Is The “Alt-Left” Going To Destroy

Our President And Country?

The 2017 Trump

Presidency - 10 June 22, 2017 – July 14, 20127

See How The Main Stream Media, The

Neocons, & the Deep State Are Trying To
Destroy The Trump Presidency
And United States of America
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June 2017
FIRST EDITION
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CONTENTS

3
 MSNBC’s Elise Jordan
Compares President Trump To A Suicide Bomber
By Randy Hall
June 22, 2017 6:09 PM EDT
If you had any doubts whether the MSNBC cable
television channel is run by and for liberals and
Democrats, former Rand Paul official and MSNBC
political analyst Elise Jordan erased them during her
appearance on Thursday morning's MSNBC Live when she
compared Donald Trump to a suicide bomber.
Jordan made the statement after host Craig Melvin
indicated he wanted to talk with her about tweets made by
the Republican president regarding whether any tapes exist
of his conversations with former Federal Bureau of
Investigation Director James Comey.
Melvin began the discussion by noting:
“You might remember that the president of
the United States tweeted a while back”
that “ James Comey better hope there are
no tapes” of such encounters.
“Just a few minutes ago,” the host noted, “the president hit
us” with another online message:
With all of the recently reported electronic
surveillance, intercepts, unmasking and
illegal leaking of information, I have no idea
whether there are “tapes” or recordings of
my conversations with James Comey, but I
did not make, and do not have, any such
recordings.
.
4
“Earlier in the broadcast,” Melvin stated, “I
said the president was bluffing. I may have
been, perhaps, too fair. It would seem as if
the president may have been lying all
along about the existence of these tapes.”
“No,” Jordan responded, “he’s just wasting
-- he wasted the country’s collective time
speculating over whether these tapes
existed or not. It’s a sad day when you
cannot depend on the president’s word.”
Of course, the president actually said that such recordings
might exist, and if they did, they could create problems for
Comey.
Nevertheless, Jordan continued:
“My advice would just be to Republicans
who do cozy up to him. It’s just like
hugging a suicide bomber. He blows you
up in the process with him.”
Melvin, who was taken aback by his guest’s hostile
statement, told Jordan that her remark was “a little strong.”
Jordan stumbled a bit in her reply:
“This is not -- look at what -- if you go out
on the limb -- if you’re a Republican who
went out on a limb and defended Donald
Trump over saying, ‘Well he’s got tapes
that are going to back up his point of view,’
you just got burned up, too,”
Unfortunately for Jordan, the decision to “waste time” on
the matter was not made by the president, but came
instead from the “mainstream media” in a perpetual quest
to bring down Donald Trump over anything, ranging from
the president getting two scoops of ice cream or his
decision to fire Comey.
 Mr. President, Meet Avner Shapiro,
Saboteur From the DOJ Swamp
By J. Christian Adams
June 22, 2017
President Trump is reportedly frustrated with Deep State
leakers trying to sabotage his agenda.
President Trump, meet Justice Department lawyer Avner
Shapiro.
President Trump is a supporter of voter identification laws.
Avner Shapiro is not.
From his perch at the Voting Section of the Department of
Justice’s Civil Rights Division, Avner Shapiro has exerted
more will over DOJ’s approach to voter ID -- particularly
against Texas -- than has the president.
That’s not how a democratic republic is designed to work.
A story built entirely on leaks and designed to attack
Trump priorities appeared in the Soros-funded Pro
Publica. It was packed with confidential insider
information about the Trump Justice Department’s
litigation decisions about state voter ID laws and the
internal views of lawyers at the Justice Department.
Avner Shapiro (Photo Credit: BU The Record)
5
The saga is a case study in how Deep State leftists both
sabotage the Trump agenda and unethically leak
confidential information about litigation decisions.
After the Trump Justice Department decided to abandon
claims that Texas voter ID was deliberately enacted to
discriminate against racial minorities, the swamp creatures
started to growl and hiss. The story reveals:
Attorneys who worked on the case for
years were barely consulted about the
change -- many weren’t consulted at all,
according to two former DOJ officials with
knowledge of the matter. Gore wrote the
filing changing the DOJ’s position largely
by himself and asked the attorneys who’d
been involved in the case for years to sign
it to show continuity. Not all of the attorneys
fell in line.
Avner Shapiro -- who has been a prosecutor in the civil
rights division for more than 20 years -- left his name off
the filings written by Gore. Shapiro was particularly
involved in developing the DOJ’s argument that Texas had
intentionally discriminated against minorities in crafting its
voter ID legislation.
This means that Shapiro sabotaged the Trump
administration’s more sensible approach to voter ID.
Let’s take a closer look at this paragraph, and sift out the
confidential information.
Whether supervisory lawyers consulted lower-level
attorneys about a change in litigation strategy is
confidential information. Lawyers are not supposed to
reveal confidential information to Soros-funded news
outlets -- or to any news outlet, for that matter. There’s one
improper leak of confidential information.

Shapiro signs a pleading attacking TX Voter ID
Whether or not “Gore wrote the filing” is also confidential
information. Now we’re at two.
Gore’s reported request to lawyers in the case to sign off to
show continuity is likewise entirely confidential. So that’s
three.
It is also confidential information that Shapiro deliberately
refused to agree to his supervisor’s request. If you’re still
counting, that’s four.
And finally, whether Shapiro was a key attorney in
developing the abandoned arguments is also confidential
information. So we have a total of five pieces of
confidential information leaked by a lawyer on the Texas
voter ID case at the Justice Department.
That’s five pieces of confidential information that a Justice
Department attorney revealed to Pro Publica, or to a third
party who revealed it to Pro Publica.
That’s five different reasons for that
attorney to be disbarred.
It’s also five different reasons for Trump administration
officials to take action against the leaker.
The DOJ ethics office must open an ethics investigation
and put the possible leaker under oath, and then report the
leaker for disbarment.
Remember, the State of Texas itself was also an intended
target of these leaks. The leaks were designed to
undermine the Trump administration's new approach
6
towards the Texas voter ID law and similar laws in other
states.
It was designed to hamper and scare Trump administration
officials away from action.
Leaks from the swamp designed to sabotage the president
will either be taken seriously, or they will not. If they are
not, there will be more leaks. If there are consequences,
like even a single termination or disbarment, they will
stop.
Avner Shapiro
For years, Shapiro’s wife Julie Fernandes has worked for
the Soros Open Society Foundations as the advocacy
director for voting rights. Remember, the Open Society
Foundations funds Pro Publica. Meanwhile, Shapiro’s
federal lawyer salary is in excess of $155,000 per year.
Avner Shapiro salary in 2015. It is higher now.
The Obama administration reflexively opposed voter ID
laws despite the fact they are supported by the vast
majority of Americans, including racial minorities. Trump
made voter ID an issue in the 2016 election, and Trump
won.
That’s what Justice Department lawyer Avner Shaprio
cannot stand.
The Pro Publica article spins the golden-oldie from a
decade ago that the civil rights lawyers at DOJ making
$150,000 or more per year are uncomfortable and unsettled
about the future because a Republican is in the White
House:
All of the internal changes at the DOJ have left attorneys
and staff with “ a great deal of fear and uncertainty,”
said [Bill] Yeomans. While he says the lawyers there
would like to stay at the department, they fear Sessions’
priorities will have devastating impact on their work.
Meow.
Memo to Bill Yeomans: Nobody cares except your close
pals. In fact, stories about left-wing federal employees
making 160 large living with "fear and uncertainty" delight
the people who elected the president.
It’s what they expected with their vote. They paid for the
ticket to the demolition derby, now the voters want to see
the carnage and steaming radiators.
Everybody knows that virtually no work is taking place
inside the Voting Section at DOJ, and hasn't for years.
Most of the lawyers in the country would trade places in a
heartbeat with the woe-is-me $160,000-a-year lawyers
leaking to Bill Yeomans and Pro Publica.
Some will bristle at the notion of hauling a lawyer
suspected of leaking to Pro Publica before the Office of
Professional Responsibility (OPR), putting the
lawyer under oath, and asking about leaking to Bill
Yeomans, Jessica Huseman, or Annie Waldman. These
would be the the sorts of insiders who flinch from any
controversy. Good luck, because the Civil Rights Division
is a cauldron of controversy. That won’t change.
Caution isn’t what got these officials a job, anyhow. This
president won the White House because he was a
.
7
disruptor. Perhaps more importantly, Americans
supporting the president expect the swamp to be drained.
People who put Trump in the White House expect
disruption, not caution. People working for the president in
federal agencies should let that soak in a bit.
When the swamp leaks and sabotages the president,
everyone working for the president has an obligation to
enforce the rules and follow the law.
Thankfully, if nobody has the will to do what the president
promised, the public can make their own complaints about
these leaks to OPR.
Let’s see if the head of OPR, Robin Ashton -- a well-
known Democratic loyalist, incidentally -- takes seriously
the fact that Voting Section lawyers are unethically leaking
to sabotage the president.
Let’s also watch to see if immediate supervisors inside the
Voting Section also take the leaks seriously and act.
If not, we can add a few more names to the list of the
swamp creatures to drain out shortly.
 Two New Polls Show Deepening
Distrust of Trump-Trashing Press Corps
By Tim Graham
June 22, 2017 2:36 PM EDT
Two new polls demonstrate an ongoing, deepening distrust
of the so-called “objective” news media, especially among
Republicans.
A new Rasmussen Reports poll published on Thursday
found 76 percent of Republicans and 51 percent of voters
not affiliated with either major political party believe most
reporters are biased against the president, a view shared by
only 24 percent of Democrats. Sixty-eight percent of GOP
voters and a plurality (45 percent) of unaffiliateds think the
media coverage of Trump is poor, but 49 percent of
Democrats rate it as good or excellent.”
The skepticism is growing deeper:
“Fifty percent think most reporters are
biased against the president, up two points
from January. Just four percent think most
reporters are biased in Trump's favor, a 12-
point drop from the previous survey.”
The latest poll from YouGov.com asked the question a
slightly different way, that asks about one-sidedness based
on the ownership (and possibly advertisers/foundation
funders) of media properties.
The question was
“Do you think news organizations tend to
provide only one side of the story
depending on who owns them or funds
them?”
8
Here’s how Hoang Nguyen at YouGov reported the
answers:
The rise of fake news, a growing multitude
of media sources, and an increasingly
polarized nation have Americans learning
to take their headlines with a grain of salt.
New YouGov research shows that most Americans (70%)
agree that news organizations report stories in a light that’s
partial to who owns them. It’s interesting to note that the
two prevailing political parties perceive media bias to
varying degrees. About one in two Democrats (52%)
believe that news media is influenced by funding while a
drastically greater number of Republicans (85%) hold the
same to be true.
They also asked this question:
“Do you trust news organizations that have
a reputation for objectivity proven by track
record?”
Republicans shirk the idea of a “reputation for objectivity,”
which can easily be read as the “classic brands” of
“objective” news, like Associated Press or the Big Three
broadcast networks. Nguyen summarized:
Conversely, when asked whether or not
one would trust a news source if its track
record proved objectivity, 83% of
Democrats believe they would, whereas
only 58% of Republicans say the same.
Taken in conjunction with the first poll, Republicans and
the national population tend to be more skeptical of news
organizations, regardless of whether the source has a
reputation of being neutral.
The percentage point difference in the two
surveys reveals that the general public
sides more with Republicans than it
does with Democrats on the topic of
media bias.
It’s nearly impossible to watch the “mainstream” media
report on President Trump and believe anyone is trying to
demonstrate a “track record” of objectivity. There is no
reward inside the media elite for neutrality in the wake of
what they see as Hurricane Donald.
Nguyen concluded:
YouGov recently conducted a survey that
revealed 44% of Americans believe when
someone refers to reporting as fake news,
it tends to be that s/he doesn’t like what’s
being reported more than the fact that it’s
untrue. Given that the general population
sides more closely with Republican
sentiment towards media bias in the above
polls, it seems that news organizations
have a tough few months of ahead of them
if they want more members of the public to
accept reporting at face value.
There’s a flaw in that survey: it requires mind-reading. The
44-percent number is asking the public that when “people
say” something is Fake News, is it because they don’t like
the story? Survey respondents are more generous to the
blob of “people.”
However, there’s a very dramatic partisan tilt when they
make the question just about the president:
“When Donald Trump says something is
‘Fake News,’ do you think he is more likely
to say that because (A) he believes the
.
9
information in the story isn’t true, or (B) he
just doesn’t like what is being reported, or
(C) not sure?”
The Democrat tilt is 9-87-4 – he doesn’t like real news –
and the Republican tilt is 66-23-10 – he’s convinced the
press is faking it. It would be more fun if (C) was
“he’s tweaking/trolling the press because
he knows they hate being called fake.”
The press gets upset at the “fake news” label because they
define it very narrowly, like the standard for libel –
reporters perpetuating a story they know is a lie. They miss
the way Republican voters hear the phrase.
Most importantly in Trump’s tones, “fake” is a
denunciation of the Dominant Media Spin, the one that
routinely insists Republicans are falling off a cliff, or that
the Russia probe is incredibly dire, or implying that Trump
won’t last his four-year term. Or that winning all the
special elections is actually a bad sign. Facts are regularly
manipulated to sound a gloomy note.
In 2016, the Dominant Media Spin was that Trump was so
dangerously hateful and reckless that he would lose badly
and take a large chunk of Republicans down with him.
None of that happened. All the polls insisting he was
losing badly ended up being wrong.
Or “fake news.”
 White House Statement Warns Of 'Unusual And
Extraordinary Threat' - What Do They
Know That We Don't Know?
Should This Ominous President Trump Tweet Indicate
To Us That 'Time Is Short'?
By Stefan Stanford - All News Pipeline - Live Free Or Die
June 22, 2017
In this recent story from Mac Slavo over at SHTFPlan he
warns that a recent tweet from President Donald Trump
could be looked at as a warning to Americans that war may
be coming soon. Thanking China and their President Xi for
the efforts they've made for helping with North Korea,
Trump warns of those efforts:
"it has not worked out".
With the US and China set to meet again as new activity is
detected at a North Korean nuclear site, some experts warn
that every day without a 'solution' to the North Korea
problem is another day moving closer to what could be an
absolutely devastating war with the complete destruction
of Seoul, South Korea one unimaginable but very real
possibility.
With Kim Jong Un so afraid of assassination by US Navy
SEALS that he only travels at night, the fact that a recent
US Navy ballistic missile intercept failed off of the coast
of Hawaii might be causing nightmares for some
Hawaiians, especially considering Kim's recent threats that
North Korea could nuke Hawaii. And with reports coming
out last week that North Korea was only 'one step away'
from launching a nuclear missile that could hit
America while even the Wall Street Journal recently
reported North Korea dreams of turning out the lights in
America, the options President Trump faces on how to
deal with the 'North Korea problem' are paved with peril.
While the Washington Post asked in a recent story, "what
did President Trump mean" by his recent tweet (seen via
10
screenshot above), Vox was freaking out even more,
reporting
"Trump just sent a mystifying, disturbing
tweet about North Korea" and "maybe the
president shouldn't tweet vaguely
threatening things about a nuclear power".
Well the Post now gets an answer to their question as
President Trump's White House has just released a
statement called "Continuation of the National Emergency
with Respect to North Korea" within which the President
reiterates why all of these Executive Orders on North
Korea have been signed in the first place dating back
years:
to deal with the unusual and
extraordinary threat to the national
security, foreign policy, and economy of the
United States posed by the continued
actions and policies of the Government of
North Korea.
From President Trump's new statement:
The existence and risk of proliferation of
weapons-usable fissile material on the
Korean Peninsula and the actions and
policies of the Government of North
Korea continue to pose an unusual and
extraordinary threat to the national
security, foreign policy, and economy of
the United States. For this reason, the
national emergency declared in
Executive Order 13466, expanded in
scope in Executive Order 13551,
addressed further in Executive Order
13570, further expanded in scope in
Executive Order 13687, and under which
additional steps were taken in Executive
Order 13722 of March 15, 2016, and the
measures taken to deal with that
 national emergency, must continue in
effect beyond June 26, 2017. Therefore,
in accordance with section 202(d) of the
National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C.
1622(d)), I am continuing for 1 year the
national emergency with respect to
North Korea declared in Executive
Order 13466. This notice shall be
published in the Federal Register and
transmitted to the Congress. DONALD J.
TRUMP THE WHITE HOUSE, June 21,
2017.
And while this statement doesn't specifically address the
exact reason that Kim's North Korea poses an 'unusual and
extraordinary threat' to the United States, those who have
been paying attention know that there is a very real chance
that Kim and NKorea have two 'aces in the hole' that fly
over the US several times every day in satellite's KMS 3-
2 and KMS-4. In the chart below you can see all of the
passes that KMS-4 makes over the US over the next
week+ into July 1st.
We've reported on ANP about the potential EMP threat
from North Korea for several years now, dating far back
into the Obama administration, and while there are no
clear answers why the 'North Korea problem' wasn't dealt
with long ago, it's been warned that the globalists could be
holding Kim's EMP's as an 'ace in the hole'. A card just
waiting to be played upon America, and a 'card' that would
give the globalists who benefit from it 'plausible
deniability'. "Kim did it!"
As Dr. Peter Vincent Pry previously reported in this story
on ANP, should the US be attacked by EMP, up to or more
than 90% of us could be dead within the following year to
18 months. And while North Korea's top envoy to India
recently stated that North Korea is open to a moratorium
on new nuclear tests, and would like to begin talks with the
US 'under the right conditions', this story also reports why
that's highly unlikely as 'the right conditions' begin with
the US ending all military drills with South Korea, drills
that have been going on routinely now for many years.
11
As Slavo's story over at SHTFPlan continues,
there’s a reason we’ve suggested that
concerned Americans stock up on anti-
radiation pills and CBRN rated Gas Masks
and if President Trump’s latest tweet is any
guide, then time is running short.
A very real 'nightmare scenario' for America, even our
Secretary of Defense warns of problems ahead.
According to this June 13th story from NDTV, US
Pentagon Chief General Jim Mattis told lawmakers last
week he was shocked by the readiness of the US military,
blaming legal budget caps and 16 years of constant war for
the sad state the military was in. Warning also that North
Korea was the 'most urgent' threat to international peace
and the security of the US, 'Maddog' also helped to explain
why war might NOT be the answer - it could quickly lead
to devastation.
"I retired from military service three
months after sequestration took effect,"
Mattis, a former Marine general, told the
House Armed Services Committee.
"Four years later, I returned to the
Department (of Defense), and I have
been shocked by what I've seen about
our readiness to fight... No enemy in the
field has done more to harm the
readiness of our military than
sequestration."
Ahead of the four-hour hearing, Mattis
also warned that North Korea poses the
most urgent threat to international
peace and security, calling the regime's
weapons program a "clear and present
danger" to all. In written testimony, he
said Pyongyang is increasing the pace
and scope of its nuclear weapons
program that leader Kim Jong-Un wants
to be capable of delivering a bomb on
the United States.
 "The regime's provocative actions,
manifestly illegal under international
law, have not abated despite United
Nations' censure and sanctions," Mattis
said.
Pyongyang has test-fired a string of
missiles this year, building on launches
and nuclear tests that have ratcheted up
tensions over its quest to develop
weapons capable of hitting the United
States -- something Trump has vowed
"won't happen."
But Mattis and his top military officer,
General Joe Dunford, said any military
action against North Korea would have
disastrous consequences for the
peninsula. "It would be a war like
nothing we have seen since 1953,"
Mattis said about the end of the Korean
War.
With apparent terrorist supporters within the US Congress
in Washington DC showing their true colors 'en masse' by
neglecting to sign on to Tulsi Gabbard's "Stop Arming
Terrorists" bill, thus seemingly proving their allegiance to
arming the same ISIS terrorists who want to slaughter
Americans and destroy our nation, we're not the least bit
surprised that there are still 'enemies of America within',
willing to do whatever they can to take down our nation.
While for the first time in many years we actually found
ourselves agreeing with Arizona Senator John McCain
who claimed North Korean President Kim Jong Un should
be held responsible for the murder of Otto Warmbier, we
agree even more with President Trump who claimed
former US President Barack Obama should have done
much more much sooner to get Otto home than he did,
sentiments agreed on by Otto's father Fred Warmbier.
In fact, the entire situation happening in North Korea could
be looked at from that standpoint: The 'North Korea
problem' should have been dealt with much sooner rather
than that 'can kicked down the road' as far as it has been.
Now it's been dumped in President Trump's lap at a time
12
even high-profile national security people are talking about
the potential of a deranged Kim sending the US back to the
dark ages, wiping out 90% of us or more in the process.
If you asked the average person about
what threat North Korea poses to the
United States, they’ll probably respond
with a blank stare. The few who happen
to pay attention to the news, will likely
mention North Korea’s nuclear program,
as well as their efforts to develop long
range ballistic missiles that could one
day reach the United States. That’s
pretty much all most Americans know
about North Korea’s capabilities,
because that’s all they hear about from
the media.
The truth however is much more
frightening. There’s plenty of evidence
to suggest that North Korea is either
capable of, or is working on the ability
to launch an EMP attack against the
United States. Unlike the threat posed
by a nuclear tipped missile, this
wouldn’t just destroy a city or wipe out
an overseas military base. It could
destroy every city, and kill millions of
people. Without a functional electrical
grid, there’s simply no way that our
society can feed and shelter the current
population.
However, it should be noted that while
most Americans are totally unaware of
this threat, people in high places are
taking it very seriously. Earlier this
month, a columnist for the Toronto Sun
named Anthony Furey released a book
that details the threat of an EMP attack,
called Pulse Attack: The Real Story
Behind the Secret Weapon That Can
Destroy North America. He was recently
interviewed by Breitbart, and revealed
that powerful people in our government
are discussing North Korea’s EMP
capabilities.
In the 2nd video below we hear a msm report from
CBSNews who reports that as of this moment, diplomatic
efforts at dealing with the 'North Korea problem' have
failed and tensions continue to escalate there. In the 1st
video below from Infowars we hear why bombing North
Korea may be the last horrible option left for President
Trump though we'll have to remind, we hope that if
President Trump resorts to that action, he's also prepared to
take down KMS 3-2 and KMS 3-4 before they're able to
deliver their deadly payload.

In the final video below, Dave with the X22Report also

touches upon the North Korea situation, and their offer to
end nuclear tests under the right circumstances, in a new
video called "Brace Yourself, It's Going To Get A Lot
Worse Before It Gets Better".

13
 Smoking Gun Proof
That Russia Hacked The Entire World
By Washingtonsblog
Posted On June 22, 2017
As shown below, the allegations that Russia has been
hacking the entire world have been thoroughly vetted and
verified.
Germany
Germany’s intelligence agency accused Russia of
deploying cyberattacks to destabilize the government!
(But German intelligence agencies later
found no evidence of Russian
interference.)
And last December, German security officials said that
Russia hacked secret German communications and
provided them to Wikileaks (English translation).
(But German officials later concluded that
the communications were likely leaked
from an insider within the German
parliament, the Bundestag (English
translation)).
France
The Washington Post, New York Times (and here),
Reuters, Politico, Register and many other mainstream
publications claimed that the Russians hacked the French
election, just like they hacked the U.S. election.
The head of the NSA claimed that the NSA watched the
Russians hack the French elections:
.
14
(But the French government later said
there was no trace of Russian hacking.)
Qatar
CNN reported that U.S. officials suspected that Russia had
hacked Qatar’s state news agency, causing a rift with
Saudi Arabia.
(But the Qatari government later said it
wasn’t Russia.)
America
The Washington Post published a story claiming that
Russian hackers penetrated the US power grid through a
utility in Vermont.
(The Post subsequently admitted that –
according to officials close to the
investigation – “the incident is not linked to
any Russian government effort to target or
hack the utility”, that the incident only
involved a laptop not connected to the
electrical grid, and there may not even
have been malware at all on this laptop.)
When a treasure trove of secret NSA tools were revealed,
Russian hackers were blamed.
(But it turns out that it was probably a leak
by an NSA insider.)
And of course the evidence that the Russians hacked
Democratic party emails and leaked them to Wikileaks –
and otherwise stole the election away from Clinton – is
extremely strong. After all, the mainstream press has said
so.
(Maybe not so much …)
So you see? It’s been proven that Russia has hacked the
world …
 Netflix Documentary Claims
Trump Destroying Freedom of the Press
By Kevin Baker
June 22, 2017 1:41 PM EDT
Thursday’s Morning Joe took the time to devote a whole
segment to a new Netflix documentary entitled Nobody
Speak: Trials of the Free Press. In discussion with the
director, Brian Knappenberger, the panel lamented the
supposed deplorable attacks by Donald Trump and his
supporters on the media and First Amendment. Time was
taken to mourn the demise of the "critical" news site
Gawker, dead at the hands of Hulk Hogan, and Trump
supporter Peter Thiel.
“This seems so important,” co-host Mika
Brzezinski said reverently of the
conversation, “I am beginning to feel like
everything he [Trump] does...is far more
serious than we could ever imagine.”
The segment started off with a clip from the documentary
in which it warned that,
“Without a meaningful application of the
First Amendment you have a true risk of
living in a suppressive state.” It further
cautioned, “There is enough chance that
the President will be upset enough, angry
enough, vengeful enough to try to take
whatever actions he thinks he can to
punish those who have offended him.”
Much of the actual dialogue eventually came to revolve
around the influence of powerful right-wing billionaires,
such as Sheldon Adelson and Peter Thiel, on the news and
their increasing power. As an example of this, they cited
the lawsuit in which Hulk Hogan successfully sued
Gawker Media for libel:
15
KNAPPENBERGER: In the film we kind of look at the
chronology of what we've seen. If you look at candidate
Trump and the way he treated the press, the press were
scum, I think even this show got some heat at times from
him, but the press were scum, you know, he blacklisted
them from attending their rallies and speeches, giving
press credentials in the usual way, eventually of course
called them the enemy of the people and then, you
know, we saw the antics when he was president --
President-Elect Trump and even now, I think as late as
yesterday he was sort of still -- this is a part of his -- of
every speech that he makes and it has been a part of his
rise, this kind of anger of the press.
WILLIE GEIST: A lot of what you talk about in the film,
though, predates Donald Trump and focuses on big, rich
guys who can buy out media and then control the
narrative their way. Shelly Adelson, Las Vegas, that
secret deal, and Peter Thiel, behind the Gawker versus
the Hulk Hogan deal. What is the danger of that big
money being able to control the message a newspaper
or organization puts out?
KNAPPENBERGER:Yeah. We should say that the film
starts by looking at the Hulk Hogan versus Gawker case
which I thought was fascinating by itself. The first time a
sex tape case like this had ever gone to trial. And as
salacious and tabloidy as that sounded there was clearly
some big picture first amendment versus privacy issues
at stake. It was complex, it was kind of on the fringes of
acceptability.
But it was the verdict that was really kind of shocking but
$140 million verdict paired with a $50 million requirement
that Gawker had to put up the money right away. That was
a death sentence of Gawker. Then it was revealed that
Peter Thiel was actually funding Hulk Hogan's lawsuit. So
there was an element of almost theater actually in the trial
because you didn't understand what was really happening
here was that there was a very wealthy individual trying to
come silence this critical voice.
Completely absent from the segment was any semblance
of discussion about the issue of liberal bias within the
mainstream media. In addition to this, no questions were
raised as to why the press has become so hated or why its
credibility has fallen to all-time lows in the eyes of the
American people. The narrative simply became one of the
media being the victims of an unwarranted and
unprovoked attack by Donald Trump and his supporters.
Innocent victims, like Gawker, who never, ever, ever, did
anything that warranted any sort of lawsuit or legal action,
whatsoever.
Today's Morning Joe was brought to you by Lexus,
American Wind Action, and Xarelto.
Here are the excerpts from the June 22 segment:
8:52 AM
NARRATOR: Without a meaningful application of the first
amendment you have a true risk of living in a suppressive
state, of living in a country in which a president thinks he's
doing the right things -- they always do -- who thinks that
his critics are harming the country -- they always do -- can
limit the ability of the press, the willingness of the press to
expose, to criticize, and the like. There is enough chance
that the president will be upset enough, angry enough,
vengeful enough to try to take whatever actions he thinks
he can to punish those who have offended him.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: That was a clip from the new Netflix
original documentary, Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free
Press, which looks at the growing influence that both
billionaires and politicians are having on today's media.
Joining us now is the film's director Brian Knappenberger.
Brian, thank you for coming on the show. This seems so
important. It feels like Trump's -- President Trump's sort of
fight with the press often is sort of joked away. I am
beginning to feel like everything that he does that people
end up sort of joking about, because it's just him, is far
more serious than we could ever imagine. What do you feel
about this fight with the press?
KNAPPENBERGER: Yeah. I think it is serious.
BRZEZINSKI: What does this show?
KNAPPENBERGER: Very, very serious. In the film we kind
of look at the chronology of what we've seen. If you look at
candidate Trump and the way he treated the press, the
press were scum, I think even this show got some heat at
times from him, but the press were scum, you know, he
blacklisted them from attending their rallies and speeches,
giving press credentials in the usual way, eventually of
course called them the enemy of the people and then, you
know, we saw the antics when he was President --
President-Elect Trump and even now, I think as late as
yesterday he was sort of still -- this is a part of his -- of
every speech that he makes and it has been a part of his
rise, this kind of anger of the press.
WILLIE GEIST: A lot of what you talk about in the film,
though, predates Donald Trump, actually, and focuses on
16
big, rich guys who can buy out media and then control the
narrative that way. Shelly Adelson, Las Vegas, that secret
deal, and Peter Thiel, behind the Gawker versus Hulk
Hogan deal. What is the danger of that big money being
able to control the message a newspaper or organization
puts out?
KNAPPENBERGER:Yeah. We should say that the film
starts looking at the Hulk Hogan versus Gawker case
which I thought was jsut fascinating by itself. The first time
a sex tape case like this had ever gone to trial. And as
salacious and tabloidy as that sounded there was clearly
some big picture first amendment versus privacy issues at
stake. It was complex, it was kind of on the fringes of
acceptability.
But it was the verdict that was really kind of shocking it was
$140 million verdict paired with a $50 million requirement
that Gawker had to put up the money right away. That was
a death sentence of Gawker and then it was revealed that
Peter Thiel was actually funding Hulk Hogan's lawsuit. So
there was an element of almost theater, actually, in the trial
because you didn't understand what was really happening
here was that there was a very wealthy individual trying to
come silence this critical voice.
BRZEZINSKI: You mentioned Peter Thiel. Here's another
clip from Nobody Speak.
TRUMP: I think the media is among the most dishonest
groups of people I've ever met.
NARRATOR: Donald Trump, Peter Thiel and other
billionaires have been trying to undercut the press,
undercut the First Amendment, undercut the freedom of
speech.
NARRATOR: I think the common thread among the Peter
Thiel story, the Adelson story, and the Trump story is
billionaires who are proclaiming we are not vulnerable to
truth. We are invulnerable to the facts. And it simply doesn't
matter what you say, what the press does, we are more
powerful than the truth.
MIKE BARNICLE: Okay, there you have sort of the nut, the
core of the problem. You have resources married to intent.
You have rich people with the specific intent of damaging
the free press. Now, it's not going to work with The Times
or The Washington Post or NBC, but there are a host of
medium-sized papers and websites around this country
that could be ended with this.
KNAPPENBERGER: Yeah, and that's -- I was actually very
concerned about that. Local communities across the United
States used to have a very healthy kind of competitive
multiple newspapers. And so this Sheldon Adelson story
where he buys the Las Vegas Journal, an important local
newspaper in the west, he does that in secret so you don't
 know what his intentions are, you don't know what his
motivation is. So, that was a big part oft hat. But, if you look
at the bigger picture, I do think we're facing a wave of
hostility towards the press.
If you think about what we've seen just in the last couple of
months, you know, had a reporter arrested for asking Tom
Price a question, health and human services director. You
had a reporter pinned, I guess, against the wall of the FCC
for asking a question of the director there. And of course
you had this awful incident with Greg Gianforte, body
slamming a reporter for asking a question, doing what he
should be doing, asking a question about health care of the
then congressional candidate, now a member of Congress.
SAM STEIN: I'm curious how you would react to my theory,
which is that part of the problem, actually, rests with the
press corps itself. The press has a collective action issue.
As a member of an outlet that was barred from covering
the Trump campaign, I experienced this first hand, which is
when people, outlets are barred from covering the
campaign, the rest of the press corps could take two
tracks, one is just to sort of go on with their business and
cover the campaign as they see fit, and the other is to
stand in solidarity with the other outlets that are being
barred.
And this is happening now with the White House briefings
where they're increasingly off camera, no audio, no video,
and what challenge the White House Correspondents
Association now has is what do you do? Do you try to go
.
17
on with business as usual or do you try to do collective
action? No longer broadcast some of these executive
signing statements, no longer attend these background
briefings that you can't even broadcast or show audio files
for? So is that the solution? Is the solution to all this
pressure and the tax and the money collective action?
KNAPPENBERGER: Yeah, actually, I think so. In history
there's been some great examples of that where
somebody's been, you know, shut down a question and
someone else has just deferred their question to the
person who was just shut down. Those are pretty moving
statements by themselves. And I think that can easily be
something important. You know, the small sort of ray of
hope that I have in this and the sort of early days of the
Trump administration is that the press is kind of getting
reminded about what they're there for in the first place. I do
think there's a lot of legitimate criticism of the press, that
maybe it's gotten too cozy to power, that maybe its become
too corporatized over time or traded softball stories for
access --
BRZEZINSKI: And Twitter hasn't helped. You have the
whole concept of objectivity I think is in peril. And there's a
transformation taking place from objective reporters to
transparent reporters. Which I think is a good thing, but I
think it runs into some potholes along the way, especially at
times like this.
KNAPPENBERGER: Yeah.
 Left-Wing Media And Democrats Colluded To Create
Russia Hacking HOAX As An Act Of TREASON To
Overthrow The Elected President
By JD Heyes
Thursday, June 22, 2017
Since Nov. 9, the day after the presidential election,
Americans have been treated to the lie that Donald J.
Trump and his campaign (and later, inner political circle)
“colluded” with Russia to “steal” the White House from
Hillary Clinton.
There have been a number of variations on this phony
narrative — Russia mass-planted fake news in hundreds of
websites, Facebook and Google; Russia “hacked” the
election to change ballots; Trump and Russian President
Vladimir Putin are BFF’s who set all this up before Trump
announced he would seek the GOP nomination; yada,
yada, yada.
Mind you, none of this has been proven. After nearly eight
months of allegations and innuendo, mostly in the form of
Deep State leaks to willing Left-wing accomplices in the
Democrat-controlled establishment media, not one shred
of evidence has surfaced to indicate any part of these
hyped narratives are true.
In fact, the FBI and other intelligence agencies have been
looking into Team Trump-Russia ties for nearly a year.
And still there is nothing.
So what’s the deal? Why are these investigations
continuing? Why hasn’t the Republican-controlled
Congress put a stop to this nonsense? Why is the Justice
Department wasting taxpayer funds with a special counsel
and staff?
18
The simple answer is also the most obvious one: “Official
Washington” does not like Trump, never will like Trump,
and wants Trump out of official Washington.
On recent episode of his Fox News program, “Tucker
Carlson Tonight,” the namesake opened his show
emphasizing that after all the hoopla, leaks and charges,
the “Trump-Russia” narrative is a massive nothing burger
aimed at bringing down a duly-elected president.
[H]ere is what is true – as of 8 p.m. Eastern
time tonight [June 9], Donald Trump is still
the president of the U.S., and that means
on the most basic level, [fired FBI Director
Jame’s] Comey’s testimony [before the
Senate Intelligence Committee] failed to
achieve its goal. Make no mistake,
removing Trump from office was the goal.
“There was collusion, Russia hacked our
election, assault to our democracy, imperils
our way of life!” You hear those all the time.
You hear them every night on this show but
nobody in D.C. actually believes any of
that, and that’s why nobody ever explains
how exactly it happened or what
specifically the effects of it were. Because
they have no idea. And in fact, they don’t
really care. They just want Trump gone
along with anyone who is in the way.
Russia is just a means.
There have been various other targets within the Trump
White House as well — advisor Steve Bannon, Attorney
General Jeff Sessions, son-in-law Jared Kushner, former
National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, spokesman Sean
Spicer, chief of staff Reince Priebus, advisor Kellyanne
Conway — but getting to them, too, is a way to eventually
get to Trump. (RELATED: Dershowitz warns that left-
wing media frenzy endangers civil liberties by
promoting LIES about Trump and the presidency)
All in an effort to do nothing more than topple “a
democratically elected government” that ‘official’
Washington despises (that includes establishment
Democrats and Republicans, by the way).
 “[A]gain, this is not about truth or fairness,
much less protecting this country from
foreign threats,” he added. “It’s about
toppling – let’s not lie about it – a
democratically elected government that the
permanent class in Washington does not
like.
“Now again, collusion with a foreign
government against the interest of the
United States is tantamount to treason,”
Carlson continued. “It is definitely a moral
crime, and we would never defend it. We
would attack it, of course. There is just no
evidence it actually happened. This
whole story is a hoax. It’s a lie that those
.
19
who tell it they tell it are beginning to
believe. That is the definition of mass
hysteria. It is deeply hurting our country,
and yet otherwise smart people press
forward as if it is all entirely real despite
mounting evidence it is not real at all.”
And now that a special counsel, Robert Mueller, has been
appointed, many long-time Beltway politicos believe that
he won’t get out of town without indicting, charging or
implicating somebody in wrong-doing.
Most of those same people believe, once more, that the
ultimate goal is Trump removal.
 Trump: Mueller’s Friendship
With Comey ‘Very Bothersome’
Relationship Poses Conflict Of Interest In Witch Hunt
NY Post
June 23, 2017

Comey was overseeing the investigation until Trump axed

him last month out of frustration with the inquiry.

Mueller and Comey worked together at the Justice

Department in the Bush administration.

Fox News released excerpts of the interview after

interviewing Trump at the White House.

Trump has denied any ties to Russia or knowledge of any

campaign collusion with Moscow.
James Comey and Robert Mueller Getty Image
The Trump administration has been firing back at the
deluge of leaks surrounding Mueller’s Russia probe —
President Trump said it is “very bothersome” that the man suggesting that anonymous sources tied to the reports
investigating possible ties between his presidential cannot be trusted.
campaign and Russia is good friends with ousted FBI
director James Comey.
Trump has lashed out on Twitter to decry
The president was asked in an interview to be broadcast
Friday morning on “Fox and Friends” whether special “the single greatest WITCH HUNT in
counsel Robert Mueller should step down because of his American political history” – claiming it’s
relationship with Comey. being “led by some very bad and conflicted
people!”
“We’re going to have to see,” Trump
replied.
.

20
 So, Just How Many Times
Did James Comey Leak To The Press?
Legal Experts Have Argued That Comey’s Memos Are FBI Property,
Hence Government Records
By Usafeaturesmedia
Posted On June 23, 2017
(National Sentinel) FBI follies: Americans are having
serious trust issues with some of our [historically] most
revered institutions, but it’s not their fault: If the men and
women who have been appointed and/or elected to those
institutions had not been so abusive with their power, then
trust wouldn’t be an issue.
Take fired FBI Director James Comey, for instance. The
man admitted during recent testimony before the Senate
Intelligence Committee that he leaked contents of a memo
of a conversation that allegedly took place between him
and President Donald J. Trump – a leak that he knew
would lead to the appointment of a special counsel to
investigate anything and everything about the Trump
administration.
That admission alone should have resulted in formal
charges against Comey, since his actions were violations
both of federal statutes and FBI rules of conduct.
But now we learn that the memo Comey admitted to
leaking via a friend to The New York Times may have been
just one of many leaks, as Breitbart News reports:
James Comey may have misled senators
on May 3, when he testified to the Senate
Judiciary Committee that he had never
been an anonymous source in news
reports related to the Russia investigation.
By that time, he had already leaked several
private conversations he had with
President Trump to his friend Benjamin
21
Wittes, editor-in-chief of the blog Lawfare
and former editorial writer for the
Washington Post.
In a piece written May 18, only nine days after Comey was
fired, Wittes said that the former FBI director had shared
those conversations “over the previous few months.” He
noted:
Comey never told me the details of the
dinner meeting; I don’t think I even knew
that there had been a meeting over dinner
until I learned it from the Times story. But
he did tell me in general terms that early
on, Trump had ‘asked for loyalty’ and that
Comey had promised him only honesty. He
also told me that Trump was perceptibly
uncomfortable with this answer.
In addition, Wittes also wrote that he had lunch with
Comey on March 27, and that they talked about a phone
call that the president had made to him earlier in the
day, Breitbart News reported.
Those conversations were leaks, however, Wittes claimed,
“just conversations between friends, the
contents of which one friend is now
disclosing.”
Oh.
That’s not what constitutional expert and law professor
Jonathan Turley, a frequent supplier of testimony to
various congressional committees, believes. He wrote that
what the two discussed constitutes an unauthorized leak by
definition under the law.
More from Breitbart:
 Wittes not only wrote about the “loyalty”
conversation with Trump in his May 18 blog
post, titled: “What James Comey Told Me
About Donald Trump,” he but he also wrote
about contacting the New York Times as a
source to share what Comey had told
him. He also discussed contacting the New
York Times in a Buzzfeed interivew.
The fact that Wittes did so only after
Comey was fired does not change the fact
that Comey shared his communications
with Trump while he was still FBI director.
No question Wittes is arguably a member of the media;
hence, leaks.
But Comey’s leaking extends beyond Wittes:
Comey told senators on June 8 that he
decided on May 12 to release his memos
of his conversations with Trump to friend
Daniel Richman so that he could leak them
to the media to prompt a special counsel.
But that doesn’t explain who leaked to the
New York Times the conversation about
the “loyalty request” on May 11 — a day
before Comey said he gave Richman
memos of the conversation to leak to
media outlets.
That Times story cited “associates,” or “two
people who have heard” Comey’s account
of the dinner and agreed to keep it quiet
while Comey was director.
.
22
The Associated Press reported that a day
before the New York Times story broke,
Comey friend Daniel Richman had
commented to the AP that the president
had removed “somebody unwilling to
pledge absolute loyalty to him.”
From those reports, it appears that Comey
told both Wittes and Richman about the
conversations while he was FBI director,
potentially for the purpose of later leaking
to the media.
In earlier testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on
May 3, Comey told the panel he had “never” been an
anonymous news source on “matters relating to” the
investigation on the Trump campaign.
By his own admission, that does not appear to be the case:
What Comey didn’t say was that he had by
then already discussed confidential
conversations with the president to
“friends” — who would later write about
those conversations or act as conduits to
the media.
The Trump legal team is preparing to file complaints
against Comey with the Department of Justice’s Office of
the Inspector General and the Senate Judiciary Committee,
a source close to officials has said, Breitbart News
reported.
Turley has argued that Comey’s memos are FBI property,
hence government records. Leaking them could put him in
some legal jeopardy.
 Trump Explains Why He Bluffed On 'Comey Tapes';
Blasts Mueller's Hiring Of "Clinton Supporters"
By Tyler Durden
Jun 23, 2017 9:29 AM

After weeks without a live interview, President Trump, reporting to determine that, but I don't
much to the dismay of the left-leaning MSM, appeared on think it will be that hard."
Fox & Friends this morning with Melania. The interview
will undoubtedly be described throughout the day as a
'softball' piece but it did at least result in some new
insights, maybe.

First, on the now infamous 'Comey tapes.' Given that

Trump has now admitted that there never were any 'tapes,'
at least as far as he knows, why the bluff?

Apparently, Trump believes the bluff

helped to steer Comey toward the path
of truth in his testimony, a path that
Trump believes he'd lost before the
bluff.

Here's Trump on the topic:

“Well I didn’t tape him. You never know

what’s happening when you see that the
Obama administration and perhaps longer
than that was doing all this unmasking and
surveillance and you read all about it and
I’ve been reading about it for the last
couple of months about the seriousness of
the and the horrible situation of surveillance
all over the place."
“But I didn’t tape, and I don’t have any
tapes, and I didn’t tape, but when he
found out that there may be tapes out
there, whether its governmental tapes or
anything else and who knows, I think
his story may have changed."
“You’ll have to take a look at that. Because
then he’ll have to tell what actually took
place at the events. And my story never
changed. My story was the straight story.
My story was always the truth.”
"But you'll have to determine for
yourself whether or not his story
changed. He did admit that what I said
was right. And, if you look further back,
before he heard about that, I think
maybe he wasn't admitting that. So,
you'll have to do a little investigative
And on Robert Mueller:
“Well he’s very, very good friends with
Comey. Which is very bothersome.
We’re going to have to see. But there has
no obstruction, there has been no
collusion. There has been leaking by
Comey. And virtually everyone agrees on
that.”
“The people who have been hired are
all Hillary Clinton supporters. Some of
them worked for Hillary Clinton. I mean
the whole thing is ridiculous if you want to
know the truth from that standpoint."
"But he is an honorable man, and hopefully
he’ll come up with an honorable solution.”
And, in case there is any doubt, here is The Hill's
confirmation that some of the folks on Mueller's team may
be slightly less that completely 'independent.'
The Hill previously reported that Jeannie
Rhee, a member of Mueller’s team,
donated $5,400 to Hillary Clinton’s

23
 presidential campaign PAC Hillary for
America.

Another person on Mueller’s team, Andrew Weissmann,

donated money to former President Obama’s campaign in
2008 while working at a law firm. Weissmann is the senior
lawyer on the special counsel team, Bloomberg reported.

James Quarles, who served as an assistant special

prosecutor on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force,
has donated to over a dozen Democratic PACs since the
late 1980s. He was also identified by the Washington Post
as a member of Mueller's team.

In the end, not much new was learned but it all makes for
entertaining TV.

24
 FEAR AND LOATHING
Johnny Depp Jokes About KILLING Donald Trump At
Glastonbury 2017, Asking ‘When Was The Last Time
An Actor Assassinated A President?’
Scruffy Star, 54, Makes Reference To Lincoln's Killer
During Rambling Introduction At Glasto Event
By Neal Baker
23rd June 2017, 8:00 Am
Updated: 23rd June 2017, 8:04 Am

JOHNNY Depp joked about assassinating President Crowds cheered as the dishevelled actor made a rambling
Donald Trump at Glastonbury Festival. speech
Crowds were filmed cheering as the Pirates Of The
Caribbean Star asked:
“When was the last time an actor
assassinated a President?”
— a nod to Abraham Lincoln’s killer John Wilkes Booth.

Depp asked the crowd when the last time an actor

assassinated a President

Depp was filmed joking about assassinating Trump at Scruffy Depp, 54, was given a rock star welcome during
Glastonbury Festival the event at Cineramageddon — a drive-in cinema on the
Somerset site.

He made a rambling introduction to his 2004 film The

Libertine along with film director Julien Temple — talking
about religion and poetry.

A fan shouted, “You can say whatever you like”, to which

he replied that President Trump should come here.

25
 Johnny Depp Latest Hollywood
Punk To ‘Joke’ About Killing Trump
By Usafeaturesmedia
Posted On June 23, 2017

Depp is only the latest actor-scumbag to engage in

assassination porn with President Trump Last year, Depp played Trump in a nearly hour-long spoof
called

“Funny or Die Presents Donald Trump’s

The Art of the Deal: The Movie.”

Depp is only the latest actor-scumbag to engage in

assassination porn with President Trump. In March rapper
Snoop Dogg was panned for a music video showing a
clown with a likeness to Trump being shot in the head.

And last month comedian Kathy Griffin was fired by CNN

(National Sentinel) Hollyweird: Add Pirates of the after posing with a bloody prop designed to look like the
Caribbean star Johnny Depp to the growing list of President’s decapitated head.
Hollywood celebrities who wish nothing but death for the
sitting president of the United States.
And there is a long list of other “stars” who have expressed
their desire to commit violence against Trump.
In a rambling speech of sorts to about 1,500 people at the
annual Glastonbury Festival in the UK, Depp insinuated in
As National Sentinel editor-in-chief J. D. Heyes has noted
very obvious ways that perhaps it was time, once again, for
in a recent “Mad Minute” episode, it is never okay to talk
an actor to assassinate a president, alluding to the manner
of harming our duly-elected presidents:
in which President Abraham Lincoln was shot and killed in
1865 by actor and southern sympathizer John Wilkes
Boothe.

“I think he needs help and there are a lot of

wonderful dark, dark places he could go,”
Depp, 54, said.
“It is just a question – I’m not insinuating
anything. By the way, this is going to be in
the press. It will be horrible. I like that you
are all a part of it,” he continued.
“When was the last time an actor
assassinated a President? I want to qualify,
I am not an actor. I lie for a living. However,
it has been a while and maybe it is time.”
.

26
 CBS, NBC Rage Over Trump’s
‘Outrageous’ ‘Mortal Sin’ on Golf Course
By Scott Whitlock
June 23, 2017 1:00 PM EDT

The journalists at CBS and NBC have found a new Donald right across the green, that just breaks
Trump “outrage” to hyperventilate over: every rule of golf.”

The President drove his golf cart onto a
green at one of the courses he owns. This,
according to CBS This Morning guest host
David Westin, is a “mortal sin.” Today's
Matt Lauer insisted he was “gasping” over
video of Trump.
CBS This Morning devoted 41 seconds to freaking out over
Trump’s golf cart error. That was just four seconds less
than a movie star jokingly encouraging the assassination of
the President. Talk about misplaced priorities.
Transcripts are below:

On CBS, co-host Norah O’Donnell huffed, “Well, golf is a

sport of etiquette, but President Trump appears to have
committed a golfing sin.” Continuing the religious
language, unusual for liberal journalists, Westin
excoriated,

“This is a mortal sin, actually, if you're a

golfer. A mortal sin.”

CBS This Morning

6/23/17
7:30am ET

NORAH O’DONNELL: Well, golf is a sport of etiquette, but

A mortal sin? Even as a joke, this type of language is way
over the top. Over on NBC’s Today, Lauer mentioned the
story at 7am as the show opened. He hyped,
“A golden rule of golf broken. You won't
believe who is behind the wheel today.”
A minute later, he marveled,
“As a golfer, I'm gasping over that last
story. But I'll save my outrage.” Later in the
7am hour, Lauer returned to the story, still
annoyed: “That's not good. That really isn't
good. It's a nice golf course, by the way,
but to take a heavy golf cart and to ride
27
President Trump appears to have committed a golfing sin.
Yep, he's driving a golf cart on a putting green. The
President will probably get a pass. He owns the Bedminster
course. I think that's a violation that can usually get you
kicked out of a particular club.
DAVID WESTIN (Bloomberg/CBS guest host): No kidding.
This is a mortal sin, actually, if you're a golfer. A mortal sin.
GAYLE KING: David, as Norah knows, I don't play golf. But
I’m thinking, are golfers just clutching their pearls? You’re
looking at that going, “No!”
O’DONNELL: Yes. Yes, they are
KING: But he owns the course. Does that matter?
O’DONNELL: Well, it’s the green. They are expensive to
upkeep
 MATT LAUER: All right. I need a moment. Dylan's over in
the orange room with a story that pains me as a fan of the
sport of golf. Dylan?

SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: It's all right.

WESTIN: Imagine what the green keepers are thinking.
O’DONNELL: They’re the ones that are really —
KING: They’re really clutching their pearls.
Today
6/23/17
7am
MATT LAUER: A golden rule of golf broken. You won’t
believe who is behind the wheel today.
DYLAN DREYER: I'm right there with you, Matt. We all know
that President Trump loves the game of golf. He owns nearly
20 golf courses and has held countless tournaments so you
would think that he would know the game's etiquette pretty
well. Well, a newly surfaced video begs to differ. We have to
warn you, for golfers out there, this may disturb you.
So, take a look at this. Driving all over the green at Trump
National Golf Club in new Jersey. That is a major no-no for
anyone who knows the game and as you can imagine, the
reaction online to this video is a mash-up of sports etiquette
and politics. So let's dig right in. Chris writes, “This is
unacceptable, driving on the green. Sad.” While Aaron
tweets, “He owns the course, he can drive wherever he
wants on it.” Makes a good point there. Brian writing, “I don't
golf and even I know that's not acceptable” and even some
Trump supporters saying, “This is the first thing President
Trump has done that I didn't like. I feel guilty even walking
on the green sometimes. How do you guys feel about this?

7:01 LAUER: Yeah, that's not good. That really isn't good. It's a
nice golf course, by the way, but to take a heavy golf cart
LAUER: As a golfer, I’m gasping over that last story. But I’ll and to ride right across the green, that just breaks every rule
save my outrage for later. of golf.

7:51

28
 Trump Trolls Media
With Three Unanswered Questions About
The Democrats And Russia
By Aaron Klein
23 Jun 2017
On June 22, President Donald Trump
raised three unanswered questions
about the Democratic Party and the
Obama administration’s role in claims
that Russia interfered in the 2016
presidential election.
All three questions are backed by legitimate data and
should be at the top of the list for news media outlets to
investigate if the goal is to get to the bottom of the alleged
Russia hacking story.
Here are Trump’s three queries together with background
information raising further questions on the subjects.
1 – Why did the Democratic National Committee
(DNC) turn down FBI requests to inspect its hacked
servers?
…Why did the DNC REFUSE to turn over
its Server to the FBI, and still hasn't? It's all
a big Dem scam and excuse for losing the
election!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
June 22, 2017
29
The DNC did not immediately return a Breitbart News
request seeking comment on why it rebuffed FBI requests
to inspect the Committee’s servers.
In January testimony before the Senate Intelligence
Committee, then-FBI Director James Comey confirmed
that the FBI registered “multiple requests at different
levels,” to review the DNC’s hacked servers. Ultimately,
the DNC and FBI came to an agreement in which a “highly
respected private company” would carry out forensics on
the servers and share any information that it discovered
with the FBI, Comey testified.
A senior law enforcement official stressed the importance
of the FBI gaining direct access to the servers, a request
that was denied by the DNC.
“The FBI repeatedly stressed to DNC
officials the necessity of obtaining direct
access to servers and data, only to be
rebuffed until well after the initial
compromise had been mitigated,” the
official was quoted by the news media as
saying.
“This left the FBI no choice but to rely upon
a third party for information. These actions
caused significant delays and inhibited the
FBI from addressing the intrusion earlier.”
Comey’s statement about a “highly respected private
company” gaining access to the DNC servers was a
reference to CrowdStrike, the third-party company
ultimately relied upon by the FBI to make its assessment
about alleged Russian hacking into the DNC.
As this reporter documented, CrowdStrike was financed to
the tune of $100 million from a funding drive last year led
by Google Capital.
Google Capital, which now goes by the name of CapitalG,
is an arm of Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company. Eric
Schmidt, the chairman of Alphabet, has been a staunch and
active supporter of Hillary Clinton and is a longtime donor
to the Democratic Party.
CrowdStrike is a California-based cybersecurity
technology company co-founded by experts George Kurtz
and Dmitri Alperovitch.
Alperovitch is a nonresident senior fellow of the Cyber
Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council. The Council
takes a hawkish approach toward Russia and has released
numerous reports and briefs about Russian aggression.
The Council is funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund,
Inc, the U.S. State Department, and NATO ACT.
Another Council funder is the Ploughshares Fund, which
in turn has received financing from billionaire George
Soros’ Open Society Foundations.
2 – Why was the DNC uninterested in assistance from
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to
secure DNC servers?
…Why did Democratic National Committee
turn down the DHS offer to protect against
hacks (long prior to election). It's all a big
Dem HOAX!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
June 22, 2017
The DNC further did not immediately reply to a Breitbart
News request seeking clarity on this issue.
In his prepared remarks before the House Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence, former Homeland
Security (DHS) Secretary Jeh Johnson revealed that the
Democratic National Committee “did not feel it needed”
DHS assistance into hacks of the Committee’s systems.
This means that the DNC, faced with hacks later attributed
to Russia, turned down the possibility of assistance from at
least two federal agencies – the DHS and the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Johnson’s prepared remarks read:
Sometime in 2016 I became aware of a hack into systems
of the Democratic National Committee. Fresh from the
experience with the Office of Personnel Management, I
pressed my staff to know whether DHS was sufficiently
proactive, and on the scene helping the DNC identify the
intruders and patch vulnerabilities. The answer, to the best
of my recollection, was not reassuring: the FBI and the
DNC had been in contact with each other months before
about the intrusion, and the DNC did not feel it needed
DHS’s assistance at that time.
30
3 – Why did the Obama administration wait until
October before going public with claims that Russia
was attempting to interfere in the 2016
presidential election?
By the way, if Russia was working so hard
on the 2016 Election, it all took place
during the Obama Admin. Why didn't they
stop them?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
June 22, 2017
The Obama administration was reportedly confident that
Russia was attempting to hack the election as early as
August. Yet the administration waited until October 7 to
make an announcement, when the DHS released a
statement claiming
“the Russian Government directed the
recent compromises of e-mails from US
persons and institutions, including from US
political organizations.”
Newsweek raised further questions three months ago when
the magazine cited “two sources with knowledge of the
matter” reporting that Comey wanted to go public with the
Russia story in the summer of 2016, but he was rebuffed
by top Obama administration officials.
Newsweek reported:
Well before the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) and the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence (DNI)
accused the Russian government of
tampering with the U.S. election in an
October 7 statement, Comey pitched the
idea of writing an op-ed about the Russian
campaign during a meeting in the White
House Situation Room in June or July.
“He had a draft of it or an outline. He held
up a piece of paper in a meeting and said,
‘I want to go forward. What do people think
of this?’” says a source with knowledge of
the meeting, which included Secretary of
State John Kerry, Attorney General Loretta
Lynch, Department of Homeland Security
Secretary Jeh Johnson and National
Security Adviser Susan Rice.
… “The White House shut it down,” that
source says. “They did their usual—
nothing.” Both sources spoke to Newsweek
on the condition of anonymity because they
weren’t authorized to speak to the press.
Last December, NBC News reported the Obama
administration’s thinking about whether to go public with
the Russia story was influenced by the belief inside the
White House that Hillary Clinton would win.
NBCNews.com reported:
The Obama administration didn’t respond
more forcefully to Russian hacking before
the presidential election because they
didn’t want to appear to be interfering in the
election and they thought that Hillary
Clinton was going to win and a potential
cyber war with Russia wasn’t worth it,
multiple high-level government officials told
NBC News.
“They thought she was going to win, so
they were willing to kick the can down the
road,” said one U.S official familiar with the
level of Russian hacking.
The administration did take action in response to the hack
prior to the election. In September, President Obama
privately confronted Vladimir Putin about the hacks at the
G-20 summit in China. He warned the Russian President
of unspecified consequences if the hacks continued.
In his testimony before the Senate this week, former DHS
chief Johnson attempted to explain the Obama
administration’s decision to wait until October before
announcing the Russia charges.
.
31
Stated Johnson:
First, as you know well, we have to
carefully consider whether declassifying the
information compromises sources and
methods.
Second, there was an ongoing election,
and many would criticize us for perhaps
taking sides in the election. So that had to
be carefully considered. One of the
candidates, as you’ll recall, was predicting
that the election was going to be rigged in
some way. And so we were concerned
that, by making the statement, we might in
and of itself be challenging the integrity of
the — of the election process itself.
This was — this was a very difficult
decision. But in my personal view, it’s
something we had to do. It got careful
consideration, a lot of discussion. My view
is that we needed to do it, and we needed
to do it well before the election, to inform
the American voters of what we knew and
what we saw, and that it would be
unforgivable if we did not, pre-election. And
I’m glad we did it.
 Senate Panel To Probe Loretta Lynch’s Role
In Covering For Clintons During 2016 Campaign
By Usafeaturesmedia
Posted On June 23, 2017

The committee’s investigation could also eventually shed Ms. Lynch’s ability to make impartial
more light on the Obama White House’s operations decisions.
regarding the intentional spreading of sensitive intelligence
aimed at undermining Trump. Mr. Comey said that was one reason why
he took it upon himself to buck Justice
Department tradition and reveal his findings
about Mrs. Clinton last year.

The probe into Ms. Lynch comes as the

Judiciary Committee is already looking at
President Trump’s firing of Mr. Comey.

[…]

(National Sentinel) Corruption: Many legal experts spoke At a Senate hearing earlier this month, Mr.
highly of Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch during Comey told lawmakers that Ms. Lynch had
her days as s federal prosecutor in New York. But like so attempted to change the way the FBI
many other people, once she became associated with one described its probe of Mrs. Clinton’s use of
of the most corrupt, politically motivated regimes in a private email server. The change
American history, her reputation suffered mightily. appeared to dovetail with how Mrs.
Clinton’s supporters were characterizing
And now, she’s the subject of a new probe by the Senate the probe.
Judiciary Committee which is examining her role in
helping to cover up, smooth over, de-escalate or whatever “At one point, [Ms. Lynch] directed me not
else she may have done to soften the blow of the FBI’s to call it an ‘investigation’ but instead to call
investigation into then-Democratic presidential nominee it a ‘matter,’ which confused me and
Hillary Clinton’s criminal use of a private email server to concerned me,” Mr. Comey said during his
handle classified materials during last year’s election June 8 testimony before the Senate Select
cycle. Committee on Intelligence. “That was one
of the bricks in the load that led me to
As reported by The Washington Times: conclude I have to step away from the
department if we are to close this case
credibly.”
In a letter to Ms. Lynch, the committee asks
her to detail the depths of her involvement
It’s not certain at all that this probe will produce evidence
in the FBI’s investigation, including whether
of criminal behavior or even if there was evidence of it.
she ever assured Clinton confidantes that
But it will be interesting to know more of the details
the probe wouldn’t “push too deeply into
surrounding the Obama administration’s attempts to run
the matter.”
interference for the heir apparent, Clinton, because they
may have some political impact on the various
Fired FBI Director James B. Comey has
investigations now taking place into congressional (and
said publicly that Ms. Lynch tried to shape
independent) investigations into alleged “obstruction of
the way he talked about the investigation
justice” charges against President Donald J. Trump (which
into Mrs. Clinton’s emails, and he also
are bogus anyway, but…).
hinted at other behavior “which I cannot
talk about yet” that made him worried about
For all the world, Comey described Lynch’s actions as
interference, if not outright obstruction, though you’ll
32
notice the dishonest “mainstream media” isn’t about to
make that distinction because, well, Lynch and Obama and
Clinton are Democrats, and the MSM is the propaganda
wing of the Democratic Party.
The committee’s investigation could also eventually shed
more light on the Obama White House’s operations
regarding the intentional spreading of sensitive intelligence
aimed at undermining Trump and his inner circle. We
won’t know until all is said and done.
.
33
But it is about time that the GOP Congress made serious
attempts to hold Obama and Democrats accountable
for their actions, because you know if the majorities were
reversed it would be non-stop political warfare against
Republicans and Trump.
Some things that took place last year with Lynch – her
instructions to Comey, her improper meeting on an
Arizona airport tarmac with former President Bill Clinton
at the height of the FBI’s investigation, etc. – may have
been more than just suspicious.
 Hillary Clinton Calls GOP ‘The Death Party’
Chuck Ross - Reporter
5:50 PM 06/23/2017

Hillary Clinton took the debate over the Senate health care
bill to a new level on Friday, saying that if Republicans
vote to pass the law they will be known as
“the death party.”
“Forget death panels. If Republicans pass this
bill, they’re the death party,” the former
Democratic presidential nominee tweeted Friday
afternoon.
Democrats oppose the bill, which would roll back some
components of Obamacare.
Some Republicans also oppose the Senate bill in its current
form.
So far, five Republicans have said that they plan to vote
against the bill, which was crafted by a small group of
GOP senators behind closed doors.

She was responding to an article citing Harvard research
which found that the Senate bill, the Better Care
Reconciliation Act, “could result” in between 18,000 and
28,000 deaths in 2026.
Three small government conservative Republicans, Texas
Sen. Ted Cruz, Utah Sen. Mike Lee, and Kentucky Sen.
Rand Paul, have all said they oppose the bill. Wisconsin
Sen. Ron Johnson and Nevada Sen. Dean Heller have also
come out against the measure.

34
 Trump Shifts View
On Nonexistent Russian US Election Meddling
By Stephen Lendman - Stephenlendman.Org
6-23-2017
The Big Lie refuses to fade away. Even Trump now
believes it’s likely true, tweeting:
“Just out: The Obama Administration knew far in
advance of November 8th about election
meddling by Russia. Did nothing about it. WHY?”
On Friday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said
Trump believes Russia “probably” interfered in the 2016
election…Maybe some other countries did as well,”
adding:
“(O)f course (he’s) concerned about any country
or any actor that wants to interfere in elections.”
He created a commission to study the integrity of
America’s voting process. In January,
he said “(a)s far as hacking, I think it was Russia
(but) we also get hacked by other countries and
other people.”
No evidence suggests any nation interfered in America’s
electoral process, not last year or earlier. Washington does
it repeatedly against many countries worldwide, seeking to
influence who wins, showing contempt for the sovereign
rights of all states.
On Friday, the neocon/CIA-connected Washington Post
continued spreading the Big Lie about nonexistent Russian
US election hacking, saying:
“Early last August, an envelope with
extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the
White House.”
“Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried ‘eyes
only’ instructions that its contents be shown to
just four people: President Barack Obama and
three senior aides.”
“Inside was an intelligence bombshell (sic), a
report drawn from sourcing deep inside the
Russian government that detailed Russian
President Vladi mir Putin’s direct involvement in
a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the US
presidential race.”
“But it went further. The intelligence captured
Putin’s specific instructions on the operation’s
35
audacious objectives - defeat or at least damage
the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and
help elect her opponent, Donald Trump.”
Fact:
The so-called CIA “intelligence bombshell” was
fabricated to bash Russia and denigrate Trump.
Fact:
No Russian US election hacking occurred - or
any other Moscow interference in America’s
electoral process.
Fact:
No US election hacking occurred by any source.
DNC emails were leaked by one or more
disgruntled party staffers. Russia had nothing to
do with it.
Fact:
WaPo is an instrument of CIA propaganda, truth-
telling on major issues absent on its pages,
especially on geopolitical ones.
Its so-called Friday “Exclusive: Hacking Democracy”
report was fiction, not factual - continuing deception,
manipulating public opinion to believe Big Lies are bona
fide truths
Claiming “Putin was working to elect Trump” is utter
rubbish. Not a shred of evidence suggests it. Nothing
indicates Russian interference in the electoral processes of
any of the 50 states - or any other countries.
Claims otherwise are bald-faced lies, including WaPo
calling “Russia’s (nonexistent) interference…the
(political) crime of the century, an unprecedented and
largely destabilizing attack on American democracy.”
So-called “American democracy” is pure fantasy. None
exists. Duopoly power with two right wings runs things.
Ordinary people have no say whatever.
Russia’s electoral system shames America’s sham process.
Putin’s overwhelming domestic popularity was earned by
responsible governance.

It’s polar opposite how rogue state America is run, its
major media, like WaPo, serving as propaganda arms.
.
Disinformation, fake news and Big Lies
substitute for legitimate journalism. WaPo’s
latest report on (nonexistent) Russian US
election interference was willful deception -
disgracefully and unjustifiably bashing the
country and Vladimir Putin.

36
 Washpo Anon Source At CIA:
Putin Gave Direct Orders To Help Elect Donald Trump
Dr. Fly
Fri Jun 23, 2017 2:01pm EST
I do not mean to be flippant when dismissing the never-
ending barrage of anonymous sources inside the CIA who
leak to the Washington Post. I’m sure there are good
agents who are protecting Americans from foreign
meddlers. But the optics of these leaks is terrible. Truth is,
I sometimes think they’re doing this to make the main
stream media look even worse — to lend an air of bias to
the reporting rooms to dissuade Americans from trusting
them. After all, Washpo, MSNBC, CNN and the NY Times
are in the business of appealing to all people, not just the
one’s who agree with them. Do they realize the irreversible
damage they’re inflicting upon their organizations by
publishing suspicious anonymous leaks designed to take
down a democratically elected President?
If Russia truly wanted to hurt America, they could not do
more than what the main stream media is doing now,
peddling stories that are infuriating half the country.
Washington Post is reporting today that Vladimir Putin
himself directed his agents to help elect Donald Trump.
Early last August, an envelope with extraordinary handling
restrictions arrived at the White House.
Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried “eyes
only” instructions that its contents be shown
to just four people: President Barack Obama
and three senior aides.
The White House debated various options to punish
Russia, but facing obstacles and potential risks, it
ultimately failed to exact a heavy toll on the Kremlin for
its election interference.
Inside was an intelligence bombshell,
37
a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the
Russian government that detailed Russian
President Vladimir Putin’s direct involvement
in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit
the U.S. presidential race.
But it went further.
The intelligence captured Putin’s specific
instructions on the operation’s audacious
objectives — defeat or at least damage the
Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help
elect her opponent, Donald Trump.
At that point, the outlines of the Russian assault on the
U.S. election were increasingly apparent. Hackers with ties
to Russian intelligence services had been rummaging
through Democratic Party computer networks, as well as
some Republican systems, for more than a year. In July,
the FBI had opened an investigation of contacts between
Russian officials and Trump associates. And on July 22,
nearly 20,000 emails stolen from the Democratic National
Committee were dumped online by WikiLeaks.
I find it interesting how there’s no mention of John
Podesta’s emails in this report. After all, that’s what we’re
talking about, right? The DNC leaks came during the
primaries and were a minor blip in the Wikileaks/DNC
election narrative. The crux of the Russian hacking charges
begins and ends with the embarrassing collusion revealed
in the Podesta emails — tying the main stream media to
Clinton.
One of the reporters of the Washpo article, Greg Miller,
called the Russian hack ‘the crime of the century.’ I
suppose he is implying the theft of the Presidency from
Hillary Clinton. They cannot get over it.
If President Obama knew that Putin himself was hacking
John Podeasta’s email box and passing the info to
Wikileaks, who has flatly denied the notion that Russia
was their source, why didn’t he do anything about it? Is it
possible that they thought Hillary was going to win and
they didn’t want to rock the boat, causing Wikileaks to
reveal even more damaging and embarssing emails?
 that could be detonated if the United States
found itself in an escalating exchange with
Moscow. The project, which Obama approved in
a covert-action finding, was still in its planning
stages when Obama left office. It would be up to
President Trump to decide whether to use the
capability.

Here’s CBS reporting a ‘secret program’ revealed

by Washpo today, tipping off Russia to ‘digital
bombs’ planted there. Treason?
pic.twitter.com/21TLpDb4Dt
That’s exactly what the Washpo reporter says in the clip
— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) June 23,
below — but he doesn’t realize he said it.
2017

Just in case you’re wondering why the media keeps

obsessing over Russian hacking claims that have yet to be
backed up by a shred of evidence, Greg Miller from
Washpo will blue pill you on it. You’re feeling vulnerable
and unsure about our sacred democracy.

Washpo also revealed that Obama planted ‘digital bombs’

in Russian infrastructure, to be used at the behest of
Trump. If true, why is the Washington Post publishing this
information? This goes against our national security
interests and tips off the Russians to what we’re doing
behind the scenes.
We cannot let the Russians get away with this. Putin
Obama also approved a previously
himself is a devil and wanted to see the first legit female
undisclosed covert measure that authorized
candidate for President of the United States defeated,
planting cyber weapons in Russia’s
because he’s obviously mansplaining himself to the world
infrastructure, the digital equivalent of bombs
and not tolerant of women’s rights.
.

38
 Very Fake News: After Breitbart Investigation, CNN
Retracts Conspiracy Theory Hit Piece Attacking Trump,
Associates Over Russian Fund
by Matthew Boyle
23 Jun 2017
CNN has admitted it printed what President Donald Trump
calls “very fake news” and retracted a demonstrably
inaccurate hit piece on the President and his allies after a
Breitbart News investigation uncovered significant
inaccuracies and flaws in CNN’s work.
“On June 22, 2017, CNN.com published a story
connecting Anthony Scaramucci with
investigations into the Russian Direct Investment
Fund,” CNN said in a statement late Friday night.
“That story did not meet CNN’s editorial
standards and has been retracted. Links to the
story have been disabled. CNN apologizes to Mr.
Scaramucci.”
The statement was sent out very late Friday evening on
CNN’s Twitter account.
An editor's note from CNN
https://t.co/5bHxUVnHHt
pic.twitter.com/W3IjT5FPN8
— CNN (@CNN) June 24, 2017
The retraction is a complete cave by a network that is
notorious for trying to pick fights with President Trump
and his allies. President Trump has identified CNN as a
“very fake news” network. It comes on the heels of
Breitbart News reporting on the inaccurate CNN hit piece,
citing senior administration officials and sources close to
Senate GOP leadership.
The thrust of CNN’s inaccurate piece, which is no longer
available online, was a demonstrably untrue allegation that
the Senate Intelligence Committee and Treasury
Department were probing a Russian investment fund with
ties to senior Trump allies like Anthony Scaramucci.
Using a single anonymous source, CNN wrote:
The source said the Senate intelligence
committee is investigating the Russian fund in
connection with its examination of discussions
between White House adviser Jared Kushner
and the head of a prominent Russian bank. The
39
bank, Vnesheconombank, or VEB, oversees the
fund, which has ties to several Trump advisers.
Both the bank and the fund have been covered
since 2014 by sanctions restricting U.S. business
dealings.
The Senate Intelligence Committee declined to comment
on the matter when reached by Breitbart News, but a
source close to Senate GOP leadership confirmed to
Breitbart News that the allegation was bogus and
politically motivated by Democrats. The GOP source close
to Senate GOP leadership said:
This is nothing besides Democrats trying to
frustrate the efforts of President Trump’s
administration while Elizabeth Warren and those
of her ilk spend their days collecting taxpayer
funded paychecks while they do nothing but
stand in the way of the progress of the American
agenda and are responsible for this nonsense.
They should put their names on it if they want to
waste taxpayer money on it.
As Breitbart News noted in its original investigation into
the demonstrably fake news CNN hit piece, this supposed
Senate investigation exists only among Democrats and not
the actual Senate Intelligence Committee. Breitbart News
noted in the original investigation:
Such vehemently anti-Trump voices as Sens.
Kamala Harris (D-CA), Ron Wyden (D-OR),
Martin Heinrich (D-NM) and Dianne Feinstein (D-
CA) are on the Senate committee. CNN did not
specify if its sole source for its story was a
Democrat or Republican staffer, but most with
familiarity on this matter assume that it was a
Senate Democrat staffer without knowledge of
the committee’s true intent or actions who made
these inaccurate claims to CNN.
But that was not all that was wrong with the fake news
piece from CNN. The CNN report continued:
Separately, Steve Mnuchin, now Treasury
Secretary, said in a January letter that he would
 look into the Jan. 16 meeting between the fund’s
chief executive and Anthony Scaramucci, a
member of the transition team’s executive
committee and a fundraiser and adviser for
Trump’s presidential campaign. At the time,
Mnuchin had not yet been confirmed as Treasury
Secretary. The Treasury Department did not
respond to a request for an update. Two
Democratic senators had asked Treasury to
investigate whether Scaramucci promised to lift
sanctions — a policy shift that would help the
fund attract more international investment to
Russia.
It turns out, as Breitbart News noted in the original
investigation, that the two Democrats who pushed for the
probe of Scaramucci’s supposed “meeting” with the
investment fund executive—which was not really a
meeting—were Sens. Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Elizabeth
Warren (D-MA). Scaramucci debunked the CNN fake
news report in his original quote to the network, detailing
how there was no such meeting to begin with.
CNN originally wrote, in the now retracted inaccurate hit
piece:
Scaramucci, the founder of SkyBridge Capital,
minimized his January meeting with [Kirill]
Dmitriev in the resort town of Davos, Switzerland,
at the celebrated annual gathering of the World
Economic Forum. Scaramucci had met Dmitriev
at previous Davos meetings, although at the
gathering in January, Scaramucci was expecting
to be named White House liaison to the business
community.
CNN also wrote that Scaramucci told the network in an
email that Dmitriev
“came over to say hello in a restaurant, and I
was cordial. There is nothing there.”
The idea that the Treasury Department is investigating this
is also completely baseless, as Breitbart News reported.
.
40
“The matter has been reviewed and determined
to be without merit,” a senior administration
official told Breitbart News.
The inaccurate piece remained online for nearly an entire
day, despite Breitbart News’s earlier inquiries to CNN
about it. It was not until long after Breitbart News
published its exposé on the fake news piece from CNN,
hours later, that CNN finally retracted the piece and issued
an “Editor’s Note” at 10:44 p.m. ET announcing the grave
error. CNN’s Tweet was not until 11:50 p.m. ET.
CNN spokeswoman Emily Kuhn has not answered
followup email questions as to whether reporter Thomas
Frank, whose name appears on the byline, has faced any
consequences for his actions—or whether he is still
employed by the network. Kuhn has also not answered
whether there have been any consequences that have
befallen others involved in the publication of the
demonstrably fake news piece, or exactly who at CNN was
involved in this grave mistake.
Kuhn also continues to refuse to answer whether anyone
from CNN, including media reporter Brian Stelter—the
host of the network’s media program Reliable Sources—
are courageous enough to publicly defend the network’s
actions in an appearance on Breitbart News radio on
SiriusXM. Kuhn has refused to provide anyone from the
network on Breitbart radio since before President Trump
won the election last year and defeated Democrat Hillary
Rodham Clinton in a landslide in the electoral college.
The fact remains, however, that CNN printed
demonstrably fake news–and has now admitted it by
retracting this piece–and it did so at the behest of Elizabeth
Warren’s leftist agenda. But, as Breitbart News’s original
source close to Senate GOP leadership said:
“Mr. Scaramucci knows more about lawfully and
ethically conducting business in the finance world
than Elizabeth Warren will ever know U.S.
finance — Native American or otherwise.”
Obama White House Laid 'Cunning Trap For Trump' With
Plan To Cyber Bomb Russia
© AFP 2017/ PAUL J. RICHARDS - US
21:55 23.06.2017(Updated 23:59 23.06.2017)
The revelation that former US President Barack Obama
authorized planting a "cyber bomb" in Russian
infrastructure is a "non-veiled threat" from Washington
that it could declare a cyberwar on Russia, political
scientist Andrei Manoylo told Radio Sputnik.
© Sputnik/ Alexei Druzhinin - Digital Armageddon: Obama Plotted
Detonating Cyber Bombs in Russia
On Friday, the Washington Post reported that the Obama
administration had discussed ways of punishing Russia
for alleged interference in last year's presidential elections,
which included cyber warfare.
According to the report, Obama had approved a measure
that authorized planting cyber bombs in Russia's
infrastructure which could be detonated if the United
States found itself in an escalating exchange with Moscow.
The measure was still in the planning stages when Obama
left office and it would be up to President Trump to decide
whether to use the capability.
41
Political scientist Andrei Manoylo told Radio Sputnik that
the revelation represents a "non-veiled threat from the US"
to attack Russia with cyber weapons.
"The Washington Post was quite vague in its
description but we can guess that if there really is
something, these are some kind of information
'implants' that were placed at some time
in Russian communication and possibly even
management systems. Perhaps it's some kind
of means of cyber-attack such as hacking secure
information networks, hardware programs or new
viruses."
© AP Photo/ Evan Vucci - Trump Denies Obstructing Justice in FBI
Probe Into Russian Meddling in Election
The development of the technology could represent
another "trap" set for the current President, if he came
under pressure from others in his administration detonate
the "bomb."
"No head of the security services or even the US
Department of Defense would ever take that
responsibility on themselves, only with the
approval of the President because he is the
commander-in-chief. In this sense, those who
prepared the cyberattacks against Russia can't
do anything without Trump and his permission.
They are required to get it," Manoylo said.
"On the other hand, it's completely possible that
they are preparing another cunning trap
for Trump here, in the hope that the power
games and intrigues that are currently going
 on around him will force him to give that kind with Moscow irrevocably."
of permission. In that case, he will ruin relations
.

42
 The World Is Going Down With Trump
Paul Craig Roberts
June 23, 2017
On June 21 the editorial board of the Washington Post,
long a propaganda instrument believed to be in cahoots
with the CIA and the deep state, called for more sanctions
and more pressure on Russia.
One second’s thought is sufficient to realize how bad this
advice is. The orchestrated demonization of Russia and its
president began in the late summer of 2013 when the
British Parliament and Russian diplomacy blocked the
neoconned Obama regime’s planned invasion of Syria. An
example had to be made of Russia before other countries
began standing up to Washington. While the Russians
were focused on the Sochi Olympic Games, Washington
staged a coup in Ukraine, replacing the elected democratic
government with a gang of Banderite neo-nazi thugs
whose forebears fought for Hitler in World War II.
Washington claimed it had brought democracy to Ukraine
by putting neo-nazi thugs in control of the government.
Washington’s thugs immediately began violent attacks on
the Russian population in Ukraine. Soviet war memorials
were destroyed. The Russian language was declared
banned from official use. Instantly, separatist movements
began in the Russian parts of Ukraine that had been
administratively attached to Ukraine by Soviet leaders.
Crimea, a Russian province since the 1700s, voted
overwhelmingly to seperate from Ukraine and requested to
be reunited with Russia. The same occurred in the Luhansk
and Donetsk regions.
These independent actions were misrepresented by
Washington and the presstitutes who whore for
Washington as a “Russian invasion.” Despite all facts to
the contrary, this misrepresentation continues today. In US
foreign policy, facts are not part of the analysis.
The most important fact that is overlooked by the
Washington Post and the Russophobic members of the US
government is that it is an act of insanity to call for more
punishment and more pressure on a country with a
powerful military and strategic nuclear capability whose
military high command and government have already
concluded that Washington is preparing a surprise nuclear
attack.
Are the Washington Post editors trying to bring on nuclear
armageddon? If there was any intelligence present in the
43
Washington Post, the newspaper would be urging that
President Trump immediately call President Putin with
reassurances and arrange the necessary meetings to defuse
the situation. Instead the utterly stupid editors urge actions
that can only raise the level of tension. It should be
obvious even to the Washington Post morons that Russia is
not going to sit there, shaking in its boots, and wait for
Washington’s attack. Putin has issued many warnings
about the West’s rising threat to Russian security. He has
said that Russia “will never again fight a war on its own
territory.” He has said that the lesson he has learned is that
“if a fight is unavoidable, strike first.” He has also said that
the fact that no one hears his warnings makes the situation
even more dangerous.
What explains the deafness of the West? The answer is
arrogance and hubris.
As the presstitute media is incapable of reason, I
will do their job for them. I call for an immediate
face-to-face meeting between Trump and Putin
at Reykjavik. Cold War II, begun by Clinton,
George W. Bush, and Obama, must be ended
now.
So, where is President Trump? Why is the President of the
United States unable to rise to the challenge? Why isn’t he
the man Ronald Reagan was? Is it, as David Stockman
says, that Trump is incapable of anything except tweeting?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47310.htm
Why hasn’t President Trump long ago ordered all
intercepts of Russian chatter gathered, declassified, and
made public? Why hasn’t Trump launched a criminal
prosecution against John Brennan, Susan Rice, Comey,
and the rest of the hit squad that is trying to destroy him?
Why has Trump disarmed himself with an administration
chosen by Russiaphobes and Israel?
As David Stockman writes, Trump “is up against
a Deep State/Dem/Neocon/mainstream media
prosecution” and “has no chance of survival short
of an aggressive offensive” against those
working to destroy him. But there is no Trump
offensive, “because the man is clueless about
 what he is doing in the White House and is being Our president twitters while he and Earth itself are pushed
advised by a cacophonous coterie of amateurs toward destruction.
and nincompoops. So he has no action plan
except to impulsively reach for his Twitter
account.”

44
 Another Mika Meltdown: Trump Is Morphing
Into A "Dictator Or Someone Who Is Not Well"
by Tyler Durden
Jun 23, 2017 5:40 PM

MSNBC's "Morning Joe" co-host Mika Brzezinski has

become famous for her on-air Trump meltdowns and
apparently she was feeling particularly 'triggered' this
morning as an entire segment seemingly got derailed when
she went rogue and compared Trump's administration to a
"developing dictatorship." The snowflake moment
sparked a minor per-martital tiff between Mika and Joe
resulting in some cringe-worthy awkwardness.

It all started when Mika decided to, once again, share her
personal thoughts on the Trump administration...
“It does feel like a developing dictatorship.”
...which prompted a swift rebuke from Mika's
future husband, and co-host, Joe Scarborough.
"You see, that's an inside voice thing....what
you just said."
Except, when Joe went 'low,' Mika went 'lower':
“I will say you can do some work reading history
and reading books about how dictatorships
happen. The development of very negative
forces taking over and what you are seeing is
either this happening right now, or someone
who’s not well. Very few options. Very very
imbalanced.”
Of course, this is hardly the first time Mika has melted
down on live television. Perhaps our recent favorite was
when she shared her thoughts regarding one of President
Trump's weekend tweet storms about alleged wiretapping
of his Trump Tower.
Fighting back tears during her opening remarks,
Mika lamented that she had "lost hope
completely" in President Trump's competency
and declared that "this presidency is fake and
failed."
"I had hope and an open mind and I have lost
hope completely and my mind is closed. This
presidency is fake and failed."

Ironically, the only "very negative forces" that seem to be

having any impact on Americans at the moment are the
forces within the media which are intent upon continuing
their fake "Russian collusion" crusade until it results in
mass hysteria among the general public...and, of course,
we got a small dose of that hysteria recently when a
gunman decided to try and assassinate a bunch of
Republican congressmen.

Here's the full clip courtesy of the Daily Caller:

Keep up the good work, Mika. Your morning comedy

routine is very entertaining for a lot of folks.
.

45
 Trump Vindication? New Study Shows MILLIONS Of
“Non-Citizens” Have Been Voting In U.S. Elections
By JD Heyes
Friday, June 23, 2017
After Donald J. Trump handily defeated Hillary Clinton in
November, her shell-shocked campaign, along with the
entire Democratic Left, could only grasp at one fact to
soothe their bruised, over-inflated egos: Their candidate, at
least, won the popular vote.
Well, she did, no question about it. But even that is tainted,
given that her majority came entirely from one state:
California (more on that in a moment).
But Trump, not willing to concede a single point regarding
his historic win, quickly made a counter-claim that sent the
Left into apoplectic fits: He said he would have also won
the popular vote, along with the electoral majority, were it
not for millions of non-citizens and illegal aliens casting
ballots.
The Washington Post huffed:
Days after being sworn in, President Trump
insisted to congressional leaders invited to a
reception at the White House that he would have
won the popular vote had it not been for millions
of illegal votes, according to people familiar with
the meeting.
Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence,
that widespread voter fraud caused him to lose
the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, even while he
clinched the presidency with an electoral college
victory.
‘There’s no proof! Where’s your evidence?’ his
critics wailed.
46
Now he has some.
As noted by the Washington Times, a new report from an
independent think tank that is widely cited estimates that,
in the 2008 election, as many as 5.7 million non-citizens
cast ballots, with about two-thirds of that amount voting in
the 2012 election.
To come up with its findings, the organization Just Facts,
led by President James D. Agresti, examined voter data
compiled by Harvard/YouGov, an exhaustive study that is
conducted every two years using questions from a
sampling of tens of thousands of voters — some of whom
admit that they are not U.S. citizens but who vote anyway.
The group’s findings “confront both sides in the illegal
voting debate: Those who said it happens a lot and those
who said the problem is nonexistent,” The Times reported.
On the one one side, there are studies by researchers at Old
Dominion University who sought to gather scientifically
obtained voting data on non-citizens using the Harvard
compilations, which are embodied in an ongoing analysis
called the Cooperative Congressional Election Study.
On the other side are those who contend from other studies
using the same data that “zero” non-citizens out of some
18 million U.S. adults voted. As expected, the discredited
Left-leaning “mainstream” media quickly took this
position — so they could say ‘No, Mr. President, there is
no problem with widespread voter fraud,’ thus debunking
the Old Dominion conclusions.
But despite being lambasted by the liberal press, the ODU
profs have stood by their conclusions, contending that data
show anywhere between 38,000 and 2.8 million voted
illegally in 2008.
However, Agresti’s analysis concluded that the actual
numbers are very likely much higher. He says data show
that about 7.9 million non-citizens were registered illegally
that year, and that between 594,000 and 5.7 million of
them voted.
The Times noted further:
These numbers are more in line with the
unverified estimates given by President Trump,
 who said the number of ballots cast by
noncitizens was the reason he lost the popular
vote to Hillary Clinton.
We may soon get further verification that Trump was right.
The president signed an executive order in May
establishing a commission tasked with attempting to find
on-the-ground facts regarding illegal voting. The
commission is headed by Vice President Mike Pence and it
will principally examine outdated voter registration rolls
around the country containing names of the deceased and
.
47
people who have registered in multiple jurisdictions.
(RELATED: Voter Fraud: Dead People Are Voting)
“The details are technical,” says Agresti of his
conclusions, “but the figure I calculated is based
on a more conservative margin of sampling error
and a methodology that I consider to be more
accurate.”
J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and
NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National
Sentinel.
 Never Forget: Loretta Lynch Called For
“Blood In The Streets” Before The Mass Execution Attempt
On Republican Lawmakers…
Why Is SHE Not Being Investigated?
By Jayson Veley
Friday, June 23, 2017
It seems as though when it comes to President Trump and
his administration, congressional democrats want an
investigation into virtually everything. Over the past few
months, they have demanded investigations into several
people on Trump’s team, including former National
Security Adviser Michael Flynn, Attorney General Jeff
Sessions and even the president himself, all over the notion
that there was some level of collusion between Trump and
the Russians that lead to the defeat of Hillary Clinton last
November. But as the democrats continue to push for
unnecessary investigations, there is one person who really
should be investigated — and she happens to be the former
Attorney General of the United States.
Loretta Lynch is an example of a liberal democrat who
hides her true agenda behind words like “compassion” and
“fairness.” In reality, and with all due respect to the former
Attorney General, Loretta Lynch was neither of those
things. On multiple occasions, Lynch demonstrated that
she was, in fact, one of the most corrupt individuals to ever
serve as Attorney General, and definitely one of the most
deserving of a full-scale investigation.
Who could forget the time when Loretta Lynch released a
video that seemingly called for more bloodshed and
violence in the streets in the interest of national progress?
48
“We have always had to work to move this
country forward to achieve the great ideals of our
Founding Fathers,” the former head of the
Justice Department said in her video.
“They’ve marched, they’ve bled, yes some of
them have died. This is hard. Every good thing
is. We have done this before; we can do this
again.”
It should go without saying that if any member of
President Trump’s administration ever made a comment
like this, congressional democrats and the liberal media
would be going nuts. It would be written about in every
liberal newspaper, talked about on every left wing cable
news outlet, and joked about on every late night television
show. But of course, since the comment came from a
democrat, the liberals remained silent.
Furthermore, why hasn’t a single democrat, whether
they’re from Washington DC or cable news, called for an
investigation into Loretta Lynch? Our country literally
witnessed the Attorney General of the United States
implying that the progressive agenda required blood to be
shed, and yet not a single liberal batted an eye. No calls for
legal action, no calls for some kind of an investigation —
nothing. Yet a scandal that was entirely manufactured by
the left wing media — that is, the so-called “collusion”
between Trump and the Russians — warrants a massive,
full-scale probe into the president and his administration. If
this doesn’t seem like it makes much sense, it’s because it
doesn’t.
There’s more. As everyone remembers, last June, Loretta
Lynch had a mysterious meeting with Bill Clinton aboard
her private jet, just days before former FBI Director James
Comey announced that Hillary would not be charged for
storing highly classified emails on her private server. The
meeting may very well have been an obstruction of justice,
and yet the only time democrats talk about obstruction of
justice today is when they are talking about current
President of the United States.
To put it bluntly, most modern day leftists are nothing but
political hacks. They claim that they care about
maintaining integrity within our governmental institution,
yet all they really care about is taking down those who
oppose their radical agenda. Things like integrity, honesty
and doing what’s best for the country are virtually
.
49
meaningless to the vast majority of those on the left side of
the political spectrum. Without question, congressional
republicans should be demanding an investigation into
Loretta Lynch, because if there’s anyone that truly
deserves it, it’s her.
 Trump: The Birth Of The Hero
By Paul C. Bermanzohn
June 23, 2017
Liberals hope to remove Trump from office and believe
his base will abandon him. But it won’t be simple or quick.
Trump’s followers revere him and won’t be easily
dissuaded. During the campaign, Trump said he was so
popular he could shoot people on 5 th Avenue and his
supporters wouldn’t waver. That’s still true. As usual
Trump was way ahead of his detractors: he intuitively
recognized he was worshipped as a great American hero.
Won’t exposing his shady business practices erode
Trump’s support? Not necessarily. His relentless drive for
riches is part of his appeal. His critics don’t grasp that for
millions of supporters, Trump is a great American hero
precisely because he’s rich.
Recall a few things about the US.
The most insistently worshipped American heroes are the
Founding Fathers. But their chief work is poorly
understood. They founded not merely a republic. They
founded a commercial republic.
Capitalism reigns supreme. America’s values are capitalist
values. The highest value is money. Money is prized above
life itself. Consider the oil companies’ contempt for life on
Earth in their mad rush for profits. Like Trump who
supports them, the oil profiteers are congruent with
America’s commercial traditions.
The Founders created a Constitution to ensure democracy
could not interfere with wealth. This is the legacy that we
confront today (and the basis of Trump’s popularity).
The US political system is arranged to assure that we
remain passive – political spectators. And spectators need
heroes. We the people are supposed to choose a savior
every four years who will rescue us from our miserable
conditions. This is why they all run on “hope.” Call it the
mendacity of hope.
Trump ran on the promise that he would return jobs to
America and “make America great again.” He looked
straight into the camera and said, “Only I can do it for
you.“ He auditioned for the part of America’s great hero
and won the role according to the antidemocratic rules of
the game.
50
Heroes are as American as violence and apple pie. Most
Americans have no real power under the capitalist
plutocracy that runs our lives and commands our deaths.
Yet official mythology says that all Americans have power
because this is a democracy where all people have equal
rights and the government is “of the people, by the people
and for the people.”
The yawning gap between the mythology and the reality
creates a need and a market for heroes. Heroes are larger
than life individuals who right the wrongs. Heroes make
things come out as they should, with the common man’s
rights preserved for him.
People should have their victories won for them, not by
them. A core principle of the system is to keep the people
passive, “to prevent insurrection,” as James Madison
wrote.
The US has been saturated with heroes since its inception,
but especially since the birth of the modern media. As
early as 1932, the Lone Ranger in his white hat and black
mask, rode across the Plains on the radio, and on his white
horse, to protect the ordinary (white) settler family from
evil-doers. In 1939, Superman joined him to fight for
“Truth, Justice and the American Way.”
Many superheroes have joined since then. Kids dress up
every Halloween as superheroes, proving the continued
fascination with these icons of impotence. As politics
merges with entertainment, the political leader becomes a
superhero.
Trump’s critics cannot understand how fervently Trump’s
base remains attached to him. He is their hero, both by the
example of his personal accumulation of riches (people
dream they will be rich one day) and as a hero who will
right the wrongs that beset them.
Trump’s avarice is legendary and all-consuming. He has
never prized integrity above wealth. Before the White
House, he routinely stiffed workers on his construction
projects and in his hotels and casinos. Now, occupying the
highest office in the land, concerns for integrity will not
interfere with his personal accumulation. His followers are
impressed with this; they will not be swayed by liberal
arguments about Trump’s “lack of integrity.”
When the liberal point of view is rejected by the Trump
supporter, the liberal typically resorts to name-calling. S/he
accuses Trump’s people of stupidity, even of insanity for
not seeing the liberal’s superior logic. Let’s not forget
Hillary and her “basket of deplorables.”
51
What the liberal doesn’t see is that Trump’s cohorts stand
firmly on the ground of US mercantile values and the
system of hero worship that has grown out of that.
Powerless people hunger for heroes. Only changing the
conditions that require heroes will free us from the
American hero’s grip. Only discussing it in these terms
will allow communication between the two sides.
 Senate Probes Loretta Lynch's
Alleged Interference In Clinton Email Investigation
By John Parkinson
Jun 23, 2017, 12:45 PM ET

A bipartisan group of Senate Judiciary Committee leaders
is examining former Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s
alleged interference in the Hillary Clinton email
investigation.
The group is seeking details about Lynch's communication
with a Clinton campaign aide, Amanda Renteria, as well as
copies of documents and information about whether the
FBI investigated the alleged communication.
Trump: Lynch action on Clinton inquiry 'totally illegal'
James Comey: Everything you need to know about the
former FBI director
The letters, sent Thursday, are signed by Senate Judiciary
Chairman Charles Grassley, Ranking Democrat Dianne
Feinstein, as well as Sens. Lindsey Graham and Sheldon
White House, the chair and ranker on the subcommittee on
Crime and Terrorism.
The senators question Open Society Foundations' Leonard
Benardo and its General Counsel Gail Scovell, as well as
Renteria and Lynch, about a May 24 story from the
Washington Post that reported Lynch assured Renteria that
she would not let the FBI investigation into Clinton go too
far. Lynch declined to comment at the time.
An email reportedly recounting that alleged conversation
and authored by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who
served at the time as DNC chair, was allegedly hacked by
Russia, though the FBI later discounted its reliability.
The inquiry comes as the Senate Judiciary Committee
examines the firing of former FBI Director James Comey,
who President Trump says he dismissed due in part to his
handling of the Clinton email probe.

52
 Peggy Noonan: Fierce Anti-Trump Media Bias Is
'Unalterable' -- and Financial
By Tim Graham
June 23, 2017 7:27 PM EDT
Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan used to write
for CBS News, including the radio commentaries of Dan
Rather, so she can speculate from an insider perspective.
Her latest column insists “Dislike of Mr. Trump within
the mainstream media is unalterable. It permeates every
network, from intern to executive producer and CEO.”
Like many on the right, Noonan has not been a big Trump
fan, but she can see how dramatically the media is arrayed
against the president. She has a unique theory -- the liberal
media think their bias isn't only striking a blow for justice,
but a smart business strategy:
Here is a theory on what they’re thinking: They’re
thinking attempts at fairness and balance in this
charged atmosphere get them nowhere. They’re
attacked by both sides. And anyway they think
Mr. Trump is insane.
They live on ratings, which determine advertising rates.
Hillary Clinton got 2.9 million more votes than Mr.
Trump, so the anti-Trump audience is larger. Moreover,
people who oppose Mr. Trump tend to be more affluent,
more educated, more urban. They’re more liberal, of
.
53
course, and they’re younger. They’re a desirable
demographic. The pro-Trump audience is more rural, more
working- and middle-class, older. A particularly heartless
media professional might sum them up this way:
“Their next big lifestyle choice will be death.”
So, if you are a person who programs or sets the tone of
network fare and you want to take a side—you shouldn’t,
but you want to!—you throw your lot with the anti-Trump
demo, serving them the kind of journalistic approaches and
showbiz attitudes they’re likely to enjoy.
Mr. Trump, you are certain, won’t last: He’ll bring himself
down or be brought down. You want to be with the
winning side. So play to those who hate him, exclude
others, call it integrity and reap the profits.
Journalists aren't going to admit that they have a divide-
and-conquer strategy, but it's not a crazy guess when you
take in a few hours of "objective" broadcast or cable news.
This contributes to public division—to the great
estrangement we see in America. I talk to media folk a lot,
being one, and haven’t found anyone who’s said, “Why
yes, that’s exactly what we’re doing, deepening our
national divisions for profit!” Although I shared my theory
this week with a senior manager of a news organization
who quickly mentioned another major news organization
and said: “I think that’s what they’re doing.”
But I do think it’s part of what is going on. I add only that
it’s not only cynical and destructive, as a business strategy
it’s stupid. Bias is boring. It’s predictable, rote, is an
audience-limiter. What has value at a time like this is
playing it straight and presenting the facts. That’s what
they ought to do instead of taking a side.
 Fmr. Clinton Campaign Chair
John Podesta Summoned To Secret House Session
John Podesta Set To Give Interview In Secret
Despite His Very Own Ties To Russia
By Shepard Ambellas -
June 24, 2017
John Podesta (Center For American Progress/Flickr)
WASHINGTON (INTELLIHUB) — Former Clinton
Campaign Chairman John Podesta is set to be interviewed
by the House Intelligence Committee in a secret session
next week over Russia’s alleged interference of the U.S.
54
electoral system during the 2016 run-up to the general
election.
Yes, this is actually happening. Despite the fact that
Podesta’s very own Russian ties run deep and that he “may
have violated federal law when he failed to disclose that he
received 75,000 shares of stock from a company financed
by the Kremlin,” as Intellihub reported back in March, the
Trump-Russia investigation continues full-steam.
The fmr. campaign chair will be the first of six witnesses
to be interviewed behind close doors on the matter.
John Podesta was at the center of the Wikileaks ‘Podesta
emails’ scandal where researchers in the online community
claim that he is heavily involved with ‘Pizzagate‘ which is
an alleged child sex-trafficking ring in the District of
Columbia that reportedly prompted an out-of-state man to
‘self-investigate’ a local pizzeria and fire off a round from
his AR-15 rifle.
 CNN Deletes 'Fake News' Story
About Russian Investment Ties To Trump
By Tyler Durden
Jun 24, 2017 9:20 AM
Thursday afternoon, CNN posted a story, by none other
than Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter Thomas Frank,
claiming that
"Congress was investigating a Russian
investment fund with ties to Trump officials."
The story was perfect fodder for 'The Left' as it provided
yet more 'confirmation' that sources 'confirmed' Trump and
his team were up to something nefarious with The
Russians...
Highlights included...
Congress is investigating a little-known
Russian investment fund...
The fund CEO met in January with a member of the
Trump transition team...
"If you're going to get your nose under the
tent, that's a good place to start," said
Ludema, a Georgetown University economics
professor. "I'm sure their objective is to get rid
of all the sanctions against the financial
institutions. But RDIF is one [sanctioned
Mr. Scaramucci responded via Twitter...
.@CNN did the right thing. Classy move. Apology
accepted. Everyone makes mistakes. Moving on.
https://t.co/lyVajCKNHx
55
organizations] where a number of prominent
U.S. investors have been involved."
A fund spokeswoman says there was no discussion about
lifting sanctions...
Scaramucci's comments alarmed Democratic
Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts
and Ben Cardin of Maryland, who asked
Mnuchin investigate whether Scaramucci sought
to "facilitate prohibited transactions" or promised
to waive or lift sanctions against Russia.
Sounds great right? Well, despite the 'facts' they
reported, 36 hours later (quietly late on a Friday
night), CNN decided to delete the story and
issue a retraction, apologizing to Mr.
Scaramucci (presumably for lying?)
On June 22, 2017, CNN.com published a story connecting
Anthony Scaramucci with investigations into the Russian
Direct Investment Fund.
That story did not meet CNN's editorial
standards and has been retracted. Links to
the story have been disabled. CNN
apologizes to Mr. Scaramucci.
— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) June 24,
2017
Despite their deletion of the story, thanks to The Wayback-
Machine, we can see what the original story said...
Is it any wonder that Americans are becoming 'Russia' narrative that is is constantly spewed with no mind
increasingly frustrated by the media's attention to the for factual reporting?

56
 Trump Acknowledges
Russian Meddling In Tweet Criticizing Obama
By Stefan Becket Cbs News
June 24, 2017, 9:03 Am
Last Updated Jun 24, 2017 4:46 PM EDT
President Trump appeared to acknowledge Russian
involvement in the 2016 campaign while criticizing the
Obama administration's response to a Russian interference
campaign he has repeatedly denied took place.
In a tweet Friday night, Mr. Trump wrote that President
Obama "knew far in advance of November 8th about
election meddling by Russia" and "did nothing about it."
Just out: The Obama Administration knew far in
advance of November 8th about election
meddling by Russia. Did nothing about it. WHY?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June
24, 2017
Later in the day, after spending a few hours at his golf club
in Sterling, Virginia, Mr. Trump reiterated that sentiment.
Since the Obama Administration was told way
before the 2016 Election that the Russians were
meddling, why no action? Focus on them, not T!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June
24, 2017
Obama Administration official said they "choked"
when it came to acting on Russian meddling of
election. They didn't want to hurt Hillary?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June
24, 2017
The tweets came after Mr. Trump expressed similar
criticism of his predecessor in an interview with Fox
News.
"I just heard today for the first time that Obama
knew about Russia a long time before the
election, and he did nothing about it," Mr. Trump
said in an excerpt of the interview, airing in full on
Sunday. "But nobody wants to talk about that."
The comments marked a rare admission by Mr. Trump,
who has repeatedly declined to say definitively that Russia
interfered in the 2016 campaign. Asked on Friday whether
Mr. Trump believes the Russians interfered in the election,
57
White House press secretary Sean Spicer referred reporters
to a January press conference in which Mr. Trump said
"I think it was Russia" when asked about
hacking.
Congressional investigators and special counsel Robert
Mueller are investigating possible collusion between
Russia and Trump campaign officials, inquiries the
president has called a "total scam," a "witch hunt" and a
"hoax."
The Washington Post reported in early December that the
CIA had concluded that Russia's efforts were intended to
boost Mr. Trump.
On Friday, the Post reported the CIA arrived at that
conclusion in August 2016 and presented its findings to
Mr. Obama and a handful of senior aides. The agency
determined Russian President Vladimir Putin
had personally directed Russian intelligence to "defeat or
at least damage" Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, the
Post said. However, Mr. Obama was wary of publicly
accusing Russia of aiding Mr. Trump, fearing such an
accusation would be seen as the White House trying to
bolster Clinton's chances.
The Post also revealed new details about the Obama
administration's response to the Russian interference
campaign prior to the election. Following the CIA's
August report,
Mr. Obama authorized "planting cyber weapons
in Russia's infrastructure, the digital equivalent of
bombs that could be detonated if the United
States found itself in an escalating exchange with
Moscow," the Post reported.
Administration officials briefed top members of Congress
of both parties about Russia's actions in the weeks leading
up to the election. Republican leaders, including Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, questioned the
underlying intelligence and warned against accusing the
Russian government of aiding Mr. Trump in the weeks
leading up to Election Day.
Top intelligence chiefs released a statement in October
2016 publicly blaming Russia for an array of cyber attacks,
including the release of stolen emails from the Democratic
National Committee in July. The statement asserted the
U.S. intelligence community's assessment that the efforts
were "intended to interfere with the U.S. election process,"
but stopped short of accusing the Russians of trying to help
Mr. Trump win the election.
The U.S. did not publicly accuse Russia of trying to aid
Mr. Trump until January 2017, when U.S. intelligence
agencies released a declassified assessment on the Russian
interference campaign.
.
58
Before taking office in January, Mr. Trump received a
classified briefing on the assessment from then-Director of
National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director John
Brennan, FBI Director James Comey and National
Security Agency Director Adm. Mike Rogers. The briefing
included classified details of Russian efforts to harm the
Clinton campaign and bolster Mr. Trump.
Following that briefing, Mr. Trump said
Russia's efforts had "absolutely no effect on
the outcome of the election." Current and
former officials have repeatedly said the U.S.
has no evidence of voting machines being
compromised or tallies being altered.
 Russia Hacking Allegations
Driven By A Serial Liar
By George Washington
Jun 24, 2017 2:24 PM
Today’s lengthy Washington Post’s story makes it clear
that former CIA boss John Brennan is largely responsible
for driving the claim that Russia hacked the election.
But Brennan is a proven, documented
liar. He was busted for lying to
Congress and the American public by
claiming that the CIA wasn’t spying on
the Congressional investigation into
torture … when it was.
Indeed, the Washington Post called on Brennan to be fired
for lying.
And Brennan lied when – as Obama’s counter-terrorism
advisor – he said that in the past year there had not been a
single collateral death from drone strikes. (He later
changed that slightly to say there was no “credible
evidence” of such deaths.) But there was abundant and
credible evidence of collateral deaths from drone strikes.
As just one example among many, a March 2011 CIA
drone attack in Pakistan killed some 50 people, including
tribal elders who were gathered for a tribal conclave.)
Trevor Timm pointed out at the Guardian:
Internal intelligence documents leaked to
McClatchy later confirmed Brennan to have
lied at the time ….
When Brennan was approved by the
Senate, many of his friends told the media
he wanted to get the CIA out of the drone
business and hand operations over to the
Pentagon, but of course once he assumed
his office, he seems to have reversed
course and kept the drone program under
CIA control.
Brennan also fed the public wildly
inaccurate details about the Osama bin
Laden raid in 2011, and despite
59
condemning leaks of classified information
from others, he has often leaks classified
information himself to suit his own needs.
***
This is the type of spy … who lies because
he doesn’t like to tell the truth.
Indeed, Brennan’s CIA even created hacking techniques to
frame other countries for hacking incidents.
Why is the media taking Brennan’s claims at face value?
Especially when some of the other claims of Russian
hacking have officially been debunked?
As Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Seymour Hersch said in
January in a story questioning the whole Russian hacking
story:
[If I had been covering the story,] I would
have made [John] Brennan into a buffoon.
A yapping buffoon in the last few days.
Instead, everything is reported seriously.
Postscript:
The other intelligence official behind many
of the Russian hacking claims – James
Clapper – is also a confirmed liar.
And see:
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2017/06/67890.html
and
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2017/06/special-prosecutor-
mueller-political-hack.html
.
 New US House Oversight Panel Chairman Doesn't Plan to
Pursue Trump-Russia Probe
© REUTERS/ Dylan Martinez - US
00:20 24.06.2017(updated 07:22 24.06.2017)
Newly-elected US House of Representatives Oversight
and Government Reform Chairman Trey Gowdy stated
on Friday that he does not plan to conduct an
investigation into the Trump-Russia investigation.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Gowdy stated that the
Trump-Russia investigations fall under the jurisdiction
.
60
of the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee and
the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, the
report stated.
"I told [Special Counsel] Bob Mueller Tuesday
that I would never do anything wittingly or
unwittingly that veered over into his lane, and his
lane is broad and undetermined at this point,"
Gowdy said as quoted by Politico.
Outgoing Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz
was active in the Trump-Russia investigation and sought
memos from former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Director James Comey.
The Oversight Committee may take part in the Trump-
Russia investigation if questions are raised about who
should have access to security clearances, Gowdy added.
 Senate Judiciary Committee
Opens Probe Into Loretta Lynch
By Tyler Durden
Jun 24, 2017 11:32 AM
As more Democrats have started to question why former
Attorney General Loretta Lynch was never investigated for
obstruction following a suspicious meeting with former
President Bill Clinton, it appears the Senate Judiciary
Committee has finally decided to act.
The Washington Times reported Friday that the committee
has launched a formal investigation into Lynch’s
attempts to shape the FBI’s probe into Hillary Clinton,
and whether she mishandled classified information on
her private email server.
According to the Times, the investigation has bipartisan
support.
“Sen. Charles E. Grassley, chairman of the
committee, said the investigation is
bipartisan. The letter to Ms. Lynch is signed by
ranking Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein and
also by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Sheldon
Whitehouse, the chairman and ranking member
of the key investigative subcommittee.”
“Letters also went to Clinton campaign staffer
Amanda Renteria and Leonard Benardo and Gail
Scovell at the Open Society Foundations. Mr.
Benardo was reportedly on an email chain
from the then-head of the Democratic
National Committee suggesting Ms. Lynch
had given assurances to Ms. Renteria, the
campaign staffer, that the Clinton probe
wouldn’t “go too far."
During testimony before the Senate Intelligence
Committee, former FBI Director James Comey said his
61
suspicions about Lynch’s cozy relationship with the
Clintons prompted him to unilaterally announce the close
of the Clinton investigation last summer.
According to Comey, Lynch leaned on him to
soften his language when discussing the
investigation, asking him to refer to the probe
as a “matter,” mirror language used by the
campaign, instead of as “an investigation.”
Comey also said the suspicious meeting between Clinton
and Lynch raised questions about her objectivity that
could’ve compromised the bureau’s integrity.
LANKFORD: Then you made a comment earlier a the
attorney general, the previous attorney general asking
you about the investigation on the Clinton e-mails
saying you were asked to not call it an investigation
anymore. But call it a matter. You said that confused
you. You can give us additional details on that?
COMEY: Well, it concerned me because we were at
the point where we refused to confirm the
existence as we typically do of an investigation for
months. And was getting to a place where that looked
silly because the campaigns we're talking about
interacting with the FBI in the course of our work. The
Clinton campaign at the time was using all kinds
of euphemisms, security matters, things like that
for what was going on.
We were getting to a place where the attorney
general and I were both going to testify and talk
 publicly about it I wanted to know was she going
to authorize us to confirm we have an
investigation. She said yes, don't call it that, call it
a matter. I said why would I do that? She said, just
call it a matter. You look back in hindsight, if I
looked back and said this isn't a hill worth dying
on so I just said the press is going to completely
ignore it. That's what happened when I said we
opened a matter.
They all reported the FBI has an investigation open.
So that concerned me because that language
tracked the way the campaign was talking about
the FBI's work and that's concerning.
LANKFORD: You gave impression that the
campaign was somehow using the language as
the FBI because you were handed the campaign
language?
COMEY: I don't know whether it was intentional or
not but it gave the impression that the attorney
general was looking to align the way we talked
about our work with the way it was describing
that. It was inaccurate. We had an investigation open
for the federal bureau of investigation, we had an
investigation open at the time. That gave me a queasy
feeling.
62
So who was obstructing or trying to interfere there?
Comey said that this troubled him greatly and convinced
him,
“I have to step away from the department if
we’re too close this case credibly.”
As former Speaker Newt Gingrich noted earlier this week,
even California Sen. Dianne Feinstein – the ranking
Democrat on the Judiciary Committee – had begun to
wonder aloud why Lynch was being investigated. Gingrich
said the absence of an investigation is a sign of Republican
weakness.
“What’s amazing to me about the Republican
passivity here is that Senator Dianne
Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the
intelligence committee, said last week after
Comey’s testimony ‘you know we really have
to look into exactly what’s going on with
Loretta lynch and with president Obama.' Now
I was waiting for one of the intel chairmen in the
House and Senate to get up and say they’re
opening a new investigation into exactly what
Loretta lynch said to Comey.”
Now we wait to see if the house and, more importantly, the
DOJ follow suit.
 Sketchy Firm Behind
Trump Dossier Is Stalling Investigators
By Paul Sperry
June 24, 2017

nominee Mitt Romney. And in 2015, Democrat ally

Planned Parenthood retained Fusion GPS to investigate
pro-life activists protesting the abortion group.

More, federal records show a key co-founder and partner

in the firm was a Hillary Clinton donor and supporter of
her presidential campaign.

In September 2016, while Fusion GPS was quietly

shopping the dirty dossier on Trump around Washington,
its co-founder and partner Peter R. Fritsch contributed at
least $1,000 to the Hillary Victory Fund and the Hillary
For America campaign, Federal Election Commission data
show. His wife also donated money to Hillary’s campaign.

A secretive Washington firm that commissioned the Property records show that in June 2016, as Clinton allies
dubious intelligence dossier on Donald Trump is bankrolled Fusion GPS, Fritsch bought a six-bedroom,
stonewalling congressional investigators trying to learn five-bathroom home in Bethesda, Md., for $2.3 million.
more about its connections to the Democratic Party.
Fritsch did not respond to requests for comment. A lawyer
The Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month for Fusion GPS said the firm’s work is confidential.
threatened to subpoena the firm, Fusion GPS, after it
refused to answer questions and provide records to the
Sources say Fusion GPS had its own interest, beyond those
panel identifying who financed the error-ridden dossier,
of its clients, in promulgating negative gossip about
which was circulated during the election and has sparked
Trump.
much of the Russia scandal now engulfing the White
House.
Fritsch, who served as the Journal’s bureau chief in
Mexico City and has lectured at the liberal Wilson
What is the company hiding? Fusion GPS describes itself
Center’s Mexico Institute, married into a family with
as a “research and strategic intelligence firm” founded by
Mexican business interests. His wife, Beatriz Garcia,
“three former Wall Street Journal investigative reporters.”
formerly worked as an executive at Grupo Dina, a
But congressional sources says it’s actually an opposition-
manufacturer of trucks and buses in Mexico City that
research group for Democrats, and the founders, who are
benefits from NAFTA, which Trump opposes.
more political activists than journalists, have a pro-Hillary,
anti-Trump agenda.
Fritsch’s Fusion GPS partner Thomas Catan, who grew up
in Britain, once edited a business magazine in Mexico,
“These weren’t mercenaries or hired guns,” a
moreover. A third founding partner, Glenn Simpson, is
congressional source familiar with the dossier
reported to have shared dark views of both Russian
probe said. “These guys had a vested personal
President Vladimir Putin and Trump. Before joining
and ideological interest in smearing Trump and
Fusion GPS, Simpson did opposition research for a former
boosting Hillary’s chances of winning the White
Clinton White House operative.
House.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee is also investigating
Fusion GPS was on the payroll of an unidentified
whether the FBI has wrongly relied on the anti-Trump
Democratic ally of Clinton when it hired a long-retired
dossier and its author, Christopher Steele — the old spy
British spy to dig up dirt on Trump. In 2012, Democrats
who was hired by Fusion GPS to build a Russia file on
hired Fusion GPS to uncover dirt on GOP presidential

63
Trump — to aid its ongoing espionage investigation into
the Trump campaign and its possible ties to Moscow.
The FBI received a copy of the Democrat-funded dossier
in August, during the heat of the campaign, and is said to
have contracted in October to pay Steele $50,000 to help
corroborate the dirt on Trump — a relationship that “raises
substantial questions about the independence” of the
bureau in investigating Trump, warned Senate Judiciary
Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.
Senate investigators are demanding to see records of
communications between Fusion GPS and the FBI and the
Justice Department, including any contacts with former
Attorney General Loretta Lynch, now under congressional
investigation for possibly obstructing the Hillary Clinton
email probe, and deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe,
who is under investigation by the Senate and the Justice
inspector general for failing to recuse himself despite
financial and political connections to the Clinton campaign
through his Democrat activist wife. Senate investigators
have singled out McCabe as the FBI official who
negotiated with Steele.
Like Fusion GPS, the FBI has failed to cooperate with
congressional investigators seeking documents.
Steele contracted with Fusion GPS to investigate Trump’s
ties to Russia starting in June 2016, whereupon he
outlandishly claimed that Hillary campaign hackers were
“paid by both Trump’s team and the Kremlin” and that the
operation was run out of Putin’s office. He also fed Fusion
GPS and its Hillary-allied clients incredulous gossip about
Trump hating the Obamas so much that he hired hookers
to urinate on a bed they slept in at the Moscow Ritz-
Carlton, and that Russian intelligence recorded the pee
party in case they needed to blackmail Trump.
Never mind that none of the rumors were backed by
evidence or even credible sourcing (don’t bother trying to
confirm his bed-wetting yarn, Steele advised, as “all direct
witnesses have been silenced”). Steele reinforced his
paying customers’ worst fears about Trump, and they
rewarded him for it with a whopping $250,000 in
payments.
But it’s now clear his “intelligence reports,” which
together run more than 35-pages long, were for the most
part worthless. And the clients who paid Fusion GPS
(which claims to go “beyond standard due diligence”) for
them got taken to the cleaners.
Steele’s most sensational allegations remain unconfirmed.
For instance, his claim that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen
held a “clandestine meeting” on the alleged hacking
scheme in Prague with “Kremlin officials” in August 2016
unraveled when Cohen denied ever visiting Prague, his
.
64
passport showed no stamps showing he left or entered the
US at the time, witnesses accounted for his presence here,
and Czech authorities found no evidence Cohen went to
Prague.
Steele hadn’t worked in Moscow since the 1990s and
didn’t actually travel there to gather intelligence on Trump
firsthand. He relied on third-hand “friend of friend”
sourcing. In fact, most of his claimed Russian sources
spoke not directly to him but “in confidence to a trusted
compatriot” who, in turn, spoke to Steele — and always
anonymously.
But his main source may have been Google. Most of the
information branded as “intelligence” was merely rehashed
from news headlines or cut and pasted — replete with
errors — from Wikipedia.
In fact, much of the seemingly cloak-and-dagger
information connecting Trump and his campaign advisers
to Russia had already been reported in the media at the
time Steele wrote his monthly reports.
In the same August report, for example, Steele connected a
Moscow trip taken by then-Trump campaign adviser
Michael Flynn to “the Russian operation” to hack the
election. But there was nothing secret about the trip, which
had taken place months earlier and had been widely
reported.
And there was nothing untoward about it. It was a dinner
celebrating the 10th birthday of Russian TV network RT,
and Flynn sat at the same table with Putin as US Green
Party presidential candidate Jill Stein.
The real question is why anyone would take anything in
the sketchy report seriously.
But even the CIA gave it credence. The dossier ended up
attached to a Top Secret intelligence briefing on Russia for
President Obama, even though his intelligence czar last
month testified “We couldn’t corroborate the sourcing.”
The FBI, moreover, has been using it for investigative
leads on Trump associates like Carter Page, even though
former FBI Director James Comey this month described
the dossier as “salacious and unverified.”
And of course, Democratic leaders in Congress keep
referring to it to cook up more charges against Trump,
while liberal media continue to use it as a road map to find
“scoops” on Trump in the “Russiagate” conspiracy they’re
peddling — still hoping against hope that the central thrust
of the report — that Trump entered into an unholy alliance
with the Russian government during the election — will
one day prove true and bring about the downfall of his
presidency.
65
 Dems Push Leaders To Talk Less About Russia
By Mike Lillis
06/24/17 06:03 AM EDT
Frustrated Democrats hoping to elevate their election
fortunes have a resounding message for party leaders: Stop
talking so much about Russia.
Democratic leaders have been beating the drum this year
over the ongoing probes into the Trump administration’s
potential ties to Moscow, taking every opportunity to
highlight the saga and forcing floor votes designed to
uncover any business dealings the president might have
with Russian figures.
But rank-and-file Democrats say the Russia-Trump
narrative is simply a non-issue with district voters, who are
much more worried about bread-and-butter economic
concerns like jobs, wages and the cost of education and
healthcare.
In the wake of a string of special-election defeats, an
increasing number of Democrats are calling for an
adjustment in party messaging, one that swings the focus
from Russia to the economy. The outcome of the 2018
elections, they say, hinges on how well the Democrats
manage that shift.
“We can't just talk about Russia because people
back in Ohio aren't really talking that much about
Russia, about Putin, about Michael Flynn,” Rep.
Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) told MSNBC Thursday.
“They're trying to figure out how they're going to
make the mortgage payment, how they're going
to pay for their kids to go to college, what their
energy bill looks like.
“And if we don't talk more about their interest
than we do about how we're so angry with
Donald Trump and everything that's going on,”
he added, “then we're never going to be able to
win elections.”
Ryan is among the small group of Democrats who are
sounding calls for a changing of the guard atop the party’s
leadership hierarchy following Tuesday’s special election
defeat in Georgia — the Democrats’ fourth loss since
Trump took office. But Ryan is hardly alone in urging
party leaders to hone their 2018 message.
Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minn.) has been paying particularly
close attention to voters’ concerns because he’s running
66
for governor in 2018. The Russia-Trump investigation, he
said, isn’t on their radar.
“I did a 22-county tour. … Nobody’s focusing on
that,” Walz said. “That’s not to say that they don’t
think Russia and those things are important, [but]
it’s certainly not top on their minds.”
Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) delivered a similar message,
saying his constituents are most concerned with two
things: dysfunction in Washington and the Republicans’
plans to repeal ObamaCare. The controversies surrounding
Trump, he said, don’t tally.
"We should be focused relentlessly on economic
improvement [and] we should stay away from
just piling on the criticism of Trump, whether it’s
about Russia, whether it’s about Comey.
Because that has its own independent dynamic,
it’s going to happen on its own without us piling
on,“ Welch said.
"We’re much better off if we just do the hard work
of coming up with an agenda. Talking about
Trump and Russia doesn’t create an agenda.”
The intrigue over Russian meddling in the 2016 elections
and potential collusion with Trump’s campaign has
engulfed Capitol Hill since even before the president was
sworn in. Both the House and Senate Intelligence
committees have launched investigations, and the Justice
Department has named a special counsel, former FBI
Director Robert Mueller, to lead a third probe.
Democrats have gone out of their way to keep the spotlight
on the evolving investigations. Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-
Calif.) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) are trumpeting
legislation to create an independent panel, like the 9/11
Commission, to conduct a fourth investigation.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has
repeatedly used her press briefings and cable news
appearances to raise questions about Trump’s “political,
personal and financial” ties to Moscow.
“What do the Russians have on Donald Trump?”
she asked earlier this month in a common
refrain.
And the Democrats, who have few opportunities to force
votes on the House floor, have spent a lot of energy
pushing proposals that would require Trump to release his
taxes, which many Democrats suspect will expose business
ties between Trump and Russia. The latest such vote
was Wednesday, marking the 10th time this year
Democrats have forced the issue.
“It’s important for us to have the returns on tax
reform, it’s important to have it on the Russia
investigation,” Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), the
ranking member of the Ways and Means
Committee’s tax subpanel, said on the floor.
Democratic leaders have defended their focus on the
Trump-Russia affair, arguing that it’s not a distraction
from the local economic issues that resonate in their
districts.
“We can walk and chew gum at the same time,”
Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), vice chairman of
the Democratic Caucus, said Wednesday.
But even some leaders are ready to acknowledge that the
Russia investigation alone won’t lead to a Democratic
comeback.
“As much as I think people in Washington tend to
focus on the issues of Russia, and the president
and the Republicans’ inability to get much of
anything accomplished, … we need to focus on
the local issues,” said Rep. Joseph Crowley
(N.Y.), chairman of the caucus.
.
67
“That’s what gets Democrats elected.”
A recent Harvard-Harris poll reveals the risks inherent for
the Democrats, who are hoping to make big gains — or
even win back the House — in 2018. The survey found
that while 58 percent of voters said they’re concerned that
Trump may have business dealings with Moscow, 73
percent said they’re worried that the ongoing
investigations are preventing Congress from tackling
issues more vital to them.
“While the voters have a keen interest in any
Russian election interference, they are
concerned that the investigations have become a
distraction for the president and Congress that is
hurting rather than helping the country,” said
Harvard-Harris co-director Mark Penn.
With that in mind, many Democrats said they’re going out
of their way to focus on the economy — and downplay the
Russia saga — when they’re at home.
“If you see me treating Russia and criticisms of
the president and things like that as a secondary
matter, it’s because that’s how my constituents
feel about it,” said Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.).
“I don’t think anybody wants to give a pass to
illegal or unethical activity,” he added. “But in life
we all have priorities, and the first priority for my
constituents is to their families — as it should
be.”
 Washington Post: “Russia’s Interference
[In US Election] Was The Crime Of The Century”
By Jonas E. Alexis
June 25, 2017
Obviously lizards at the Washington
Post think that everyone is stupid. Who
are they fooling this time? The CIA, as
Douglas Valentine has recently
documented, is “organized crime.”
Peter Dale Scott of the University of
California and Rebecca Gordon have
come to similar conclusions. David
Talbot has called the CIA, Allen Dulles
and the rise of America’s secret
government “the devil’s chessboard.”
There is a plausible theory which even
suggests that the CIA was behind the
JFK assassination.
“We’ve met once again, Bro.”
“When ideology is your guide,” Daniel J.
Flynn rightly writes in Intellectual Morons,
“You are bound to get lost. Ideology deludes,
inspires dishonesty, and breeds fanaticism.
Facts, experience, and logic are much better
at leading you to truth. Truth, however, is not
everyone’s intended destination.”[1]
If you were trained in logic, then the New World Order
ideology will soon or later insult your intelligence. Really.
After taking its cue from the CIA—a covert organization
that has committed crimes virtually all over the planet—
the Washington Post has recently declared:
“In political terms, Russia’s interference was the
crime of the century, an unprecedented and
largely successful destabilizing attack on
68
American democracy. It was a case that took
almost no time to solve, traced to the Kremlin
through cyber-forensics and intelligence on
Putin’s involvement.”[2]
Obviously those lizards think that everyone is stupid. Who
are they fooling this time? The CIA, as Douglas Valentine
has recently documented, is “organized crime.”[3] Peter
Dale Scott of the University of California and Rebecca
Gordon have come to similar conclusions.[4] David Talbot
has called the CIA, Allen Dulles and the rise of America’s
secret government “the devil’s chessboard.”[5] There is a
plausible theory which even suggests that the CIA was
behind the JFK assassination.[6]
Again, we are not dealing with conspiracy stuff here.[7]
These issues have been widely documented by meticulous
scholars, writers of various stripes, and serious journalists.
Do puppets in the Washington Post mean to tell us that
they know nothing about this? Do they honestly mean to
tell us that they don’t know about the CIA’s involvement
in the drug business in Afghanistan, Columbia, and even in
far-distant lands such as Indo-China?[8] Do they mean to
tell us that they have no clue about the CIA’s involvement
in destabilizing Iran way back in 1953?
If that is the case, then Malcolm Muggeridge was
absolutely right when he said that “we have educated
ourselves into imbecility.” Muggeridge also said that “only
dead fish swim with the stream.” Writers in the
Washington Post are “dead fish” when it comes to
examining issues that are important to the American
people and much of the world. They represent the
oligarchs, the warmongers, the Israeli regime, and the
Deep State. They will never tell the American people the
whole truth because they want America to be involved in
perpetual wars. After all, they were also the ones who
perpetrated the categorical lies that Saddam had weapons
of mass destruction.
If Zionist outlets such as the Washington Post were trying
to present serious facts, then they would have almost
certainly slammed the Israeli regime for supporting
terrorist cells in places like Syria. Even the Wall Street
Journal, of all places, has reported last Sunday that it is no
secret that Israel is helping the bad guys in Syria.[9] Why right now for them: even if there were unreliable proof that
doesn’t anyone call this diabolical enterprise one of the Russia did meddle in the US election, I would still say,
biggest crimes of the century? Why haven’t the
Washington Post and even the Wall Street Journal taken “Go Russia. Perhaps that would teach the CIA
the Israeli regime to task and asked them to stop? and the Deep State to stop screwing countries
around the world. Perhaps that would teach them
Moreover, why are Zionist puppets interested in Russia the basic and elementary lesson that you cannot
when they are not devoted the same amount of time to one do to others what you would not have them do to
of America’s allies, Saudi Arabia, which by the way was you.”
involved in the 9/11 attack? Saudi Arabia, as Stephen
Kinzer has recently written in the Boston Globe, is And if New World Order agents keep saying that Russia is
involved in destabilizing much of the Muslim world, most evil for allegedly meddling in US election, then they are
specifically Indonesia. Kinzer says: inexorably saying that they themselves are evil for
meddling in world affairs for more than sixty years.
“Saudi Arabia has been working for decades
to pull Indonesia away from moderate Islam
and toward the austere Wahhabi form that is
state religion in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis’
campaign has been patient, multi-faceted,
and lavishly financed. It mirrors others they
have waged in Muslim countries across Asia
and Africa.”[10]

American presidents have given decent Americans some

Kool-Aid to calm their fears about Saudi Arabia, but we
know that the Saudis are indeed bad for America and much
of the world. The Washington Post and New World Order
agents aren’t interested about that. They are interested in
inciting a nuclear war with Russia. Let me lay it on the line

[1] Daniel J. Flynn, Intellectual Morons: How Ideology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid Ideas (New York: Crown Forum,
2004), 1.
[2] Greg Miller, Ellen Nakashima and Adam Entous, “Obama’s secret struggle to punish Russia for Putin’s election assault,”
Washington Post, June 23, 2017.
[3] Douglas Valentine, The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World (Atlanta: Clarity
Press, 2017).
[4] Peter Dale Scott, American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan
(Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010 and 2014); Rebecca Gordon, Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in
the Post-9/11 United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
[5] David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government (New York:
Harper Perennial, 2015).
[6] Peter Janney, Mary’s Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for
World Peace (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2012).
[7] I am dealing with the popular definition of conspiracy here, which says that “conspiracy theories” have no proof for their
claims.
[8] Peter Dale Scott, Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina (Lanham: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, 2003).
[9] Rory Jones, Noam Raydan, and Suha Ma’ayeh, “Israel Gives Secret Aid to Syrian Rebels,” Wall Street Journal, June 18,
2017.
[10] Stephen Kinzer, “Saudi Arabia is destabilizing the world,” Boston Globe, June 11, 2017.

69
 Assange Criticizes ‘Doomed’
Democratic Party For Stirring Russia-Trump ‘Hysteria’
Published Time: 25 Jun, 2017 14:43 Edited Time: 26 Jun, 2017 08:30
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says the Democratic
party is “doomed,” while warning its Trump-Russia
collusion narrative is a “political dead end” that is
consuming all its energy.
Assange took to Twitter on Sunday to list six reasons he
believes the party is sabotaging itself.
“The Democratic establishment has
vortexed the party’s narrative energy into
hysteria about Russia,” he wrote, calling
the rhetoric a “political dead end.”
“Despite vast resources, enormous
incentives and a year of investigation,
Democratic senators who have seen the
classified intelligence at the CIA such as
Senator Feinstein (as recently as March)
are forced to admit that there is no
evidence of collusion,” he wrote.
The WikiLeaks founder went on to address other issues he
believes are leading to the party’s demise, including the
.
70
collapse of the Democratic vote over the past eight years,
which he says has occurred at all levels – city, state,
congressional, and presidential.
“This short-term tactic has led to the
inevitable strategic catastrophe of the white
and male super majorities responding by
seeing themselves as an unserviced
political identity group,” he wrote, noting
that Trump received the votes of 63
percent of white men and 53 percent of
white women.
Assange also listed the many shortcomings of the Trump
administration, including “broken promises, inequality,
economy, healthcare, militarization,” saying the Democrat
party can’t really address those issues, either, because “all
its energy and it is entangled with many of the same
groups behind Trump’s policies.”
The 45-year-old went on to say that the
Democratic party has integrated itself with
the “security sector and media barons,”
which leads to the perception that
Democrats “act on behalf of an entrenched
power elite.”
“The Democratic base should move to start
a new party since the party elite shows no
signs that they will give up power,” he
wrote.
Assange tweeted the six points from the Ecuadorian
embassy in London, where he has been holed up for the
past five years.
Although Sweden dropped an investigation into Assange’s
sexual assault allegations last month, he has remained in
the embassy to avoid being extradited to the United States.
WikiLeaks published 391,832 classified documents
relating to the war in Iraq in 2010, the biggest leak of its
kind in military history.
 CNN Executive Editor Demands
To Review All Future Russia-Related Stories...
"No Exceptions"
By Tyler Durden
Jun 25, 2017 11:30 PM

After another in a string of embarrassing screw-ups, CNN

is reportedly implementing a policy change to strengthen
oversight of stories involving Russia, according to a
Buzzfeed News report.

Buzzfeed obtained an email sent by CNNMoney executive

editor Rich Barbieri outlining the network's new rules.

The email, which went out at 11:21 a.m.

on Saturday said "No one should
publish any content involving Russia
without coming to me and Jason," a
CNN vice president.
"This applied to social, video, editorial,
and MoneyStream. No exceptions," the
email added. "I will lay out a workflow
Monday." The initial story, written by none other than Pulitzer-Prize-
winning reporter Thomas Frank,
The new restrictions also apply to other areas of the
network — not just CNNMoney, which wasn't involved claimed that "Congress was
with the article that was deleted and retracted. Buzzfeed investigating a Russian investment fund
said CNN didn't immediately return a request for comment with ties to Trump officials."
or answer questions about what the previous workflow
was.

The story was perfect fodder for 'The Left', as it provided

yet more 'confirmation' that Trump and his team were up
to something nefarious involving the Russians...

71
Highlights included...

Congress is investigating a little-known Russian

investment fund...

The fund CEO met in January with a member of the

Trump transition team... Scaramucci, for his part, has been a
good sport about the incident. He even
"If you're going to get your nose under the praised CNN for taking the story down,
tent, that's a good place to start," said calling it a "classy move."
Ludema, a Georgetown University
economics professor. "I'm sure their
objective is to get rid of all the sanctions
against the financial institutions. But RDIF
is one [sanctioned organizations] where a
number of prominent U.S. investors have
been involved."

A fund spokeswoman says there was no discussion about

lifting sanctions...
Scaramucci's comments alarmed Democratic Senators
Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Ben Cardin of
Maryland, who asked Mnuchin to investigate whether
Scaramucci sought to "facilitate prohibited transactions" or
promised to waive or lift sanctions against Russia.
Scaramucci disputed the story, and CNN eventually
retracted it, saying only that it did not meet its rigorous
ethical standards.
Of course, this isn't the only screwup from CNN in recent
memory: Earlier this month, the station published a story
claiming that Comey would contradict President Donald
Trump's claim that Comey repeatedly told Trump he
wasn't under investigation.
But the publication of Comey's opening
statement soon revealed this to be
inaccurate, and CNN quickly corrected
the story.

I guess those anonymous sources aren't always as reliable

as we'd like them to be, huh?

72
 NBC’s Chuck Todd Asserts
Obama Not Swaying Election Akin to 9/11
By Nicholas Fondacaro
June 25, 2017 10:11 AM EDT
Last this week, The Washington Post published an article
saying that the Obama administration knew well in
advance of Election Day 2016 that Russia was trying to
meddle the U.S. election process. And despite their
knowledge, they chose not to go public because of the fear
that many would think President Obama was swaying the
election to Hillary Clinton. During NBC’s Sunday Today,
the network’s Chuck Todd let his true feelings show when
equated Obama not putting his figure on the electoral scale
to President Bush not acting on intelligence reports about
Osama bin Laden before the 9/11 attacks.
“This was a Washington Post story this week that said
Obama administration soft-pedaled its response to the
Russian meddling because it didn’t want to be seen as
putting its thumb on the scale of this election,” prefaced
host Willie Geist, before asking Todd the triggering
question. “What’s the impact of that story and all this stew
of Russia?”
Todd whined that Trump was making his “head spin” by
creating the “atmosphere” that kept Obama from taking the
Russian meddling intelligence public.
“I mean, for the very reason: Here's
President Trump criticizing former
President Obama for not doing
anything,” he bemoaned. “Well at the
time they got this intelligence, candidate
Donald Trump was telling everybody
that this election was going to get
rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton.”
According to Todd,
73
“In hindsight, though, there clearly a
bunch of Obama White House folks are
hand-wringing about this.”
Todd seemed to be almost obsessed or disturbed by
Obama’s decision because he declared that he would
“never get over” how one Obama official claimed that “we
choked” for not speaking out.
The story seemed to hit a boiling point for the Meet the
Press moderator.
“Look, this could be, Willie, what the
infamous August 6th presidential
intelligence daily briefing: ‘Bin Laden
determined to strike the U.S. before
9/11,’” he announced, with a slight tinge of
anger.
“This may be the equivalent in history
on this Russian infiltration of the
American democracy. We may go back
and say: ‘This was equivalent of that,’”
He continued to rant. “The Obama
administration had the intelligence, had
the smoking gun, and decided to pull
back for fear of politicizing the election.”
What Todd failed to mention was that the warning
received by Bush was not a cut-and-dry fact, but a vague
prediction about what bin Laden wanted to do with no set
date. In sharp contrast, Obama's intelligence was about
what they knew to be happening at the time.
Geist seemed to sympathize with Todd, saying:
 “And as you say, we’re hearing from a
lot of Obama, who behind the scenes
saying we should have done more in
real time.”
In a commercial for his show on MSNBC, MTP Daily,
Todd once claimed to be the “referee” who was out there
to enforce the political “rules.” By misleadingly comparing
the Bush administration’s and the Obama administration’s
inactions on intelligence, Todd is equating 9/11 with
Trump’s presidency. That doesn’t sound like an unbiased
referee. That sounds like one that has chosen a clear side to
back and throws his own low blows.
Transcript below:
NBC
Sunday Today
June 25, 2017
8:06:24 AM Eastern
(…)
WILLIE GEIST: Let me move on to Russia because when
President Trump wasn’t tweeting about health care this
week he was tweeting about Russia. I’ll read you one of
them, Chuck. “Just out: The Obama administration knew far
in advance of November 8th about lection meddling by
Russia. Did nothing about it. Why?” Put to the side the fact
that he acknowledges Russian meddling in that tweet right
there, something he has not done previously. Just go to this
is a story—This was a Washington Post story this week that
.
74
said Obama administration soft-pedaled its response to the
Russian meddling because it didn’t want to be seen as
putting its thumb on the scale of this election. What’s the
impact of that story and all this stew of Russia?
CHUCK TODD: Well look, talk about making your head spin.
I mean, for the very reason: Here's President Trump
criticizing former President Obama for not doing anything.
Well at the time they got this intelligence, candidate Donald
Trump was telling everybody that this election was going to
get rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton. And that was the
atmosphere that the Obama administration was dealing with
publicly when they got this intelligence, so we understand
the reason why they did this. In hindsight, though, there
clearly a bunch of Obama White House folks are hand-
wringing about this. That line, I’ll never get over, you know:
“We choked.”
Look, this could be, Willie, what the infamous August 6th
presidential intelligence daily briefing: “Bin Laden
determined to strike the U.S. before 9/11.” This may be the
equivalent in history on this Russian infiltration of the
American democracy. We may go back and say: “This was
equivalent of that.” The Obama administration had the
intelligence, had the smoking gun, and decided to pull back
for fear of politicizing the election.
GEIST: And as you say, we’re hearing from a lot of Obama,
who behind the scenes saying we should have done more in
real time.
(…)
 Seymour Hersh: US Knew
No Chemical Weapons Used By Syria
Published: June 25, 2017
Berlin (GPA) – Pulitzer prize winner Seymour Hersh – the
journalist who’s exposed US crimes from My Lai to Abu
Ghraib – says Trump carried out Tomahawk strike on
Syria despite US intelligence saying Assad didn’t use
chemical weapons.
German newspaper Die Welt has published an explosive
story today in which renowned journalist Seymour Hersh
claims US President Donald Trump ordered his highly
praised retaliatory cruise missile strike on Syria’s Shayrat
airbase despite US intelligence reporting that the Syrian
military didn’t use chemical weapons in the Idlib town of
Khan Sheikhoun.
Hersh told Welt that he had been in contact with sources
inside US intelligence operating in Syria that informed him
that they had contacted Washington with reports that the
Syrian military wasn’t behind an alleged chemical
weapons attack on April 4th of this year. These reports
were apparently ignored by Trump; who instead informed
his decision to launch 59 cruise missiles from the
Mediterranean based on reports by the US imperialist
media.
Hersh claims that starting from the beginning, the Syrian
government was open about their operations in Idlib that
day – even broadcasting details of the bombing run on
Khan Sheikhoun in English through the deconfliction
channels established by the US and Russia. This seems
possible since the targets of the bombing were several mid
level members of Tahrir al-Sham (formerly the al-Qaeda
affiliate, Jahbat al-Nusra), should have been agreeable to
all sides. There is little doubt this area was controlled by
Tahrir al-Sham at the time since all the evidence of the use
of sarin gas came from the “humanitarians” in the White
Helmets – a group with known ties to the jihadist group.
According to Hersh, his sources say the Tahrir al-Sham
commanders’ meeting place that was the target of the
Syrian airstrike was a small building with a basement that
was used as a munitions stockpile as well as storage for
industrial chemicals/weapons components such as chlorine
and fertilizer. It’s also being reported that the Syrian air
force shared this intelligence with their Russian allies; who
supplied a precision guided bomb for the strike and claim
they also informed US personnel of this decision.
The Russian-supplied 500 pound bomb used for the strike
is said to have generated immense heat which caused
75
secondary explosions of the aforementioned chemicals.
This is consistent with the preliminary explanation offered
by Russia that the toxic gas in the area was an unintended
consequence of the operation.
Claims that the videos coming out of Khan Sheikhoun
showed victims displaying symptoms of exposure to sarin
gas have yet to be verified by any unbiased body. As stated
above, the only evidence provided came from the White
Helmets and a doctor in the area who had previously been
detained on charges of terrorism.
Seymour Hersh Image Credit: Flickr – CC – Giorgio
Montersino
The claim that sarin was used hasn’t been confirmed
despite Hersh’s sources saying it would be “very easy” to
confirm “because it penetrates paint,” and all the sources
in the area would have had to do is “get a paint sample.”
The timing of the attack immediately came under scrutiny
by everyone who knows better than to take the word of
western media at face value. A major factor that aroused
suspicion was the Trump administration’s announced that
removing Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad was no longer
a US priority; just a day before the incident in Khan
Sheikhoun. This obviously would have caused groups like
Tahrir al-Sham concern that their association with US
backed rebels like the Free Syrian Army (FSA) was no
longer enough to guarantee their seeming immunity to US
strikes.
The Syrian government would obviously have no reason to
use a weapon like sarin; knowing it would only cause
international outrage similar to the last time similar
accusations were leveled against Assad in 2013. On the
other hand, it’s not hard to imagine notoriously brutal
terror organizations like Tahrir al-Sham would resort to
atrocious methods like poisoning civilians if they felt they
were on borrowed time.
While it is fair to be somewhat skeptical of Seymour Hersh
due to the fact that he only presented unnamed sources, he
.
76
should at least be heard out based on his 50+ year history
of exposing US war crimes. While we can’t currently
confirm Hersh’s claims as 100% accurate, he does provide
a plausible breakdown of the events in April that stay true
to the explanation put forward by Syria and Russia; two
countries that Hersh would have no clear reason to lie for.
 Flashback: Why The Claim That Russia Wanted To Help
Trump And Not Clinton NEVER Made Any Sense
By Usafeaturesmedia
Posted On June 25, 2017
This theory has more holes in it than Clinton has excuses
for losing in November
(National Sentinel) [This story was originally published
December 12, 2016, at NationalSecurity.news.]
Political intel: Over the weekend the Washington Post and
The New York Times both reported that “anonymous
sources” within the CIA believe that Russia interfered in
the U.S. presidential election, largely by hacking into
Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign
computers, and by feeding propaganda to about 200
American-based news and information web sites.
First the Post. It reported:
The CIA has concluded in a secret
assessment that Russia intervened in the
2016 election to help Donald Trump win the
presidency, rather than just to undermine
confidence in the U.S. electoral system,
according to officials briefed on the matter.
Intelligence agencies have identified
individuals with connections to the Russian
government who provided WikiLeaks with
thousands of hacked emails from the
Democratic National Committee and
others, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign
chairman, according to U.S. officials. Those
officials described the individuals as actors
known to the intelligence community and
part of a wider Russian operation to boost
Trump and hurt Clinton’s chances.
“It is the assessment of the intelligence
community that Russia’s goal here was to
77
favor one candidate over the other, to help
Trump get elected,” said a senior U.S.
official briefed on an intelligence
presentation made to U.S. senators.
“That’s the consensus view.”
But there is still no hard evidence that anyone can produce,
a full reading of the Post story reveals.
Next, the Times. It reported:
American intelligence agencies have
concluded with “high confidence” that
Russia acted covertly in the latter stages of
the presidential campaign to harm Hillary
Clinton’s chances and promote Donald J.
Trump, according to senior administration
officials.
They based that conclusion, in part, on
another finding — which they say was also
reached with high confidence — that the
Russians hacked the Republican National
Committee’s computer systems in addition
to their attacks on Democratic
organizations, but did not release whatever
information they gleaned from the
Republican networks.
In the months before the election, it was
largely documents from Democratic Party
systems that were leaked to the public.
Intelligence agencies have concluded that
the Russians gave the Democrats’
documents to WikiLeaks.
But there is still no hard evidence that anyone can produce,
a full reading of the Times story reveals.
The Trump transition team has, of course, lambasted both
of these reports, saying essentially that they are from the
same intelligence apparatus that claimed, incorrectly, that
Saddam Hussein’s Iraq held weapons of mass destruction.
But aside from the political perspective, here is why these
reports are very suspect and, indeed, could be propaganda
themselves aimed solely at undermining the incoming
Trump administration.
Consider:
 The reporters and editorial boards of both papers were
in the tank for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary
Clinton, despite the fact that both papers did indeed
report on much of the hacked information gleaned from
the DNC and her campaign. Both editorial boards
endorsed her (the Post here; the Times here).
 The Post ran with a story recently based on obviously
shoddy information from an anonymous group no one
had ever heard of, which claimed that Moscow used
hundreds of U.S.-based web sites to spread false
propaganda about Clinton, to the benefit of Trump. No
one else would touch this story and for good reason: It
was garbage. The Post was even forced to print a sort-
of retraction. Reliably Left-leaning online investigative
news site The Intercept, whose co-founder Glenn
Greenwald broke the Edward Snowden series with the
Post, was even highly critical.
 The mainstream media, which was also largely in
Clinton’s corner, has attempted to craft the “fake news”
narrative out of whole cloth since her loss, without a
shred of evidence or proof that the negative reports
circulating about Clinton, her foundation’s shady
foreign dealings and her husband’s past sexual
dalliances prior to the election were fabricated.
And here is the most important point of all to make: No
one seems to be asking or providing an answer to this
question,
“Why would Putin help Trump and not
Clinton?”
This is a crucially important question for a number of
reasons. First, there is the matter of Clinton’s unauthorized
use of a personal email server during her tenure as
secretary of state. FBI Director James Comey said his
agents believe with 99 percent certainty that her server was
hacked by several foreign governments; Russia certainly
has the capability to do so, and as such any good
intelligence analyst worth his/her salt would have to
assume that Moscow is one of the countries the FBI
believes hacked the Clinton servers. After all, we are
attempting to hack Russian (and Iranian, and Chinese, and
a host of other countries) intelligence data bases all the
time.
Why is that important? Because, as Breitbart News
reported:
House Homeland Security Chairman
Michael McCaul declared on Thursday’s
Fox & Friends that Clinton exposed vital
American information to our enemies —
78
some of the “most classified, sensitive
secrets in the federal government, many of
them covert operations.”
“Our adversaries have this very sensitive
information, that not only jeopardizes her,
and national security at home, but the men
and women serving overseas,” said
McCaul. “In my opinion, quite frankly, it’s
treason.”
“…[E]xposed vital American information to
our enemies…”
Secondly, as The Daily Caller noted, the Times’
declaration that the Republican National Committee’s
servers were similarly hacked by Russian intermediaries—
but that the hackers chosenot to release any RNC
information, thus “proving” Moscow was helping
Trump—is itself a fabrication. According to RNC
spokesman Sean Spicer, the organization is working with
U.S. intelligence agencies who have concluded that no, the
RNC’s servers were not hacked.
“The intelligence is wrong,” Spicer told
CNN. “It didn’t happened. We offered the
New York Times conclusive proof that it
didn’t happen. They ignored it. They
refused to look at it because it didn’t fit the
narrative.”
“The bottom line is the intelligence is
wrong,” he continued. “They are writing that
the conclusion they came to was based in
part on the fact the RNC was hacked. It
wasn’t hacked. We have intelligence
agencies that we worked with that are
willing to sort this out.”
And there is this: Julian Assange of WikiLeaks has stated,
publicly, that Russia was not behind the DNC/Clinton
campaign hacks. Granted, Assange made his statement on
RT (Russia Today), a media organ controlled by Moscow.
But hang on; there’s more.
It’s very fair to say that Russia was likely among the five
or six countries the FBI believes hacked into Clinton’s
personal email server while at State; so why shouldn’t we
also believe that Moscow hacked into the DNC and the
Clinton campaign, but not the RNC?
It’s quite possible that Russian President Vladimir Putin,
like much of the rest of the world, believed that Clinton
would defeat Trump Nov. 8, so he launched an intelligence
operation to gather as much dirt on Clinton as he could—
stolen intelligence and other sensitive information he could
use to his advantage when she took over the White House.
The Times reported it this way:
 The Russians were as surprised as
everyone else at Mr. Trump’s victory,
intelligence officials said. Had Mrs. Clinton
won, they believe, emails stolen from the
Democratic committee and from senior
members of her campaign could have been
used to undercut her legitimacy.
That helps explain his hack of her State-related email
servers and, perhaps, even the hacks the DNC and the
Clinton campaign. But it doesn’t help explain the
resulting release of the hacked data because it was
all clearly damaging to her and her political party. And
the releases of hacked information seemed to be an
effort to keep her out of the White House.
That doesn’t make sense. After all, if you’ve got the goods
on a U.S. president—and let’s not forget that the Clintons
were also instrumental in helping Russia secure 20 percent
of all U.S. strategic uranium reserves—you would keep
those cards close to your vest because that would be a huge
diplomatic and foreign policy advantage for Russia. If
Putin has all this stuff on Clinton, he could essentially
dictate U.S. foreign policy as it pertained to Russian
interests.
79
By comparison, a Donald Trump presidency featuring
billionaire businessman with zero political influence or
experience, and no skeletons remaining in the closet after a
bruising campaign cycle, does not offer strategic
advantages to Putin. A Trump administration, especially
one whose Cabinet is permeated with hawks, offers a
much greater challenge to Putin on the world stage than
would a compromised Hillary Clinton.
While we can only assume what the motivations are for the
Post and the Times (and, possibly, some in the U.S.
intelligence community) in pushing their narrative that
Russia was somehow overly influential in the U.S.
presidential election, what is far easier to deduce, with
some thought, is that it just doesn’t add up. This narrative
also assumes two additional things: 1) Trump, by himself,
is incapable of convincing enough voters in enough key
states to support him; and 2) the CIA is completely devoid
of careerist officials who don’t themselves have a political
agenda.
Neither of these assumptions can be accurately made.
 CNN's 'Massive' Error On Russia?
No Time For It On 'Reliable Sources'
By Tim Graham
June 26, 2017 10:51 AM EDT

"This applied to social, video, editorial, and

MoneyStream. No exceptions," the email
added. "I will lay out a workflow Monday."

The new restrictions also apply to other areas of the

network — not just CNNMoney, which wasn't involved
with the article that was deleted and retracted.

A source close to the network, who requested anonymity

to discuss the matter, told BuzzFeed News earlier that the
story was a

CNN's media unit has an enormous black hole in its review

"massive, massive f---up and people will
of the media world: CNN. On Friday, CNN retracted an
be disciplined." [Emphasis mine.]
online story making unsubstantiated claims about the
Russian ties of Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci. Jon
Passantino at Buzzfeed reported on Sunday a crackdown on The person said CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker and
CNN reporting on Russia to prevent future mistakes. the head of the company's human resources department are
"directly involved" in an internal investigation examining
how the story was handled.
So how much time did Stelter have for this story on his
show Reliable Sources on Sunday? Nothing. Instead,
Stelter spent more than five minutes hate-analyzing Fox & It's not like Stelter was unaware of the CNN retraction. He
Friends as a Trump infomercial. He spent about ten and a tweeted that on Saturday morning:
half minutes indulging "TV legend" Phil Donahue. He
even closed the show with four minutes allegedly about
Russia -- but his guest Masha Gessen basically fed back
Stelter his favorite talking point that Trump is an "aspiring
autocrat" who's shutting down access to the press:

"We're definitely hurtling towards a closed

system of government..."

Here's what Buzzfeed reported:

CNN is imposing strict new publishing restrictions for

online articles involving Russia after the network deleted a
story and then issued a retraction late Friday, according to
an internal email obtained by BuzzFeed News.
On Sunday night in his e-mail newsletter, Stelter spent
about 230 words on the "massive" mess-up:
The email went out at 11:21 a.m. on Saturday from Rich
Barbieri, the CNNMoney executive editor, saying
On Friday evening CNN.com fully retracted
a story after questions were raised about
"No one should publish any content the accuracy of the reporting and sourcing.
involving Russia without coming to me and The story, by Thomas Frank of the
Jason [Farkas]," a CNN vice president. investigative unit, said Congress was
investigating a "Russian Investment Fund
With Ties To Trump Officials." It didn't

80
 get TV airtime, but it was shared on the
web, where it was spotted and scrutinized
by Breitbart.
On Friday night the story was replaced by an editor’s note:
"That story did not meet CNN's editorial
standards and has been retracted. Links to
the story have been disabled."
The editor's note included an apology to Trump ally
Anthony Scaramucci, who was named in the story. The
next morning Scaramucci responded via Twitter:
"CNN did the right thing. Classy move.
Apology accepted. Everyone makes
mistakes. Moving on."
Some prominent conservative figures, like Donald Trump
Jr. and Sean Hannity, seized on the story as an example of
anti-Trump bias and anonymous source malfeasance...
.
81
An embarrassing moment for CNN
The truth is, there's still a lot we don't know. On Saturday
and Sunday I asked CNN PR for details and comment. A
network spokeswoman declined to comment as of Sunday
evening.
-- My take: I sometimes complain to my
editors about the layers of editing and
oversight that exist at CNN. But these
processes exist for good reasons.
Determining what went wrong this time
will help prevent future damage to the
news organization... [Emphasis in the
original.]
Perhaps Stelter should try to be as upset at his poor access
to his own network's executives as he is to the media's
poor access to Trump.
 Trump Blasts Obama On Russia:
"He Didn't 'Choke'...He Expected Clinton To Win
So He Colluded Or Obstructed"
By Tyler Durden
Jun 26, 2017 9:02 AM

Former President Obama, political royalty on the left and a

media darling who even sent a "thrill up the leg" of Chris
Matthews, has drawn a rather surprising amount of public
criticism of late over his handling of Russia's meddling in
the 2016 election. Everyone from Congressional
democrats to CNN is suddenly curious why Obama didn't
do more?

Well, apparently Trump has decided to clear things up via

Twitter:

"The reason that President Obama did

NOTHING about Russia after being
notified by the CIA of meddling is that
he expected Clinton would win and did
not want to "rock the boat." He didn't
"choke," he colluded or obstructed, and
it did the Dems and Crooked Hillary no
good."
"The real story is that President Obama
did NOTHING after being informed in
August about Russian meddling. With 4
months looking at Russia under a
magnifying glass, they have zero "tapes" of
T people colluding. There is no collusion &
no obstruction. I should be given
apology!"
Of course, the more important issue is the media's
shocking and sudden turn against Obama as it does make
one wonder whether there is more at play here than meets
the eye.

82
 Dowd: Trump's The 'One Person That Questions His
Legitimacy The Most'
By Kristine Marsh
June 26, 2017 10:36 AM EDT

DOWD: No, he has an obsession on this

and I was thinking about this. The one
person that questions Donald Trump's
legitimacy the most for holding his
office seems to be Donald Trump.
Donald Trump constantly raises questions
about his own electoral victory, about
whether or not Russia interfered with it and
I'm reminded of a quote, to cure one
obsession you usually have to adopt
another obsession so Donald Trump
would be much better adopting another
Monday on ABC’s Good Morning America, the network’s that was more beneficial for the public.
political analyst Matthew Dowd accused President Trump
of having an “obsession” with Russia “hacking” the
presidential election. Without a hint of irony, Dowd added
that Trump was the “one person” that “questioned Trump’s
legitimacy the most,” seemingly forgetting that he himself
has questioned Trump’s legitimacy over and over again on
GMA since November.

After Trump tweeted this morning about a Washington

Post report that revealed President Obama knew about
Russia trying to meddle in the 2016 election long before
Wikileaks but did nothing about it, ABC again shifted the
blame from Obama to attack Trump. For tweeting about
this revelation, anchor George Stephanopoulos and Dowd
diagnosed Trump as having an “obsession” over the
Russian hacking:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Meantime, the
president simply can't help himself on
those tweets about Russia.
.
For Dowd to claim that Trump was the one who was
“obsessed” with Russian hacking is a hoot. This is the
same network that has spent just about every day talking
about the investigation for months on end. Not only that,
but Dowd claimed that Trump “questioned” his own
election win more than anyone else. Again, Dowd ignored
that his own network has questioned Trump’s legitimacy
repeatedly, from questions asked by George
Stephanopoulos to Dowd himself.

83
 Report: FBI Collaborated With
Dem Oppo Research Firm To Smear Trump
By Debra Heine
June 26, 2017
FBI Director James Comey speaks to the Intelligence and National
Security Alliance Leadership Dinner in Alexandria, Va., Wednesday,
March 29, 2017. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
The D.C. firm that commissioned the Russia intelligence
dossier smearing President Donald Trump is refusing to
answer questions and provide records to the Senate panel
investigating its connections to the Democratic Party,
according to the New York Post's Paul Sperry. The so-
called "dodgy dossier" helped spark the Russia scandal that
has been bedeviling Trump since the election.
Astonishingly, the FBI became involved with the dossier
last summer, even though it knew the salacious report
lacked credibility -- and now it is also stonewalling the
Senate Judiciary Committee.
Fusion GPS calls itself a “research and strategic
intelligence firm” but is well known in Washington to be
an opposition-research group for Democrats. According to
Sperry, the firm's founders are "more political activists
than journalists" and have "a pro-Hillary, anti-Trump
agenda."
Via the New York Post:
“These weren’t mercenaries or hired guns,”
a congressional source familiar with the
dossier probe said. “These guys had a
vested personal and ideological interest in
smearing Trump and boosting Hillary’s
chances of winning the White House.”
Fusion GPS was on the payroll of an unidentified
Democratic ally of Clinton when it hired a long-retired
British spy to dig up dirt on Trump. In 2012, Democrats
hired Fusion GPS to uncover dirt on GOP presidential
nominee Mitt Romney. And in 2015, Democrat ally
84
Planned Parenthood retained Fusion GPS to investigate
pro-life activists protesting the abortion group.
More, federal records show a key co-founder and partner
in the firm was a Hillary Clinton donor and supporter of
her presidential campaign.
In September 2016, while Fusion GPS was quietly
shopping the dirty dossier on Trump around Washington,
its co-founder and partner Peter R. Fritsch contributed at
least $1,000 to the Hillary Victory Fund and the Hillary
For America campaign, Federal Election Commission data
show. His wife also donated money to Hillary’s campaign.
Property records show that in June 2016, as Clinton allies
bankrolled Fusion GPS, Fritsch bought a six-bedroom,
five-bathroom home in Bethesda, Md., for $2.3 million.
Fritsch did not respond to requests for comment. A lawyer
for Fusion GPS said the firm’s work is confidential.
Sources say Fusion GPS had its own interest, beyond those
of its clients, in promulgating negative gossip about
Trump.
Fritsch, who served as the Journal’s bureau chief in
Mexico City and has lectured at the liberal Wilson
Center’s Mexico Institute, married into a family with
Mexican business interests. His wife, Beatriz Garcia,
formerly worked as an executive at Grupo Dina, a
manufacturer of trucks and buses in Mexico City that
benefits from NAFTA, which Trump opposes.
Fritsch’s Fusion GPS partner Thomas Catan, who grew up
in Britain, once edited a business magazine in Mexico,
moreover. A third founding partner, Glenn Simpson, is
reported to have shared dark views of both Russian
President Vladimir Putin and Trump. Before joining
Fusion GPS, Simpson did opposition research for a former
Clinton White House operative.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is also looking into the
FBI's involvement with the anti-Trump dossier and
Christopher Steele, the former spy who was hired by
Fusion GPS to create a Russia file on Trump.
The FBI received a copy of the Democrat-funded dossier
in August, during the heat of the campaign, and is said to
have contracted in October to pay Steele $50,000 to help
corroborate the dirt on Trump — a relationship that “raises
substantial questions about the independence” of the
bureau in investigating Trump, warned Senate Judiciary
Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.
Senate investigators are demanding to see records of
communications between Fusion GPS and the FBI and the
Justice Department, including any contacts with former
Attorney General Loretta Lynch, now under congressional
investigation for possibly obstructing the Hillary Clinton
email probe, and deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe,
who is under investigation by the Senate and the Justice
inspector general for failing to recuse himself despite
financial and political connections to the Clinton campaign
through his Democrat activist wife.
According to Sperry, Senate investigators say McCabe is
the FBI official who negotiated with Steele.
Steele contracted with Fusion GPS to investigate Trump’s
ties to Russia starting in June 2016, whereupon he
outlandishly claimed that Hillary campaign hackers were
“paid by both Trump’s team and the Kremlin” and that the
operation was run out of Putin’s office. He also fed Fusion
GPS and its Hillary-allied clients incredulous gossip about
Trump hating the Obamas so much that he hired hookers
to urinate on a bed they slept in at the Moscow Ritz-
Carlton, and that Russian intelligence recorded the pee
party in case they needed to blackmail Trump.
Never mind that none of the rumors were backed by
evidence or even credible sourcing (don’t bother trying to
confirm his bed-wetting yarn, Steele advised, as “all direct
witnesses have been silenced”). Steele reinforced his
paying customers’ worst fears about Trump, and they
rewarded him for it with a whopping $250,000 in
payments.
But it’s now clear his “intelligence reports,” which
together run more than 35-pages long, were for the most
part worthless. And the clients who paid Fusion GPS
(which claims to go “beyond standard due diligence”) for
them got taken to the cleaners.
Bizarrely, the CIA gave the shoddy, uncorroborated report
credence and it wound up in the White House, where then-
President Obama was briefed on it. The FBI also used the
dossier for investigative leads on Carter Page, who has
been eager to testify before Congress so he can clear his
name. Yet former FBI Director James Comey admitted
under oath earlier this month that the dossier is “salacious
and unverified.”
And of course, Democratic leaders in Congress keep
referring to it to cook up more charges against Trump,
85
while liberal media continue to use it as a road map to find
“scoops” on Trump in the “Russiagate” conspiracy they’re
peddling — still hoping against hope that the central thrust
of the report — that Trump entered into an unholy alliance
with the Russian government during the election — will
one day prove true and bring about the downfall of his
presidency.
On Fox and Friends Sunday, Sperry said the new
developments on the case "do not bode well for
Democrats."
"Not only is the Senate now investigating
officially the Obama administration [Loretta
Lynch] for obstruction of justice, but they're
also investigating the origins of this
discredited dossier that Democrats used to
launch their witch hunt against Trump on
Russia," Sperry said. "And that witch hunt
could backfire on them now if this really
heats up...with subpoenas, hearings, and
also possibly a criminal investigation down
the road."
Asked why he thinks the media has been ignoring these
latest developments, Sperry answered that
"they're part of the witch hunt" and "a lot of
them are Democrat mouth pieces."
He said the Senate Judiciary Committee is eager to find
out if the FBI collaborated with Fusion GPS on the dossier.
The dossier is "riddled with errors in fact
and questionable sourcing" and "was a
Democrat operation from top to bottom,"
Sperry told the Fox and Friends hosts.
He said the committee's next move will likely be to start
issuing subpoenas.
"We've got to get to the bottom of this
because when you combine Loretta Lynch
and ... allegations against her of
obstruction of justice in the Hillary
investigation, and this whole thing is really
starting to smell rotten," Sperry concluded.
President Donald Trump on Saturday tweeted that the
investigations into Russian meddling should focus on the
Obama administration -- not him.
"Since the Obama Administration was told
way before the 2016 Election that the
Russians were meddling, why no action?
Focus on them, not T," the president wrote
.
86
on Twitter. "Obama Administration official
said they 'choked' when it came to acting
on Russian meddling of election. They
didn't want to hurt Hillary?"
It looks like a shift in focus may be beginning to take
place.
 NYT Front-Page Shocker:
Trump’s Genuine Bond With Families
Of Victims Of Illegals
By Clay Waters
June 26, 2017 10:43 AM EDT
New York Times reporter Vivian Yee, who got emotional
on a February front page over the plight of
“undocumented” immigrants (no surprise, given the
paper’s support for amnesty for illegals), on Monday
penned a surprisingly sympathetic view of distraught
Americans who have lost loved ones to illegal immigrants
and came to support Donald Trump for that one reason,
loyalty that Trump has returned in kind.
Yee’s story on Monday’s front page, “From Deep Grief, a
Solid Bond With Trump on Border Policy,” rather
shockingly gave those bereft families much of the same
kind of soft and glowing coverage that the paper usually
reserves for illegal immigrants like “The Dreamers” and
other favored targets of “persecution.”
The families could reel off all the times they had called the
media and written to Washington, but after all that trying,
they had never heard anyone who mattered. The families
could reel off all the times they had called the media and
written to Washington, but after all that trying, they had
never heard anyone who mattered say anything like it:
Most Mexican immigrants, Donald J. Trump declared in
his first campaign speech, were “rapists” who were
“bringing drugs, bringing crime” across the border.
Now he had come to meet them, the families of people
killed by undocumented immigrants, and they wanted to
tell him he was right.
One son had been struck by a truck, another shot just
around the corner from home. Different causes of death,
but the driver, the gunman, all the perpetrators were the
same, the parents said: people who never should have been
in the country in the first place.
….
Hailed for bravery, accused of racism,
scorned as puppets, these are some of
Mr. Trump’s most potent surrogates, the
people whose private anguish has
formed the emotional cornerstone of his
crusade against illegal immigration and
clouded the futures of America’s 11
million unauthorized immigrants.
87
Their alliance came down to this: To parents parched for
understanding, Mr. Trump was a gulp of hope. The Trump
campaign flew them to speak at rallies and at the
Republican National Convention, put them up in Trump
hotels and kept in touch with regular phone calls and
messages. After his victory, Mr. Trump invited at least one
to the Inaugural Ball and seated three more with the first
lady during his first address to Congress.
Then and since, they have defended him on social media
and in the press, assuring the world that, with President
Trump in office, their children will not have died in vain.
Yee talked to Sabine Durden, whose son was killed in a
road collision by an illegal from Guatemala who had two
DUIs but had been released on bail and never deported:
At his sentencing in 2013, Mr. Tzun blamed God for the
crash. Ms. Durden blamed the immigration system.
….
Ms. Durden, 59, had come to the United States from
Germany when she married an American in the Army,
eventually becoming a citizen. He was a Democrat, so she
was a Democrat. She had never thought much about the
immigration debate before Dominic died. Now it was her
whole life.
Then came Mr. Trump. Whenever she saw him, he greeted
her with a “great big hug,” she recalled. “Dom’s mom,” he
called her.
“He would say, ‘You’ll never be alone
again. You’ll never have to fight this
alone,’” said Ms. Durden, who went on to
speak at three of his rallies.
Yee suggested the issue was truly a campaign turning point
for many voters who wouldn’t normally be considered in
the Trump tank.
The Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, was out there
talking about the need to create a pathway to citizenship
for undocumented immigrants. When Ms. Durden heard
that, she changed her voter registration to Republican the
same day.
In a series of recent interviews, the
families described a similar trajectory:
The death of a loved one. The spasm of
realizing that the other driver, or the
gunman, was living in the country
illegally. The political awakening -- for
the Republicans, a hardening toward
illegal immigrants; for the Democrats, a
quick, grim conversion. The relief, when
another “angel mom” or “angel dad”
saw them on the news and found them
online.
Yee’s article may qualify as one of the most flattering
things about Trump to appear in the paper (Michael
Kinsley’s odd experiment to “say something nice about
Donald Trump” notwithstanding).
Here was the paradox of Donald Trump, unfiltered tycoon
who seemed as far away as Fifth Avenue and as close up
as the living room TV. Even as a legion of critics warned
he was pandering to his fans on the way to betraying them,
the alliance he had made with the families felt, to many of
them, like an unshakable bond.
The thing was, he paid attention. And he
never stopped.
….
of the smiling dead. The commemorative buttons. The
ashes held close in a locket.
….
[Trump] also mentioned the case that, at least on the right,
had come to define the dangers of illegal immigration: that
of Kathryn Steinle, a 32-year-old woman shot to death on a
San Francisco pier in 2015. The suspect was an ex-felon
from Mexico who had been deported five times. A few
months before Ms. Steinle’s death, the local authorities
had released him from jail without notifying federal
immigration agents.
….
Still, those who appeared on the campaign’s behalf said
they had never felt like props. Mr. Trump was no more
using them, they said, than Mrs. Clinton was using
hardworking Hispanic families to humanize the issue.
….
It looked very different to the other side, of course. People
on social media, and even some friends, did not hesitate to
let them know that they thought they were being used. Lots
of people called them racist. They insisted that they were
not, emphasizing that they did not think all undocumented
immigrants were bad.
A large body of research, accumulated over many years,
has found that immigrants are less likely than native-born
citizens to commit serious crimes or to be imprisoned.

For the Trump campaign, the private cultivation paid off.

For the families, such studies were
In public, the families became some of the campaign’s
beside the point. To them, illegal
most compelling witnesses.
immigration was an epidemic of
preventable deaths.
They could be picked out by what they carried, the
talismans of absence: the T-shirts printed with photographs
.

88
 Obama Holdover:
Trump Style 'Quicker, More Decisive'
By Paul Bedard
Jun 26, 2017, 8:25 AM

Veterans Affairs Secretary David J. Shulkin is a rare bird
in the Trump administration, having been a top Obama
pick when he was the department's undersecretary for
health through the 2016 election.
So, we asked him how things have changed under Trump,
and he said it is all for the good.
is earning back that trust that it needs," he
added.
Shulkin, who has won kudos for his management acumen,
said that the president is using a businessman's sense to fix
government.
"The president very much looks at this
organization like running a business. And
he understands that you need to allow the
manager of the business to have the
freedom to go out and to challenge
assumptions and to make decisions," said
the secretary during a breakfast hosted by
the Christian Science Monitor.

And that's a good thing?

"Slow, incremental change isn't what this

organization needs," he said. "He did not
"I have found that mandate from him, to get
come in to make incremental change; he
this organization fixed and the support and
came in to set a fundamental different
freedom to go out and challenge old
course in direction when it comes to
assumptions, as exactly what the VA needs
providing services to veterans," Shulkin
right now," Shulkin said.
said. "Acting quicker and more decisively is
"I think the organization feels more part of that management style."
empowered to fix problems than they have
in the past, and my hope is that we will be
able to set the path so that the organization
.

89
90
 Finally: Senate To Probe Illicit Behavior By Obama AG
Loretta Lynch In Covering Up For The Clintons
By JD Heyes
Monday, June 26, 2017
The Senate Judiciary Committee is launching an
investigation into the actions of former Obama Attorney
General Loretta Lynch during last year’s FBI criminal
investigation into then-Democratic presidential nominee
Hillary Clinton’s improper use of a private email server to
handle highly classified intelligence information.
As reported by the Washington Times, the panel, led by
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, its chairman, wants to
know more about her efforts to shape or otherwise
influence the investigation.
Critics have said Lynch’s actions were tantamount to
ensuring that Clinton — who then-FBI Director James
Comey said during a July 5, 2016, press conference had
committed numerous violations of the law governing the
handling of classified material — was not held accountable
for her actions so she would still be free to pursue the
White House.
The Times noted:
In a letter to Ms. Lynch, the committee asks her to detail
the depths of her involvement in the FBI’s investigation,
including whether she ever assured Clinton confidantes
that the probe wouldn’t “push too deeply into the matter.”
In public testimony Comey, who was fired in May by
President Donald J. Trump after receiving a memo from
Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein that the Justice Department
had lost confidence in him over his own behavior in the
Clinton probe, said that Lynch attempted to instruct him on
how to discuss the Democratic nominee’s investigation. At
one point he hinted that she had engaged in other behavior
91
“which I cannot talk about yet” that caused him to become
concerned about Lynch’s impartiality.
Comey added that was one of the reasons he decided to go
public with the FBI’s findings regarding Clinton in that
July presser, which ran counter to Justice Department and
FBI usual operating procedures.
The Judiciary Committee’s decision to examine Lynch’s
role in the Clinton probe comes as the panel is already
examining Trump’s firing of Comey, the Times noted.
Grassley has said that the Lynch investigation is being
conducted in a bipartisan manner. The Lynch letter was
also signed by ranking Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein,
as well as Sens. Lindsey Graham and Sheldon Whitehouse,
the chairman and ranking member of the key investigative
subcommittee that will handle much of the probe.
In addition, the committee sent letters to Amanda Renteria,
a Clinton campaign staff member, as well as Leonard
Benardo and Gail Scovell of the Open Society
Foundations, which were founded by Left-wing billionaire
and global socialist meddler George Soros.
Bernardo, the Times reported, may have been on an email
chain from the head of the Democratic National
Committee at the time, reportedly offering assurances to
Renteria that the Clinton investigation wouldn’t “go too
far.”
Earlier this month at a highly-anticipated hearing before
the Senate Intelligence Committee, Comey told members
that Lynch tried at one point to get him to alter the manner
in which his agency described the investigation into
Clinton’s use of a private server. The requested change
appeared to fall right in line with the Clinton campaign’s
narrative. (Realted: COVER UP: Did Susan Rice’s records
get moved to the Obama prez library to avoid having them
released to public?)
“At one point, [Lynch] directed me not to call it an
‘investigation’ but instead to call it a ‘matter,’ which
confused me and concerned me,” Comey said on June 8.
“That was one of the bricks in the load that led me to
conclude I have to step away from the department if we are
to close this case credibly.”
Many Americans don’t believe he did. After laying out the
case against Clinton, Comey then incredibly claimed that
the FBI couldn’t find any “intent” that she wanted to
commit a crime (which is NOT a requirement to charge
someone with violations of national security statutes, and
despite the fact that she went out of her way to purposely
buy and set up her own private email server,
secretly). Comey also claimed that “no reasonable
.
92
prosecutor” would chose to prosecute Clinton, which was
not an FBI director’s decision to make.
Critics have also questioned Lynch’s decision to take an
impromptu meeting with former President Bill Clinton
on an Arizona airport tarmac at the peak of the
investigation into his wife. Some believe that Lynch told
the former president then that Hillary would not be
charged.
Comey made that official just a few days later.
 SCOTUS "Mostly" Reinstates
Trump Travel Ban; Schedules October Hearing
By Tyler Durden
Jun 26, 2017 4:34 PM

Update:  Thomas, alito, gorsuch issue partial dissent on travel

ban
It appears that Trump has been handed a 'partial' victory on
his travel ban by the Supreme Court. While SCOTUS It seems that we won't know more until October.
revived a "narrowed" ban, they found that it can not be
applied to people with a

"credible claim of a bona fide

relationship with a person or entity in
the United States."

 Supreme court temporarily narrows travel ban

 Supreme court lifts most of injunction that blocked
trump's travel ban on six muslim-majority nations Meanwhile, it seems that SCOTUS may be taking tweeting
 Court says ban can apply to people without u.s. tips from the President...though we're not entirely
relationship sure...maybe "bona dude" is a technical term.
 U.s. supreme court agrees to hear trump appeals of
rulings blocking travel ban on six muslim-majority
nations

The ban will exclude people visiting a

close family member, students who
have been admitted to a university or
workers who have accepted an
employment offer,

the court said. But the court said people can’t avoid the
travel ban by entering into a relationship solely to enter the
U.S.

The policy will suspend entry into the U.S. by people from
Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for a
period of 90 days and it will take effect in 72 hours.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch

said they would have let the entire ban take effect
immediately.

Here is the full SCOTUS decision on next page:

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98
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100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
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 ***

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) will
wrap up its 2017 session today and will likely issue a
decision on Trump's controversial travel ban. As you may
recall, Trump's "travel ban" was designed to impose a 90-
day pause in travel from citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia,
Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Decisions are expected to be
revealed publicly at 10AM EST.
Of course, the case has ended up in the Supreme Court
because two federal appellate courts ruled against the

109
Trump travel policy on the basis of religious and
"nationality-based" discrimination. Per CBS:
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in
Richmond, Virginia, said the ban was
"rooted in religious animus" toward
Muslims and pointed to Trump's campaign
promise to impose a ban on Muslims
entering the country as well as tweets and
remarks he has made since becoming
president.
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals said the travel
policy does not comply with federal
immigration law, including a prohibition
on nationality-based discrimination.
That court also put a hold on separate
aspects of the policy that would keep all
refugees out of the United States for 120
days and cut by more than half, from
110,000 to 50,000, the cap on refugees in
the current government spending year that
ends Sept. 30.
Trump's first executive order on travel applied to travelers
from the six countries as well as Iraq, and took effect
immediately, causing chaos and panic at airports over the
last weekend in January as the Homeland Security
Department scrambled to figure out who the order covered
and how it was to be implemented. A federal judge
blocked it eight days later, an order that was upheld by a
9th circuit panel. Rather than pursue an appeal, the
administration said it would revise the policy.
In March, Trump issued a narrower order, but it too was
promptly blocked.
Of course, back in June, during what became a fairly
public dispute with his own Attorney General,
Trump blasted the "watered down,
politically correct" version of his travel
ban that is currently before the Supreme
Court.
Meanwhile, today's session could also draw buzz as
rumors have surfaced of late that Justice Kennedy could
announce his retirement. Moreover, it is expected that
Kennedy's retirement would push SCOTUS even further to
the right as he was often considered the "center of the
court."
.
110
More from Axios:
White House sources think Justice Anthony
Kennedy, the Supreme Court's ideological
fulcrum, may announce his retirement
today, as the justices gather on the bench
for the last time this term.
Trump's first Court appointment, of Justice Neil Gorsuch,
was a one-for-one ideological swap for the late Justice
Antonin Scalia.
Replacing Kennedy would be even more
historic and consequential: a
momentous chance to edge the Court
right, since Kennedy is the center of the
Court
— the one most willing to listen to both sides. On a
controversial case, both sides pitch to him. It's been called
"Kennedy's Court."
No one's predicting: Court watchers say no one knows, and
Kennedy has said nothing publicly. He could well wait one
more year:
The Court buzz is that it'll be this year or next.
Lyle Denniston, who has covered the Supreme Court for
58 years, headlines a post on his website,
"High drama: Supreme Court term is
ending": "[R]umors have continued to
make the rounds that ... Kennedy, who
will be 81 in July, could reveal plans
[today] to end his career. ... The longest
serving of the Justices, Kennedy joined
the court more than 29 years ago."
If true, of course, this would give the Trump
administration the opportunity to replace a second
Supreme Court justice within the first year of his
administration.
 Trump Responds: "Unanimous Supreme
Court Decision A Clear Victory
For Our National Security"
By Tyler Durden
Jun 26, 2017 12:29 PM

Many have been waiting with bated breath all morning for
Trump's response on the Supreme Court's decision
regarding his travel ban. While we expected that response
would come in the form of a snarky tweet, it has
unfortunately been revealed via a more carefully crafted
official statement.
countries and the refugee suspension to
become largely effective.
As President, I cannot allow people into our country who
want to do us harm. I want people who can love the United
States and all of its citizens, and who will be hardworking
and productive.

My number one responsibility as Commander in Chief is

to keep the American people safe. Today's ruling allows
me to use an important tool for protecting our Nation's
homeland.

I am also particularly gratified that the

Supreme Court's decision was 9-0.

Of course, we're sure that today's ruling is also

"particularly gratifying" for the Trump administration in
light of their previous accusations that rulings by the 9th
district court in San Francisco were politically motivated.

Here is the full text:

Statement from President Donald J. Trump

Today's unanimous Supreme Court

decision is a clear victory for our
national security. It allows the travel
suspension for the six terror-prone
.

111
 Senior CNN Producer: ‘
The Entire Trump-Russia Narrative Is Bullsh*T’
Producer Admits It's All For "Ratings"
By Shepard Ambellas
June 27, 2017

(INTELLIHUB) Senior CNN producer John Bonifield was

recently caught on camera admitting that CNN is only
pushing the Trump-Russia narrative for “ratings” and that
he knows it’s all “bullsh*t.”
“It’s mostly bullsh*t right now. Like, we
don’t have any big giant proof,” the senior
producer stated in the video obtained by
Project Veritas. “I just feel like they don’t
really have it but they want to keep digging
— and so I think that the President is right
to say, like, look, you are witch hunting me.
Like you have no smoking gun, you have
no real proof […] If it was something really
good — it would leak.”
The, most-likely soon to be jobless, producer also said that
CNN CEO Jeff Zucker congratulated reporters during a
meeting for there coverage of the climate accord but said
that the CEO wanted to quickly resume the ‘Russia
coverage’ despite the fact that there is nothing to the story.
Additionally, Bonifield voiced his opinion on Russian
interference with the U.S. electoral system and why
Hillary Clinton lost the election.
“Even if Russia was trying to swing an
election, we try to swing their elections, our
CIA is doing sh*t all the time, we’re out
there trying to manipulate governments,”
he said. “You win because you know the
game and you play it right [and Hillary]
didn’t play it right.”

The producer said that CNN’s ratings are “incredible right

now” and admits that the news business needs to “do what
they got to do to make their money.”

#deepstate

112
 CNN Decides It Can No Longer Trust Its Own Reporting,
Retracts Story Linking Trump To Russia
Three Resign Over Scandal
By Shepard Ambellas
June 27, 2017

(INTELLIHUB) — Three CNN employees handed in their
resignations over a Trump-Russia story published on
Friday which the agency removed from its website after it
was decided that they could not stand by their own
reporting, proving that CNN is the epitome of ‘fake news.’
The agency, which employs CIA-connected Operation
Mockingbird mouthpieces such as Anderson Cooper, has
stooped to an all-time low vindicating what Intellihub has
maintained all-along — that “CNN is nothing more than a
shitshow.”

What is CNN?
.

Evidence Suggests CNN Is Nothing More Than A Shitshow

113
 ‘There’s No Camera On, Jim!’ Showboating CNN’s Acosta
Yells at Spicer Over Press Access
By Curtis Houck
June 26, 2017 5:12 PM EDT

At Monday’s audio-only and photos-only White House ACOSTA: Can you just give you an answer
press briefing, CNN senior White House correspondent to that? Can you tell us why you turned the
Jim Acosta continued to make a fool out of himself, cameras off? Why are they off, Sean?
melting down and screaming at press secretary Sean Spicer
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: It's a
over the current set-up for briefings.
legitimate question.

Acosta first interrupted after a female reporter didn’t get ACOSTA: It’s a legitimate question. You
her question answered. When he yelled at Spicer to answer are a taxpayer-funded spokesman for the
her question, Spicer lobbed some A+ shade at Acosta: United States government. Can you at
least give us an explanation of why the
cameras are off?
“There's no camera on, Jim.”
Thankfully for Acosta, One America News Network’s
balanced White House reporter Trey Yingst bailed him out
by pressing Spicer to “get this out of the way” and
“address the cameras issue.”

Once the tape-delayed audio aired, Acosta was parked

outside the White House to again pontificate with his
grievances.

Taking the first issue of Spicer trolling CNN by not calling

them, Acosta vented:

The CNN liberal immediately took Spicer’s bait, Sean Spicer has refused to take questions
screaming as Spicer tried to move on: from CNN for weeks now. It has been
going on for some time. You know, he may
“Maybe we should turn the cameras on, have taken a question here or there over
Sean! Why don't we turn the cameras the last couple of weeks, but we've largely
on? Why don't we turn the cameras on? been just blackballed during these
Why not turn the cameras on, Sean? briefings. We're just not getting questions
They’re in the room, the lights are on.” to the press secretary. That would not have
happened in previous administrations. Fox
Roughly 10 minutes later, local Fox affiliate WTTG-5 News always got a question every day at
reporter Ronica Cleary asked about White House the briefing until President Obama, so let's
Correspondents Association president Jeff Mason’s just make sure that's perfectly clear to
meetings with the Trump press team and if the lack of on- everybody watching out there. Fox News
camera briefings represented “a new normal.” always got questions. MSNBC always got
questions during the previous
Instead of respectfully going back and forth with Spicer administrations. This is a new thing this
White House is doing to us here at CNN
like Cleary did, Acosta interjected to further badger Spicer,
and to a couple other news outlets as well.
convincing absolutely no one that he’s a sober journalist
(and the type Spicer referenced last week): “Let's make this clear. This is not a
Trump campaign event. This is the
ACOSTA: Why are the cameras off, Sean? United States government saying that
Why don’t you turn them on? we can't have cameras on inside the
White House briefing room for an event
SPICER: Trey, Trey, Trey. that is typically covered with
114
 cameras...but, Ana, make no mistake,
this is the gradual erosion of the
expectations of the traditions that have
been in this city for about a quarter of a
century now, that these briefings be
held on camera,” he added.
He finished on his third point by stating his concern that
President Trump would be speaking this week with India’s
Prime Minister in the Rose Garden but not holding a
subsequent press conference.
“[H]e's getting the coverage without the
accountability and I think that we just
need to recognize what's happening
here and that is what we are typically
accustomed to in this town in terms of
covering the White House, that is being
eroded away right in front of our eyes,”
Acosta concluded.
Here’s the relevant portions of the transcript from June
26's CNN Newsroom:
CNN Newsroom
June 26, 2017
2:34 p.m. Eastern
JIM ACOSTA: Sean, Sean, can you answer whether the
President still believes the question —
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE REPORTER: Can you just answer
Jen’s question?
SEAN SPICER: There's no camera on, Jim.
ACOSTA: Maybe we should turn the cameras on, Sean!
Why don't we turn the cameras on?
SPICER: Jen —
ACOSTA: Why don't we turn the cameras on?
SPICER: — I'm sorry you have to deal with — Jen? Jen, go
ahead.
115
ACOSTA: Why not turn the cameras on, Sean? They’re in
the room, the lights are on.
(....)
RONICA CLEARY: Sean, thank you. Jeff Mason sent an
account of the meeting that he had to the members of the
White House Correspondents Association about the future
of the press briefings, would you say his account of that
meeting was accurate?
SPICER: I was not provided with that. I had the conver —
CLEARY: Could you give us an account from your
perspective of what happened in that meeting and what
we’ve —
SPICER: We've had two since then, another one since then.
Jeff has stated the position of the board that he believes,
and I’ve shared with him where we are on that, that we have
been consistent since December and January when we
addressed this issue with them specifically and publicly and
that we'll continue to have a mix of opportunities to stay in
touch with the media.
CLEARY: This seems to have been a drastic shift, starting
form maybe the week before the President took his first trip
abroad, but now we see you on camera once a week. Is that
a new normal that we would expect?
SPICER: We’ll see. We’ll just — we’ll continue to mix
things? Trey?
ACOSTA: Why are the cameras off, Sean? Why don’t you
turn them on?
SPICER: Trey, Trey, Trey.
ACOSTA: Can you just give you an answer to that? Can you
tell us why you turned the cameras off? Why are they off,
Sean?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE REPORTER: It's a legitimate
question.
 ACOSTA: It’s a legitimate question. You are a taxpayer-
funded spokesman for the United States government. Can
you at least give us an explanation of why the cameras are
off?
TREY YINGST: So we can get this out of the way? Can we
address the cameras issue? Do you think this will —
SPICER: Yes. Some days we'll have them and some days
we won't. The President’s going to speak today in the Rose
Garden. I want the President's voice to carry the day — you
know, and I think — so — look, this is nothing inconsistent
from what we had since day one.
(....)
2:55 p.m. Eastern
ACOSTA: Well, a couple issues here, Ana, and let's
separate them. One is Sean Spicer has refused to take
questions from CNN for weeks now. It has been going on for
some time. You know, he may have taken a question here
or there over the last couple of weeks, but we've largely
been just blackballed during these briefings. We're just not
getting questions to the press secretary. That would not
have happened in previous administrations. Fox News
always got a question every day at the briefing until
President Obama, so let's just make sure that's perfectly
clear to everybody watching out there. Fox News always got
questions. MSNBC always got questions during the previous
administrations. This is a new thing this White House is
doing to us here at CNN and to a couple other news outlets
as well. But as for the camera issue, as you know Ana, and
as you witnessed, that briefings was off camera once again
today, so I asked a couple times during the briefing, why
can't we turn these cameras on?
People who are not accustomed to being in that briefing
room need to understand. It is set up like a TV studio. You
can turn the cameras on. The cameras can be on at any
moment. There are TV lights on all the time, because the
cameras can be turned on at any moment, and the White
House — let's make this clear. This is not a Trump
campaign event. This is the United States government
.
116
saying that we can't have cameras on inside the White
House briefing room for an event that is typically covered
with cameras and, you know, I'll let the viewers decide why
they're being kept off, but I tried a couple times during the
briefing today to get a question to Sean Spicer and to ask
why these cameras are not being turned on. Now, Trey
Yingst, over at OANN, which is a conservative outlet, to his
credit, when Sean Spicer was not answering my question
about why the cameras are being kept off, did ask the
question and said, hey, let's get this out of the way, why are
these cameras being kept off, and Spicer basically punted
on that issue and said, well, there will be times they're off
and times they're on, but Ana, make no mistake, this is the
gradual erosion of the expectations of the traditions that
have been in this city for about a quarter of a century now,
that these briefings be held on camera.
Further to that point, this openness and transparency point,
the President is going to be making a statement this
afternoon with Prime Minister Modi from India. Those head
of state press conferences or statements are typically press
conferences, where the American press gets two questions
and the foreign press will get two questions. That is not
happening today. So, the President is using the setting of
the Rose Garden to talk about whatever he wants to talk
about and presumably he may talk about this travel ban, but
he's not going to be taking questions from the news media.
And so, once again, he's getting the coverage without the
accountability and I think that we just need to recognize
what's happening here and that is what we are typically
accustomed to in this town in terms of covering the White
House, that is being eroded away right in front of our eyes.
Democratic-Party-Aligned Firm Behind Debunked "Russia
Dossier" Stonewalls Senate Investigators
By Tyler Durden
Jun 26, 2017 11:30 PM

A Democratic Party-aligned opposition opposition research for a former Clinton White House
research firm is stonewalling operative.
Congressional investigators who are
trying to ascertain exactly who financed
the now-debunked “Russia dossier” –
remember? The one that claimed
germaphobe Trump enjoyed getting
urinated on by Russian hookers?

The New York Post’s Paul Sperry is out with another report
about Fusion GPS, a

“research and strategic intelligence firm”

founded by “three former Wall Street
Journal investigative reporters.” But
congressional sources say it’s actually
an opposition-research group for
Democrats, and the founders, who are
more political activists than journalists,
have a pro-Hillary, anti-Trump agenda."
Fusion has refused to answer Senate investigators’
questions or provide records of communications that might
help the panel identify who financed the error-ridden
dossier. Now, because of the firm's intransigence, it looks
like the investigators might soon make good on their
threats.
“These weren’t mercenaries or hired guns,”
a congressional source familiar with the
dossier probe said.
Clearly, the research in the dossier – which was used to
help justify the launch of Congressional and DOJ probes
into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russian entities – has
had tremendous consequences for the new administration,
forcing Trump to beat back baseless claims and
insinuations fed to the media by the DOJ and intelligence
agencies. Still, after months of this treatment, no evidence
of collusion has emerged.
But the question remains: Who, exactly, provided the
funding for the organization’s controversial and
research? Money that allowed the firm to hire former MI6
agent Christopher Steele, allegedly the source of the
dossier’s controversial claims.

“These guys had a vested personal and

The Post has an idea of the profile, if not exactly the
ideological interest in smearing Trump
identity, of the individual or individuals responsible.
and boosting Hillary’s chances of
winning the White House.”
“Fusion GPS was on the payroll of an
unidentified Democratic ally of Clinton
The firm was founded by Glenn Simpson, Thomas Catan
when it hired a long-retired British spy to
and Peter Fritsch. Two of whom, Fritsch and Catan, have
dig up dirt on Trump. In 2012, Democrats
ties to Mexico -- with Fritsch, a former Journal bureau
hired Fusion GPS to uncover dirt on
chief in Mexico City, married to a Mexican woman who
GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
worked for Grupo Dina -- a beneficiary of NAFTA. Catan,
And in 2015, Democrat ally Planned
formerly from Britain, once edited a Mexican business
Parenthood retained Fusion GPS to
magazine.
investigate pro-life activists protesting
the abortion group.”
Simpson, pictured below, is reported to have shared dark
views of both Russian President Vladimir Putin and
Trump. Before joining Fusion GPS, Simpson did
117
The FBI is also resisting Senate investigators who are
zeroing in on the alleged misconduct by former deputy
director Andrew McCabe, who’s failure to recuse himself
from the investigation into the Trump campaign despite
financial and political connections to Clinton through his
Democrat activist wife has attracted suspicion.
And unsurprisingly, former Attorney General Loretta
Lynch – now the subject of another probe organized by the
Senate Judiciary Committee – is somehow involved.
"Senate investigators are demanding to
see records of communications
between Fusion GPS and the FBI and
the Justice Department, including any
contacts with former Attorney General
Loretta Lynch, now under congressional
investigation for possibly obstructing
the Hillary Clinton email probe,
and deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, who is under
investigation by the Senate and the Justice inspector
general for failing to recuse himself despite financial and
political connections to the Clinton campaign through his
Democrat activist wife.:
The bureau’s attempts to verify the content
in the dossier should alarm anybody in a
report that should who’s been following
along these past few months, after
receiving a copy of the dossier in August,
the bureau offered to pay its controversial
source to corroborate the information.
“The FBI received a copy of the Democrat-
funded dossier in August, during the heat
of the campaign, and is said to have
contracted in October to pay Steele
$50,000 to help corroborate the dirt on
Trump — a relationship that “raises
substantial questions about the
independence” of the bureau in
investigating Trump, warned Senate
Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-
Iowa.”
As the Post reminds us, Steele has been cited as the source
for nearly the entire collusion narrative, from the pro-
Trump hackers were working at the direction of Russian
President Vladimir Putin, the theory that the Russian
government might have compromising information about
Trump, and the idea that a Trump confidant held a
clandestine meeting in Moscow.
All of these allegations, as the Post notes, are 100%
bullshit. Steele hasn't traveled to Moscow since the 1990s,
and it appears his main source for most of his material
was Google.
118
“Steele’s most sensational allegations
remain unconfirmed. For instance, his
claim that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen
held a “clandestine meeting” on the alleged
hacking scheme in Prague with “Kremlin
officials” in August 2016 unraveled when
Cohen denied ever visiting Prague, his
passport showed no stamps showing he
left or entered the US at the time,
witnesses accounted for his presence
here, and Czech authorities found no
evidence Cohen went to Prague.
Steele hadn’t worked in Moscow since the 1990s and
didn’t actually travel there to gather intelligence on Trump
firsthand. He relied on third-hand “friend of friend”
sourcing. In fact, most of his claimed Russian sources
spoke not directly to him but “in confidence to a trusted
compatriot” who, in turn, spoke to Steele — and always
anonymously.
But his main source may have been
Google. Most of the information
branded as “intelligence” was merely
rehashed from news headlines or cut
and pasted — replete with errors —
from Wikipedia.”
But that didn’t stop both Democrats and, before them, anti-
Trump Republicans, from accepting Steele’s allegations
without scrutiny - and paying him handsomely for his
efforts.
“Steele contracted with Fusion GPS to
investigate Trump’s ties to Russia starting
in June 2016, whereupon he outlandishly
claimed that Hillary campaign hackers were
“paid by both Trump’s team and the
Kremlin” and that the operation was run out
of Putin’s office. He also fed Fusion GPS
and its Hillary-allied clients incredulous
gossip about Trump hating the Obamas
so much that he hired hookers to
urinate on a bed they slept in at the
Moscow Ritz-Carlton, and that Russian
intelligence recorded the pee party in
case they needed to blackmail Trump.
Never mind that none of the rumors were backed by
evidence or even credible sourcing (don’t bother trying to
confirm his bed-wetting yarn, Steele advised, as “all direct
witnesses have been silenced”).
Steele reinforced his paying customers’
worst fears about Trump, and they
rewarded him for it with a whopping
$250,000 in payments.”
Steele, pictured below, also played a role in maligning
former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn by
suggesting there was something “untoward” about Flynn’s
attending of a dinner to celebrate the 10th anniversary of
Russia Today – an event that was also attended by former
Green Party candidate Jill Stein.
“In the same August report, for example,
Steele connected a Moscow trip taken by
then-Trump campaign adviser Michael
.
119
Flynn to “the Russian operation” to
hack the election. But there was nothing
secret about the trip, which had taken
place months earlier and had been
widely reported.
And there was nothing untoward about it. It
was a dinner celebrating the 10th birthday
of Russian TV network RT, and Flynn sat
at the same table with Putin as US Green
Party presidential candidate Jill Stein.”
Meanwhile, it appears the founders of Fusion GPS have
profited handsomely from their misinformation campaign:
“Property records show that in June
2016, as Clinton allies bankrolled Fusion
GPS, Fritsch bought a six-bedroom,
five-bathroom home in Bethesda, Md.,
for $2.3 million.”
Could this be the thread that finally unravels the Trump
investigation? We think so. Stay tuned for more
information once the inevitable subpoena is served...
 McCabe's Revenge: Circa Suggests Flynn
Investigation Was Launched As Pure Retaliation
By Tyler Durden
Jun 26, 2017 9:00 PM
Andrew McCabe has long been a controversial figure at
the FBI. His position as Deputy Director of the FBI came
under intense scrutiny during the Clinton email
investigation after it came to light that his wife, Jill
McCabe, took nearly $500,000 from Virginia Governor
Terry McAuliffe to fund her Senate campaign. Of
course, Terry McAuliffe is a long-time confidant of the
Clinton family and was rumored as a potential running
mate for Hillary. But sure, no reason to be wary the
McCabe was put in charge of supervising that particular
investigation.
But now, at least according to a new report from Circa,
McCabe may have other conflicts,
including a personal vendetta against
former National Security Advisor
Michael Flynn, that have not yet been
disclosed. According to Circa, Flynn
apparently enraged McCabe a few years
back after he intervened on behalf of an
FBI Special Agent, Robyn Gritz, who
had accused McCabe and other top FBI
officials of sexual discrimination.
The FBI launched a criminal probe against former Trump
National Security Adviser Michael Flynn two years after
the retired Army general roiled the bureau’s leadership by
intervening on behalf of a decorated counterterrorism
agent who accused now-Deputy FBI Director Andrew
McCabe and other top officials of sexual discrimination,
according to documents and interviews.
Flynn’s intervention on behalf of
Supervisory Special Agent Robyn Gritz
was highly unusual, and included a
letter in 2014 on his official Pentagon
stationary, a public interview in 2015
supporting Gritz’s case and an offer to
testify on her behalf. His offer put him as
a hostile witness in a case against
McCabe, who was soaring through the
bureau’s leadership ranks.
The FBI sought to block Flynn’s support for the agent,
asking a federal administrative law judge in May 2014 to
keep Flynn and others from becoming a witness in her
120
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
case, memos obtained by Circa show. Two years later, the
FBI opened its inquiry of Flynn.
The EEOC case, which is still pending,
was serious enough to require McCabe
to submit to a sworn statement to
investigators, the documents show.
According to anonymous sources within the FBI (and you
know how we feel about those...so take these comments
with a heaping mound of salt), Circa notes that several
field agents had witnessed McCabe make disparaging
remarks about Flynn and one agent even became
uncomfortable enough to consult an attorney after the
Flynn investigation ramped up.
Three FBI employees told Circa they
personally witnessed McCabe make
disparaging remarks about Flynn before
and during the time the retired Army
general emerged as a figure in the
Russia case.
The bureau employees, who spoke only on
condition of anonymity for fear of
retribution, said they did not know the
reason for McCabe’s displeasure with
Flynn, but that it made them
uncomfortable as the Russia probe
began to unfold and pressure built to
investigate Flynn.
One employee even consulted a private lawyer.
“As far as the troops in the field, the vast-
majority were disgusted with the Russia
decision, but that was McCabe driving the
result that eventually led [former FBI
Director James] Comey to make the
decision,” said a senior federal law
enforcement official, with direct knowledge
of the investigation.
“The Flynn leaks were nothing short of
political,” one FBI employee said, noting
the specific contents of the conversation
were known by only a handful of
government officials when they leaked.
 “The leaks appeared to be targeted to
take Flynn out.”
But would McCabe really launch an
investigation out of retaliation?
Well, it seems that his own testimony in the sexual
discrimination lawsuit would suggest he did just that
against Gritz.
But McCabe’s sworn statement offered evidence that
actually supported Gritz’s claim of retaliation and
discrimination, recounting a conversation on June 19, 2012
in which he authorized the OPR investigation of Gritz after
one of his deputies told him Gritz was about to file an EEO
complaint, his sworn statement shows.
“I first learned of the issues that led to
Ms. Gritz’s current OPR investigation
during a telephone call with Deputy
Assistant Director (DAD) Jennifer Ley
on June 19, 2012,” McCabe testified.
“I recalled that during the course of our
conversation DAD Ley mentioned to me
that Ms. Gritz had filed or intended to file
an EEO complaint against her immediate
supervisor.”
The very next day, the FBI initiated the
OPR investigation of Gritz, according to
evidence in the FBI’s official personnel
files.
FBI records support McCabe’s version of events, showing
Gritz had contacted FBI EEO officials in mid-June before
the OPR probe was initiated, then filed her formal
.
121
complaint a few weeks later. The FBI ‘s official report of
investigation on Gritz’s EEO complaint, which absolved
the FBI of any discrimination, omitted any mention that
McCabe had been aware of the EEO complaint before the
bureau filed its OPR action against Gritz.
Clearly McCabe's reputation was on the line, so it's not
terribly surprising that he would take offense to Flynn
providing the following supportive comments in favor of
Gritz:
“SSA Gritz was well-known, liked and
respected in the military counter-
terrorism community for her energy,
commitment and professional capacity,
and over the years worked in several
interagency groups on counter-
terrorism targeting initiatives,” Flynn
wrote May 9, 2014.
At the time, Flynn was an Army lieutenant general and the
chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and he put his
letter on official agency stationary to be submitted in
Gritz’s case.
As soon as Gritz revealed to the FBI that Flynn and other
top federal figures had written letters to support her case
and likely would be called as witnesses, the bureau
dispatched a lawyer to try to block the evidence from
being included in the EEO case, documents show.
In a brief interview this weekend, Gritz said she was
mortified to think that her request to Flynn to help with her
EEOC case in any way affected his relationship with the
FBI or his current status as someone under investigation in
the Russia case.
“Flynn was the first leader to defend me,” said Gritz.
“He forwarded a letter to the FBI and I personally
think that Comey did not receive it. McCabe knew
Flynn and I were friends. I felt that from the beginning
it was an issue.”
So what say you? More fake news or is another recusal in
order on the "Russian collusion" investigation?
 Proof CNN Is Fake News,
No Proof Of Russian Hacking Lie
Dawn Luger
June 27, 2017

this little spark of truth. The anchors actually told their

viewers that it’s their job to control what the public thinks.

It’s over for CNN. The media giant has been busted using
propaganda and false narratives to promote an “anti-
Trump” agenda. Even Alex Jones is calling on the White
House to revoke CNN’s press credentials.

For once, “conspiracy theorists” don’t sound like looney
birds. Alternative media outlets like The Daily Sheeple
have been on the ball calling out CNN for their obviously
biased reporting, and if you haven’t noticed it until now,
you’re one of the ones successfully brainwashed during
their intentional misinformation and propaganda
campaign.
In a new undercover video, a CNN producer is caught on
camera saying the infamous “Russian hacking” narrative
was a lie and pushed for ratings. Still don’t believe the
media is using propaganda on the weakest leaks? Here’s
the video by Project Veritas, and the “Russian hacking” lie
is not the only admission John Bonifield, CNN’s
supervising producer speaks of.
The mind control tactics have worked to an extent. The
Russian hacking narrative was still dominating headlines
regardless of the FACT that there is not a single shred
of proof or a smoking gun. And what the mainstream
media and CNN conveniently left out for their simple
minded lemmings, was the fact that Wikileaks released
Vault 7 documents titled “Marble” proving the US (more
specifically, the CIA) can hack anything they want and put
stamps from any other country on those hacks. This would
shift the blame to any country they think they can get away
with blaming. Now even if they ever manage to fabricate
some kind of proof, it’ll implicate their precious
government and the CIA.
Even parody accounts poking fun at Antifa are more
credible than mainstream media at this point.

It isn’t like the media hasn’t slipped up in the past and

literally told the public that they control what those who
All of a sudden, CNN is making Alex Jones look
tune in think. MSNBC accidentally said that it’s their job
incredibly credible. Three CNN journalists were also just
to tell people that to think back in February. Anyone
forced to resign after the network apologized for pushing
assuming MSNBC is somehow better than CNN didn’t see
another fake news story about Trump advisor Anthony
122
Scaramucci being linked to a Russian investment fund.
That prompted Jones to ask Trump to revoke CNN’s White
House credentials.

Any other news outlet that admitted it

created fake news simply to make
money and attract eyeballs would be
savaged by the rest of the media, put
on a blacklist and wouldn’t get
anywhere near the White House. –Info
Wars

Any American (or foreigner for that matter) who couldn’t

Credibility and honesty and integrity are gone, and it is
see the media’s bias are the very ones who are easily
more likely than not, not just CNN. Fear is a powerful tool,
controlled and manipulated by outlets like CNN. Free
but so is thinking for oneself. Issues like this one the very
thinking is rare anymore, and the truth is now treason in
reasons why people are turning to alternative media. We
the empire built on lies. John Bonifield, even said that
don’t hide the government’s corruption on this site, and we
CNN had no respect for journalism ethics.
don’t protect those in the media who use propaganda to
brainwash the public.
.

123
 CNN Pure Garbage
Special Report On Russia
By Stephen Lendman - Stephenlendman.Org
6-27-2017
Like all other major Western media, CNN features press
agent journalism for powerful interests, not the real thing.
Its programming is an embarrassment to truthful, full-
disclosure, uncensored reporting. It consistently violates
core journalistic ethics.
Professional integrity is its cornerstone, deplorably absent
Ain its programming.
The Radio-Television News Directors Association Code of
Ethics and Professional Conduct stresses public trust,
credibility, accuracy, truth-telling, avoiding bias, fairness,
integrity, independence, and accountability.
Western media bias is notorious, CNN the bottom of a
sordid barrel among so-called television news channels.
It’s hard understanding why anyone believes they can be
informed by following it.
Misinformation, disinformation, Big Lies and fake news
are its specialities - news consumers carpet-bombed with it
daily, especially anything related to war and peace, Trump
bashing for the wrong reasons, and Russia bashing for fake
ones.
A likely authentic Project Veritas sting video caught
caught CNN supervising producer John Bonifield red-
handed, calling the channel’s so-called Russiagate
coverage BS, aired ad nauseam to help ratings.
He was heard saying
“the president (Trump) is probably right to
say, like, look you are witch-hunting me.
You have no smoking gun. You have no
real proof.”
Nor does any credible evidence suggest Russian US
election hacking. The persistent accusation is phony, a Big
Lie.
Days earlier, a CNN reporter and two editors were sacked
for getting caught red-handed reporting a fake news story,
claiming
“Congress was investigating a Russian
investment fund with ties to Trump
officials.”
.
124
It was willful deception. CNN was forced to retract the
story.
Its latest outrage aired Tuesday night - a fake news
“documentary” called “The Russian Connection: Inside
the Attack on Democracy,” reported by CNN’s chief
national security correspondent Jim Sciutto.
From 2011 - 2013, he was chief of staff for US
ambassador Gary Locke in Beijing. Earlier he was a
London-based ABC News foreign correspondent, before
that a PBS producer.
His book titled “Against Us: The New Face of America’s
Enemies in the Muslim World” is pure Islamophobic
rubbish.
His so-called “Russian Connection” special report was
right out of the CIA playbook - beginning-to-end
unjustifiable bashing, willful deception instead of
responsible truth-telling.
He rehashed old discredited accusations of nonexistent
Russian US election hacking, a CNN advance promo
saying:
His report
“recounts and tracks the story of Russian
hacks targeting the 2016 presidential
election from the very beginning to the
investigations still underway today and to
new fears of Russian attacks on upcoming
US elections.”
It’s
“the first comprehensive telling on
television of Russia’s attack on the 2016
race, with jarring lessons for American
leaders and the public about more attacks
to come.”
His hyped report was fake news, a CNN specialty, material
no respectable editor would touch.
No Russian US election hacking occurred. Not a shred of
evidence suggests otherwise. Claims otherwise are Big
Lies.
 Jeh Johnson Pushes Russian Hack Lie
Former Homeland Security Secretary Spreads Fake News
The Alex Jones Show - June 27, 2017

David Knight explains how Jeh Johnson has helped to push the lie that Russia hacked the American 2016
Presidential Election and physically altered votes although no physical proof exists to date.

125
 Phony US Claim About
A Planned Syrian CW Attack
By Stephen Lendman - Stephenlendman.Org
6-27-2017
The June 26 White House press secretary Sean Spicer
claim about an impending Syrian CW attack was a bald-
faced lie.
The Trump administration appears intending to blame a
likely planned false flag CW attack on Syria’s military as a
pretext to escalate US aggression in the country.
Russia slammed the scheme, Putin spokesman Dmitry
Peskov, saying his government
“consider(s) threats (against) the legitimate
leadership of the Syrian Arab Republic
unacceptable.”
No credible evidence showed Assad was responsible for
any CW attacks throughout years of conflict. Indisputable
evidence proves US-supported terrorists targeted civilians
with CWs numerous times.
Russian intelligence matches America’s in Syria and
elsewhere. It has no information about a planned Syrian
CW attack. The Trump administration’s claim was
fabricated.
On Tuesday, State Department spokeswoman Heather
Nauert stonewalled reporters repeatedly - refusing to
comment on (nonexistent) evidence of an impending
Syrian CW attack.
The lengthy exchange went as follows:
QUESTION: So the Russians put out a readout of a call
yesterday between Secretary Tillerson and Foreign
Minister Lavrov. In the Russian version of the call it says
that they discussed deterring the use of chemical weapons.
Did the Secretary -
MS NAUERT: Their discuss - the what?
QUESTION: Deterring the use of chemical weapons -
MS NAUERT: Okay.
QUESTION: - in Syria. Did the Secretary share the
information that was shared with us last night, that they
had - that the US. had detected preparations at the site?
And did the Secretary warn Foreign Minister Lavrov about
that or ask them to press the Syrians not to do that?
126
MS NAUERT: Well, I can confirm that Secretary Tillerson
spoke yesterday with his counterpart, with Mr. Lavrov, the
foreign minister there. As you know, they talk about things
regularly. They began their dialogue in Moscow and I
believe it was March.
They met here about a month ago or so. And then, of
course, they’ve had subsequent phone conversations, such
as the one last evening.
Secretary Tillerson is not putting out a full play-by-play of
that conversation. We know that the Russians have put out
what they consider to be their version, so I’m not going to
get into a tit for tat about what we think they said or what
they claim they said - claim was said in that conversation.
But the Secretary has made his concerns clear in the past
and continues to do so with regard to Russia.
QUESTION: In light of the statement that the White
House put out last night, it seems like a fair question to ask
if -
MS NAUERT: Oh, I’m not - you can ask me anything you
want. I’m not saying it’s not -
QUESTION: But you’re not going to say anything
specifically about chemical weapons?
MS NAUERT: No.
QUESTION: There’s a sparrow carrying a one-pound
coconut. Did you -
MS NAUERT: What?
QUESTION: Are you saying that you - are you saying that
you dispute the Russian characterization?
MS NAUERT: No. I’m just - I’m not going to get into a tit
for tat. The Russians will often put out information, and
they tend to mischaracterize things sometimes, and so I’m
not going to get into going back and forth with them about
what was said in this conversation.
Secretary Tillerson is always clear with the Russians about
how we feel about certain things, and the Secretary prefers
to conduct a lot of his diplomacy in private in those
conversations, because he believes that we can be most
effective that way.
QUESTION: There were some reports that the White
House statement about the Syria chemical weapons attack
took some policy experts at the State Department by
surprise. Is that true? Was the State Department fully read
in on this?
MS NAUERT: So the Secretary, as you know, was at the
White House yesterday. He met with the President, also a
group meeting with the President’s national security team,
and that’s when this conversation was all had about that
statement.
So they were all informed and aware of that statement. In
terms of who exactly that filtered down to at the State
Department, I’m not going to get into our internal
conversations. But the Secretary was aware of it. Folks
here were aware of it, and that’s what’s important and
that’s what matters.
QUESTION: So the sequence of time, that the Tillerson-
Lavrov call came before the statement made by the White
House, right?
MS NAUERT: I believe - that’s a good question. I believe
the Secretary’s call with Foreign Minister Lavrov was in
the morning. I can double check on that and get back with
you, but yes - okay. Yeah, it was in the morning.
QUESTION: So the warning may not have come as a
result of that conversation.
MS NAUERT: Again, I just don’t know, but the call was -
I’m getting the nod over here - it was, in fact, in the
morning.
QUESTION: There is clearly a difference of opinion or - I
don’t know - strong disagreement, whatever you might
want to call that, between Russia and the United States
over this matter.
The Syrians themselves claim that there is no preparation
underway for any chemical weapons attack. Russia seems
to be agreeing with them.
MS NAUERT: Wait. Hold on. Are we supposed to buy
what the Syrians are saying, that there are no chemical
weapons preparations underway -
QUESTION: This is not my question.
MS NAUERT: - because in the past, we know that they
have killed their own people, which include women and
children. So if they say that they’re not making any
preparations, I’m not certain that we’re going to buy that.
But go ahead.
QUESTION: I wanted to ask you if there is a follow - if
there is an intent to follow up on that between Secretary -
MS NAUERT: On which? I’m sorry.
127
QUESTION: On the discussion on Syria and the alleged
plans for chemical attack between Secretary Tillerson and
Minister Lavrov.
MS NAUERT: You mean - are - do you mean that when
the statement was put out last evening, that the United
States is concerned about Syria and preparations that we
believe are underway for a chemical weapons attack? Your
question is will there be additional conversations about
that?
QUESTION: Yeah, something like that.
MS NAUERT: I don’t have any additional calls or any
information to read out. This is something that the United
States Government remains very concerned about. I’m just
not aware of any subsequent conversations that are
scheduled just yet.
QUESTION: Do you guys have any evidence to share with
us about this potential preparation for the use of chemical
weapons? Because that wasn’t actually laid out.
MS NAUERT: Right, and nor would that be laid out,
because that would be considered an intelligence matter.
So as you all are aware, there are a lot of these things that
will pop up sometimes that we just can’t get into the
details about this, but this has obviously gotten the
attention of the United States Government at the highest
level.
QUESTION: So could the activity have perhaps been for
some other reason than a chemical weapons attack
preparation?
MS NAUERT: Such as?
QUESTION: Something that they do at the base or - I
mean, is that a possibility?
MS NAUERT: I would say that that’s a hypothetical
question. We know from past experience that the Syrian
regime has used chemical weapons on its own people, so
that obviously remains a very large concern for us in the
future.
QUESTION: When you guys believe that it’s in your
interests, you do put out what you say is evidence or proof
of things that involve intelligence, and it happened from
this podium not that long ago with the crematorium that
you guys said was being built at the prison.
MS NAUERT: Yeah.
QUESTION: So it’s not a blanket “we never discuss
intelligence,” right?
MS NAUERT: Matt Lee, I’m not going to - I’m not going
to get into that one with you, but this is a very serious and
grave matter, and when you have the President involved
and his national security team and the Secretary involved
as well, I’d say that’s a serious issue.
QUESTION: The preparation, the preparation. Is it like
24-hour preparation, maybe 48 hours, and then they stand
back or something -
MS NAUERT: I don’t have the answer to that question.
The White House may be able to give you more on that, or
perhaps the Department of Defense or another agency, but
- or department, rather - but I just can’t get into that and I
don’t have the answer to that question.
QUESTION: Just to clarify, Mr. Assad was also seen
photographed with the top Russian general in Syria within
the last 24 hours or so. Do you know if the Russians - are
we aware if the Russians were aware about these
preparations as well?
MS NAUERT: I’m not aware of that.
QUESTION: We don’t have any intel saying one way or
another?
MS NAUERT: I just can’t get into any of the intelligence,
but I’m not personally aware of that.
QUESTION: Yeah. So Ambassador Haley said today that
they would blame Iran, Russia, and Syria if chemical
weapons were again - what does it mean to blame these
countries? How would the US hold them accountable in
the event of another strike?
MS NAUERT: Okay.
QUESTION: Does the US intends on militarily striking
Iran or Russia in the event of a chemical weapons attack?
MS NAUERT: Okay. Your third question I can’t answer.
That’s a Department of Defense matter, and then that’s
.
128
also a hypothetical. In terms of the first question, which is
why would we - why would we look to Syria and Iran?
Was that the part?
QUESTION: How - what does it mean to blame them?
MS NAUERT: Well, we’ve seen -all we have to do is look
to the past, right, and we have seen as the Syrian regime
back in 2015 was on the verge of collapsing - who came in
to help save the Syrian regime?
Who came in? Russia came in. And that is exactly why we
are today - we, meaning the world - in the place that Syria
is. Russia came in, helped bolster up Syrian forces, and we
have seen the death, the devastation, the destruction that
has taken place ever since.
So when we say Russia would be held responsible, we
believe that they play a role in this as well. They have a lot
of influence with the Assad regime, and we have
consistently called upon them to use their influence with
the Assad regime to stop this kind of activity.
A Final Comment
The lengthy exchange went on a little longer, covering no
new ground. Nauert stonewalled throughout it.
She refused to back Trump administration accusations with
evidence - because none exists.
Despite some reporters pressing her hard for something
substantive, she held firm offering nothing to support
specious administration claims.
Whether the embarrassing exchange and Russian concern
about possible planned escalated US aggression in Syria is
enough to give the Trump administration second thoughts
remains to be seen.
Based on endless US aggression in multiple theaters, it
would be foolhardy to believe neocons infesting the Trump
administration intend turning a responsible new leaf.
 The REAL Terrorists:
“Mainstream” Media Continues To Incite Violence
Against Trump With Its Hate-Filled Rhetoric
Encouraging Violence And Rewarding It With
Coverage Is The Same As Committing It.
By Usafeaturesmedia
Posted On June 27, 2017

to understand how often he trolls them (which is what he

did with the “tapes” tweets).

“He’s just wasting — he wasted the

country’s collective time speculating over
whether these tapes existed or not,” said
Jordan, a former aide in the Bush White
House. “It’s a sad day when you cannot
depend on the president’s word.”

She then proceeded to give Republicans this counsel:

(National Sentinel) Media: If the conservative media had
talked about, lied about, threatened and spewed the kind of
hate toward Barack Obama the “mainstream” media
throws at Donald J. Trump, you would have literally seen
heads exploding on TV.
But while conservative pundits had plenty to say that was
critical of Obama, the Right largely refrained from calling
him a “terrorist” or associating him with the kind of
violence terrorist organizations routinely display.
And yet the disgusting far-Left “mainstream” media
regularly refers to Trump in those terms and in that
manner, which is continuing to feed into the anger and hate
of the Democratic Party’s base.
In recent days a “political analyst” for MSNBC, Elise
Jordan — who is little more than a Left-wing hack and
Trump hater — “advised” Republican lawmakers to avoid
embracing and defending Trump, whom she said “lied” to
the country over earlier statements regarding fired FBI
Director James Comey and “tapes,” comparing it to
“hugging a suicide bomber.”
“My advice would just be to Republicans
who do coy up to him — it’s like hugging a
suicide bomber. He blows you up in the
process with him.”
“That’s a little strong,” another MSNBC
host, Craig Melvin, cautioned.
“If you’re a Republican who went out on a
limb and defended Donald Trump over
saying, well, he’s got tapes that will back
up his point of view, you just got blown up,
too,” she responded.
First of all, again, Trump never claimed he had tapes of
any of his conversations with Comey. All he tweeted was
that Comey “better hope” there aren’t any tapes:

Those outrageous comments came in response to the

president’s claims last week that no, he did not possess any
tape recordings of his conversations with Comey, and in
fact never said that he did. But of course, the hack media
still can’t figure Trump out and most certainly, can’t seem
It was the chronically Trump-deranged media that leapt to
the assumption that Trump was claiming he had tapes. He
never said he did, and yet the media (and Democrats in

129
Congress) became so obsessed with that tweet that the
“tapes” story took on a life of its own, which happens a
LOT these days.
More importantly, Melvin is correct; Jordan’s statement
was too strong, because it’s feeding into a false media-
driven, media-created narrative that violence against his
president is fine and dandy because, you know, ‘he’s a
terrorist himself.’ (Related: Dershowitz warns that left-
wing media frenzy endangers civil liberties by promoting
LIES about Trump and the presidency.)
This kind of talk, this kind of dangerous rhetoric against
Trump, has gone on now for months, practically since he
won the Nov. 8 election. In any number of ways, the Left
— the “mainstream” media, Democrats in Congress, the
entertainment industry — have all used hate-filled rhetoric,
violent imagery and actual calls to violence against the
president and his party.
130
All of which is beginning to manifest itself in deadly,
dangerous ways, as evidenced earlier this month when a
crazed Left-wing hater and Bernie Sanders supporter
named James T. Hodgkinson brought a rifle to a ball field
in northern Virginia where Republican lawmakers were
practicing for an annual softball game and opened
fire…just because they were Republicans.
No one killed, thankfully, but the House’s No. 3 leader,
Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana, was critically
wounded.
More and more Americans are beginning to understand
that the political violence sweeping our country is not
being driven and encouraged by conservatives and the
Right.
The real domestic terrorists are on the Left, and many of
them are members of the media.
 CBS Throws Hissy Fit Over Trump
Scolding CNN For Spreading Fake News
By Nicholas Fondacaro
June 27, 2017 10:22 PM EDT

frankly, looking for something better,”

Huckabee Sanders said to the press pool.

The CBS correspondent admitted that most people don’t

believe the media, citing a Gallup poll that found 32
percent of Americans mistrust the media. But like a bandit
that was caught stealing, Garrett pointed a finger and
Trump.

“But the White House has credibility issues

of its own,” he deflected.

Late last week, CNN was forced to remove a story that

falsely claimed former Trump aide Anthony Scaramucci
was being investigated by Congress for alleged ties to a
Russian bank. And on Tuesday, President Trump took to
Twitter to rub the fake news in CNN’s face after three
people involved with the story resigned. CBS took
acceptation with Trump’s gloating and whined about it
during CBS Evening News, later that day.

“And now to the White House where

tensions between the administration and
the news media are growing,” announced
Anchor Anthony Mason at the start of the
segment.
White House Correspondent Major Garrett started his
report by reading Trump’s scornful tweet.
“’Wow, CNN had to retract big story on
Russia with three employees forced to
resign,’ the President wrote. ‘What about all
the other phony stories they do? Fake
news,’” he read. Garrett appeared to stick
up for CNN, noting how they had
apologized to Scaramucci for dragging his
name through the mud.
Garrett wagged a reproving finger at Deputy Press
Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders for daring to bring up
CNN’s fake story at the press briefing on Tuesday, despite
the apology.
“We've been going on this Russia/Trump
hoax for the better part of a year now with
no evidence of anything. America is,
131
He rambled on about how The New York Times
“accused the President of saying
something false every day for the first 40
days of his administration.”
Reading from the hit piece, Garrett said:
“There is simply no precedent for an
American president to spend so much time
telling untruths … He is trying to create an
atmosphere in which reality is irrelevant."
During the press briefing a reporter for The Sentinel, Brian
Karem, blew a gasket and lambasted Huckabee Sanders
and Trump for calling the press out on their fake news
stories. Garrett actually touted Karem’s out-of-turn
outburst, claiming he was venting “his frustration with the
Trump press team.”
“The White House tried to use the CNN
story to brand all Russia-related news as
phony,” Garrett prefaced as he tried to
mock the President. “But, Anthony here's
 what's not phony: Two congressional
investigations and a special counsel probe
into the matter.”
But what Garrett failed to mention was the undercover
video also released on Tuesday by Project Veritas, which
exposed CNN producer John Bonifield admitting the
Russia story was “mostly bulls—t right now...” Bonifield
also admitted that his network kept pushing the Russia
story because of the ratings.
And despite Garrett’s mocking of the President by noting
the investigations, the CNN producer told the undercover
operative that right now investigators are turning up
nothing.
“I don’t know. If they were finding
something, we would know about it,” he
explained. “The way these leaks happen,
they would leak it. They’d leak. If it was
something really good, it would leak.”
This is why the public’s trust in the media is in the toilet.
And this is how the White House will continue to have
ammunition to fight off the liberal media obsessed with
bringing it down.
Transcript below:
CBS Evening News
June 27, 2017
6:33:45 PM Eastern
ANTHONY MASON: And now to the White House where
tensions between the administration and the news media are
growing. Major Garrett is there.
[Cuts to video]
DONALD TRUMP: So I'll ask the press to leave. I greatly
appreciate you folks being here.
132
MAJOR GARRETT: President Trump tried to make nice with the
press this afternoon hours after assailing CNN on Twitter. "Wow,
CNN had to retract big story on Russia with three employees
forced to resign," the President wrote. "What about all the other
phony stories they do? Fake news." CNN retracted and
apologized for an online story linking former Trump aid Anthony
Scaramucci with a Russian bank. The network also announced
the resignation of three employees.
Scaramuci accepted the network's apology, but Deputy White
House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders pounced.
SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS: We've been going on this
Russia/Trump hoax for the better part of a year now with no
evidence of anything. America is, frankly, looking for something
better.
GARRETT: Last year a Gallup poll found only 32 percent of
Americans had a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media.
Among Republicans, the number was 14 percent. But the White
House has credibility issues of its own.
The New York Times has accused the President of saying
something false every day for the first 40 days of his
administration. "There is simply no precedent for an American
president to spend so much time telling untruths,” The Times
wrote last week. "He is trying to create an atmosphere in which
reality is irrelevant."
Today, Brian Karem of Sentinel Newspapers vented his
frustration with the Trump press team.
BRIAN KAREM: What you just did is inflammatory to people all
over the country who look at it and say, "See, once again, the
President is right and everybody else out here is fake media."
[Cuts back to live]
GARRETT: The White House tried to use the CNN story to brand
all Russia-related news as phony. But, Anthony, here's what's not
phony: Two congressional investigations and a special counsel
probe into the matter.
 Trump Involvement In
Syria Missile Strike Is A Red Herring:
It Was Always The Deep State
By Brandon Turbeville
June 27, 2017

In his article, “Trump’s Red Line,” Hersh writes,

On April 6, United States President Donald

Trump authorized an early morning
Tomahawk missile strike on Shayrat Air
Base in central Syria in retaliation for what
he said was a deadly nerve agent attack
carried out by the Syrian government two
days earlier in the rebel-held town of Khan
Sheikhoun. Trump issued the order despite
having been warned by the U.S.
intelligence community that it had found no
evidence that the Syrians had used a
On June 25, veteran journalist Seymour Hersh released a chemical weapon.
bombshell article revealing a number of facets regarding
The available intelligence made clear that
the alleged chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria and
the Syrians had targeted a jihadist meeting
the resulting volley of Tomahawk missiles fired by the
site on April 4 using a Russian-supplied
United States at the al-Sha’aryat airbase in response.
guided bomb equipped with conventional
Hersh’s article provides the reader with what many of us
explosives. Details of the attack, including
already knew and wrote about at the time; i.e. that the
information on its so-called high-value
Syrian military did not conduct a chemical weapons attack
targets, had been provided by the Russians
and that the United States was fully aware of that fact.
days in advance to American and allied
Still, the U.S. government opted to use the attack as a
military officials in Doha, whose mission is
justification for launching 59 Tomahawk missiles at a
to coordinate all U.S., allied, Syrian and
Syrian airbase that resulted in the deaths of Syrian soldiers,
Russian Air Force operations in the region.
civilians, and children from the nearby village.
Some American military and intelligence
Hersh’s article shows that not all key personnel were on officials were especially distressed by the
board with the decision to launch Tomahawk missiles at president’s determination to ignore the
al-Sha’aryat or even of the whole Syria/Iraq mission. The evidence.
article reveals real concerns amongst knowledgeable “None of this makes any sense,” one officer
personnel that the Russians will not continue to act as the told colleagues upon learning of the
cooler heads and that Russia has long wanted peace in the decision to bomb. “We KNOW that there
region. Most notably, it reveals the fact that there is a was no chemical attack … the Russians
“secret agenda” moving forward in regards to Syria, Iraq, are furious. Claiming we have the real intel
and Russia. Hersh’s article also points to the President as and know the truth … I guess it didn’t
the individual who made the decision to launch attacks in matter whether we elected Clinton or
Syria, against the advice of the military and intelligence Trump.”
community.
Within hours of the April 4 bombing, the
world’s media was saturated with
While much of this information is already well known, it photographs and videos from Khan
bears closer scrutiny to understand and unearth what is Sheikhoun. Pictures of dead and dying
really going on behind the scenes in the American victims, allegedly suffering from the
government. symptoms of nerve gas poisoning, were
uploaded to social media by local activists,
133
 including the White Helmets, a first
responder group known for its close
association with the Syrian opposition.
Hersh goes on to lay the blame at the feet of President
Trump, pointing out that the National Security team was
dismayed at his insistence to launch the Tomahawk
missiles. He writes,
To the dismay of many senior members of
his national security team, Trump could not
be swayed over the next 48 hours of
intense briefings and decision-making. In a
series of interviews, I learned of the total
disconnect between the president and
many of his military advisers and
intelligence officials, as well as officers on
the ground in the region who had an
entirely different understanding of the
nature of Syria’s attack on Khan
Sheikhoun. I was provided with evidence of
that disconnect, in the form of transcripts of
real-time communications, immediately
following the Syrian attack on April 4.
Hersh’s chat protocol between a security analyst and an
American soldier, which was also published by Welt, does
indeed show a major disagreement between the analyst and
the soldier and the Trump policy to launch strikes. It also
shows that both the analyst and the soldier disagree with
the entire mission in both Iraq and Syria as well as the U.S.
policy toward Russia.
Hersh presents a picture of Trump as a reactionary and
narcissistic watcher of television news, anxiously awaiting
the ability to be seen as a hero or at least the focus of
attention. He writes essentially that Trump saw reports of
the deaths of civilians in Khan Sheikhoun and made the
decision right then and there to bomb Syria, a decision he
stuck to even after all the intelligence surrounding the
chemical attack had been shown to him and it was
demonstrated that the Syrian government did not use
chemical weapons. According to Hersh, the intelligence
community, the military, and national security team were
all frightened that the reckless Trump would push us into
World War Three and thus sought to guide him into
launching an attack that showed force but wasn’t enough
to actually create the pretext for Armageddon. Hersh paints
a picture that shows a military and intelligence community
telling the Russians before the missiles were launched so
that a confrontation could be avoided.
Hersh writes,
In an important pre-strike process known
as deconfliction, U.S. and Russian officers
routinely supply one another with advance
details of planned flight paths and target
134
coordinates, to ensure that there is no risk
of collision or accidental encounter (the
Russians speak on behalf of the Syrian
military). This information is supplied daily
to the American AWACS surveillance
planes that monitor the flights once
airborne. Deconfliction’s success and
importance can be measured by the fact
that there has yet to be one collision, or
even a near miss, among the high-powered
supersonic American, Allied, Russian and
Syrian fighter bombers.
Russian and Syrian Air Force officers gave
details of the carefully planned flight path to
and from Khan Sheykhoun on April 4
directly, in English, to the deconfliction
monitors aboard the AWACS plane, which
was on patrol near the Turkish border, 60
miles or more to the north.
The Syrian target at Khan Sheikhoun, as
shared with the Americans at Doha, was
depicted as a two-story cinder-block
building in the northern part of town.
Russian intelligence, which is shared when
necessary with Syria and the U.S. as part
of their joint fight against jihadist groups,
had established that a high-level meeting of
jihadist leaders was to take place in the
building, including representatives of Ahrar
al-Sham and the al-Qaida-affiliated group
formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra. The
two groups had recently joined forces, and
controlled the town and surrounding area.
Russian intelligence depicted the cinder-
block building as a command and control
center that housed a grocery and other
commercial premises on its ground floor
with other essential shops nearby,
including a fabric shop and an electronics
store.
“The rebels control the population by
controlling the distribution of goods that
people need to live – food, water, cooking
oil, propane gas, fertilizers for growing their
crops, and insecticides to protect the
crops,” a senior adviser to the American
intelligence community, who has served in
senior positions in the Defense Department
and Central Intelligence Agency, told me.
The basement was used as storage for
rockets, weapons and ammunition, as well
as products that could be distributed for
free to the community, among them
medicines and chlorine-based
decontaminants for cleansing the bodies of
the dead before burial. The meeting place
– a regional headquarters – was on the
floor above. “It was an established meeting
place,” the senior adviser said. “A long-time
facility that would have had security,
weapons, communications, files and a map
center.” The Russians were intent on
confirming their intelligence and deployed a
drone for days above the site to monitor
communications and develop what is
known in the intelligence community as a
POL – a pattern of life. The goal was to
take note of those going in and out of the
building, and to track weapons being
moved back and forth, including rockets
and ammunition.
One reason for the Russian message to
Washington about the intended target was
to ensure that any CIA asset or informant
who had managed to work his way into the
jihadist leadership was forewarned not to
attend the meeting. I was told that the
Russians passed the warning directly to the
CIA. “They were playing the game right,”
the senior adviser said. The Russian
guidance noted that the jihadist meeting
was coming at a time of acute pressure for
the insurgents: Presumably Jabhat al-
Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham were desperately
seeking a path forward in the new political
climate. In the last few days of March,
Trump and two of his key national security
aides – Secretary of State Rex Tillerson
and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley – had
made statements acknowledging that, as
the New York Times put it, the White
House “has abandoned the goal” of
pressuring Assad “to leave power, marking
a sharp departure from the Middle East
policy that guided the Obama
administration for more than five years.”
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer
told a press briefing on March 31 that
“there is a political reality that we have to
accept,” implying that Assad was there to
stay.
Russian and Syrian intelligence officials,
who coordinate operations closely with the
American command posts, made it clear
that the planned strike on Khan Sheikhoun
was special because of the high-value
target. “It was a red-hot change. The
mission was out of the ordinary – scrub the
sked,” the senior adviser told me. “Every
operations officer in the region” – in the
Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, CIA and
NSA – “had to know there was something
going on. The Russians gave the Syrian Air
Force a guided bomb and that was a rarity.
They’re skimpy with their guided bombs
and rarely share them with the Syrian Air
Force. And the Syrians assigned their best
135
pilot to the mission, with the best
wingman.” The advance intelligence on the
target, as supplied by the Russians, was
given the highest possible score inside the
American community.
The Execute Order governing U.S. military
operations in theater, which was issued by
the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
provide instructions that demarcate the
relationship between the American and
Russian forces operating in Syria. “It’s like
an ops order – ‘Here’s what you are
authorized to do,’” the adviser said. “We do
not share operational control with the
Russians. We don’t do combined
operations with them, or activities directly in
support of one of their operations. But
coordination is permitted. We keep each
other apprised of what’s happening and
within this package is the mutual exchange
of intelligence. If we get a hot tip that could
help the Russians do their mission, that’s
coordination; and the Russians do the
same for us. When we get a hot tip about a
command and control facility,” the adviser
added, referring to the target in Khan
Sheikhoun, “we do what we can to help
them act on it.” “This was not a chemical
weapons strike,” the adviser said. “That’s a
fairy tale. If so, everyone involved in
transferring, loading and arming the
weapon – you’ve got to make it appear like
a regular 500-pound conventional bomb –
would be wearing Hazmat protective
clothing in case of a leak. There would be
very little chance of survival without such
gear. Military grade sarin includes additives
designed to increase toxicity and lethality.
Every batch that comes out is maximized
for death. That is why it is made. It is
odorless and invisible and death can come
within a minute. No cloud. Why produce a
weapon that people can run away from?”
The target was struck at 6:55 a.m. on April
4, just before midnight in Washington. A
Bomb Damage Assessment (BDA) by the
U.S. military later determined that the heat
and force of the 500-pound Syrian bomb
triggered a series of secondary explosions
that could have generated a huge toxic
cloud that began to spread over the town,
formed by the release of the fertilizers,
disinfectants and other goods stored in the
basement, its effect magnified by the dense
morning air, which trapped the fumes close
to the ground. According to intelligence
estimates, the senior adviser said, the
strike itself killed up to four jihadist leaders,
and an unknown number of drivers and
security aides. There is no confirmed count
of the number of civilians killed by the
poisonous gases that were released by the
secondary explosions, although opposition
activists reported that there were more than
80 dead, and outlets such as CNN have
put the figure as high as 92. A team from
Médecins Sans Frontières, treating victims
from Khan Sheikhoun at a clinic 60 miles to
the north, reported that “eight patients
showed symptoms – including constricted
pupils, muscle spasms and involuntary
defecation – which are consistent with
exposure to a neurotoxic agent such as
sarin gas or similar compounds.” MSF also
visited other hospitals that had received
victims and found that patients there
“smelled of bleach, suggesting that they
had been exposed to chlorine.” In other
words, evidence suggested that there was
more than one chemical responsible for the
symptoms observed, which would not have
been the case if the Syrian Air Force – as
opposition activists insisted – had dropped
a sarin bomb, which has no percussive or
ignition power to trigger secondary
explosions. The range of symptoms is,
however, consistent with the release of a
mixture of chemicals, including chlorine
and the organophosphates used in many
fertilizers, which can cause neurotoxic
effects similar to those of sarin.
The internet swung into action within hours,
and gruesome photographs of the victims
flooded television networks and YouTube.
U.S. intelligence was tasked with
establishing what had happened. Among
the pieces of information received was an
intercept of Syrian communications
collected before the attack by an allied
nation. The intercept, which had a
particularly strong effect on some of
Trump’s aides, did not mention nerve gas
or sarin, but it did quote a Syrian general
discussing a “special” weapon and the
need for a highly skilled pilot to man the
attack plane. The reference, as those in the
American intelligence community
understood, and many of the inexperienced
aides and family members close to Trump
may not have, was to a Russian-supplied
bomb with its built-in guidance system. “If
you’ve already decided it was a gas attack,
you will then inevitably read the talk about
a special weapon as involving a sarin
bomb,” the adviser said. “Did the Syrians
plan the attack on Khan Sheikhoun?
Absolutely. Do we have intercepts to prove
it? Absolutely. Did they plan to use sarin?
136
No. But the president did not say: ‘We have
a problem and let’s look into it.’ He wanted
to bomb the shit out of Syria.”
At the UN the next day, Ambassador Haley
created a media sensation when she
displayed photographs of the dead and
accused Russia of being complicit. “How
many more children have to die before
Russia cares?” she asked. NBC News, in a
typical report that day, quoted American
officials as confirming that nerve gas had
been used and Haley tied the attack
directly to Syrian President Assad. “We
know that yesterday’s attack was a new
low even for the barbaric Assad regime,”
she said. There was irony in America’s
rush to blame Syria and criticize Russia for
its support of Syria’s denial of any use of
gas in Khan Sheikhoun, as Ambassador
Haley and others in Washington did. “What
doesn’t occur to most Americans” the
adviser said, “is if there had been a Syrian
nerve gas attack authorized by Bashar, the
Russians would be 10 times as upset as
anyone in the West. Russia’s strategy
against ISIS, which involves getting
American cooperation, would have been
destroyed and Bashar would be
responsible for pissing off Russia, with
unknown consequences for him. Bashar
would do that? When he’s on the verge of
winning the war? Are you kidding me?”
Trump, a constant watcher of television
news, said, while King Abdullah of Jordan
was sitting next to him in the Oval Office,
that what had happened was “horrible,
horrible” and a “terrible affront to humanity.”
Asked if his administration would change
its policy toward the Assad government, he
said: “You will see.” He gave a hint of the
response to come at the subsequent news
conference with King Abdullah: “When you
kill innocent children, innocent babies –
babies, little babies – with a chemical gas
that is so lethal … that crosses many,
many lines, beyond a red line . … That
attack on children yesterday had a big
impact on me. Big impact … It’s very, very
possible … that my attitude toward Syria
and Assad has changed very much.”
Within hours of viewing the photos, the
adviser said, Trump instructed the national
defense apparatus to plan for retaliation
against Syria. “He did this before he talked
to anybody about it. The planners then
asked the CIA and DIA if there was any
evidence that Syria had sarin stored at a
nearby airport or somewhere in the area.
Their military had to have it somewhere in
the area in order to bomb with it.” “The
answer was, ‘We have no evidence that
Syria had sarin or used it,’” the adviser
said. “The CIA also told them that there
was no residual delivery for sarin at
Sheyrat [the airfield from which the Syrian
SU-24 bombers had taken off on April 4]
and Assad had no motive to commit
political suicide.” Everyone involved, except
perhaps the president, also understood that
a highly skilled United Nations team had
spent more than a year in the aftermath of
an alleged sarin attack in 2013 by Syria,
removing what was said to be all chemical
weapons from a dozen Syrian chemical
weapons depots.
At this point, the adviser said, the
president’s national security planners were
more than a little rattled: “No one knew the
provenance of the photographs. We didn’t
know who the children were or how they
got hurt. Sarin actually is very easy to
detect because it penetrates paint, and all
one would have to do is get a paint sample.
We knew there was a cloud and we knew it
hurt people. But you cannot jump from
there to certainty that Assad had hidden
sarin from the UN because he wanted to
use it in Khan Sheikhoun.” The intelligence
made clear that a Syrian Air Force SU-24
fighter bomber had used a conventional
weapon to hit its target: There had been no
chemical warhead. And yet it was
impossible for the experts to persuade the
president of this once he had made up his
mind. “The president saw the photographs
of poisoned little girls and said it was an
Assad atrocity,” the senior adviser said.
“It’s typical of human nature. You jump to
the conclusion you want. Intelligence
analysts do not argue with a president.
They’re not going to tell the president, ‘if
you interpret the data this way, I quit.’”
The national security advisers understood
their dilemma: Trump wanted to respond to
the affront to humanity committed by Syria
and he did not want to be dissuaded. They
were dealing with a man they considered to
be not unkind and not stupid, but his
limitations when it came to national security
decisions were severe. “Everyone close to
him knows his proclivity for acting
precipitously when he does not know the
facts,” the adviser said. “He doesn’t read
anything and has no real historical
knowledge. He wants verbal briefings and
photographs. He’s a risk-taker. He can
accept the consequences of a bad decision
137
in the business world; he will just lose
money. But in our world, lives will be lost
and there will be long-term damage to our
national security if he guesses wrong. He
was told we did not have evidence of
Syrian involvement and yet Trump says:
‘Do it.”’
On April 6, Trump convened a meeting of
national security officials at his Mar-a-Lago
resort in Florida. The meeting was not to
decide what to do, but how best to do it –
or, as some wanted, how to do the least
and keep Trump happy. “The boss knew
before the meeting that they didn’t have the
intelligence, but that was not the issue,” the
adviser said. “The meeting was about,
‘Here’s what I’m going to do,’ and then he
gets the options.”
The available intelligence was not relevant.
The most experienced man at the table
was Secretary of Defense James Mattis, a
retired Marine Corps general who had the
president’s respect and understood,
perhaps, how quickly that could evaporate.
Mike Pompeo, the CIA director whose
agency had consistently reported that it
had no evidence of a Syrian chemical
bomb, was not present. Secretary of State
Tillerson was admired on the inside for his
willingness to work long hours and his avid
reading of diplomatic cables and reports,
but he knew little about waging war and the
management of a bombing raid. Those
present were in a bind, the adviser said.
“The president was emotionally energized
by the disaster and he wanted options.” He
got four of them, in order of extremity.
Option one was to do nothing. All involved,
the adviser said, understood that was a
non-starter. Option two was a slap on the
wrist: to bomb an airfield in Syria, but only
after alerting the Russians and, through
them, the Syrians, to avoid too many
casualties. A few of the planners called this
the “gorilla option”: America would glower
and beat its chest to provoke fear and
demonstrate resolve, but cause little
significant damage. The third option was to
adopt the strike package that had been
presented to Obama in 2013, and which he
ultimately chose not to pursue. The plan
called for the massive bombing of the main
Syrian airfields and command and control
centers using B1 and B52 aircraft launched
from their bases in the U.S. Option four
was “decapitation”: to remove Assad by
bombing his palace in Damascus, as well
as his command and control network and
all of the underground bunkers he could
possibly retreat to in a crisis.
“Trump ruled out option one off the bat,”
the senior adviser said, and the
assassination of Assad was never
considered. “But he said, in essence:
‘You’re the military and I want military
action.’” The president was also initially
opposed to the idea of giving the Russians
advance warning before the strike, but
reluctantly accepted it. “We gave him the
Goldilocks option – not too hot, not too
cold, but just right.” The discussion had its
bizarre moments. Tillerson wondered at the
Mar-a-Lago meeting why the president
could not simply call in the B52 bombers
and pulverize the air base. He was told that
B52s were very vulnerable to surface-to-air
missiles (SAMs) in the area and using such
planes would require suppression fire that
could kill some Russian defenders. “What
is that?” Tillerson asked. Well, sir, he was
told, that means we would have to destroy
the upgraded SAM sites along the B52
flight path, and those are manned by
Russians, and we possibly would be
confronted with a much more difficult
situation. “The lesson here was: Thank
God for the military men at the meeting,”
the adviser said. “They did the best they
could when confronted with a decision that
had already been made.”
Fifty-nine Tomahawk missiles were fired
from two U.S. Navy destroyers on duty in
the Mediterranean, the Ross and the
Porter, at Shayrat Air Base near the
government-controlled city of Homs. The
strike was as successful as hoped, in terms
of doing minimal damage. The missiles
have a light payload – roughly 220 pounds
of HBX, the military’s modern version of
TNT. The airfield’s gasoline storage tanks,
a primary target, were pulverized, the
senior adviser said, triggering a huge fire
and clouds of smoke that interfered with
the guidance system of following missiles.
As many as 24 missiles missed their
targets and only a few of the Tomahawks
actually penetrated into hangars,
destroying nine Syrian aircraft, many fewer
than claimed by the Trump administration. I
was told that none of the nine was
operational: such damaged aircraft are
what the Air Force calls hangar queens.
“They were sacrificial lambs,” the senior
adviser said. Most of the important
personnel and operational fighter planes
had been flown to nearby bases hours
before the raid began. The two runways
138
and parking places for aircraft, which had
also been targeted, were repaired and back
in operation within eight hours or so. All in
all, it was little more than an expensive
fireworks display.
And now we come to the main gist of the article – that the
villain is Donald Trump. Hersh writes,
“It was a totally Trump show from
beginning to end,” the senior adviser said.
“A few of the president’s senior national
security advisers viewed the mission as a
minimized bad presidential decision, and
one that they had an obligation to carry out.
But I don’t think our national security
people are going to allow themselves to be
hustled into a bad decision again. If Trump
had gone for option three, there might have
been some immediate resignations.”
Here is where we come to some very important questions
not only about the incident itself but about the information
being presented by Seymour Hersh. First, no one truly
doubts that the U.S. military and intelligence community
knew all along that the Syrian government did not use
chemical weapons at Khan Sheikhoun. (Please see my
article, “Chemical Weapons 2017: What Just Happened In
Syria?” for a critique of the official narrative surrounding
Khan Sheikhoun published less than 48 hours after the
incident.) The track record of Western power and their
proxy terrorists in Syria is enough to raise serious doubt as
to who used the weapons and Assad, smart as he is, is not
likely to use chemical weapons on a strategically
insignificant area in front of the world and cross one of
America’s many stupid “red lines.” Not only that, Hersh’s
article is confirmation that the Russians alerted the U.S.
military as to what was going to happen days in advance.
So the questions that immediately crop up almost all
surround Trump himself. How much did Trump actually
know? Was he told the attack never happened? Did he
actually make the decision to launch missiles himself?
Was Trump really the only person who wanted to bomb
Syria? Does Trump really have that much authority? Was
Trump influenced to bomb Syria? Was he forced? And
what of the network that made the issue a “chemical attack
by the brutal dictator Assad?” Were they cowering in the
corner afraid of Trump’s choices or were they actually
doing something?
To reduce the incredibly reckless and immoral foreign
policy decision down to the ego of one man who,
interestingly enough, continued the same policy and stupid
decisions as his predecessor, is just too simplistic. After
all, Trump has publicly given carte blanche to his “military
command,” a policy move that has given right wing
Republicans wet dreams for decades. Even Slate, always
ready to criticize the CIC for crimes, real or imagined, ran
a story entitled “No Strategy In Syria” where it stated,
Earlier this month, President Trump
decided to let Secretary of Defense (and
retired four-star general) James Mattis set
U.S. military policy in Afghanistan. Now he
seems to be handing the military the same
carte blanche on the more fraught
battlefields in Syria.
The U.S. shootdown of a Syrian jet fighter
on Sunday was a move apparently decided
by commanders in the field—not the same
abdication of duty as Trump’s sloughing off
Afghanistan.
The Military Times confirmed what Slate suspected. It
says,
A U.S. Air Force general confirmed
American pilots made the call to shoot
down Syrian aircraft on three separate
missions this month and defended their
actions as self-defense.
On June 18, an F/A-18E Super Hornet
conducted the U.S. military’s first air-to-air
kill involving a manned aircraft in nearly two
decades when it downed a hostile Su-22
Fitter south of Taqbah.
Meanwhile, on June 8 and again on June
20, F-15E Strike Eagles shot down Iranian-
made Shaheed drones over At Tanf as the
unmanned aerial vehicles approached or
dropped munitions near U.S.-backed forces
on the ground.
“We’re trying to de-escalate,” Air Force
Brig. Gen. Charles Corcoran, commander
of the 380th Air Expeditionary Wing, told
Military.com. “We’re here to fight ISIS, but
we’re going to protect our forces from
Syrian pro-regime entities.”
While neither Slate, Military Times, nor Trump announced
publicly that Secretary of Defense James “Mad Dog”
Mattis has carte blanche in Syria, it appears that such is the
case and that Mattis has given field commanders the option
of starting World War Three. It is thus a scary prospect to
acknowledge that what stands between us and
thermonuclear world war is rabid warmonger relic
nicknamed “Mad Dog” and the discretion of a possibly
trigger-happy pilot.
While Trump’s temperament should not be discounted,
isn’t it possible that Trump was not the ultimate authority
making the decision to attack Syria at the time? In the
conversation between the security analyst and the
American soldier published by Welt, note that both
139
individuals wonder to one another who was behind the
decision; was it POTUS or someone else?
What is interesting about Hersh’s presentation is that he
claims that Trump’s decision was going against the advice
of the intelligence community and military advisers. So,
we are being asked to believe that the national security
apparatus which has been responsible for the organization,
funding, and directing of terrorism not only in Syria but
across the world and the U.S. military which has been
doing the same and who would put World War Three in
the hands of “commanders in the field” were dismayed by
Trump sending token Tomahawks to a Syrian airbase?
This writer, for one, isn’t buying it.
After all, who is part of Trump’s national security and
military team? The entire cabinet is made up of
warmongers, intel corporations, banks, and rabid Zionists;
they are leftover neocons from the Bush era. These are not
the poster children of cooler heads and peaceniks by any
means, yet we are supposed to believe they are dismayed
at the prospect of Trump’s decision. Remember, during the
Obama years, as much of a willing puppet as he was, it
was Obama himself that was less willing to engage in
more and more warfare in Syria despite the urging of his
national security team and intelligence apparatus, an
apparatus that contains both in policy and in physical
presence regardless of which president is in office.
Nevertheless, the agenda marched ahead with Obama just
as it is marching ahead with Trump.
And how much authority and sway does Trump actually
have over his own policies? This is an important question
since a number of Trump’s promises on the campaign trail
did carry over into his election only to be scuttled by some
unseen force behind closed doors. Remember, Trump’s
tough stance on Saudi Arabia, his desire for a closer
relationship with Putin, and his desire to back away from
NATO all started taking shape early on in the Trump
administration but the President suddenly did an abrupt
180 turn. Suddenly, Trump was provoking WW3, praising
NATO and Saudi Arabia. Presidents backing away from
campaign promises is one thing. Presidents realizing they
have no power upon being elected is quite another. I would
suggest that we are witnessing the latter with the requisite
and expected dose of the former. Trump has likely found
himself in the same situation as JFK: allowed to assume
the role of the presidency due to his own ignorance and
willingness to play ball and self-incriminate in his personal
life only to realize that, upon becoming president, he is
surrounded by enemies on all sides sharpening their knives
if he dares get out of line.
And what of Hersh’s revelation that the Russians told the
United States about the Syrian military’s operation
beforehand? While not heavily discussed, this is incredibly
important. Giving the U.S. notice that the Syrian military
would be dropping a bomb on this particular facility would
then give the U.S. time to organize an impromptu White
Helmets propaganda production, possibly even loading the
chemicals into the building shortly before the bomb. This
would explain the White Helmets ability to immediately
arrive on scene with cameras blazing in time to catch great
video of all the “chemical weapons victims.”
It is also important to note the role of the Western
corporate media here. Hersh is apt to point out the role that
they played in creating an environment of fear, panic, and
anger at the horrors in Syria now being shown to the
American public and blamed on Assad. The corporate
media blamed Assad from the very first moment the first
report aired which created an environment of pressure on
Trump to “do something.” Trump had to respond to the
incident somehow. Unfortunately, in warmonger America,
simply stating the facts that Assad didn’t do it isn’t good
enough, as right and left wingers are already frothing at the
mouth demanding that someone be killed and Syria be
invaded regardless. Of course, Trump should have done
just that; i.e. stated Assad’s innocence. But Trump, being
what he is, did not.
What is most likely here is not the situation that Hersh
presents. It is more likely that the U.S. military and
intelligence apparatus colluded with their corporate media
department and capitalized on this incident and Trump’s
narcissism and perceived political necessity. It is more
likely that “advisors” like Trump’s rabid Zionist son-in-
law who has been given frightening levels of access to the
president and the government in an official capacity as
Trump’s senior advisor, simply told the president that
launching missiles was what he was expected to do by the
Deep State and Trump complied. Trump could also have
been told by advisors that the story was already out and the
narrative already accepted and therefore he had to do
something to appease the pro-war leftists, Democrats, and
Republicans.
In this regard, Hersh’s article is possibly a limited hangout
operation, not on the part of Hersh, but on the part of the
intelligence community who wish to do more damage to
the President’s public support and his ability to act
independently of the “Deep State.” It is their ability to
announce the tragic massive fraud of Khan Sheikhoun
.
140
while looking like the level heads and the good guys of the
situation. Trump, of course, comes off looking like the
lone assassin, the lone madman so eaten up with
narcissism that he is putting the country at risk. But while
Trump is undeniably a narcissist and he is undeniably
putting the country at risk, it is the fact that he is listening
to and obeying the Deep State apparatus that is the danger,
not that he is ignoring them.
While most of the above is speculation, it is also put into
proper historical context, not only in the Trump
administration but also in the history of other
administrations over the past several decades, most notably
that of Kennedy and Nixon, neither of which point to a
promising end for Trump.
What is clear, however, is that the U.S. establishment
knew that there was no chemical weapons attack and the
corporate media, at best, knew there was no evidence of an
attack. Still, the narrative was peddled continually through
every mainstream outlet in America and the West, the
strike was ordered and carried out. In this sense, the
personal involvement and responsibility of Donald Trump
is a red herring. It is and always was the Deep State that
has been in control of foreign (and domestic) policy
initiatives. It is merely the carrying out of a plan set in
motion long ago, written about in the early ’80s and again
in the ’90s and once again in the plans of the PNAC group.
It has been discussed at various corporate financier think
tanks and openly at a number of globalist and Zionist
confabs. The presidents of the United States have changed
numerous times over the past few decades but this agenda
has always moved forward without so much as a hiccup,
except perhaps for the damaged reputation of the
individual president.
It is fashionable and trendy in American media today to
take swipes at Donald Trump and even considered a
necessity in some areas of discourse before any other
statements can be made. However, America has a much
bigger problem than Trump and it is becoming more and
more obvious by the day. If the Deep State apparatus is not
exposed and neutered soon, we may very well find
ourselves in a third world war.
 Trump Must Break Up The Google Media Monopoly
For The Good Of America
By Jayson Veley
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
There is an effort underway in this country to shut down
conservative speech as much as possible, to the point
where liberalism becomes not only the dominant ideology,
but really the only ideology in the United States. This
assault on the First Amendment exists in just about every
part of our society, from our colleges and universities, to
Hollywood, to the mainstream media, and even the world
wide web. Aside from social media websites like Facebook
and Twitter, one of the most active participants in the
nationwide attack on conservative speech is none other
than Google, which in the past has buried right-leaning
websites and manipulated search results for ideological
purposes. (RELATED: Read a statement from the
Health Ranger on Google’s censorship of Natural
News)
To give just one example, last September, a psychologist
researcher by the name of Dr. Robert Epstein claimed that
Google’s search suggestions were giving an unfair
advantage to Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary
Clinton.
“It is somewhat difficult to get the Google
search bar to suggest negative searches
related to Mrs. Clinton or to make any
Clinton-related suggestions when one
types a negative search term,” wrote Dr.
Epstein, who is a Senior Research
Psychologist at the American Institute for
Behavioral Research and Technology.
Dr. Epstein later explained that he first became interested
in learning more about Google’s political bias after
141
watching two YouTube videos that seemingly proved that
the search engine giant did have a pro-Hillary slant. The
videos, which are narrated by Matt Lieberman, depict a
series of screen grabs that appear to show that Google only
generates positive search suggestions for Clinton, and
mostly negative suggestions for her challengers Bernie
Sanders and Donald Trump.
To Dr. Epstein, the information conveyed in these
YouTube videos was particularly significant, considering
the fact that a 2015 study revealed that
“internet search rankings have a significant
impact on consumer choices, mainly
because users trust and choose higher-
ranked results more than lower-ranked
results.”
Unsurprisingly, Google denied the allegations of political
bias, telling the Washington Times that
“Google Autocomplete does not favor any
candidate or cause.”
Another area where conservative viewpoints are being
censored is the Google-owned video sharing site, YouTube.
Prager U, founded by nationally syndicated conservative
radio host Dennis Prager, is currently one of the most
conservative YouTube channels in existence, known
primarily for their short yet extremely informative videos
on a wide variety of political issues.
You would think that videos such as “The Top 5 Issues
Plaguing the Black Community,” “Income Inequality is
Good,” “Things Every High School Principle Should
Say,” and “Debunking the 1 in 5 College Women Will
Be Sexually Assaulted Myth” wouldn’t be controversial
enough for YouTube to take action against them, but alas,
that’s exactly what they did. Evidently, YouTube (which
again, is owned by Google), considers these videos to be
inappropriate and has placed them under a restricted
category. (RELATED: YouTube censors video
interview with Jeffery Smith about GMOs)
Typically, only videos that contain sexual content or adult
themes are placed in the restricted category. For obvious
reasons, many schools have set up blockers on their
computers to deny students access to restricted YouTube
content. Sadly, this means that thousands of young people
across the country are not able to access certain videos
from Prager U while they are on campus, even though the
site was specifically made for millennials.
It may be time for President Trump and the republicans in
congress to take action to break up Google’s media
142
monopoly for the good of the country. Considering the fact
that most Americans use Google on a regular basis for
their political news and information on current events, we
must act to ensure that all viewpoints are given equal
exposure. If President Trump is to take action, it should be
in the interest of expanding free speech rights across the
Internet; otherwise, Google’s pattern of censorship and
political suppression will only get worse.
 Phony US Claim About
A Planned Syrian CW Attack
By Stephen Lendman - Stephenlendman.Org
6-27-2017
The June 26 White House press secretary Sean Spicer
claim about an impending Syrian CW attack was a bald-
faced lie.
The Trump administration appears intending to blame a
likely planned false flag CW attack on Syria’s military as a
pretext to escalate US aggression in the country.
Russia slammed the scheme, Putin spokesman Dmitry
Peskov, saying his government
“consider(s) threats (against) the legitimate
leadership of the Syrian Arab Republic
unacceptable.”
No credible evidence showed Assad was responsible for
any CW attacks throughout years of conflict. Indisputable
evidence proves US-supported terrorists targeted civilians
with CWs numerous times.
Russian intelligence matches America’s in Syria and
elsewhere. It has no information about a planned Syrian
CW attack. The Trump administration’s claim was
fabricated.
On Tuesday, State Department spokeswoman Heather
Nauert stonewalled reporters repeatedly - refusing to
comment on (nonexistent) evidence of an impending
Syrian CW attack.
The lengthy exchange went as follows:
QUESTION: So the Russians put out a readout of a call
yesterday between Secretary Tillerson and Foreign
Minister Lavrov. In the Russian version of the call it says
that they discussed deterring the use of chemical weapons.
Did the Secretary -
MS NAUERT: Their discuss - the what?
QUESTION: Deterring the use of chemical weapons -
MS NAUERT: Okay.
QUESTION: - in Syria. Did the Secretary share the
information that was shared with us last night, that they
had - that the US. had detected preparations at the site?
And did the Secretary warn Foreign Minister Lavrov about
that or ask them to press the Syrians not to do that?
143
MS NAUERT: Well, I can confirm that Secretary Tillerson
spoke yesterday with his counterpart, with Mr. Lavrov, the
foreign minister there. As you know, they talk about things
regularly. They began their dialogue in Moscow and I
believe it was March.
They met here about a month ago or so. And then, of
course, they’ve had subsequent phone conversations, such
as the one last evening.
Secretary Tillerson is not putting out a full play-by-play of
that conversation. We know that the Russians have put out
what they consider to be their version, so I’m not going to
get into a tit for tat about what we think they said or what
they claim they said - claim was said in that conversation.
But the Secretary has made his concerns clear in the past
and continues to do so with regard to Russia.
QUESTION: In light of the statement that the White
House put out last night, it seems like a fair question to ask
if -
MS NAUERT: Oh, I’m not - you can ask me anything you
want. I’m not saying it’s not -
QUESTION: But you’re not going to say anything
specifically about chemical weapons?
MS NAUERT: No.
QUESTION: There’s a sparrow carrying a one-pound
coconut. Did you -
MS NAUERT: What?
QUESTION: Are you saying that you - are you saying that
you dispute the Russian characterization?
MS NAUERT: No. I’m just - I’m not going to get into a tit
for tat. The Russians will often put out information, and
they tend to mischaracterize things sometimes, and so I’m
not going to get into going back and forth with them about
what was said in this conversation.
Secretary Tillerson is always clear with the Russians about
how we feel about certain things, and the Secretary prefers
to conduct a lot of his diplomacy in private in those
conversations, because he believes that we can be most
effective that way.
QUESTION: There were some reports that the White
House statement about the Syria chemical weapons attack
took some policy experts at the State Department by
surprise. Is that true? Was the State Department fully read
in on this?
MS NAUERT: So the Secretary, as you know, was at the
White House yesterday. He met with the President, also a
group meeting with the President’s national security team,
and that’s when this conversation was all had about that
statement.
So they were all informed and aware of that statement. In
terms of who exactly that filtered down to at the State
Department, I’m not going to get into our internal
conversations. But the Secretary was aware of it. Folks
here were aware of it, and that’s what’s important and
that’s what matters.
QUESTION: So the sequence of time, that the Tillerson-
Lavrov call came before the statement made by the White
House, right?
MS NAUERT: I believe - that’s a good question. I believe
the Secretary’s call with Foreign Minister Lavrov was in
the morning. I can double check on that and get back with
you, but yes - okay. Yeah, it was in the morning.
QUESTION: So the warning may not have come as a
result of that conversation.
MS NAUERT: Again, I just don’t know, but the call was -
I’m getting the nod over here - it was, in fact, in the
morning.
QUESTION: There is clearly a difference of opinion or - I
don’t know - strong disagreement, whatever you might
want to call that, between Russia and the United States
over this matter.
The Syrians themselves claim that there is no preparation
underway for any chemical weapons attack. Russia seems
to be agreeing with them.
MS NAUERT: Wait. Hold on. Are we supposed to buy
what the Syrians are saying, that there are no chemical
weapons preparations underway -
QUESTION: This is not my question.
MS NAUERT: - because in the past, we know that they
have killed their own people, which include women and
children. So if they say that they’re not making any
preparations, I’m not certain that we’re going to buy that.
But go ahead.
QUESTION: I wanted to ask you if there is a follow - if
there is an intent to follow up on that between Secretary -
MS NAUERT: On which? I’m sorry.
144
QUESTION: On the discussion on Syria and the alleged
plans for chemical attack between Secretary Tillerson and
Minister Lavrov.
MS NAUERT: You mean - are - do you mean that when
the statement was put out last evening, that the United
States is concerned about Syria and preparations that we
believe are underway for a chemical weapons attack? Your
question is will there be additional conversations about
that?
QUESTION: Yeah, something like that.
MS NAUERT: I don’t have any additional calls or any
information to read out. This is something that the United
States Government remains very concerned about. I’m just
not aware of any subsequent conversations that are
scheduled just yet.
QUESTION: Do you guys have any evidence to share with
us about this potential preparation for the use of chemical
weapons? Because that wasn’t actually laid out.
MS NAUERT: Right, and nor would that be laid out,
because that would be considered an intelligence matter.
So as you all are aware, there are a lot of these things that
will pop up sometimes that we just can’t get into the
details about this, but this has obviously gotten the
attention of the United States Government at the highest
level.
QUESTION: So could the activity have perhaps been for
some other reason than a chemical weapons attack
preparation?
MS NAUERT: Such as?
QUESTION: Something that they do at the base or - I
mean, is that a possibility?
MS NAUERT: I would say that that’s a hypothetical
question. We know from past experience that the Syrian
regime has used chemical weapons on its own people, so
that obviously remains a very large concern for us in the
future.
QUESTION: When you guys believe that it’s in your
interests, you do put out what you say is evidence or proof
of things that involve intelligence, and it happened from
this podium not that long ago with the crematorium that
you guys said was being built at the prison.
MS NAUERT: Yeah.
QUESTION: So it’s not a blanket “we never discuss
intelligence,” right?
MS NAUERT: Matt Lee, I’m not going to - I’m not going
to get into that one with you, but this is a very serious and
grave matter, and when you have the President involved
and his national security team and the Secretary involved
as well, I’d say that’s a serious issue.
QUESTION: The preparation, the preparation. Is it like
24-hour preparation, maybe 48 hours, and then they stand
back or something -
MS NAUERT: I don’t have the answer to that question.
The White House may be able to give you more on that, or
perhaps the Department of Defense or another agency, but
- or department, rather - but I just can’t get into that and I
don’t have the answer to that question.
QUESTION: Just to clarify, Mr. Assad was also seen
photographed with the top Russian general in Syria within
the last 24 hours or so. Do you know if the Russians - are
we aware if the Russians were aware about these
preparations as well?
MS NAUERT: I’m not aware of that.
QUESTION: We don’t have any intel saying one way or
another?
MS NAUERT: I just can’t get into any of the intelligence,
but I’m not personally aware of that.
QUESTION: Yeah. So Ambassador Haley said today that
they would blame Iran, Russia, and Syria if chemical
weapons were again - what does it mean to blame these
countries? How would the US hold them accountable in
the event of another strike?
MS NAUERT: Okay.
QUESTION: Does the US intends on militarily striking
Iran or Russia in the event of a chemical weapons attack?
MS NAUERT: Okay. Your third question I can’t answer.
That’s a Department of Defense matter, and then that’s
also a hypothetical. In terms of the first question, which is
145
why would we - why would we look to Syria and Iran?
Was that the part?
QUESTION: How - what does it mean to blame them?
MS NAUERT: Well, we’ve seen -all we have to do is look
to the past, right, and we have seen as the Syrian regime
back in 2015 was on the verge of collapsing - who came in
to help save the Syrian regime?
Who came in? Russia came in. And that is exactly why we
are today - we, meaning the world - in the place that Syria
is. Russia came in, helped bolster up Syrian forces, and we
have seen the death, the devastation, the destruction that
has taken place ever since.
So when we say Russia would be held responsible, we
believe that they play a role in this as well. They have a lot
of influence with the Assad regime, and we have
consistently called upon them to use their influence with
the Assad regime to stop this kind of activity.
A Final Comment
The lengthy exchange went on a little longer, covering no
new ground. Nauert stonewalled throughout it.
She refused to back Trump administration accusations with
evidence - because none exists.
Despite some reporters pressing her hard for something
substantive, she held firm offering nothing to support
specious administration claims.
Whether the embarrassing exchange and Russian concern
about possible planned escalated US aggression in Syria is
enough to give the Trump administration second thoughts
remains to be seen.
Based on endless US aggression in multiple theaters, it
would be foolhardy to believe neocons infesting the Trump
administration intend turning a responsible new leaf.
.
 Can Americans Believe
The President About Syrian Chemical Weapons?
Defense Officials Initially Were In The Dark About The White House’s
Claim The Assad Regime Was Planning Another Attack.
Carlos Barria / Reuters - Krishnadev Calamur
Jun 27, 2017

Assad regime to launch a chemical-weapons attack in

April against civilians in Idlib Province. In that incident,
President Trump responded almost immediately, launching
more than 50 cruise missiles at the base near the city of
Homs.

Monday’s White House statement said the activities

“are similar to preparations the regime

made before”

the April attack. Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the

U.N., tweeted:
The White House said Monday night that Syria’s Assad
regime was potentially preparing for a chemical-weapons
attack that

“would likely result in the mass murder of

civilians, including innocent children.”
“If … Mr. Assad conducts another mass
murder attack using chemical weapons,”
the statement from the White House press
secretary said, “he and his military will pay
a heavy price.” The White House insisted Tuesday

The New York Times, which called the statement “highly
unusual,” noted:
“Several military officials were caught off
guard by the statement from President
Trump’s press secretary, but it was unclear
how closely held the intelligence regarding
a potential chemical attack was.”
By Tuesday, the Defense Department appeared to have
gotten on the same page as the president. Captain Jeff
Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said the U.S. has seen
“all relevant agencies—including State,
DoD, CIA and ODNI—were involved in the
process” leading up to the statement “from
the beginning.”
But as BuzzFeed News reported Tuesday, the manner in
which the White House released its statement—the
Pentagon’s clarification notwithstanding—only raises
more questions about what the White House was referring
to.
Here’s more:

“actions suggestive of intent to use [F]ive US defense officials reached by

chemical weapons” BuzzFeed News Monday night said they
did not know where the potential chemical
at the al-Shayrat airbase for several days. That’s the same attack would come from, including one US
airbase the Trump administration said was used by the Central Command official who had ‘no idea’
146
 about its origin. The officials said they were
unaware the White House was planning to
release its statement; usually such
statements are coordinated across the
national security agencies and departments
before they are released.
In Damascus, Ali Haidar, the minister for national
reconciliation, rejected the White House’s claim. He told
the Associated Press the statement suggested a “diplomatic
battle” at the U.N. against Syria. Russia, which backs the
Assad regime, also rejected the allegation.
“I am not aware of any information about a
threat that chemical weapons could be
used,” Dmitri Peskov, the Kremlin
spokesman, said.
Assad’s record on this issue is clearly damning, however:
During the more than six-year civil war in his country, he
has used chemical weapons multiple times despite an
agreement involving the U.S. and Russia that aimed to
remove his ability to do so; and he has found other ways to
kill hundreds of thousands of his people. Syria and Russia
have repeatedly rejected overwhelming evidence that
Assad’s forces carried out the chemical-weapons attack in
April, instead blaming rebels for the deaths. So it’s hardly
unexpected that they would both reject any evidence the
White House presents for its latest claim—even if it is
accurate.
But the saga of the statement so far highlights the White
House’s own credibility problems—and why Russia and
Syria are in a position to exploit them.
It’s plausible, as the Times suggests, that the White House
made its announcement based on intelligence that was not
widely shared within the administration. Neither the Times
nor Buzzfeed identified which specific officials had been
surprised by the Monday night statement; maybe those
officials weren’t in a position to know about it ahead of
time anyway. On the other hand, it’s no less plausible that
this White House would make a pronouncement without
.
147
consulting the relevant national-security agencies—
despite the administration’s claims to the contrary—and
that the president has once again left his own government
scrambling to catch up and coordinate. We’ve seen this
happen on several significant occasions since Trump’s
inauguration: He repeatedly described NATO as
“obsolete” and appeared to make U.S. support for its
partners in the alliance conditional upon their military
expenditures, only to have James Mattis, his defense
secretary, undertake a European tour in an attempt to
reassure allies of America’s commitment. He publicly
alluded to military action against North Korea, in apparent
contradiction of the public statements of his own secretary
of state.
There has been even more confusion over Qatar, a U.S.
ally with which Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations
severed links this month over its alleged support of
terrorism. Trump lauded that stand. The U.S. State
Department took a dramatically different approach, with
the department spokeswoman declaring herself “mystified”
about what the Gulf countries expected to achieve. Similar
contradictions have surfaced with regard to Russia, which
Trump wants closer relations with but which Mattis has
said “we are going to have to confront;” and Syria, where
the Trump administration’s stated policy preferences have
ranged from political solutions to regime change.
What do all these contradictions amount to? They could
signal mere inexperience; they could show internal policy
debates being played out in public. But the more troubling
possibility lies in what my colleague James Fallows has
called Trump’s “credibility crisis.” The president’s
willingness to disregard and distort facts, Fallows wrote,
invites the question:
“If an administration will lie about facts
where the contradictory evidence is in plain
sight, how can we possibly believe them on
anything else?”
When the president releases a late-night threat of military
action, which his own Defense Department won’t
comment on publicly until the following morning, that
question becomes all the more urgent.
 Pentagon “Clueless” On Trump’s
Surprise Warning To Syria Over Chemical Attack
Written By Jason Ditz
June 27, 2017 At 10:56 Pm
(ANTIWAR.COM) — Last night, White House issued a
surprise statement accusing the Syrian government of
preparing a chemical weapons attack and threatening to
make them pay “a heavy price” for doing so. This
immediately suggested another US attack on Syria was
imminent. No one saw this coming, including the Pentagon
and the State Department.
Pentagon officials say they were totally unaware if this
putative evidence of a chemical attack until the moment
the White House issued the statement, something they
completely didn’t see coming. The State Department,
which would normally be involved in coordinating such an
important press release, also wasn’t consulted.
Indeed, such an announcement would normally involve
myriad security agencies, including the Pentagon, State
.
148
Department, and intelligence agencies, particularly
whoever was the source of the allegation about Syria in the
first place. All signs, however, are that this wasn’t the case
with anyone, and they’re not even sure where Trump got
the idea that a chemical attack might be imminent.
The White House has since offered a secondary comment
insisting that all of the officials who are quoted in the
media saying they didn’t know about the announcement
are lying, and that the White House did, somehow, consult
with everybody without anybody knowing about it.
The only person who may conceivably have been in the
loop is US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley,
who almost immediately after the White House statement
Tweeted that any future attacks in Syria would be blamed
on Assad, Russia, and Iran.
This too gives the impression that last night’s brief,
evidence-free statement was mostly a pretext for picking a
fight in Syria, and the fact that it came mere hours after
Secretary of State Tillerson spoke with the Russian
Foreign Minister about a new ceasefire gives the
appearance this was a none-too-subtle way of turning that
proposal down.
 Donald Trump's Millionaire Supporters Are Deserting The
President Over Government Dysfunction
'Forbes' Estimates The President's Wealth To Total $3.5bn
Andrew Buncombe New York - @Andrewbuncombe
Tuesday 27 June 2017 17:33 BST
When he was running for the White House, Donald Trump
used to constantly brag about how wealthy he was.
“I don’t need anybody’s money. I’m really
rich,” he would say. “I don’t need anybody’s
money, I don’t need lobbyists’ money.” He
said he was not boasting, but that this was
the “kind of mindset you need” in America.
Mr. Trump may be a little disappointed, therefore, to learn
that his support among other rich people appears to be
declining. A survey conducted for CNBC found that
millionaires were having growing worries about Mr.
Trump because of apparent government dysfunction.
149
CNBC's Millionaire Survey found that 45 per cent of
millionaires who responded said they voted for the former
TV reality star, compared to 41 per cent for Ms. Clinton.
Modi escapes Trump handshake with ingenious move
It said that when they were asked to score Mr. Trump’s
first 100 days, the President ranked 38 on a scale of 1 to
100. When the survey then looked at “pro-Trump” and
“anti-Trump” attitudes, 50 per cent of millionaires said
they were now opposed to the President. Just 29 per cent
said they considered themselves pro-Trump, according to
the poll.
“He’s an unconventional president, and I
think many of these voters are still getting
used to that,” said George Walper,
president of Spectrem Group, which
conducted the survey. “And I think that the
hopes for tax reform and health-care
reform faded a bit.”
When asked about the biggest risk to the economy over the
next 12 months, government dysfunction ranked first, at 38
per cent. Millionaires also said government dysfunction
was the biggest threat to their own personal wealth.
 Russia-gate Is No Watergate or Iran-Contra
By Robert Parry
June 28, 2017
Special Report: Many comparisons have been made
between Russia-gate and the earlier scandals of Watergate
and Iran-Contra, but the similarities are at best superficial,
explains Robert Parry.
Russia-gate, the sprawling investigation into whether
Russia meddled in last year’s U.S. election, is often
compared to the two big political scandals of the latter half
of the Twentieth Century, Watergate and Iran-Contra.
Sometimes you even hear that Russia-gate is “bigger than
Watergate.”
The bugged phone from the Watergate office of Democratic Party
official Spencer Oliver. Placed on the phone during a May 1972
break-in, the bug was the only device that worked. A second break-in
on June 17. 1972, led to the capture of Richard Nixon’s Watergate
burglars.
Yet what is perhaps most remarkable about those two
Twentieth Century scandals is how little Official
Washington really understands them – and how these
earlier scandals significantly contrast, rather than compare,
with what is unfolding now.
Although the historical record is still incomplete on
Watergate and Iran-Contra, the available evidence
indicates that both scandals originated in schemes by
Republicans to draw foreign leaders into plots to
undermine sitting Democratic presidents and thus pave the
way for the elections of Richard Nixon in 1968 and Ronald
Reagan in 1980.
As for Russia-gate, even if you accept that the Russian
government hacked into Democratic emails and publicized
them via WikiLeaks, there is still no evidence that Donald
Trump or his campaign colluded with the Kremlin to do
150
so. By contrast, in the origins of Watergate and Iran-
Contra, it appears the Nixon and Reagan campaigns,
respectively, were the instigators of schemes to enlist
foreign governments in blocking a Vietnam peace deal in
1968 and negotiations to free 52 American hostages in Iran
in 1980.
Though Watergate is associated directly with the 1972
campaign – when Nixon’s team of burglars was caught
inside the Democratic National Committee offices in the
Watergate building – Nixon’s formation of that team,
known as the Plumbers, was driven by his fear that he
could be exposed for sabotaging President Lyndon
Johnson’s Vietnam peace talks in 1968 in order to secure
the White House that year.
After Nixon’s narrow victory over Vice President Hubert
Humphrey in the 1968 election, FBI Director J. Edgar
Hoover informed Nixon that Johnson had a secret file,
complete with wiretapped phone calls, detailing the Nixon
campaign’s backchannel messages to South Vietnamese
officials convincing them to boycott Johnson’s Paris peace
talks. Later, Nixon learned that this incriminating file had
disappeared from the White House.
So, in 1971, after the leaking of the Pentagon Papers,
which recounted the lies that had been used to justify the
Vietnam War through 1967, Nixon fretted that the missing
file about his peace-talk gambit in 1968 might surface, too,
and would destroy him politically. Thus, he organized the
Plumbers to find the file, even contemplating fire-bombing
the Brookings Institution to enable a search of its safe
where some aides thought the missing file might be found.
In other words, Watergate wasn’t simply a break-in at the
Democratic National Committee on June 17, 1972, in
pursuit of useful political intelligence and Nixon’s ensuing
cover-up; the scandal had its origins in a far worse scandal,
the derailing of peace talks that could have ended the
Vietnam War years earlier and saved the lives of tens of
thousands of U.S. soldiers and possibly more than 1
million Vietnamese.
Iran-Contra Parallels
Similarly, the Iran-Contra scandal exploded in 1986 with
revelations that President Reagan had authorized secret
arms sales to Iran with some of the profits going to fund
the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, but the evidence now
indicates that the connections between Reagan’s team and
Iran’s revolutionary regime traced back to 1980 when
emissaries from Reagan’s campaign worked to stymie
President Jimmy Carter’s negotiations to free 52 American
hostages then held in Iran.
PBS Frontline’s 1991 documentary, entitled “The Election Held
Hostage,” co-written by Robert Parry
According to multiple witnesses, including former
Assistant Secretary of State for Middle Eastern Affairs
Nicholas Veliotes, the pre-election contacts led to the
opening of a weapons pipeline to Iran (via Israel), after
Reagan was sworn in on Jan. 20, 1981, which was the
precise moment when Iran finally released the American
hostages after 444 days.
Some key players in the 1980 Reagan-Iran contacts
reappeared four years later at the start of direct (again
secret) U.S. arms shipments to Iran in 1985, which also
involved Israeli middlemen. These key players
included Iranian CIA operative Cyrus Hashemi, former
CIA clandestine services chief Theodore Shackley,
Reagan’s campaign chief and then-CIA Director William
Casey, and former CIA Director and then-Vice President
George H.W. Bush.
In other words, the Iran-Contra weapons shipments of
1985-86 appear to have been an outgrowth of the earlier
shipments dating back to 1980 and continuing under Israeli
auspices until the supply line was taken over more directly
by the Reagan administration in 1985-86.
Thus, both the Watergate scandal in 1972 and the Iran-
Contra Affair in 1986 could be viewed as “sequels” to the
earlier machinations driven by Republican hunger to seize
the enormous powers of the U.S. presidency. However, for
decades, Official Washington has been hostile to these
underlying explanations of how Watergate and Iran-Contra
began.
For instance, The New York Times, the so-called
“newspaper of record,” treated the accumulation of
151
evidence regarding Nixon’s 1968 peace-talk gambit as
nothing more than a “rumor” until earlier this year when a
scholar, John A. Farrell, uncovered cryptic notes taken by
Nixon’s aide H.R. Haldeman, which added another piece
to the mosaic and left the Times little choice but to
pronounce the historical reality finally real.
Grasping the Watergate Narrative
Still, the Times and other major news outlets have failed to
factor this belated admission into the larger Watergate
narrative. If you understand that Nixon did sabotage
President Johnson’s Vietnam War peace talks and that
Nixon was aware that Johnson’s file on what LBJ called
Nixon’s “treason” had disappeared from the White House,
the early “Watergate tapes” from 1971 suddenly make
sense.
President Richard Nixon with his then-National Security Advisor
Henry Kissinger in 1972.
Nixon ordered White House chief of staff H.R. “Bob”
Haldeman and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger
to locate the missing file but their search came up empty.
Yet, some Nixon aides thought the file might be hidden at
the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank in
Washington. So, in his desperate pursuit of the file, Nixon
called for a break-in at Brookings, possibly even fire-
bombing the building as a cover for his team of burglars to
slip in amid the confusion and rifle the safe.
The old explanation that Nixon simply wanted to find
some file related to Johnson’s 1968 pre-election Vietnam
bombing halt never made sense given the extreme steps
that Nixon was prepared to take.
The relevant portions of Nixon’s White House tapes
include an entry on June 17, 1971, coincidentally one year
to the day before the Watergate burglars were caught.
Nixon summoned Haldeman and Kissinger to the Oval
Office and pleaded with them again to locate the file.
“Do we have it?” Nixon asked Haldeman. “I’ve asked
for it. You said you didn’t have it.”
 Haldeman: “We can’t find it.”
Kissinger: “We have nothing here, Mr. President.”
Nixon: “Well, damn-it, I asked for that because I need
it.”
Kissinger: “But Bob and I have been trying to put the
damn thing together.”
Haldeman: “We have a basic history in constructing
our own, but there is a file on it.”
Nixon: “Where?”
Haldeman: “[Presidential aide Tom Charles] Huston
swears to God that there’s a file on it and it’s at
Brookings.”
Nixon: “Bob? Bob? Now do you remember Huston’s
plan [for White House-sponsored break-ins as part of
domestic counter-intelligence operations]? Implement
it.”
Kissinger: “Now Brookings has no right to have
classified documents.”
Nixon: “I want it implemented. Goddamn-it, get in and
get those files. Blow the safe and get it.”
Haldeman: “They may very well have cleaned them by
now, but this thing, you need to “
Kissinger: “I wouldn’t be surprised if Brookings had the
files.”
Haldeman: “My point is Johnson knows that those files
are around. He doesn’t know for sure that we don’t
have them around.”
But Johnson did know that the file was no longer at the
White House because he had ordered his national security
adviser, Walt Rostow, to remove it in the final days of
Johnson’s presidency.
Forming the Burglars
On June 30, 1971, Nixon again berated Haldeman about
the need to break into Brookings and “take it [the file]
out.” Nixon suggested using former CIA officer E.
Howard Hunt to conduct the Brookings break-in.
“You talk to Hunt,” Nixon told Haldeman. “I
want the break-in. Hell, they do that. You’re
to break into the place, rifle the files, and
bring them in. Just go in and take it. Go in
around 8:00 or 9:00 o’clock.”
Haldeman: “Make an inspection of the safe.”
Nixon: “That’s right. You go in to inspect
the safe. I mean, clean it up.”
For reasons that remain unclear, it appears that
the Brookings break-in never took place (nor did the fire-
152
bombing), but Nixon’s desperation to locate Johnson’s
peace-talk file was an important link in the chain of events
that led to the creation of Nixon’s burglary unit under
Hunt’s supervision. Hunt later oversaw the two Watergate
break-ins in May and June of 1972.
While it’s possible that Nixon was still searching for the
file about his Vietnam-peace sabotage when the ill-fated
Watergate break-ins occurred a year later, it’s generally
believed that the burglary was more broadly focused,
seeking any information that might have an impact on
Nixon’s re-election, either defensively or offensively.
However, if you think back on 1971 when the Vietnam
War was tearing the country apart and massive antiwar
demonstrations were descending on Washington, Nixon’s
desperation to locate the missing file suddenly doesn’t
seem quite so crazy. There would have been hell to pay if
the public learned that Nixon had kept the war going to
gain a political advantage in 1968.
Walt Rostow’s “‘X’ Envelope”
Through 1972 – and the early days of the Watergate
scandal – former President Johnson had stayed silent about
Nixon’s sabotage of the Paris peace talks. But the ex-
President became livid when – after Nixon’s reelection in
1972 – Nixon’s men sought to pressure Johnson into
helping them shut down the Watergate investigation, in
part, by noting that Johnson, too, had deployed wiretaps
against Nixon’s 1968 campaign to obtain evidence about
the peace-talk sabotage.
While it’s not clear whether Johnson would have finally
spoken out, that threat to Nixon ended two days after
Nixon’s second inaugural when on Jan. 22, 1973, Johnson
died of a heart attack. However, unbeknownst to Nixon,
Johnson had left the missing file, called “The X-
Envelope,” in the care of Rostow, who – after Johnson’s
death – gave the file to the LBJ presidential library in
Austin, Texas, with instructions that it be kept under wraps
for at least 50 years. (Rostow’s instructions were
overturned in the 1990s, and I found the now largely
declassified file at the library in 2012.)
So, with the “The X-Envelope” squirreled away for more
than two decades at the LBJ library and with the big
newspapers treating the early sketchy reports of Nixon’s
peace-talk sabotage as only “rumors,” Watergate remained
a scandal limited to the 1972 campaign.
Still, Nixon’s cover-up of his campaign’s role in the
Watergate break-in produced enough clear-cut evidence of
obstruction of justice and other offenses that Nixon was
forced to resign on Aug. 9, 1974.
A Failed Investigation
The 1979-81 hostage confrontation with Iran was not
nearly as devastating a crisis as the Vietnam War but
America’s humiliation during the 444-day-long ordeal
became a focus of the 1980 election, too, with the first
anniversary of Iran’s seizure of the U.S. Embassy in
Tehran coincidentally falling on Election Day 1980.
President Jimmy Carter signing the Camp David peace agreement
with Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin.
President Carter’s failure to gain freedom for the 52
embassy personnel turned what had been a close race into
a landslide for Ronald Reagan, with Republicans also
gaining control of the U.S. Senate and ousting some of the
most influential Democratic senators.
In 1984, Reagan won reelection in another landslide, but
two years later ran afoul of the Iran-Contra scandal.
Reagan’s secret arms sales to Iran and diversion of profits
to the Contras “broke” in November 1986 but focused only
on Reagan’s 1985-1986 arms sales and the diversion. Still,
the scandal’s crimes included violations of the Arms
Export Control Act and the so-called Boland Act’s
prohibitions on arming the Contras as well as perjury and
obstruction of justice. So there was the prospect of
Reagan’s impeachment.
But – from the start of Iran-Contra – there was a strong
pushback from Republicans who didn’t want to see
another GOP president driven from office. There was also
resistance to the scandal from many mainstream media
executives who personally liked Reagan and feared a
public backlash if the press played an aggressive role
similar to Watergate.
153
And, moderate Democrats, such as Rep. Lee Hamilton of
Indiana who co-chaired the congressional investigation,
sought to tamp down the Iran-Contra fires and set up
firebreaks to prevent the investigation from spreading to
related crimes such as the Reagan admin-
istration’s protection of Contra cocaine traffickers.
“Ask about the cocaine,” pleaded one
protester who was dragged from the Iran-
Contra hearing room, as the congressional
investigators averted their eyes from such
unseemly matters, focusing instead on
stilted lectures about the Congress’s
constitutional prerogatives.
It was not until 1990-91 that it became clear that secret
U.S.-approved arms shipments to Iran did not start in 1985
as the Iran-Contra narrative claimed but traced back to
1981 with Reagan’s approval of arms sales to Iran through
Israel.
Reagan’s politically risky move of secretly arming Iran
immediately after his inauguration and the hostage release
was nearly exposed when one of the Israeli flights strayed
into Soviet airspace on July 18, 1981, and crashed or was
shot down.
In a PBS interview nearly a decade later, Nicholas
Veliotes, Reagan’s assistant secretary of state for the
Middle East, said he looked into the incident by talking to
top administration officials.
“It was clear to me after my conversations
with people on high that indeed we had
agreed that the Israelis could transship to
Iran some American-origin military
equipment,” Veliotes said.
In checking out the Israeli flight, Veliotes came to believe
that the Reagan camp’s dealings with Iran dated back to
before the 1980 election. “It seems to have started in
earnest in the period probably prior to the election of 1980,
as the Israelis had identified who would become the new
players in the national security area in the Reagan
administration,” Veliotes said.
“And I understand some contacts were
made at that time.”
However, in 1981, Veliotes said, the State Department
issued misleading press guidance to cover the
administration’s tracks and the Washington media failed to
follow up. Thus, the U.S.-Israeli arms pipeline to Iran
stayed secret from the American people until November
1986 when — despite Reagan’s long-running insistence
that he would never trade arms with a terrorist state like
Iran — the operation was exposed.
When I re-interviewed Veliotes in 2012, he said he
couldn’t recall who the “people on high” were who had
described the informal clearance of the Israeli shipments of
U.S.-manufactured weapons, but he indicated that “the
new players” were the young neoconservatives who were
working on the Reagan campaign, many of whom later
joined the administration as senior political appointees.
Documents that I discovered at the Reagan presidential
library revealed that Reagan’s neocons at the State
Department, particularly Robert McFarlane and Paul
Wolfowitz, initiated a policy review in 1981 to allow Israel
to undertake secret military shipments to Iran.
McFarlane and Wolfowitz also maneuvered to put
McFarlane in charge of U.S. relations toward Iran and to
establish a clandestine U.S. back-channel to the Israeli
government outside the knowledge of even senior U.S.
government officials.
Another Failed Investigation
In 1991, faced with the accumulating evidence of a prequel
to the Iran-Contra scandal, Congress grudgingly agreed to
take a look at these so-called “October Surprise”
allegations. But Republicans, then led by President George
H.W. Bush and his White House team, mounted an
aggressive cover-up to “spike” the story.
Former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Indiana.
And, with the congressional inquiry largely in the hands
again of Rep. Hamilton, the Democrats timidly folded their
tent despite a growing body of evidence that the Reagan
team was indeed guilty.
Much of that evidence flowed into the House Task Force
in December 1992 when President George H.W. Bush had
already been defeated for reelection and the Democrats
were looking forward to their renewed control of
Washington. So, instead of giving a careful review to the
new evidence, the House Task Force ignored, disparaged
or buried it.
The late-arriving material included sworn testimony on
Dec. 18, 1992, from David Andelman, the biographer of
French intelligence chief Alexandre deMarenches,
154
describing how deMarenches had confided that he had
helped arrange the Republican-Iranian contacts.
Andelman, an ex-New York Times and CBS News
correspondent, said that while he was working on
deMarenches’s autobiography, the arch-conservative
spymaster admitted arranging meetings between
Republicans and Iranians about the hostage issue in the
summer and fall of 1980, with one meeting held in Paris in
October.
Andelman said deMarenches ordered that the secret
meetings be kept out of his memoirs because the story
could otherwise damage the reputations of his friends,
William Casey and George H.W. Bush. Andelman’s
testimony corroborated longstanding claims from a variety
of international intelligence operatives about a Paris
meeting involving Casey and Bush. But the Task Force
report brushed this testimony aside, paradoxically terming
it “credible” but then claiming it was “insufficiently
probative.”
The Task Force’s report argued that
Andelman could not “rule out the possibility
that deMarenches had told him he was
aware of and involved in the Casey
meetings because he, deMarenches, could
not risk telling his biographer he had no
knowledge of these allegations.”
In the last weeks of the investigation, the House
investigators also received a letter from former Iranian
President Bani-Sadr detailing his behind-the-scenes
struggle with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his son
Ahmad over their secret dealings with the Reagan
campaign. But the House investigators dismissed Bani-
Sadr’s first-hand account as hearsay and thus also lacking
“probative value.”
I later unearthed some of the evidence in unpublished Task
Force files. However, in the meantime, Official
Washington had dismissed the “October Surprise” and
other Iran-Contra-connected scandals, like Contra drug
trafficking, as conspiracy theories.
The Russian Report
Ironically, another piece of late-arriving evidence was a
January 1993 report from a national security committee of
the Russian parliament about the Kremlin’s intelligence
data confirming that key Republicans, including George
H.W. Bush and William Casey, had met with Iranian
officials in Europe regarding the hostages during the 1980
campaign.

Then-Vice President George H.W. Bush with CIA Director William
Casey at the White House on Feb. 11, 1981. (Photo credit: Reagan
Library)
Hamilton had requested the Russian assistance before the
U.S. election in 1992, but the report was not sent until
there were only two weeks left in George H.W. Bush’s
presidency.
Lawrence Barcella, who served as the Task Force chief
counsel, later told me that so much incriminating evidence
arrived late that he asked Hamilton to extend the inquiry
for three months but that Hamilton said no (although
Hamilton told me that he had no recollection of denying
Barcella’s request).
The other fatal flaw of the House investigation was that it
left much of the actual investigating up to President
George H.W. Bush’s White House counsel’s office and the
State Department, although Bush was one of the chief
suspects and, in 1991-92, was running for re-election, a
campaign that would have been derailed if the 1980
October Surprise allegations were confirmed.
The naivete of this decision was underscored years later
when I located a memo at Bush’s presidential library
stating that the State Department had informed the White
House counsel’s office that Casey had traveled to Madrid
in 1980, corroborating a key October Surprise allegation.
The confirmation of Casey’s trip was passed along by
State Department legal adviser Edwin D. Williamson to
Associate White House Counsel Chester Paul Beach Jr. in
early November 1991, just as the October Surprise inquiry
was taking shape, according to Beach’s “memorandum for
record” dated Nov. 4, 1991.
Williamson said that among the State
Department “material potentially relevant to
the October Surprise allegations [was] a
cable from the Madrid embassy indicating
that Bill Casey was in town, for purposes
unknown,” Beach noted.
Two days later, on Nov. 6, 1991, Beach’s boss, White
House counsel C. Boyden Gray, arranged an inter-agency
155
strategy session and explained the need to
contain the congressional investigation into the October
Surprise case. The explicit goal was to ensure the scandal
would not hurt President Bush’s reelection hopes in 1992.
In 2013, when I interviewed Hamilton about the Beach
memo, he lamented that the Madrid information had not
been shared with his investigation, saying “you have to
rely on people” in authority to comply with information
requests.
“We found no evidence to confirm Casey’s
trip to Madrid,” Hamilton told me. “We
couldn’t show that. The [George H.W.
Bush] White House did not notify us that he
did make the trip. Should they have passed
that on to us? They should have because
they knew we were interested in that.”
Asked if knowledge that Casey had traveled to Madrid
might have changed the Task Force’s dismissive October
Surprise conclusion, Hamilton said yes, because the
question of the Madrid trip was key to the task force’s
investigation.
Not Moving the Needle
However, the Madrid trip revelation and other post-
investigation disclosures failed to move the needle on
Official Washington’s disdain for the October Surprise
story.
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir shaking hands with President
Ronald Reagan’s Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger in 1982.
(U.S. government photo)
The later disclosures included a 1993 interview in Tel
Aviv in which former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak
Shamir said he had read the 1991 book, October Surprise,
by Carter’s former National Security Council aide Gary
Sick, which made the case for believing that the
Republicans had intervened in the 1980 hostage
negotiations to disrupt Carter’s reelection.
With the topic raised, one interviewer asked,
“What do you think? Was there an October
Surprise?”
“Of course, it was,” Shamir responded
without hesitation. “It was.”
And, there were other corroborating statements as well. In
1996, for instance, while former President Carter was
meeting with Palestine Liberation Organization leader
Arafat in Gaza City, Arafat tried to confess his role in the
Republican maneuvering to block Carter’s Iran-hostage
negotiations.
“There is something I want to tell you,”
Arafat said, addressing Carter in the
presence of historian Douglas Brinkley.
“You should know that in 1980 the
Republicans approached me with an arms
deal [for the PLO] if I could arrange to keep
the hostages in Iran until after the [U.S.
presidential] election,” Arafat said,
according to Brinkley’s article in the fall
1996 issue of Diplomatic Quarterly.
In 2013, after the movie “Argo” appeared regarding an
early facet of the Iran-hostage crisis, former Iranian
President Bani-Sadr elaboratedon his account of
Republican overtures to Iran in 1980 and how that secret
initiative prevented release of the hostages.
In a Christian Science Monitor commentary, Bani-Sadr
wrote,
“Ayatollah Khomeini and Ronald Reagan
had organized a clandestine negotiation
which prevented the attempts by myself
and then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter to
free the hostages before the 1980 U.S.
presidential election took place. The fact
that they were not released tipped the
results of the election in favor of Reagan.”
Then, Bani-Sadr added a new detail, that
“two of my advisors, Hussein Navab Safavi
and Sadr-al-Hefazi, were executed by
Khomeini’s regime because they had
become aware of this secret relationship
between Khomeini, his son Ahmad, … and
the Reagan administration.”
[For more details on the October Surprise
case, see Robert Parry’s Trick or
Treason and America’s Stolen Narrative.]
Compare and Contrast
156
So how do Watergate and Iran-Contra compare and
contrast with Russia-gate? One key difference is that in
Watergate in 1972-73 and Iran-Contra in 1985-86, you had
clear-cut crimes (even if you don’t want to believe the two
“prequels” from 1968 and 1980, respectively).
President Donald Trump being sworn in on Jan. 20, 2017. (Screen
shot from Whitehouse.gov)
In Watergate, five burglars were caught inside the DNC
offices on June 17, 1972, as they sought to plant more bugs
on Democratic phones. (An earlier break-in in May had
installed two bugs, but one didn’t work.) Nixon then
proceeded to mount a cover-up of his 1972 campaign’s
role in funding the break-in and other abuses of power.
In Iran-Contra, Reagan secretly authorized weapons sales
to Iran, which was then designated a terrorist state, without
informing Congress, a violation of the Arms Export
Control Act. He also kept Congress in the dark about his
belated signing of a related intelligence “finding.” And the
creation of slush funds to finance the Nicaraguan Contras
represented an evasion of the U.S. Constitution.
There was also the attendant Iran-Contra cover-up
mounted both by the Reagan White House and later the
George H.W. Bush White House, which culminated in
Bush’s Christmas Eve 1992 pardons of six Iran-Contra
defendants as special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh was
zeroing in on possible indictment of Bush for withholding
evidence.
By contrast, Russia-gate has been a “scandal” in search of
a specific crime. President Barack Obama’s intelligence
chieftains have alleged – without presenting any clear
evidence – that the Russian government hacked into the
emails of the Democratic National Committee and of
Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta and
released those emails via WikiLeaks and other Internet
sites. (The Russians and WikiLeaks have both denied the
accusations.)
The DNC emails revealed that senior Democrats did not
maintain their required independence regarding the
primaries by seeking to hurt Sen. Bernie Sanders and help
Clinton. The Podesta emails pulled back the curtain on
Clinton’s paid speeches to Wall Street banks and on pay-
to-play features of the Clinton Foundation.
Hacking into personal computers is a crime, but the U.S.
government has yet to bring any formal charges against
specific individuals supposedly responsible for the hacking
of the Democratic emails. There also has been no evidence
that Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with Russians in
the hacking.
Lacking any precise evidence of this cyber-crime or of a
conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign,
Obama’s Justice Department holdovers and now special
prosecutor Robert Mueller have sought to build “process
crimes,” around false statements to investigators and
possible obstruction of justice.
Railroading Flynn
In the case of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s first
national security adviser, acting Attorney General Sally
Yates used the archaic Logan Act of 1799 to create a
predicate for the FBI to interrogate Flynn about a Dec. 29,
2016 conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergey
Kislyak, i.e., after Trump’s election but before the
Inauguration.
Green Party leader Jill Stein and retired Lt. General Michael Flynn
attending a dinner marking the RT network’s 10-year anniversary in
Moscow, December 2015, sitting at the same table as Russian
President Vladimir Putin.
The Logan Act, which has never resulted in a prosecution
in 218 years, was enacted during the period of the Alien
and Sedition Acts to bar private citizens from negotiating
on their own with foreign governments. It was never
intended to apply to a national security adviser of an
elected President, albeit before he was sworn in.
But it became the predicate for the FBI interrogation —
and the FBI agents were armed with a transcript of the
intercepted Kislyak-Flynn phone call so they could catch
Flynn on any gaps in his recollection, which might have
been made even hazier because he was on vacation in the
Dominican Republic when Kislyak called.
157
Yates also concocted a bizarre argument that the
discrepancies between Flynn’s account of the call and the
transcript left him open to Russian blackmail although how
that would work – since the Russians surely assumed that
Kislyak’s calls would be monitored by U.S. intelligence
and thus offered them no leverage with Flynn – was never
explained.
Still, Flynn’s failure to recount the phone call precisely
and the controversy stirred up around it became the basis
for an obstruction of justice investigation of Flynn and led
to President Trump’s firing Flynn on Feb. 13.
Trump may have thought that tossing Flynn overboard to
the circling sharks would calm down the sharks but the
blood in the water only excited them more. According to
then-FBI Director James Comey, Trump talked to him
one-on-one the next day, Feb. 14, and said,
“‘I hope you can see your way clear to
letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a
good guy. I hope you can let this go.”
Trump’s “hope” and the fact that he later fired Comey
have reportedly led special prosecutor Mueller to look at a
possible obstruction of justice case against Trump. In other
words, Trump could be accused of obstructing what
appears to have been a trumped-up case against Flynn.
Of course, there remains the possibility that evidence
might surface of Trump or his campaign colluding with the
Russians, but such evidence has so far not been presented.
Or Mueller’s investigation might turn over some rock and
reveal some unrelated crime, possibly financial
wrongdoing by Trump or an associate.
(Something similar happened in the
Republican investigation of the Sept. 11,
2012 Benghazi attack, a largely fruitless
inquiry except that it revealed that
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent and
received official emails over a private
server, which Comey decried during last
year’s campaign as “extremely careless”
but not criminal.)
Curb the Enthusiasm
Another contrast between the earlier scandals (Watergate
and Iran-Contra) and Russia-gate is the degree of
enthusiasm and excitement that the U.S. mainstream media
and congressional Democrats have shown today as
opposed to 1972 and 1986.

The Washington Post’s Watergate team, including from left to right,
publisher Katharine Graham, Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward,
Howard Simons, and executive editor Ben Bradlee.
Though The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Carl
Bernstein aggressively pursued the Watergate scandal,
there was much less interest elsewhere in major news
outlets until Nixon’s criminality became obvious in 1973.
Many national Democrats, including DNC Chairman Bob
Strauss, were extremely hesitant to pursue the scandal if
not outright against it.
Similarly, although Brian Barger and I at The Associated
Press were pursuing aspects of Iran-Contra since early
1985, the big newspapers and networks consistently gave
the Reagan administration the benefit of the doubt – at
least before the scandal finally burst into view in fall 1986
(when a Contra-supply plane crashed inside Nicaragua and
a Lebanese newspaper revealed U.S. arms shipments to
Iran).
For several months, there was a flurry of attention to the
complex Iran-Contra scandal, but the big media still
ignored evidence of a White House cover-up and soon lost
interest in the difficult work of unraveling the convoluted
networks for arms smuggling, money laundering and
cocaine trafficking.
Congressional Democrats also shied away from a
constitutional confrontation with the popular Reagan and
his well-connected Vice President George H.W. Bush.
158
After moving from AP to Newsweek in early 1987, I
learned that the senior executives at Newsweek, then part
of The Washington Post Company, didn’t want “another
Watergate”; they felt another such scandal was not “good
for the country” and wanted Iran-Contra to go away as
soon as possible. I was even told not to read the
congressional Iran-Contra report when it was published in
October 1987 (although I ignored that order and kept
trying to keep my own investigation going in defiance of
the wishes of the Newsweek brass until those repeated
clashes led to my departure in June 1990).
So, perhaps the biggest similarity between Russia-gate and
Watergate is that Richard Nixon and Donald Trump were
both highly unpopular with the Washington establishment
and thus had few influential defenders, while an important
contrast with Iran-Contra was that Reagan and Bush were
very well liked, especially among news executives such as
Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham who, by all
accounts, did not care for the uncouth Nixon. Today, the
senior executives of The New York Times, The
Washington Post and other major news outlets have made
no secret of their disdain for the buffoonish Trump and
their hostility toward Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In other words, what is driving Russia-gate – for both the
mainstream news media and the Democrats – appears to be
a political agenda, i.e., the desire to remove Trump from
office while also ratcheting up a New Cold War with
Russia, a priority for Washington’s neoconservatives and
their liberal-interventionist sidekicks.
If this political drama were playing out in some other
country, we would be talking about a “soft coup” in which
the “oligarchy” or some other “deep state” force was using
semi-constitutional means to engineer a disfavored
leader’s removal.
Of course, since the ongoing campaign to remove Trump
is happening in the United States, it must be presented as a
principled pursuit of truth and a righteous application of
the rule of law. But the comparisons to Watergate and
Iran-Contra are a stretch.
 CNN Is Dead: Network Loses All Credibility As Producer
Admits That The Entire Russia Narrative Is Fake News
Source: Michael Snyder, Guest Post
Published: June 28, 2017
Nobody else needs to dig a grave for CNN because they
are doing it themselves. There has been scandal after
scandal at the network, and now one of their producers has
been caught on undercover video admitting that CNN has
been pushing fake news stories about a connection
between Donald Trump and Russia in a desperate attempt
to get ratings. In other words, CNN’s entire Russia
narrative has been a complete lie all along. Unfortunately
for CNN, they are going to discover that once your
credibility is gone it is incredibly difficult to ever get it
back.
On Tuesday, Project Veritas made headlines all over the
world when it released undercover video of CNN Producer
John Bonifield admitting that CNN’s Russia narrative is
fake news. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can view the
entire video right here. Now that this video has been made
public, I don’t see how CNN is ever going to recover from
this. When one of your top producers admits that the story
you have been pushing for months is basically a load of
cow manure, it is impossible to maintain the pretense that
you are a legitimate news organization any longer…
Project Veritas has released a video of CNN Producer
John Bonifield who was caught on hidden-camera
admitting that there is no proof to CNN’s Russia narrative.
“I mean, it’s mostly bullshit right
now,” Bonifield says. “Like, we don’t
have any giant proof.”
He confirms that the driving factor at CNN is ratings:
159
“It’s a business, people are like the
media has an ethical phssssss… All the
nice cutesy little ethics that used to get
talked about in journalism school you’re
just like, that’s adorable. That’s
adorable. This is a business.”
And of course this comes on the heels of three reporters
being forced out of CNN for publishing a false story that
attempted to link a Russian investment fund with Trump…
Three CNN employees have handed in their resignations
over a retracted story linking President Trump to Russia,
the network announced Monday.
The article was removed from CNN.com on Friday after
the network decided it could no longer stand by its
reporting.
“In the aftermath of the retraction of a story
published on CNN.com, CNN has accepted
the resignation of the employees involved
in the story’s publication,” a network
spokesperson told TheWrap in a
statement.
President Trump has taken a lot of heat for referring to
CNN as “fake news”, but after the events of the past
several days he has been completely vindicated.
And once news broke of three reporters being forced out of
the network for a false story about Russia, he took a bit of
a victory lap with this tweet…
Wow, CNN had to retract big story on
“Russia,” with 3 employees forced to
resign. What about all the other phony
stories they do? FAKE NEWS!
This is such a shame, because I always liked CNN’s
election coverage compared to the other networks. John
King always did such a great job breaking things down
county by county, and Wolf Blitzer always made things
seem so dramatic.
But now it is exceedingly difficult to see any sort of a
future for the network after all of this.
And of course other major news outlets have been guilty of
pushing fake news about Russia too. The following comes
from the Intercept…
Over and over, major U.S. media outlets have published
claims about the Russia Threat that turned out to be
completely false — always in the direction of exaggerating
the threat and/or inventing incriminating links between
Moscow and the Trump circle. In virtually all cases, those
stories involved evidence-free assertions from anonymous
sources that these media outlets uncritically treated as fact,
only for it to be revealed that they were entirely false.
But with CNN it has always been on another level, and we
now have a top insider on tape admitting that a connection
between Trump and Russia is being pushed even though
there isn’t any evidence. In fact, Bonifield says that CNN
CEO Jeff Zucker has been personally pushing this angle
himself…
“Just to give you some context,
President Trump pulled out of the
climate accords and for a day and a half
we covered the climate accords. And
the CEO of CNN (Jeff Zucker) said in our
internal meeting, he said good job
everybody covering the climate
accords, but we’re done with that, let’s
get back to Russia.”
I can’t imagine that Zucker gets to keep his job now that
this has been revealed.
It may not happen immediately, but look for him to be
shown the door in the not too distant future.
All along, Trump has insisted that this whole thing with
Russia has been a “witch hunt”, and that is what I have
.
160
been saying too. And it turns out that Bonifield feels the
exact same way…
“I just feel like they don’t really have it
but they want to keep digging. And so I
think the President is probably right to
say, like, look you are witch hunting me.
You have no smoking gun, you have no
real proof.”
If this doesn’t kill “the Russia story”, I don’t know what
will.
This whole thing has been a massive charade from the very
beginning, and the big news networks have been endlessly
pushing it for ratings.
In their zeal to destroy Trump, they have
“jumped the shark” and have destroyed
their own credibility instead.
Once upon a time, most mainstream journalists at least
attempted to pretend that they were being objective, but
those days are long gone.
Today, it is absolutely imperative for all of us to
understand that everyone has an agenda. In other words,
every single person that you see on television is trying to
get a message across. So instead of taking in news and
entertainment passively, we need to have our filters up and
we need to be thinking for ourselves.
Fortunately, episodes such as this one tend to awaken a lot
of people, and more Americans than ever are sick and tired
of the lies and misinformation that they are constantly
being fed.
 Limbaugh Goes Nuclear on CNN, ‘Little Jim Acosta’;
‘The Trump White House Owns CNN Now’
By Curtis Houck
June 28, 2017 6:36 PM EDT
As only he could, conservative talk radio host Rush
Limbaugh spend large swaths of Wednesday’s program
trashing the liberal media and particularly CNN,
referring to them as “fools” with “little Jim
Acosta” behaving like a cat “chasing the
red laser pointer around and bumping
into walls and sofa.”
Limbaugh took on CNN from almost the get-go, informing
listeners that he’s
“sensed a momentum shift, and I
continue to see evidence of it”
with Tuesday’s White House daily briefing and Sarah
Huckabee Sanders holding her ground against
Sentinel/Playboy writer Brian Karem.
Blasting CNN for
“now making fools of themselves each
and every day, as is a large swath of the
Drive-By Media,”
Limbaugh astutely noted how he’s exposed this going back
decades to the point that it’s blatantly obvious the media
“have become the organizing power of the American
left.”
“The media is now gobsmacked. They
are in the process of humiliating
themselves every day. They are
embarrassing themselves. The latest
example, and it’s glaring, is CNN and
the three people that had to resign or
quit or whatever over the erroneous
story filed about a Trump associate
working with banks in Russia. This
whole Russia story has simply
consumed the media, simply consumed
them,” he masterfully added.
Limbaugh praised the “fearless” Huckabee Sanders as
someone who “cannot be intimidated” based on her
trashing of CNN for their retracted Russia story.
161
“There’s no other Republican White
House that would ever deal with this like
this. This is earth-shattering, it’s
precedent setting. And the press of
course, after she said that they started
erupting and trying to ask the next
question, but she held them off and
continued,” Limbaugh explained.
Needless to say, she had to have known how the media
would react, as evidenced by Karem having
“lost his mind over this.”
As for Jim Acosta, Limbaugh hysterically called out
Acosta in the same vein that he previously did to Brian
Stelter [emphasis mine]:
And during the Q&A, she opens up with
somebody from Breitbart, which also ticked
off the media. Our old buddy little Jim
Acosta who’s chasing the red laser
pointer around and bumping into walls
and sofas, he tweeted later
(paraphrasing): “This is just unreal. They
called on conservatives. They call on
conservatives and they won’t call on us.
And they call us fake news. Is this
America? Is this the Constitution?” Just
losing his mind. The Trump White
House owns CNN now.
Acosta’s pompousness rings true concerning a subsequent
point Rush made, which was that the media have
“gotten completely immersed in their
supposed constitutionality” and become
drunk with power over the press being
“specifically mentioned in the First
Amendment.”
There were plenty of other things highlighted by the
Founders in the First Amendment, but that’s minor details
to these people. Limbaugh continued:
And I’ve thought for the longest time these
people really do think that they are the
 singular thing keeping our country together.
But what’s happened is they all think that
you can’t criticize them. They are so far
above and beyond that you can’t criticize
them. What they’re doing is too important.
They’re simply trying to explain truth to
power. They’re trying to hold truthful people
accountable, and you can’t criticize them,
you can’t, it’s unconstitutional, it’s
undermining their precious responsibility.
Later in the show, he put a finger on the media’s true goal,
which is to “to destroy Republicans” (and, by extension,
impeach Trump):
Let’s face it, there’s a lot of people out
there that think the media’s job is to destroy
Republicans. A lot of people think the
media’s purpose is to destroy Republicans,
destroy conservatives, and destroy their
ideas and discredit them, that that’s the job.
Look at the sycophantic way they dealt with
Obama and they claim they’re just trying to
do their jobs in there and ask the
questions. They’re not doing anything of
the sort. It’s being exposed and they don’t
know how to deal with it.
Here’s the relevant portions of the transcript from June
28's The Rush Limbaugh Show:
The Rush Limbaugh Show
June 28, 2017
RUSH LIMBAUGH: I mentioned on Monday starting the
program that I sensed a momentum shift, and I continue to
see evidence of it. The White House press briefing
yesterday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and a reporter, a
White House reporter from Playboy got into it yesterday.
CNN is now making fools of themselves each and every
day, as is a large swath of the Drive-By Media. There’s one
reason this is happening. I was thinking about this while
consuming all of this data. For 25 years, 30 years,
whatever length of time I’ve been doing this, I have been
focusing attention here on the media, telling people how
they operate, who they are, what they do, and what they
don’t do. And how they now have become the organizing
power of the American left, not the Democrat Party.
The media is now running the operations of the American
left. I have spent all of these years attempting to get people
to know what they’re watching and know what they’re
reading when they consume media and how to spot the
bias, the unfairness, the bigotry, all of the things that the
media is. It has been a never-ending quest. I’m not
expressing frustration here. I’m leading up to something.
(....)
162
LIMBAUGH: The media is now gobsmacked. They are in
the process of humiliating themselves every day. They are
embarrassing themselves. The latest example, and it’s
glaring, is CNN and the three people that had to resign or
quit or whatever over the erroneous story filed about a
Trump associate working with banks in Russia. This whole
Russia story has simply consumed the media, simply
consumed them.
There’s nothing to it. There isn’t anything there. And now
there are stories in the media about how it’s time we get rid
of journalism. Opinion journalism needs to be the order of
the day. Now, do you remember the Project Veritas tape
that we played yesterday, which ostensibly was a recording
of a CNN producer who admitted that, “Yeah, we know
there’s nothing to this Russia thing, but it’s ratings, man, it’s
ratings, and that means money. You know, we spend a day
on the climate accords, but they come to us, the execs,
Zucker, and they tell us to get back on the Russia story.
We can’t drop it. We got stay on the Russia story.” Why?
Ratings, money.
(....)
LIMBAUGH: Now back to CNN and the Drive-By Media
and what happened in the pressroom yesterday. Sarah
Huckabee Sanders did the briefing. Sarah Huckabee
Sanders, like Trump, is fearless. She cannot be
intimidated. And, boy, did they try yesterday. She opened
up with a statement about the CNN story that had to be
declined, deleted, and canceled, and the three people were
fired and she used it as an example of the fake news that’s
out there. And she started listing other examples of fake
news, and a Playboy reporter lost his mind over this, over
the way the Trump administration is trying to portray the
media. And she stood her ground. Let’s get started. We’ll
start with audio sound bite number two. She’s the deputy
press secretary. She did the briefing yesterday. And during
the Q&A, she opens up with somebody from Breitbart,
which also ticked off the media. Our old buddy little Jim
Acosta who’s chasing the red laser pointer around and
bumping into walls and sofas, he tweeted later
(paraphrasing): “This is just unreal. They called on
conservatives. They call on conservatives and they won’t
call on us. And they call us fake news. Is this America? Is
this the Constitution?” Just losing his mind. The Trump
White House owns CNN now.
Anyway, the guy from Breitbart, his name is Charlie
Spiering, and he said, “Recently Breitbart News challenged
the accuracy of a CNN story. And afterwards the story was
retracted, it was deleted, and the editors responsible were
fired, as well the network apologized for the story. One of
the targets of the story accepted the apology,” that would
be Anthony Scaramucci. “The President went on Twitter
this morning and repeated that CNN was fake news. Why
isn’t their response, why isn’t their apology, firing the three
reporters, deleting the story, why isn’t that good enough for
the President?”
SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS: It’s the constant barrage
of fake news directed at this President probably that has
garnered a lot of his frustration. You point to that report,
there are multiple other instances where that outlet that you
referenced has been repeatedly wrong and had to point
that out or be corrected.
LIMBAUGH: There’s no other Republican White House that
would ever deal with this like this. This is earth-shattering,
it’s precedent setting. And the press of course, after she
said that they started erupting and trying to ask the next
question, but she held them off and continued.
(....)
LIMBAUGH: And so here’s the guy from Playboy. You’ve
probably already seen it ’cause the Drive-Bys cannot stop
playing this. This guy lost it. His name is Brian Karem, and
he is a Sentinel newspapers exec. Now, wait. I’ve seen that
he’s a Playboy reporter. This says Sentinel newspaper.
Whatever, doesn’t matter. I’ve not seen the guy before, by
the way. I mean, I don’t watch these things every day, but I
have never seen this guy in the press. That’s why when I
saw this happening, there was no sound on, it happened
during the program yesterday, I said, “Who is this guy?”
Not that he shouldn’t be in there, I had just never seen him
before. Well, his name is Brian Karem, he’s either at
Playboy or a Sentinel Newspaper executive, and he
couldn’t take it anywhere.
(....)
.
163
LIMBAUGH: You know, they’ve gotten completely
immersed in their supposed constitutionality. The press has
its freedom specifically mentioned in the First Amendment.
I think it’s gone to their heads. And I’ve thought for the
longest time these people really do think that they are the
singular thing keeping our country together. But what’s
happened is they all think that you can’t criticize them.
They are so far above and beyond that you can’t criticize
them. What they’re doing is too important. They’re simply
trying to explain truth to power. They’re trying to hold
truthful people accountable, and you can’t criticize them,
you can’t, it’s unconstitutional, it’s undermining their
precious responsibility. Well, the fact of the matter is Sarah
Huckabee Sanders nor Donald Trump’s driving a wedge
between the media and the people. The media have been
doing that themselves for decades. They have polled near
the bottom of respectability professions for I don’t know
how long, and they are still there.
(....)
LIMBAUGH: Let’s face it, there’s a lot of people out there
that think the media’s job is to destroy Republicans. A lot of
people think the media’s purpose is to destroy
Republicans, destroy conservatives, and destroy their
ideas and discredit them, that that’s the job. Look at the
sycophantic way they dealt with Obama and they claim
they’re just trying to do their jobs in there and ask the
questions. They’re not doing anything of the sort. It’s being
exposed and they don’t know how to deal with it.
 Irish Reporter Calls Out
Donald Trump For Calling Her ‘Beautiful’
The President Is Criticized After Singling Out A Female Irish Reporter
While On An Oval Office Diplomatic Phone Call,
Commenting On Her 'Nice Smile.'
Tom Sykes
06.28.17 6:46 AM ET

President Donald Trump has previously enjoyed perhaps

more support—or at least forbearance—in Ireland than in
some other countries around the world, thanks in no small
part to his significant investments in the cash-strapped
country.
However his astonishing objectification of a female news
reporter employed by Ireland’s state public-service
broadcaster has dismayed observers across the board in the
Republic.
After telling the president who she was and which news
outlet she represented, Trump told Varadkar:
“Caitriona Perry, she has a nice smile on
her face, so I bet she treats you well.”
Perry retreated back to the press corps and later described
the incident on Twitter as a “bizarre moment.”

Trump was making a congratulatory phone call to

Ireland’s new Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, on Tuesday, when
he beckoned to RTÉ’s Washington correspondent,
Caitriona Perry, telling her to “come here” during the call.

Trump was heard saying,

“Hello how are you?... Congratulations on

your great victory. We have so many
people from Ireland in this country. I know
so many of them, too. I feel I know all of
them. But I just want to congratulate you.
That was a great victory that you had.”

Trump continued:
Other commentators were less generous.

“We have a lot of your Irish press watching

us... they are just now leaving the room."

Trump then singled out Perry, saying,

“Where are you from, come here, come

here, where are you from?”

Perry ventured gingerly over to his desk.

“We have all of this beautiful Irish press.

Where are you from?” he asked the
reporter again.

164
 Panic! CBS, Washington Post
Freak Over ‘Right,’ ‘Far-Right’ Gorsuch
By Scott Whitlock
June 28, 2017 11:26 AM EDT
Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch is “to the right,” the
“far right.” CBS and The Washington Post on Wednesday
conducted a collective freak out over the possibility that
the new judge really is in the mold of the late Antonin
Scalia. The two outlets collectively used the terms “right”
or “far right” eight times.
On CBS This Morning, co-host Gayle King cited the Post
and alerted viewers that Gorsuch “appears to be asserting
himself as a force on the Supreme Court's right.”
Repeating herself, she underlined,
“Gorsuch fills the seat of the late Antonin
Scalia and some say he's perhaps
further to the right.”
In case anyone was unclear, King concluded,
“He is also further to the right than almost
all his colleagues on gun rights.” For
those keeping score, that’s three
descriptions of Gorsuch being on the “right”
in just 24 seconds.
In a front page story for Wednesday’s Post, reporter
Robert Barnes warned,
“On Day 78 of his lifetime appointment, the
Supreme Court’s newest justice, Neil M.
Gorsuch, revealed himself Monday to be....
farther to the right than almost all of his
colleagues on gun rights.”
The headline blared, “Gorsuch Asserts
Himself Early As Force On Supreme
Court’s Right.” Barnes declared, “The
bottom line, according to most accounts, is
165
that Gorsuch is a Scalia 2.0, perhaps
further to the right.”
Later, the journalist continued his labeling, this time
describing the dreaded “far right.”
The views he expressed on the final day came in dissents
or concurrences he wrote or joined with other justices. He
has sided far more frequently with Justice Clarence
Thomas on the court’s far right than with Roberts, closer to
the center.
The Post used “right” or far right” five times. CBS and the
newspaper have not repeatedly fretted about the“far left”
Obama judges, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
On CNN, Tuesday, Chris Cuomo and Jeffrey Toobin
fretted over the “very conservative” Gorsuch.
A transcript of the CBS segment is below:
CBS This Morning
6/28/17
7:32:03 to 7:32:27
GAYLE KING: The Washington Post
reports that Justice Neil Gorsuch appears
to be asserting himself as a force on the
Supreme Court’s right. Gorsuch fills the
seat of the late Antonin Scalia and some
say he's perhaps further to the right.
Decisions announced on Monday reveal
that he was skeptical about the reach of the
Court’s decision two years ago granting
same sex couples the right to marry. He is
also further to the right than almost all his
colleagues on gun rights.
 Senators Propose ‘Black Book’
On Foreign Meddling In Russian Politics
Published Time: 28 Jun, 2017 10:47
A Federation Council meeting. © Vladimir Fedorenko / Sputnik
The Russian parliamentary task group established to
prevent foreign interference in Russian politics has met for
the first time, with members proposing that all foreign
meddling be recoded in a ‘black book’ and that potential
retaliatory measures be developed.
The proposal to start collecting evidence of foreign
meddling in Russian internal politics was made by the
deputy head of the Federation Council’s Committee for
International Relations, Senator Andrey Klimov. He also
said that all those working to undermine Russian
sovereignty should be included in a so-called ‘black book.’
“By launching such a document we will be
able to study the tools of our opponents
and develop more reliable methods [of
countering them]” Klimov said in comments
with RBC news site.
He also said that the task group planned to establish the
criteria for foreign interference in Russia’s domestic
political affairs at one a future session.
Additionally, the senators agreed to form three more
working groups – for the protection of Russian sovereignty
on Russian territory, for the monitoring of foreign
activities targeting Russia’s internal affairs, and for
legislative work.
166
According to the head of the upper house Committee for
International Relations, Senator Konstantin Kosachev,
since 1946 the United States has interfered with elections
in foreign nations at least 80 times.
"This is not including military operations
launched to overthrow certain governments
or military coups that took place in various
countries after their people elected
candidates that did not please the
Americans. I am talking about Iran, Congo,
Guatemala and Chile,” Kosachev said.
Russian senators decided to launch a dedicated
commission to monitor foreign nations’ attempts to
influence internal Russian politics and work on proposals
to counter such moves in early June this year. Russian
media reported that the idea was proposed after President
Vladimir Putin’s recent meetings with the leaders of
Germany and France.
Back then, upper house chair Valentina Matviyenko said
that attempts to interfere with Russia’s internal affairs had
been ongoing for many years, adding that foreign
governments and groups were sending US$70-100 billion
to Russia each year to sponsor various political activities.
“We know the consequences of such
meddling and we hold our sovereignty
dear, we will not allow anyone to threaten
Russia’s sovereignty,” she said.
In subsequent comments, Matviyenko said that in her
opinion it was wrong to describe the decision as
“tightening the screws” because all future protective
measures would be developed on the basis of foreign
nations’ experience.
 CNN’s Acosta Goes Full Liberal Activist:
Trump Is Eroding Our Freedoms!
By Nicholas Fondacaro
June 28, 2017 10:23 PM EDT
CNN’s eccentric Senior White House Correspondent Jim
Acosta had been all over CNN and social media this
week throwing a temper-tantrum over how the White
House press briefings were being conducted. But during an
appearance on The Situation Room, Wednesday evening,
Acosta went full liberal activist as he decried the Trump
administration and tried to smear a conservative panelist.
“What we're witnessing right now is just
this erosion of our freedoms in terms of
covering the president of the United
States,” he claimed while standing in front
of the White House.
Acosta then proceeded to whine about how few press
conferences President Trump had had press since taking
office.
“This issue of turning off the cameras in
the briefing rooms,” he said, switching the
topic to his favorite subject. “Wolf, I could
hold up my phone tomorrow and live
stream that press briefing with Sean
Spicer or Sarah Sanders, whoever
comes in there, and that is just where
technology is right now.”
“So to think that we're going backwards
and not having things on camera to me
is just preposterous,” he chided.
But Acosta was infamous for his on camera battels with
both Press Secretary Sean Spicer and President Trump.
The CNN reporter doesn’t seem to have a problem with
cameras not being allowed in the Supreme Court, the only
167
branch of government without them. It may actually
surprise CNN’s wannabe Braveheart that the highest court
in the land doesn’t allow cameras to curb people like him.
The premise was that a lack of cameras stems the potential
theatrics that lawyers and justices would put on to get
noticed.
Matt Schlapp, Chairman of the American Conservative
Union, noted how out of control the on camera press
briefings had gotten before they were limited.
“I don’t think it’s helping politics in
America to have these daily briefings. I
actually think they’ve been a bit of a
side show,” he said as he called Acosta
out on his hyperbole:
And I think a lot of us look at them and say what are the
American people learning? What really is the press
learning? Jim, I can understand you want as much access
as you can get, but your freedoms are not being denied
when a White House determines the method by which they
want to brief the press. That is their first amendment right.
“But you have to accept the fact that in
poll after poll after poll the American
people believe that major news
organizations are biased to the left,”
Schlapp noted as he explained how the
press should really study why the public
distrusts them. “You're suffering
credibility because they feel like you
have it against this President and
against conservatives.”
That real news didn’t sit well with Acosta who flew off the
handle, and asked:
“Isn’t part of the reason why those
numbers are being driven down is that
the President is driving them down?”
But Acosta’s accusation was divorced from reality.
According to a Gallup tracking poll that shows data as
far back as 1985, trust in newspapers has never broken 40
percent and had been on a steady downward trend since
2001. In layman’s terms, that’s long before Trump was
president.
The ranting CNN correspondent then targeted Schlapp
with an underhanded smear when he asked:
“When he tells half the country that
we're enemies of the people, how can
you stand by that?! Why have you, as a
Republican leader in this country,
shouted from the mountain tops that
this is wrong?!”
But the confrontation was expertly defused by Schlapp
when he explained that
“I don’t. I don’t stand by it. Jim, I don’t.
You’re not my enemy … I think you’re a
good man. I think you’re trying to do
your job.”
Jim ‘Braveheart’ Acosta’s self-righteous indignation
proves that he’s more interested in slinging inflammatory
assertions and making a scene than actually being a
reporter.
Transcript below:
CNN
The Situation Room
June 28, 2017
5:47:40 PM Eastern
(…)
168
MATT SCHLAPP: Look, I'm not trying to indict every
reporter. I have a lot of friends that work for CNN who are
on this show right now as well. But what I am trying to say
is we all have to acknowledge that the Chiron on the
screen says “Trump war with the press.” A lot of
conservatives and Republicans believe that the
national media has been at war with their values for
decades. And when we have had to watch story after
story after story about this investigation, about things
that actually weren't that accurate about the Russia
investigation, the fact that they don’t think Trump is a
legitimate president, the fact that they are looking for
every way to drive negative coverage.
You look at that Harvard study, Wolf, and it's hard for
you to-- Put yourself in a conservative's shoes. When you
look at the coverage, the overwhelming majority of
coverage is anti-Trump. He deserves some of that
coverage. They’ve made mistakes. I think they have to own
up to those mistakes. But after a while the American
people want to go to a place on the dial were they can
simply get the straight facts without all this coloring, without
all this opinion, without this shading. I think the American
people deserve that.
WOLF BLITZER: Let me ask Jim Acosta to respond. Go
ahead, Jim.
JIM ACOSTA: Well Wolf, I think that-- and I asked this
question of the President when he was running to win the
White House: Can you withstand the scrutiny that comes
with being president of the United States? He didn't like
that question. He snapped at me during that news
conference. It was May of last year. And, you know, I think
that there are moments when this President is just really
sensitive to criticism and he lashes out in this fashion.
I think Matt is right to some extent, that yes, the coverage
can get a little too negative sometimes, and that
happens during the Obama administration. That
happens during other administrations. Coverage of the
president is tough, but that's the territory we're in right now.
But I think to paint everybody with a broad brush is just not
the right thing.
And Wolf, what we're witnessing right now is just this
erosion of our freedoms in terms of covering the
president of the United States. The president has only
held one full news conference since the beginning of his
administration, and that was in February. That's way
behind the average of other presidents in modern times.
This issue of turning off the cameras in the briefing
rooms. Wolf, I could hold up my phone tomorrow and
livestream that press briefing with Sean Spicer or
Sarah Sanders, whoever comes in there, and that is
just where technology is right now. So to think that
we're going backwards and not having things on
camera to me is just preposterous.
 SCHLAPP: Can I respond? Look, I think the bipartisan
letter from Ari Fleischer and Mike McCurry captures the
moment. I don’t think it’s helping politics in America to
have these daily briefings. I actually think they’ve been
a bit of a side show. And I think a lot of us look at them
and say what are the American people learning? What
really is the press learning? Jim, I can understand you
want as much access as you can get, but your
freedoms are not being denied when a White House
determines the method by which they want to brief the
press. That is their first amendment right.
ACOSTA: They're our cameras and we should be able to
turn them on and the White House is saying we can't turn
them on.
(…)
5:54:36 PM Eastern
SCHLAPP: But you have to accept the fact that in poll
after poll after poll the American people believe that
major news organizations are biased to the left. And I
.
169
think you would do the American people a lot of good if you
look at not just Trump's polls, but your own poll numbers.
You're suffering credibility because they feel like you
have it against this President and against
conservatives. And we should all stop that.
ACOSTA: Isn’t part of the reason why those numbers
are being driven down is that the President is driving
them down?
SCHLAPP: No Jim! You have to own it yourself!
ACOSTA: When he tells half the country that we're
enemies of the people, how can you stand by that?
Why have you, as a Republican leader in this country,
shouted from the mountain tops that this is wrong?
SCHLAPP: I don’t. I don’t stand by it. Jim, I don’t. You’re
not my enemy. This is why it doesn’t work, because we’re
shouting at each other. I think you’re a good man. I think
you’re trying to do your job.
(…)
 CNN’s Fake News Hall Of Shame:
The Many Times The Network Has Purposefully Lied
About The Trump Administration
By J. D. Heyes, Editor-In-Chief
Posted On June 28, 2017
There is no clearer evidence that CNN is
not a media organization but instead a
propaganda organ for the Marxist Left
Media collapse: Earlier this week a senior producer for
CNN admitted during an undercover media sting operation
by Project Veritas that most of the network’s coverage of
President Donald J. Trump’s alleged election “collusion”
with Russia was “bulls**t.”
“I mean, it’s mostly bulls**t right now,” said
John Bonifield. “Like, we don’t have any
giant proof.”
Nevertheless, the network’s ratings are good right now –
because it is peddling Trump hate and there will always
be a portion of the country that will lap it up — so it’s
onward and upward with the Russia-Trump hoax.
“It’s a business, people are like the media
has an ethical phssssss… All the nice
cutesy little ethics that used to get talked
about in journalism school you’re just like,
that’s adorable. That’s adorable. This is a
business,” Bonifield also said, which is a
frank admission that the network
distinctly lacks ethics in its coverage.
(Related: CNN credibility collapses
under weight of fake news scandal…
“no longer a news organization”.)
He noted further:
Then they say, well there’s still an
investigation going on. And you’re like,
yeah, I don’t know. If they were finding
something we would know about it. The
way these leaks happen, they would leak it.
They’d leak. If it was something really
good, it would leak…. The leaks keep
leaking and there’s so many great leaks,
and it’s amazing. I just refuse to believe
that if they had something really good like
that that wouldn’t leak because we’ve been
getting all these other leaks.
170
So, devoid of any real evidence that Trump or his inner
circle has done anything nefarious involving the Russians,
CNN has had to invent stories, allegations and innuendo —
because it’s good for business, not because the network is
interested in good, factual journalism.
As Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept notes:
Over and over, major U.S. media outlets
have published claims about the Russia
Threat that turned out to be completely
false — always in the direction of
exaggerating the threat and/or inventing
incriminating links between Moscow and
the Trump circle. In virtually all cases,
those stories involved evidence-free
assertions from anonymous sources
that these media outlets uncritically treated
as fact, only for it to be revealed that they
were entirely false.
With that in mind, and as our own contribution to
legitimate journalism, we thought it important to provide
readers with a so of CNN ‘Hall of Shame’ collection of the
more outrageous, Trump-hate-driven lies the network has
published since Trump won in November:
 The most recent example of CNN story fabrication
involved Anthony Scaramuci, a member of
Trump’s transition team, as well as a a fundraiser
and advisor for his campaign. The network
published an unsubstantiated story from an
“anonymous” source claiming that Scaramuci was
under congressional investigation by the Senate
for allegedly discussing sanctions with Kirill
Dmitriev, chief executive of the $10 billion Russian
Direct Investment Fund just four days before the
president’s inauguration. It didn’t happen;
CNNwas forced to retract the story.
The Trump hate at CNN started long before this
week, however:
 August 10, 2016: CNN reported that the Secret
Service spoke to the Trump campaign about the
then-GOP nominee’s comment regarding the
 Second Amendment. He said: “Hillary wants to
abolish — essentially abolish the Second
Amendment. By the way, if she gets to pick, if she
gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks.
Although the Second Amendment people, maybe
there is, I don’t know.” It was misconstrued
(intentionally) to suggest Trump was calling for
armed rebellion against Clinton if she won and
began appointing Left-wing Supreme Court
justices. It didn’t happen.
 September 29, 2016: The network reported that
talk radio shock jock Howard Stern said Trump
expressed support for the Iraq war on his show in
2002. Stern later denied the CNN report and said
he doesn’t know “how CNN came up with” it’s
headline that Stern “confirmed” Trump’s support.
Trump denied it.
 October 2016: Network Leftie host Chris Cuomo,
in riffing on WikiLeaks’ steady release of damning
emails about Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton, told his
audience it was illegal for ordinary folks to view
those documents, so people would have to rely
only on the media to tell them what’s in them (or
not tell them). A noted legal expert debunked
Cuomo.
 October 30, 2016: The network accused Trump
of “encouraging” voters to cast more than one
ballot, because he voiced skepticism of mail-in
ballots (check the URL of this website, which
syndicated the original CNN story, and you can
see what the initial headline said). Not true, and
the network eventually rewrote the headline and
added an editor’s note at the bottom of the original
story, claiming the change “more accurately”
reflected Trump’s real comments.
 November 22, 2016: During a daytime broadcast,
CNN contributor Charles Kaiser claimed that
Trump “should never ask his supporters to give
the Nazi salute, which he did at a rally in March.
That’s not a good idea…” When challenged, he
added, “In March he asked his supporters to raise
and pledge their support to his candidacy and
pledge their support for him. There’s plenty of
video of that.” Except, that is not what Trump was
doing, calling it ridiculous.
 January 20, 2017: On Inauguration Day, the
Trump transition team utilized an old Frank
Sinatra hit, “My Way,” in some festivities. CNN
reported that his daughter, Nancy Sinatra, of
“These Boots Are Made For Walkin’” fame, was
not happy about it. She tweeted out later, “That’s
not true. I never said that. Why do you lie CNN?”
Later CNNupdated the piece without explanation.
 January 20, 2017: The network ran a story
claiming that Trump’s then-pick for secretary of
education, school-choice advocate Betsy DeVos,
171
said that ‘guns should be in schools to protect
students from grizzly bears.’ What she really said:
During her confirmation hearing was in response
to a question about whether schools should have
guns on campus; responding to the question, she
noted that the issue was “best left to locales and
states to decide,” not Washington bureaucrats.
She then noted that one school in Wyoming had a
fence around it to protect students from roaming
wildlife, adding, “I would imagine there’s probably
a gun in the school to protect from potential
grizzlies,” some of which do in fact live in
Wyoming.
 January 31, 2017: In the lead-up to Trump
announcing his first Supreme Court pick, network
White House correspondent Jeff Zeleny claimed
via Twitter that the Trump administration was
“setting up [the] Supreme Court announcement as
a prime-time contest,” setting up identical Twitter
pages for the two most likely nominees, Neil
Gorsuch and Thomas Hardiman. It was a sneering
tweet meant to make the White House look
unflattering. But 30 minutes later he was forced to
retract his earlier tweet, saying, “The Twitter
accounts…were not set up by the White House,
I’ve been told.” The initial lying tweet was shared
more than 1,100 times; the correction only about
150 times, leaving far too many people with the
impression that his first one was true.
Natural News founder/editor Mike Adams, the Health
Ranger, observed this week regarding CNN’s disgustingly
frequent fake news regarding all things Trump, as well the
other usual suspects:
Through revelations like these, the
credibility of CNN, NYT and the
Washington Post has utterly collapsed.
Only complete fools believe anything they
read in these fiction rags. Time after time,
these publications have been caught
fabricating “anonymous sources” to spin
the stories they want to publish, even when
those stories are knowingly false.
Rarely do the stories get retracted, and for
every retraction that does take place, there
are a thousand other fake news stories
published on their websites that never get
removed or corrected. The mainstream
media has literally become the very
FAKE NEWS they accused the
independent media of pushing.
No truer words.
 CNN Reporter Thinks Trump Admin
Is Endangering Media, Compares To ‘War Zone’
By Alex Xenos
June 28, 2017 1:38 PM EDT

Nobody is claiming that the on the scene, “war zone”

reporting is fake news. Yesterday and today, Karem has
been whining that journalists put their lives on the line to
report the news and don’t deserve to be treated as fake
news. Yeah, war correspondents and such put their lives at
risk, not Washington Reporters, Brian. The truth is that the
media is actually reporting inaccurate information and
Newsbusters exposes this sad reality every single day.

CNN has become a self-serving propaganda mill

for journalists the past few months, reaching a new level of
shamelessness. Wednesday’s New Day ran the headline,
“TRUMP WHITE HOUSE INTENSIFIES WAR
WITH MEDIA,” with reporter Clarissa Ward (filling in
for co-host Alisyn Camerota) worrying that by labeling the
media as fake and such, that the White House is putting the
lives of journalists in danger:

Chris, at what point does this become dangerous and I'm
not just talking about dangerous as in tearing at the social
fabric,
I'm talking about dangerous in that a
journalist gets hurt, because I can tell
you working overseas in war zones,
people are emboldened by the actions
of this administration,
Every public figure gets threats, Brian. I am old enough to
remember way back, like a few weeks ago, when GOP
congressmen were targeted and shot at (not just
threatened) by a leftist nut job. The narrative is rich
considering it is the media that is pushing false or
misleading stories and at times hateful narratives. Yet I
don’t recall the media being worried when journalists were
prosecuted by the Obama administration. As Andrew
McCarthy points out in National Review:

emboldened by the all-out sort of declaration of war on the The administration’s targeting of journalists, including (a)
media, if I'm getting it in the neck, Chris I can only attorney general Eric Holder’s approval of the seizure of
imagine what someone like you is dealing with. At what personal and business phone records of Associated Press
point does this become reckless or irresponsible, Chris? reporters en masse (i.e., not a particularized search
targeting a specific journalist suspected of wrongdoing);
and (b) Holder’s approval of a warrant targeting the e-
The media’s new hero (Vox actually called his actions
mails of Fox News reporter James Rosen in a leak
"heroic"), Brian Karem, who yelled at Deputy Press
investigation — based on an application in which the
Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders during Tuesday's White
government represented to a federal court that the
House briefing, claimed: “We are past that point...We've
journalist could be guilty of a felony violation of the
had, we've had threats.” Karem claimed journalists are just
Espionage Act in connection with a leak of classified
doing their job. That job, of course, is to support the
information (in addition to purportedly being a “flight
agenda of the left.
risk”).
Unsurprisingly, co-host Chris Cuomo applauded Karem:
Nor did the media cry when that administration sought to
“You’ve got a home here, Brian. We always like people
ostracize Fox News, claiming it was illegitimate.
who want to speak truth to power on the show...”
172
Hennion & Walsh and the Laser Spine Institute ran ads CILLIZZA: I mean I don't want to say we're past that point.
following the segment.
BRIAN KAREM: We are past that point.
See the more complete transcript of the June 28
conversation below: CILLIZZA: I think it is already dangerous what the Trump
administration is doing, which is defiance points--
8:10 AM ET
KAREM: We've had, we've had threats
CLARISSA WARD: Chris, at what point does this become
dangerous and I'm not just talking about dangerous -- CILLIZZA: they are trying to take an honest mistake or not even a
mistake, and turn it into the norm as opposed -- the rule opposed
CHRIS CILLIZZA: Oh, we're past that point. to the exception, which is a very dangerous thing because that's
wilfully misleading, frankly...
WARD: -- As in tearing at the social fabric, I'm talking about
dangerous in that a journalist gets hurt, because I can tell you (...)
working overseas in war zones, people are emboldened by the
actions of this administration, emboldened by the all-out sort of CUOMO: You’ve got a home here, Brian. We always like people
declaration of war on the media, if I'm getting it in the neck, Chris who want to speak truth to power on the show...
I can only imagine what someone like you is dealing with. At what
point does this become reckless or irresponsible, Chris?
.

173
 Deep State Cover
By The Conservative Depot
Posted On June 28, 2017
No, Susan Rice, you’re not being forced to testify because
you’re black or a woman…you were duly summoned for
lying, colluding and abusing the authority invested in your
office to serve this Constitutional Republic.
If you’re going to play the “victim” wildcard, at least have
the decency to apologize to those victims wrongfully
railroaded by your bigoted and shameless partisan
schemes. As the former National Security Adviser to one
Barack Obama, you now hold the dubious distinction of
representing the first administration to wiretap a
Presidential candidate during an ongoing election and
subsequently spy on an incoming administration to unearth
any crumb of usable intelligence for political gain. Surely,
Mr. Comey shared that useful patriotic memo. While I
hesitate to use petty and egregious in the same rumination,
your behavior was painfully juvenile and undeniably
treasonous.
How many leaks does it take to get to the epicenter of real
scandal and trigger a Congressional investigation over an
aspiring ‘Deep State’ coup d’etat? You tell me!
No matter how much you deflect from the truth and blame
those who dare to hold you accountable, Mrs. Rice, you
obtained FISA warrants under false pretenses and showed
no regard for national security or those public officials you
.
174
unmasked with the intention of destroying their
livelihoods; or better yet, a newly elected Chief of State
and his pledge of systemic reform.
Despite the fact you knew the Trump-Russia conspiracies
were outright fabrications used to potentially topple or
undermine his presidency – debunked by the FBI,
Homeland Security and now even CNN itself – you
consciously ignored documented security breaches into the
DNC database because the Democratic Party was too busy
rigging the nomination against Bernie and hiding Hillary’s
numerous indiscretions, inflammatory remarks and radical
associates: including the Clintons’ vast ties to the Kremlin,
the Russian conglomerate Uranium One and Moscow’s
Renaissance Capital.…none of which raised your
convenient sense of ‘social justice’. Or perhaps “We the
People” should just be thankful you helped secure a
“nuclear” Iran to fight true misogyny and anti-White
supremacy.
Now I may not be a World Series Poker Champion but I
know the difference between an obvious political bluff, a
smug opportunist, and a persecuted woman asked to sit at
the back of the bus because of the color of her skin. At
least Rosa Parks had the integrity and courage not to wilt
beneath the scorn of true injustice.
 Van Jones: Russia Is "Nothing Burger"
– American Pravda: CNN Part 2
White House: Everyone Should Watch This Video
CNN Responds: Bonifield Just A "Health Producer"
June 28, 2017
(NEW YORK) -- Project Veritas' American Pravda: CNN
continues today with a video of left-leaning political
commentator Van Jones caught on camera plainly stating
that "the Russia thing is just a big nothing burger."
This follows the release of a video of CNN Producer John
Bonifield, who was caught touting the Russia narrative as
"bullsh*t."
According to Brian Stelter on Twitter, CNN
released a statement stating that Bonifield
is just a "Health Producer" and "isn't
involved in Russia or Trump coverage."
Paul Fahri of the Washington Post also weighed in on the
Veritas video and Bonifield's position at CNN:
"[I]t never mentions that Bonifield is a
producer of health and medical stories,
raising questions about how relevant his
views are, and how informed he is, about
CNN's political coverage."
Jones is one of CNN's most prominent political
commentators, and has appeared on CNN in the past
attacking President Trump for his "Putin relationship."
On December 18, 2016 Jones said:
175
"Other Presidents tried to say nice things
about the Russians -- not in the face of an
active attack on the country!"
"I mean, it's mostly bullshit right now,"
Bonifield says in the first video. "Like,
we don't have any giant proof."
CNN's Public Relations team eventually was forced by the
overwhelming coverage of our video (with no help from
them, of course) to give a statement:
"CNN stands by our medical producer John
Bonifield. Diversity of personal opinion is
what makes CNN strong, we welcome it
and embrace it."
CNN is receiving heavy criticism from the President of the
United States, and the video was mentioned by the Deputy
Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders:
"There is a video circulating now. Whether
it is accurate or not, I don't know, but I
would encourage everybody in this room,
and frankly, everybody across the country
to take a look at it. I think if it is accurate, I
think it's a disgrace to all of media, to all of
journalism -- we've been going on this
Russia-Trump hoax for the better part of a
year now with no evidence of anything."
"Last year, we had to circumvent the
mainstream media," said James O'Keefe.
"At a Trump inaugural event, I put the
mainstream media on notice. If you are in
the media and are using deception or
malfeasant tactics, you may want to sleep
with one eye open."
 CNN's Stelter: Right-Wing Critics Are
'Anti-Journalism,' Just Pushing 'Resentment And Hatred'
By Tim Graham
June 28, 2017 9:33 AM EDT
CNN Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter tore into critics of
the liberal media in his email newsletter that came just
after midnight on Wednesday. In response to a terrible
week for CNN’s public relations, he claimed CNN’s critics
were “anti-journalism.”
This makes about as much sense as saying that when CNN
is critical of Trump, they are opposed to the presidency.
When Stelter rips into Fox News on a regular basis, and his
Media Unit tries to rip advertisers away from their shows,
he doesn’t think that is “anti-journalism.” But that’s where
Stelter was going in his midnight rant [emphasis his]:
Here's what I see: a divide between "pro-
journalism" and "anti-journalism." People
on the left, right and in-between who are
pro-J recognize that most journalists try to
be fair and right. Accuracy and credibility
are our currencies. Checks and balances
and layers of editing are guardrails. When
screw-ups happen, corrections are
made and lessons are learned.
Newsrooms are imperfect but hopefully
improving all the time. Media critics and
persnickety readers and sharp-elbowed
competitors all play an accountability role.
The consensus pro-J view, as far as I can tell, is that CNN
made mistakes with this Russia-related story last week;
that the company took serious action as a result; and that it
hopefully will learn from this affair.
But there's an alternative view, popular on
partisan web sites and social media, that is
176
straight-up "anti-journalism." These
activists and commenters don't promote
accountability, they promote resentment
and hatred.
They claim that most, if not all, journalists have sinister
agendas... that newsrooms are occupied by "enemies of the
people..." and that the evil "MSM" is propaganda. These
anti-J people claim that reporters routinely cover up good
news and invent bad news.
I've noticed a disturbing increase in terrorist
lingo, like "CNN is ISIS," a phrase
promoted by Alex Jones. This Tuesday
night Breitbart story also invokes CNN
and ISIS in the same sentence.
Some of this "anti-journalism" spin isn't about eradicating
bias or improving news coverage, it's about trying to stamp
out reporting altogether. It's nutty, but it's insidious, and
that's why I'm bringing it up. Millions of Americans are
exposed to these extreme views every single day through
social media...
Comparing CNN to ISIS is just trolling. But Stelter and his
crew are incredibly tolerant of leftists comparing President
Trump to Stalin, Hitler, Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong Un, and
terrorists. That’s another day at the office for the liberal
media. The mellow liberals compare Trump to Richard
Nixon.
Breitbart's James Delingpole offered a point Stelter won't
consider, their laughable pretense that the liberal, partisan
media isn't liberal or partisan. Delingpole recalled being on
a panel discussion:
"What amazed me that, while I was
perfectly frank with the audience that
Breitbart was a conservative media
organization which catered for a largely
conservative readership, both the guy from
CNN and the guy from [the] New York
Times were adamant that they were
objective seekers-after-truth."
The truth about their bias they just never admit.
Stelter insists that unless you honor and respect the
intentions of liberal journalists – never questioning that
their motives might be partisan – then you are “anti-
journalism.” If you actually document that the media elites
“cover up good news and invent bad news,” then you’re
“anti-journalism.” If you document that journalists and
Democratic operatives are operating hand in glove – like,
.
177
for example, CNN analysts offering questions to Hillary
Clinton in advance, or journalists sending e-mails offering
Clinton officials the chance to edit their stories before
publication – that’s somehow “anti-journalism.”
What we’re doing at NewsBusters isn’t “anti-journalism.”
It’s journalism on journalism.
 Trump Rips
'Amazonwashingtonpost'
As Fake News
By Jordan Fabian
06/28/17 09:32 AM EDT
President Trump on Wednesday attacked The Washington
Post and its owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, for its
coverage of him and his administration.
“The #AmazonWashingtonPost, sometimes
referred to as the guardian of Amazon not
paying internet taxes (which they should) is
FAKE NEWS!” the president
tweeted Wednesday morning.
The president is escalating his attacks on the news media
as he struggles to advance his agenda in Congress and
grapples with the wide-ranging probe into whether his
associates colluded with Russia in its efforts to
influence the 2016 presidential election.
.
178
Trump’s broadside against the Post came after it published
an article revealing that fake Time magazine covers with
Trump's photo hung at several of his properties.
It also ran a piece headlined “Who’s Afraid Of Trump?
Not Enough Republicans — At Least For Now.” It
details the president’s strained efforts to get wavering GOP
senators behind the Senate plan to repeal and replace
ObamaCare.
He also went after The New York Times earlier
Wednesday over a similar piece.
“The failing @nytimes writes false story
after false story about me. They don't even
call to verify the facts of a story. A Fake
News Joke!” he tweeted. “Some of the
Fake News Media likes to say that I am not
totally engaged in healthcare. Wrong, I
know the subject well & want victory for
U.S.”
In his Post tweet, Trump appeared to reference Amazon’s
past efforts to keep online purchases tax free. But the
retailer does collect sales tax on purchases across the U.S.
Breaking with practice of past presidential nominees,
Trump refused to release his tax returns during the 2016
campaign.
 CNN: 'We're Not Complaining'
About Press Briefings, 'Just Pointing it Out'
By Nicholas Fondacaro
June 29, 2017 12:55 AM EDT
In one of the most ridiculous segments on CNN
Wednesday, host Don Lemon claimed that he and other
personalities of the organization weren’t complaining
about the Trump White House’s press briefings.
“But this is just more about pointing out
the hypocrisy in all this. Listen, we're
not complaining here. We're just
pointing it out to you, everyone,” he
managed to say with a straight face on
CNN Tonight.
That assertion came after CNN had spent the first half of
the week shouting from the rooftops about how the White
House wasn’t allowing video coverage of the daily White
House press briefings.
And un-ironically, Lemon’s declaration of intent came
after he and his liberal journalist guests spent the first 10
minutes of the show discussing the press briefings.
“Yesterday's press briefing was on
camera. A good portion of it was to
attack the press. And unfairly do it. Is
this about the president needing an
enemy,” he asked David Chalian.
“I mean, it is an attempt to discredit the
news media which at times when
reporting what is happening could be
critical of the Trump administration, of
the president, himself, and the facts
may not stack up exactly how he likes
them,” Chalian tried to explain.
179
Lemon then targeted Trump supporters with a snide
comment about their intelligence.
“Yeah, but the interesting thing is his
supporters will believe it, but most --
most other Americans will not believe
it,” he sneered.
Well, the joke is on Lemon because a majority of
Americans don’t trust the media, and that’s according to
Gallup.
And it wasn’t just the current White House that was fine
with a lack of televised press briefings. A bipartisan
collection of a George W. Bush press secretary (Ari
Fleischer) and a Bill Clinton press secretary (Mike
McCurry) came out in support of a heavily delayed release
of the press conference recording. But CNN’s own press
briefing crusader, Senior White House Correspondent
Jim Acosta found ridiculous “flaws” in their idea.
“What if there's a terrorist attack? What
if there's a hurricane? What if there's an
earthquake,” Acosta seriously asked. “And
there's a need for a live briefing here at
the White House to talk about what's
going on in the country.” He couldn’t
wrap his mind around the idea that the
White House would be the ones to say
when they could broadcast live. “They’re
our cameras, Don, as we talked about
the other night, our cameras, our lights,
it's our briefing room. It's not their
briefing room,” he angrily told Lemon.
The fact that Acosta claimed that the White House briefing
room belonged to the media proves that their antics were
more about them than it was for the public’s interest.
Acosta would most likely defend his comment by saying
“our briefing room” meant he was speaking for the
American people. But it came at the end of a list of things
CNN’s financial department has receipts for.
Lemon had, even more, insults to fling at the White House.
“Yeah, it's, you 2017. I mean, should we
go back to dial-up as well? It's kind of
ridiculous. Why don't they just answer
the questions,” he spat.
He went on to claim that he had seen more combative
press briefings before Trump was in office and that
Acosta’s open hostility towards the President wasn’t much.
“I’m just a big teddy bear, Don. You
know that,” Acosta quipped.
And before the panel moved on to talking about Trump’s
first 2020 campaign event, Lemon wanted to make sure
that the viewers understood their intentions in talking
about the press briefings.
“Yeah. I want people to see the
hypocrisy here,” he said. “But this is just
more about pointing out the hypocrisy
in all this. Listen, we're not complaining
here. We're just pointing it out to you,
everyone.”
That’s completely laughable especially when they were
running chyrons that read
"President Trump Making the Media the
Enemy?" and "No Live On-Camera
Briefing - Again."
Transcript below:
CNN Tonight
June 28, 2017
10:03:11 PM Eastern
DON LEMON: David, let's talk more about this whole thing
with the press. Yesterday's press briefing was on
camera. A good portion of it was to attack the press.
And unfairly do it. Is this about the president needing an
enemy?
DAVID CHALIAN: Yeah, in part, Don, it is. I mean, it is an
attempt to discredit the news media which at times when
reporting what is happening could be critical of the Trump
administration, of the president, himself, and the facts may
180
not stack up exactly how he likes them. So, if he engages in
the campaign to discredit the news media, then his
supporters will trust much more in his Twitter feed than they
will in the facts of the matter being reported by the news.
The other piece of this is, of course, to stoke his supporters.
I mean, this is -- this is something that he has dipped in the
well on many, many times. To take on the press, take on the
mainstream media, in a way to get his supporters more
wound up and excited to support him. This is a very
convenient foil for him.
LEMON: Yeah, but the interesting thing is his supporters
will believe it, but most -- most other Americans will not
believe it.
(…)
JIM ACOSTA: Hey, Don. Can I bring up a question about
this also? I saw this proposal from McCurry and Fleischer
earlier today. Here's one of the flaws in that proposal.
What if there's a terrorist attack? What if there's a
hurricane? What if there's an earthquake? And there's a
need for a live briefing here at the White House to talk
about what's going on in the country.
You know, those kinds of occasions do arise, as you
remember with Ferguson. Can you imagine if we did not
have live briefings at the White House during Ferguson, for
example? And so the question becomes, does the White
House control the switch? Do they get to make it live
when they want it to be live? Do they get to switch it off
when they don't want it to be live? They’re our cameras,
Don, as we talked about the other night, our cameras,
our lights, it's our briefing room. It's not their briefing
room.
LEMON: Yeah, it's, you 2017. I mean, should we go back
to dial-up as well? It's kind of ridiculous. Why don't they
just answer the questions? Then that way -- because
reporters-- Listen, I've seen more combative interviews, by
the way, I haven't forgot about you, Kaitlyn, don't worry
about it. I've seen more combative interviews in the past
than you, Jim Acosta, during this. I mean, you know, if you
look back, if you go back and look at combative interviews in
White House briefings, I don't think that you're at the top of
the list. This is all –
ACOSTA: I’m just a big teddy bear, Don. You know that.
LEMON: But it’s all a ruse and we know that.
(…)
LEMON: Yeah. I want people to see the hypocrisy here.
Listen, reporters, we in media are used to taking the tough
questions. Getting criticized. But this is just more about
pointing out the hypocrisy in all this. Listen, we're not
complaining here. We're just pointing it out to you,
everyone.

181
 NYT Finally Retracts Russia-Gate Canard
By Robert Parry
June 29, 2017
Exclusive: A founding Russia-gate myth is that all 17 U.S.
intelligence agencies agreed that Russia hacked into and
distributed Democratic emails, a falsehood that The New
York Times has belatedly retracted, reports Robert Parry.
The New York Times has finally admitted that one of the
favorite Russia-gate canards – that all 17 U.S. intelligence
agencies concurred on the assessment of Russian hacking
of Democratic emails – is false.
New York Times building in New York City. (Photo from Wikipedia)
On Thursday, the Times appended a correction to a June
25 article that had repeated the false claim, which has been
used by Democrats and the mainstream media for months
to brush aside any doubts about the foundation of the
Russia-gate scandal and portray President Trump as
delusional for doubting what all 17 intelligence agencies
supposedly knew to be true.
In the Times’ White House Memo of June 25,
correspondent Maggie Haberman mocked Trump for
“still refus[ing] to acknowledge a basic fact
agreed upon by 17 American intelligence
agencies that he now oversees: Russia
orchestrated the attacks, and did it to help
get him elected.”
However, on Thursday, the Times – while leaving most of
Haberman’s ridicule of Trump in place – noted in a
correction that the relevant intelligence
182
“assessment was made by four intelligence
agencies — the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence, the Central
Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and the National Security
Agency. The assessment was not
approved by all 17 organizations in the
American intelligence community.”
The Times’ grudging correction was vindication for some
Russia-gate skeptics who had questioned the claim of a
full-scale intelligence assessment, which would usually
take the form of a National Intelligence Estimate (or NIE),
a product that seeks out the views of the entire Intelligence
Community and includes dissents.
The reality of a more narrowly based Russia-gate
assessment was admitted in May by President Obama’s
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and
Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan in sworn
congressional testimony.
Clapper testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee
on May 8 that the Russia-hacking claim came from a
“special intelligence community
assessment” (or ICA) produced by selected
analysts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, “a
coordinated product from three agencies –
CIA, NSA, and the FBI – not all 17
components of the intelligence community,”
the former DNI said.
Clapper further acknowledged that the analysts who
produced the Jan. 6 assessment on alleged Russian hacking
were “hand-picked” from the CIA, FBI and NSA.
Yet, as any intelligence expert will tell you, if you “hand-
pick” the analysts, you are really hand-picking the
conclusion. For instance, if the analysts were known to be
hard-liners on Russia or supporters of Hillary Clinton, they
could be expected to deliver the one-sided report that they
did.
Politicized Intelligence
In the history of U.S. intelligence, we have seen how this
selective approach has worked, such as the phony
determination of the Reagan administration pinning the
attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II and other acts
of terror on the Soviet Union.
Hillary Clinton at the Code 2017 conference on May 31, 2017.
CIA Director William Casey and Deputy Director Robert
Gates shepherded the desired findings through the process
by putting the assessment under the control of pliable
analysts and sidelining those who objected to this
politicization of intelligence.
The point of enlisting the broader intelligence community
– and incorporating dissents into a final report – is to guard
against such “stove-piping” of intelligence that delivers the
politically desired result but ultimately distorts reality.
Another painful example of politicized intelligence was
President George W. Bush’s 2002 National Intelligence
Estimate on Iraq’s WMD that removed State Department
and other dissents from the declassified version that was
given to the public.
Since Clapper’s and Brennan’s testimony in May, the
Times and other mainstream news outlets have avoided a
direct contradiction of their earlier acceptance of the 17-
.
183
intelligence-agencies canard by simply referring to a
judgment by “the intelligence community.”
That finessing of their earlier errors has allowed Hillary
Clinton and other senior Democrats to continue
referencing this fictional consensus without challenge, at
least in the mainstream media.
For instance, on May 31 at a technology conference in
California, Clinton referred to the Jan. 6 report, asserting
that
“Seventeen agencies, all in agreement,
which I know from my experience as a
Senator and Secretary of State, is hard to
get. They concluded with high confidence
that the Russians ran an extensive
information war campaign against my
campaign, to influence voters in the
election.”
The failure of the major news organizations to clarify this
point about the 17 agencies may have contributed to
Haberman’s mistake on June 25 as she simply repeated the
groupthink that nearly all the Important People in
Washington just knew to be true.
But the Times’ belated correction also underscores the
growing sense that the U.S. mainstream media has joined
in a political vendetta against Trump and has cast aside
professional standards to the point of repeating false
claims designed to denigrate him.
That, in turn, plays into Trump’s Twitter complaints that
he and his administration are the targets of a “witch hunt”
led by the “fake news” media, a grievance that appears to
be energizing his supporters and could discredit whatever
ongoing investigations eventually conclude.
 H. R. McMaster Manipulating
Intelligence Reports To Trump
National Security Adviser Wants 150,000 Ground Troops In Syria
By Mike Cernovich
June 29, 2017

As NSA, McMaster’s job is to synthesize intelligence

reports from all other agencies. President Trump is being
given an inaccurate picture of the situation in Syria, as
McMaster is seeking to involve the U.S. in a full scale war
in Syria.

The McMaster-Petraeus plan calls for 150,000 American

ground troops in Syria.

Current National Security Adviser Herbert Raymond “H.

R.” McMaster is manipulating intelligence reports given to
President Donald Trump, Cernovich Media can now
report. McMaster is plotting how to sell a massive ground
war in Syria to President Trump with the help of disgraced
former CIA director and convicted criminal David
Petraeus, who mishandled classified information by
sharing documents with his mistress.

184
 Unease in Brussels over Trump's Poland visit
By Justyna Pawlak | WARSAW
Thu Jun 29, 2017 | 1:24am EDT
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump arrives at the
Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport in Rome, Italy, May 23, 2017.
REUTERS/Remo Casilli/File Photo
A trip to Poland by U.S. President Donald Trump next
week may feel like a diplomatic coup for the right-wing
government, but western European nations are uneasy it
will encourage Warsaw's defiance towards Brussels.
Trump visits Poland for one day - en route to a G20
summit in Hamburg, Germany - to take part in a gathering
of leaders from central Europe, Baltic states and the
Balkans, an event convened by Poland to bolster regional
trade and infrastructure.
Brussels diplomats view the July 6 gathering, dubbed the
Three Seas summit because the countries involved border
the Baltic, Black and Adriatic seas, as a Polish bid to carve
out influence outside the European Union with which the
nationalist government has repeatedly clashed.
Trump plans to promote U.S. natural gas exports to the
leaders from central and eastern Europe, a region heavily
reliant on Russian supplies, his top economic adviser said.
Poland received its first shipment of U.S. liquefied natural
gas (LNG) this month.
Most diplomats in Brussels dismiss the importance of the
Three Seas project, co-hosted by Croatia, but are wary
over Trump's high-profile visit to participate in a project
one senior EU official called Poland's push towards "self-
ghettoisation".
"One cannot but feel a bit suspicious if it isn't an attempt to
break up European unity," another EU diplomat said about
the Three Seas project.
185
Poland's ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has played a
major role in fuelling a deepening rift between ex-
communist and Western members of the European Union,
at a time when the bloc is struggling with the aftermath of
Britain's decision to leave.
Since winning a parliamentary election in 2015, the PiS
has angered France over a canceled army procurement
deal, brought relations with Germany to their worst in
nearly a decade, and is facing EU action over what critics
call its authoritarian tilt.
Poland is one of the leading voices in the region against
migration, a view it shares with Trump alongside a
disregard for climate change and suspicion of international
bodies.
"A MADNESS OF ELITES"
Underscoring Warsaw's mistrust towards the EU, Prime
Minister Beata Szydlo recently called an EU quotas policy
for relocation of refugees from the Middle East "a madness
of Brussels elites", in a speech in parliament.
In turn, EU leaders delivered a snub to Poland's
government by steamrolling its objections and
reappointing former Polish premier Donald Tusk to chair
summits. Szydlo, acting on orders from party boss and
long-time Tusk adversary Jaroslaw Kaczynski, had vowed
to stop him securing a second 30-month term.
Warsaw portrayed the issue as one of fundamental
principle, in which vital national interests had been ignored
by a Brussels machine dominated by "German diktat". Its
crushing defeat showed how far the biggest of the ex-
communist states that joined the EU after the Cold War
appears isolated, even in Eastern Europe.
Deeply distrustful of Moscow, Poland hopes Trump, who
once called NATO "obsolete", will reconfirm his
commitment to the alliance's military build-up in eastern
Europe, a deterrence policy against Russia, and possibly
promise more.
The United States has about 900 troops on Polish soil as
part of a rotating NATO contingent in eastern Europe.
NATO AND TRUMP
But Western diplomats are wary that Trump could use his
trip to Warsaw to repeat criticism of Europe's low defense
spending, which has irritated many Western leaders.
Trump denounced some NATO members' failure to meet a
joint target of two percent of economic output, at a
meeting of alliance leaders in Brussels last month. Poland,
alongside the United States, is one of the few members
who meet the goal.
"We are not sure what Trump's message is going to be ... If
he is here to reinforce Washington's commitment to
(NATO's mutual defense principle)? Great!," one EU
diplomat said.
"What if he makes it conditional, to be based on meeting
the ... spending goal? This would cause a lot of damage."
Diplomatic observers who watch Washington say Trump
may want to use the trip to deliver a message that he is
serious about countering threats from Russia.
"Most of the countries (at the Warsaw summit) see Russia
as their main security threat and most strongly support
NATO and would like a stronger U.S. force presence in
their countries," said Heather Conley, who was a State
Department official in the George W. Bush administration.
"GET OUT AND TRAVEL"
Some western European officials view Trump's nod to the
Warsaw government as counter-productive at a time when
European unity is wavering.
186
"We encourage Mr Trump to get out and travel as much as
he can. He needs to understand Europe and he can do that
by getting out and speaking to people, to European
leaders," said one European official, who declined to be
named.
"(But) he can't do deals with individual countries over the
head of the European Union," he said. "In Hamburg, he
will hear different arguments, we can clear up anything
that has been misconstrued."
Poland has expressed hopes Trump can persuade U.S.
business to invest in a network of north-south rail and road
links central to the regional initiative, something U.S.
diplomats and many economists dismiss as unrealistic.
Much commerce in eastern Europe is done along east-west
trade routes rather than between north and south, to a large
degree a reflection of German economic dominance.
Some governments in the east may also view Poland's
ambitions of regional leadership with suspicion, cautious
not to damage relations with trade partners in Berlin.
"We are monitoring it," said a Czech government source.
"But we don't put much weight on it at the moment."
(Additional reporting by Pawel Sobczak in Warsaw,
Alastair Macdonald and Robin Emmott in Brussels,
Michel Rose in Paris, and Roberta Rampton in
Washington, editing by Peter Millership)
 Trump Slams Morning "Psycho" Joe,
Says Mika "Bleeding Badly From A Face-Lift"
By Tyler Durden
Jun 29, 2017 11:07 AM

Just when you thought President Trump's tweet tirade

against his denigrators in the media had peaked, it appears
he just turned up the anger amplifier to '11'...

Yes, the president of the United States just said that. And
cue the CNN meltdown over this outburst...

Brzezinski responded to Trump's tweets by posting a

Cheerios promo that reads "Made For Little Hands."

187
 Sarah Huckabee Sanders Cites MRC Study
On Networks Obsessing Over Russia
By Curtis Houck
June 29, 2017 3:53 PM EDT
At Thursday’s combative White House press briefing,
deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders cited the
latest blockbuster study by the Media Research Center’s
Rich Noyes, which found that the evening newscasts of
ABC, CBS, and NBC spent May and June obsessing over
possible Trump-Russia collusion to the detriment of actual
policy topics.
The liberal media spent much of the briefing questioning
Huckabee Sanders about President Trump’s lewd tweets
about Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski’s face when
the deputy press secretary fought back with Noyes’s study.
She began by noting that Trump “would love for us all to
focus on the legislative agenda a whole lot more,” but
ABC, CBS, and NBC don’t seem interested in doing that:
[Y]ou look at the coverage over the last
month of the extended period between May
and June, all of the major networks, if you
look at their coverage and what they're
talking about, they spent one minute in the
evening newscasts talking about tax
reform, three minutes on infrastructure, five
minutes on the economy and jobs, 17
minutes on health care, and 353 minutes
— 353 minutes, attacking the President
and pushing a false narrative on Russia.
Imploring the media snowflakes to “look at that in
comparison” and reconsider this promise of theirs that
they would love to focus on policy.
To the groans and gripes coming from reporters, she
continued:
188
[Y]ou guys get to help set that table and
353 minutes of attacks against the
President and driving a false narrative and
one minute on tax reform. That's over the
course of a month. That's crazy. The
numbers — guys, the numbers don't lie.
The media's focus on priorities, they don't
line up with the rest of America. Right now,
we've got our economies growing, the
stock market’s up, unemployment is down,
jobs are back, and ISIS is on the run.
America is winning and that's what we'd
like to talk about. But you guys constantly
ignore that narrative.
Of course, CNN senior White House correspondent Jim
Acosta tried to get questions into Huckabee Sanders by
mercilessly yelling at her, but Huckabee Sanders allowed
Fox News Radio’s John Decker to move on the briefing.
Decker wanted to talk about the tweets and argued the
media’s hands have been tied whenever Trump tweets
something controversial, but Huckabee Sanders correctly
noted that they certainly haven’t based on the MRC study:
Look, I think he's put out a number of
tweets on health care, on the immigration
bills that’ll be in the House today, we that's
not being talked about. That's not being
asked about. But the discrepancy, again,
353 minutes, you can't say that you want to
talk about policy and then you look at the
numbers and they just don't lie. You can't
expect for that amount of attack and
intensity to come on a President and him to
never respond.
Here’s the relevant portion of the transcript from June 29's
White House Press Briefing:
White House Press Briefing
June 29, 2017
2:43 p.m. Eastern
SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS: I think the President would love
for us all to focus on the legislative agenda a whole lot more over
— you look at the coverage over the last month of the extended
period between May and June, all of the major networks, if you
look at their coverage and what they're talking about, they spent
one minute in the evening newscasts talking about tax reform,
three minutes on infrastructure, five minutes on the economy and
jobs, 17 minutes on health care, and 353 minutes — 353
minutes, attacking the President and pushing a false narrative on
Russia. I mean, look at that in comparison. If you guys want to
talk about legislative agenda and focus on policy and priorities,
you guys get to help set that table and 353 minutes of attacks
against the President and driving a false narrative and one
minute on tax reform. That's over the course of a month. That's
crazy. [BRIEFING ROOM GROANS, SCREAMS] The numbers
— guys, the numbers don't lie. The media's focus on priorities,
they don't line up with the rest of America. Right now, we've got
our economies growing, the stock market’s up, unemployment is
down, jobs are back, and ISIS is on the run. America is winning
and that's what we'd like to talk about. But you guys constantly
ignore that narrative.
189
JIM ACOSTA: Sarah, doesn't he create these distractions on his
own?
HUCKABEE SANDERS: But you guys constantly ignore that
narrative.
ACOSTA: Sarah, doesn't he create these distractions on his
own?
HUCKABEE SANDERS: Go ahead, John.
JOHN DECKER [Fox News Radio]: All of those points about the
positive developments of what the President's agenda are
certainly true, all of those things are true, but the President today
put out this tweet which takes away from all of that and you
expect us here in this room to simply ignore that. I think that's the
valid question that should be asked of you right now. Should we
just ignore this entirely?
HUCKABEE SANDERS: Look, I think he's put out a number of
tweets on health care, on the immigration bills that’ll be in the
House today, we that's not being talked about. That's not being
asked about. But the discrepancy, again, 353 minutes, you can't
say that you want to talk about policy and then you look at the
numbers and they just don't lie. You can't expect for that amount
of attack and intensity to come on a President and him to never
respond.
ACOSTA: Does he create his own distractions?
 Obama Accidentally Exposes Russia HOAX:
“No Serious Person” Believes The Russians Could
“Rig America’s Elections”
By Mike Adams
Thursday, June 29, 2017

had it in the bag. So when Donald Trump began voicing

his concerns that the election was being rigged against
him, Obama mocked him, and the entire mainstream media
attacked Trump as being a loony tunes conspiracy theorist,
insisting that elections could not be stolen or rigged in
America. Obama specifically stated, “There is no evidence
that that has happened in the past…” and went on to
proclaim that if Trump won, the Democrats would
graciously accept their loss and cooperate with Trump.
(Yes, Obama actually said that.)

I find it astonishing that even though this took place less

Thanks to the incessant bombardment of the public with
fake news dreamed up by CNN and other “fake news”
media outlets, no one seems to remember that right before
the 2016 election, President Obama assured the voters that
America’s election couldn’t possibly be rigged, saying,
“there is no serious person out there who would suggest
somehow that you could even — you could even rig
America’s elections, in part, because they are so
decentralized and the numbers of votes involved.”
than one year ago, nobody on the Left seems to
remember any of this. It’s almost as if this entire chapter
of U.S. history has been memory wiped from the minds of
Leftists.
To refresh your memory, here’s a partial transcript and
video of Obama’s speech, sourced from TIME Magazine:

In a now-infamous talk dubbed the “stop whining” speech,

Obama mocked Donald Trump for suggesting that the
election was being rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton. In
response, Obama told Trump that rigging the presidential
election in America was impossible and that Trump
should “stop whining” and “go try to make his case to get
votes.” (Source: Reuters)

That’s exactly what Donald Trump did, of course. He

made his case to the voters, and they elected him
President. That’s when Obama, Clinton and the entire
As you read these words, note carefully how the
Left-wing fake news machine reversed the script and
Democrats have utterly betrayed everything Obama
dredged up their baseless, evidence-free assertions that
stated:
Trump had somehow colluded with the Russians to “steal
the election.” (Apparently, elections can only be stolen
when Democrats don’t win, you see.) OBAMA: One of the great things about America’s
democracy is we have a vigorous, sometimes bitter political
contest and when it’s done, historically, regardless of party,
You mean the same election that Obama just told everyone
the person who loses the election congratulates the winner,
couldn’t be stolen? Keep in mind that until Election Day,
who reaffirms our democracy and we move forward.
everybody on the Left believed Hillary was going to easily
win. This was largely because of all the illegal voting of
non-citizens who are routinely recruited by Democrats to That’s how democracy survives because we recognize that
steal elections. So much voter fraud was already “baked” there’s something more important than any individual
into the election that Obama and Clinton were certain they
190
 campaign. And that is making sure that the integrity and
trust in our institutions sustains itself.
Because democracy, by definition, works by consent, not
by force. I have never seen, in my lifetime or in modern
political history, any presidential candidate trying to
discredit the elections and the election process before
votes have even taken place.
It’s unprecedented. It happens to be based on no facts;
every expert, regardless of political party, regardless of
ideology, conservative or liberal, who has ever examined
these issues in a serious way, will tell you that instances of
significant voter fraud are not to be found, that — keep in
mind, elections are run by state and local officials, which
means that there are places like Florida, for example,
where you’ve got a Republican governor, whose
Republican appointees are going to running and monitoring
a whole bunch of these election sites.
The notion that somehow if Mr. Trump loses Florida, it’s
because of those people that you have to watch out for,
that is both irresponsible and, by the way, doesn’t really
show the kind of leadership and toughness that you want
out of a president.
If you start whining before the game’s even over, if
whenever things are going badly for you and you lose, you
start blaming somebody else, then you don’t have what it
takes to be in this job because there are a lot of times
when things don’t go our way or my way.
.
191
That’s OK, you fight through it, you work through it, you try
to accomplish your goals. But the larger point I want to
emphasize here is that there is no serious person out there
who would suggest somehow that you could even — you
could even rig America’s elections, in part, because they
are so decentralized and the numbers of votes involved.
There is no evidence that that has happened in the past or
that there are instances in which that will happen this time.
And so I’d invite Mr. Trump to stop whining and go try to
make his case to get votes.
And if he got the most votes, then it would be my
expectation of Hillary Clinton to offer a gracious concession
speech and pledge to work with him in order to make sure
that the American people benefit from an effective
government.
And it would be my job to welcome Mr. Trump, regardless
of what he’s said about me or my differences with him on
my opinions, and escort him over to the Capitol, in which
there would be a peaceful transfer of power.
That’s what Americans do. That’s why America is already
great. One way of weakening America, making it less
great, is if you start betraying those basic American
traditions that have been bipartisan, and have helped to
hold together this democracy now for well over two
centuries.
 Fake Story Scandal:
How Russia Obsession Led CNN Into A Trap
Alex GORKA
29.06.2017
CNN is in trouble, with its reputation tanking as a result
of publishing an article connecting Trump ally and Wall
Street financier Anthony Scaramucci, who served on the
executive committee of Trump's transition team, to the
$10-billion Russian Direct Investment Fund. The story
based on a single antonymous source happened to be a
fake. Despite swift retraction of the article, apology
published and the following resignation of three veteran
journalists, the image of the cable news network has been
greatly tarnished.
True, CNN imposed new rules on the stories regarding
Russia but it will hardly repair the damage done. The
network was on track for record profit of more than $1
billion in 2017. It has been expanding investigative teams
while vigorously attacking the US president to be
ultimately caught in an anti-Trump trap. «I would
encourage everyone in this room and, frankly, everyone
across the country, to take a look at it», Deputy Press
Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said. «I think if it is
accurate, I think it’s a disgrace to all of media, to all of
journalism."
In early January President Donald Trump called CNN
«fake news’. The White House refused to send its
spokespeople or surrogates onto CNN shows, accusing the
network’s reporters of publishing highly-damaging and
unverified accusations about the president’s behavior in
Russia. Some people believed it was not a smart move
because leading news networks, like CNN, have become
powerful enough to make politicians, including presidents,
do their best to avoid quarrels. It is widely believed that
politicians come and go, but media outlets remain. Looks
192
like CNN is on the way to become an exclusion from this
rule.
The recent fake story is just another example of the
network’s inaccurate reporting and wrongdoings. CNN has
been involved in a series of scandals. It touted the boy
called Omran Daqneesh as the face of civilian suffering in
Aleppo at a time the city was divided between pro-
government and rebel forces and suffered under intensive
fighting. CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour used the
picture of Daqneesh in her October interview with Russian
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to question Russia’s
support of Damascus in the Syrian conflict. «That is a war
crime, sir», she said showing the photo. The boy
resurfaced in world media this month after his family
agreed to talk to journalists. His father Mohammad Kheir
Daqneesh accused the White Helmets of using his family
to produce propaganda.
In March, CNN reported that the FBI had information
suggesting President Donald Trump associates «may have
coordinated» with Russians on the release of information
damaging Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton during the
election. «There’s probably more evidence that CNN
colluded with the Clinton campaign to give her questions
than the Trump campaign gave any kind of collusion»,
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer snarked at
today’s press briefing, when asked about that report.
In May, comedian Kathy Griffin was fired by CNN for the
shocking picture in which she was seen holding a mask of
Trump’s bloody, severed head. The same month, CNN
anchor Anderson Cooper apologised for 'crude' remark to
Trump supporter during an interview. This month,
CNN had to fire Reza Aslan, the host of a documentary
series on the network, for his profane anti-Trump tweets.
The list can go on, there are numerous examples of CNN’s
inappropriate behaviour as it is waging attacks against the
president and all’s fair in war. CNN belongs to the
networks President Trump called «the enemy of the
people», addressing the annual Conservative Political
Action Conference in February. Obsessed with Trump and
«Russia’s threat», CNN has downgraded in front of our
eyes into a vulgar, lowbrow network. Step by step it is
moving to collapse.
It’s not CNN only. President Trump has said that NBC and
ABC reports regarding the administration’s links to Russia
have also been biased or untrue. At a time the Senate
approved the sweeping anti-Russia sanctions bill to be
considered by the House now, somebody «leaked» to
Buzzfeed the classified information about the State
Secretary Rex Tillerson’s «secret» road map – a plan to
improve the relations with Russia. Evidently, the goal was
to spur the process of the bill becoming a law and hinder
the implementation of the State Secretary’s plans.
The US media are waging an information war in an effort
to oust Donald Trump from the White House. That’s
where Russia – the country blamed for each and
everything going awry in the United States – comes in
handy. None of the stories regarding Russia and President
Trump has been backed up by anything like solid evidence
or facts. Even if only a small part of them were true,
impeachment procedures would be launched but nothing
like that has happened, except that US media has limited
the President's room for maneuver with endless false
stories about Russia.
193
What if the investigation led by Special Counsel Robert
Mueller does not produce any facts to make the media
information offensive look like a failed conspiracy to stage
a quite coup d’état in the United States? Will those who
work in the leading media networks waging the smear
campaign and spreading around unconfirmed information
be held responsible?
Media attacks negatively affect the prospects for a Putin-
Trump meeting during the Russia-US summit to take place
on July 7-8 in Hamburg, Germany. The US is no less
interested in the positive outcome than Russia. With the
troublesome news coming from Syria, tensions running
high between Russia and NATO, arms control and non-
proliferation regime eroding, and terrorists moving to
Africa and the Asia Pacific, as well as a host of other
issues on the agenda, the US media do a disservice to their
own country by obstructing all attempts to revive the
Russia-US dialogue on burning issues of mutual interest.
Intensification of media attacks against the president in the
days left till the event in Germany is something to be
expected. But too much zeal is not always a good thing.
Scoop stories attract public attention just for a few days,
but a good reputation is hard to win and easy to lose. The
CNN fake news scandal is a good illustration of the fact.
 New York Times Retracts Rumor On Russia-Gate
Following Ridicule
SPUTNIK
6/30/2017
The New York Times has finally retracted its assertion that
17 US national intelligence agencies had unanimously
agreed that Russia organized cyberattacks against the US.
On Thursday, the New York Times issued a correction of a
June 25 White House Memo report by correspondent
Maggie Haberman:
“The assessment was made by four
intelligence agencies – the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence, the
Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal
Bureau of Investigation and the National
Security Agency. The assessment was not
approved by all 17 organizations in the
American intelligence community.”
The Times’ retraction fails to reflect the fact that even
those four agencies weren’t in full agreement.
The National Security Agency (NSA) is the main body that
can trace and track all incoming and outgoing cyber
activity on US networks, according to CIA analyst Ray
McGovern. They offered a “moderate” confidence level
in the allegations of Russian hacking in the report cited
by the Times.
“If this was a hack, NSA would know
about it. NSA does not know about it,” he
said in an April interview. “Matter of fact,
when the CIA and FBI said, ‘we have high
confidence’ … NSA, which is the only real
agency that has the capability to trace
these things, said ‘well, we only have
moderate confidence.'”
.
194
“In the Army we call that the SWAG factor:
a scientific wild-ass guess,” McGovern
said.
Methodologically, the US intelligence community simply
doesn’t just leap to consensus conclusions, making
unanimous consent suspicious. Instead, the process allows
for dissenting opinions.
“The Times’ grudging correction was
vindication for some Russia-gate skeptics
who had questioned the claim of a full-
scale intelligence assessment,” Robert
Parry wrote for Consortium News
on Thursday, “which would usually take the
form of a National Intelligence Estimate (or
NIE), a product that seeks out the views
of the entire Intelligence Community and
includes dissents.”
What’s more, former Director of National Intelligence
James Clapper even admitted on January 6 that the
analysts responsible for preparing the report were “hand-
picked,” which leaves open the possibility that the report
was written for political, rather than intelligence, purposes.
“As any intelligence expert will tell you, if
you ‘hand-pick’ the analysts, you are really
hand-picking the conclusion,” Parry wrote.
The end result:
Hillary Clinton and other top Democrats
have had the full force of the US
intelligence community to cite this “fictional
consensus,” Parry noted.
He cited Clinton’s sophisticated rhetoric at the May 31 Re-
Code conference, where she blamed “non-existent” data
for her loss:
“Seventeen agencies, all in agreement,
which I know from my experience as a
senator and secretary of state, is hard
to get. They concluded with high
confidence that the Russians ran an
extensive information war campaign
against my campaign, to influence voters
in the election.”
 Third Undercover O’Keefe
Video Exposes CNN’s Internal Culture Of Hate
Zeropointnow
Fri Jun 30, 2017 5:26am EST

soaring right now, keep up what you’re

doing. Well, what we’re doing is Russia,
ISIS, London terror, shooting in Chicago,
that’s it.

Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe has just capped off

a week destroying CNN’s last shred of credibility with a
Friday morning release of an undercover encounter with
another producer for the network. Jimmy Carr, a hate-
filled Associate Producer, said that virtually everyone he
knows at the network – surprise – absolutely hates
President Trump.

“On the inside, we all recognize he is a

clown, that he is hilariously unqualified for
this, he’s really bad at this and that he does
not have America’s best interests. We
recognize he’s just f*cking crazy.”
Here’s the deal, this is a man who’s not actually a
Republican… He just adopted that because that was the
party he thought he could win in. He doesn’t believe
anything that these people believe. –Jimmy Carr
Fake News Bust
O’Keefe also caught CNN selectively editing out a Trump
supporter’s answer during an election panel to make him
appear stupid when giving an answer to the topic of illegal
immigrants voting in the 2016 election.
Entire video:

Carr goes on to rattle off a laundry list of grievances

against the President, stating that “90% of us are on
board with just the fact that he’s crazy.”

Carr didn’t stop at the President. When asked about the

election, the Associate Producer said American voters are
“Stupid as shit,” before insulting Kellyanne Conway – a
top Trump advisor and the first woman to run a successful
Presidential campaign.

Ratings Week of horror for CNN

Carr then echoed what another CNN producer admitted to
a Project Veritas operative – it’s all about Ratings.
“It’s decisions made by people higher than
me and if they go wow, your ratings are
While O’Keefe saved the best for last, undercover footage
released earlier in the week dealt devastating blows to the
beleaguered network whose President, Jeff Zucker, may be
on the chopping block if a merger between AT&T and
CNN parent company Time Warner is approved.

195
 “whether it’s accurate or not, I don’t know
– I think if it is accurate, it is a disgrace to
all of media, to all of journalism.” –Sarah H.
Sanders

Huckabee’s endorsement drew the ire of the MSM,

On Monday, Project Veritas released undercover
footage of a candid discussion with CNN producer John
Bonifield, in which the “Very Fake News” network
employee admitted that the whole Russia story against
President Trump is a “Mostly B.S.” ratings grab by CNN’s
CEO Jeff Zucker.
however instead of discussing the content of O’Keefe’s
video – pundits like Chuck Todd did a full Exorcist head
swivel over the fact that Huckabee hadn’t personally
verified each claim in the undercover sting (which CNN
confirmed the authenticity of).

Bonifield also admitted that he hasn’t seen any evidence of

President Trump committing a crime.

But all the nice cutesy little ethics that used to get talked
about in journalism school, you’re just like, that’s
adorable. That’s adorable. This is a business.

Then on Wednesday O’Keefe captured footage of CNN

host Van Jones saying that the Russia – Trump story is “a
big nothing burger.”

“CNN stands by our medical producer

John Bonifield. Diversity of personal
opinion is what makes CNN strong, we
welcome it and embrace it,” CNN said in a
statement. –USA Today

Death knell?

Will a cleanout of CEO Jeff Zucker and perhaps a few

Van Jones responded with a CNN op-ed,
other sacrificial wolves restore credibility to the news
calling the video a hoax and “highly edited
network that’s been faking it for years? I wouldn’t hold my
right wing propaganda” made by a “con
breath as long as guys like James O’Keefe are around to
man.”
expose the shills.
[F]or those of you unfamiliar with James O’Keefe and his
misnamed “Project Veritas,” here’s a helpful recap: James
O’Keefe is a notorious con man whose infamy arises from
his addiction to pulling the same media stunts, over and
over again. –Van Jones
(Perhaps the Project Veritas operative
approached Van Jones off camera to role-
play as a conservative for fun?)

White House Endorses

On Tuesday, White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah

H. Sanders encouraged people to watch the O’Keefe video
of CNN Producer John Bonifield admitting the Russia
story was “Mostly B.S.” pushed by CEO Jeff Zucker for
ratings.

196
 CNN Caught Editing Out
Eyewitness Testimony Of Election Vote Fraud
California Refuses To Comply With Trump
Investigation Into Illegal Voting
Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.Com
June 30, 2017
CNN has been caught deliberately
editing out eyewitness testimony of vote
fraud as California refuses to comply
with a Trump administration
investigation into how many illegal
aliens voted in the presidential election.
In James O’Keefe’s latest bombshell, he reveals how
Project Veritas was sent the full hour and a half audio
from a CNN public forum hosted by Alisyn Camerota
about Donald Trump’s first 60 days in office.
The eight minute segment that was aired on March 30
included forum member William Baer saying that he
personally witnessed people being bussed in to vote on
election day, but the segment went on to portray the man
as a conspiracy theorist.
However, the part CNN omitted included the Baer
mentioning James O’Keefe exposing how it was simple for
197
anyone to vote illegally as well as his own eyewitness
testimony when the Baer stated,
“I was actually a poll watcher in New
Jersey and I saw what was going on there,”
before he goes on to describe how he saw
students voting without proper ballots.
“At the moment Baer is about to cite the
evidence to support his claim, CNN ends
the clip,” comments O’Keefe, adding, “The
piece suggests that Baer did not have a
legitimate answer to Camerota’s question –
in actuality the answer was cut because it
didn’t fit their narrative – this is a textbook
lie of omission.”
The clip was featured in part 3 of O’Keefe’s ‘American
Pravda’ series, which also showed a CNN producer
revealing how 90% of the people at CNN thought
Americans were “stupid as shit”.
Meanwhile, California Secretary of State Alex Padilla has
refused to comply with President Donald Trump’s voter
fraud commission that is investigating how many illegal
aliens voted in the presidential election.
“Padilla said Trump’s voter fraud
commission’s request of personal voting
data on every American voter “is a waste of
taxpayer money” that aims to ratify a false
claim that millions voted illegally,” reports
the Huffington Post.
How can Padilla assert that the claim is false while
simultaneously blocking an investigation that would
determine whether or not it was false?
Trump was relentlessly attacked by the media after the
election when he claimed that he would have won the
popular vote if millions of illegal aliens hadn’t voted for
Hillary Clinton.
Ever since then, Trump’s assertion that millions of illegals
voted has been called a “fake news” conspiracy theory.

If it’s all just a conspiracy theory, why is California

refusing to take part in an investigation? Something to
hide?

As we reported earlier this month, a new study reveals that

up to 5.7 million illegal immigrants were likely to have
voted in the 2008 election, proving Donald Trump was
right to have concerns and that a proper investigation is
critical.
.

198
 CNN's Carl Bernstein Rails Against
Trump's Malfunctioning, 'Malignant Presidency'
By Brad Wilmouth
June 30, 2017 2:32 PM EDT
Appearing as a guest on Friday's New Day, CNN political
commentator Carl Bernstein repeatedly attacked the
Trump administration as a "malignant presidency" and
asserted that it is "not functioning." Bernstein:
"We are in the midst of a malignant
presidency. And that malignancy is known
to the military leaders of the country -- it's
known to the Republican leadership in
Congress who recognize it -- and it's known
to the intelligence community."
He went on to intone:
"We're in foreign territory. We have never
been in a malignant presidency like this
before. It calls on our leaders -- it calls on
our journalists to do a different kind of
reporting, a different kind of dealing with
this presidency and the President of the
United States."
Co-host Chris Cuomo set up the segment by recalling a
controversial tweet by President Donald Trump targeting
MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski, and then posed:
His spokespeople are telling reporters to
focus on policy. The question is,
"How?" when the President keeps doing
things like this -- it makes you wonder if it is
intentional.
After asking Bernstein for his reaction, the CNN
commentator began:
199
I think something much greater is
happening -- and that is that we are in the
midst of a malignant presidency. And that
malignancy is known to the military leaders
of the country -- it's known to the
Republican leadership in Congress who
recognize it -- and it's known to the
intelligence community.
He then added:
And the presidency of Donald Trump is not
functioning. It's not functioning partially
because of his character -- it's not
functioning partially because of his attacks
on the press which is totally moving the
needle that the American people are
watching to a side show. But it's really not
functioning because of character and
capabilities of this President are called into
grave question in a way that those who
know him best are raising serious concerns
about. And this is the greatest journalistic
challenge of the modern era to report on a
malignant presidency and what it means
and where it's going.
Substitute co-host Clarissa Ward wondered if President
Trump's tweet was meant to distract attention from health
care reform as she followed up:
Some people have said this is an issue of
impulse control, that the President is not
able to control his impulses, to attack back,
to fight fire with fire. Other people are
saying,
"Hold on, this is a genius obfuscation tactic:
divert attention from a health care bill which
has been in trouble."
What's your take?
After asserting that "both could be true," Bernstein
repeated that the Trump presidency is "not functioning"
and then warned:
 We're in foreign territory. We have never
been in a malignant presidency like this
before. It calls on our leaders -- it calls on
our journalists to do a different kind of
reporting, a different kind of dealing with
this presidency and the President of the
United States. We have to in the press be
kind of medical reporters right now. I don't
mean about the President's psyche, but
rather about every aspect of his presidency
and how and whether it is functioning
because many aspects are not functioning.
After Cuomo brought up the point of view of Trump
supporters who argue that the President has indeed made
accomplishments, Bernstein dismissively responded:
He's done a lot in terms of the perception of his base, but
not in terms of the larger population of this country, and
not in terms of what Republicans in the House and Senate
are now saying to each other, and especially in light of this
latest tweet which confirms for so many of them what
they've been worried about all along -- and that is whether
or not this President of the United States is capable of
being President.
Below is a complete transcript of the segment from the
Friday, June 30, New Day on CNN:
CHRIS CUOMO: The President's personal and offensive
tweet about another news anchor is the latest hit in Mr.
Trump's battle against the media. His spokespeople are
telling reporters to focus on policy. The question is, "How?"
when the President keeps doing things like this -- it makes
you wonder if it is intentional. Let's discuss with CNN
political commentator and legendary journalist Mr. Carl
Bernstein. ... How do you see this a tactic by the President?
CARL BERNSTEIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I
think something much greater is happening -- and that is
that we are in the midst of a malignant presidency. And that
malignancy is known to the military leaders of the country --
it's known to the Republican leadership in Congress who
recognize it -- and it's known to the intelligence community.
200
And the presidency of Donald Trump is not functioning. It's
not functioning partially because of his character -- it's not
functioning partially because of his attacks on the press
which is totally moving the needle that the American people
are watching to a side show. But it's really not functioning
because of character and capabilities of this President are
called into grave question in a way that those who know him
best are raising serious concerns about. And this is the
greatest journalistic challenge of the modern era to report on
a malignant presidency and what it means and where it's
going.
CLARISSA WARD: I mean, Carl, some people have said
this is an issue of impulse control, that the President is not
able to control his impulses, to attack back, to fight fire with
fire. Other people are saying, "Hold on, this is a genius
obfuscation tactic: divert attention from a health care bill
which has been in trouble." What's your take?
BERNSTEIN: That both could be true. But I keep going back
to the greater problem that this President is not in control of
the presidency in a way that it is functioning. And that has
got our leaders worried. They are worried about his
character -- they are worried about his capabilities -- they
are worried about his temperament and state of his
temperament, to use kind words here. We're in foreign
territory. We have never been in a malignant presidency like
this before.
It calls on our leaders -- it calls on our journalists to do a
different kind of reporting, a different kind of dealing with this
presidency and the President of the United States. We have
to in the press be kind of medical reporters right now. I don't
mean about the President's psyche, but rather about every
aspect of his presidency and how and whether it is
functioning because many aspects are not functioning. So
we need to shift --
CUOMO: To question your premise, other than the fact that
he hasn't filled a lot of vacancies yet -- and at this point in a
presidency, it's somewhat odd that the administration is as
underserved as it is in terms of appointments -- they'll say,
his defenders, "What are you talking about, Carl? Look at all
the executive orders. Look at all the regulations that have
been cut. Look at the economic stimulation that we've seen.
Look at how they got back Warmbier from North Korea.
Look at how our presence on the international stage has
changed. This President has done a lot, and he's done a lot
in terms of the perception of this country in terms of policy."
BERNSTEIN: He's done a lot in terms of the perception of
his base, but not in terms of the larger population of this
country, and not in terms of what Republicans in the House
and Senate are now saying to each other, and especially in
light of this latest tweet which confirms for so many of them
what they've been worried about all along -- and that is
whether or not this President of the United States is capable
of being President.
 They have -- many of the Republicans in Congress and our
reporters need to go out and talk to them either off the
record, on background, about the question of their
confidence in this President and whether or not he is
capable of being the President of the United States in a way
that defends us, our country, and the Constitution of the
United States. Many members of Congress, many of our
military leaders, many in our intelligence community who I've
.
201
spoken to, and I know other reporters have spoken to,
understand and are beginning to comprehend that the
underlying story here is a lack of confidence in the abilities
and character of the President of the United States of
America.
WARD: All right, Carl Bernstein, thank you for giving us the
bottom line.
 Maria Bartiromo DESTROYS John Podesta
And His Lies About Russia And Trump Collusion
John Podesta Tries To Lie About Not Having Stock
In Any Russian Company
Alex Christoforou
June 30, 2017

Fox Business News host Maria Bartiromo absolutely

destroy Hillary Clinton’s loser campaign chairman John
Podesta, the main who along with Hillary and Robby
Mook, fabricated the Russian election meddling story to
explain away their pathetic presidential election result.

Maria Bartiromo exposes just about every single lie that

John Podesta has ushered into the mainstream news cycle,
including Trump’s connection to Russia.

Podesta is left repeating the stupid “17 Intelligence

Agencies confirmed Russian interference” talking point,
which has been completely debunked by the New York
Times… Podesta had his emails hacked due, to his very poor
knowledge of technology and password protection.

The Clinton former campaign chair lost his mobile phone,

fell for a phishing scam, and then went on to blame
“Russian Hackers” for all of HRC’s problems.

The Duran has chronicled in many past posts how Hillary

Clinton’s failed campaign manager John Podesta was
personally responsible for having his entire email data
compromised by hackers, in what was later re-packaged by
the Clinton campaign staff as “Russian election meddling.”

See here…EXPOSED: John Podesta leaked the Podesta

emails to Wikileaks,

here…Hillary hypocrisy: her campaign chairman John

Podesta received $35 million from Russian government,

and here…Hillary Clinton’s connection to Russian banks

exposed through Tony Podesta’s lobbying contracts.

An example of Podesta’s password protection…

202
203
 New Undercover Video:
CNN Producer Slashes 'Stupid' Voters,
'Clown' Trump, Ugly Kellyanne
By Tim Graham
June 30, 2017 2:08 PM EDT
Project Veritas has released another undercover video of a
CNN producer saying embarrassing things underlining the
network’s liberal, anti-Trump atmosphere. Jimmy Carr, a
producer for CNN’s morning show New Day, with co-
anchors Alisyn Camerota and Chris Cuomo -- the son of
one New York Democrat governor and the brother of the
current New York Democrat governor.
Carr was caught on camera proclaiming,
“On the inside, we all recognize that he
is a clown, that he is hilariously
unqualified for this, he’s really bad at
this and that he does not have
America’s best interests. We recognize
he’s just f—ing crazy.”
He added:
“90 percent of us are on board with just the
fact that he’s crazy.”When he’s asked if
that means, 90 percent are “With Her,” he
says no, just they ‘acknowledge the fact
that he’s bats–t.”
Asked if it would be “fair to question the intellect of the
American voter,” Mr. Carr replied,
.
204
“Oh no. They’re stupid as s–t.”
Carr referred to the White House counselor as
“that awful woman Kellyanne Conway.
You know, the blonde.” When the Project Veritas
videographer asked what Conway looked like, Carr
replied,
“She looks like she got hit with a
shovel.”
“What’s that?” the man recording asked
Carr, who repeated the insult. “She looks
like she got hit with a shovel.”
The same media that's obsessing over Trump's tweets
about Mika Brzezinski will probably skip right over this.
Carr said them when he didn't think anyone was filming or
paying attention, which cannot be said for the president.
But certainly Mika agrees that Conway is
"that awful woman,"
a woman she thinks shouldn't be allowed on TV.
Carr also says Trump's not really a Republican, that he
doesn't really care about social issues like abortion or gay
marriage, or even about the budget...but that sounds like
many Republicans over the last two years. It's also a little
tougher to say with Justice Gorsuch on the Supreme
Court.
Carr is a CNN newbie, just getting a job in 2013 (although
he held internships before). So it's easier to dismiss him
than with John Bonifield, who's held many jobs at CNN.
 CNN Associate Producer:
90% Of CNN Staffers “On Board”
With Belief That Trump Is ‘Batsh*T Crazy’
Says: 'American Voters Are Stupid'
By Shepard Ambellas
June 30, 2017

producer said. “We recognize he’s just a

fu*king crazy.”

Carr said that “90%” of his colleagues at CNN are “on

board” with the belief that President Trump is ‘batshit
crazy.’

(INTELLIHUB) — An undercover video titled American

Pravda: CNN Part 3 was released by Project Veritas on
YouTube Friday morning delivering the final nail in
CNN’s coffin after exposing the agency and 90% of their
employees beliefs.

In the video, Associate Producer of the show New Day, Additionally, the narcissistic producer also proclaims that
Jimmy Carr, gives some insight into how the agencies the American voter is “stupid as shit.”
staffers generally feel about President Trump and
American voters. #boycottCNN

“We all recognize that he is a clown,

that he is hilariously unqualified for this,
he is really bad at this, and that he does
not have America’s best interests.” the
.

205
 NYT Quietly Corrects Major Falsehood
They Helped Spread On Russia Investigation
By Kristine Marsh
June 30, 2017 10:40 AM EDT

anonymous sources in the Russia investigation. For

example, this USA Today article from October 21, still
on their website, says in the headline,

“Yes, 17 Intelligence Agencies Really

Did Say Russia Was Behind Hacking.”

However the Times wasn’t the first on the left to correct

Thursday night The New York Times quietly issued a
correction online that admitted one of the media’s major
talking points about the Russia investigation wasn’t
actually true. The correction was discreetly placed on their
website under a 5 day-old article on Trump and Russia by
Maggie Haberman called “Trump’s Deflections and
Denials on Russia Frustrate Even His Allies.”
So what did the Times finally admit wasn’t true? That oft-
repeated claim that “Seventeen” intelligence agencies
assessed that Russia hacked the 2016 presidential election.
Here’s what the paper had to say about that:
this myth. Obama appointee, former Director of National
Intelligence James Clapper contradicted the media’s
narrative when he testified May 8, saying
only “three” intelligence agencies
actually made this assessment, not 17.
For finally admitting months after the fact, that one of their
major talking points wasn’t actually true, the paper earned
mockery from those on the left on Twitter:
Wikileaks:

Correction: June 29, 2017

A White House Memo article on Monday
about President Trump’s deflections and
denials about Russia referred incorrectly
to the source of an intelligence
assessment that said Russia orchestrated
hacking attacks during last year’s
presidential election. The assessment
was made by four intelligence agencies
— the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence, the Central Intelligence
The Young Turks’ Michael Tracey:
Agency, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and the National Security
Agency. The assessment was not
approved by all 17 organizations in the
American intelligence community.

This correction is a hugely significant admission because

this lie was widely propagated for over the past nine
months. It was repeated by every major media outlet, on
talk show hosts like The View and even by Hillary Clinton
during the final presidential debate. This “fact” that the left
ran with was the basis of many smug headlines meant to
shame those on the right criticizing the media’s use of

206
 Lionel Likens CNN To Professional
Wrestling Or Magic: ‘We All Knew It Was Fake’
'Newly Released Project Veritas Video Is CNN's Zapruder Film, Loved It'
By Shepard Ambellas -
June 30, 2017

The flamboyantly outspoken analyst questioned the state

that CNN must be in after years of “shoddy journalism”
have been exposed.

“Do you know what’s going on at CNN? I

mean can you imagine?” He asked.

However, the best part of the segment came when Lionel

likened CNN to professional wrestling and magic.

To be quite fair, this is like exposing

(INTELLIHUB) — Legal and media analyst Michael
William Lebron, a.k.a. Lionel, recently appeared on RT to
talk about the newly released Project Veritas video which
shows CNN producer John Bonifield saying that the entire
Russian narrative is total and complete “bullsh*t.”
“Loved it — loved it! Lionel told RT. “This
was CNN’s Zapruder film. This was the
smoking gun.”
.
professional wrestling or magic — we knew
it! We knew it [was fake] the whole time!”
He said.
But what this goes to show you is that this
is not a news organization. this is targeted
prosecution. This is an organization that’s
out for ratings only, money, revenue and is
as surrogate for […] Hillary Clinton, the
DNC, and others. So while it’s fascinating
to hear this we knew this.”

207
 Van Jones Performs Trump-Russia
'Nothing Burger' Spin Control On Anderson Cooper
By P.J. Gladnick
June 30, 2017 11:01 AM EDT
Everyone who watched the recent Project Veritas video of
Van Jones clearly heard him say that "the Russia thing is
just a big nothing burger." However, Van Jones appeared
on the June 29 Anderson Cooper 360 show to declare that
we misinterpreted what he was saying. Jones spun it that
what he meant was that the hope for impeachment of
President Donald Trump based on the proofless charge of
collusion with Russia in the 2016 election was the real
"nothing burger."
Here is Van Jones as he spin, spin, spins:
ANDERSON COOPER: A conservative activist named James
O'Keefe has released another selectively edited tape today this
time targeting CNN Political Commentator Van Jones. Van is
going to weight in on it for the first time in a moment. But first,
here's what O'Keefe chose to publish from the secretly recorded
conversation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, man. We met in Palm Springs a few
years back.
VAN JONES: Hey good to see you man, you good?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. How you been?
JONES: I'm good.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What are you doing? What do you think
is going to happen this week with the whole Russia thing?
JONES: The Russia thing is just a big nothing burger.
208
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Really? You don't think that's --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: And Van Jones joins us now. So just explain what
happened here. Who were you talking to? Where were you?
What was the context?
You've had a few days to craft a good spin so go at it, Van.
JONES: Okay. I was standing outside the bureau in Los Angeles,
you know, and I'll talk to anybody. I don't care you're a janitor,
homeless person, police officer, pop star, I talk anybody. A guy
comes up and he starts engage me in conversation. I'll talk to
anybody and he starts asking these questions around what's
going on in American politics.
As you know, I have been beating the drum about
progressives going so far over board on Russia. The news
agency should be going in on Russia. Because any time
you have the president of the United States under
investigation by the FBI that is a news story. But
Progressives have to be very careful that we don't put all
our eggs in that basket because the chances of this
cowardly Republican Party actually impeaching and then
removing a president, something that has never happened,
I think it's very, very slight.
And so, I was about to go into that and says there's nothing
you can do, and then a bunch of my guys from CNN came
out we started talking. So he took that little bit thing and
made it seem like I was out here saying that there's nothing
wrong that Donald Trump has been doing. This guy is a
hoaxster, he's a fraudster, he's been convicted, he's a
scumbag, and he does this stuff all the time.
I guess Van Jones missed the part of former FBI Director
James Comey's testimony in which he admitted that
President Trump was NOT under investigation.
COOPER: So when on the tape you say that the Russia
investigation was a big nothing burger what did you mean?
JONES: I meant for Progressives to keep jumping up and down
about this doesn't make a lot of sense because you've got a
bunch of us acting as if this guy is going to be impeached
tomorrow. That Trump is going to be impeached and he's going talking about the real pain at the bottom here in our country,
to be gone. you've got a lot of people just going in loops and cycles. I'm
not talking about news people. We got to cover this news.
Listen, from a political point of view, if you're looking I'm talking about Progressive activists who talk about
honestly, you do not have the ability to both impeach and Russia all day and don't talk about jobs any day. That has
remove this guy. got to stop. And if you think that just talking about Russia,
Russia, Russia, Russia is going to be a way to get this guy
impeached or remove or win an election. I think you are wrong
And from political point of view, it's a
and I think we need to get back to substantive stuff for ordinary
nothing burger. You've got to be
people, not only the stuff that the news media are excited about.
focused on real stuff, like jobs, health
care, addiction, and stay focus on the
substantive issues. COOPER: Van, thank you very much. You can read Van's full
editorial in the tape and the nothing burger comment at cnn.com.
In the June 26 Project Veritas video, a CNN producer
admits that CNN President Jeffrey Zucker is one of those JONES: Much ado about nothing burger.
focused mainly on Trump-Russia collusion. So in a way,
Van Jones is slamming his own boss for being overly Actually you are talking about news people, Mr. Jones,
obsessed about Trump-Russia collusion. especially your boss, Jeff Zucker, acting as a real life
Captain Ahab obsessed with chasing down his White
COOPER: Which you say we're not talking enough about. Whale in the form of non-existent Trump-Russia
collusion even if it means sinking his CNN ship.
JONES: No. You're not -- you're talking about stuff that is not
going to register for ordinary people, it's not for ordinary people. Apparently James O'Keefe of Project Veritas watched Van
Real people are going to be worried about jobs, health care, Jones' spin on Anderson Cooper and tweeted this
addiction, that kind of stuff. We've got to stay focused on that. intriguing reply:
And that's whereas about to go, but I don't know this guy and
then my guys come up from CNN whom I love at the bureau and
we start talking. So he took that little clip and he puts it out there.
But here's the reality. You would have -- the worst thing isn't that
the guy did the little hoaxster thing. This guy is a hoaxster, he's a
fraudster. The worst thing is that the Trump White House then
elevated it. So you've got the Trump White House elevating a
guy who is a known fraudster.

COOPER: But Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, you know, she

didn't know if it was true or not but urged everyone to look at it.

JONES: That's not good. Let me -- today. You always have fraud
out there putting out selectively edit, look, if you're still falling for
selectively edited videotape in 2017, you haven't been paying
attention. But for the White House to fall for it and promote it,
that's what really is terrible.

COOPER: You said that too many Democrats see the Russian
controversies is a kind of a magical get out of jail free card,
meaning that they think the president is somehow going to be
impeached.

JONES: Listen, we have a bunch of problems in our party. And

rather than dealing with those problems in a serious way,
rather than getting back to talking about jobs, backs to
.

209
 More Media Heroism!
Wapo Op-Ed Writer Finds ‘Brave’ Way
To Stick It To Trump
By Sarah D.
Posted At 4:52 Pm On June 30, 2017

In case you needed a reminder that in these troubling

times, the media are the real heroes:

So very brave. Mary-Ellen Deily writes:

I started following Trump’s personal Twitter

account after last year’s election. Social
media, he has told Americans repeatedly,
Like, wow. is our window into his unfiltered views, and
I wanted to stay informed. But by Thursday
afternoon, frankly I wanted to reattach
some sort of filter. No, I’m not arguing for
ignorance, but I’m walking away from a
conversation I simply don’t want to be a
part of.

210
In the wake of the president’s Thursday morning
tweetstorm, The Post’s editorial board weighed in:

“After his latest execrable tweets, it’s

obvious that there is no point in urging
President Trump to act with greater dignity,
respect for his office or, for that matter,
self-respect. It isn’t going to happen. That
makes it all the more urgent for the rest of
us to think about how to safeguard civility
and democratic values until his presidency
ends.”
Ha!

Last night, I looked up tips to prevent cyberbullying. At

SafeTeens.com, I found this: Block the bully. And, at
stopbullying.gov (yes, a website run by the government
that the president leads), I read about

“Kids who Reinforce” bullying: “These

children are not directly involved in the
bullying behavior but they give the bullying
an audience.”

I also know that even negative reinforcement can reinforce

bad behavior by giving the offender attention, even if it’s
not the attention he initially wanted.

So, she unfollowed his account. Think he’ll ever recover?

211
 Trump Wants All Your
Voter Data. What Could Go Wrong?
Issie Lapowsky
June 30, 2017
The private ballot is tradition in the United States. Now,
President Trump’s voter fraud commission wants to collect
every American’s voting history and make it available to
the public—all in the name of “election integrity.”
This week, the newly formed Advisory Committee on
Election Integrity asked secretaries of state across the
country for their complete voter rolls, including people’s
political parties, voting history, the last four digits of their
social security numbers, felony history, and more. The
request, submitted by committee vice chair Kris Kobach,
has both voting rights advocates and privacy hawks on
edge. It’s not just a violation of people’s voter privacy
expectations, they say, but it also sets the government up
to manipulate the often messy data contained in those voter
rolls to give the impression that voter fraud is widespread
when it isn't.
“There’s a never-ending amount of mischief
that can be done with this data in the wrong
hands,” says Myrna Perez, director of
voting rights and elections at Brennan
Center for Justice. “I think there’s going to
be a lot of false positives about people
voting when they’re ineligible.”
This committee was founded in response to the President’s
wholly unfounded claims that millions of people voted
illegally in 2016. It’s a charge that even the author of a
study President Trump has cited on the subject rejects as
an exaggeration. Recent Russian attempts to hack voting
software proves there’s ample room for improvement as
far as election security goes, but the committee’s approach
not only misses the mark, it could make the electoral
system more vulnerable than it already is. Which is,
perhaps, why more than 20 states and counting have
already said they don’t plan to comply with the ask.
“Aggregating the voter rolls from many
states creates a bigger privacy risk than the
patchwork of state data we have today,
because it creates a one-stop shop for
people who want to use the data
maliciously, from identity thieves to
stalkers,” says Jacob Hoffman-Andrews,
senior staff technologist at the Electronic
Frontier Foundation.
212
Today, much of the voter data housed by states is
technically publicly available. But states set their own
ground rules about how much information is available to
the public, who can access it, what people can do with that
information, and, often, how much they have to pay to get
their hands on it. States can, for instance, ban commercial
entities from using it to bombard their residents with ads.
Some also restrict out-of-staters from accessing the data at
all. However, the minute a state hands this information
over to the federal government, it becomes part of the
public domain, no longer subject to those state laws
dictating its use.
“Saying that it’s ‘publicly available’ is a
truism,” says Perez. “That doesn’t account
for the other limits and restrictions.”
The level of detail Kobach’s request asks for is, itself,
misleading. One kind of potential voter fraud the president
has worried about is people stealing the identities of dead
people in order to vote. But if the committee wants to
know that, it doesn’t need to know what party those people
belong to. Kobach also requested the last four digits of
people’s social security numbers, which could, ironically,
have the inadvertent effect of exposing voters to identity
fraud.
“Researchers have shown that the first five
digits can very often be guessed just based
on someone’s place and date of birth,”
says Julian Sanchez, a senior fellow at the
libertarian leaning Cato Institute, referring
to a 2009 Carnegie Mellon study. “This
seems like all risk and no reward.”
All of it would be utterly puzzling, if it weren’t for the fact
that Kobach has been pursuing changes to the national
voter rolls since before President Trump even took office.
During the transition, he was photographed during a
meeting with the president-elect with an agenda that
included references to voter rolls.
“The commission was founded to put a fig
leaf on what are already precooked policy
ideas,” says Justin Levitt, law professor at
Loyola Law School and former deputy
assistant attorney general in the
 Department of Justice’s Civil Rights
Division. “That was on the to do list before
the committee was established.”
For anyone looking to build a case that voter fraud exists,
the country’s messily maintained and inconsistent voter
databases would sure seem to provide ample proof. And
yet, anyone in the business of standardizing voter rolls—or
engaging in list-matching exercises of any kind—knows
that these lists need to be cleaned up, at a minimum, to
avoid duplications, errors, and typos.
That kind of thing takes time. The Committee has asked
for the voter rolls by July 14.
“You’re going to have a list of hundreds of
millions of records, including many, many,
many, many John Smiths, their addresses,
and sometimes the year they were born,”
Levitt says. He argues that trying to match
that information up with, say, a list of
people who immigration has flagged as
being undocumented, would be "beyond
sloppy and guaranteed to be riddled with
errors."
“There’s a lot of worry to be had about
garbage in-garbage out,” Levitt says.
213
Of course, the John Smiths may have an easier time than,
say, the Jose Garcias. Rolling Stone investigated one tool
that aims to find fraudulent voters, called Crosscheck,
which is used by more than two dozen states. It found that
the system disproportionately flags Hispanic, black, and
Asian-American voters. States can use this list to purge
people from voter rolls, whether or not the system
accurately pegged them as fraudsters. It’s not out of the
question that Kobach is looking to do something similar
nationwide. Kobach, in fact, is the person who started
Crosscheck.
"There will be allegations of people voting
more than once. There will be allegations
of people voting when they're dead,
allegations of people voting in different
states," says Perez. "When you have big
numbers like that, you're going to get
people who look the same."
The good news here is Kobach’s note is merely a request,
not a mandate. Secretaries of state in both red and blue
states are taking a stand against it. In this polarized
political environment, that should tell you something.
Trump...Body Slams CNN - Twitter...
#FraudNewsCNN And #FNN

214
.

215
 Amazing! California Sells
The Same Voter Data They Won’t Give Trump
Jim Hoft
Jul 1st, 2017 9:27 Pm

President Trup’s voting commission asked all 50 states for Now this…
voter names, addresses, party affiliation and voting
records, part of an investigation into voter fraud by a
commission he launched last month. California won’t give the requested information to the
Trump administration but sells it to organizations in
the state.
Officials in 10 states already announced they would not
comply at all with the request. Those states are California,
Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Via Reddit:
Mexico, New York, South Dakota, Tennessee and
Virginia. From a NBC 7 San Diego News article back in June 2013:

If you’re a registered voter, are you aware that what you

write on your registration form is publicly available?

“Commercial” interests are barred from that

data.

But all sorts of other people have legal access to it.

A lot of people think only government agencies can access

voter registration information – the courts, for instance, to
Via FOX News summon you for jury duty.

President Trump tweeted about this earlier on Saturday: But it can be purchased for purposes such as scholarly and
“What are they trying to hide?” journalistic research, and for use in “elections” and
“politics”.

Buyers are only a phone call away from you.

216
 Trump Attacks Media As 'Fake' And 'Fraudulent,'
Pushes Back About His Use Of Twitter
Fox News
Published July 01, 2017
President Trump late Saturday widened his attack on
mainstream media, deriding it as "fake" and "fraudulent"
in a series of tweets.
"The FAKE & FRAUDULENT NEWS
MEDIA is working hard to convince
Republicans and others I should not use
social media - but remember, I won the
2016 election with interviews, speeches
and social media. I had to beat
#FakeNews, and did. We will continue to
WIN!" he tweeted.
He then tweeted that he's thinking about changing his usual
"fake news" moniker for CNN to
"#FraudNewsCNN."
He previously went after CNN and MSNBC, going after
company executives instead of his usual criticism of the
cable networks’ on-camera stars while still deriding “fake
news.”
“I am extremely pleased to see that @CNN
has finally been exposed as #FakeNews
and garbage journalism. It's about time!”
Trump said in one tweet.
.
217
His comments follows CNN earlier this week retracting a
story on its website about the Senate investigating a
Russian bank linked to Trump ally Anthony Scaramucci.
The cable TV network also apologized for the mistake, and
three newsroom employees resigned, in the aftermath.
“They caught Fake News CNN cold” and
“What about all the other phony stories
they do?” Trump tweeted earlier this week.
The president has had a long-running feud with CNN
White House correspondent Jim Acosta and with MSNBC
“Morning Joe” co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe
Scarborough, who have been critical of Trump’s
presidency.
However, Trump on Saturday appeared to also criticize
executives at NBC and parent company Comcast.
“Word is that @Greta Van Susteren was let
go by her out of control bosses at @NBC &
@Comcast because she refused to go
along w/ 'Trump hate!’ ” the president
tweeted.
Van Susteren worked for the Fox News Channel for about
15 years, before being hired by MSNBC in early 2017.
Trump, a Republican, was a Comcast/ NBC star as host of
the popular primetime TV show “The Apprentice,” until
summer 2015 when he decided to run for president.
NBC Universal CEO Steve Burke has in past years backed
Republican candidates. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts has
given to Democratic and Republican candidates.
 29 States Refuse To Give Data To Voter Fraud Panel,
"What Are They Trying To Hide" Trump Asks
By Tyler Durden
Jul 1, 2017 12:08 PM
Together with lashing out at the anchors of Morning Joe,
slamming "garbage" fake news CNN, and suggesting that
Greta Van Susteren was fired because she "refused to go
along with Trump hate", President Trump on Saturday
blasted the 29 (and rising) states refusing to comply with
his election fraud commission's request for voter data to a
commission he created to investigate alleged voter fraud,
asking
"what are they trying to hide?"
Last Wednesday, Trump's Presidential Advisory
Commission on Election Integrity - which was formed to
investigate his claim that millions of illegal votes cost him
the popular vote in the 2016 presidential election - sent a
letter to all 50 states asking them to turn over voter
information including names, the last four digits of social
security numbers, addresses, birth dates, political
affiliation, felony convictions and voting histories. The
request was for information publicly available under each
state's laws. And while some states are providing part of
this information, many states immediately raised concerns
and voiced their opposition to providing the information,
and as of Saturday morning,
more than half of all US states - 29 at
last count - had refused to comply with
the commission's requests,
saying they are unnecessary and violated privacy,
according to statements from election officials and media
reports.
"This commission was formed to try to find
basis for the lie that President Trump put
forward that has no foundation," Kentucky
Secretary of State Alison Lundergan
Grimes told Reuters previously in an
interview.
218
Among the states refusing to comply with Trump's request
are both Democratic and Republican states.
***
Echoing Trump's skepticism, Kansas Secretary of State
Kris Kobach, the vice chair of the commission, had a
similar response to the president on states refusing to
comply.
“Frankly, if a state like Kentucky or
California won’t provide available
information, one has to ask the
question, ‘Why not?’” Kobach said Friday
during an interview with NPR. “I mean,
what are they trying to hide if they don’t
want a presidential advisory commission to
study their state voter rolls?” he asked.
Several states replied to that question, as the Hill reports.
"There's not enough bourbon here in
Kentucky to make this request seem
sensible," Kentucky's Democratic Secretary
of State, Alison Lundergan Grimes, said on
MSNBC. "Not on my watch are we going to
be releasing sensitive information that
relate to the privacy of individuals."
Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, a
Republican, also said he won't turn over any information to
the panel, telling members of the voter fraud commission
to,
"go jump in the Gulf of Mexico."
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, took a similar
line, calling the Trump investigation an attempt to suppress
the vote.
Election officials from both sides of the aisle expressed
skepticism about Trump’s claim of voter fraud:
“In Ohio, we pride ourselves on being a
state where it is easy to vote and hard to
cheat,” said Jon Husted, Ohio’s Republican
secretary of state. “Voter fraud happens,
it's rare and when it happens we hold
people accountable. I believe that as the
Commission does its work, it will find the
same about our state."
Several states, among them California and New York, said
participating in the attempt to compile voter data would
only serve to legitimize the false and already debunked
claims of massive voter fraud,” according to Democratic
Secretary of State Alex Padilla. On the other hand, by
refusing to participate in the first place, they force Trump
himself to question what it is they are hiding.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Virginia Gov. Terry
McAuliffe, both Democrats, said their states would not
provide confidential information.
“New York refuses to perpetuate the myth
voter fraud played a role in our election,”
Cuomo said in a statement. “We will not be
complying with this request.”
Even Kansas, where Kobach is secretary of state, will not
share voters' Social Security information with the
commission.
“In Kansas, the Social Security number is
not publicly available," Kobach told the
Kansas City Star. "Every state receives the
same letter, but we’re not asking for it if it’s
not publicly available."
Officials in Connecticut, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Utah
and Washington also expressed skepticism and said their
states would withhold nonpublic information. North
Carolina will provide all but the last four digits of Social
Security numbers, dates of birth and driver's license
numbers.
.
219
Rhode Island Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea (D) took her
criticism further, saying Kobach was unfit to lead the
commission, given his record of strict voting laws and a
recent court fine for failing to produce documents related
to a lawsuit over voting laws.
***
Trump has made such allegations of voter fraud before,
including claiming that that millions of people voted
illegally in the 2016 election.
Kobach says he does not know if such claims are true but
the commission is investigating them. He is an advocate of
strict voter identification laws, which he says are necessary
to combat fraud. Opponents say those laws hinder access
to the polls primarily for elderly and minority voters.
Meanwhile, the Hill reported that officials have raised
questions about the commission’s discretion obtaining the
confidential documents.
“State statutes permit the [Wisconsin
commission] to share confidential
information in limited circumstances with
law enforcement agencies or agencies of
other states,” Haas said. “The presidential
commission does not appear to qualify
under either of these categories.”
Trump appointed another voter identification supporter,
Heritage Foundation fellow Hans von Spakovsky, to the
commission Thursday. Von Spakovsky, one of Kobach’s
mentors, has long advocated for stricter voter access rules.
As of noon on Saturday, the states who have refused the
Commission's demands are: Arizona, California,
Connecticut, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky,
Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, New
Mexico, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, North
Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode
Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont,
Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.
 Inside Trump’s Disastrous
‘Secret’ Drug War Plans For Central America
At Closed-Door Meetings In Miami, Trump And His Generals Plotted A
Muscular Military Response To Violence In Central America.
Been There. Done That. It’s A Disaster.
Jeremy Kryt
07.01.17 12:01 AM ET
Photo Illustration by Lyne Lucien/The Daily Beast
Nothing really puts you in your place quite like getting
shot at in another country. All gringo arrogance vaporized
in an instant. Choking from teargas. Lungs aflame. Reeling
blind through unknown streets just ahead of the death
squads. Abandoned by your fellow correspondents, who
were all shrewd enough to have put on their gas masks and
taken cover before the soldiers launched shock grenades
and opened fire on the crowd.
Yes, whenever a quick and brutal dose of humility is called
for I can always flash back to the Honduran capital of
Tegucigalpa in the summer of 2009, during the U.S.-
backed military coup against elected president Manuel
“Mel” Zelaya. A swift recall of live rounds slamming into
unarmed demonstrators—of my own self at the mercy of
those sadistic soldados—and all false pride just fades
away.
The crowds had come in their thousands and their tens of
thousands to protest the army’s kidnapping of old Mel,
who was as famous for his cheesy sombrero-and-mustache
look as he was for his tepidly liberal politics. In any case,
soldiers arrived at his house one pleasant morning in late
June, frogmarched him in his PJs to the massive American
airbase just outside Teguc, and—wham, whack, whoosh—
Mel was gone from the country within hours. The military
then forged a letter of resignation, installed a sham
replacement as head of state, and the coup was complete.
220
Or so they thought. But then came the massive marches.
Made up of indigenous Garifuna and Linca and Meskit
peoples. Campesinos, feminists, and constitution-lovers of
all stripes. These motley flocks of patriots rose up in small
villages and major cities across the nation to sing and and
chant, to beat drums and dance, and to demand their
country back.
Like many of its neighbors in Central America, the “U.S.S.
Honduras” is run by a small and incestuous clan of
oligarchs. These right-wing cliques also control the
military, and are closely allied with the American
corporations (like Dole and Chiquita) that gifted us with
the handy phrase “Banana Republic” in the first place.
Well, those Honduran overlords had had enough of Mel
Zelaya daring to raise the minimum wage, lobbying for
lunch programs at public schools, and suggesting
democratic plebiscites on constitutional reforms. So he had
to go.
And all the folks marching in the street? Of course they
had to go, too. Back to the barrios from whence they came!
Back to the banana and palm-oil plantations! To affect the
end of the protest fiesta, the authorities broke out the state-
of-the-art weaponry—including sonic disruptor cannons—
that Uncle Sam had given them for waging the “War on
Drugs.” They then commenced to blast away at peaceful
protesters, or anybody else who got in their way, including
a foolish-proud, white-boy reporter who thought he could
hack it without a gas mask.
Scores were killed or wounded during what Hondurans
still call El Golpe de Estado (the phrase means “coup
d’état”; those who backed it are called golpistas). To
further intimidate the opposition, and break the will of the
nonviolent Resistencia movement, human rights centers
sheltering victims were deliberately targeted by
government troops. Well, we all learned the hard way back
in those days. But at least we did learn just how dangerous
democracy-hating, Third-World warmongers can be.
The same can’t be said of the Trump administration. As of
now, it’s set to double down on the same hard-line,
authoritarian strategies that enabled the Honduran
president-snatching in the first place—and resulted in the
country’s descent into a gang-ridden, apocalyptic
nightmare from which it has yet to awaken.
The “Northern Triangle” Tangle
The corner of the Central American isthmus consisting of
Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras is referred to by
military strategists and policy geeks as the “Northern
Triangle.” Over the last 10 years or so it’s become one of
the deadliest regions on earth. Young people are
particularly impacted. The homicide rate among youths is
a staggering 90 per 100,000, in part due to rampant gang
violence. Based on murders per capita, the Triangle is far
more dangerous than Mexico, no matter what Mr. Trump
says on Twitter.
The Triangle is an important stopover on the smuggling
routes that connect the cocaine breadbaskets of South
America with their cartel distributors in Mexico. As such it
suffers under powerful maras (gangs) with names like
Barrio 18 and the Salvatruchas—both of which originated
in the U.S. prison system, incidentally, and arrived in
Honduras thanks to mass deportations.
These street gangs are tangentially linked to the cartels
operating out of Mexico, as well as places like Colombia.
The maras are often hired to hack out small airstrips in the
jungle for drug-smuggling planes, or to run overland
narcotics shipments across international borders. And they
find plenty of time to torture local residents. The gangs
rule entire neighborhoods, specializing in rape, forced
recruitment tactics, abduction for ransom, drug dealing.
Blackmail is rampant, and they often collaborate with local
authorities in shaking down their victims.
Gang violence is one of the driving factors behind the
Central American migrant crisis, which has sent hundreds
of thousands fleeing northward, many of them children.
All that mayhem finally caught the attention of the Trump
regime. But, as usual when it comes to narcotics
interdiction efforts under Trump, the proffered solution
seems to be more show than substance—all at the expense
of American taxpayers.
A shadowy summit last month in Miami brought together
Vice President Mike Pence, high-powered cabinet
members like Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the leaders
of all three Triangle nations, and officials from at least
nine other countries. The plan they espoused? Spend
untold millions more dollars on a strategy that, according
to experts, is guaranteed to fail. So what’s not to like about
that?
Co-hosted by Mexico, the two-day session was grandly
touted as “The Conference for Prosperity and Security.”
221
The first phase focused on wealth creation; it went down at
Florida International University on June 15, and was
immediately met by protests on campus.
“We’re in this together,” Pence told Central
American leaders at the end of the day. He
then went on to emphasize that sense of
fellowship by adding, “President Trump has
already taken decisive action to protect the
American people from the harshest
consequences of illegal immigration...” In
other words: We’re here for you,
neighbors—just stay the hell on your side
of The Wall.
The second stage was geared toward the “Security” side of
the equation, and took place the next day behind closed
doors at the SOUTHCOM military base. Because press
access was restricted, it’s hard to know all the specifics
that were discussed. But there are clues that point to a
coming crackdown.
Despite the cloak-and-dagger staging of the conference,
some of the Trump administration’s harsh plans for
escalating the Drug War have already been hinted at in
speeches, budget proposals, and conference calls with the
press. And critics contend this “old-is-new” approach is
unlikely to result in either “Prosperity” or “Security” in the
region.
An editorial on the conference by the watchdog group
InsightCrime referred to the Trump doctrine for the
Northern Triangle as “heavy-handed” and “going
backwards.” It also pointed out that all three leaders from
the Triangle countries in attendance had been accused of
corruption or involvement with drug traffickers or both—
in fact the vice president of El Salvador showed up in
Miami already under indictment back home.
The InsightCrime op-ed concluded by
lambasting Trump’s vision “that the main
threats to U.S. national security come from
impoverished migrants, the majority of
whom have no ties to the organized crime
groups, gangs, or drug traffickers that
safely operate under state protection in
Central America.” (Italics added.)
The statement issued by Doctors Without Borders about
the goals set forth in Miami is even more damning.
Likening conditions in the Triangle to those found in
“some of the world’s deadliest war zones,” the group
estimates the number of immigrants bee-lining it out of
their native countries to be about 500,000 a year.
As for the solutions proposed by Trump’s
proxies, Doctors Without Borders accused
conference planners of “turning a blind eye”
 to the emergency and went on to say,
“Addressing the crisis in Central America
cannot only be about future prosperity and
security; it must also be about saving and
protecting lives today.”
Militarization Nation
There are two schools of thought on how you help
countries climb out of multifaceted maelstroms like the
one currently walloping the Northern Triangle. The first,
as favored by the Obama administration, is an aid-based
approach, usually involving democracy-building
incentives, humanitarian programs, and the strengthening
of law enforcement and judicial actors.
Obama’s legacy in the region is far from pristine, but to his
credit he intuited that the coup in Honduras was a mistake
not to be repeated. (He also understood the importance of
development to affect positive change even if, as with
Afghanistan, he thought the military had to play a major
role.)
The second method is just to send on down millions of
dollars for “security assistance”—oversight be damned—
and hope for the best. Care to guess which strategy Team
Trump prefers?
POTUS’ congressional budget proposal called for a $54
billion increase in military spending, with an undisclosed
amount of that earmarked for ramping up the counter
narcotics campaign and barricading borders against
migrants. Meanwhile the State Department and the U.S.
Agency for International Development (USAID) would
see their budgets slashed by about 39 percent from last
year’s levels under the Trump budget.
Economic aid and assistance to Central America is
projected to fall from $520 million down to about $300
million, according to a study by the Washington Office on
Latin America. All that “charity” chopping will directly
endanger social and educational programs in the Northern
Triangle—further reducing quality of life overall, and
making immigration (legal or otherwise) all the more
tempting, observers say.
The focus of the Trump agenda is not about solving the
root problems like poverty and government corruption that
drive gang violence and narcotics trafficking, says Jake
Johnston, a research associate at the Center for Economic
and Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington, D.C.
Johnston refers to the Trumpite approach as “outsourcing
security to countries with checkered pasts [on] human
rights.” Far from winning the Drug War, or curbing the
flood of migrants, he tells The Daily Beast, “empowering
these sectors is only going to exacerbate those problems.”
222
But strong-arming our way to victory remains a popular
fantasy, especially among Trump’s all-gringo cabinet.
Johnston says Homeland Security boss Kelly—also a
retired general and the former director of SOUTHCOM—
seems determined to apply the belligerent approach in
Central America, and is responsible for the
“reprioritization” away from programs like USAID, which
directly targeted problems like economic inequality in the
region.
“It’s unprecedented that the conference
took place behind the gates of a military
barracks,” says Johnston. “The security
apparatus and the Pentagon’s specific
plans [for the Triangle] are incredibly
opaque,” although the overall implications
are clear enough.
“The writing’s on the wall that this is a shift
away from soft power to hard power,” says
Johnston, who’s been conducting research
into Latin American economic issues for
the last decade.
During a Senate hearing in late May, police officers from
multiple jurisdictions in the U.S. lectured lawmakers about
just how ineffective, even dangerous, the Trump
administration’s brand of steroidal, community-alienating
policing can be when it comes to fighting entrenched
gangs like the Salvatruchas.
Nevertheless, says Johnston, “in the future,
U.S. diplomacy in the region will likely be
wearing a uniform instead of a suit.”
Cops, Soldiers, and Cartels on the Same Team
Over the last two decades of the Drug War, the Pentagon’s
penchant for propping up repressive generalissimos in
places like Mexico, Colombia, and Central America has
caused widespread suffering among the populations of
those nations, including a plague of extrajudicial killings.
To get a precise read on current conditions in heavily
occupied regions of the Triangle zone, I reach out to the
national coordinator for the Honduran Solidarity Network
(HSN), Karen Spring, who is based in Tegucigalpa.
“Honduran society is already very
militarized,” said Spring, in a phone
interview on the eve of the Miami
conference. “Since the 2009 coup they’ve
created a whole series of new police and
military units like the Tigres, who are vetted
and trained by the U.S. government.”
Following the 2009 coup the U.S. has sent some $200
million in security aid to Honduras, despite a petition
signed by dozens of American congressmen asking for a
boycott over human rights concerns. And yet in spite of all
that martial funding the country remains mired in one long,
slow-burn Armageddon, with one of the highest homicide
rates on the planet.
At the same time, says CEPR’s Johnston, the post-coup
years have also seen “a real spike in poverty and economic
inequality” despite the millions flowing south from
Washington.
According to Spring, of the Solidarity Network, the
militarization craze has also sparked a rise in human rights
abuses, including right-wing death squads tasked with
eliminating political dissidents. The fact that “the military
is not trained to be providing civilian security” is part of
the problem Spring says. But the troubles go far deeper
than that.
“The police and military are known to be
linked to, or infiltrated by, the drug cartels,”
says Spring, who first went to Honduras
eight years ago as a human rights worker
sent down in the wake of the Zelaya
takedown.
(Full disclosure: I knew Karen Spring back in those
woeful, post-coup days in Honduras, and have seen this
brave young woman stand her ground against civil abuses
by armed actors more than once.)
“Even high-level military officials are known
to be involved in drug trafficking,” she says,
and yet, “impunity rates have not gone
down. If you are not punishing people who
are corrupt—especially people in positions
of power—what deters them from
committing crimes?”
Indeed, that corruption permeates Honduran politics at the
highest levels, according to a recent report by the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace (PDF), which
describes the country as being run by “intertwined, or
‘integrated,’ ... kleptocratic networks.” Even the son of the
former president was recently accused in a New York
courtroom of working with organized crime.
Death and (War) Taxes
“The way that gangs down here are
portrayed in the international press and by
the government is that they’re these
autonomous actors that take over
communities and prisons,” says Spring,
when our conversation turns to the dreaded
maras.
223
“That’s an elaborate narrative,” she adds,
and a false one.
“I work in urban communities every day—
and nobody here believes gangs are acting
on their own.” Instead, they “work
alongside and are enabled by a corrupt
police force.”
In Spring’s eyes, the social-aid-first ethos espoused by
President Obama—who also took his fair share of flack for
sending down questionable military aid to Honduras—has
done little or nothing to curb connivance between
authorities and organized crime. Trump’s hardball tactics,
on the other hand, are “much worse for everybody.”
“I don’t think any aid from the U.S. to
Honduras has made any changes for the
majority of the population,” she says, and
as evidence cites the fact that “60 percent
of the country is still in poverty.”
The soft-power initiatives seem to have proven useful in
some cases, but Spring also accuses them of “promoting
very specific interests” that don’t “have an impact on
security or why people live in fear.”
Johnston, of CEPR, also wonders if the soft programs are
adequate.
“State and USAID have rolled out a number
of community-driven crime prevention
programs and held them up as illustrative
of their success but the reality is we have
little knowledge about their actual
effectiveness.”
The playbook on social development might need fine-
tuning or expansion, but it’s far better than
indiscriminately empowering crooked goon squads. As
human rights worker Spring puts it, “hard power just
doesn’t do anything to address the problems that are
perpetuating” Honduras’ downward spiral.
To illustrate the failure of the stick-before-carrot strategy,
she goes on to describe a neighborhood where she works
in Tegucigalpa:
“The 18 Street gang controls the
community,” Spring says, and all local
business owners must provide a regular
quota for the privilege of living under thug
tyranny, or risk being shot.
“It’s literally called a war tax,” she says. “An
impuesto de guerra,” and from taxi and bus
drivers to “the women selling tortillas,”
everyone has to pay it.
A special unit of military police set up a permanent base
on the same barrio’s soccer field, back in 2013, which has
put the kibosh on local futbol games as well—one of the
few innocent pastimes formerly available to local kids.
Although the borough is now an occupied zone,
“everybody is still paying the war tax,”
Spring continues. “Extortion is still going
on. There’s still a high level of control in the
neighborhood by the gang.”
In fact, the barrio taxi stand “is right in front of the
military-police base—but the drivers are still paying”
tribute to the gangs. And that’s not a coincidence.
The blackmailing goes on in front of the barracks where
the officers “eat, sleep, and live,” and not by accident, but
because “the police are involved in organized crime.”
Everyone in the area knows “they’re working with the
gangs, extorting people for profit.”
Far from being independent entities, she says, the gangs
are often tools of the authorities, who “use them for their
own purposes.”
Most citizens know they can’t “call the Honduran police
for help” when they’re targeted themselves since “they
assume [officers] are involved” with the maras.
“You can’t just walk into a community with
a complex social structure and take it over,”
Spring says. “Militarization is not solving
the problem—it’s making it worse.”
Drug War Redux
As a general rule, when arming oppressive regimes, lack of
accountability is the root of all evil. When we send
military aid to tropical tyrants we shouldn’t be shocked
when they commit atrocities with those expensive and
deadly toys.
Take the March 2016 murder of Berta Cáceres, a well-
known Honduran activist and winner of the prestigious
Goldman environmental prize. During the counter-coup
movement, Cáceres gained fame for her habit of striding
out to meet with army commanders in the streets of
Tegucigalpa, in an effort to stem the assaults on protesters.
So it wasn’t a great surprise when her killers were found to
have ties to the Honduran military.
(Since her death, at least two other members of Cáceres’
NGO have been assassinated.)
One oft-proffered solution by hawks in Washington is to
improve screening and background checks on individual
224
units south of the border. The sad truth, however, is that
even our best attempts to vet security forces engaged in the
Drug War in Mexico, Central, and South America have
proven fruitless.
A prime example of this futility went down in the remote
Ahuas region of Honduras, during a botched DEA raid on
an indigenous village in Moskitia that left four innocent
people dead, and several others wounded.
A State Department chopper team, working with a vetted
Honduran unit, opened fire on a boatload of locals after
mistaking them for drug smugglers.
“The Honduran door gunner didn’t fire until
he received orders from the DEA agent,”
according to CEPR’s Johnston, who co-
authored an article on the incident. (The
DEA declined to respond to an interview
request for this story.)
As reported by The Daily Beast last year, another badly
bungled Drug-War op took place in Mexico’s Coahuila
state, in 2011, when DEA officers shared intelligence with
Mexican officers—who then leaked that intel to the Zetas
cartel, resulting in a massacre that wiped out parts of an
entire town.
“We know from experience that the violent
model that has been in place in Mexico is
to be intensified in the Central American
countries as well,” says Laura Carlsen,
director of the Americas Program, in
Mexico City. Some 160,000 people have
lost their lives since Mexico’s Narco Guerra
began in 2006.
“Lack of justice and collusion between
[authorities] and organized crime,” are
hallmarks of the war in Mexico, Carlsen
says. “In cases of assassinations of
journalists and attacks on human rights
defenders, at least 50 percent of the
perpetrators are identified as government
officials.”
And yet conviction rates hover in the single digits.
Mexico’s Other Wall
A preview of what’s to come in the Northern Triangle is
already on display along Mexico’s southern border with
Guatemala. That’s where the Pentagon and [DHS Director]
Kelly “have placed a real emphasis on militarizing,” says
Americas Program director Carlsen.
That plan for shutting down the border—or the Frontera
del Sur initiative—was also on the docket at the recent
conference in Miami, where Vice President Pence bragged
about how it’s already stifled immigration from Triangle-
land by 70 percent. Carlsen describes the clampdown as
another attempt to “make Mexico pay for The Wall
again—only this time on its own southern border.”
Thanks to Frontera del Sur, Mexico now deports more
Central American migrants than does the U.S. And in fact
our own Border Patrol reports that illegal immigration
from the isthmus has been halved since this same time last
year. And yet that reduction has come with a price.
The crackdown on the Guatemalan border “has had a
devastating impact on migrants,” says Carlsen, who has
worked in Mexico since the mid-1980s.
The refugees “are fleeing very serious violence in their
country.” Yet instead of offering succor, Mexico is now
“attempting to box them in,” in part to curry favor with
President Trump and his advisers ahead of upcoming
NAFTA negotiations.
Mexican cartels are “delighted at these
kinds of policies,” she goes on, “because
they criminalize migrants, and turn them
into into prey.”
For Carlsen, the Trump team’s script for the Drug-War
reboot has “much more to do with repressing people than
trying to solve deeper social problems that they’re facing.”
CEPR economist Johnston believes the Trumped up
approach to immigration and the Drug War will actually
.
225
worsen Central America’s ongoing crisis. Nothing
presented at the Miami conference will “address the
problems that are actually driving people to leave these
countries,” he says.
Karen Spring agrees. But she also holds that it shouldn’t be
left to the Trump administration to implement ham-fisted
fixes in the Triangle. Viable solutions have already been
put forth by those closest to the violence, who know the
risks and realities best of all—if only the ruling junta
would hear them out:
“There has never been a space in
Honduras to really listen to some of the
proposals that are put forward by local
communities and organizations,” explains
Spring, who laments what she calls a
“failure of democracy” in the Northern
Triangle.
Former President Zelaya tried to listen, but his modest
attempts to fight economic inequality got him shanghaied
by his own troops. Trouble-making crusaders like Bertha
Caceres have been assassinated for daring to suggest land-
ownership reforms that challenge traditional elites and
transnational corporations.
“It’s the voices which have typically been
excluded that are trying to promote an
alternative,” Spring says, “and for doing so
they’re being killed, criminalized, and
silenced.”
 Trump Unloads In Angry Tweetstorm:
Slams "Dumb As A Rock" Mika, "Garbage" CNN
By Tyler Durden
Jul 1, 2017 12:41 PM

One day after the NY Post issued its shortest ever editorial It all started off politely enough, withTrump wishing
on the topic of "Trump's tweets", writing just three words:
"Happy Canada Day to all of the great
people of Canada and to your Prime
“Stop. Just Stop"... Minister and my new found friend
@JustinTrudeau. #Canada150"

However, things quickly went downhill from there, with

Trump first speculating on the reason for Van Susteren's
depature, saying
"Word is that @Greta Van Susteren was let
go by her out of control bosses at @NBC &
@Comcast because she refused to go
along w/ 'Trump hate!'"

... and which came on the heels of Trump’s

latest Twitter controversy, where the
president targeted MSNBC’s Morning Joe
hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe
Scarborough for their coverage of the
president and his administration, saying He next lashed out at CNN, again, saying
Scarborough was a “psycho” and
Brzezinski “crazy” before going on to claim "I am extremely pleased to see that @CNN
that Mika was “bleeding badly from a face has finally been exposed as #FakeNews
lift” when she was at his Florida resort and garbage journalism. It's about time!"
around New Year’s 2016, it appears that
Trump has again ignored the advice, and in
a burst of angry tweets, the president has
doubled down by not only targeting
Morning Joe's Mika, whom he called "dumb
as a rock", but also commenting on the
unexpected departure of Greta van
Susteren from MSNBC, and perhaps less
surprisingly, the ongoing CNN "fake news"
fall out, which in his latest twitter rant he Before finally taking aim, for the second time in three
called "garbage." days, at the Morning Joe hosts: "Crazy Joe Scarborough

226
and dumb as a rock Mika are not bad people, but their low
rated show is dominated by their NBC bosses. Too bad!"
227
Trump's Saturday tweetstorm may or may not be over, but
it is sure to provoke more protests about unpresidential
and/or improper language - by both democrats and
republicans - from Trump, which in turn demonstrates that
the president intends to continue defying the "proper"
protocols of appropriate behavior. What his strategy is by
doing so, if of course there is one, remains unclear.
 Unhinged: Dozens Of Dems
Sign On To Begin Process Of Removing Trump
Who’s REALLY ‘Out There’ – Trump Or Deranged Democrats?
By Usafeaturesmedia
Posted On July 1, 2017
(National Sentinel) Political posturing: Frustrated by their
inability to take out President Donald J. Trump through the
usual Deep State-media tactics, at least two dozen
Democrats are signing on to an effort to get him declared
mentally unstable and removed from office under
provisions of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution.
As reported by the UK’s Daily Mail, Rep. Jamie Raskin,
D-Md., who teaches constitutional law on the side at
American University, has begun an effort to convene a
special committee of psychiatrists and other doctors who
would be tasked with determining whether Trump is
mentally competent to serve as the nations’ commander-in-
chief.
Under provisions of the 25th Amendment, a president can
be removed from office if he self-determines he is unable
to continue to discharge his duties, or if the vice president
and a majority of the president’s Cabinet, “or of such other
body as Congress may by law provide,” make the
determination.
The Daily Mail reported further on Raskin’s long-shot
effort:
Raskin’s bill would allow the four
Republican and Democratic leaders of the
House and Senate to each choose a
psychiatrist and another doctor. Then each
party would add a former statesman – like
a retired president or vice president.
The final group of 10 would meet and
choose an 11th member, who would
become the committee’s chairman.
228
Once the group is officially seated, the
House and Senate could direct it through a
joint resolution to conduct an actual
examination of the president ‘to determine
whether the president is incapacitated,
either mentally or physically,’ according to
the Raskin bill.
And if the president refuses to participate,
the bill dictates, that “shall be taken into
consideration by the commission in
reaching a conclusion.”
That provision is especially telling; it essentially says of
the president doesn’t want any part of this witch hunt, that
alone can be used to determine he’s mentally unstable.
What’s ironic is that the Dem-led effort to prove Trump is
mentally unfit is being driven by a truly unhinged and
irrational hatred of the president.
But for the purposes of discussion, there are several things
that need to happen before Trump is driven from office in
this manner:
 Vice President Pence and a majority of Trump’s
Cabinet would have to be on board (not likely)
 Raskin’s effort centers around a piece
of legislation, which a) GOP leaders would have to
agree to send to their respective chambers for a
vote; and b) Trump would have to sign (even less
likely)
 One look at Raskin and you begin to wonder just
who really is the crazy one.
As the “Trump-Russia collusion” narrative begins to
collapse and there is little likelihood of finding any
evidence that Team Trump did anything nefarious with
Moscow, the attempt to “prove” Trump is mentally
unstable is the latest attempt by a deranged political party
and its propaganda media wing to dispose of a duly-elected
president whose only “fault” is that he isn’t taking the
abuse they heap on him daily lying down.
 Elderly Snowflakes Say Trump Is “Mentally Ill,” ‘Does
Deals With The Russians’
Snowflakes Claim Trump "Hits" His Wife Melania
By Shepard Ambellas
July 2, 2017

The old-timers could be seen standing on the sidewalk

holding up signs which read: “Trump = Covfefe” and
“Trump Is Unfit.”

“He’s not right. He may not have dementia but he has

some sort of personality disorder,” the woman told
Intellihub. “As his wife like to brag, he hits back ten times
as hard if somebody crosses him. Which makes you
wonder about Melania when she was walking during that
European tour and he reached back and she swatted his
hand away, we wonder how hard he hit back.”

The not so dynamic duo also claim that President Trump

AUSTIN, Tex. (INTELLIHUB) — Two elderly “absolutely” has a Russian connection, despite CNN’s
snowflakes who attended Sunday’s anti-Trump retraction of the fake news which cited ’17 intelligence
‘Impeachment March’ proclaim that President Trump is agencies.’
“unfit” to be President because he is “mentally ill” and that
he may “hit” his wife Melania.
.

229
 Trump: Fake Media Trying To Silence Us,
But People Know The Truth
Published Time: 2 Jul, 2017 03:14 Edited Time: 2 Jul, 2017 15:18
US President Donald Trump © Yuri Gripas / Reuters
US President Donald Trump has once again lashed out at
what he calls “fake media” on Saturday at a Kennedy
Center event. Earlier in the day he said that ‘fraudulent
news media” was trying to convince his party that he
should be using social media to express his opinion.
Speaking at the Saturday night "Celebrate Freedom"
concert honoring veterans, Trump once again used the
stage to criticize the media.
"The fake media is trying to silence us, but
we will not let them," he said. "The fake
media tried to stop us from going to the
White House. But I'm president, and they're
not."
“The fact is the press has destroyed
themselves because they went too far.
Instead of being subtle and smart, they
used a hatchet. And the people saw right it
right from the beginning. The dishonest
media will never keep us from
.
230
accomplishing our objectives on behalf of
our great American people,” he added.
Earlier in the day Trump took an aim at CNN by saying
that he is
“thinking about changing the name
#FakeNews CNN to #FraudNewsCNN” and
that the channel’s work is “garbage
journalism.”
CNN has been under fire for retracting a story earlier in
June claiming that an adviser to the Trump campaign is
under Senate investigation for meeting with the head of a
Russian state-backed investment fund at the Davos
economic forum. Three journalists, including the executive
editor of a new investigative branch, have left CNN
following the retraction.
Trump who has been criticized for excessive use of Twitter
to express his personal opinion, on Saturday has also
defended his use of social media as
“modern day presidential.”
Earlier, on Saturday Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R)
characterized Trump’s use of Twitter as “unacceptable.”
“We’ve seen this for quite a while. You
know, it’s unfortunate and people are now
begging the president not to do this, and
you know you got to stop doing it,” Kasich
told ABC’s Martha Raddatz. The two were
discussing Trump’s recent Tweets about
MSNBC host Mika Brzezinksi, whom he
called “crazy” and “low I.Q.”
 Trump: Right Fake News Media,
Wrong About Most Everything Else
By Stephen Lendman - Stephenlendman.Org
7-2-2017
Media scoundrels abhor journalism the way it should be -
especially on domestic and geopolitical issues mattering
most, notably on virtually everyting related to imperial
wars, Russia and Trump.
Instead of demanding he be held accountable for high
crimes of war and against humanity, along with serving
monied interests at the expense of most others, they blast
him for the wrong reasons - willfully deceiving readers and
viewers.
Serving as press agents for powerful interests, truth-telling
is considered anathema. Disinformation, Big Lies and fake
news substitute. Following their reports assures being
misinformed, uninformed, and lied to.
At a Saturday rally, Trump was right, saying the
“dishonest media(’s) agenda is not your(s)” - omitting self-
criticism, failing to explain his agenda serves wealth,
power and privilege exclusively.
Long forgotten are inaugural day promises. He’s a warrior
president servant of power like his predecessors.
Saying he’d “fight for you with every breath in (his) body,
and never, ever let you down” proved hollow rhetoric.
.
231
So was promising noninterventionism. He escalated
Obama’s wars, perhaps intends new ones on Iran and/or
North Korea.
He’s waging undeclared war on Venezuela. He took
relations with Russia to a new low, after pledging
improved ties. Imposing illegal sanctions on China showed
a short-lived honeymoon with President Xi Jinping was
more mirage than real.
Instead of combating terrorism as pledged, he supports it.
Instead of draining the swamp, he filled it with neocons,
hawkish generals and billionaires.
Instead of serving all Americans equitably, he favors
privileged ones at the expense of most others, especially
the nation’s most vulnerable.
All politicians lie. Rare exceptions prove the rule. Trump
showed he’s like all the rest.
He’s right bashing deplorable media scoundrels, dead
wrong on most everything else - inflicting enormous harm
on countless millions at home and abroad.
 Trump Criticizes 'Fraudulent'
Mainstream Media for Fake News
© REUTERS/ Joshua Roberts - US
03:26 02.07.2017
Donald Trump went on criticizing the US
mainstream media of publishing fake
and biased news
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — US President Donald Trump
went on criticizing the US mainstream media of publishing
fake and biased news, in particular, considering of so-
called renaming of the CNN news channel.
"I am thinking about changing the name #FakeNews CNN
to #FraudNewsCNN… The FAKE & FRAUDULENT
NEWS MEDIA is working hard to convince Republicans
and others I should not use social media — but remember,
I won the 2016 election with interviews, speeches and
232
social media. I had to beat #FakeNews, and did," Trump
wrote on Twitter.
The recent scandal over the issue occurred on June 24,
when CNN took down an article that suggested the US
Senate Intelligence Committee was looking into the
meeting of Trump's aide Anthony Scaramucci and Russian
Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) CEO Kirill Dmitriev. The
article was retracted, while three CNN reporters who
worked on the story resigned on Monday.
Since Trump assumed the office, US media, including
CNN, have accused the US president's team of having ties
to the Kremlin. The US president has refuted these
allegations and labelled the media involved in these
speculations as "fake news."
 Wapo Hypes
The Nonexistent Russian Threat
By Stephen Lendman - Stephenlendman.Org
7-2-2017
None exists, not now or earlier. Everyone in Washington
knows it. So do media scoundrels like the neocon/CIA-
connected Washington Post.
Yet the Big Lie persists. On June 30, WaPo headlined
“How US Presidents Missed The Russia Threat - Until
It Was Much, Much To Late,” saying:
Obama “fail(ed) to react to intelligence
reports on Kremlin attempts to influence
the US election.”
Fact:
Before last November’s election, in
response to Trump suggesting it was being
rigged for Hillary, Obama said “there is no
serious person out there who would
suggest somehow that you could even -
you could even rig America’s elections, in
part, because they are so decentralized
and the numbers of votes involved.”
WaPo:
“(O)ne Trump associate has been linked
directly to Russian hackers…”
Fact:
No election hacking occurred by Russians
or anyone else. The accusation is fake. Not
a shred of evidence proves otherwise.
WaPo:
Obama, Bush, and other US officials
“didn’t…recognize the…dangers posed by
a resurgent, aggressive Russia years
earlier - and how…Trump” benefitted.
.
233
Fact:
Russia never attacked another country. It’s
not at war aggressively earlier or now. It’s
the world’s leading peace and stability
champion.
Fact:
Trump benefitted from sounding anti-
establishment, appealing to millions fed up
with dirty business as usual - not realizing
they were being conned. He proved himself
as ruthlessly dangerous as Hillary and
other neocons infesting Washington.
WaPo:
“We know that Trump, among others, did
deals with many people who had Russian
or ex-Soviet connections. We also know
that he has admired Putin for many
years…”
Fact:
Trump earlier said he has “zero
investments in Russia.” There’s nothing
inappropriate or illegal for anyone to invest
there, or have relations with anyone in the
country.
Fact:
Many people admire Putin. He’s the
preeminent world leader - polar opposite
deplorable Western ones.
WaPo supports America’s appalling domestic and
geopolitical agenda. It writes what Langley directs it to
say.
 US Democrats Want To Remove
Trump From White House For Mental Incapacity
© AP Photo/ Pablo Martinez Monsivais - Politics
01:07 02.07.2017(Updated 10:20 02.07.2017)

four physicians, and three other members, potentially

to include a former president, vice president, or former top
government official, according to the Free Beacon.

A group of Democrats in the House of

Representatives have moved to bring
the 25th Amendment to the US
Constitution into play, allowing for the
removal of US President Donald Trump
from office for mental incapacity.

Member of the US House of Representatives Jamie Raskin

(D-MD) has introduced a bill that would create a special
oversight committee to determine whether US President
Donald Trump has the mental capacity to serve
as president, thereby setting the stage to remove him
from office under the 25th Amendment to the US
Constitution, which allows for a president who is mentally
unfit to carry out the duties of the office to be fired.
Raskin claimed to have support from both sides of the
political aisle on Capitol Hill, asserting that some unnamed
Raskin's newly introduced bill calls for the creation of a Republicans have expressed tacit agreement with the
nonpartisan "Oversight Commission on Presidential move.
Capacity," which would consist of members appointed
by congressional leaders, according to Yahoo News.
Based on the wording of the 25th Amendment, a sitting US
president cannot legally be declared mentally unfit to serve
The oversight committee, tasked with determining Trump's without the agreement of the vice-president.
mental fitness, would be comprised of four psychiatrists,
.

234
 Trump Vows To Stick With
Social Media Despite Recent Backlash
By Edmund Demarche
Published July 02, 2017

Most of Trump’s critics would read that tweet and say: you
may have won the election using that strategy, but now
you are the president, and the role requires more
seriousness and deference.

Maureen Dowd, a columnist for The New York Times,

penned a column Saturday titled, “Cruella de Trump.”
She writes,

“Trump is isolated in the White House, out

of his milieu, unable to shape the story,
forced to interact with people he doesn’t
President Trump on Saturday took to Twitter to reaffirm
own. Even the staffers folding his clothes
his strategy to use social media to combat what he sees as
aren’t on his payroll.”
“fake news” from media outlets and get out his message.

Trump’s most recent controversy was his tweet claiming

that MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski had a facelift and was
“bleeding badly” during a meeting around New Year’s Eve
at Mar-a-Lago.

The criticism for that tweet came from both sides of the
aisles. Brzezinski, for her part, wrote a column in The
Washington Post, saying that she—along with her co-host
Joe Scarborough—are “certain” that Trump is “not
mentally equipped to continue watching our show.”

She said she is doing fine. Scarborough continued,

Criticism for the Brzezinski tweet was not limited to The
Times’ editorial page. Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., tweeted,
“We’re OK—the country is not.”
“Please just stop. This isn’t normal and it’s
Trump tweeted on Saturday that his use of social media beneath the dignity of your office.”

“is not Presidential—it’s MODERN DAY
PRESIDENTIAL. Make America Great
Again!”
He also tweeted that
“the FAKE & FRAUDLENT NEWS MEDIA
is working hard to convince Republicans
and others I should not use social media—
but remember, I won….the 2016 election
with interviews, speeches and social
media. I had to beat #FakeNews, and did.
We will continue to WIN!”
Fox News' Brit Hume noted on Twitter:
"Please explain how the president of the
United States can be 'bullied' by the hosts
of what he says it is a low-rated cable TV
show? Absurd." Hume tweeted again, “His
Tweets make his critics more visible and
they diminish him. It's punching down and
it's a mug's game.”
Perhaps one of the main concerns for Trump supporters
who-- like Ann Coulter—enjoy when Trump takes on

235
opponents on social media, there seems to be no limit to
what Trump will not post on Twitter.
The White House appears to position Trump’s Twitter use
as an asset. Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah
Huckabee, said on Fox News—in response to the tweet—
that Trump fights back.
“This is a president that fights fire with fire,”
she said.
One of his most famous tweets was the one where he
posted,
“James Comey better hope that there are
no “tapes” of our conversations before he
starts leaking to the press!”
.
236
Trump—once again on Twitter-- said that he "did not
make" and doesn't have any recordings of his private
conversations with ousted former FBI Director James
Comey.
"With all of the recently reported electronic
surveillance, intercepts, unmasking and
illegal leaking of information," Trump said
he has "no idea" whether there are "tapes"
or recordings of the two men's
conversations. But he declares he "did not
make, and do not have, any such
recordings."
Comey says any recordings that might exist would support
his version that Trump asked him to pledge loyalty and
urged him to drop the investigation into Trump's former
national security adviser.
"Lordy, I hope there are tapes," Comey
declared at a congressional hearing.
 Thousands Of Protesters Marched Down 5th Street And
Broadway In Downtown To Los Angeles City Hall.
Laura J. Nelsoncontact Reporter
July 2, 2017

“It cuts to the heart of his personal

insecurities and fears,” said Levinson,
describing Trump as an “aspiring despot.”
And, he said wryly, “we wanted something
G-rated.”

Thousands of protesters marched down 5th Street and Broadway in

downtown to Los Angeles City Hall.

Several thousand protesters marched through downtown

Los Angeles on Sunday, waving signs and chanting,
“Down, down, down with Trump — up, up, up with the
people” as they urged Congress to impeach the president.

The peaceful demonstration was one of dozens of events

held across the country Sunday, aimed at voicing
displeasure with Trump and his White House.

The Los Angeles march began at Pershing Square. John

Meranda, 56, of Long Beach brandished a sign showing
Trump's face on the body of a baby, with the word
“impeach” spelled out in wooden blocks.

“Every day when I wake up, something is

more terrible than it was yesterday,”
Meranda said.
In the last week, he said, he’s been unsettled by
Republican proposals to cut billions of dollars from the
Medicaid program; some of his friends, he said, “are kept
alive by it.”
His friend Angela Greene of San Pedro held a hot pink
sign that read,
At a rally before the impeachment march, three to four
dozen Trump supporters gathered on the sidewalk outside
Los Angeles Police Department headquarters in an area
roped off by yellow police tape. Many had American flags
hoisted over their shoulders or tied around their necks.
Matthew Woods, a 55-year-old street musician from West
Hills, dismissed the investigation into whether members of
the Trump campaign or the president’s associates
conspired with Russia during or after the election.

“We need a leader, not a creepy tweeter.”
Further north on Broadway, Allen Levinson, 55, of
Redondo Beach and two friends hoisted a plastic frame
supporting a wide banner that read “Illegitimate Corrupt
Puppet.”
“It’s all been disproven,” Woods said. “He
has a right to terminate this inquiry.… I
think it’s magnanimous of him to let them
go on with it.”
In February, White House officials said the president fired
national security advisor Michael Flynn because the

237
former three-star Army general had lied to Vice President
Mike Pence and other officials about his contacts with
Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
A day later, Trump met with FBI Director James B.
Comey and told him he hoped “you can see your way clear
to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” according to Comey.
Trump has disputed Comey’s account. The president and
his aides have denied any wrongdoing.
“Why shouldn’t they have talked to
Russia?” said Hollee Garcia of Cathedral
City, who drove in for the pro-Trump
counterprotest. “I don’t agree with [Russian
President Vladimir] Putin, but I respect him
as a man who has a country behind him.
Though does he have them under lock and
key? Maybe.”
At a nearby booth, where a vendor sold Trump T-shirts,
someone propped up a sign that read,
“Trump 2020: Better crazy than stupid.”
As the pro-impeachment marchers passed by, one anti-
Trump demonstrator leaned toward the rally and screamed:
“You’re a fraud! You’re a fraud!”
Similar events in favor of impeaching Trump were held in
numerous cities, including Chicago, New York and
Washington, D.C.
238
The impeachment march in Los Angeles ended at Fletcher
Bowron Square near City Hall, where demonstrators heard
anti-Trump speeches, including one from Rep. Brad
Sherman (D-Porter Ranch).
The San Fernando Valley lawmaker has put himself at
odds with House Democratic leaders by drafting and
circulating articles of impeachment, accusing Trump of
trying to thwart the FBI’s investigation into Flynn.
"We have to act now to protect our country
from abuse of power and impulsive,
ignorant incompetence," Sherman said.
The crowd cheered and began chanting,
“Lock him up.”
In the shade of a nearby ficus tree, Edward Holzhauer, 51,
of Palm Desert clutched a long foam pool noodle wrapped
with pink duct tape that he had molded to look like a giant
drinking straw. The attached sign read, “This is the last
straw.”
Holzhauer drove in from the Coachella Valley to attend the
march because the Republican effort to repeal the
Affordable Care Act is “hurtful,” he said.
“I can’t take it anymore.”
A sticker on his shirt read “Healthcare, not
warfare.”
Still, he said, Trump’s election has created one silver
lining: He’s become politically active for the first time
since high school, supporting local candidates for public
office and attending city council meetings.
“We’re not just against what Trump is doing
federally,” Holzhauer said. “We’re also
learning how we can help here.”
239
As demonstrators left the rally, they passed a modest white
tent on the lawn of City Hall, with a sign reading
“Empathy Tent.”
Inside, Edwin Rutsch of Berkeley sat on an orange
camping chair, mediating a discussion between a Trump
supporter and an impeachment marcher. They sparred over
whether Trump had ever lied or committed any
impeachable offenses, their voices sometimes rising.
Rutsch repeatedly broke into the argument, urging them to
“reflect back,” or summarize their debate partner’s points
before launching into a counterattack. The exercise was
designed to increase empathy, he said.
Neither participant seemed to like it much, and the
discussion ended without any agreement.
Still, said mediator Dave Gottfried, who watched from the
sidelines, that doesn’t mean the discussion wasn’t a
success. All the group wanted, he said, was “just to get
people to stop yelling at each other and start talking.”
 After Trump’s CNN ‘Fight’ Video,
#25thamendmentnow Starts Trending On Twitter
By Jaclyn Reiss Globe Staff
July 02, 2017

the procedure to take place. The vice president would then

become president under the amendment.

Some Americans were so upset by President Trump’s

latest controversial tweet that a hashtag lobbying for his
removal from office was trending on Twitter on Sunday
night.

The term “#25thAmendmentNow” began trending several

hours after Trump tweeted a mock video that shows him
pummeling a man — his face obscured by the CNN logo
— outside a wrestling ring, along with the message:

‘‘#FraudNewsCNN #FNN.’’

Some media organizations were alarmed by the outright

violence toward journalists portrayed in the video, and
CNN accused Trump of engaging in

‘‘juvenile behavior far below the dignity of

his office.’’

However, a White House aide insisted the tweet should not

send a chill across the media landscape.

‘‘I think that no one would perceive that as

a threat,’’ homeland security adviser Tom
Bossert said. ‘‘I hope they don’t. But I do
think that he’s beaten up in a way on cable
platforms that he has a right to respond to.’’
Still, many condemned Trump’s video online, sparking the
#25thAmendmentNow hashtag. The 25th Amendment is a
procedure to remove presidents who haven’t committed
crimes but are considered unfit to be in office. Cabinet
members would first have to certify that the president is
“unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,”
and then two-thirds of Congress would have to concur for
240
 The hashtag also started trending days after US
Representative Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat,
promoted a bill he recently introduced to create a
constitutional body to examine Trump’s fitness to be
president. The bill has more than 20 sponsors — including
James McGovern of Massachusetts, according to
Congress.gov.

“In case of emergency, break glass. We need an Oversight

Commission on Presidential Capacity in order to fulfill the
meaning of the 25th [Amendment],” Raskin tweeted
Friday.

However, some were also using the hashtag to defend the

president.

Evan Horowitz of the Globe staff contributed to this

report. Material from the Associated Press was used in
this report.

241
 How The Left Lost Its Mind
Polemicists, Conspiracists, And Outright Fabulists Are Feeding An
Alternative Media Landscape—Where The Implausibility Of A Claim Is
No Bar To Its Acceptance.
Mckay Coppins
Jul 2, 2017
Last month, Democratic Senator Ed Markey delivered
what seemed like an explosive bit of news during an
interview with CNN: A grand jury had been impaneled in
New York, he said, to investigate the Trump campaign’s
alleged collusion with Russia.
The only problem: It wasn’t true.
The precise origins of the rumor are difficult to pin down,
but it had been ricocheting around social media for days
before Markey’s interview. The story had no reliable
sourcing, and not a single credible news outlet touched
it—but it had been fervently championed by The Palmer
Report, a liberal blog known for peddling conspiracy
theories, and by anti-Trump Twitter crusaders like Louise
Mensch. Soon enough, prominent people with blue
checkmarks by their names were amplifying it with “Big if
true”-type Tweets. And by May 11, the story had migrated
from the bowels of the internet to the mouth of a United
States senator.
After Markey’s office apologized for spreading the
unsubstantiated story, there was a mild flurry of articles
warning of “fake news” aimed at the left, and then
everyone moved on. But the episode jarringly illustrated an
under-examined phenomenon in American politics.
Over the past two decades, an immense amount of
journalistic energy was spent exploring the right-wing
media ecosystem—from talk radio, to Fox News, to
Breitbart and beyond—and documenting its growing
influence on mainstream GOP politics. This turned out to
be a worthy and prescient pursuit, and if any doubt remains
242
about that, I’d present “President Donald Trump” as
Exhibit A. While serious Republicans in the political class
spent years scoffing at the “entertainers” and
“provocateurs” on the supposedly powerless fringe, the
denizens of the fever swamp were busy taking over the
party.
But 2017 poses the question: Could the same thing happen
on the left?
It’s a prospect that deserves more serious attention and
debate than it’s gotten this year. The Trump era has given
rise to a vast alternative left-wing media infrastructure that
operates largely out of the view of casual news consumers,
but commands a massive audience and growing influence
in liberal America. There are polemical podcasters and
partisan click farms; wild-eyed conspiracists and cynical
fabulists. Some traffic heavily in rumor and wage
campaigns of misinformation; others are merely
aggregators and commentators who have carved out a
corner of the web for themselves. But taken together, they
form a media universe where partisan hysteria is too easily
stoked, and fake news can travel at the speed of light.
Before we go on, let me try to quiet the cries of “False
equivalence!” before they begin: No, these personalities
and publications do not yet wield the same influence in the
Democratic Party that their counterparts do in the GOP.
But ignoring them would be a mistake. In recent months,
some of the most irresponsible actors in this world have
proven alarmingly adept at influencing venerated figures
of the left—from public intellectuals, to world-famous
celebrities, to elected officials.
What follows is an attempt to map the topography of the
left’s modern alternative media landscape. It is by no
means comprehensive, but hopefully it provides a useful
start to the kind of exploration and anthropology that’s
needed.
Twitter conspiracists
In past political epochs, popular conspiracy theories spread
via pamphlets left on windshields, or chain emails
forwarded thousands of times. These days, the tinfoil-hat
crowd gathers on Twitter.
People like Mensch, Claude Taylor, Andrea Chalupa, Eric
Garland, and Leah McElrath feed their followers a steady
diet of highly provocative speculation, rumor, and
innuendo that makes it sound as if Trump’s presidency—
and, really, the entire Republican Party—is perpetually on
the verge of a spectacular meltdown.
The most prolific of the conspiracy-mongers tend to focus
on the Russia scandal, weaving a narrative so
sensationalistic and complex that it could pass for a Netflix
political drama. Theirs is a world where it is acceptable to
allege that hundreds of American politicians, journalists,
and government officials are actually secret Russian
agents; that Andrew Breitbart was murdered by Vladimir
Putin; that the Kremlin has “kompromat” on everyone, and
oh-by-the-way a presidency-ending sex tape is going to
drop any day now.
Writing recently in The New Republic, Sarah Jones
identified the popularity of these notorious
tweetstormers—some of whom boast followings in the
hundreds of thousands—as part of a “disturbing emerging
trend” on the left. “Liberals desperate to believe that the
right conspiracy will take down Donald Trump promote
their own purveyors of fake news,” she wrote.
Hyperpartisan Facebook pages
If Twitter is where liberal conspiracy theories germinate
and spread among news junkies, Facebook is where anti-
Republican propaganda can go wide.
Facebook pages like Occupy Democrats have millions of
fans who ensure that every meme, video, and breathless
blog post they publish has a good chance at virality. The
content plastered across these pages includes standard-
issue clickbait (“Trump Just Did Something Awful At His
Golf Course”) and hyperbolic headlines (“Queen Elizabeth
Just Told Trump To Go F*ck Himself And It Is Perfect”).
But these feeds are also studded with straightforwardly
fake news.
An analysis by BuzzFeed during the frenzied final weeks
of the 2016 election found that nearly 20 percent of the
stories posted by three extremely popular liberal Facebook
pages—Occupy Democrats, The Other 98%, and
Addicting Info—were either partly or mostly false. While
conservative Facebook pages were even more likely to
spread false stories, BuzzFeed’s finding should serve as a
red flag for the kind of the news that millions of rank-and-
file Democrats are getting on the world’s largest social-
media platform.
243
Blogs and message boards
The roots of the liberal blogosphere can be traced back to
the early Bush years, when Markos Moulistas launched the
Daily Kos to crusade against “an oppressive and war-
crazed administration” and Josh Marshall used Talking
Points Memo to take the Senate Majority Leader to task. A
decade and a half later, some of the blogs of that era have
matured into more professional news sites, like TPM,
while others have disappeared. But in 2017, the left has
more niche political sites than ever, and in many ways they
make up the core of its modern media ecosystem.
Some are relative newcomers to this scene. There is The
Palmer Report, the publication of record for anti-Trump
conspiracy nuts who don’t care about the credibility of the
record; Shareblue, a viral news site that aspires, according
to its founder David Brock, to become the “Breitbart of the
left”; and Patribotics, home to Mensch’s Russia-related
rumormongering.
Meanwhile, old-school platforms like Reddit and Daily
Kos continue to host freewheeling forums that attract the
kind of occasionally enlightening, occasionally deranged
conversations that tend to thrive in those environments.
And the HuffPost contributor platform—an un-vetted,
unedited section of the site that operates apart from its
professional journalism—has been a vehicle for some of
the most bizarre, and outright craziest, content to go viral
on the left in recent years.
Just this month, editors were forced to delete a contributor
post that began, “Impeachment and removal from office
are only the first steps; for America to be redeemed,
Donald Trump must be prosecuted for treason and — if
convicted in a court of law — executed.” And throughout
last year’s primaries, Seth Abramson, a creative writing
professor at the University of New Hampshire, used his
HuffPost perch to churn out a procession of increasingly
delusional blog posts explaining why Bernie Sanders
would inevitably win the Democratic nomination.
Abramson’s arguments not only denied political realities
and delegate math as the race wore on; they often denied
basic human logic. But thanks to the hordes of Bernie fans
desperately scouring the internet for some hope to cling to,
Abramson’s posts consistently went uber-viral. (He
eventually wrote a post defending this shameless play for
clicks as a form of “experimental journalism” that
embraced “the multi-dimensionality of metanarrative.” The
Washington Post’s Matt O’Brien responded via Twitter:
“Area Academic Writes Barely Comprehensible Defense
of Lying.”) These days, Abramson’s main platform is
Twitter, where he has over 150,000 followers, and
specializes in imminent-indictment stories in the style of
criminal complaints.
As with right-wing publishers, the content produced by
these liberal sites varies widely in terms of quality,
credibility, and good faith. At their best, they can offer the
kind of radical viewpoints and unique insights that don’t
commonly make it onto the high-profile platforms of
mainstream liberalism, like MSNBC or the New York
Times op-ed page. At their worst, they serve up shallow
partisan affirmation and dishonest propaganda. And rarely
do the more responsible publishers in this ecosystem spend
time proactively debunking the rumors and falsehoods that
are circulating among their audiences.
Podcasts
The constellation of popular podcasts that has emerged on
the left serves many of the same functions that right-wing
talk-radio hosts served for their audiences in their early
days. They provide a mix of commentary, entertainment,
and partisan catharsis; a safe space to process the daily
onslaught of bad news.
The hosts tend not to be household names, but to their
listeners they are superstars. The most successful
podcasters are able to sell out theaters for live shows, and
can even get recognized on the street (in certain zip codes,
at least).
The nature of the medium—walled off from the web and
unplugged from social media—means that even
irresponsible podcasts are not innately integral to the
spread of sketchy information on the left. Many of the
most popular podcasts, including those from the
mainstream Democrats of the Crooked Media empire, are
careful with their evidence and claims, working to debunk
conspiracy theories, and hosting guests with a variety of
views. And the gleefully vulgar champions of the “dirtbag
left” at Chapo Trap House make a point of mocking the
Russia conspiracists. Above all, what they offer their
stressed-out listeners is a sense of community (plus plenty
of discount codes for Blue Apron and MeUndies).*
VIP Validators
One sign of the potential power in this alternative media
universe is the regularity with which stories that originate
there end up reaching public figures with real influence
.
244
and massive followings. These may be people who are
relatively unsophisticated when it comes to politics and
media, but whose prominence in other fields—academia,
history, law, literature—gives them a certain sheen of
trustworthiness. So when they share stories from fringe
outlets on Twitter or Facebook, many are inclined to take
them seriously.
On the “about” page for The Palmer Report, the site thanks
a range of well-known people and mainstream media
outlets it claims have shared its (dubious) reporting —
including Representative Ted Lieu, former Michigan
Governor Jennifer Granholm, former DNC chair Howard
Dean, the actors Mark Ruffalo and Debra Messing,
Newsweek, The Oregonian, and an array of MSNBC
contributors. Laurence Tribe, the renowned Harvard
scholar of constitutional law, has been an especially active
booster for the site, routinely tweeting links to highly
questionable, unverified news stories about Trump.
Last April, when Jason Chaffetz announced he would
resign his House seat, The Palmer Report published an
anonymously sourced bombshell claiming the FBI had
discovered the Utah congressman was being blackmailed
by the Kremlin. The story was characteristic of the site’s
well-worn shtick. But that didn’t stop Ned Price, a former
special assistant to President Obama, from credulously
passing it along on Twitter.
“Interesting, if single-sourced, article from a few
days ago,” he wrote.
Eric Schultz, a senior adviser to Obama, then chimed in,
“Too bad nobody flagged this earlier.”
When journalists began pressing the duo on why they were
sharing a story from a website with such a spotty track
record of accuracy, Price’s response was telling.
“Every once in a blue moon, the tin hat can fit.”
 Shadow President? Obama Meets With South Korean
President To Discuss Trump
Alex Pfeiffer - White House Correspondent
10:30 AM 07/03/2017
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA - JULY 03: In this handout
photo released by the South Korean Presidential Blue
House, Former U.S. President Barack Obama shakes hands
with South Korean President Moon Jae-in during their
meeting at the presidential Blue House on July 3, 2017 in
Seoul, South Korea. Obama is in South Korea to attend
anAsian Leadership conference in Seoul. (Photo by South
Korean Presidential Blue House via Getty Images)
Former President Barack Obama seems to be feeling
nostalgic for his old job, meeting with South Korean
President Moon Jae-in Monday for 40 minutes.
The Korea Herald reported that Moon spoke about his
recent meetings with President Trump in Washington and
asked Obama for his advice on how to improve that
relationship.
.
245
The meeting came after Obama spoke at the Asian
Leadership Conference and the Fourth Congress of
Indonesian Diaspora in Jakarta. There he attacked Trump’s
decision to withdraw from the Paris climate change accord.
“In Paris, we came together around the most ambitious
agreement in history about climate change, an agreement
that even with the temporary absence of American
leadership can still give our children a fighting chance,”
Obama said in Indonesia.
The former president had said before leaving office that he
appreciated his predecessor George W. Bush’s silence
during his tenure, but also contended that he’s “still a
citizen and that carries with it duties and obligations.”
This citizen status has led to him to have an active post-
presidential political life.
He appealed to members of Congress in May to have the
“courage” to save Obamacare, and just a few weeks into
President Trump’s tenure Obama put out a statement
through his spokesman attacking Trump’s so-called “travel
ban.”
President Trump and Obama have had a strained
relationship. Trump has accused Obama of both spying on
him and obstruction of justice.
 Keith Olbermann: Trump Should
Be Impeached After Tweeting CNN Takedown Video
By Katherine Rodriguez -
July 3, 2017
Former MSNBC television host and
liberal commentator Keith Olbermann
sent out a tweet Sunday morning calling
for President Trump to be impeached
after the president posted a video of
himself beating CNN in a wrestling
match on Twitter.
“Please RT if you agree the cabinet must
invoke the 25th Amendment, TODAY, and
immediately remove @realDonaldTrump
from the presidency,” Olbermann wrote.
Please RT if you agree the cabinet must
invoke the 25th Amendment, TODAY, and
immediately remove @realDonaldTrump
from the presidency.
— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann)
July 2, 2017
Trump tweeted the video of himself taking
down someone whose face is replaced with
a CNN logo Sunday morning with the
caption “#FraudNewsCNN #FNN.”
#FraudNewsCNN #FNN
pic.twitter.com/WYUnHjjUjg
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
July 2, 2017
At the end of the video, the letters FNN appear with the
words “fraud news network” directly underneath them.
246
The video meme is taken from an event in 2007 where
Trump bodyslammed WWE Chairman and CEO Vince
McMahon at Wrestlemania XXII.
Various Trump supporters edited the video to show the
president tackling his many foes, including CNN.
Liberals, including Olbermann, were not amused by the
meme. In his tweet, Olbermann referred to the efforts by
congressional Democrats to deem Trump “mentally unfit”
to serve as president so they can pass a bill that would
allow Congress remove him from office under the 25th
Amendment.
The 25th Amendment, ratified in 1967 shortly after
President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, addresses the
issue of what to do when a president becomes unable to
perform his presidential duties. It allows the vice president
to assume the presidency in case the president resigns or
the cabinet removes him from office because he is “unable
to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
Olbermann has called for Trump to be impeached several
times within 24 hours.
The first time, Olbermann alleged that Trump “attacked
freedom of speech” and called for his impeachment:
So @realDonaldTrump has just attacked
freedom of speech in an Independence
Day speech. Impeach him, indict him,
imprison him, erase his name
https://t.co/w5A6oxJYYS
— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann)
July 2, 2017
Then, he tweeted that the vice president and the cabinet
should use the 25th Amendment to get Trump to resign:
The @vp and the cabinet of
@realDonaldTrump need to invoke Article
4 of the 25th Amendment and remove him
from office, today, or resign.
— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann)
July 2, 2017
Olbermann is currently the host of a webcast for GQ called
“The Resistance.”
 Democratic Bill Lays
The Groundwork To Remove Trump From Office
By Phil Mccausland
Jul 3 2017, 4:55 Am ET

House Democrats are on a mission to educate the

American people about a little-known power of the 25th
Amendment — the ousting of the president.

Led by freshman Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a group

of growing Democratic co-signers has put forth a bill that
could force President Donald Trump from office if he were
found mentally or physically unfit.

Although it was introduced in April, the bill has gained

steam in the past week as Trump's tweet storms have
grown in ferocity.

The commission would evaluate whether Trump or the

president at the time

"is temporarily or permanently impaired by

physical illness or disability, mental illness,
mental deficiency, or alcohol or drug use to
the extent that the person lacks sufficient
understanding or capacity to execute the
powers and duties of the office of
President."

Initially, 20 members of Congress signed onto the bill in

"Given Donald Trump's continued erratic
April, but the number continues to grow, especially after
and baffling behavior, is it any wonder why
Trump's most recent tweets. His feud with the hosts of
we need to pursue this legislation?" asked
MSNBC's "Morning Joe" and a tweet that included a GIF
Rep. Darren Soto, D-Florida, a co-signer.
of himself tackling and punching a figure with the CNN
"The mental and physical health of the
logo over its face have earned him harsh criticism from the
leader of the United States and the free
media, as well as from members of Congress.
world is a matter of great public concern."

If successful, the law would create an 11-member

bipartisan commission known as the Oversight
Commission on Presidential Capacity, which would
medically examine the president and evaluate his mental
and physical faculties.

Rankin hopes to take advantage of Section 4 of the 25th

Amendment, which allows the vice president to remove
the president if he or she has the consent of the majority of
the Cabinet or "such other body as Congress," if they
believe he cannot "discharge the powers and duties of the But the bill isn't just about Trump, and it shouldn't be
office." If all goes according to plan, the bipartisan voted on by party lines, said Raskin, a professor of
commission could provide that consent after a medical constitutional law, who said the commission could be
examination of the president. called for any president whenever there's concern.

247
 "We've got to make sure that we have a
president who is able faithfully to discharge
the duties of office," Raskin said Friday on
CNN's "Outfront." "This is not just for one
president — it's for all of the presidents.
And I think we can come together in a
bipartisan way."
The White House didn't respond to multiple requests for
comment from NBC News.
The 25th Amendment has been invoked a few times in the
past when presidents have had to be sedated for medical
procedures.
.
248
In July 1985, for example, then-Vice President George
H.W. Bush was acting president for about eight hours
when President Ronald Reagan underwent a procedure to
have a precancerous lesion removed from his colon.
And Dick Cheney was twice acting president during the
administration of President George W. Bush: first in June
2002, for about 2½ hours, when Bush underwent a
colonoscopy, and again for about two hours in July 2007,
when Bush had five non-cancerous colon polyps removed.
 Steve Bannon Reportedly
Pushing Trump To Raise Taxes On The Wealthy
By Tyler Durden
Jul 3, 2017 7:40 AM
The tensions between the Trump administration’s populist
win and its more traditionally Republican establishment
types have been well-documented in recent months. And
now, more than two months after Treasury Secretary
Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Council chief
Gary Cohn unveiled an outline of the administration’s tax-
reform ambitions, another battle between the two wings
appears to be brewing.
Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon is said to be
pushing to raise the top tax rate on individuals, with Axios
saying the former Breitbart CEO would like the top rate
to have “a 4 in front of it” - currently, the highest
income-tax bracket in the US is 39.6% for individuals
earning more than $414,000 a year.
Some officials – code for Mnuchin, Cohn and the other
members of the more traditionally corporatist (or rather
Goldmanist) wing of the Trump administration – believe
Bannon’s ideas are crazy. But Bannon believes raising
taxes on the wealthy could help the administration boost its
populist bona fides, an angle which Trump appears to be
actively pursuing once again having recently failed with
his more traditional fiscal reform push. But as tax reform is
shaping up to be a must-win for the Trump administration,
it would hardly be a surprise to see Bannon’s plan shelved
in favor of across-the-board cuts that would help rally the
Republican Party’s conservatives to support whatever
reform package Trump ultimately presents.
Cohn and Mnuchin reportedly view tax reform as a top
priority for the administration. However, as Axios notes,
time to pass comprehensive reform is quickly running out.
249
 Lobbyists who have met with Gary Cohn and
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin say they've
been struck by how impatient the two appear:
 Cohn has told associates that if tax reform
doesn't get done this year, it's probably never
going to happen.
 Sources who know Cohn speculate that he'll
leave the White House the instant he concludes
tax reform is dead.
 While Cohn and Mnuchin differ stylistically —
Cohn is brash and physically imposing while
Mnuchin is mild-mannered — sources who've
been meeting with them say they share the same
philosophy: Go big or go home.
Ironically, Cohn and Mnuchin are warming to an idea that
Bannon supported in the aftermath of the election, when he
claimed that he's "not a conservative" and said he would
support spending packages that blow out the deficit,
arguing that the US should rebuild its infrastructure now
while interest rates are low. Mnuchin, for his part, has
refused to promise that tax reform wouldn’t lead to wider
deficits when he and Cohn unveiled the outline for the
administration’s reform plan back in April.
Cohn and Mnuchin aren't bluffing when they say they want
to slash the corporate tax rate to 15% from the current
35%. Neither man has any interest in timid tax cuts,
and they wager that special interests will relinquish
their loopholes if they become convinced their tax rate
really will be in the teens.
 They're becoming far less wedded to revenue
neutrality — the idea, favored by House and Senate
Republican leadership, that tax cuts mustn't add to
the deficit.
 They're increasingly tantalized by an idea some
conservatives (like Grover Norquist and Sen. Pat
Toomey) are pushing: Allow major tax cuts to last
longer than 10 years without having to balance the
budget.
 Conservatives like Toomey favor a more expansive
20- or 25-year period. But top White House officials
are more cautious, and are said to be weighing a
15-year period.
The last time the US passed comprehensive tax reform, the
legislative battle took two years. Thus, a new theme is
emerging that applies not just to tax reform, but to
Trump’s agenda more broadly: Do it now, or let it go.
Context: The last time Congress passed major tax reform,
in 1986, it was a two-year rollercoaster. This time, the
White House officials driving the process have concluded
there's no chance of getting Democrats to support what
Trump wants to do. So, they believe it must be done before
the 2018 midterm elections or not at all.
.
250
That's going to be a heck of a challenge. They need to first
pass a budget, which is embroiled in fights over defense
spending and welfare reform. And they need to finish with
health care. Some top Republicans have come to believe,
contrary to conventional wisdom, that tax reform stands a
better chance if health care fails — so desperate will
Trump and Republican leaders be for a victory.
The x-factor here, of course, is Trump. How does he feel
about raising taxes on the wealthy? And, more
importantly, is Bannon succeeding in moving the Trump
administration in a more populist direction, following
Trump's decision to largely abandon his protectionist
rhetoric? A few more tweets from the president should
provide the answer.
 This proves that one of the smartest people alive can be WRONG!

Stephen Hawking Fears

Trump Could ‘Push Earth Over The Brink’
And Start Chain Reaction Which Wipes Out Humanity
British Professor Fears Global Warming Will Cause Temperatures To
Skyrocket Beyond Boiling Point And Sulphuric Acid
To Rain From The Sky
By Jasper Hamill
3rd July 2017, 12:29 Pm , Updated: 3rd July 2017, 12:31 Pm
STEPHEN Hawking fears Donald Trump’s decision to In his latest prophecy, the professor suggested our planet
pull out of the Paris climate change agreement could be the could be destined to become totally uninhabitable.
“tipping point” which wipes out humanity and turns our
planet into a living hell. “We are close to the tipping point where
global warming becomes irreversible.
The British professor is worried that The Donald’s Trump’s action could push the Earth over
rejection of this plan to combat global warming could the brink, to become like Venus, with a
cause irreversible changes which doom our planet to a temperature of two hundred and fifty
grim fate. degrees, and raining sulphuric acid,” he
told the BBC.
“Climate change is one of the great
dangers we face, and it’s one we can
prevent if we act now.
“By denying the evidence for climate
change, and pulling out of the Paris
Climate Agreement, Donald Trump will
cause avoidable environmental damage to
our beautiful planet, endangering the
natural world, for us and our children.”

The famed physicist and doom monger also fears that

“evolution has inbuilt greed and aggression

Will Donald Trump bring about the apocalypse? Professor Stephen
Hawking certainly appears to think so to the human genome”,

In recent years, Hawking has become something of a meaning that we might wipe ourselves out before Earth
doom-monger who is determined to sketch out a variety of turns into Venus.
grim fates which await the human race.
.

251
 It’s ON! Trump Should Order The Arrest Of Barack
Obama For Violating The LOGAN ACT For Meeting With
South Korean President As A Private Citize!
By IWB
July 3, 2017
Former President Barack Obama seems to be feeling
nostalgic for his old job, meeting with South Korean
President Moon Jae-in Monday for 40 minutes.
The Korea Herald reported that Moon spoke about his
recent meetings with President Trump in Washington and
asked Obama for his advice on how to improve that
relationship.
The meeting came after Obama spoke at the Asian
Leadership Conference and the Fourth Congress of
Indonesian Diaspora in Jakarta. There he attacked Trump’s
decision to withdraw from the Paris climate change accord.
“In Paris, we came together around the
most ambitious agreement in history about
climate change, an agreement that even
with the temporary absence of American
leadership can still give our children a
fighting chance,” Obama said in Indonesia.
The former president had said before leaving office that he
appreciated his predecessor George W. Bush’s silence
during his tenure, but also contended that he’s “still a
citizen and that carries with it duties and obligations.”
252
http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/03/obama-meets-with-
south-korean-president-to-discuss-trump/
The Logan Act (1 Stat. 613, 18 U.S.C. § 953, enacted
January 30, 1799) is a United States federal law that details
the fine and/or imprisonment of unauthorized citizens who
negotiate with foreign governments having a dispute with
the United States. It was intended to prevent the
undermining of the government’s position.[2] The Act was
passed following George Logan‘s unauthorized
negotiations with France in 1798, and was signed into law
by President John Adams on January 30, 1799. The Act
was last amended in 1994, and violation of the Logan Act
is a felony.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan_Act
The Founding Fathers put all these protections in place
because they knew how the United States could be
undermined. Liberalized Baby Boomers squandered it all
and condemned future generations to pay for their apathy
and cowardice.
 'Your Worst Nightmare:
A Successful Donald Trump Presidency'
As The President Seizes On Policy Wins And Seeks To Turn The Russia
Spotlight On Obama And The Press, Some Experts Say Liberals Are In
For A Rude Awakening, Trump’s Tweet Attacking CNN Is ‘Un-
American’, Top Media Ethicist Says
David Smith In Washington
Monday 3 July 2017 05.00 EDT
Donald Trump smiles at supporters as he arrives to speak at a rally in
Cedar Rapids, Iowa, earlier this month. Photograph: Charlie
Neibergall/AP
Sgy Michael Verardo, who lost an arm and a leg while
serving with the US army in Afghanistan in 2010, says he
was failed by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
He had to wait 57 days to get his prosthetic leg fixed and
three and a half years for adaptations to his home. But then
came Donald Trump.
“Thank you, President Trump and [Veterans
Affairs] Secretary [David] Shulkin for ensuring
that we are not forgotten and that we will receive
the care we need and deserve,” Verardo said at
the White House recently.
Trump, signing an act to protect VA whistleblowers,
revelled in the moment, using his fingers to mime a gun
and mouthing his catchphrase
“You’re fired!” at Shulkin. Then he smiled: “We
will never use those words on you, that’s for
sure.”
The audience in the East Room laughed dutifully. This is
the parallel universe that Trump occupies whenever he
253
can, a universe of achievements, applause and adoration, a
safe space where he is monarch of all he surveys and his
punchlines land. In his version of Washington, he is the
Henry V-style man of action to Barack Obama’s
indecisive, cripplingly intellectual Hamlet.
Trump’s self-belief appears to get a shot in the arm from
every victory, real or imagined. This may go some way to
explaining why, even as his approval ratings fall off a cliff
and some call for his impeachment, he sees no reason to
course-correct, as he and a noisy caucus around him seem
to become ever more self-righteous.
Trump is “much more resilient” than his opponents allow,
said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, before
pivoting to a plug for his new book, Understanding Trump.
The past two weeks illustrate how, when on the ropes,
Trump can still throw some punches that at least get him to
the bell. And he makes sure his 33 million Twitter
followers know about it. When Republican Karen Handel
beat Democrat Jon Ossoff in a Georgia race much-hyped
as a referendum on his presidency, Trump tweeted:
“Thank you @FoxNews ‘Huge win for President
Trump and GOP in Georgia Congressional
Special Election.’”
Then the president headed to Iowa to bask in the adulation
of his supporters in the forum he likes best, a campaign-
style rally. When he ranted against the “dishonest media”
and floated the idea of solar panels on his border wall, the
crowd lapped it up. Trevor Noah, host of Comedy
Central’s The Daily Show, commented:
“You know what was really impressive to see last
night? How Trump supporters are so onboard
with their dude he can say anything and they’ll
come along for the ride.”
Then came the veterans event at the White House where,
under the gaze of portraits of George Washington and
Teddy Roosevelt, Trump projected himself as a man who
gets things done.
Trump shakes hands with Buzz Aldrin after signing an executive order on
space exploration. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
“We’ve announced that the VA will finally solve a
problem that has plagued our government for
decades,” he said, referring to the transfer of
veterans’ medical records from the Department
of Defense to the VA – a seemingly simple
process that has earned comparisons to the
incompatibility of the Xbox and PlayStation.
Meanwhile, Trump finally caught a break on the worst
crisis facing his presidency, the multiple investigations
into his election campaign’s links to Russia. First, David
Brooks, a Trump critic and New York Times columnist,
suggested that the scandal may be overblown.
“There may be a giant revelation still to come,”
Brooks wrote. “But as the Trump-Russia story
has evolved, it is striking how little evidence there
is that any underlying crime occurred – that there
was any actual collusion between the Donald
Trump campaign and the Russians. Everything
seems to be leaking out of this administration,
but so far the leaks about actual collusion are
meagre.”
Then, the Washington Post published a major investigation
that raised questions over whether Obama could have done
more to stop Moscow’s interference in last year’s poll,
quoting one former administration official as saying: “I
feel like we sort of choked.”
That gave Trump the opening he needed, to deflect and
disrupt the prevailing narrative.
“The real story is that President Obama did
NOTHING after being informed in August about
Russian meddling,” he tweeted. “With 4 months
254
looking at Russia... under a magnifying glass,
they have zero ‘tapes’ of T people colluding.
There is no collusion & no obstruction. I should
be given apology!”
He was handed another gift when CNN was forced to
retract a report, citing a single anonymous source, that
Congress was investigating a “Russian investment fund
with ties to Trump officials”. It changed nothing about the
Russia-related cloud over Trump but it did feed into his
narrative that untrustworthy media organisations are
conspiring against him.
The president gloated:
“So they caught Fake News CNN cold, but what
about NBC, CBS & ABC? What about the failing
@nytimes & @washingtonpost? They are all
Fake News!”
Reporter challenges White House spokeswoman over fake news claims
Politico reported that Trump and his allies “believe he’s
gained a tactical advantage in his war with the media” –
which intensified over the weekend – adding that many
White House staff members were “elated” by the CNN
blunder, reckoning it will prove to sceptical voters that the
mainstream media has a “vendetta” against the
administration. The president’s supporters seized on the
incident to plant seeds of confusion and false equivalency:
if that Russia story was wrong, perhaps all of them are
wrong?
Yet another lifeline was thrown to Trump from an
unexpected quarter. The supreme court partially restored
his executive order imposing a travel ban on six Muslim-
majority countries and said it would hear arguments in the
autumn. After setbacks in lower courts, the president was
quick to crow about a “clear victory”.
‘A success in spite of himself scenario’
Trump’s parallel universe also consists of speeches, bill
signings, Oval Office photo ops and meetings with foreign
leaders with whom he has, of late, stopped taking
questions from the media, preferring to be lavished with
praise that often jars with the national conversation. Indian
prime minister Narendra Modi, for example, thanked
Trump for “having spent so much time with me, for having
spoken such kind words about me and my country … In
this journey of India-America relations, I think I would
like to thank you for providing great leadership.”
None of these examples comes without caveats. Handel’s
victory in Georgia was in a seat that Republicans have held
since 1979. Democrats say Trump’s proposed budget will
make it harder for veterans to receive care. The Russia
investigations are likely to drag on for years and could find
that Trump obstructed justice when he fired FBI director
James Comey. The supreme court did not fully reinstate
his travel ban, granting exemption to people with a “bona
fide relationship” with someone in the US. And his
campaign promise to repeal and replace Obamacare
remains in limbo on Capitol Hill, while the president has
been condemned by both parties for a crude attack on TV
host Mika Brzezinski.
But politics, after all, is often a battle of perceptions. Niall
Ferguson, a British historian and senior fellow at the
Hoover Institution in Stanford, California, said in May:
“I think one of the things Guardian readers, and
their counterparts on the American coasts, don’t
want to think about is the possibility that despite
his obvious ineptitude, Trump might actually be
successful.
“I said last summer to a bunch of liberal friends:
‘Your worst nightmare is not a Trump presidency;
it’s a successful Trump presidency.’ The
successful Trump presidency scenario is one in
which, despite it all, the economy does better
thanks to deregulation and tax cuts, foreign
policy delivers some big wins on North Korea,
the Middle East.
The past two weeks illustrate how, when on the ropes, Trump can still
throw some punches that at least get him to the bell. Photograph:
Xinhua / Barcroft Images
“It doesn’t take an awful lot for a president to
start looking good. If the expectations start really
low, which they have done, it may be one win,
and I definitely don’t rule out a kind of ‘success in
spite of himself’ scenario. And then you begin to
wonder if a left-of-Clinton Democrat in 2020
would be blown away. We’ll see. The fun thing
255
about doing history is you really can’t tell at this
point which way it will go. It could quite easily go
Jimmy Carter and he could be a lame duck.”
The president has not given a solo press conference since
16 February. Since 11 May, he has not given a TV
interview to a channel other than the staunchly supportive
Fox News. Combined with increasingly terse White House
press briefings, often off camera, the pattern suggests that
Trump is focused on firing up his base and has all but
given up on reaching beyond it.
Michael Barnett, chairman of the Republican party in Palm
Beach County, Florida, said:
“I haven’t seen Trump lose any bit of support on
the ground here. I hear people say he’s not
presidential but it looks like he is beginning to
redefine what it means to be presidential. He’s
not going to take it lying down but he’s going
stand up for himself and give it back.”
He added:
“We believe, just as President Clinton said, it’s all
about the economy. That’s what people care
about most, not Russia or climate change, but
things that affect them personally like putting
food on the table. If Trump focuses on that, he’ll
win again in 2020.”
‘Most Americans see this as a failure of a president’
Trump’s string of wins – as he sees them – has
emboldened him. This week, at his luxury hotel in
Washington, he hosted his first re-election campaign
fundraiser.
George Ajjan, a Republican consultant and strategist, said:
“The early political burials of Trump and
impeachment whispers were wishful thinking.
Remember we are not even six months into his
presidency – the proof of the pudding is in the
eating, and most of the bowl is still untasted. The
 fixation of Trump’s enemies on Russia is not
strategic: they are wasting their time hoping for a
silver bullet made in Moscow.”
But from vulgar tweets to healthcare, Trump remains
highly combustible. As the healthcare legislation continues
to falter, his reputation as a dealmaker is on the line. Last
week, Senate Republicans postponed a vote as they argued
over the way forward. Some complained that the president
lacks a grasp of the basic issues. House Republicans are
also reportedly furious that he branded their bill “mean”.
Failure to repeal and replace Obamacare would no doubt
be a colossal failure, but the alternative might be worse.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Senate
plan would leave 22 million more people uninsured and
gut Medicaid, breaking Trump’s promise to protect it. His
hardcore supporters, in states such as West Virginia, would
be hardest hit. If no legislation is passed, Trump and his
allies will have the option of trying to muddy the waters by
blaming the intransigence and dysfunction of Washington.
The message will be: “Look, I tried, but the politicians got
in the way.”
Frank Luntz, a Republican consultant and pollster,
counselled patience:
“With Donald Trump, every news cycle is a
lifetime. Never assume he’s dead, because he
always rises from the ashes of some political or
personal error. And never assume he’s safe,
because the next political explosion is no more
than days away.”
.
256
Trump’s approval rating hovers at an average of 40%.
John Hudak, a senior fellow in governance studies at the
Brookings Institution think tank in Washington, warned:
“His supporters [see] someone they see as
presidential; the problem is that most Americans
don’t.
“Most Americans see this as a failure of a
president and don’t agree with handling of the
economy or his handling of foreign policy.”
Hudak added:
“No one is supporting Trump because three
people at CNN resigned. This love-fest over
Republicans winning Republican House seats is
worrying. Trump needs to expand his base: he
will not be re-elected if he relies on the same
coalition. He won by the narrowest of margins
and replication is not a viable strategy. A lot of
polling data shows the Trump base is an ever
shrinking segment of the American population.”
On Friday, there was another little noticed celebration in
the Oval Office, as Trump signed an executive order
reviving the National Space Council. Buzz Aldrin, the
second man to walk on the moon, quipped:
“Infinity and beyond.”
Perhaps not aware of the reference to Toy Story’s Buzz
Lightyear, Trump replied:
“This is infinity here. It could be infinity. We don’t
really don’t know. But it could be. It has to be
something – but it could be infinity, right?”
 Media Reaps Dividends
From Trump Attacks
By Jonathan Easley
07/03/17 06:00 AM EDT
Cable news outlets are pulling huge ratings and reporters
are becoming overnight celebrities as the attacks between
President Trump and the media enter strange new territory.
The White House has agitated for the fight, believing
that every day it spends feuding with the media exposes
further press bias and energizes the conservative base.
But Trump’s claim that MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski was
“bleeding badly from a face-lift" unified the media, with
anchors from Fox News to CNN expressing outrage at the
president’s tweets and pointing to them as evidence that
the press should not treat Trump like a normal president.
Trump again sent the media into a fury over the weekend
when he tweeted a doctored video showing him at a fake
wrestling match body-slamming someone with the CNN
logo superimposed over their face. Reporters accused
Trump of encouraging violence against the press.
The relationship between the White House and the media
is in shambles, with the daily press briefings devolving
into shouting matches and airing of grievances. Both
sides engage in stunts, grandstanding and political theater
meant to undermine or embarrass the other.
The White House has long viewed attacking the media,
dubbed “the opposition party” by chief strategist Stephen
Bannon, as a winning strategy. But the nasty turn has also
been a boon to the media and the individual reporters who
register acts of protest against the administration.
“Ratings are part of it, but the media’s open
contempt for this administration is part of it, too,”
said Tim Graham, the director of media analysis
at the conservative Media Research Center. “I
imagine it will continue as long as the ratings
keep going up.”
Left-leaning MSNBC pulled big numbers as the only
network in open opposition to the president, even before
the spat between Trump and “Morning Joe” hosts Joe
Scarborough and Brzezinski engulfed Washington.
257
According to Nielsen’s second-quarter ratings, MSNBC’s
total viewers are up 73 percent year-over-year, with prime-
time viewership up 86 percent, easily making it the fastest-
growing cable news outlet.
Anchor Rachel Maddow has become a cultural icon on the
left while also attracting a younger audience of viewers.
MSNBC’s share of the coveted 25- to 54-year-old
demographic grew 78 percent in prime time over last year.
Its prime-time audience has nearly tripled since second
quarter of 2014.
Scarborough said on Twitter that his show had a record
month for ratings.
Congrats to the entire Morning Joe team for
another record setting ratings month. You are
amazing. Your hard work makes the difference!!
pic.twitter.com/OFH8inG5td
— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) July 2, 2017
CNN, meanwhile, is running third in the cable wars.
Journalistically, the network has had a rough stretch, with
retraction-related dismissals, sting videos showing
producers expressing frustration with the network’s
editorial decisions and allegations of bias coming from the
right.
But CNN has still grown 25 percent in total viewers and 10
percent in prime time year-over-year. The network’s deep
well of contributors and political pundits ensures that the
Trump show is always rolling.
It’s a stark departure from the pre-Trump era, when
sagging ratings provoked a move away from breaking
news and political programming. As recently as 2014,
CNN was airing “Dirty Jobs,” “America’s Most Wanted”
or “Our America with Lisa Ling” in the prime-time 9 p.m.
hour.
Some media watchers are growing alarmed by the
increasingly antagonistic approach some in the press are
taking. But most expect it will continue as long as the
feuding with Trump attracts new viewers.
 “The news world is reaping some short-term
benefits from the running battle with Trump, but
this is really a short-sighted and ultimately losing
strategy,” said Jeffrey McCall, a media critic and
professor at DePauw University. “Sure, it's
sensational and somewhat entertaining, but it
makes the media look small and petty. Media
credibility is quite low and most news consumers
aren't going to sympathize with the news
industry, even when Trump makes boorish
attacks.”
Fox News is still the front-runner in the cable wars, despite
shake-ups that roiled both its prime-time line-up and
executive suites.
Fox’s audience grew 19 percent between 8 p.m. and 11
p.m., as viewers tune in to watch Tucker Carlson or Sean
Hannity rail against the news media on a nightly basis.
Feuding with Trump has also become a profitable
endeavor for many individual reporters, with viral video
clips and tweets opening new doors for previously little-
known journalists.
Taking on the White House worked for Brian Karem, an
editor for a regional newspaper in the Washington suburbs.
Karem was little-known before Tuesday, when a video of
him lecturing White House deputy press secretary Sarah
Huckabee Sanders over press access went viral.
Less than a week later, he has nearly 80,000 followers on
Twitter.
After his exchange, Karem made the cable news rounds to
call Sanders a bully. He sat for scores of interviews with
.
258
print and online outlets, where he claimed the nickname
“honey badger” — a supposedly fearless animal — and
said members of the press corps had likened him to
legendary reporters Sam Donaldson and Helen Thomas.
Left-leaning outlets have held Karem up as a hero,
although the episode cemented in the minds of many
conservatives that reporters want to use the briefings to
make their names by grandstanding against the
administration.
That’s a point White House press secretary Sean Spicer
made in explaining why fewer press briefing would be
televised.
Other reporters have had similar experiences.
Veteran reporter April Ryan, who has been covering the
White House for 20 years and has long been one of the
most respected journalists in the press corps, scored a
contributor position on CNN this year after several high-
profile dust-ups with Trump and Spicer.
CNN White House reporter Jim Acosta has
become the face of the resistance inside the briefing room,
railing against the administration on the air and on social
media.
Acosta’s antagonistic tweets have gone viral amid the
furor over the White House's decision to take the
briefings off-camera. Frustrated with the lack of camera
access, Acosta began to tweet pictures of his socks — the
only things in the briefing, he wrote, that he was allowed
to show on camera.
 Trump After Talk With Saudi King:
'Interesting Things Happening'
Mon Jul 3, 2017 5:57PM

Saudi Arabia, itself known as a main sponsor of violent

extremist ideology, has spearheaded a blockade against
Qatar for allegedly sponsoring terrorism.

US President Donald Trump. (Photo by AFP)

US President Donald Trump has tweeted
that "Interesting things are happening"
in the Middle East, following a US President Donald Trump (L) and Saudi Arabia's King Salman
conversation he had with Saudi Arabia's (file photo)
king.
The crisis unfolded on June 5, when Saudi Arabia,
"Spoke yesterday with the King of Saudi
Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Egypt cut
Arabia about peace in the Middle-East.
ties with Qatar, officially accusing it of "sponsoring
Interesting things are happening!," Trump
terrorism" and destabilizing the region.
tweeted on Monday.
Doha, however, has slammed the measures as unjustified,
On Sunday, Trump spoke separately by phone with King
saying they are based on false claims and assumptions.
Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Crown Prince
Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, and Emir
Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani of Qatar. While Trump has seemingly sided with the Saudi-led bloc,
his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, has called for an end
to the diplomatic and economic blockade, which he said
The White House said Trump spoke with the Arab leaders
has hurt US interests in the region.
about the situation with Qatar and
Analysts believe the Saudi measures are rather because
"reiterated the importance of stopping
Doha does not see Riyadh as the “big brother,” and follows
terrorist financing and discrediting extremist
an independent policy including in its relations with Iran.
ideology."

Trump also restated his goals from his visit to the region in
May of "defeating terrorism” and “achieving a lasting
peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians."

259
 Six In 10 Americans Say They Don't Trust The Trump
Administration But Congress And The Media
Have Even Worse Numbers – And Hardly
ANYONE Trusts Opinion Polls
 Marist/NPR Poll Found 61 Per Cent Of U.S. Adults Don't Trust The Trump Administration
 That Number Was 68 Per Cent For Congress And The Media, However, Giving The
President A Leg Up
 Americans Trust The U.S. Intelligence Community And The Courts
 But 61 Per Cent Distrust Opinion Polls, And Just 35 Per Cent Believe Them
By David Martosko, Us Political Editor For Dailymail.Com
Published: 12:38 EDT, 3 July 2017 | Updated: 15:08 EDT, 3 July 2017

The Trump administration is suffering from a trust deficit The media and Congress fared even worse than the White
as the president battles with federal lawmakers and House in a new Marist/NPR poll – and opinion polls
political journalists. themselves have a trust deficit of their own

But a new poll that identified the problem found

Americans trust Congress and the news media even less.

A survey conducted by Marist College for National

Public Radio and the PBS 'NewsHour' program found just
37 per cent of adults in the U.S. trust the Trump
administration, compared with 61 per cent who don't.

More than four in 10 said they don't trust the

administration 'at all.'

Congress is distrusted by 68 per cent of Americans and

trusted by just 29 per cent.

The media tied Congress witl 68 per cent distrust, but had
far more in the 'not at all' column.

Thirty per cent of adults said they trust the media either 'a
good amount' or 'a great deal.'

The two American institutions that placed highest were

intelligence agencies and the courts.

Sixty per cent of adults said they trust the intelligence

community, compared with 37 per cent who don't.
President Donald Trump has a trust deficit with
Americans, with about six in 10 saying they don't trust his
Those numbers were the same for the courts. They're also
administration
an almost perfect mirror of Trump's.

260
Trust for the administration and the media is split along
party lines.
Trouble on Capitol Hill: Just 25 per cent of Democrats and
39 per cent of Republicans trust Congress
Trump's now-famous video tweet showing him body-
slamming CNN may be popular with his base as few
Americans trust the media
The news media fared horribly among Republicans, with
just 9 per cent trusting the news they read. But 56 per cent
of Democrats – including 70 per cent of self-described
'strong Democrats' – trust the media
261
Eight-four per cent of Republicans trust the White House,
compared with just 8 per cent of Democrats.
But 56 per cent of Democrats – including 70 per cent of
self-described 'strong Democrats' – trust the media. That
number is just 9 per cent for Republicans.
Congress gets failing grades from adults in both parties,
with 25 per cent of Democrats and 39 per cent of
Republicans saying they trust the federal legislature.
In a departure from the ordinary, the Marist Poll asked
adults if they trust public opinion polls.
Only 35 per cent said they do. 'Strong Democrats' were the
most likely to have faith in polls, at 57 per cent. Just 22 per
cent of 'strong Republicans' agree.
 Georgia Sec. Of State Blasts "Fake News"; Says Media
Biggest Threat To Democracy Not Russian Hackers
By Tyler Durden
Jul 3, 2017 11:00 PM
Back in December, the Georgia Secretary of State, Brian
Kemp, publicly blasted the Obama administration and the
Department of Homeland Security for repeated attempts to
hack into his state's election system. Kemp figured the
attempts were nothing more than an effort to expose
security flaws in state election systems so that Homeland
Security could designate all election systems as "Critical
Infrastructure" and seize control in a massive "federal
power grab." Here is a recap from our previous post:
Last week we noted a letter from Georgia Secretary of
State, Brian Kemp, to the Department of Homeland
Security questioning why someone with a DHS IP address
(216.81.81.80) had attempted to hack into his state's
election database on November 15, 2016 at 8:43AM.
Now, according to WSB-TV in Atlanta, we
learn that Georgia's election systems
were actually the target of hacking by
DHS on 10 separate occasions.
The Georgia Secretary of State's Office
now confirms 10 separate cyberattacks
on its network were all traced back to
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
addresses.
In an exclusive interview, a visibly frustrated Secretary of
State Brian Kemp confirmed the attacks of different levels
on his agency's network over the last 10 months.
He says they all traced back to DHS
internet provider addresses.
"We're being told something that they
think they have it figured out, yet
nobody's really showed us how this
happened,” Kemp said. "We need to
know."
Kemp told Channel 2’s Aaron Diamant his office's
cybersecurity vendor discovered the additional so-called
vulnerability scans to his network's firewall after a massive
mid-November cyberattack triggered an internal
investigation.
262
Meanwhile, Kemp pointed out that all of the attempted
hackings occurred around critical registration and voting
deadlines calling into question whether
"somebody was trying to prove a point."
But while the election, and the Obama administration, are
now long gone,
Kemp's fight to protect his state's
election infrastructure from being taken
over by the feds is still going full steam.
That said, it's not the Obama administration's hacking
efforts that has Kemp worried these days,
it's "misinformation from the media"
which he now says is the biggest threat
to Democracy.
Below is an excerpt from an opinion piece that Kemp
published in the USA Today:
Misinformation from the media or
disgruntled partisans not only fuels
conspiracy theorists but also erodes the
first safeguard we have in our elections
— the public’s trust.
Failing to respect this process with accurate reporting is a
disservice to the American people.
To be candid, the most plausible and
potentially effective attack on our
elections is not by hacking the vote — it
is through the manipulation of the
American media machine.
With “breaking news” that generates voter confusion,
these baseless attacks and inaccurate stories enhance voter
apathy and erode our confidence in the cornerstone of our
democracy. That’s the real story.
Kemp goes on to lament about the number of calls he's
now forced to field on a daily basis from "misinformed"
reporters that have no interest in learning the facts about
his state's election infrastructure but rather seek to "dilute
facts and develop false narratives about Russian hacking
and potential vulnerabilities in the system."
For years, we have run our elections with little interest
from the press. But during last year’s presidential election,
everything changed with the news media’s obsession with
Russian meddling.
Now, we are bombarded with questions about election
security from reporters on tight deadlines.
Their questions often reflect a complete
misunderstanding of voting systems
and what safeguards are in place to
keep them secure.
As reporters chase stories to feed the 24-
hour news cycle, they dilute facts and
develop false narratives about Russian
hacking and potential vulnerabilities in
the system.
The prevailing plot line is that states like Georgia can’t
provide suitable security for elections.
Many news media elite think federal oversight is the
answer. Republican and Democratic secretaries of state
disagree. A “critical infrastructure” designation is simply a
big government power grab.
Of course, while we can't argue with the logic, we
somehow doubt Kemp's opinion will sway CNN's wall-to-
wall coverage of "Russian hacking."
***
Below is Kemp's full opinion piece from the USA Today:
As Georgia’s secretary of state, I have
worked tirelessly to ensure our state’s
elections are secure, accessible and fair.
For years, we have run our elections with
little interest from the press. But during last
year’s presidential election, everything
changed with the news media’s obsession
with Russian meddling.
Now, we are bombarded with questions
about election security from reporters on
.
263
tight deadlines. Their questions often
reflect a complete misunderstanding of
voting systems and what safeguards are
in place to keep them secure.
As reporters chase stories to feed the 24-
hour news cycle, they dilute facts and
develop false narratives about Russian
hacking and potential vulnerabilities in
the system. The prevailing plot line is that
states like Georgia can’t provide suitable
security for elections.
Many news media elite think federal
oversight is the answer. Republican and
Democratic secretaries of state disagree. A
“critical infrastructure” designation is simply
a big government power grab.
Informed, non-partisan experts agree that
manipulating a presidential election makes
a good TV storyline but lacks real-world
standing. State voting systems are diverse,
highly scrutinized and not connected to the
Internet. Web-based attacks on voter
registration do not affect the vote count.
The thing that matters most — your vote —
is secure.
Misinformation from the media or
disgruntled partisans not only fuels
conspiracy theorists but also erodes the
first safeguard we have in our elections
— the public’s trust. Failing to respect
this process with accurate reporting is a
disservice to the American people.
To be candid, the most plausible and
potentially effective attack on our
elections is not by hacking the vote — it
is through the manipulation of the
American media machine. With “breaking
news” that generates voter confusion,
these baseless attacks and inaccurate
stories enhance voter apathy and erode
our confidence in the cornerstone of our
democracy. That’s the real story.
Are states doing enough to keep our
elections secure? Yes.
Anything to the contrary is fake news.
 Trump’s Reckless
Korean Peninsula Brinksmanship
By Stephen Lendman - stephenlendman.org
7-4-2017
Trump’s belligerent unpredictability could embroil East
Asia in devastating conflict.
America’s rage to impose its will on all other nations risks
unthinkable nuclear war.
Trump earlier said
“we could end up having a major, major
conflict with North Korea. We’d love to
solve things diplomatically, but it’s very
difficult.”
He called the DPRK his biggest diplomatic challenge - “an
urgent national security threat and top foreign policy
priority,” according to administration officials.
China rejects belligerence. War is “not acceptable,” its
Foreign Minister Wang Yi stressed.
“The Korean peninsula is not the Middle
East. If war breaks out, the consequences
would be unimaginable.”
China’s position is firm, Korean peninsula
denuclearization its aim, diplomacy and dialogue the only
way to resolve things.
War on its border is a “red line” it demands not be crossed.
Beijing and Washington are world’s apart on North Korea.
America’s rage for belligerence makes the peninsula a
hugely dangerous flashpoint.
On Sunday, Trump and Xi spoke by phone. Offensive
pressure substituted for constructive dialogue, the way
America usually operates, accomplishing little or nothing.
.
264
Late Monday, in response to another DPRK ballistic
missile test called successful by its defense ministry,
Trump said it’s time for China to act - wanting crippling
economic sanctions imposed Beijing justifiably rejects.
Korean peninsula instability threatens its security. Trump
rejects the only sensible approach - opting for tough talk
and unacceptable demands instead of diplomatic outreach.
Trump calling the DPRK a “growing threat” is nonsense.
It’s the other way around. America represents a major
threat to Pyongyang and all other independent
governments - targeted for regime change, naked
aggression Washington’s favored strategy of choice.
On Sunday, in response to more US provocations,
including its latest naval intrusion in Chinese waters and
Trump telling Xi Washington will act on its own if Beijing
doesn’t crack down hard on the DPRK, China’s Foreign
Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said his government “will
continue to take all necessary means to defend its national
sovereignty and security.”
Later this week, Trump and Xi will meet on the sidelines
of the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. Expect little or
no resolution on major differences between both countries
on dealings with North Korea.
China urges carrots. Washington’s approach is sticks.
Diplomacy is the only way to resolve things. Toughness is
reckless, accomplishing little or nothing.
 British People Strongly
Object Trump State Visit: Analyst
Tue Jul 4, 2017 5:58PM
Britons are strongly opposed to a state
visit by US President Donald Trump
because the “arrogant bully and
demented clown” is a major backer of
terrorism, a political analyst in London
says.
“The British people do not want Trump
coming anywhere in the British Isles.
Trump is a mixture of arrogant bully and
demented clown. That mixture is perhaps
the most dangerous mixture that can be,”
Dr. Rodney Shakespeare told Press TV on
Tuesday.
“Trump is backing the source of terrorism in
Saudi Arabia,” Shakespeare said. “And in
doing so, he has unleashed Saudi
aggression already, a very dangerous
force.”
“Saudi Arabia is behind the Takfiri forces in
Syria, it is involved in the military
occupation of Bahrain, it is involved in a
genocidal onslaught on the poorest country
in the world, which is Yemen,” he added.
“And Saudis now are trying to make an
attack on Qatar. These Saudis want to
block-out Al Jazeera, and in particular they
.
265
want to grab the financial resources of
Qatar and Trump is behind that and with it.”
Trump is deeply unpopular in Britain, and he would
probably face wide-scale protests during a visit to the
country. Recent surveys have found that more than half of
people in the UK believe Trump is a threat to global
stability.
Trump has no plans to visit Britain in the near future,
although he may still change his mind, according to a
White House official, rejecting new reports that Trump
was considering a quick visit to the UK next week.
Many activists in the UK, including some members of
Parliament and trade unions, have vowed to hold the
largest demonstrations in British history during any state
visit by the US leader.
Last month, two administration officials said Trump was
considering postponing or scrapping a visit to Britain this
year amid intense backlash over comments he made about
London Mayor Sadiq Khan after the recent terrorist attack
in London.
“The USA of course is expansionist and
pushing against every other country,”
Shakespeare said. “It has got Russia
surrounded with bases. It has got Iran
surrounded by 40 bases and it has got right
up against China,” he said.
“And you can be sure that the British
people will take the strongest objection to
someone who is supporting terrorism,
supporting the forces of evil, and doing his
very best trying to stimulate what might
even become a third world war.”
 Media Errors Give
Trump Fresh Ammunition
By Jonathan Easley
07/04/17 11:19 AM EDT
A string of high-profile corrections and retractions by
major news organizations on stories about President
Trump or his allies have fueled more allegations of
bias in the mainstream press.
The relationship between Trump and the news
media regularly hits new lows, with insults flying between
the two camps and reporters warning that the president is
inciting violence against journalists.
But Trump’s allies on the right believe the president’s
claims that the mainstream media is “fake news” have
been bolstered by recent missteps. They point to recent
admissions from top news outlets — including CNN, The
New York Times and The Associated Press — that
bombshell stories were either overcooked or included
incorrect details.
Adding insult to injury: Breitbart News, the pro-Trump
media outlet that is scorned by many in the mainstream
press, has been fact-checking their mainstream
counterparts with some success.
Breitbart’s Washington political editor, Matthew Boyle,
was first to call into question a CNN story on alleged ties
between a Trump associate and a Russian investment fund
that was later retracted. Boyle was also reporting on an
error in an Associated Press report when the newswire
corrected and later rewrote the story.
Together, the corrections and retractions amount to only a
few stories out of the thousands published every day. But
the high-profile nature of the errors hurts the media's
credibility at a time when the press is under more scrutiny
than ever before, giving new political ammunition to
critics of the mainstream press.
“There’s a dramatic difference in the
degree of hostility the press has shown
Presidents Trump and Obama,” said Tim
Graham, a director at the conservative
Media Research Center. “I guess it’s easier
to make errors writing stories where Trump
is twirling his villain’s mustache than when
you’re writing about how tone Michelle
Obama’s arms are.”
266
Last week, The New York Times and The Associated Press
ran similar corrections acknowledging that reports on
Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election had
overstated, by more than a dozen, the number of U.S.
intelligence agencies that had signed off on the assessment.
Both outlets had reported that all 17 organizations that fall
under the umbrella of the U.S. intelligence community had
made the assessment. In fact, only four — the CIA, FBI,
the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the
National Security Agency — had contributed to that
conclusion.
The Associated Press correction was applied to four
stories that had run from early April to late June.
The corrections were gleefully aggregated by conservative
media outlets and bounced around social media on the
right.
The AP ran into more trouble over the weekend after it ran
a story about how Environmental Protection Agency
Administrator Scott Pruitt met privately with the CEO of a
top chemical company, then decided to drop a ban on a
widely used pesticide that has been shown to harm
children’s brains.
The story insinuated that Pruitt had made the decision
under pressure from a corporate lobbying campaign.
But while the meeting between Pruitt and Dow Chemical
CEO Andrew Liveris was on Pruitt’s schedule, it never
happened — an admission the AP made after Pruitt’s
office and Breitbart pressed them for a correction.
The EPA and Dow Chemical both said the scheduled
meeting at a hotel in Houston had been canceled, with the
two men instead having only “a brief introduction in
passing.”
The AP followed with a Saturday story — published
without a byline — titled “EPA Says Pruitt Meeting
With Dow Chemical Head Was Canceled.”
Breitbart took a victory lap.
“A Breitbart News investigation has led to
the correction by the Associated Press–
 which originally resisted–of the fake news it
printed as deeper questions of
responsibility, accountability, and
journalistic ethics consume the AP heading
into Fourth of July weekend,” Boyle wrote.
It’s the second time Breitbart, which was once led by
White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon, has been at
the center of a media correction controversy.
Boyle was the first to call into question a CNN report
alleging that Trump associate Anthony Scaramucci was
under investigation for improper dealings with a Russian
state bank. Meanwhile, Sputnik News, a Russian state-
funded news outlet, disputed CNN’s claim that the bank in
question was also backed by Moscow.
Later that same day, CNN retracted the article. Several
days later, three of its top journalists resigned.
“An organization of nearly 4,000 news
professionals; an organization that has
spent huge sums recruiting ever-greater
reportorial muscle; an organization that
promises both sides a fair shake; an
organization that values right-on-the-money
exclusives — it just cannot abide getting
shamed by Sputnik and Breitbart,”
Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple
wrote at the time.
It has been a tough stretch for CNN. A few weeks earlier,
the network had to retract a story authored by some of its
most recognizable on-air talent after it was directly
contradicted by public testimony from former FBI Director
James Comey.
In that same testimony, Comey described a bombshell New
York Times story alleging contacts between Trump
campaign officials and Moscow as
“almost entirely wrong.”
Most reports sourced to anonymous officials about the
Russia investigation should not be trusted, Comey said,
because those who are willing to talk don’t know about the
investigations and those who do know about the
investigations aren’t talking.
Last week, Vice News retracted two stories about how
Disney would not give a robotic Trump figure a speaking
role in its “Hall of Presidents” attraction.
.
267
Those errors come as Trump’s conservative media allies
are increasingly on the hunt for media errors and alleged
bias.
Conservative activist James O’Keefe has targeted CNN
employees in a string of undercover sting videos. One
video revealed a CNN producer criticizing Kellyanne
Conway’s appearance.
A second video found CNN commentator Van Jones
calling the Russia controversy a “nothing burger.” A
third video showed a producer alleging the network was
burying important stories as part of its obsession with
Russia.
The media’s errors come as Trump and his allies launch a
barrage of attacks aimed at undermining and calling into
question the veracity of the news media.
Trump’s personal attack against the hosts of MSNBC’s
"Morning Joe" and his weekend tweet showing him
tackling a wrestler with the CNN logo emblazoned over
his face have unified the press.
GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill have condemned Trump’s
attacks, as have a broad cross-section of newsmakers on
the political talk show circuit, who called the "Morning
Joe" attack sexist and the CNN tweet an incitement of
violence against reporters.
“The basic premise is most of the elite
media is center left and most of the country
is center right,” conservative radio host
Hugh Hewitt said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet
the Press.” “Combativeness towards the
media plays well. Cruelty does not. And
when the president crosses the line
between combativeness into cruelty, he
loses some of his base.”

But the White House has shown no sign it plans to let up
in the war against the media, and his allies are seizing on
the missteps to chip away at press credibility.
“These people claim to be defenders of fact
and truth but are only out to smear Trump
and his supporters,” said Graham, of the
Media Research Center. “They’re
stenographers for the resistance.”
 Voter Fraud Investigation:
Trump Criticizes Left-Wing States Over Failure To Comply
With Voter Commission’s Information Requests
By JD Heyes
Tuesday, July 04, 2017
“What are they trying to hide?”
That was the question President Donald J. Trump tweeted
out Saturday morning in response to some far-Left states
who are refusing to comply with voter registration
information as part of an investigation by a special
commission he established to look into nationwide voter
fraud.
“Numerous states are refusing to give
information to the very distinguished
VOTER FRAUD PANEL,” Trump tweeted.
“What are they trying to hide?”
As reported by Fox News, officials in California and New
York have said they won’t respond to requests from the
voter fraud commission that is headed up by Vice
President Mike Pence. Trump established the commission
in the wake of the 2016 election, in which he alleged that
perhaps as many as five million people voted illegally,
thereby giving his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, a
popular vote majority.
268
Interestingly enough, Clinton’s entire majority came from
one state — California — that is also now refusing to
comply with the president’s efforts to ensure only those
who have a legal right to vote do so.
Democrats have decried Trump’s effort as little more than
an attempt to suppress voting rights, which is, of course,
ludicrous, given that the initiative is aimed specifically at
ensuring the integrity of balloting. But then again, given
that Democrats have been behind efforts nationally to
subvert or block voter ID laws at every turn, most people
believe their party is primarily benefitting from illegal
voters, no matter how limited or widespread the problem
actually is.
But we won’t know until the president’s commission
completes its work. And we won’t have a complete picture
at all if Left-wing Democrat-run states refuse to cooperate.
Not all Democrats are opposed to the effort. On Friday Bill
Gardner, New Hampshire’s Democratic secretary of state
and a member of the vote fraud commission defended the
information request. He added that a number of states may
only comply partially, due to differing open records laws
in states.
“If only half the states agree, we’ll have to
talk about that. I think, whatever they do,
we’ll work with that,” he said, noting further
that the commission plans to discuss the
information request survey at a July 19
meeting.
He also said he’s been getting calls from angry
constituents who said they did not want the president to
see their personal information, but noted: “This is not
private, and a lot of people don’t know that.”
Opposition is also coming from some red states that voted
for Trump; including Texas, where officials said because
of state laws they could only partially comply with the
commission’s information request. (RELATED: As
Promised, Trump Empanels White House Commission
To Examine Extent Of Voter Fraud)
Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, a
Republican, said he has not yet received the request, but
if/when he does, he will say, as quoted by Fox News:
“They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico,
and Mississippi is a great state to launch
from. … Mississippi residents should
celebrate Independence Day and our
state’s right to protect the privacy of our
citizens by conducting our own electoral
processes.”
Fox News reported further:
In a federal court case after a contentious
U.S. Senate primary in Mississippi in 2014,
a group called True the Vote sued
Mississippi seeking similar information
.
269
about voters. Hosemann fought that
request and won.
And no state election commission is going to provide all of
the requested information.
Still, there is at least anecdotal evidence to support
Trump’s claim that voter fraud in the U.S. is a much bigger
problem than many believe. Last month a study was
published showing that as many as 5.7 million non-citizens
may have illegally voted in the 2008 election.
“The White House has provided enormous
evidence with respect to voter fraud, with
respect to people being registered in more
than one state,” White House policy adviser
Stephen Miller told ABC’s “This Week” in
March, amid calls for Trump to provide
evidence for his claims.
 Trump Urges China To End
North Korea ‘Nonsense’, China Urges Calm
Tue Jul 4, 2017 4:48AM

The latest launch came just hours after Trump and

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed over the
phone to exert added pressure on North Korea over its
missile and nuclear development programs.

They also agreed to hold trilateral talks on the “the

growing threat” of Pyongyang's nuclear activities with
South Korean President Moon Jae-in on the sidelines of
the Group of 20 summit in Germany, which begins on
Friday.

US President Donald Trump waves as he makes his way to board Air On Tuesday, China urged for calm and restraint after the
Force One before departing from Newark Liberty Airport in
Newark, New Jersey, June 11 2017. (Photo by AFP)
ballistic missile launch. Speaking at a daily news briefing,
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said
US President Donald Trump has warned UN Security Council resolutions had clear rules on North
the Chinese leader that the United Korea's missile launches and Beijing opposed it going
States is prepared to act on its own in against those rules.
increasing pressure on North Korea, as
Washington loses patience with
Beijing’s unwillingness to push
Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear and
missile programs, US officials say.

Trump’s warning was delivered in a blunt phone call on

Monday to President Xi Jinping, according to senior White
House officials.

Trump took to twitter on Tuesday to express his outrage

over the North’s test-firing of a ballistic missile that landed
in the Sea of Japan earlier in the day.
“North Korea has just launched another
missile. Does this guy have anything better
to do with his life?” Trump said of North
Korean leader Kim Jung-un, who has
pledged to continue the tests and defend
his country against the US.
“Hard to believe that South Korea and
Japan will put up with this much longer.
Perhaps China will put a heavy move on
North Korea and end this nonsense once
and for all!” he wrote in another tweet.
Pyongyang has drawn warnings from the US and Japan for
firing rockets near Japanese territorial waters in the past.
A South Korean soldier watches a television news showing file
footage of a North Korean missile launch, at a railway station in
Seoul, July 4, 2017. (Photo by AFP)
The Trump administration has been pressuring China—the
North’s main trade ally—to use its influence over
Pyongyang and stop the unruly neighbor’s development of
nuclear and ballistic deterrents.
In April, Trump hosted Xi in his private Florida estate of
Mar-a-Lago, where he promised the Chinese leader to
make his best effort to build strong relations between the
two sides in exchange for a tough stance against North
Korea.
However, things did not work out the way Trump wanted
as he admitted last month that Xi and his government had
tried but failed to curb Pyongyang’s military programs.

270
Some experts say the United States has refused to
deescalate tensions on the Korean Peninsula in order to
maintain its military bases in East Asia and contain China.
Last week, American officials said the Pentagon had
finished revising its military options against North Korea
and will soon present them to Trump.
.
271
The Trump administration’s focus on North Korea is
nothing short of an obsession, a point that can be inferred
from the words of CIA Director Mike Pompeo.
"I hardly ever escape a day at the White
House without the President asking me
about North Korea and how it is that the
United States is responding to that threat,"
Pompeo told MSNBC in late June. "It's very
much at the top of his mind."
 Trump Lawyer Sekulow Asks The Obvious:
Why Isn’t There A Special Counsel Investigating
President Obama Over “Russia” Allegations?
By JD Heyes
Tuesday, July 04, 2017
As the Republican-led Congress mysteriously continues to
investigate their own president over still-unproven
allegations he and his inner circle pulled off the election
crime of the century by “colluding” with Russia to “steal
the election” from Hillary Clinton, one of Donald J.
Trump’s lawyers is asking a very pertinent question: How
come former President Obama isn’t being investigated?
After all, attorney Jay Sekulow maintained, Obama was
president during last year’s election cycle, and according
to recent reports, he was well-aware that Russia was
attempting to meddle in the American election (though he
and his former intelligence community chiefs have all said
no Russian tampering changed ANY election results).
During a recent appearance on Fox News’ “America’s
Newsroom” program with host Shannon Bream, Sekulow
singled out the former president, asking why a special
counsel isn’t looking into his actions and those of his
administration more thoroughly.
“Why do we have a special counsel dealing
with the Russia hacking when they had that
evidence and did nothing?” Sekulow said.
“Why don’t we have a special counsel
[former FBI Director Robert Mueller]
reviewing why President Obama did
nothing after he assured the American
people — he gets intelligence briefings but
assures the American people that Russia
did not interfere with the election?”
272
As for his client, there is nothing there, Sekulow added.
(RELATED: Why does the GOP-run Congress have
time to investigate Trump, THEIR president, but no
time to pass his agenda?)
“You know when the president said early
on this was a witch hunt?” Sekulow said.
“Every day that goes by, I’m not sure that’s
fair to witch hunts to keep calling it that. It’s
beyond that.”
Mediaite, which was reporting on the Sekulow interview,
made sure to mention reports in Left-wing papers The
Guardian and The Washington Post claiming that
“millions of dollars were funneled to Sekulow’s family
from a charity controlled by Sekulow.” But a closer read of
both stories shows that they also included a statement by
Sekulow’s spokesman, Gene Kapp, denying that there
were any legal or moral improprieties — something
Mediaite conveniently left out.
In any event, Sekulow’s main point remains valid: What
did Barack Obama know, when did he know it, and more
importantly, why didn’t he adequately respond?
Whether the Post realized it or not, the paper essentially
threw the former president under the bus in a recent 8,000-
plus word piece that contained scores of illegally leaked
information that essentially claimed Obama was well-
aware of Russian cyber activity aimed at disrupting the
U.S. election, but chose to do as little as possible about it.
The evidence, which was presented to Obama by the CIA,
was said to be so damning that “the Obama administration
secretly debated dozens of options for deterring or
punishing Russia, including cyberattacks on Russian
infrastructure, the release of CIA-gathered material that
might embarrass Putin and sanctions that officials said
could ‘crater’ the Russian economy,” the Post said, adding:
“But in the end, in late December, Obama
approved a modest package combining
measures that had been drawn up to
punish Russia for other issues —
 expulsions of 35 diplomats and the closure
of two Russian compounds — with
economic sanctions so narrowly targeted
that even those who helped design them
describe their impact as largely symbolic.”
That report directly conflicts with what Obama himself
has said publicly about Russia’s inability to “hack” into
U.S. electronic voting systems, who noted that “no serious
person out there” could believe U.S. voting systems could
be hacked and changed because they’re too diverse and too
dispersed. In addition, Obama’s cyber security expert,
Michael Daniel, told Israel Army Radio this week that
.
273
Russia did not “hack the election” in any way that changed
votes.
The American press knows this.
The American Congress knows this.
Trump knows it, and so do his detractors.
But the question Sekulow asks remains relevant:
Why isn’t the 44th president and his staff being hauled
before House and Senate panels to answer questions about
Russia’s 2016 election involvement?
 The Trump-Putin
Meeting And The Fate Of The Earth
By Norman Solomon
July 4, 2017
Any truthful way to say it will sound worse than ghastly:
We live in a world where one person could decide to begin
a nuclear war — quickly killing several hundred million
people and condemning vast numbers of others to slower
painful deaths.
Given the macabre insanity of this ongoing situation, most
people don’t like to talk about it or even think about it. In
that zone of denial, U.S. news media keep detouring
around a crucial reality: No matter what you think of
Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin, they hold the whole
world in their hands with a nuclear button.
If the presidents of the United States and Russia spiral into
escalating conflicts between the two countries, the world is
much more likely to blow up. Yet many American critics
of Trump have gotten into baiting him as Putin’s flunky
while goading him to prove otherwise. A new barrage of
that baiting and goading is now about to begin — taking
aim at any wisps of possible détente — in connection with
the announced meeting between Trump and Putin at the G-
20 summit in Germany at the end of this week.
Big picture:
This moment in human history is not about
Trump. It’s not about Putin. It’s not about
whether you despise either or neither or
both. What’s at stake in the dynamics
between them is life on this planet.
Over the weekend, more than 10,000 people signed
a petition under the heading “Tell Trump and Putin:
Negotiate, Don’t Escalate.” The petition was written by
RootsAction to be concise and to the point: “We
vehemently urge you to take a constructive approach to
your planned meeting at the G-20 summit. Whatever our
differences, we must reduce rather than increase the risks
of nuclear war. The future of humanity is at stake.”
A war between the world’s two nuclear superpowers could
extinguish human life on a gigantic scale while plunging
the Earth into cataclysmic “nuclear winter.”
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“Recent scientific studies have found that a
war fought with the deployed U.S. and
Russian nuclear arsenals would leave
Earth virtually uninhabitable,” wrote Steven
Starr, a senior scientist with Physicians for
Social Responsibility. “In fact, NASA
computer models have shown that even a
‘successful’ first strike by Washington or
Moscow would inflict catastrophic
environmental damage that would make
agriculture impossible and cause mass
starvation.”
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists explains why, since
last year, it has moved the risk-estimate “Doomsday
Clock” even closer to apocalyptic midnight — citing as a
major factor the escalation of tensions between the U.S.
and Russian governments.
So, the imminent meeting between Trump and Putin will
affect the chances that the young people we love — and so
many others around the world — will have a future. And
whether later generations will even exist.
I put it this way in a recent article for The Nation:
“Whatever the truth may be about Russian
interference in the U.S. election last year,
an overarching truth continues to bind the
fates of Russians, Americans and the rest
of humanity. No matter how much we might
wish to forget or deny it, we are tied
together by a fraying thread of relations
between two nations that possess 93
percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.
Right now it is not popular to say so, but we
desperately need each other to enhance
the odds of human survival.”
In that overall context, stoking hostility toward Russia is,
uh, rather short-sighted. Wouldn’t it be much better for the
meeting between Trump and Putin to bring Washington
and Moscow closer to détente rather than bringing us
closer to nuclear annihilation?
 Associated Press Caught In Fake News, Retracts False
Claim That 17 Intelligence Agencies Agree
On Russian “Interference”
By D. Samuelson
Wednesday, July 05, 2017
like “deep state” and “rogue elements,” but that’s not in
their vocabulary. This same false assessment was used by
Mrs. Clinton in a testy exchange during the third
presidential debate.

While these assessments were being crafted, the folks in

All those lies about little green cyber Russians
invading black voting boxes to sabotage the U.S.
presidential election has had one crack exposed, according
to Breitbart, who reports that the Associated Press (AP)
has written a retraction concerning those 17 agencies who
supposedly agreed that pesky Putin and friends had been
busy usurping America. The AP printed this falsehood four
times: April 6, June 2, June 26 and June 29.
charge of these three agencies included James Comey, the
former and fired director of the FBI, John Brennan, an
Obama appointee who ran the NSA and James
Clapper, who holds the distinction of having been the
fourth Director of National Intelligence. All these
characters have colorful and obviously checkered pasts,
but Mr. Clapper’s penchant for lying was made more
obvious when he testified in front of Congress in 2013,
saying that the NSA did not collect data on all Americans,
well maybe “inadvertently,” but certainly not “wittingly.”
Is it just a nervous tic to scratch one’s head and
peer downward while speaking to a member of Congress?

The AP, in its mea culpa issued June 30, 2017, states that
the intelligence assessment was made after the three
agencies — “the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency .
. . and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence
[DNI]” gathered the data. The DNI, says AP, “represents
all U.S. intelligence agencies” and it was the DNI that
published the information. The AP makes it clear in the
retraction that “not all 17 agencies were involved in
reaching the assessment.”
As reported by Libertarian Institute, here is the transcript
of that infamous exchange which is a stark example
of perjury:

“Wyden: Does the NSA collect any type

of data at all on millions or hundreds of
millions of Americans?
Clapper: No sir.
Wyden: It does not?
Clapper: Not wittingly. There are cases
where they could, inadvertently
perhaps, collect—but not wittingly.”
It’s comforting to know there was some dissent in the
ranks. The news agency avoided using descriptive phrases

275
The security apparatus has been in place for a few decades. 29, 2017. Oh for the day when the sheeple will wake up
After September 11, 2001 the deep state’s vicious intent on and all the liars will be revealed.
destroying America was magnified a thousand fold and our
current illegal and ubiquitous security system was built.
It’s been growing ever since, as have the anxiety levels of
many Americans. The DNI didn’t even exist before
September 11, 2001. The FBI and the NSA did
not openly share their information until after 9/11. Edward
Snowden risked all he had to make the American people
wake up to the electronic surveillance gates surrounding
them shortly after James Clapper lied to Senator Wyden.

It turns out that the AP isn’t the only periodical that has
retracted at least one portion of an intelligence assessment
that many American believe is completely bogus. The
disheveled New York Times issued its correction on June Follow more on this topic at WhiteHouse.news.

276
 Four Ways U.S. Intelligence Reporting
On “Trump-Russia Collusion” Is Extremely Deceptive
By JD Heyes
Wednesday, July 05, 2017
Ever since the November election the Deep State has been
attempting to ‘sell’ the American public on the notion that
Donald J. Trump and his campaign team somehow
“colluded” with Russia to undermine the election and
“steal” it from Democratic presidential nominee Hillary
Clinton.
Why? Because Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted
Trump to win, of course, because he “hates” Clinton,
ostensibly because she questioned the fairness of Russian
elections. At least, that’s what we were told.
That excuse has never made any sense, mostly because a)
Trump ran on a platform of building up the U.S. military
— something that would directly challenge Russian
hegemony; and b) Clinton, through her use of a hacked
private email server, her improper fleecing of foreign
governments and interests (including Russian interests) to
enrich her family foundation; and her assistance in helping
Putin gain control of 20 percent of U.S. strategic uranium
always made her much more susceptible to blackmail by
the Russian leader (there’s a good assessment of the
Clinton-Russia nexus here).
Moreover, the Deep State, via U.S. intelligence agencies,
has not been convincing in providing enough data or
evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, or even Russian
attempts to “hack” the election. As noted by Breitbart
columnist Ben Shapiro, there are five problems with the
claims:
— The NSA demurred: In January we were treated to a
U.S. intelligence community assessment claiming Russian
interference in the November elections. The vague report
was released by the head of the Office of the Director of
277
National Intelligence, James Clapper. It said, in part: “We
assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an
influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential
election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in
the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton,
and harm her electability and potential presidency. We
further assess Putin and the Russian Government
developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.”
While this report was presented as a summary of
conclusions by all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies, it was
actually the product of only three: The FBI, CIA and NSA.
However, the NSA never fully backed it and did not share
the “high confidence” of the other two agencies.
(RELATED: Insanely Stupid Leftists Think It’s A
Crime For U.S. Officials To Talk To Russian
Officials… DIPLOMACY Is Now A Crime?)
— Obama White House relied on a foreign country for
its “critical intelligence” on Russian ‘collusion:’ The
Washington Post noted that one reason NSA confidence in
the conclusion was considerably less is because some of
the critical information the Obama administration
employed to make its decision came from a foreign
country.
The details were contained in a recently-published long
piece on Obama’s “secret struggle” with the Russian
interference, as evidenced by this section:
Some of the most critical technical
intelligence on Russia came from another
country, officials said. Because of the
source of the material, the NSA was
reluctant to view it with high confidence.
— Not everyone in Congress agreed, either: U.S. Rep.
Christopher Stewart, R-Utah, during congressional
testimony by former CIA Director John Brennan on May
23, raised what he termed a “red flag” regarding the
agency’s “high confidence” conclusion that Moscow
sought to assist Trump:
I don’t agree with the conclusion,
particularly that it’s such a high level of
confidence. I just think there should’ve
been allowances made for some of the
 ambiguity in that and especially for those
who didn’t also share in the conclusion that
it was a high degree of confidence.
— The intel report on the alleged interference by
Russia was hastily assembled: That fact was made plain
by an exchange between Brennan and Rep. Elise Stefanik,
R-N.Y., during the same testimony in May:
STEFANIK: So you noted that the
complexity can have an impact on the
timeliness to produce a comprehensive
report. This report was produced in just 20
days in December. Was there anything
about this interagency process that differed
the timeline, the approval process, the
editing or the staffing?
BRENNAN: I think it followed the general
model of how you want to do something
like this with some notable exceptions.
.
278
It only involved the FBI, NSA and CIA as
well as the Office of Director of National
Intelligence; it wasn’t a full interagency
community assessment that was
coordinated among the 17 agencies and for
good reason, because of the nature the
sensitivity of the information trying to, once
again, keep them tightly compartmented.
The longer this narrative has been out there, the more it
has been contradicted, explained away or otherwise
discredited.
To this date, no evidence has been presented, published or
offered proving that Russia changed the outcome of the
November election, as even intelligence officials have
repeatedly admitted.
 NYTimes Mistakenly Cites
Tweet From North Korea Parody Account
By Tyler Durden
Jul 5, 2017 7:45 PM
Management at the New York Times is planning to lay off
half of the copy editors on staff – a decision that provoked
a walkout at the NYT’s Times Square headquarters last
week. But after an embarrassing editing error risked
starting World War III, we’re thinking they might
want to reconsider – at least until tensions cool between
the US and North Korea.
As the Washington Free Beacon pointed out, the Times
cited a tweet from a North Korean parody account as if it
were an official statement from the DPRK’s government.
The tweet reads: "Imbecilic Americans drunkenly fire
missiles into East Sea of Korea, demonstrating near total
ignorance of ballistic science."
he tweet was included in a story about a joint military
exercise involving the US and South Korea in response to
the DPRK’s first-ever launch of a genuine ICBM.
The story has since been updated with a correction:
"Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this
article attributed incorrectly a Twitter statement to the
North Korean government," it read. There are likely to
be even more “editing errors” like this one when the paper
.
279
chops its editing staff in half. Typically, employing half
the number of people to handle the same amount of work
will result in more errors.
The DPRK parody account couldn’t resist poking fun at
the Times.
Of course, the NYT – along with virtually every other
western publication – has been banned from the DPRK for
years.
The Times isn’t the only national newspaper that
missed the joke. USA Today fell for the account in
March, erroneously reporting that the North Korean
government called Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) an
"infantile lunatic angrily soiling himself."
With the editor layoffs looming on the horizon, we look
forward to many more embarrassing mistakes like this one
in the months and years ahead. Maybe someone should
explain to the NYT’s editing staff the significance of being
“Twitter verified.”
For his part, North Korean Kim Jong-Un has said he is
"firmly determined and committed" to test an ICBM that
can hit the U.S. mainland within this year. Providing
some more details on yesterday's launch, Kim also said
that the US must be upset with "gift package" that he
sent in honor of America’s Independence Day.
 MSM, Still Living In Propaganda-Ville
Robert Perry
July 6, 2017
Exclusive: The stakes in U.S.-Russia
relations could not be higher – possible
nuclear conflagration and the end of
civilization – but the U.S. mainstream
media is still slouching around in
“propaganda-ville,” says Robert Parry.
As much as the U.S. mainstream media wants people to
believe that it is the Guardian of Truth, it is actually lost in
a wilderness of propaganda and falsehoods, a dangerous
land of delusion that is putting the future of humankind at
risk as tension escalate with nuclear-armed Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses a crowd on May 9, 2014,
celebrating the 69th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany and
the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Crimean port city of
Sevastopol from the Nazis. (Russian government photo)
This media problem has grown over recent decades as
lucrative careerism has replaced responsible
professionalism. Pack journalism has always been a threat
to quality reporting but now it has evolved into a self-
sustaining media lifestyle in which the old motto, “there’s
safety in numbers,” is borne out by the fact that being
horrendously wrong, such as on Iraq’s WMD, leads to
almost no accountability because so many important
colleagues were wrong as well.
Similarly, there has been no accountability after many
mainstream journalists and commentators falsely stated as
flat-fact that “all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies” concurred
that Russia did “meddle” in last November’s U.S. election.
For months, this claim has been the go-to put-down
whenever anyone questions the groupthink of Russian
venality perverting American democracy. Even the
280
esteemed “Politifact” deemed the assertion “true.” But it
was never true.
It was at best a needled distortion of a claim by President
Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper
when he issued a statement last Oct. 7 alleging Russian
meddling. Because Clapper was the chief of the U.S.
Intelligence Community, his opinion morphed into a claim
that it represented the consensus of all 17 intelligence
agencies, a dishonest twist that Democratic presidential
candidate Hillary Clinton began touting.
However, for people who understand how the U.S.
Intelligence Community works, the claim of a 17-agencies
consensus has a specific meaning, some form of a National
Intelligence Estimate (or NIE) that seeks out judgments
and dissents from the various agencies.
But there was no NIE regarding alleged Russian meddling
and there apparently wasn’t even a formal assessment from
a subset of the agencies at the time of Clapper’s statement.
President Obama did not order a publishable assessment
until December – after the election – and it was not
completed until Jan. 6, when a report from Clapper’s office
presented the opinions of analysts from the Central
Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation and
the National Security Agency – three agencies (or four if
you count the DNI’s office), not 17.
Lacking Hard Evidence
The report also contained no hard evidence of a Russian
“hack” and amounted to a one-sided circumstantial case at
best. However, by then, the U.S. mainstream media had
embraced the “all-17-intelligence-agencies” refrain and
anyone who disagreed, including President Trump, was
treated as delusional. The argument went:
“How can anyone question what all 17
intelligence agencies have confirmed as
true?”

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (right) talks with
President Barack Obama in the Oval Office, with John Brennan and
other national security aides present. (Photo credit: Office of
Director of National Intelligence)
It wasn’t until May 8 when then-former DNI Clapper
belatedly set the record straight in sworn congressional
testimony in which he explained that there were only three
“contributing agencies” from which analysts were “hand-
picked.”
The reference to “hand-picked” analysts pricked the ears
of some former U.S. intelligence analysts who had
suffered through earlier periods of “politicized”
intelligence when malleable analysts were chosen to
deliver what their political bosses wanted to hear.
On May 23, also in congressional testimony, former CIA
Director John Brennan confirmed Clapper’s description,
saying only four of the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies took
part in the assessment.
Brennan said the Jan. 6 report
“followed the general model of how you
want to do something like this with some
notable exceptions. It only involved the FBI,
NSA and CIA as well as the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence. It wasn’t a
full inter-agency community assessment
that was coordinated among the 17
agencies.”
After this testimony, some of the major news
organizations, which had been waving around the “17-
intelligence-agencies” meme, subtly changed their
phrasing to either depict Russian “meddling” as an
established fact no longer requiring attribution or referred
to the “unanimous judgment” of the Intelligence
Community without citing a specific number.
This “unanimous judgment” formulation was deceptive,
too, because it suggested that all 17 agencies were in
accord albeit without exactly saying that. For a regular
reader of The New York Times or a frequent viewer of
281
CNN, the distinction would almost assuredly not be
detected.
For more than a month after the Clapper-Brennan
testimonies, there was no formal correction.
A Belated Correction
Finally, on June 25, the Times’ hand was forced when
White House correspondent Maggie Haberman reverted to
the old formulation, mocking Trump for
“still refus[ing] to acknowledge a basic fact
agreed upon by 17 American intelligence
agencies that he now oversees: Russia
orchestrated the attacks, and did it to help
get him elected.”
New York Times building in New York City. (Photo from Wikipedia)
When this falsehood was called to the Times’ attention, it
had little choice but to append a correction to the article,
noting that the intelligence
“assessment was made by four intelligence
agencies — the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence, the Central
Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and the National Security
Agency. The assessment was not
approved by all 17 organizations in the
American intelligence community.”
The Associated Press ran a similar “clarification” applied
to some of its fallacious reporting repeating the “17-
intelligence-agencies” meme.
So, you might have thought that the mainstream media was
finally adjusting its reporting to conform to reality. But
that would mean that one of the pillars of the Russia-gate
“scandal” had crumbled, the certainty that Russia and
Vladimir Putin did “meddle” in the election.
The story would have to go back to square one and the
major news organizations would have to begin reporting
on whether or not there ever was solid evidence to support
what had become a “certainty” – and there appeared to be
no stomach for such soul-searching. Since pretty much all
the important media figures had made the same error, it
would be much easier to simply move on as if nothing had
changed.
That would mean that skepticism would still be
unwelcome and curious leads would not be followed. For
instance, there was a head-turning reference in an
otherwise typical Washington Post take-out on June 25
accusing Russia of committing “the crime of the century.”
A reference, stuck deep inside the five-page opus, said,
“Some of the most critical technical
intelligence on Russia came from another
country, officials said. Because of the
source of the material, the NSA was
reluctant to view it with high confidence.”
Though the Post did not identify the country, this reference
suggests that more than one key element of the case for
Russian culpability was based not on direct investigations
by the U.S. intelligence agencies, but on the work of
external organizations.
Earlier, the Democratic National Committee denied the
FBI access to its supposedly hacked computers, forcing the
investigators to rely on a DNC contractor called
CrowdStrike, which has a checkered record of getting this
sort of analytics right and whose chief technology officer,
Dmitri Alperovitch, is an anti-Putin Russian émigré with
ties to the anti-Russian think tank, Atlantic Council.
Relying on Outsiders
You might be wondering why something as important as
this “crime of the century,” which has pushed the world
closer to nuclear annihilation, is dependent on dubious
entities outside the U.S. government with possible
conflicts of interest.
President Donald Trump being sworn in on Jan. 20, 2017. (Screen
shot from Whitehouse.gov)
282
If the U.S. government really took this issue seriously,
which it should, why didn’t the FBI seize the DNC’s
computers and insist that impartial government experts
lead the investigation? And why – given the extraordinary
expertise of the NSA in computer hacking – is “some of
the most critical technical intelligence on Russia [coming]
from another country,” one that doesn’t inspire the NSA’s
confidence?
But such pesky questions are not likely to be asked or
answered by a mainstream U.S. media that displays deep-
seated bias toward both Putin and Trump.
Mostly, major news outlets continue to brush aside the
clarifications and return to various formulations that
continue to embrace the “17-intelligence-agencies” canard,
albeit in slightly different forms, such as references to the
collective Intelligence Community without the specific
number. Anyone who questions this established
conventional wisdom is still crazy and out of step.
For instance, James Holmes of Esquire was stunned on
Thursday when Trump at a news conference in Poland
reminded the traveling press corps about the inaccurate
reporting regarding the 17 intelligence agencies and said
he still wasn’t entirely sure about Russia’s guilt.
“In public, he’s still casting doubt on the
intelligence community’s finding that
Russia interfered in the 2016 election
nearly nine months after the fact,” Holmes
sputtered before describing Trump’s
comment as a “rant.”
So, if you thought that a chastened mainstream media
might stop in the wake of the “17-intelligence-agencies”
falsehood and rethink the whole Russia-gate business, you
would have been sadly mistaken.
But the problem is not just the question of whether Russia
hacked into Democratic emails and slipped them to
WikiLeaks for publication (something that both Russia and
WikiLeaks deny). Perhaps the larger danger is how the
major U.S. news outlets have adopted a consistently
propagandistic approach toward everything relating to
Russia.
Hating Putin
This pattern traces back to the earliest days of Vladimir
Putin’s presidency in 2000 when he began to rein in the
U.S.-prescribed “shock therapy,” which had sold off
Russia’s assets to well-connected insiders, making billions
of dollars for the West-favored “oligarchs,” even as the
process threw millions of average Russian into poverty.
 propaganda line and accused people who questioned this
Official Narrative of disseminating Russian “propaganda”
– or being a “Moscow stooge” or acting as a “useful fool.”
There was no tolerance for skepticism about whatever the
State Department or the Washington think tanks were
saying.

Trump Meets Putin

So, as Trump prepares for his first meeting with Putin at

the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, the U.S.
mainstream media has been in a frenzy, linking up its
groupthinks about the Ukraine “invasion” with its
groupthinks about Russian “hacking” the election.
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland,
who pushed for the Ukraine coup and helped pick the post-coup
leaders.

But the U.S. mainstream media’s contempt for Putin

reached new heights after he helped President Obama head
off neoconservative (and liberal interventionist) demands
for a full-scale U.S. military assault on Syria in August
2013 and helped bring Iran into a restrictive nuclear
agreement when the neocons wanted to bomb-bomb-bomb
Iran.

The neocons delivered their payback to Putin in early 2014

by supporting a violent coup in Ukraine, overthrowing
elected President Viktor Yanukovych and installing a
fiercely anti-Russian regime. The U.S. operation was
spearheaded by neocon National Endowment for
Democracy President Carl Gershman and neocon Assistant
Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland,
with enthusiastic support from neocon Sen. John McCain.
Washington Post columnist David Ignatius. (Photo credit: Aude)
Nuland was heard in an intercepted pre-coup phone call
with U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt discussing who
In a July 3 editorial, The Washington Post declared, “Mr.
should become the new leaders and pondering how to
Trump simply cannot fail to admonish Mr. Putin for
“glue” or “midwife this thing.”
Russia’s attempts to meddle in the 2016 presidential
election. He must make clear the United States will not
Despite the clear evidence of U.S. interference in tolerate it, period. Naturally, this is a difficult issue for Mr.
Ukrainian politics, the U.S. government and the Trump, who reaped the benefit of Russia’s intervention
mainstream media embraced the coup and accused Putin of and now faces a special counsel’s investigation, but
“aggression” when ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, nonetheless, in his first session with Mr. Putin, the
called the Donbas, resisted the coup regime. president must not hesitate to be blunt. …

When ethnic Russians and other citizens in Crimea voted “On Ukraine, Mr. Trump must also display
overwhelmingly in a referendum to reject the coup regime determination. Russia fomented an armed
and rejoin Russia – a move protected by some of the uprising and seized Crimea in violation of
20,000 Russian troops inside Crimea as part of a basing international norms, and it continues to
agreement – that became a Russian “invasion.” But it was instigate violence in the Donbas. Mr. Trump
the most peculiar “invasion,” since there were no images ought to make it unmistakably clear to
of tanks crashing across borders or amphibious landing Mr.Putin that the United States will not
craft on Crimean beaches, because no such “invasion” had retreat from the sanctions imposed over
occurred. Ukraine until the conditions of peace
agreements are met.”
However, in virtually every instance, the U.S. mainstream
media insisted on the most extreme anti-Russian

283
Along the same lines, even while suggesting the value of
some collaboration with Russia toward ending the war in
Syria, Post columnist David Ignatius wrote in a July 5
column,
“Russian-American cooperation on Syria
faces a huge obstacle right now. It would
legitimize a Russian regime that invaded
Ukraine and meddled in U.S. and
European elections, in addition to its
intervention in Syria.”
Note the smug certainty of Ignatius and the Post editors.
There is no doubt that Russia “invaded” Ukraine; “seized”
Crimea; “meddled” in U.S. and European elections. Yet all
these groupthinks should be subjected to skepticism, not
simply treated as undeniable truths.
But seeing only one side to a story is where the U.S.
mainstream media is at this point in history. Yes, it is
possible that Russia was responsible for the Democratic
.
284
hacks and did funnel the material to WikiLeaks, but
evidence has so far been lacking. And, instead of
presenting both sides fairly, the major media acts as if only
one side deserves any respect and dissenting views must be
ridiculed and condemned.
In this perverted process, collectively approved versions of
complex situations congeal into conventional wisdom,
which simply cannot be significantly reconsidered
regardless of future revelations.
As offensive as this rejection of true truth-seeking may be,
it also represents an extraordinary danger when mixed with
the existential risk of nuclear conflagration.
With the stakes this high, the demand for hard evidence –
and the avoidance of soft-minded groupthink – should go
without question. Journalists and commentators should
hold themselves to professional precision, not slide into
sloppy careerism, lost in “propaganda-ville.”
 Here’s How Trump Transferred
Wealth To His Son While Avoiding The Usual Taxes
Donald Trump Sold Two Condos To Eric In April 2016 At A Steep
Discount. But He Doesn’t Appear To Be On The Hook For Gift Taxes.
By Derek Kravitz And Cezary Podkul, Propublica, And Will Parker, The Real Deal
July 5, 2017, 8 A.M.
(Photo: Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images)
In April 2016, as Donald Trump was on the cusp of
clinching the Republican nomination for the White House,
he sold two luxury condos near Manhattan’s Central Park
for less than half the price his company had said they were
worth. The lucky buyer: Trump’s son, Eric.
Such family-friendly deals would normally incur hundreds
of thousands of dollars in gift taxes.
285
But in this case, Trump appears unlikely to have been on
the hook for anywhere near that, thanks to benefits only
available to real estate developers.
Eric Trump bought the two condos on the two top floors of
the Trump Parc East building at 100 Central Park South
for $350,000 each. Trump Organization filings show that,
as of February 2016 — two months before Trump sold the
apartments to Eric — the condos were priced at $790,000
and $800,000. A similar one-bedroom condo on a lower
floor at the same building sold for $690,000 in 2014.
The transactions illustrate the unique advantages that real
estate developers like Trump have when passing down
valuable assets between generations.
“Not everyone has the opportunity to avoid
gift taxes, just developers with developer
units,” said Beth Shapiro Kaufman, an
estate planning attorney and president at
Caplin & Drysdale in Washington, D.C.
“The biggest game in gift taxes is valuation
issues.”
An owner who sells real estate for less than it’s worth
would typically have to pay gift tax on the difference
between the sales price and the true market value. Any
personal gifts that are worth more than $14,000 in a year
are subject to up to 40 percent in federal taxes.
But as the building’s developer selling the units for the
first time, Trump had lots of flexibility within the law to
determine the value of the apartments.
“This is really, really primo real estate,” said
Bob Lord, a tax attorney who reviewed the
transaction records at ProPublica’s
request. “Why would you show a sale at
 $350,000 other than to play games for tax
purposes?”

The units were originally rent regulated, which would

typically lower the value of the apartments significantly.

New York City records state that the condos are no longer
rent regulated. It’s not clear when they were deregulated,
but the result is that Eric Trump will likely be able to sell
the apartments at significantly higher prices. It’s also
unclear if anyone currently lives in the condos. The
younger Trump bought another, much larger, apartment in
the building for $2 million in 2007.
Trump bought the Central Park South building in 1981 and
It’s ultimately unclear how much, if any, taxes Trump paid later converted it into condos. The building’s 80 units were
on the transactions. The Trump Organization, the White initially filled mostly with wealthy rent-regulated tenants
House and Eric Trump did not respond to requests for who had the right to keep renewing their leases at below-
comment. market rates as long as they chose to remain in the
building. That interfered with Trump’s plan to tear down
But other taxes paid on the transaction suggest gift taxes the building and replace it with a condo project.
were not paid. Trump paid a total of $13,000 in city and
state transfer taxes, New York City property records show. Under New York laws, developers who convert apartment
Those transfer taxes, according to a spokeswoman for the buildings into condos must disclose to the New York state
city’s Department of Finance, are not usually paid when attorney general how much they’re looking to sell units for
“bona fide gifts” are involved. to existing tenants as well as to the public.

Also, when a sale is reported as a gift, buyers and sellers
typically disclose in transfer records that the sale is taking
place between two relatives. The Trumps did not.
Trump’s 1997 disclosure to the attorney general, known as
an offering plan, shows that units 13G and 14G were both
rent regulated and originally listed for sale at $245,000 and
$250,000, respectively. Over time, as market prices moved
higher, Trump filed frequent amendments raising the listed
prices, a standard practice for developers. ProPublica and
The Real Deal obtained the offering plan and amendments
through a public-records request.

Trump reported nearly $3.2 million in revenue in 2016 and

the first half of 2017 from condo sales using the company,
Trump CPS LLC. He resigned as president of that
Trump has said that he, like many Americans, wants to
company on Jan. 19, the day before his inauguration.
keep his taxes at a minimum. “I fight like hell and pay as
little as possible,” he told CBS’ “Face the Nation” in
August 2015. Trump has proposed repealing the estate tax As with the president’s other assets, Trump CPS LLC is
entirely. held by the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust and is
managed by one of Trump’s lawyers and the president’s
sons. Trump put his businesses under the trust in response
The condo sales were disclosed in President Trump’s 2017
to criticism about conflicts. As we have reported, President
federal financial disclosure, which was released by the
Trump can take funds from the trust any time.
U.S. Office of Government Ethics last month. The buyers
were listed as two limited liability companies. After we
asked readers to help us analyze the documents, a reader This story was co-published with The Real Deal.
flagged the deals and noted that the LLCs listed as the
buyers were managed by Eric Trump.

Eric Trump listed as president of CPS

Apartment 13G LLC
.

286
 Freak Out: Democrats’ Call For Panel To Test Trump’s
“Mental” Fitness Is Criticized By Former Dem Lawmaker
Who Says They Are “Destroying The Party”
By JD Heyes
Thursday, July 06, 2017
Last week Democrats increasingly frustrated with being
out of power and tired of seeing the president survive
assault after assault — the by media, by the Deep State,
and by their party — showed just how serious their Trump
Derangement Syndrome really is.
As noted by The National Sentinel, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-
Md., who — unbelievably — teaches “constitutional law”
at American University in his spare time, has other
members of his party supporting a bill he will try to
introduce that would require Congress to authorize the
convening of a panel of psychiatrists and other doctors for
the purpose of determining Donald J. Trump’s mental
fitness for office of the president:
Under provisions of the 25th Amendment, a
president can be removed from office if he
self-determines he is unable to continue to
discharge his duties, or if the vice president
and a majority of the president’s Cabinet,
“or of such other body as Congress may by
law provide,” make the determination.
The bill would instruct the four Democratic and
Republican leaders of the House and Senate to each select
a psychiatrist and another physician. Also, each part would
add a retired statesman to the panel, like a president or vice
president (gee — who do you think the Democrats already
have in mind?).
The group of 10 would meet and then choose an 11th
member, who would serve as the panel’s chairman.
287
The Daily Mail noted further:
Once the group is officially seated, the
House and Senate could direct it through a
joint resolution to conduct an actual
examination of the president “to determine
whether the president is incapacitated,
either mentally or physically,” according to
the Raskin bill.
“What’s ironic is that the Dem-led effort to
prove Trump is mentally unfit is being
driven by a truly unhinged and irrational
hatred of the president,” The National
Sentinel noted. (RELATED: Trump trolls
CNN with tweet showing him
“wrestling” and beating down the
network, as the Left once again
predictably freaks out)
Former presidential contender and Democratic U.S. Rep.
Dennis Kucinich seems to agree. In an interview Tuesday
on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” program, he said of the
effort:
“It’s a political statement, not a medical
statement. I think it’s destroying the party
as an effective opposition.”
Continuing, he also said,
“People want political parties to be focused
on America’s economic needs, jobs,
wages, heath care, education, retirement
security and peace — and they want
American politicians to be constructive, not
destructive.”
He then said that it was apparent some members of his
party are still not able to “reconcile” the results of the
November election, after Trump handed Democratic
nominee Hillary Clinton her second presidential loss.
“What’s happening here is not good for the
country,” said Kucinich.
The bill establishes an
“Oversight Commission on Presidential
Capacity,” which would be charged with
carrying out a “medical examination of the
President to determine whether the
President is mentally or physically unable
to discharge the powers and duties of the
office.”
Under the bill’s provisions, said determination would be
made if the
“Commission finds that the President is
temporarily or permanently impaired by
physical illness or disability, mental illness,
mental deficiency, or alcohol or drug use to
the extent that the person lacks sufficient
.
288
understanding or capacity to execute the
powers and duties of the office of
President.”
The measure references the 25th Amendment, which says
the vice president would assume the Oval Office when the
president is declared by himself or a majority of his
Cabinet that he is
“unable to discharge the powers and duties
of his office.”
The bill isn’t likely to go anywhere, however: It would
have to pass the GOP-controlled Congress, which no doubt
also sees this as little more than an act of desperation by a
desperate party, and then be signed by the very president
the bill seeks to unseat.
 Like Father, Like Son: Donald Trump Jr Ramps Up His
War With CNN By Accusing The Network Of 'Bullying
And Intimidating Citizens' Into Silence In The Wake Of Its
'Blackmail' Controversy
 Don Jr Was One Of The First Prominent Republicans To Accuse CNN Of 'Blackmail'
 Allegation Stemmed From CNN Revealing It Figured Out Who Was Behind A Secret Reddit
Account That Created A Meme 'Inciting Violence Against Its Journalists'
 'CNN: Let's Bully And Intimidate Citizens Online So They Never Question Our #Fakenews
Again! #Cnnblackmail' The President's Son Tweeted Out On Thursday
 He Also Attacked CNN Reporter, Andrew Kaczynski, Who Found The Meme Maker
By Liam Quinn For Dailymail.Com
Published: 10:20 EDT, 6 July 2017 | Updated: 12:05 EDT, 6 July 2017
Donald Trump Jr is on the warpath against CNN, echoing
his father's repeated attacks on the 'fake news' network. Donald Trump Jr is following in his father's footsteps by
increasing his attacks on CNN in the last few days. Trump
Don Jr has frequently gone after the network since his and Trump Jr are pictured together after one of the debates
family entered the political fray, but his took his last September
antagonistic tweeting to a new level after CNN was
accused of trying to 'blackmail' the middle-aged Reddit Trump Jr has been tweeting furiously about the
user who anonymously created a GIF of the president 'controversy', and on Thursday morning he fired off
attacking the network. another tweet in response to CNN boss Jeff Zucker saying
the president is trying to bully the news network.
The GIF, created by Reddit user
'HanA**holeSolo', shows Trump tackling 'Also CNN: Let's bully and intimidate
WWE owner Vince McMahon during the citizens online so they never question our
professional wrestling company's #fakenews again! #CNNBlackmail,' Trump
Wrestlemania event in 2007. The CNN logo Jr wrote.
is superimposed over McMahon's head.
Minutes earlier, he had attacked the network's reporter Jim
On Wednesday, CNN was accused by its opponents of Acosta - who his father has feuded with - for questioning
'blackmailing' the person who created the original video on whether the president's press conference in Poland was
Wednesday, after the network revealed it had spoken to 'fake' because he took questions from 'a reporter who is
him and could 'release his identity' in future. essentially an ally of the White House'.

'So by that logic, was every news

conference for the last 8 years #fakenews
Jim?' he wrote, making the assertion
President Barack Obama was coddled by
the media.

He then briefly switched targets to fire off a tweet at NBC,

after reporter Chuck Todd wrote about Don Jr's dad's
speech in Poland:

'A trashing of the American press corps

and Intel community in Eastern Europe of
all places. Could Putin have asked for
anything more?'
289
 'CNN: Lets corner the market on anything
stupid and overly sensational!!! NBC: Hold
my beer,' Trump Jr wrote, in an attempt to
mimic a popular meme.
Don Jr ramped up his attacks on CNN after the network
was accused by its opponents of 'threatening to blackmail'
a Reddit user who created a meme that was lifted and used
by the president
Trump Jr attacked CNN in a series of tweets on
Wednesday and Thursday after the network was accused
of 'blackmailing' a Reddit user
The Thursday morning tweets came after he spent hours on
Wednesday going after CNN's KFile reporter, Andrew
290
Kaczynski, who tracked down Reddit user
'HanA**holeSolo'.
'So I guess they weren't effective
threatening the admin so they go after &
bully a 15 y/o? Seems in line w their
"standards" #CNNBlackmail,' he wrote in
one tweet on Wednesday, pushing the
claim the man behind the account was a
teenager.
That was said to be false by CNN and Kaczynski, who
spoke to the Reddit user directly.
'If only @CNN spent as much time tracking
down info on IRS targeting, Fast & Furious,
Iran deal etc as they did a meme writer!
#CNNBlackmail,' Don Jr wrote in another
post.
For the most part, Kaczynski steered clear of Don Jr's
tweets, however he did offer a response after the
president's son accused him of deleting posts.
'The son of the president sent a second
false tweet today about me and CNN.
Neither has been corrected,' the CNN
reporter wrote.
Trump Jr spent much of Wednesday attacking CNN's
KFile reporter, Andrew Kaczynski, who tracked down
Reddit user 'HanA**holeSolo' - the middle-aged man who
created a GIF that was taken and sent out by Donald
Trump
Kaczynski seemed to mainly ignore Trump Jr's criticism,
however he responded to two claims made by the
president's son he said were factually incorrect

Trump Jr was one of many conservatives who attacked

CNN on Wednesday after it posted an article detailing how
it tracked down the man behind Trump's WWE-mimicking
Donald Trump Jr is pictured waving while standing on the White
meme.
House lawn on April 17, 2017

The article read:

'CNN is not publishing "HanA**holeSolo's"

name because he is a private citizen who
has issued an extensive statement of
apology, showed his remorse by saying he
has taken down all his offending posts, and
because he said he is not going to repeat
this ugly behavior on social media again.'

The article then added:

'CNN reserves the right to publish his

identity should any of that change.' Donald Trump Jr shakes his father's hand after a presidential debate
in October 2016 in Missouri

That line was seized upon by opponents of the network,

including hundreds of anonymous posters on Reddit and
Twitter, to accuse CNN of 'blackmail'.

'CNN LITERALLY DOXXED A PRIVATE

CITIZEN AMD THREATENED TO
RELEASE HIS PUBLIC INFO IF HE
DIDN'T APOLOGIZE, SERIOUSLY WHAT
THE F***ING F***,' a user called
'ExtinctWhiteMale' wrote on
R/The_Donald.
'CNN is f***ing ISIS...... nobody should ever
apologize when FNN (Fraud News
Network) is the enemy,' another user wrote
in response.

President Donald Trump tweeted an edited video clip of

himself hitting Vince McMahon at WrestleMania 23, but
the CNN logo was slapped over McMahon's face. The
image created controversy this week, and led to CNN
reporters tracking down the user who created the GIF

291
The subreddit, which was where the initial meme and
subsequent apology from 'HanA**holeSolo' were first
posted, promoted the hashtag 'CNNBlackmail'.
In addition to Trump Jr, other prominent conservative
online figures, including Julian Assange and Wikileaks,
pushed the 'blackmail' allegation.
In response to a comment about the alleged 'blackmail', the
KFile writer tweeted:
'This line is being misinterpreted. It was
intended only to mean we made no
agreement w/the man about his identity.'
blackmailed or coerced him is false,' the
statement read.
'The user, who is an adult male, not a 15-
year-old boy, apologized and deleted his
account before ever speaking with our
reporter.
'CNN never made any deal, of any kind,
with the user. In fact, CNN included its
decision to withhold the user’s identity in an
effort to be completely transparent that
there was no deal.'

CNN also defended its story in a statement released on

Wednesday afternoon.

'CNN decided not to publish the name of

the Reddit user out of concern for his
safety. Any assertion that the network

292
 Polish Crowd Chants
‘Donald Trump!’ & 'USA! USA!'
'It’s Such A Great Honor'
Jul 6, 2017
Administration had canceled as a part of his
revamped START nuclear treaty.

Trump also thanked Poland for being one of the only

NATO members to fully honoring its financial
commitment to the Western security alliance.

The Polish crowd attending President Trump's speech in

Warsaw repeatedly interrupted his remarks with chants of

"Donald Trump!" and "USA! USA!"

At a wreath-laying ceremony in Krasinski Square, the

excited crowd broke out into an American-style, "
USA! USA! USA!" chant.
Later, during Trump's prepared remarks, the crowd
repeatedly interrupted the speech with a
"Donald Trump! Donald Trump!" chant.
"The story of Poland is the story of a
people who have never lost hope, who
have never been broken and who have
never ever forgotten who they are," Trump
said in Warsaw, before the crowd began
chanting his name.
"Thank you so much, thank you," he
replied. "Thank you so much. A great
honor."
Trump's speech celebrated the United States' alliance with
Poland, and announced the country was purchasing the
PATRIOT Air Defense Missile System that the Obama
.
"That is also why we salute the Polish
people for being one of the NATO countries
that has actually achieved the benchmark
for investment in our common defense,"
Trump said. "Thank you. Thank you
Poland. I must tell you the example you set
is truly magnificent and we applaud
Poland."
Trump also said the United States remains firmly
committed to honoring NATO's Article 5.
"To those who would criticize our tough
stance" he's taken with asking NATO
members to honor their financial
commitments, Trump said, "I would point
out that the United States has
demonstrated not merely with words but
with its actions that we stand firmly behind
Article 5, the mutual defense commitment."

293
 Trump Finally Turns On Russia As He Warns Putin To STOP His
Aggression In Syria And Ukraine As He Issues Full-Throated
Attack On Radical Islamic Terrorism AND Government
Bureaucracy To Delight Of Thousands Of Poles
Who Chant His Name
 President Donald Trump Met With Polish President Andrzej Duda On Thursday At The Royal Castle In
Warsaw
 He Later Questioned During A Landmark Speech At Krasinski Square Whether The West Has The 'Will To
Survive'
 Insisted North Korea Would Face 'Consequences' And Admitted Russia 'Could Have' Interfered With The
Election
 Trump Hit Russia Later For Its 'Destabilizing Activities In Ukraine And Elsewhere And Its Support For
Hostile Regimes Including Syria And Iran'
 He Urged Vladimir Putin's Government To Join The U.S. And Its Allies In The Global Fight Against
Terrorism
 Earlier Said He Thought Russia Had Interfered In The Election - But That Obama Had Done Nothing About It
 Visit To Warsaw Came Ahead Of A Journey To Germany For The G20 Summit On Friday And Saturday
By David Martosko, Us Political Editor For Dailymail.Com In Warsaw, Poland And Francesca
Chambers, White House Correspondent For Dailymail.Com
Published: 03:54 EDT, 6 July 2017 | Updated: 15:19 EDT, 6 July 2017

President Donald Trump browbeat Russia on Thursday
for its 'destabilizing activities in Ukraine and
elsewhere and its support for hostile regimes including
Syria and Iran' and urged Vladimir Putin's government
to join the U.S. and its allies in the global fight against
terrorism.
Trump had refused earlier in the day to pin election
hacking last year in the U.S. on the Kremlin, saying he
thinks it was Putin's government, but it 'could have been
other people in other countries.'
And he did not mention Russia by name in his remarks to
the Polish people when he committed the U.S. to making
sure Warsaw is
cyber warfare, we must adapt our lives to
compete effectively in new ways and on all
new battlefields,' he said in a direct
reference to Moscow's meddling.
Speaking to thousands of cheering Poles, Trump called
their nation 'the geographic heart of Europe' and praising
their countrymen for shaking off both Nazi oppressors and
Russian occupiers in the last century.
'That's trouble. That's tough,' he exclaimed.
'In those dark days, you have lost your land
but you never lost your pride.'

'never again held hostage to a single

supplier of energy.'

But turning to threats against the West later in his speech

in front a memorial to the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, Trump
railed against 'the steady creep of government
bureaucracy,' along with 'radical Islamic terrorism' and
'powers that seek to test our will, undermine our
confidence and challenge our interests.'

'To meet new forms of aggression, President Donald Trump questioned if the West has the
including propaganda, financial crimes and 'will to survive' in a landmark speech in Warsaw on
Thursday afternoon. He spoke at Krasinski Square in front
294
of a monument commemorating the 1944 Warsaw
Uprising against the Nazis. The Warsaw Uprising was the
largest act of resistance by any nation under the German
occupation during World War II and the heroism of the
insurgents remains a defining element in Polish national
identity
Trump spoke in front of a crowd at Krasinski Square at the
Royal Castle in Warsaw on Thursday
Trump participates in a wreath laying ceremony before
delivering a speech at Krasinski Square at the Royal Castle
295
Trump waves next to First Lady of the United States
Melania Trump, Polish President Andrzej Duda and First
Lady of Poland Agata Kornhauser-Duda before his public
speech
People cheer as Trump delivers his landmark speech at
Krasinski Square at the Royal Castle on Thursday morning
Ahead of his speech on Thursday, First Lady Melania
Trump welcomed the crowd and introduced her husband
Trump delivered his address in Krasinski Square, at the
foot of a statue commemorating the 1944 Polish uprising
against German occupiers. He and first lady Melania
Trump laid a wreath at its base.
Speaking behind bullet-proof glass, the president said
Poles are 'a people who truly know the value of what you
defend.'
He urged them to uphold 'a future in which good conquers
evil.'
They repeatedly chanted 'USA, USA' and 'Donald Trump!
Donald Trump!'
Trump had earlier met the Polish president and warned that
the future of the West is in doubt.
In a speech to the public he praised Poland's 'will to
survive' because they 'have never, ever forgotten who they
are.'

'The Polish experience reminds us – the defense of the

West ultimately rests not only on means but also on the
will of its people to prevail,' Trump said.

'Your oppressors tried to break you, but Poland could not

be broken.'

During her introduction speech at Krasinski Square on

Thursday Melania Trump said she hoped all around world
could share in that safety

First Lady Melania Trump warmed up the crowd in

Poland's capital city ahead of her husband's speech, saying
that all people should be allowed to 'live their lives without
fear'

First Lady Melania walked alongside President Trump as

they arrived at Krasinski Square on Thursday ahead of
Trump's speech

The first lady said Thursday that guaranteeing the 'security'

of the American people is the centerpiece of Trump's
administration

Melania Trump, who is taking a prominent role in her

husband's key overseas trip, also saluted the Polish people
and their 'beautiful country'

296
Melania donned a navy blue dress with pink and blue
stripes for the event on Thursday. She wore purple heels to Ivanka was beaming as she arrived at the speech hand-in-
finish off the outfit hand with husband Jared Kushner. The couple arrived in
Warsaw on Air Force One with the president and first lady
And Trump projected his fight against Middle Eastern
terrorism onto the template of Poland's historic struggles,
saying, 'We are fighting hard against radical Islamic
terrorism, and we will prevail.'

'America and Europe have suffered one terror attack after

another. We are going to get it to stop,' he said. 'While we
will always welcome new citizens who share our values
and love our people, our borders will always be closed to
terrorism and extremism of any kind.'

The president urged European nations to commit more of

their money to NATO, as he said the organization's 'Article
5' commitment to mutual defense is an ironclad guarantee.

'Words are easy but actions are what matters,' he urged.

'Europe must do more. Europe must demonstrate that it Ivanka Trump smiles as she arrives in Krasinski Square, in
believes in its future by investing its money to secure that Warsaw, with her husband Jared Kushner, senior adviser
future.' of Trump

At a press conference following his private talks

with Andrzej Duda, Trump said North Korea would face
'consequences' for its intercontinental ballistic missile test.

He also admitted that Russia 'could have' interfered with

the 2016 election and vowed to work with Poland on
addressing threats from the country

Ivanka, who has taken a prominent role in her father's

White House administration, arrived in Warsaw on
Wednesday evening ahead of Trump's speech

297

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump took seats in the front
row in Krasinski Square ahead of Trump's speech, for
which Poles from around the country traveled to see
The pair held hands as they listened to the president made
his speech, in which he Poland as the 'geographic heart of
Europe'
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump applauded as they
listened to Trump's speech, which he made from behind
bulletproof glass
Trump's whirlwind visit to Warsaw came just before a
meeting with Putin. He will travel next to Germany for
298
Friday and Saturday's G20 summit, where he will sit down
for talks with the Russian leader for the first time since
taking office.
Trump's appearance alongside the Polish president will go
down badly in Russia.
Trump's visit to Warsaw was coordinated with the Three
Seas Initiative, which is a new 12-nation trade and
economic bloc organized in part to limit Russia's power,
especially in ways that diminish its dominance in the
region's energy markets.
'To the citizens of this great region, America is eager to
expand our partnership with you. We welcome stronger
ties of trade and commerce as you grow your economies,'
Trump said in his Krasinski Square speech. 'And we are
committed to securing your access to alternate sources of
energy, so Poland and its neighbors are never again held
hostage to a single supplier of energy.'
North Korea's ballistic missile test the day the day before
Trump left the U.S. moved the threat posed by Kim Jong-
un's illicit nuclear activity up to the top of the American
president's list of shared threats.
Trump spoke from Krasinski Square, the site of a
monument commemorating the 1944 Warsaw Uprising
against the Nazis
The Warsaw Uprising (its monument pictured above) was
the largest act of resistance by any nation under the
German occupation during World War II, and the heroism
of the insurgents remains a defining element in Polish
national identity
 considering a 'severe' response.
During World War II, the Germans suppressed the
rebellion brutally, destroying most of Warsaw and killing
around 200,000 people, most of them civilians. Pictured
above, Trump and Melania observed the monument for the
Warsaw Uprising
Donald Trump shake hands with veteran as dozens of
others look on after delivering a speech in Krasinski
Square in Warsaw, Poland on Thursday
299
Dozens of veterans watched Trump's speech from behind
the stage on Thursday, sitting next to a monument for the
Warsaw Uprising
At his joint press conference with Duda, Trump called on
the global community to ensure there are 'consequences'
for Pyongyang's belligerence and warned that he is
'I call on all nations to confront this global threat and
publicly demonstrate to North Korea that there are
consequences for their very, very bad behavior,' he
declared.
'I have pretty severe things that we're thinking about,'
Trump said, addressing a question from DailyMail.com,
but added: 'That doesn't mean that we'll do them.'
Trump later said that he was working with Poland on
addressing threats from Russia and reiterated his calls for
NATO members to meet their financial obligations.
Trump said that 'as a result' of his administration's pushing,
'billions of dollars' have begun to pour into NATO.
'In fact, people are shocked. But billions and billions of
dollars more are coming in from countries that, in my
opinion, would not have been paying so quickly.'
Trump commemorated Polish and Jewish history in his
speech as dozens of veterans looked on. Pictured above,
Melania, Polish President Andrzej Duda and Polish First
Lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda listen to Trump's speech
Trump shook hands with several veterans who listened to
the speech as he left Krasinski Square and headed for
Germany
+
Crowds waving US, confederate and Polish flags gathered
in and around a Warsaw square where Trump delivered his
first public speech in Europe
300
Some Trump supporters tied a 'Make America Great
Again' banner to a barrier fence ahead of the speech.
Nearby attendees wore hats bearing the same slogan
While some people carried flags, some banners on display
in Krasinski Square featured the right-wing, pro-
government Gazeta Polska newspaper.
One man kept his supportive sign straight and to the point:
He simply carried around a photo of President Donald
Trump to the rally
'To those who would criticize our tough stance, I would
point out that the United States has demonstrated not
merely with words but with its actions that we stand firmly
behind Article 5, the mutual defense commitment,' he said,
checking an important box in his remarks for European
leaders who have worried about that his warnings to pay
up or else meant the U.S. was rethinking its involvement in
the international organization.
Trump heaped praise on Poland for paying up.
He told the Polish people, 'You were supported in that
victory over communism by a strong alliance of free
nations in the West that defied tyranny. Now, among the
most committed members of the NATO Alliance, Poland
has resumed its place as a leading nation of a Europe that
is strong, whole, and free.'
'A strong Poland is a blessing to the nations of Europe, and for a summit of the world's developed and developing
they know that. A strong Europe is a blessing to the West nations
and to the world.'

Trump's speech came just days after Independence Day in

As Krasinski Square filled with people, crowds are the United States and ahead of his appearance at the G20
gathered in neighboring streets, where screens have been Summit in Germany
set up for viewing

There were so many attendees at the event that some

In the center of the square, several rows of seats were set crowded into a glass-enclosed bus stop to watch Trump
up for guests while others sat in nearby bleachers and deliver his speech
behind barriers

Former president Lech Walesa is among the special guests Trump addressed thousands of Poles from Krasinski
in the VIP section. Poland's leaders promised Trump a Square, site of the Warsaw Uprising against Nazi
warm welcome before he heads to Germany later Thursday occupation. More than 150,000 Poles died during the
struggle to overthrow oppression

301

Some supporters in the crowd made T-shirts reading 'Make
Poland Great Again' a phrase that played on Trump's
'MAGA' campaign slogan
It was also confirmed that Trump accepted an invitation to
visit the small central European nation that is the homeland
of his wife Melania following his speech

Noting the 100th anniversary of America's entry into

World War I, which he will celebrate formally next week
in Paris, France, Trump said' the transatlantic bond
between the United States and Europe is as strong as ever
and maybe, in many ways, even stronger.'

'This continent no longer confronts the specter of

communism. But today we’re in the West, and we have to
say there are dire threats to our security and to our way of
life,' he said. 'You see what’s happening out there. They
are threats. We will confront them. We will win. But they
are threats.'

Duda for his part said he believed Trump took Poland's

security seriously.
'We see ourselves as loyal partners who cooperate on a
number of issues, among others on security,' Duda said at
the news conference.
Demonstrators dressed in costumes resembling those from
Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale attended a Trump
protest in Warsaw on Thursday

The costumes resemble those worn in a new television

series based on Margaret Atwood's 1985 novel in which
Following his speech, Trump and his wife departed from women - dubbed 'breeders' - are forced to give birth and
Warsaw and headed for Germany on Air Force One ahead have no control over their bodies. Poland is currently
of the G20 Summit embattled in a large debate over banning abortion

302
Poland has month the tightest abortion laws in Europe, and
a proposal last year sought to ban all abortions unless a
President Donald Trump questioned whether the West has
mother's life was at risk. Demonstrators at Thursday's
the 'will to survive' in a landmark speech in Warsaw on
protest wore pins that read 'Together' in Polish
Thursday

Dozens of protesters showed up at the speech on Thursday,

with some carrying signs that read 'Trump Not Welcome'
and 'Dump Trump'
Trump held a joint press conference with Polish
President Andrzej Duda on Thursday after the pair had
Trump said then that Russia 'could have' interfered with private talks
the 2016 US presidential election which saw him take
victory over Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

He added, however, that he's not totally convinced that

Russia was the sole meddler, contrasting claims from four
U.S. intelligence agencies which said the effort was
directed by Putin and emanated from Moscow.

'I think it was Russia, and it could have been other people
in other countries,' Trump said. 'Nobody really knows.'

He added that the U.S. Intelligence Community has made

high-profile mistakes in the past, so 'nobody really knows
for sure.'

The president sought to redirect any scrutiny toward his At a press conference following his private talks with
predecessor, Barack Obama, accusing him of allowing Andrzej Duda, Trump said North Korea would face
Moscow to meddle on his watch. 'consequences' for its intercontinental ballistic missile test

303
He also admitted that Russia interfered with the 2016
election and vowed to work with Poland on addressing Trump later said that he was working with Poland on
threats from the country addressing threats from Russia and reiterated his calls for
NATO members to meet their financial obligations
Though the Obama administration warned Russia publicly
and privately before Election Day to stop interfering,
questions have since been raised about whether he acted
aggressively enough to stop the threat.

'They say he choked. Well, I don't think he choked,' Trump

said. 'I think he thought Hillary Clinton was going to win
the election, and he said, "Let's not do anything about it".'

Trump said the CIA had informed Obama about the

hacking months before the election but added that
'mistakes have been made.'.

He also took a question from DailyMail.com about a

domestic tempest that developed this week over a video
Trump's whirlwind visit to Warsaw comes just days before
clip he tweeted on Sunday, depicting himself body-
he meets Russian President Vladimir Putin. He will next
slamming a pro wrestling mogul whose face was
travel to Germany for Friday and Saturday's G20 summit
superimposed with CNN's logo.

CNN quickly condemned the tweet and assigned a reporter

to find out where the viral meme originated.

Trump and Duda shook hands for photo ops several times
on Thursday, including after their joint press conference

By Thursday the network was under fire for allegedly

At a joint press conference between Trump and Duda, the threatening to reveal the name of a person it said created
US president called on the global community to ensure the video.
there are 'consequences' for Pyongyang's belligerence and
warned that he is considering a 'severe' response
304
But CNN appears to have gotten it wrong, using the wrong
version of the doctored footage as the basis for their
interview with the unnamed man.

'I think what CNN did is unfortunate for them,' Trump said
at the press conference. 'As you know they have some
pretty serious problems.

'They have been fake news for a long time. They have
been covering me in a very, very dishonest way.'

Trump then turned to Duda and asked, 'Do you have that
also, Mr President?', to which Duda shrugged.

'What CNN did – and what others did, NBC is equally as

bad despite the fact that I made them a fortune with "The Trump talks to Duda as US ambassador to Poland Paul W
Apprentice," but they forgot that,' Trump said. Jones looks on during the Three Seas Initiative Summit on
Thursday
'What I will say is that CNN has really taken it too
seriously and I think they've hurt themselves very badly,
very, very badly. And what we want to see in the United
States is honest, beautiful, free, but honest press. We want
to see fair press.'

'I think it's a very important thing. We don't want fake

news. By the way, not everybody is fake news. But we
don't want fake news. Bad thing. It's very bad for our
country,' Trump concluded.

Duda, center, speaks with Croatia President Kolinda

Grabar-Kitarovic as Trump makes a comment during the
Three Seas Initiative transatlantic roundtable in the Great
Assembly Hall of the Royal Castle

Trump talks with Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-

Kitarovic, center right, as they arrive for a group photo
prior to the Three Seas Initiative transatlantic roundtable in
the Great Assembly Hall of the Royal Castle, in Warsaw

The group who attended the initiative includes leaders of

the Baltic, Adriatic and Black seas nations and aims to
expand and modernize energy and trade with the goal of
reducing the region's dependence on Russian energy

305
 President Donald Trump is greeted by Polish President
Andrzej Duda as he visits Poland during the Three Seas
Initiative Summit in Warsaw on Thursday

While at the Royal Castle, President Trump and Duda (not

pictured) attended a meeting together

Following the press conference, Trump attended a meeting

of the Three Seas Initiative. Poland's ruling party sees itself as a Euroskeptic regime
along the lines of last year's Brexit movement in the
The group includes leaders of the Baltic, Adriatic and United Kingdom
Black seas nations and aims to expand and modernize
energy and trade with the goal of reducing the region's
dependence on Russian energy.

While at the meeting, Trump pledged that the United

States will never use energy to coerce eastern and central
European nations, adding that the United States won't
allow other nations to coerce them either.

Trump said he's proud that the region is benefiting from

US energy supplies. Poland received a first shipment of
liquefied natural gas from the United States last month.

Trump noted the region's special significance to him. His

wife, Melania, is a native of Slovenia, which belongs to the
group.
The US president's unapologetic brand of nationalism is
seen as its idealized complement, aligning Washington and
He then claimed that everyone is benefiting from the Warsaw in a push against a Berlin-dominated Europe
thriving US economy except for him.

He bragged of recent stock market gains, but said:

'Personally, I've picked up nothing.'

Trump and Duda shook hands at the Royal Castle in front

of a white marble bust of Stanislaw August Poniatowski,
the last king of Poland
306
The leaders then retreated to a room decorated with red Polish President Duda gave Trump a tour of the royal
walls for their private talks, where they also posed for castle on Thursday ahead of their joint press conference
photos

Meanwhile, First Lady Melania Trump met with Poland's

Asked how he felt about the trip, Trump, who is on a First Lady, Agata Kornhauser-Duda at the Belvedere
whirlwind 16-hour trip in Poland said 'Great' Palace in Warsaw

'That's all right,' he said. 'Everyone else is getting very

rich. That's OK. I'm very happy.'

Trump gave his two adult sons and a senior executive

control of his global real estate, property management and
marketing empire when he took office in January. But
Trump did not divest his businesses.

Instead he placed his financial assets in a trust that he can

seize control of at any time.

Busloads of Trump supporters were sent to Warsaw to see

Trump speak on Thursday in Krasinski Square, where a
monument stands to a 1944 popular uprising against
German occupation. Trump's daughter, Ivanka, visited the Monument to the
Ghetto Heroes in Warsaw on Thursday
In every corner of Poland, citizens were offered free
transportation to Warsaw if they wanted to be a part of the
Trump show.

307
'I am here today not just to visit an old ally, but to hold it
up as an example for others who seek freedom and who The two presidents met at the Royal Castle in Warsaw on
wish to summon the courage and the will to defend our Thursday morning head of Trump's landmark speech
civilization,' Trump told his fans.

The words 'courage,' 'will' and 'civilization' were

capitalized for emphasis in the snippets the White House
sent to reporters.

The United States is serious about the security of its ally

Poland, Duda said on Wednesday after his meeting with
Trump.

'We see ourselves as loyal partners who cooperate on a

number of issues, among others on security,' Duda told the
joint news conference. 'I have a feeling that the United
States is serious about Poland's security.'

Trump has made a point of attacking what adviser Steve Thursday's joint appearance with Duda at Warsaw's royal
Bannon has derided as 'the bureaucratic state,' rolling back castle was originally billed as a press conference
regulations that he says are choking free enterprise and
dampening the American economy.

Trump, like Poland's President Andrzej Duda, is aligned

Trump will praise 'the triumph of the Polish spirit over
centuries of hardship' in a landmark speech in Warsaw, the
White House said Thursday morning
against the European Union's bureaucracies
'The West became great not because of paperwork and
regulations but because people were allowed to chase their
dreams and pursue their destinies,' Trump's speech added.

308
'Americans, Poles, and the nations of Europe value Trump will speak to the leaders of Three Seas Initiative
individual freedom and sovereignty,' he said. nations and address the Polish people at Warsaw's
Krasinski Square later in the da
'We must work together to confront forces, whether they
come from inside or out, from the South or the East, that
threaten over time to undermine these values and to erase
the bonds of culture, faith and tradition that make us who
we are. If left unchecked, these forces will undermine our
courage, sap our spirit, and weaken our will to defend
ourselves and our societies.'

Trump, like Poland's president, is aligned against the

European Union's bureaucracies.

Flag-waving Poles lined Trump's motorcade route on

Wednesday night, but critics pointed out that the
government had paid to bus in thousands from Poland's
far-flung provinces.
The White House later described the meeting as a 'press
Duda's government had reportedly promised his American event', which raised concerns that Trump wouldn't be
counterpart a hero's welcome as a condition of visiting taking questions from reporters
Poland.

The pair met between flags of each nation before heading

+78
into a discussion about the European Union
Like the Trump administration, Duda's government is
Poland's ruling party sees itself as a Euroskeptic regime
staking its claim on a desire to limit the numbers of
along the lines of last year's Brexit movement in the
refugees it resettles even as European Union leaders press
United Kingdom.
Warsaw to open its borders

The US president's unapologetic brand of nationalism is

seen as its idealized complement, aligning Washington and
Warsaw in a push against a Berlin-dominated Europe.

Like the Trump administration, Duda's government is

staking its claim on a desire to limit the numbers of
refugees it resettles even as European Union leaders press
Warsaw to open its borders.

'The Polish government has the same position as

Americans – we want strict restrictions on refugees,'
legislator Krzysztof Mróz told The Wall Street Journal on
Wednesday.

309
Thursday's joint appearance with Duda at Warsaw's royal
castle was originally billed as a press conference.
By Tuesday, however, the White House began describing
it in advisories to reporters as a 'press event', raising
concerns that Trump wouldn't take reporters' questions.
Trump (his motorcade pictured above) will speak to the
leaders of Three Seas Initiative nations and address the
Polish people at Warsaw's Krasinski Square
Trump's whirlwind visit to Warsaw comes on the front end
of a journey to Germany for Friday and Saturday's G20
summit
310
Trump arrives on a state visit at the Okecie Airport,
Warsaw President Donald Trump visit to Poland on
Wednesday
Trump and First Lady Melania Trump arrive on a state
visit at the Okecie Airport in Warsaw on Tuesday evening
Also on the trip to Warsaw were Trump's daughter, Ivanka
Trump, and her husband Jared Kushner
On Thursday morning the White House confirmed that the
press conference would indeed include a Q&A from at
least four journalists.
Trump's ongoing media war has tended to overshadow talk
of his domestic and foreign agendas, a condition he could
ill afford as he launched his second diplomacy tour in six
weeks.
Duda, too, rolled the dice by allowing American
journalists to question his government's clampdown on
press freedoms in the last year.
Protesters blockaded the Polish parliament in December
after the ruling Law and Justice party restricted the number
of journalists allowed in the building and limited which
TV networks could record proceedings there.
European Council President Donald Tusk quickly invoked Unlike past US presidents, Trump did not meet with him in
the word 'dictatorship' to warn Duda, as his government Poland. Duda's right-wing government has sought to
blamed protesters for staging an 'illegal attempt to seize downplay Wałęsa's role in Poland's history.
power.'
Wałęsa, however, was in the crowd for Trump's speech.
Demonstrators shouted 'Solidarity!' – a throwback to the
communist-era movement led by then-dissident trade
unionist Lech Wałęsa, who later became president.

311
 Watergate Reporter Drops Mysterious Hints That Deep
State May Be Planning A Soft Coup Against Trump’s
“Malignant Presidency”
By JD Heyes
Thursday, July 06, 2017
From time to time since Donald J. Trump had the gall to
actually win the presidency last fall, there have been
rumors that the Deep State — a governing cabal consisting
of establishment Democrats, RINOs, the Washington
media and elements of the U.S. intelligence community —
were plotting against the Oval Office.
Now, one of Washington’s more credible sources appears
to have dropped yet another hit that a so-called “soft coup”
targeting the president may actually be a real thing.
Over the weekend, in an interview with Trump-hating
CNN — which ordinarily should be taken with a grain of
salt given the network’s penchant for inventing “news”
about the administration — Carl Bernstein, of Watergate
fame, appeared to hint that there were elements of
government working behind the scene to remove our duly-
elected president from his office. (RELATED: CNN now
fully exposed as fake news central after senior producer
calls Trump-Russia narrative “bulls**t” in new undercover
video.)
As reported by The Hill, Bernstein made the astonishing
claim that Trump is head of a “malignant presidency,” and
that his administration is “not functioning,” leading to
much angst among the establishment.
“We are in the midst of a malignant
presidency,” Bernstein said. “That
malignancy is known to the military leaders
of the country, it’s known to the Republican
leadership in Congress who recognize it,
312
and it’s known to the intelligence
community.
“The presidency of Donald Trump is not
functioning,” he continued. “It’s really not
functioning because the character and
capabilities of this president are called into
grave question in a way that those that
know him are raising serious concerns
about.”
He also said that Trump presents the “greatest journalistic
challenge of the modern era,” and added that he “is not in
control of the presidency in a way that it is functioning.”
“That has got our leaders worried, they are
worried about his character, they are
worried about his temperament,” Bernstein
said.
“We are in foreign territory. We have never
been in a malignant presidency like this
before.”
Is Bernstein serious? After all, his Watergate reporting
partner, Bob Woodward, is preaching something
completely different. As noted by Zero Hedge, Woodward
sees a brewing war between a sitting U.S. president and
the American [establishment] media that no one should
want.
“[I]t’s not in our interest, the media’s
interest to have a war with the Trump White
House. It’s not in Trump’s interest to have
this war,” he said in an interview with Axios.
While Bernstein’s claims may be dismissed by some as
more Left-wing noise from a “mainstream” media
psychologically disturbed by Trump’s election win and
continued ability to dodge their arrows, let’s understand
that Bernstein, in 1977, published a 25,000-word essay in
Rolling Stone detailing the close relationship between the
Beltway media and the U.S. intelligence community, most
notably the CIA.
And much more recently, in May, U.S. News & World Either way, two things are clear to us: 1)
Report noted that the U.S. media and intel community Trump is having success in implementing
were teaming up for an “institutional second strike” on his anti-establishment agenda, as
Trump, which together could prove to “be dangerous evidenced by the sense of urgency to
adversaries.” increase efforts to get rid of him; and 2)
those efforts are multi-pronged and are
Let’s also not forget Sen. Chuck Schumer’s ominous being led by people deep inside
warning to the president in January — that he was being government who obviously serve
“really dumb” to “take on the intelligence community,” themselves and no longer the American
because “they have six ways from Sunday at getting back people.
at you.”
It seems clear:
As The National Sentinel reports, it is evident that the
Deep State’s inability to dispose of a president who has The Republic is under assault by
decided he will fight back and not go quietly into the night unelected, anointed, shadowy figures
has disturbed behind-the-scenes puppet masters, who are who couldn’t care less about the will of
now self-serving: the people.

313
 CNN Boss Says His Reporters Are Ready To Fight Donald
Trump And Will Not Let Him 'Bully And Intimidate' Them
 Jeff Zucker spoke about Trump's frequent attacks on CNN in a new interview
 'My job is to remind everyone they need to stay focused doing their job', he said
 He added: 'He's trying to bully us, and we're not going to let him intimidate us. You can't
lose confidence and let that change the way you conduct yourselves'
 CNN has been under fire this week for allegedly 'blackmailing' the person who created a
meme that was lifted then tweeted out by Donald Trump on Sunday
 It showed the president tackling a figure with CNN's logo for a head and hitting it
By Liam Quinn For Dailymail.com
Published: 12:02 EDT, 6 July 2017 | Updated: 16:04 EDT, 6 July 2017

CNN President has hit back at Donald Trump and his
near-constant attacks on the network, saying he is
comfortable going to battle with the commander-in-chief
every day.
Jeff Zucker, CNN's 53-year-old head honcho, spoke about
what it is like for his network to find itself so frequently in
the president's crosshairs.
'My job is to remind everyone that they need to stay
focused doing their job.
He said Trump:
'has caused us to have to take steps that
you wouldn't think would be necessary
because of the actions of the president of
the United States'.
The comment is particularly timely, given the controversy
surrounding Trump's tweeting of a video that 'incited
violence against reporters', and CNN's subsequent decision
to track down the person behind anonymous account that
first created the video.

CNN President has hit back at Donald Trump and his near-
constant attacks on the network. Zucker is pictured in New Trump and Zucker were once close friends. They are
York on May 17, 2017 pictured together in Trump Tower on November 21, 2016

'He's trying to bully us, and we're not going

to let him intimidate us. You can't lose your
confidence and let that change the way you
conduct yourselves.'

Zucker continued in the interview to say threats of

violence against reporters have spiked in the wake of
Trump's election win.
314
The CNN boss said Trump's constant attacks on the
network are an attempt to bully it for not covering him as
he wants. Trump is pictured at the White House on June 1

The GIF, created by Reddit user

'HanA**holeSolo', shows Trump tackling
WWE owner Vince McMahon during the
professional wrestling company's
Wrestlemania event in 2007. The CNN logo
is superimposed over McMahon's head.

On Wednesday, CNN was accused by its opponents of

'blackmailing' the person who created the original video on
Wednesday, after the network revealed it had spoken to
him and could 'release his identity' in future.

The CNN story led to complaints from conservative

figures, including Donald Trump Jr and Julian Assange,
but the network and its reporter stood by the story.

Above are some of Trump's recent Twitter attacks on

CNN, which he regularly criticizes on social media

Despite explaining the reason it ran the story, its online

Zucker said threats of violence against reporters have
spiked in the wake of Trump's election win. He said
Trump: 'has caused us to have to take steps that you
wouldn't think would be necessary because of the actions
of the president of the United States'
opponents promoted the hashtag 'CNNBlackmail' in an
attempt to increase pressure. Some even posted contact
information for CNN's corporate sponsors, and called on
people to bombard the companies with complaints.

315
The controversy, one of many the network has been
involved in since Trump took office, could be a factor in
Zucker struggling to get his eight hours every night.

Dismissing his lack of shut-eye, the 53-year-old told the

Times: 'I don't sleep that much anyway.'

Given Trump's constantly combative nature with the

network, that is unlikely to change anytime soon.

Donald Trump and Jeff Zucker are pictured together at the

American Ballet Theater's Spring Gala - prior to their
high-profile falling out

316
 Why Won't The Democrats
Challenge Trump On North Korea?
The Lesson Of The Iraq War Is That Progressives Must Challenge The
GOP’s Hawkish Maximalism Regardless Of The Political Cost.
Peter Beinart
Jul 6, 2017
The intercontinental ballistic missile Hwasong-14 during its test in an
undated photo released by North Korea's state news agency Reuters
via KCNA
On domestic policy, the Democratic Party is moving left.
On foreign policy, the Democratic Party barely exists. Yes,
Democrats like climate change agreements and oppose
banning refugees. But those are extensions of the party’s
domestic commitments. Yes, Democrats support a hard
line against Vladimir Putin. But that’s mostly because he
helped elect Donald Trump. What is the Democratic
position on Syria’s civil war? Or Chinese imperialism in
the South China sea? Or Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen and
bullying of Qatar? There isn’t one. President Obama stood
for the proposition that America should resist costly
military interventions and seek diplomatic agreements with
longtime foes. When it comes to war and peace, the post-
Obama Democratic Party doesn’t really stand for much at
all.
Take North Korea. Ask congressional Democrats what
America should do about Kim Jong Un’s nuclear
ambitions and they mostly answer: more pressure. Which
is the same answer Republicans give. After Kim tested an
intercontinental ballistic missile this week, Politico
reported that
“Republican and Democratic lawmakers on
Tuesday called on President Donald Trump
to increase pressure on North Korea and
China.”
317
In May, every Democrat in the House joined every
Republican except one in supporting a bill to impose new
sanctions against companies that do business with
Pyongyang. In March, the ranking Democrat on the Senate
Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific,
and International Cybersecurity, Ed Markey, joined his
Republican counterpart in “praising” the Trump
administration for imposing new sanctions of its own.
For Republicans, this stance is ideologically coherent.
Republicans tend to think Ronald Reagan proved that the
way to deal with adversaries is through ideological
denunciations, economic sanctions, and military threats.
By contrast, Democrats—at least in the Obama era—
emphasized diplomacy and international cooperation.
Instead of seeking the capitulation of hostile regimes, they
sought deals that involved compromise by both sides. They
supported pressure only when it helped to bring such deals
about.
Not anymore. When I asked the veteran arms-control
expert Joe Cirincione what today’s Democrats believe
about North Korea, he answered:
“A Bud Light version of the hawkish neocon
view.”
What makes this so tragic is that the path Trump is on—
with bipartisan support—is doomed to fail. Were
Democrats willing to risk a political fight, they could offer
a better way.
Trump’s path is doomed to fail because it is based on
scaring Pyongyang into giving up its nuclear weapons
when fear of the United States is a major reason
Pyongyang wants nuclear weapons in the first place. Given
that North Korea still has no peace treaty with the U.S. (the
Korean War ended in an armistice) and watches American
troops patrol the other side of the demilitarized zone, it has
considered the United States a threat for a long time. But
over the last 15 years, America’s efforts at regime change
have left Pyongyang even more convinced that only
nuclear weapons bring protection.
In April 2003, a month after the U.S. invaded Iraq, a North
Korean spokesman declared that
“only military deterrent force, supported by
ultra-modern weapons, can avert a war and
protect the security of the nation. This is
the lesson drawn from the Iraqi war.”
When Pyongyang conducted a nuclear test last January, its
official news agency declared that,
“The Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq and
the Qaddafi regime in Libya could not
escape the fate of destruction after being
deprived of their foundations for nuclear
development and giving up nuclear
programs of their own accord.” Therefore,
“History proves that powerful nuclear
deterrence serves as the strongest
treasured sword for frustrating outsiders’
aggression.” As Dartmouth’s David Kang
has explained, “To dismiss North Korea’s
security fears is to miss the root cause of
North Korea’s actions.”
The Trump administration, however, believes America’s
problem is that it’s not scaring North Korea enough. Asked
as a candidate about assassinating Kim, Trump replied,
“I’ve heard of worse things.” In April, Mike Pence said
that, “When the president says all options are on the table,
all options are on the table. We’re trying to make it very
clear to people in this part of the world that we are going to
achieve the end of a denuclearization of the Korean
peninsula—one way or the other.” And in March, the U.S.
and South Korea held an eight-week-long training
exercise, involving more than 300,000 troops—many more
than in past years—in which the two armies practiced
missile strikes against North Korea’s nuclear sites and
“decapitation raids” aimed at killing its leaders. In
response, Kim Jong Un appears to have quickened the
pace of his nuclear and missile tests. Which was entirely
predictable given what North Korea has said and done in
the past.
The Trump administration’s other strategy has been to
urge China to pressure North Korea economically.
(America doesn’t do enough business with Pyongyang to
wield direct economic leverage. China, by contrast,
accounts for roughly 85 percent of North Korea’s
international trade.) But even as Democrats and
Republicans responded to this week’s intercontinental
ballistic missile test by echoing Trump’s demands, Trump
himself was conceding that those demands have failed.
“Trade between China and North Korea
grew almost 40% in the first quarter,” he
tweeted on Wednesday. “So much for
China working with us.”
318
What Trump doesn’t seem to grasp is why China isn’t
“working with us.” The reason is that as frustrating as
China finds Kim’s regime, it’s more afraid of contributing
to its collapse. If North Korea fell into chaos, China would
have chaos on its border. If South Korea swallowed North
Korea, China could have American troops on its border—a
situation which it went to war in 1950 to prevent.
A Democratic alternative would start with the same
recognition that underlay Obama’s negotiations with Iran:
Convincing adversaries to curb their military arsenals
requires making America not more threatening, but less so.
(Contrary to Republican mythology, Reagan embraced that
same logic towards the USSR as early as 1984.)
Although neither Democrats nor the elite press is paying
much attention, a number of former policymakers have
offered ways to begin doing this. Last September, a
Council on Foreign Relations Task Force led by former
Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen and
former Senator Sam Nunn suggested that the U.S. and
South Korea “consider modifications to the scale and
content of U.S.-ROK joint military exercises” as part of a
deal with North Korea. This June, a group of international
experts, including former Vice Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff James Cartwright and former Under
Secretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas Pickering
proposed the same thing: “the suspension, reduction and
eventual cessation of US military exercises in South
Korea.” That same month, a letter from former Secretary
of Defense William Perry, former Secretary of State
George Schultz and former Senator Richard Lugar
gestured in the same direction. “Washington,” it said,
“should make clear that the United States does not have
hostile intentions toward North Korea.” In other words, do
exactly the opposite of what Trump—with bipartisan
support—has done.
The Council on Foreign Relations Task Force also
suggested that in order to convince China to use its
influence with Pyongyang, the United States should be
open to “revising the number and disposition of U.S.
forces on the peninsula.” In other words, promise Beijing
that even if Korea reunifies, American troops will never
stand on the banks of the Yalu River.
It’s too late to convince North Korea to scrap its nuclear
and missile programs. But, with luck, concessions of the
kind proposed by these former officials could be part of a
deal to get Pyongyang to freeze them. And if you don’t
think that would constitute a major accomplishment,
remember that Pyongyang still hasn’t learned how to place
a nuclear device on an intercontinental ballistic missile. In
the next few years it likely will.
If Democrats offer such a vision,
Republicans will immediately reply that you
can’t negotiate with Pyongyang. “All of
those negotiations and discussions failed,
 miserably,” declared Pence in April. The
mantra “North Korea always cheats” is so
uncontested that it even shows up in news
articles. “The past three presidents have
tried to negotiate,” wrote Washington Post
National Political Correspondent James
Hohlman on Wednesday, “only to learn that
Pyongyang can never be trusted.”
But that’s at best a half-truth. Take the most important
U.S.-North Korean nuclear deal, the 1994 Agreed
Framework. Pyongyang promised to freeze its nuclear
program. In return, the U.S. promised to provide “heavy
fuel oil” to compensate for the electricity North Korea
would lose by shutting down its plutonium reactor, to help
build an entirely new, “light water” reactor, and to move
toward normalizing relations.
Critics say North Korea cheated by secretly pursuing a
different path—via uranium enrichment—toward a bomb.
That’s true. But the U.S. cheated too. Because of
objections by the Republican Congress, the United States
repeatedly failed to deliver the fuel oil it had promised on
time. As early as 1997, notes Leon Sigal, director of the
Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project at the Social
Science Research Council, Pyongyang warned that if the
U.S. didn’t meet its commitments, it wouldn’t either. Still,
North Korea did not reopen its plutonium reactor, a facility
that could, according to U.S. estimates, have produced 100
nuclear bombs. And by the end of the Clinton
administration, the United States and North Korea had
pledged that neither country would have “hostile intent”
toward the other.
When the Bush administration took office, however, it
refused to reaffirm this declaration of no “hostile intent.”
And in 2002, when it learned about North Korea’s secret
uranium program, it used the revelation as an opportunity
to scrap the agreement altogether. The North Koreans
offered to abandon both their plutonium and uranium
programs in return for a final deal that provided diplomatic
relations and an end to sanctions. But as then-Under
Secretary of State for Arms Control and International
Security John Bolton admitted,
.
319
“This was the hammer I had been looking
for to shatter the Agreed Framework.”
There’s an analogy here with Obamacare. By 2002, the
Agreed Framework had achieved a lot: It had stopped
North Korea’s primary nuclear program for eight years.
But it had also developed real flaws. Instead of trying to
fix them, the Bush administration used those flaws as an
excuse to scrap a deal it had opposed from the start. The
result: North Korea reopened its plutonium reactor and in
2006 conducted its first nuclear test.
Understanding this history is crucial to the Democrats’
ability to offer a real alternative to Trump’s North Korea
policy. When Republicans say diplomacy doesn’t work,
Democrats should ask the same question they asked when
Republicans attacked the Iran deal: Compared to what? As
a method of restraining North Korea’s nuclear ambitions,
Sigal argues, “nuclear diplomacy” has proved “far superior
to the record of pressure of sanctions and isolation without
negotiations.” Yet it’s that latter path that Trump, with the
acquiescence of congressional Democrats, seems
determined to take America down.
Why aren’t Democrats challenging Trump and the GOP?
A Senate aide says it’s because the progressive foreign
policy infrastructure remains so weak:
“A lot of Democratic members are cautious
about getting out there because they know
they won’t have very much cover, and
when they get bashed there aren’t many
organizations that would get their back.”
That’s true. But it’s also true that progressive wonks,
journalists, and activists will respond if they see politicians
worth rallying behind.
The lesson of the Iraq War is that progressives must
challenge the GOP’s hawkish maximalism regardless of
the political cost. The lesson of the Bernie Sanders
campaign is that grassroots Democrats hunger for
authenticity, independence and courage. If there are
dangers for Democrats who challenge the current hawkish
discourse on North Korea, there are opportunities too.
 Trump Weighs ‘Pretty Severe Things’
For North Korea Over Launch
By Toluse Olorunnipa And Margaret Talev
July 6, 2017, 4:25 AM CDT
U.S. President Donald Trump discusses the threat of North Korea
and possible actions being considered. He speaks at a joint press
conference with Poland’s President Andrzej Duda in Warsaw.
(Source: Bloomberg)
President Donald Trump said he is contemplating some
"pretty severe things" to retaliate against North Korea after
it launched an intercontinental ballistic missile this week
that brings it closer to being able to hit the U.S. mainland.
“I have some pretty severe things we’re
thinking about," Trump said at a news
conference in Warsaw. "Doesn’t mean
we’re going to do them. I don’t draw red
lines."
"It’s a shame they’re behaving this way and
they’re behaving in a very dangerous
manner, and something will have to be
done about it," Trump said.
Trump, who spoke alongside Polish President Andrzej
Duda, offered no details about what he is considering and
did not answer a question directly about whether he is
contemplating the use of military force. Earlier in the news
conference, he said he is calling on all nations to
"publicly demonstrate to North Korea that
there are consequences for their very, very
bad behavior."
Trump once again declined to say that it was only Russia
that was involved in hacking the 2016 presidential election
ahead of his meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin on
Friday. U.S. intelligence agencies have blamed the Russian
government but Trump has stopped short of laying blame
squarely with the Kremlin.
320
"I think it was Russia, I think it could have
been other countries," Trump said. "I won’t
be specific."
He added:
"So it was Russia and it was probably
others also, and that’s probably been going
on for a long period of time."
Talking to Putin
Trump’s aides have refused to say for certain that Trump
will raise the issue with Putin directly.
On North Korea, U.S. officials confirmed that the country
launched its first successful intercontinental ballistic
missile test this week, just days before Trump was
scheduled to travel to Europe for the G-20 summit in
Germany.
The test, which follows several missile launches in recent
months, has drawn the rebuke of several world leaders and
increased pressure on Trump to take action to back up his
rhetoric against the regime of Kim Jong Un.
Trump has previously said that “the era of strategic
patience with the North Korea regime has failed’’ and “is
over.”
Trump has said all options including military force are
available against Pyongyang, though its neighbors warn a
strike could be disastrous for North Asia. South Korea’s
new government favors talks to bring Kim to heel, also
putting it potentially at odds with Trump’s administration.
North Korea’s pursuit of a nuclear-tipped warhead capable
of reaching the U.S. is likely to be a significant topic
during the G-20. Trump is scheduled to have bilateral
meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Japanese
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, South Korean President Moon
Jae-In and Putin. Each of those leaders have spoken out
against North Korea’s provocations, and Trump has leaned
on China in particular to rein in the rogue regime but
acknowledged recently that it’s not working.
321
 Will America Attack North Korea?
By Stephen Lendman - Stephenlendman.Org
7-6-2017
War on the Korean peninsula would be catastrophic if
launched. Defense Secretary Mattis said it
“would be probably the worst kind of
fighting in most people’s lifetimes.”
No precedent exists for trying to destroy a nation’s nuclear
capability by military means. The possibility of nukes
detonating on the Korean peninsula should deter any
country from risking the world’s first nuclear war, assuring
losers, not winners.
Trump’s earlier threat about a possible “major, major
conflict” with Pyongyang sounded like the ravings of a
madman.
His refusal to engage the DPRK diplomatically assures no
way of resolving bilateral differences. If surgical strikes
are launched, catastrophic full-scale war will likely follow.
On Wednesday, US Forces Korea commander General
Vincent Brooks belligerently said America is ready to go
to war on North Korea straightaway if ordered.
“Self-restraint, which is a choice, is all that
separates armistice and war,” he said.
(W)e are able to change our choice when
so ordered by our…national leaders. It
would be a grave mistake for anyone to
believe anything to the contrary.”
White House Deputy press secretary Sarah Sanders
declined to explain what Trump may do next, saying:
“We’ve been pretty consistent that we are
never going to broadcast next steps, but I
don’t have anything further on that right
now.”
322
The Pentagon lied calling Tuesday’s DPRK intermediate-
range ballistic missile test an ICBM, explained by Russia’s
Defense Ministry.
On Wednesday, Trump talked tough, saying Pyongyang is
“behaving in a very, very dangerous
manner and something will have to be
done about it.”
“We will see what happens. I have some
pretty severe things that we are thinking
about. That doesn’t mean we are going to
do it. I don’t draw red lines.”
During an “emergency” Wednesday Security Council
session, called by Washington, neocon UN envoy Nikki
Haley threatened North Korea with a military option,
saying
“(w)e will use (it) if we must…”
Around 25 million South Koreans live within 50 miles of
the heavily-fortified DMZ, including 10 million in Seoul,
35 miles from the North Korean border.
If attacked, DPRK artillery, rocket-launchers, and short-
range ballistic missiles could inflict enormous damage,
along with a devastating human toll.
Nuclear war would be catastrophic, affecting the entire
peninsula, China, Russia and Japan.
Are hawkish generals in charge of US warmaking and
Trump foolish enough to order the unthinkable?
Millions in East Asia have much to fear from a reckless
administration perhaps willing to do anything to achieve
its imperial objectives.
 Trump Threatens North Korea
With ‘Severe’ Action, Warns Russia
Thu Jul 6, 2017 10:3AM

This picture taken on July 4, 2017 shows North Korea's new two-
US President Donald Trump has stage missile. (Photo by AFP)
threatened North Korea with
“consequences” following its latest
US intelligence agencies said the missile was most likely a
ballistic missile test and warned Russia
new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) with an
to stop supporting Syria and
estimated range of 5,500 kilometers (3,400 miles), capable
destabilizing Ukraine.
of hitting Alaska.
Speaking at a press conference in the Polish capital of
Warsaw on Wednesday, Trump said he was considering a Haley: US could use ‘military force’
“severe” response to Pyongyang’s “very bad behavior.”
US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley openly warned on
Wednesday that Washington might resort to its
“I call on all nations to confront this global
“considerable military forces” if Pyongyang was not
threat and publicly demonstrate to North
willing to accept diplomatic solutions to solve the ongoing
Korea that there are consequences for their
standoff between the two countries.
very, very bad behavior,” Trump said, while
standing next to his Polish counterpart
Andrzej Duda. Speaking at the UN Security Council’s meeting about
North Korea’s latest missile test, Haley said Wednesday
“I have pretty severe things that we’re that Pyongyang’s move amounted to a “clear and sharp
thinking about,” added Trump, saying, military escalation” and the US was ready to respond
however, “that doesn’t mean that we’ll do accordingly.
them.”

North Korea announced on Tuesday it had successfully

tested the missile, which Pyongyang claimed could

“reach anywhere in the world.”

The North, currently under a raft of crippling United

Nations sanctions over its military programs, says it will
continue them until the US ends its hostility toward the
country.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley speaks during a

Security Council meeting on North Korea at the UN headquarters in
New York, July 5, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

323
 “The US is prepared to use the full range of
our capabilities to defend ourselves and
our allies,” she said. “One of our
capabilities lies with our considerable
military forces. We will use them if we
must, but we prefer not to have to go in that
direction.”
The Trump administration was putting together a series of
punitive measures against “any country that does business
with this outlaw regime,” Haley said, referring to
Washington’s plans to impose harsh sanctions against
North Korea and its trading partners.
Trump launches into a tirade against Russia, Iran
During Wednesday's press conference in Warsaw, Trump
called on Russia to stop "destabilizing" Ukraine and end its
support for Syria.
.
324
"We urge Russia to cease its destabilizing
activities in Ukraine and elsewhere and its
support for hostile regimes including Syria
and Iran, and to instead join the community
of responsible nations in our fight against
common enemies and the defense of
civilization itself," Trump said.
“We are working with Poland in response to
Russia’s actions and destabilizing
behavior."
Russia, along with Iran, have been assisting the Syrian
government in its fight against terrorist groups wreaking
havoc in the Arab country since 2011.
 Trump Chides Russia Ahead Of
Putin Meeting, Though Not Enough For Dem Critics
By Brooke Singman
Published July 06, 2017

However, during a joint press conference hours earlier

with Poland's president, Trump was not so critical on the
question of Russia's alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S.
presidential campaign.

“I think it was Russia, and I think it could

President Trump called for Moscow to stop fueling global
unrest on the eve of his highly anticipated meeting with
Vladimir Putin, indicating his first sit-down with his
Russian counterpart won't be all smiles and handshakes.
The U.S. president, though, also faced tough Democratic
criticism Thursday for "casting doubt" during a press
conference on whether Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S.
election.
The reaction reflects the tricky balancing act ahead as
Trump prepares for the Putin meeting on the sidelines of
the G-20 summit in Germany. Trump arrived in the
country on Thursday, meeting with Chancellor Angela
Merkel in Hamburg, ahead of Friday's planned meeting
with Putin.
have been other people in other
countries—I don’t want to be specific,”
Trump told reporters. “I think Russia
probably, and other people and other
countries, nobody really knows, nobody
really knows for sure.”
Trump added:
“Remember Iraq weapons of mass
destruction? Everyone was 100 percent
sure Iraq had weapons of mass
destruction, guess what—they were wrong
and it led to a mess—it was Russia, but
others also.”
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., top Democrat on the House
Intelligence Committee which is investigating Russia
election meddling and potential collusion with Trump
campaign associates, slammed the president for his
response.

Trump frequently has said he wants the U.S. to get along Schiff took to Twitter saying:
with Russia and has rejected allegations of 'collusion'
between his associates and Russia last year. At the same “America last. @POTUS already
time, Trump has an interest in reining in Russia's capitulates to Putin."
destabilizing activities around the world -- and confronting
Putin about them.

Trump took an initial step toward that goal during his

rousing speech in Warsaw, Poland, Thursday morning,
openly criticizing Russia's policies on the global stage.

“We urge Russia to cease its destabilizing

activities in Ukraine and elsewhere, and its
support for hostile regimes including Syria
and Iran, and to join the community of
responsible nations in our fight against
common enemies and in defense of
civilization itself,” Trump said.
325
 Kremlin will conclude he is too weak to
stand up to them. That would be a historic
mistake, with damaging implications for our
foreign policy for years to come.”

During that same press conference, Trump took a shot at

former President Barack Obama for apparently being
notified of Russian meddling in August and allegedly
“doing nothing about it.”
In a written statement, Schiff hit Trump for “casting
“I think he thought Hillary Clinton was going
doubt” on whether Russia was behind election meddling.
to win the election and let’s not do anything
about it,” Trump said of Obama. “He was
“This is not putting America first, but told by the CIA that Russia was trying to
continuing to propagate his own personal get involved. He did nothing about it.
fiction at the country’s expense,” Schiff People said he choked—I don’t think he
said, urging Trump to “have the courage” to choked.”
raise the issue of Russian interference in
the election with Putin. “Otherwise the
Fox News' Jason Donner contributed to this report.
.

326
 CNN President Jeff Zucker:
"Trump Is Trying To Bully Us"
By Tyler Durden
Jul 6, 2017 10:11 AM

CNN President Jeff Zucker, rather than apologize for
publishing fake news story after fake news story all in an
effort, by his own admission mind you, to drive ratings for
his network, has decided to take a play from the
'disaffected liberal" playbook and pretend to be the victim
in his rather public scuffle with President Trump. In a new
interview with the New York Times published yesterday,
Zucker never once apologized for his network's credibility-
crushing mistakes over the past several weeks but instead
said that Trump "is trying to bully us."
“He’s trying to bully us, and we’re not
going to let him intimidate us. You can’t
lose your confidence and let that change
the way you conduct yourselves.”
“My job is to remind everyone that they
need to stay focused doing their job,”
To which we have one simple observation, courtesy of the
eloquent Maude Lebowski,
you, Mr. Zucker, are most definitely the
perpetrator here and not the victim.
You can't intentionally pursue a story you know to fake
day after day in a crusade intended to take down a political
figure with whom you disagree and pretend to be the
victim. You can't extort a random American citizen for
having the 'audacity' to poke fun at you and pretend to be
the victim.
can be swayed because they’re not
watching Fox or MSNBC” — networks
with an ideological bent in prime time."
Meanwhile, Zucker again raised concerns that Trump's
bullying could end up getting a CNN reporter hurt.
It's almost as if they want it to happen...
One challenge Mr. Zucker has thought
about: safety.
The level of threats against CNN employees, he said, has
spiked this year. Mr. Trump, he said,
“has caused us to have to take steps that
you wouldn’t think would be necessary
because of the actions of the president of
the United States.”
On Wednesday, CNN found itself facing another backlash
— and additional online threats — after it posted a story
about a man who created a version of the wrestling video
that was later tweeted by Mr. Trump; it did not identify
him but said it reserved the right to do so if he resumed his
activities.
So, you can bet your last dollar that the
moment some CNN reporter breaks a
nail while pounding a table in reaction
to reading the latest Trump tweet, that
CNN will cover the 'tragedy' on a 24-
hours loop as evidence of the harmful
consequences of Trump's hate speech.
Here, we'll even try to speed up the process to get this over
with:

So why does Zucker think he's the 'victim'?

Apparently he's convinced that Trump
targets his network because of it's
unbiased reporting...unlike MSNBC which
has an "ideological bent."
“Television is his preferred medium,”
Zucker said. “And he knows our viewers
327
 John ‘Pizzagate’ Podesta Invites His Own Demise,
Attacks President Trump On Twitter
Did The Alleged 'Pizzagate Ringleader' Put
The Final Nail In His Own Coffin?
By Shepard Ambellas -
07.07.2017 @12:51 PM EDT

Needless to say, the former Clinton campaign chair was

not going to go down without a fight. Podesta fired back at
President Trump on Twitter, tweeting:

“Pulled in for a pit stop in E. Fairmont W.

Va. to see that our whack job POTUS
@realDonaldTrump is tweeting about me at
the G20. Get a grip man, the Russians
committed a crime when they stole my
emails to help get you elected President.
Maybe you might try to find a way to
mention that to President Putin.”

(INTELLIHUB) — A battle royal ensued on Twitter

Friday, after President Donald Trump addressed former
Clinton Campaign Chairman and alleged ‘Pizzagate child-
sex trafficking ringleader’ John Podesta’s unwillingness to
hand over the DNC server to the FBI for investigation into
the alleged Russian hacking of critical U.S. infrastructure,
i.e. electoral systems.

It all started when President Trump tweeted:

“Everyone here is talking about why John

Podesta refused to give the DNC server to
the FBI and the CIA. Disgraceful!”
He added: “BTW, I had nothing to do with the DNC. God
only knows what you’ll be raving about on twitter by the
time we get to Utah. Dude, get your head in the game.
You’re representing the US at the G20.”

Now I’m no genius — but I think that Podesta is barking

up the wrong tree.

Can you say ‘Pizzagate investigation?’

328
 Loretta Lynch Plot Thickens As New Details Emerge Of
Her Dealings With The Hillary Campaign
By Tyler Durden
Jul 7, 2017 3:13 PM
Last night we asked a very simple question about why the
DNC has failed to cooperate with Russia investigators by
handing over their infamous email server to either the FBI
or Robert Mueller's team (see: DNC Server: Most Critical
Evidence To Proving "Russian Hacking" Is Being
Withheld From Mueller, Why?). Afterall, if Russia did
"hack the election", as we've been told 24/7 by CNN going
on 8 months now, then the evidence could very well be on
that server. Which prompted us to ask this very simple
question:
All of which brings us back to our original question:
If the DNC is in possession of actual
tangible evidence that could prove once
and for all that Russians hacked their
servers and attempted to undermine the
campaign of Hillary Clinton, why not
share that evidence with investigators
and enjoy the blissful vindication that
its public release would provide?
We concluded by wondering whether the stonewalling
from the DNC just might have something to do with this
"purely coincidental' meeting between Loretta Lynch and
Bill Clinton on a tarmac in Phoenix and/or Loretta Lynch's
'assurances' to members of the Clinton campaign that the
FBI's investigation (or, "matter" if you prefer) of Hillary
Clinton "wouldn't go too far"? Afterall, if evidence of
"Russian hacking" were on that server, so to would there
be evidence of Lynch's transgressions...if they existed, of
course.
But we're not the only ones wondering whether there's
more to the Lynch story.
According to an article in the New York
Post, some testimony that Lynch offered
under oath before the Senate Judiciary
Committee last year could come back to
haunt her. In that testimony, Lynch said
that she had "not spoken to anyone on
either the campaign or transition or any
staff members affiliated with them."
That said, and as we've reported before,
that statement seems to contradict
reports that Lynch personally assured
329
members of Clinton's campaign,
potentially Amanda Renteria, that the
FBI's investigation "wouldn't go too
far"...more from the Post:
When former Attorney General Loretta Lynch testified last
year about her decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton for
mishandling classified information, she swore she never
talked to “anyone” on the Clinton campaign. That
categorical denial, though made in response to a series of
questions about whether she spoke with Clintonworld
about remaining attorney general if Hillary won the
election, could come back to haunt her.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, which
has launched a bipartisan investigation into
Lynch for possible obstruction of justice,
recently learned of the existence of a
document indicating Lynch assured the
political director of Clinton’s campaign
she wouldn’t let FBI agents “go too far”
in probing the former secretary of state.
Lynch’s lawyer says she is cooperating with committee
investigators, who are seeking answers to several
questions, as well as relevant documents. Among other
things, they want to know if she or any of her Justice
Department staff “ever communicated with Amanda
Renteria,” who headed Clinton’s political operations
during the campaign. Renteria, who has been identified in
the document as the senior Clinton campaign aide with
whom Lynch privately communicated, has also been asked
to testify.
And then there is that inconvenient Comey testimony in
which the former FBI director says that he was instructed
by Lynch to refer to the Clinton investigation as a "matter"
rather than what it actually was, an investigation.
Now, as The Post points out, there are new
developments which would suggest that
Comey confronted Lynch about the
alleged communication with Amanda
Renteria and promptly asked to leave.
 And it will press her to explain the only one to take the fall? Scandal free administration
discrepancy — along with why she indeed...
reportedly asked former FBI Director
James Comey to leave her office when
he confronted her with the document.

And then there is that meeting with Bill Clinton on that

Phoenix tarmac that just happened to get noticed by a local
reporter who just happened to be on scene.

After all the drama around the Clinton email investigation,

which included multiple people being offered immunity
and the revelation of what appeared to be numerous federal
crimes committed by several people on Clinton's staff,
wouldn't it be ironic if Obama's Attorney General were the
.

330
 CNN Admits In 30th Paragraph That Trump
Was Right About Intel Agencies’ Assessment On Russia
By Accuracy In Media
July 7, 2017
CNN, far from a neutral news source, wrote a very long
piece on President Trump’s relationship with the country’s
intelligence agencies. However, they buried the truth that
the liberal media overestimated how many intelligence
agencies believed the Russian government meddled in the
2016 election.
331
Where did they admit the truth? In the 3oth and 31st
paragraphs:
“Let me just start off by saying I heard it
was 17 agencies,” Trump said. “I said,
‘Boy that’s a lot.’ Do we even have that
many intelligence agencies? Right?
Let’s check it. And we did some very
heavy research. It turned out to be three
or four. It wasn’t 17.”
Trump is correct that The New York Times and The
Associated Press issued a correction and clarification for
stating that the 17 agencies that make up the US
intelligence community all concluded Russia meddled in
the election.
Why bury the reality that the liberal media got their
narrative wrong, that only 4 out of 17 intelligence agencies
believed Russia meddled in the 2016 election so far down
in the piece?
 Kim Jong-Un Willing To Discuss
Nuclear Disarmament If US Promises Not To Attack
© REUTERS/ KCNA - Asia & Pacific
20:25 08.07.2017
Pyongyang won't give up nuclear
weapons unless it receives some sort of
security guarantee that North Korea
won't be attacked by the US, political
analyst Lin Shaowen told Radio Sputnik.
Russia and China have called on North Korea, South
Korea and the United States to sign up to a de-escalation
plan drawn up in Beijing to lessen the tension in the
Korean Peninsula.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President
Vladimir Putin announced the initiative after a meeting
in the Kremlin on Tuesday. They issued a joint statement
that called on North Korea to voluntarily halt its testing
of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and on the US
and South Korea to refrain from holding large-scale joint
military drills.
"Parallel to this, the opposing sides should
start negotiations and affirm general
principles of their relations including the
non-use of force, rejection of aggression
and peaceful co-existence," the two
countries stated.
Lin Shaowen, political analyst and member of the China
Radio International(CRI) editorial team, told Radio
Sputnik that the high level of tension in the Korean
Peninsula prompted China and Russia to make the
proposal.
"North Korea's ambassador to India has
already indicated that it's willing to talk and
332
South Korea and the United States have
also indicated some sort of readiness
to talk, provided that conditions are met,"
Shaowen said.
Moscow and Beijing have also asked the US to stop the
deployment of its THAAD anti-ballistic missile system
to South Korea. They maintain that the THAAD system
impacts the strategic security interests of regional states
and does not contribute to the goals of denuclearization
of the Korean peninsula.
While South Korea's new President Moon Jae-in has halted
further THAAD deployment pending an assessment
of environment risks, two THAAD launchers were already
deployed to South Korea under the administration of Park
Geun-hye.
"The deal is there, although it was reached
with the former President. It's difficult
for him to call a complete reversal of this
decision. He may take time to see if de-
escalation is possible, then there will be
fewer pretexts for Washington to go ahead
with the deployment of the
following facilities of the THAAD system."
Shaowen said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is
pursuing the nuclear program because of concerns
for national security.
"The tough talking actually means that it
(North Korea) has serious concerns
about threats; what it wants most is regime
security or regime survival. So that's why it
so often wants to have direct dialogue
with the US, it sees that only the US has
the capability to bring about regime change
or to cause a regime collapse."
"Kim Jong-un himself doesn't feel secure,
that's why it only feels secure when he has
some greater deterrents – a nuclear
warhead plus an inter-ballistic missile
carrier. So, by other means he doesn't feel
secure, unless there is very formal
commitment of security guarantee."
The THAAD anti-ballistic missile system has a radar range "That is the same as the deployment
of 2000km, which makes it able to track movements far of anti-missile systems in Eastern
beyond North Korea, deep in Chinese and Russian European countries pressing onto the
territory. Shaowen compared the US deployment border of Russia. So, this is a similar move
of THAAD in South Korea to its deployment of an anti- which is happening in the North Eastern
missile defense shield in Eastern Europe. part of Asia."

333
 Trump Scores ‘D-Minus’ For Nuclear
Policy Failures In Korea, The US & UN
By Yoichi Shimatsu Exclusive To Rense
7-8-2017
Midway through Donald Trump's first year in office, the
world has watched in queasy disbelief at the
transformation of an anti-interventionist American
president in ways similar to how Palpatine, the idealistic
leader of a long-ago Republic and opponent of arms
dealers, turned toward the dark side to morph into Darth
Sidious. Today, Donald Trump is indistinguishable from
the warmonger Hillary Clinton or the glib “lead from
behind” Barack Obama, and has proven to be just as shifty,
two-tongued, and self-righteous as his former political
foes.
His fall from grace is a personal embarrassment for his
electoral supporters, many of whom still await his hour of
redemption, which could or more probably won't happen
before next year’s mid-term elections. To restate that
Trump was a better choice than Hillary means nothing at
this late date, especially since even a door knob is arguably
better than the mad Mrs. Clinton. Trump’s abysmal
failure--refusal--to halt military interventions abroad, his
orders for missile deployments and Tomahawk strikes, and
now his open support for atomic energy and nuclear
weapons represent something worse than a countries dependent of US financial aid, the USA has
disappointment.
His broken promises remind me of Christmas long past.
Every holiday season of my childhood I wished that Santa
might bring me a bicycle and every Christmas morning
turned out to be another letdown. I finally purchased a
third-hand girl’s bike for a few dollars and spent dozens of
days fixing the broken parts, but hard work did not make
riding any more enjoyable but, to the contrary, made it into
a chore or the reminder of a curse. At least I finally got a
bicycle despite the dereliction of Saint Nick; but Trump
has delivered on his promises with their very opposite,
with Halloween trick instead of a Christmas treat: war,
higher spending on weapons, and death for American
soldiers and the local victims of bombing in distant lands
like Syria and Yemen. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa
Claus, but not he’s not coming to our neighborhood.
Nuclear Bewitchment
As if bewitched, Trump has promoted a triple disaster on
nuclear issues:
- First, with war threats and fumbling over off-and-on
diplomatic talks with Pyongyang, which are needed to
craft an eventual deal to limit its build-up of warheads in
exchange for American assurances of non-intervention;
334
- Second, uncritical endorsement of the nuclear industry as
being safe and cheap despite the blatant releases at
Hanford Nuclear Site, the WIPP storage center in New
Mexico, leakage into the Hudson River from the Indian
Point N-plant, and worst of all radioactivity contamination
of the West Coast from Fukushima; and
- Third, his administration’s boycott of the UN treaty talks
toward a worldwide ban on nuclear weapons, which put
Trump at the helm of a 35-nation rump minority versus
129 member-states that signed the historic anti-nuclear
weapons treaty on July 7.
In less than a year in office, Trump has positioned the
United States as a nuclear outlaw far more dangerous and
untrustworthy than North Korea, Pakistan, Iran or Israel.
The White House refusal to at least partially endorse the
nuclear ban or comment on its moral worth puts America
on a slippery slope of hypocrisy when it comes to
criticizing Pyongyang or Tehran. As head of an pro-
nuclear rogue alliance, consisting mainly of East European
completely lost the high ground on counter-proliferation
and denuclearization, and can no longer be taken seriously
as a legal or ethical authority on the world stage.
Aircraft carriers and big rockets don’t make for a nation’s
greatness, otherwise the Soviet Union would still be a
superpower. When respect is gone, nobody’s going to
believe in a single word spoken by any American diplomat
or policy expert. In just a half year, Trump’s militarist
buddies have added to the damage done by the Obama
administration, reducing the once sole superpower into a
sick joke. There’s a political price to be paid especially in
the jockeying for the 2018 midterm elections to begin
soon. The populist movement that supported Donald
Trump, Bernie Sanders, the third parties and former Tea
Party leaders is well aware of the backtracking on
industrial policy and the blatant reversals on foreign
interventions, legislative domination by The Swamp, and
post-911 accommodation to the Saudis. Already the clock
is winding down on the Trump years or perhaps that
ticking sound is coming from a time-bomb of populist
discontent.
Rump Minority of Pro-Nuke States
The North Korean nuclear issue has been used by the
Trump team to deflect public scrutiny away from
Washington’s blatant insincerity on the proposed nuclear
arms ban. While castigating and threatening North Korea
for its puny nuke program and missile tests, the Trump
team at the UN led by deranged ambassador Nikki Haley
has since early March boycotted the first-ever conference
for a worldwide ban on nuclear weapons. In line with her
predecessor Susan Rice’s support for nuclear blackmail,
Haley arm-twisted and intimidated 34 other UN member-
nations, mostly in Eastern Europe, to join her ill-conceived
walkout from the opening of the treaty discussions in
March.
The Trump-Haley boycott has proven to be a fool’s errand
now that an overwhelming majority of 129 member-
nations signed the world’s first-ever nuclear-ban treaty on
Friday, July 7. Instead of their fanatic posturing and Dr.
Stangelove walkout of the talks, the American delegation
could have abstained from the final vote while voicing
support for anti-proliferation and at least in principle moral
opposition to nuclear war. The US delegation came off as
if they actually support nuclear war, an idiotic stance that
couold also be used to justify a terrorist dirty bomb
exploded in Manhattan or on the steps of the Capitol
building. Morality isn’t useless idealism, it is a necessary
guide for conduct.
At this greatest international treaty signing during his term
of office, Trump was a no-show and instead hid in a closet
of denial. The United States of America is disgraced by
such gutless stage fright. The majority turnout for treaty
approval shows that the world does not want, need or cling
to any offer of a nuclear umbrella from nuclear
superpowers United States or Russia. This planet would be
a safer place without such “protection” rackets. In any
case, nuclear powers like the US and Russia are killing
their own societies and environments with radioactive
contamination. Save your pity for the deserving.
His Profitable Korea Connection
Trump’s flaws, as his critics content and his advisers
understand, arise from sins of venality. “Trump is a
businessman”, they say, and we are supposed to be assured
that he’s just an innocent in quest of a (financial) killing
and not a pathological killer. If so, his hysterics over North
Korea are just a business ploy. There’s a basis of fact
there.
His business motive on the Korean Peninsula came as an
unexpected surprise to me on a recent visit to South Korea
for a first-hand report on the THAAD rocket deployment.
On the outskirts of an otherwise beautiful capital stood the
brute towers of Trump World I, II and III Seoul. These
grim developments were built by Daewoo, the corporate
giant and military contractor. Daewoo assembles Dolphin-
class submarines for the South Korean Navy, and its
contractor for on-board electronics is Raytheon, which also
produces the THAAD and Patriot missile interceptors
stationed in South Korea. Trump’s real-estate interests are
partnered with the war industry and thereby connected
335
with Raytheon and its THAAD partner Lockheed Martin.
No wonder Donald Trump is so worried about the “Korean
crisis”: He needs to protect his real estate investments by
helping his hidden partners in the war industry.
Daewoo Engineering also built the Trump Towers in
Manhattan, which accounts for the dark militarist style of
the Trump Group’s real estate. On a trip to Korea in the
1990s, Trump once joked that he planned to order a
Korean-built destroyer for his luxury yacht. (Daewoo
Corporation was scuttled by the 1997-98 Asian financial
crisis, but its conglomerate members Daewoo Englneering
and Construction survives on a major international builder
in partnership with Asiana Airlines, and also Daewoo
Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering went on to become
South Korea's biggest producer of submarines, but is being
investigated for fraud and bribery on a massive scale.) I
can envision his yacht entering New York Harbor: The SS
Death Star captained by Imperial Cmdr. Don Sidious.
Clearly, the populist Trump is bipolar, with a mean-
tempered opposite alter-ego who likes nothing better than
to shout: “You’re fired!” At the personal level, this is a
black comedy, but for a nation as proud as the United
States, it’s a grand tragedy.
A Measure of Failure
In the footsteps of his foundering predecessors Jimmy
Carter (nuclear artillery on the Peninsula) and Gerald Ford
(capture of the spy ship USS Pueblo), Trump has grabbed
onto the so-called crisis on the Korean Peninsula and is
predictably tolling the alarm, if for no other reason than to
ensure profits for his pals in the war industry at Raytheon
and Daewoo. Despite repeated predictions of imminent
doom from North Korean belligerence from successive
U.S. presidents, there has not been a single serious battle
on the peninsula on the scale of events in Iraq or
Afghanistan in more than six decades since the signing of
the Korean Armistice on July 27, 1953. Both Koreas, more
than less, have maintained the peace; and whatever
skirmishes have erupted in the interval, none have required
American military intervention.
As for the “threat” of a North Korean nuclear strike against
the Lower 48 plus 2, a quick look at the strategic match-
up, with data from the Arms Control Association, is
enlightening: North Korea now possesses 10 small devices
versus the 6,800 much more powerful nuclear warheads
deployed by the USA. North Korea would not now have
that small arsenal if any previous American president had
the moral courage to seriously negotiate a peace treaty
with Pyongyang instead of dragging on economic
sanctions indefinitely, the political coward’s way out of
historic decision.
By now, this recurrent failure of U.S. foreign policy means
that North Korea will maintain a tiny nuclear deterrence
capability against overwhelming American genocidal
power. At this moment, a cap on nuclear development by
Pyongyang is the best deal that can be achieved, given the
failures of past U.S. administrations, which flubbed the
many opportunities to ensure a non-nuclear Korean
Peninsula. The nuclear problem in North Korea is not
Trump’s fault; he inherited it and therefore should have the
sense not to inflame the situation but deal with it quietly
through diplomatic channels and incentives for
Pyongyang, for example, inviting the Kim family to
Disneyland, a bedazzling experience and gesture of
friendship that should thwart any desire to nuke Anaheim
or Orlando.
The Thud of THAAD
Trump’s fall from grace is becoming a major burden for
American taxpayers with his new-found toy of rocket
firings, now about to happen on an even larger scale with
the expensive but ineffectual THAAD ballistic-missile
interceptor system (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense),
which is slated to be re-tested in Alaska and eventually
South Korea and possibly Japan. The system’s midair
“kinetic” strike method, or head-on collision with the
incoming ballistic missile, is as futile as swinging a
baseball bat to stop a bullet (except for the fact that an
incoming ballistic missile moves at least 6 times faster
than any bullet).
The Raytheon-Lockheed alphabet soup for this phony
interceptor system is AN/TPY-2 (A for aircraft, N for
reflective radar, TP terminal phase meaning “during
descent”, and Y standing for prototype). So the THAAD
batteries in Japan, South Korea and Alaska are second-
round prototypes with zero proven defense value. The first
models of Y-1 were tested in Kwajalein Atoll in the South
Pacific region’s Marshall Islands. Those test firings from
Vandenberg AFB were rigged with the unarmed warheads
carrying a transponder guided by a radar beam from the
atoll. Both the incoming rocket and the THAAD were
guided along the same narrow radar pulse. This is not
rocket science, it’s cheating.
The fraudulent interception results were sufficient to
convince Congress to approve more THAAD missile
purchases, especially when Raytheon spends more than $2
million a year in campaign contributions to 94 senators and
congressmen including John McCain and Mac Thornberry,
the chairmen respectively of the Senate and House armed
services committees. In the 2016 presidential campaign,
the missile company made hefty donations to Hillary
Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. As for the
hopelessly naive American left, a vote for Sanders also
would have meant a ballot for Raytheon.
The cost of a THAAD rocket is more than $1 million
apiece, with the entire unit, including X-band phased-array
radar, costing upwards of $1 billion, plus annual payment
for support services from Chenega, a Native Alaskan
minority business that serves as the front for Academi,
formerly known as Blackwater.
336
On a visit to Seongju, the golf course in the southeastern
tip of the Korean Peninsula where THAAD has been
deployed over the past year, I learned that its firing tubes
do not contain any rockets. The truck-mounted launcher is
put there on a private golf coure that’s been illegally
converted into a military base to provide cover for the
actual mission, which is powerful radar spying on China’s
airspace over a thousand-mile distance inland. This whole
exercise is a deceit, involving massive corruption at the
highest levels of the US government, which also entangles
Donald Trump whose campaign received a hefty donation
from Raytheon. His family reportedly owns a swath of
shares in that incompetent rocket company.
The only road into the golf course is now sealed off by the
police due to a road block of boulders set up by villagers
angered by the strange hum of microwaves from the X-
band radar, which is also killing the bees needed to
pollinate local orchards. On top of the THAAD deception,
the US Army secretly helicoptered in a Patriot launcher to
protect US aircraft carriers operating along the east coast
of the Korean Peninsula.
Plunge into the Dark Side
Remember how Trump once criticized Lockheed and
Boeing for cost overruns? Those days seem like an eon
past, but it was less a year ago. Breaking with his
campaign pledges against foreign intervention, Trump
dumped 59 Raytheon-built Tomahawk missiles into the
environs of an Syrian air base as a warning against
President Bashir al-Assad’s supposed airstrikes against a
jihadist hospital. Most of those sea-borne missiles,
however, landed off-target, destroying only a couple of
warplanes among the dozens more deployed there. That
pathetic exercise in overkill failed utterly, politically and
militarily, and we’ve yet to hear Trump apologize for the
botched performance, which however did earn Raytheon
substantial revenues for replacement rockets at taxpayer
expense. Yes, Trump is a businessman.
The spike in Raytheon’s share value spurred the talented
Mr. Trump forward in his apprenticeship as a Merchant of
Death. On his recent to Warsaw, Trump sold Patriot
missile-interceptor systems to the Polish military.
Weapons sales to Poland, a vociferous geopolitical foe of
Russia, puts Trump on the same page as the late Zbigniew
Brzezinski, along with the spymaster’s daughter Mika.
Never mind the sideshow of tweets about MSNBC
Morning Joe, Mika and Don will be seated next to each
other at the Raytheon shareholders meeting waving little
NATO flags and cheering on eastward expansion onto
Moscow.
A plunge into the dark abyss of warmongering is
irredeemable, meaning it’s high time to seek (once again) a
presidential candidate with integrity of character, but this
time around one who’s not secretly on the payroll of
Raytheon, Lockheed, General Dynamics or other war
profiteers. Belief in the machines of war is based on
emotional insecurity. As in the case of bombastic men who
doubt their own virility, Trump suffers a deficit of the
quiet courage required to convince sworn foes to trust the
truce and to act honorably out of respect. It is so much
easier to equate mass murder with masculinity than it is to
suffer the frustrations of a healer and a peacemaker trying
to save humanity from self-destruction. Then again, what’s
it profit a man . . . .?

His supporters should not feel shocked if Trump soon

tumbles headlong into the gaping jaws of that special depth
of Dante’s hell reserved for politicians like the Clintons,
Obama, McCain and the rest of the warmongering fools.
Americans must continue their quest for an honest
champion of peace and architect of genuine prosperity,
even though a person of such moral caliber may be as rare
as a noble reindeer in a rat-infested swamp.

Yoichi Shimatsu is a science journalist who recently

produced a video report on the THAAD rocket scandal in
South Korea.

337
 Something Must Be Done
About ‘Problem And Menace’ Of Pyongyang - Trump
© REUTERS/ Carlos Barria - Military & Intelligence
22:11 08.07.2017(Updated 09:43 09.07.2017
Meeting with Asian leaders on the sidelines of the G20
summit, US President Donald Trump on Saturday
described North Korea as a “problem and menace.”
During the course of the G20 summit of world leaders, the
US president met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe and assured him that Beijing and Washington fully
intended to address the "the problem and menace of North
Korea."
"Something has to be done about [North Korea]," Trump
was quoted as saying in a separate meeting with Chinese
President Xi Jinping, notably in light of a Pyongyang's
launch of its first intercontinental ballistic missile, cited
by Stripes.com.
Abe affirmed that the lack of stability in the region had
become "increasingly severe" following the first launch
of a North Korean ICBM thought to be capable of striking
targets on the US mainland.
Abe's affirmation to "demonstrate the robust partnership
as well as the bonds" between Tokyo and Washington
came after a bilateral meeting with Trump on Saturday
on the sidelines of the G20 financial markets summit
in Hamburg, Germany.
The regional keystone in mitigating the threat posed
by North Korea is seen to be the willingness of China
.
338
to increase pressure on the increasingly isolated northern
country, and Trump has remarked on his administration's
frustration with Beijing's willingness or ability to support
the US position on the rogue nuclear power.
Prior to the G20 summit, Trump tweeted, "So much
for China working with us — but we had to give it a try!"
The meeting between Trump and Xi was said to be
productive, however, as the US president was quoted
as telling Xi, "I appreciate the things that you have done
relative to the very substantial problem that we all face
in North Korea," cited by Stripes.com
But China's approach to the problem of North Korea has
consistently been shown to be at odds with that of the US,
as US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Friday rejected
an offer by Beijing and Moscow to first end Washington's
military drills with Seoul prior to starting negotiations
with Pyongyang to end its ballistic missile testing.
Referring to the offer as a "freeze for freeze," Tillerson
asserted that Washington was unwilling to begin
negotiations with Pyongyang at its current level of nuclear
and ballistic missile development, according to Yonhap.
"The problem with freezing now," Tillerson said, is "if we
freeze where they are today, we freeze their activities
with a very high level of capability. And we do not think it
also sets the right tone for where these talks should begin."
The US instead is looking to approach negotiations
with Pyongyang as a "cease and roll back" program, the
secretary of state said, according to Stars and Stripes.
Acknowledging that the current negotiation stance
toward Pyongyang by Russia, China and the US has not
yet been delineated, Tillerson suggested that Xi and
Russian President Vladimir Putin view the so-called
menace of the North Korea, "a little differently than we
do."
 Why Does Donald Trump Keep Dissing Jews?
Frank Bruni
JULY 8, 2017
When something happens once, it’s a curiosity. Twice, it’s
a coincidence.
Three times or more, it’s a pattern.
And Donald Trump has established a pattern of offending
— or at the very least ignoring — Jews. The most recent
example was just last week, when he declined to pay his
respects at a Holocaust memorial in Warsaw that other
American presidents routinely visited.
What’s going on? The answer, in my view, isn’t quite as
dark as many of his detractors would paint it. But it’s
disturbing nonetheless, and his blunders when it comes to
Jews speak volumes about his limitations as a person and
liabilities as a president.
But first, the record: He’d been in office just a week when
International Holocaust Remembrance Day rolled round
and his administration issued a statement that bizarrely
omitted any specific mention of Jews. Administration
officials made no apology, saying that millions of people
who weren’t Jewish died in the Holocaust and that by not
singling out any one group of victims, the White House
had taken a more “inclusive” approach.
Then there was an initial, strange silence from Trump and
his aides about a rash of anti-Semitic vandalism and bomb
threats around the country in January and February.
339
In May, in Israel, Trump insisted on a much shorter stop at
Yad Vashem, an important Holocaust memorial and
museum, than either Barack Obama or George W. Bush
had made, and he stuck to that plan even as many Israelis
and American Jews cried foul. The tone-deaf breeziness of
his approach was accentuated by the message he left in the
visitors’ book:
“It is a great honor to be here with all of my
friends — so amazing & will never forget!”
As Yair Rosenberg of the Jewish magazine
Tablet tweeted, it was “basically just what
teenagers write in each other’s high school
yearbooks.”
Ivanka Trump went to the Warsaw memorial in her
father’s stead, though Trump softened that blow somewhat
by mentioning, in his big Warsaw speech, that
“the Nazis systematically murdered millions
of Poland’s Jewish citizens.”
Ivanka converted to Judaism to marry Jared Kushner, and
the couple’s key roles in the White House mean that
Trump has observant Jews at the very core of his
presidency — and of his life.
But that didn’t stop him from making remarks to Jewish
Republican donors in December 2015 that seemed to play
into an anti-Semitic stereotype.
“I’m a negotiator — like you folks,” he said,
later adding: “Is there anybody that doesn’t
renegotiate deals in this room? Perhaps
more than any room I’ve ever spoken to.”
During his presidential campaign, he embraced the favor
of groups and people who trafficked in white supremacy.
He re-tweeted material from proudly anti-Semitic Twitter
feeds, and prompted a furor by promoting an image that
placed Hillary Clinton’s face atop a pile of cash and beside
a six-pointed star on which “most corrupt candidate ever”
was written.
The website PolitiFact concluded that it was
“unlikely that the Trump campaign intended
to put out a Star of David image. In fact, the
campaign moved to replace the star with a
circle when the image gained attention.”
 Even so, PolitiFact noted, Trump had an
unusual habit of “using social media to
broadcast material that comes from
sources with a history of spreading racism,
anti-Semitism or white supremacy.”
I’m not convinced that Trump is much of an anti-Semite,
any more than I’m convinced that he’s much of a
homophobe. (Racism and sexism are another matter.) But I
think he’s so thirsty for, and intoxicated by, whatever love
comes his way that he’s loath to rebuff the sources of it.
A prominent Jewish Republican put it well.
“I think Trump is such a pathological
narcissist that the act of telling people who
love you that you reject them — he can’t
get around that,” he told me, interpreting
Trump’s reasoning this way: “What can be
wrong with them? They’re for me!”
Trump is disinclined to denounce any constituency or
tactics that elevate him to the throne, where he’s sure that
he belongs. The outcome validates even the ugliest and
most divisive ascent.
“I don’t think he’s goading these people or
associating with them because he shares
their views,” the Republican added. “I do
think that he’s so insensitive about the
presidency — about the responsibilities of
the leader of the free world — that he
doesn’t realize it’s not enough to say, once
or twice, ‘I don’t agree with them.’ He
doesn’t realize that you have to be very
clear.” And he doesn’t realize — or care —
that he’s validating and encouraging them.
He doesn’t understand the message of zipping through Yad
Vashem when predecessors lingered, because he’s less
concerned with the weight of his office than with the
whims and convenience of Donald Trump. It’s all about
him, always — and if he’s sure in his own heart that he’s
good with Jews, then he shouldn’t have to prove it.
.
340
Go back to his mini-tantrum during a White House news
conference in February, when a reporter for a Jewish
magazine tried to ask him whether he was paying proper
heed to the anti-Semitic bomb threats. Trump interpreted
the question as an indictment not of his behavior but of his
being —
“I am the least anti-Semitic person that
you’ve ever seen in your entire life!” he
trumpeted
— and turned the discussion toward the big, bad media.
Forget about any persecution of Jews. Let’s talk about the
persecution of Trump.
You can be only so considerate to others when you never
stop considering yourself. And the flamboyantly
nonconformist culture of Trump’s presidency has
downsides. This administration shrugs off and throws
away some rituals and niceties that do matter to people,
estranging them in the process.
Gay Pride Month came and went without even a banal
word of recognition from the White House. So while
Trump likes to crow, in a hallucinatory fashion, that gays
love him, we made do in June with a tweet from his
outsourced conscience, by which of course I mean Ivanka.
Some of this is Steve Bannon and his ilk. Their idea of
nationalism is chilly to the recognition of subgroups,
including Jewish Americans.
Some of it boils down to an absent professionalism. Trump
isn’t matching the respectful choreography of other
presidents because there’s no one in his inner circle
familiar with the dance. Kushner, Bannon, Stephen Miller
and Reince Priebus are all new to this kind and level of
work. They lack institutional memory, along with any
awareness of how easily those blind spots become
insensitivity.
I can’t know definitively how Trump feels about Jews or
gays or a whole lot else. But I can see clearly his
sloppiness and self-absorption, and they’re cause enough
for alarm.
 Comey’s Private Memos On Trump
Conversations Contained Classified Material
By John Solomon
07/09/17 08:12 PM EDT

documents he created might have been contained classified

information.

“I immediately prepared an unclassified

memo of the conversation about Flynn and
discussed the matter with FBI senior
leadership,” he testified about the one
memo he later leaked about former
national security adviser Michael Flynn.

He added,
More than half of the memos former FBI Director James
Comey wrote as personal recollections of his conversations
“My view was that the content of those
with President Trump about the Russia investigation have
unclassified memorialization of those
been determined to contain classified information,
conversations was my recollection
according to interviews with officials familiar with the
recorded.”
documents.

But when the seven memos Comey wrote regarding his

This revelation raises the possibility that Comey broke his
nine conversations with Trump about Russia earlier this
own agency’s rules and ignored the same security protocol
year were shown to Congress in recent days, the FBI
that he publicly criticized Hillary Clinton for in the waning
claimed all were, in fact, deemed to be government
days of the 2016 presidential election.
documents.
Comey testified last month he considered the memos to be
While the Comey memos have been previously reported,
personal documents and that he shared at least one of them
this is the first time there has been a number connected to
with a friend. He asked that friend, a lawyer at Columbia
the amount of memos the ex-FBI chief wrote.
University, to leak information from one memo to the
news media in hopes of increasing pressure to get a special
prosecutor named in the Russia case after Comey was fired Four of the memos had markings making clear they
as FBI director. contained information classified at the secret or
confidential level, according to officials directly familiar
with the matter.
“So you didn’t consider your memo or your
sense of that conversation to be a
government document?” Sen. Roy Blunt A spokesman for the FBI on Sunday declined to comment.
(R-Mo.) asked Comey on June 8. “You
considered it to be, somehow, your own FBI policy forbids any agent from releasing classified
personal document that you could share to information or any information from ongoing
the media as you wanted through a friend?” investigations or sensitive operations without prior written
permission, and it mandates that all records created during
“Correct,” Comey answered. “I understood
official duties are considered to be government property.
this to be my recollection recorded of my
conversation with the president. As a
private citizen, I thought it important to get “Unauthorized disclosure, misuse, or
it out.” negligent handling of information contained
in the files, electronic or paper, of the FBI
or which I may acquire as an employee of
Comey insisted in his testimony he believed his personal
memos were unclassified, though he hinted one or two the FBI could impair national security,

341
 place human life in jeopardy, result in the
denial of due process, prevent the FBI from
effectively discharging its responsibilities,
or violate federal law,” states the
agreement all FBI agents sign.
It adds that “all information acquired by me in connection
with my official duties with the FBI and all official
material to which I have access remain the property of the
United States of America” and that an agent “will not
reveal, by any means, any information or material from or
related to FBI files or any other information acquired by
virtue of my official employment to any unauthorized
recipient without prior official written authorization by the
FBI.”
Comey indicated in his testimony the memos were in his
possession when he left the bureau, leaving him in a
position to leak one of them through his friend to the
media. But he testified that he has since turned them over
to Robert Mueller, a former FBI chief who is now
spearheading the investigation into possible collusion
between the Trump campaign and Russia during the
presidential race.
It is not clear whether Comey as director signed the same
agreement as his agents, but the contract is considered the
official policy of the bureau. It was also unclear when the
documents were shown to Congress whether the
information deemed secret or confidential was classified at
the time Comey wrote the memos or determined so
afterward, the sources said.
Congressional investigators had already begun examining
whether Comey’s creation, storage and sharing of the
memos violated FBI rules, but the revelation that four of
the seven memos included some sort of classified
information opens a new door of inquiry into whether
classified information was mishandled, improperly stored
or improperly shared.
That was the same issue for which the FBI investigated
Clinton, a former secretary of State in the Obama
administration, in 2015 and 2016 under Comey. Clinton
used a private email server during her tenure that at times
contained classified material.
342
Comey ultimately concluded in July 2016 that Clinton’s
email practices were reckless, but that he could not
recommend prosecution because FBI agents had failed to
find enough evidence that she intended to violate felony
statutes prohibiting the transmission of classified
information through insecure practices. Clinton at the time
was the Democratic nominee for president.
“Although we did not find clear evidence
that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues
intended to violate laws governing the
handling of the classified information, there
is evidence that they were extremely
careless in their handling of very sensitive,
highly classified information," he said in a
decision panned by Republicans and
embraced by Democrats.
Now, congressional investigators are likely to turn their
attention to the same issues to determine if Comey
mishandled any classified information in his personal
memos.
In order to make an assessment, congressional
investigators will have to tackle key questions, such as
where and how the memos were created,
including whether they were written on an insecure
computer or notepad; where and how the memos were
stored, such as inside Comey's home, in a briefcase or on
an insecure laptop; whether any memos were shown to
private individuals without a security clearance and
whether those memos contained any classified
information; and when was it determined by the
government that the memos contained classified
information, before Comey took them and shared one or
after.
One avenue for answering those questions is for a panel
like Senate Intelligence, House Intelligence or Senate
Judiciary to refer the matter to the Justice Department’s
internal watchdog, the inspector general, or to the director
of national intelligence and its inspector general, aides
said.
 Angela Merkel's Dreadful Attempt At Networking
With Donald Trump Blows Up As He Scolds EU
DONALD Trump Hit Out At The European Union (EU) In A Private Chat
With Angela Merkel And Donald Tusk, Which Was Heard When The
German Chancellor Forgot To Turn Off Her Microphone.
By Oli Smith
PUBLISHED: 00:01, Sun, Jul 9, 2017 | UPDATED: 09:26, Sun, Jul 9, 2017

An informal chat between the European leaders and the US He said:

President on the sidelines of the G20 yesterday morning
revealed Angela Merkel initially tried to charm the US "Well, it helps when a crowd is so loving.
President, complimenting him on his rallying speech in Tremendous crowds there. So authentic."
Poland, made days before the global summit got underway
in Hamburg.

In the off-the-cuff chat, before the G20 session on

migration began, European Council president Donald Tusk
also praised Mr. Trump for his

"best speech yet".

Angela Merkel is then invited to join the conversation and

adds: RUPTLY - The President of the European Council can be heard
complimenting the US President's speech in Warsaw
"Yes, it was fantastic. We didn't understand
why you waited to give that in Warsaw.

RUPTLY - Angela Merkel was caught probing Donald Trump

RUPTLY - Tusk and Trump could be heard discussing his recent
speech in Warsaw, Poland
"It would have been nice to do that speech
in Brussels, no?"
Mr. Trump can be seen laughing off this comment, before
Mr. Tusk, who is from Poland, joked:
"A special gift to me I think!"
The US President then appeared to take indirect aim at the
reception he received in Brussels.
After the awkward exchange, an exasperated Mrs. Merkel
can be seen looking around the room for an escape from
Mr. Trump before asking:
"So where is my Chinese friends?
"China is absent. No China in the room. No
China in this world."
Mr. Trump was heard asking Mr. Tusk if he knew the topic
the G20 session would be tackling, to which Mr. Tusk said
"migration".

343
 The Trump-Loving ‘Prince’
Raided By Police For Possible Fraud
As Far As His Regal Lineage Goes, Prince Stefan Černetić May Not Pass
The Smell Test, But That Hasn’t Stopped Him From
Living The Royal Life.
Barbie Latza Nadeau
07.09.17 12:00 AM ET
Stefan Cernetic/Facebook
ROME—On June 20, 2015, American actress Pamela
Anderson, wearing a long white gown and dizzyingly high
heels, knelt before Prince Stefan Černetić (sometimes
spelled Tchernetich) of the Imperial Royal House of
Montenegro & Macedonia as he bestowed upon her the
title “Countess de' Gigli,” Countess of the Lilies, by
touching each shoulder with a dull-edged sword and
reciting a set of vows.
The knighting ceremony was followed by the 8th annual
royal “Ball of Lilies” in a lavish 17th-century castle on the
Italian riviera complete with official photographers, ladies
in tiaras, and men in waistcoats and tails. According to the
prince’s website, which has a gallery of photos from that
event and many others like it, the Baywatch beauty was
honored with the title “for her seaworld charity
involvement worldwide.”
Anderson is one of dozens of people Prince Černetić has
knighted. In fact, the prince has spent the better part of the
last two decades galavanting around Europe meeting
royalty, bestowing honors, and carrying out other princely
duties.
Not surprisingly, being a prince carries with it a number of
perks including free stays at luxury villas and a certain
enviable quality of life that includes royal trimmings like
expensive champagne and private chefs.
344
The only problem is that despite appearances, Prince
Černetić is not a prince at all, according to authorities in
Montenegro and Italy. “He’s a fraud,” Antonio Costantini,
an investigating magistrate looking into a series of
allegations against Černetić, told The Daily Beast. “He’s
been able to create this false persona that is not based in
any form of reality. Fake honors and documents led to real
recognition by those who were duped.”
In fact, Černetić has been given an incredible number of
honors, including the presidential medal of honor in Italy
that was pinned to him by former president Giorgio
Napolitano. He has met and been photographed with
European royal families and high ranking Vatican clergy,
according to his Facebook page, which has a picture of
him with Anderson as the cover photo. Apparently honors
beget more honors, and most of his awards seem to be
given based on previous medals rather than on any
verification of the prince’s blue blood, or lack thereof.
All of that may soon change.
Last month, Italy’s Carabinieri military police raided
Černetić’s modest home in Turin, which was not a castle
after all, and sequestered his computer, documents, medals
and the Montenegro flags he used on his Mercedes to give
the appearance of an official motorcade. They launched a
formal investigation into alleged fraudulent activities that
he, along with an accomplice from near Naples who acted
as his valet and sometimes as an ambassador from
Montenegro, have engaged in since 2009. And his name is
apparently Stefano, not Stefan.
The accomplice is not under formal investigation, and
remains nameless, but his home was also raided for
equipment that may have been used to make the false
documents, according to a police report seen by The Daily
Beast.
Among the potential charges for which the potentially faux
prince is being investigated are false certification to a
public official and fraud as related to an unpaid luxury
hotel bill in the Italian province of Puglia where the prince
stayed last summer.
Raimondo Porcelli/Facebook
The hotel sent the prince’s rather hefty bill to the
Montenegrin Foreign Ministry, which responded by saying
they had never heard of the prince, the ambassador or, in
fact, any of those on the list as Montenegrin diplomats. He
is also being investigated for the use of false documents to
obtain diplomatic license plates for his car.
Černetić’s email signature leaves off his full name, but
includes a range of honors and titles and the Latin motto
“In hoc signo vinces” or "In this sign you will conquer,”
which Wikipedia tells us dates back to the Roman Emperor
Constantine’s vision of the cross, but has been used and
abused by many organizations over the centuries,
including the American Nazi Party and Pall Mall
cigarettes.
By telephone Černetić gave The Daily Beast a lengthy
interview and openly admitted the cops raided his house
“with three police cars” and took his documents and
medals and interrogated him for nearly four hours, but he
says the authorities have it wrong, that he is a legitimate
wheeler and dealer who is connected to important people.
“I have a letter from Donald Trump,” he
says. “I like him very much and I like
Vladimir Putin,” he says. “My dream was to
be behind the scenes when they forge a
deal. My plan was to make them friends.”
As it happened, he missed his chance
when the two leaders met in Germany on
Friday.
“I am not a fake prince,” he said, adding in
not very princely diction, “I can guarantee
100 percent that these charges are big lies
and bullshit.”
In fact, he says, this is the result of a regal feud, a war
between aristocrats.
345
“Montenegro has two royal houses,” he
explained. “The other royal house is filled
with Freemasons who pay journalists
€300,000 to €500,000 to defame me.”
Černetić says that when Montenegro left Serbia and
became an independent republic in 2006, the government
only officially recognized one royal house, that of the
Petrović-Njegoš dynasty, though he insists that the snub
does not cancel out his lineage, which he says he can prove
goes all the way back to the Roman emperor Constantine.
Bruno Brunori/Facebook
“How can they say I am a fake prince?
Montenegrin independence does not
cancel out my history,” he says. “The other
royal house is jealous and started this
communications campaign against me
because I oppose Montenegro’s
involvement in NATO like Trump says.”
(The American president famously shoved
aside the Montenegrin head of state during
a photo op at the NATO summit in May.)
Montenegro officially joined NATO on June 5, 2017,
around the time the allegations of the fake prince’s
wrongdoings first surfaced. The Montenegrin embassy in
Rome says it will not comment on Černetić’s case because
of privacy concerns, but a representative says Montenegro
has not been ruled by a monarchy since 1918, even if it has
recognized the Petrović-Njegoš dynasty as the country’s
official royal family.
With the Archibishop of Monaco, His Eminence the
Cardinal Bernard Barsi, today.
Černetić is under investigation and police say he may be
charged soon, even though he insists charges will be
dropped and, when they are, he plans to “sue every
publication who calls me a fake prince.” In the meantime,
he continues to knight people, win awards, dine at lavish
restaurants and plead his innocence.

“My coat of arms is the original one,” he

insists. Anderson, he said, continues to pay
him homage, telling him that the allegations
are “good publicity” and that he shouldn’t
worry.
“I’m not a crook,” he says. “I’m a serious
person. I’m doing my job.”

Stefan Cernetic/Facebook
.

346
 Full Statement By Donald Trump Jr.
On Sunday's New York Times Report
Fox News
Published July 09, 2017
Below is a statement by Donald Trump Jr. in regard to a
New York Times report that he and other members of the
Trump campaign met with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a
Russian lawyer who claimed to have damaging
information about Hillary Clinton:
"I was asked to have a meeting by an acquaintance I knew
from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant with an individual
who I was told might have information helpful to the
campaign.
"I was not told her name prior to the meeting. I asked Jared
(Kushner) and Paul (Manafort) to attend, but told them
347
nothing of the substance. We had a meeting in June 2016.
After pleasantries were exchanged, the woman stated that
she had information that individuals connected to Russia
were funding the Democratic National Committee and
supporting Ms. Clinton.
"Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no
sense. No details or supporting information was provided
or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no
meaningful information. She then changed subjects and
began discussing the adoption of Russian children and
mentioned the Magnitsky Act.
"It became clear to me that this was the true agenda all
along and that the claims of potentially helpful information
were a pretext for the meeting. I interrupted and advised
her that my father was not an elected official, but rather a
private citizen, and that her comments and concerns were
better addressed if and when he held public office.
"The meeting lasted approximately 20 to 30 minutes. As it
ended, my acquaintance apologized for taking up our time.
That was the end of it and there was no further contact or
follow-up of any kind. My father knew nothing of the
meeting or these events."
 Xi Jinping’s Meeting With Trump
By Stephen Lendman - Stephenlendman.Org
7-9-2017
China and America are largely world’s apart on ways to
resolve differences between them, including major
geopolitical issues.
Beijing urges diplomatic outreach with Pyongyang and
cessation of provocative US/South Korean military
exercises the DPRK believes are preparations for war on
its country.
Washington categorically refuses to end decades of
unjustifiable hostility toward North Korea, choosing
confrontation over responsible outreach, risking
unthinkable war on the peninsula, possibly going nuclear
by accident or design.
Beijing and Moscow want provocative US THAAD
missile systems removed from South Korea, threatening
their territory. The Trump administration is unbending,
keeping them deployed, intending new installations -
aimed mostly at China and Russia aggressively.
Unacceptable US air and sea incursions encroaching on
China’s territory remain a major sticking point between
both countries.
So are arms sales to Taiwan and economic relations.
Trump’s “America first” agenda risks initiating a trade war
- last November saying
“(w)e can’t continue to allow China to rape
our country.”
“That’s what they’re doing. It’s the greatest
theft in the history of the world.”
348
He threatened a “tit-for-tat approach” through imposition
of tariffs on certain Chinese imports.
Trump and Xi Jinping spoke several times by phone. On
Saturday, they met for the second time on the sidelines of
the G20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany.
Both agree on Korean peninsula denuclearization. Xi
stressed the need for both countries to show mutual respect
and cooperation on regional and international issues - to
keep bilateral relations positive.
Trump said he and Xi have a “wonderful relationship,”
expressing confidence both leaders can achieve “success”
in addressing common issues of concern.
“Trade is a…very, very big issue for the
United States,” he stressed, adding “we’re
going to turn that around.” On North Korea,
he said “there will be success in the end
one way or the other.”
Trump is scheduled to pay a state visit to China later this
year. Focus will be on continuing discussion of major
issues both countries agree and disagree on.
Resolving latter ones will likely remain unattainable.
Washington wants all countries observing its rules. China
insists its sovereign rights be respected - yielding them to
no other country.
A rocky bilateral relationship looks likely to continue - Xi
under no illusion about America changing how it operates,
hoping to make the best out of a bad situation.
 New Research Shows Guccifer 2.0
Files Were Copied Locally, Not Hacked
Elizabeth Vos
July 9, 2017

based solely on information ultimately provided by

Crowdstrike; this places the company in the unique
position of being the only direct source of evidence that a
hack occurred.

The group’s President Shawn Henry is a retired executive

New meta-analysis has emerged from
a document published today by an independent researcher
known as The Forensicator, which suggests that files
eventually published by the Guccifer 2.0 persona were
likely initially downloaded by a person with physical
access to a computer possibly connected to the internal
DNC network. The individual most likely used a USB
drive to copy the information. The groundbreaking new
analysis irrevocably destroys the Russian hacking
narrative, and calls the actions of Crowdstrike and the
DNC into question.
The document supplied to Disobedient Media via Adam
Carter was authored by an individual known as The
Forensicator. The full document referenced here has been
published on their blog. Their analysis indicates the data
was almost certainly not accessed initially by a remote
hacker, much less one in Russia. If true, this analysis
obliterates the Russian hacking narrative completely.
assistant director of the FBI while their co-founder and
CTO, Dmitri Alperovitch, is a senior fellow at the Atlantic
Council, which as we have reported, is linked to George
Soros. Carter has stated on his website that “At present, it
looks a LOT like Shawn Henry & Dmitri Alperovitch
(CrowdStrike executives), working for either the HRC
campaign or DNC leadership were very likely to have been
behind the Guccifer 2.0 operation.” Carter’s website was
described by Wikileaks as a useful source of primary
information specifically regarding Guccifer 2.0.
Carter recently spoke to Disobedient Media, explaining
that he had been contacted by The Forensicator, who had
published a document which contained a detailed analysis
of the data published by Guccifer 2.0 as “NGP-VAN.”
The document states that the files that eventually published
as “NGP-VAN” by Guccifer 2.0 were first copied to a
system located in the Eastern Time Zone, with this
conclusion supported by the observation that “the .7z file
times, after adjustment to East Coast time fall into the
range of the file times in the .rar files.” This constitutes the
first of a number of points of analysis which suggests that
the information eventually published by the Guccifer 2.0
persona was not obtained by a Russian hacker.

The Forensicator specifically discusses the data that was

eventually published by Guccifer 2.0 under the title “NGP-
VAN.” This should not be confused with the separate
publication of the DNC emails by Wikileaks. This article
focuses solely on evidence stemming from the files
published by Guccifer 2.0, which were previously
discussed in depth by Adam Carter.

Disobedient Media previously reported that Crowdstrike is

the only group that has directly analyzed the DNC servers.
Other groups including Threat Connect have used the
information provided by Crowdstrike to claim that
Russians hacked the DNC. However, their evaluation was
349
Image via The Forensicator
The Forensicator stated in their analysis that a USB drive
was most likely used to boot Linux OS onto a computer
that either contained the alleged DNC files or had direct
access to them. They also explained to us that in this
situation one would simply plug a USB drive with the
LinuxOS into a computer and reboot it; after restarting, the
computer would boot from the USB drive and load Linux
instead of its normal OS. A large amount of data would
then be copied to this same USB drive.
In this case, additional files would have been copied en
masse, to be “pruned” heavily at a later time when the 7zip
archive now known as NGP-VAN was built. The
Forensicator wrote that if 1.98 GB of data had been copied
at a rate of 22.6 MB/s and time gaps t were noticed at the
top level of the NGP-VAN 7zip file were attributed to
additional file copying, then approximately 19.3 GB in
total would have been copied. In this scenario, the 7zip
archive (NGP-VAN) would represent only about 10% of
the total amount of data that was collected.
The very small proportion of files eventually selected for
use in the creation of the “NGP-VAN” files were later
published by the creators of the Guccifer 2.0 persona. This
point is especially significant, as it suggests the possibility
that up to 90% of the information initially copied was
never published.
The use of a USB drive would suggest that the person first
accessing the data could not have been a Russian hacker.
In this case, the person who copied the files must have
physically interacted with a computer that had access to
what Guccifer 2.0 called the DNC files. A less likely
explanation for this data pattern where large time gaps
were observed between top level files and directories
in the 7zip file, can be explained by the use of ‘think time’
to select and copy 1.9 GB of individual files, copied in
small batches with think time interspersed. In either
scenario, Linux would have been booted from a USB
drive, which fundamentally necessitates physical access to
a computer with the alleged DNC files.
The Forensicator believed that using the possible ‘think-
time’ explanation to explain the time-gaps was a less likely
explanation for the data pattern available, with a large
amount of data most likely copied instantaneously, later
“pruned” in the production of the Guccifer 2.0’s
publication of the NGP-VAN files.
Both the most likely explanation and the less likely
scenario provided by The Forensicator’s analysis virtually
exclude the possibility of a Russian or remote hacker
gaining external access to the files later published as
“NGP-VAN.” In both cases, the physical presence of a
person accessing a containing DNC information would be
required.
350
Importantly, The Forensicator concluded that the chance
that the files had been accessed and downloaded remotely
over the internet were too small to give this idea any
serious consideration. He explained that the calculated
transfer speeds for the initial copy were much faster than
can be supported by an internet connection. This is
extremely significant and completely discredits allegations
of Russian hacking made by both Guccifer 2.0 and
Crowdstrike.
This conclusion is further supported by analysis of the
overall transfer rate of 23 MB/s. The Forensicator
described this as “possible when copying over a LAN, but
too fast to support the hypothetical scenario that the
alleged DNC data was initially copied over the Internet
(esp. to Romania).” Guccifer 2.0 had claimed to originate
in Romania. So in other words, this rate indicates that the
data was downloaded locally, possibly using the local
DNC network. The importance of this finding in regards to
destroying the Russian hacking narrative cannot be
overstated.
If the data is correct, then the files could not have been
copied over a remote connection and so therefore cannot
have been “hacked by Russia.”
The use of a USB drive would also strongly suggest that
the person copying the files had physical access to a
computer most likely connected to the local DNC network.
Indications that the individual used a USB drive to access
the information over an internal connection, with time
stamps placing the creation of the copies in the East Coast
Time Zone, suggest that the individual responsible for
initially copying what was eventually published by the
Guccifer 2.0 persona under the title “NGP-VAN” was
located in the Eastern United States, not Russia.
The implications of The Forensicator‘s analysis in
combination with Adam Carter‘s work, suggest that at the
very least, the Russian hacking narrative is patently false.
Adam Carter has a strong grasp on the NGP-VAN files
and Guccifer 2.0, with his website on the subject called a
“good source” by Wikileaks via twitter. Carter told
Disobedient Media that in his opinion the analysis
provided by The Forensicator was accurate, but added that
if changes are made to the work in future, any new
conclusions would require further vetting.
On the heels of recent retractions by legacy media outlets
like CNN and The New York Times, this could have serious
consequences, if months of investigation into the matter by
authorities are proven to have been based on gross
misinformation based solely on the false word of
Crowdstrike.
Assange recently lamented widespread ignorance about the
DNC Leak via Twitter, specifically naming Hillary
Clinton, the DNC, the Whitehouse and mainstream media
as having “reason” to suppress the truth of the matter. As with Seth Rich, and definitively not remotely “hacked”
one of the only individuals who would have been aware of from Russia.
the source of the DNC Leaks, Assange’s statement
corroborates a scenario where the DNC and parties
described in Adam Carter’s work likely to have included
Crowdstrike, may have participated in “suppressing
knowledge” of the true origins and evidence surrounding
the leak of the DNC emails by confusing them with the
publication of the Guccifer 2.0 persona.

Despite Guccifer 2.0’s conflicting reports of having both

been a Russian hacker and having contact with Seth Rich,
the work of The Forensicator indicates that neither of
these scenarios is likely true. What is suggested is that the
files now known as “NGP-VAN” were copied by someone
with access to a system connected to the DNC internal
network, and that this action had no bearing on the files
submitted to Wikileaks and were most likely unassociated

351
 Trump Folds On Russia
Cybersecurity Cooperation
By Tyler Durden
Jul 9, 2017 9:28 PM

Just fourteen hours after crowing proudly of his success “When it comes to Russia I am
during discussions with Russian President Putin in forming dumbfounded, I am disappointed, and at
an 'impenetrable cyber security unit'... the end of the day he’s hurting his
presidency by not embracing the fact
that Putin is a bad guy,”
“He is literally the only person I know of
who doesn’t believe Russia attacked our
election in 2016,” Graham said of Trump,
who has said that “nobody really knows”
whether the Russians were behind
attempts to hack the 2016 presidential
election.
And after various Democrats and Republicans blasted him
President Trump appears to have reversed course rather
for
quickly... or already given up hope...
"the dumbest idea ever"...

Rubio, on Twitter, said:

"While reality & pragmatism requires that

we engage Vladimir Putin, he will never
be a trusted ally or a reliable
constructive partner.
"Partnering with Putin on a 'Cyber
Security Unit' is akin to partnering with But, hey, at least we got a ceasefire in Southwest Syria (for
(Syrian President Bashar al) Assad on a now).
'Chemical Weapons Unit'."
But it was Graham that really let loose on
NBC News' 'Meet the Press'... (via The
Hill)
.

352
 Lindsey Graham Says Trump
Is The Only Person He Knows Who Denies Russian
Meddling; Brennan Says Trump 'Dishonorable'
By The_Real_Fly
Jul 9, 2017 6:50 PM

I wonder how you are able to live with yourselves,
knowing you're a filthy rat traitor. America is the beacon
on the hill, the proverbial 'shining star' that has waged
miserable wars on other nations for 220 of its 241 year
existence. If you have a problem with America, it is
because you're an evil man -- wholly corrupt and sinful.
Here is the good Senator from S. Carolina, Lindsey
Graham, obviously very hurt and bedraggled over the
President's feckless position on Russian collusion. He said
he knows of no one else, aside from Trump, who denies
Russia's involvement into our elections. NO ONE. He is,
however, somewhat amused and pleased by recent military
developments in Afghanistan and N. Korea. But the
Russians haven't been punished and that's a real issue.
If that's not enough for you, here is former POW and hero,
John "shot down again" McCain -- angered and bewildered
by Trump's position on a sundry of issues, from Russia to
Syria to Afghanistan and back to Russia again. Remember,
this is a man who got his teeth kicked out by Vietcong
scum. John McCain is a war hero, god damn it -- shot
down 5 times in Vietnam -- accidentally responsible for
the USS Forrestal fire which caused the deaths of 134
sailors.
You cannot question his integrity.
Ever.

For those of you miserable Russophiles out there, heed the

words of the gorgeous Nikki Haley:
If that's not enough for you traitorous bastards (I am sure
most of you are burning American flags as we speak), here
"WE WILL NEVER TRUST RUSSIA."
is the former director of the CIA, John Brennan, who
served under Obama admirably from 2013-2016 saying
Trump's comments about Putin were dishonorable. This is
the former CIA director. He'd never lie to us.

353
 Russian Lawyer Had Ties
To DNC, Anti-Trump Dossier
By Wanda Carruthers
Sunday, 09 Jul 2017 10:05 PM
Natalia Veselnitskaya (Twitter)
President Donald Trump's legal team suggested the
meeting that took place between Donald Trump, Jr., and a
Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin may have been set
up by opposition forces to try to create the appearance of
impropriety, Circa reported.
Those responsible for arranging the meeting with Donald
Trump, Jr., may have connections with Fusion GPS, a U.S.
political firm with ties to former British intelligence agent
Christopher Steele, who produced a now-discredited
dossier on Trump.
“We have learned from both our own
investigation and public reports that the
participants in the meeting misrepresented
who they were and who they worked for,”
said Mark Corallo, a spokesman for
President Trump’s legal team.
“Specifically, we have learned that the
person who sought the meeting is
associated with Fusion GPS, a firm which
according to public reports, was retained by
Democratic operatives to develop
opposition research on the President and
which commissioned the phony Steele
dossier," he said.
"These developments raise serious issues
as to exactly who authorized and
participated in any effort by Russian
.
354
nationals to influence our election in any
manner,” Corallo added.
On June 9, 2016, Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign
chairman at the time, and Trump's son-in-law Jared
Kushner, along with Donald Trump, Jr., met with Russian
lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower, two weeks
after Trump secured the Republican nomination, The New
York Times reported Saturday.
"After pleasantries were exchanged, the
woman stated that she had information that
individuals connected to Russia were
funding the Democratic National
Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton,"
Donald Trump Jr. said, according to the
Times.
"Her statements were vague, ambiguous
and made no sense. No details or
supporting information was provided or
even offered. It quickly became clear that
she had no meaningful information,"
Donald Trump, Jr., said, the Times
reported.
The encounter lasted only about 20 minutes and the Trump
team had no further contact with her.
Veselnitskaya is identified in court documents as a former
Russian prosecutor and lawyer in Moscow who had been
representing Russian businessman and Prevezon Holdings
in a case against the U.S. department of Justice.
The law at issue in the Prevezon Holdings case was the
Magnitsky Act, which punished Russian officials from
entering the U.S. or using the American banking system
due to the death of Russian Sergei Magnitsky, who had
uncovered a money-laundering scheme.
The law also prevented Americans from adopting Russian
babies. Veselnitskaya reportedly brought up the issue of
the Magnitsky Act and Russian adoption in her meeting
with Donald Trump, Jr.
 Nikki Haley’s Latest Ravings
By Stephen Lendman - stephenlendman.org
7-9-2017
Her ravings at the UN and in other public remarks make
her appear unhinged.
She’s a diplomatic embarrassment to the office she holds,
part of Washington’s lunatic fringe. She contradicts Trump
and Tillerson, an unrestrained reckless loose cannon.
Her Sunday remarks on CBS News’ Face the Nation were
beginning-to-end bald-faced lies combined with
unacceptable threats.
Haley:
“…Russia…meddle(d) in the (US)
elections…Trump wanted to make sure
that President Putin was aware that he was
acknowledging it, that he knew it.”
“…Putin did what we all expected him to
do, which was deny it…Trump still knows
that they meddled…Putin knows that they
meddled, but he is never going to admit to
it.”
Fact:
No meddling occurred. Trump, Putin and
Haley know it. Russia’s president clearly
explained it in Hamburg and earlier.
Fact:
Trump tries having things both ways - at
times denying Russian hacking, other times
suggesting it occurred.
Haley:
“There’s not anybody that thinks that
Russia didn’t meddle in the elections. And I
think we all are very clear on that.”
“And I think we’re going to see what
Congress does, and I think the president
will continue to work on this going forward,
but yes, I don’t think this is over.”
“I think what this was, was one leader
telling another leader, ‘Look we know you
did it. Don’t do it again.’ “
Fact:
355
“(A)nybody” and everybody with any good
sense knows no hacking occurred - not by
Russia or anyone else. It’s virtually certain
Trump didn’t tell Putin “we know you did it.”
Haley:
“…I think the message is, look, we are not
going to have you interfere, not just with
our elections, but with any part of how the
United States functions and I think that’s
not just us. Russia has been meddling in
multiple ways in multiple countries.”
Fact:
Haley lied. Not a shred of evidence
suggests Russia interferes improperly or
illegally in the affairs of America or any
other country. Plenty of evidence indicates
polar opposite policies.
Fact:
Moscow respects the sovereign rights of all
other countries. America’s agenda is polar
opposite, waging war on humanity at home
and abroad - interfering in the affairs of
virtually all other nations, wanting them
subservient to its will.
Haley:
On North Korea, she lied claiming “they
launched an ICBM…and we’ve got to put a
stop to it…We’re going to push hard (on)
countries” not observing Washington rules.
Fact:
No evidence suggests the DPRK launched
an ICBM last week. Russian evidence
shows an intermediate-range ballistic
missile was tested - despite US claims
otherwise.
A letter from Moscow’s UN mission to Secretary General
Antonio Guterres said the following:
“A Voronezh-type radar station deployed in
the Irkutsk region monitored the launch of
the Hwasong-14 medium-range ballistic
missile (IRBM) from North Korea, which
 flew a distance of 510 kilometers (317
miles) in 14 minutes, reaching an altitude of
535 kilometers (332 miles), before landing
in the Sea of Japan.”
Washington wants economically strangling sanctions
imposed on Pyongyang, what Russia and China
categorically oppose.
The tougher Washington’s agenda is on Pyongyang, the
more committed it is to have an effective nuclear and
ballistic missile deterrent. Otherwise it’s defenseless if US
aggression is launched.
An unacceptably hardline US-sponsored Security Council
resolution is being prepared.
“(W)e don’t expect a watered down one,”
Haley blustered, adding “we’ll know” if
Russia and China are with us or “with North
Korea.”
356
Both countries support peace and diplomatic resolution of
all issues. They oppose US imperial madness. They won’t
tolerate unjustifiable Security Council harshness against
any nation - especially when it risks making a bad situation
worse.
Haley recklessly threatened Chinese economic relations
with America if it
“trade(s) with North Korea.”
She’s one of numerous neocons infesting Washington,
threatening world peace and stability.
She’s ideologically extremist, recklessly belligerent, a
menacing face of US imperial madness - a war goddess
like Hillary.
.
 Trump Aides: Russia Flap
Proves Don Jr. Is The ‘Fredo’ Of The First Family
Former Trump Campaign Officials Said Trump Jr.’S Role In The Scandal
Involving A Kremlin-Linked Lawyer Is Just The Latest In A Series Of
Mistakes By The President’s First-Born Son.
Lachlan Markay & Asawin Suebsaeng
07.09.17 8:15 PM ET
Photo Illustration by Lyne Lucien/The Daily Beast
President Donald Trump’s worst campaign surrogate is
back in the limelight, and reminding some former Trump
campaign colleagues why he earned the nickname
“Fredo.”
Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, is now at the
center of events fueling scrutiny of the campaign’s
contacts with individuals tied to the Russian government
who, the New York Times reported on Sunday, offered to
share damaging information about Democratic presidential
nominee Hillary Clinton with Trump Jr. and other senior
campaign officials.
News of the meeting between Trump Jr. and a Russian
lawyer with Kremlin ties has thrust Trump Jr. back into
headlines—and revived the First Son’s haphazard practices
that infuriated campaign operatives last year.
If the substance of the new revelations weren’t damning
enough, Trump Jr. has invited additional scrutiny with
public statements that only admitted the campaign was
seeking damaging information about Clinton after media
reports revealed additional details of the interactions.
People who worked and interacted with “Junior” during
his father’s political rise in the Republican Party aren’t
entirely surprised that the oldest Trump son would find
himself in this mess. Current White House officials and
former Trump campaign staffers recall Trump Jr. as a
357
recurring liability and a chronic headache for the
presidential campaign, prone to unforced errors and ill-
advised activity on social media and elsewhere, and the
precise “opposite of political savvy,” as one official put it.
Officials highlighted Trump Jr.’s failings as a campaign
surrogate by pointing specifically to his news-cycle-
hijacking tweet about poisoned Skittles and Syrian
refugees and his friendly radio interview with Trump-
boosting, white-supremacist host James Edwards in March
of last year, among other incidents.
Trump Jr.’s caustic Twitter habits have only intensified
since his father was elected. He frequently amplifies
conspiracy theories about the president’s political
enemies—the news media, particularly CNN of late, are
favorite targets. In cable news appearances, Trump Jr. has
occasionally replicated campaign-era communications
missteps by implicitly contradicting the official White
House version of events.
Ever since the campaign, a popular, behind-his-back
nickname for Trump Jr. among some in his father’s
political inner circle has been “Fredo,” referring to Fredo
Corleone, the insecure and weak failure of a son in The
Godfather series who ends up causing major damage to
the crime family and contributing little of value. This has
been relayed to The Daily Beast in several stories by Team
Trump veterans over the past several weeks.
Others were more charitable, but acknowledged that he
could chafe with colleagues. Another former campaign
aide said he
“didn’t have any issues with him, [but] he’s
definitely got a ‘you work for me’ attitude.”
Trump Jr. caused frequent headaches for campaign
communicators during the presidential race with public
statements that ranged from inflammatory to allegedly
plagiarized to completely at odds with the campaign’s
long-established messaging on, for instance, his father’s
refusal to release his tax returns.
Nevertheless, multiple administration officials said on
Sunday that—despite Trump Jr. claims that he “basically”
never speaks with his father since he became leader of the
free world—he has continued to stay in contact with the
president and has also kept up with some senior White
House staff members.
Officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because
they were not cleared to critique the president’s son.
Administration and former campaign officials saw
unfortunate parallels between Trump Jr.’s campaign-era
surrogacy activities and the pair of statements he released
over the weekend responding to a pair of Times reports on
his interactions with the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya.
She represented Prevezon Holdings, a Russian-owned real
estate firm incorporated in Cyprus that, along with its
executives, was targeted by U.S. sanctions under a 2012
law called the Magnitsky Act. Veselnitskaya and others
associated with Prevezon have pressed for years for
Congress to lift those sanctions.
During the campaign, Trump, the president’s son in law
and adviser Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort, then the
campaign’s chairman, met with Veselnitskaya after she
relayed promises to provide damaging information about
Clinton and her campaign, Trump admitted in a statement
on Sunday to the Times.
It was the first concrete indication that the Trump
campaign may have had contact with Russian government-
linked individuals for the purposes of damaging Clinton’s
campaign. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that
the Kremlin attempted to aid the Trump campaign through
hacks of the Clinton campaign and Democratic National
Committee and propaganda and media manipulation.
Trump Jr. claimed that Veselnitskaya had actually been
shopping evidence that the Russians were supporting
Clinton and the DNC financially. But his statement
acknowledging the political impetus for the meeting came
only after the Times reported additional details. A prior
Trump Jr. statement on Saturday omitted any mention of
the opposition research that Veselnitskaya had offered to
provide.
.
358
The White House referred questions to the president’s
outside legal team. Mark Corallo, a spokesperson for that
team, would not comment on the substance of the Times’
Sunday reporting, simply telling The Daily Beast in an
email,
"The President was not aware of and did
not attend the meeting."
Corallo released a statement on Saturday that suggested
the White House will attempt to portray the Veselnitskaya
meeting as an attempt by Democratic researchers to tar the
president with phony collusion allegations.
“We have learned that the person who
sought the meeting is associated with
Fusion GPS, a firm which according to
public reports, was retained by Democratic
operatives to develop opposition research
on the President and which commission the
phony Steele dossier,” Corallo wrote,
referring to an intelligence document
claiming the Russian government had
amassed blackmail material on the
president.
Fusion GPS has been accused of conducting undisclosed
lobbying on behalf of Prevezon, which is owned by the son
of Russia’s former transportation minister.
It’s not clear if the rhetorical strategy will succeed in light
of Trump Jr.’s erratic public statements, but the eldest son
is likely hoping that it will help spare him his father’s
wrath, a long-standing concern for the 39-year-old.
One longtime staffer on Donald Trump’s NBC reality
series The Apprentice told The Daily Beast on Sunday that
Trump Jr. was constantly “terrified” of his father, and was
in a near-perpetual state of not wanting to disappoint his
dad whenever on-set.
“After [Don Jr.] spoke, his eyes would dart
to The Big Man to gauge the reaction
[which ranged from] blank, passive
approval or burning glare of disappointment
[at Junior].”
 Trump Gives Jewish Kabbalah
Satanic Masonic Symbol Again
From Jordan Maxwell
7-10-2017

Hi Jeff…

Yes, that's a heavy duty Jewish Kabbalah hand signal used

in Satanic and Occult Free Masonic NWO Symbolism. His
continual use of it as photo ops tells the story. Here are just
a few more examples….

359
 Theresa May

Jean Claude Junker

Merkel…The Destroyer Of Europe ….Merkel Is Obsessed

The Sheep…monkey see, monkey do

360
.

361
 President Donald Trump Skewered
As ‘Friendless’ And ‘Awkward’ In Viral Take-Down
Bronte Coy And Liz Burke News.Com.Au
July 10, 20171:56pm
THE ABC journalist whose savage take-
down of Donald Trump’s G20
performance went viral has doubled
down on his scathing assessment.
Political editor Chris Uhlmann pulled no punches when he
delivered his wrap-up of Trump’s appearance at the
conference on Sunday, calling him an “uneasy, lonely,
awkward figure” who was left “isolated and friendless”
with “no desire and no capacity to lead the world”.
But even after the brutal commentary was shared
thousands of times across the world and caught the
attention of Washington heavyweights, Uhlmann was not
deterred to further critique the President’s performance.
In a cross to ABC radio’s AM program on Monday
morning, the reporter again railed against Mr Trump’s
leadership style while discussing his lack of commitment
to addressing the situation in North Korea at the weekend’s
summit.
“What the expectation was on North Korea
was the United States would say well, OK,
here’s an issue that we want to make
something of. They are the biggest gorilla,
still, in the room,” Uhlmann said.
“The problem was the call never came,
which I think, is indicative of the fact this
President of the United States doesn’t
grasp the opportunity to lead when that
opportunity it presented to him.”
Trump didn’t exactly receive rave reviews for his G20 efforts.
Picture: Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesSource:Getty Images
362
The ABC veteran’s scathing comments came after his
earlier rant was shared around the world.
On Sunday, he said:
“He has a particular skill set: he’s identified
an illness in Western democracies, but he
has no cure for it and seems intent on
exploiting it.”
And according to Uhlmann, we all need to give up on any
hope that the speeches written for Trump and delivered by
the man himself are any reflection of his true thoughts.
“It’s the unscripted Trump that’s real: a man
who barks out bile in 140 characters, who
wastes his precious days as President at
war with the West’s institutions like the
judiciary, independent government
agencies, and the free press.”
The reporter added:
“Mr. Trump is a man who craves power
because it burnishes his celebrity. To be
constantly talking and talked about is all
that really matters ... and there is no value
placed on the meaning of words, so what is
said one day can be discarded the next.”
Uhlmann also pointed out that given the uncomfortable
divide between himself and the most of the other G20
leaders on the Paris Climate Accord, a “deft” President
would have found a topic with which to rally them.
“And he had the perfect one: North Korea’s
missile tests,” the reporter explained.
“Other leaders expected it [a statement
condemning it], they were prepared to back
it, but it never came.”
At the end of the two minute video, Uhlmann provided a
chilling prediction for the future under this US President.
 “Donald Trump has pressed fast forward on
the decline of the United States as a global
leader. Some will cheer the decline of
America, but I think we’ll miss it when it’s
gone — and that’s the biggest threat to the
values of the West, which he claims to hold
so dear.”

The video has been retweeted more than 15,000 times

since being posted this morning.

Watch the full clip for yourself below:

It’s attracted plenty of attention already across the

American media landscape, with a number of journalists,
reporters and commentators applauding Uhlmann’s
bluntness and sharing the video themselves.

The brutal words are likely to have now been heard in the
White House, with Uhlmann’s Twitter handle currently
trending in Washington.

363
 Uhlmann said he was surprised that his editorial had such a
strong reaction, but understood his views were widely
held.

“You can only imagine given the number of

times that it’s been picked up by people
that it strikes a chord in many ways, that’s
it’s not an original view, it’s a view of a
great many people and their fears about
this President of the United States,” he said
on Monday.
“I think with a lot of people they’re well-held
fears. They’re not things that people are
doing maliciously, they’re just worried
about the future of the United States, and
where the United States goes so do we
given it’s one of our key allies.”

364
 The Three Stories Of Donald Trump Jr. (So Far)
Faced With A Series Of Ever-More-Damaging Reports About His Meeting
With A Kremlin-Connected Lawyer, The President’s Son
Keeps Changing His Account.
David A. Graham
Jul 10, 2017
Darron Cummings / AP
Figures in politics get caught lying frequently, but seldom
do they get caught so quickly, and with as much panache,
as Donald Trump Jr. has been caught by The New York
Times over the last three days. Twice now, the
businessman has offered an account of a June 9 meeting at
Trump Tower, only to see the paper quickly return with
reporting that suggests his account was incomplete,
inaccurate, or untruthful.
Here’s the first version: On Saturday, the Times reported
that the president’s eldest son had met with a Kremlin-
connected lawyer at Trump Tower in June. Trump Jr. said
he did not know the name of the person he was meeting
ahead of time, and that the meeting had been arranged by a
friend (later revealed to be the music publicist Rob
Goldstone).
“We primarily discussed a program about
the adoption of Russian children that was
active and popular with American families
years ago and was since ended by the
Russian government, but it was not a
campaign issue at the time and there was
no follow up,” Trump Jr. said in a
statement.
That left unanswered why he would have included both his
brother-in-law Jared Kushner and then-Trump campaign
chairman Paul Manafort in such a casual (and apparently
pointless) meeting.
365
But the Times quickly found three advisers to the White
House who countered that, no, Trump Jr. had been
informed ahead of time that the person he was meeting had
information that could be damaging to the campaign of
Hillary Clinton, Trump’s opponent in the election.
Thus Trump Jr.’s second story: Stunningly, he admitted
that he was open to receiving damaging information about
Clinton (and thus colluding with Russia), but said his
contact simply couldn’t deliver the goods. Trump Jr. said
in a fresh statement that he hadn’t been informed who he
was meeting, but had been told that she would have
information relevant to his father’s campaign. Once in the
meeting, the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, dangled
evidence that Russians were funding the Democratic
National Committee and helping Clinton, but didn’t
provide proof and instead talked about adoptions,
frustrating Trump Jr.
This was, on its own, a landmark moment in the story of
whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russian
officials to influence the election, as Special Counsel
Robert Mueller is investigating. If entirely true, it is the
first example of someone in the Trump inner orbit at least
trying to collude prior to Election Day. He had denied that
he knew what was going on ahead of time, but in the
process, apparently conceded the central accusation about
willingness to collude.
Thus story 2A: Donald Trump Jr. tweeted Monday
sarcastically suggesting that overtures like the one he
received are common on campaigns. In other words,
collusion is perfectly normal.
But what if it wasn’t the end of the story? Monday night,
the Times struck again: Prior to the meeting,
“Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an
email that the material was part of a
Russian government effort to aid his
father’s candidacy, according to three
people with knowledge of the email.”
The sourcing for this article is subtly, but perhaps
consequentially, different. Rather than citing three advisers
to the White House, it attributes the information to “three
people with knowledge of the email,” a broader category
(though one that could take in sources inside the law-
enforcement or intelligence community).
It’s almost beyond belief, as Stringer Bell would note, that
anyone would put such a conversation in writing, given
how embarrassing such a communication could be. Can
the Times’s sources really be correct? Despite Trump Jr.’s
sarcastic tweet, campaign veterans told HuffPost that being
approached by a foreign agent was unheard of and would
have led them to contact law enforcement. Trump Jr. and
Kushner were campaign amateurs, on their first rodeo, but
Manafort, a veteran operator in both U.S. and foreign
politics would, or should, have know better. (If the email
existed, it will be a piercing irony: Trump’s repeated
impeachment of Clinton’s judgment and honesty during
the campaign, based on her careless handling of emails,
was a central pillar of his upset victory.)
Thus Trump Jr.’s third version, this time offered through
Alan Futerfas, a veteran lawyer whose hiring he
announced on Monday. The new story:
Nothing to see here, folks.
In my view, this is much ado about nothing. During this
busy period, Robert Goldstone contacted Don Jr. in an
email and suggested that people had information
concerning alleged wrongdoing by Democratic Party front-
runner, Hillary Clinton, in her dealings with Russia ... Don
Jr.’s takeaway from this communication was that someone
had information potentially helpful to the campaign and it
was coming from someone he knew. Don Jr. had no
knowledge as to what specific information, if any, would
be discussed.
Will this version prove to be more complete and truthful
than the earlier ones? Earlier Monday, Goldstone told the
Times he did not know the origin of the information, and
that he was told that Veselnitskaya had information about
illegal contributions to the DNC, despite the Times’s
reporting that the Russian-government origin was
discussed. When the paper attempted to contact him to
.
366
comment on its latest report, which contradicts those
assertions, it was not successful.
Several weeks after the meeting with Veselnitskaya,
Trump Jr. insisted on CNN that the accusation that Russia
wanted to hurt Clinton was “phony” and “disgusting.”
If Trump Jr. did know that he was receiving information
from the Russian government, a crucial question is
whether he thought he was receiving emails or other
materials that had been illegally hacked, which could
deepen his legal jeopardy. Trump Jr. also says he did not
receive any damaging information at the meeting—as does
Veselnitskaya—but with his story changing so rapidly, it’s
difficult to extend that claim the benefit of the doubt.
Trump Jr. also says that his father was unaware of the
meeting, a surprising detail given that both Kushner and
Manafort were present, the fact that Trump Sr. was also at
Trump Tower that day (where he lunched with Manafort),
and the close-knit relationship among Trump family
members. Trump’s lawyer maintains he did not know
about the meeting, as did a White House spokeswoman on
Monday. (Trump Sr.’s denial of knowledge, terse,
straightforward, and unchanging, has stood in unusual
contrast to Trump Jr.’s rapidly evolving story line, and to
the president’s typical, improvisatory approach.) The
Times reports the president was informed of the meeting as
he prepared to return to the U.S. from his trip to the G20
summit in Germany last week. If Kushner kept the meeting
from Trump, he also kept it from federal officials, failing
to disclose it on an application for security clearance. He
recently disclosed the meeting, as did Manafort.
As always, it is possible that the meeting with
Veselnitskaya was innocent, in both Trump Jr.’s intention
and legality. But his contradictory accounts of the meeting,
along with Kushner and Manafort’s failure to disclose it,
create a political problem for the White House, because
they offer the impression that President Trump’s son and
son-in-law have something to hide. At some point in the
future, it will become clear how serious a legal problem
they create, too.
 Comey Bombshell: FBI Director's
Leaked Trump Memos Contained Classified Information
By Tyler Durden
Jul 10, 2017 6:20 AM
Amid the constant media outrage over everything Trump,
Trump, Trump, some might have forgotten that in the
political rollercoaster over the past 12 months, there were
numerous other high-profile individuals involved,
including not only former DOJ head Loretta Lynch, whose
every interaction with the Clinton campaign is about to be
probed under a Congressional microscope, but the man
who some say started it all: former FBI Director James
Comey.
First loved by the Democrats when he personally absolved
Hillary Clinton of any sins regarding her (ab)use of her
personal email server, then furiously loathed when he
reopened the FBI probe into Hillary Clinton one week
before the election, then finally getting into a feud with
President Trump which cost his him job, Comey ultimately
admitted to leaking at least one memo which contained
personal recollections of his conversations with the
president, in hopes of launching a special probe into the
president's alleged Russian collusion.
There was just one problem: according to a blockbuster
report from The Hill, in addition to the leaked memos,
Comey also leaked classified
information in gross and direct violation
of FBI rules and regulations.
And just like that Comey finds himself in trouble. Only not
just any trouble, but the virtually same trouble that Hillary
Clinton was in in the summer of 2016... and which James
Comey was tasked to investigate.
367
We'll repeat the above because it bears repeating: in the
purest definition of irony,
James Comey is about to be
investigated for the exact same thing
which he absolved Hillary Clinton of
doing last summer.
Almost as if neither Comey nor Clinton were aware of - or
willing to abide by - the security protocol of the agency
they were in charge of.
Aside from once again confirming that Trump may have
been right all along in his accusation of the ex-FBI chief's
motives, this shocking revelation raises the possibility that
Comey broke his own agency’s rules - by putting his
own interests above those of his country - but far more
grotesquely,
ignored the same security protocol that
he publicly criticized Hillary Clinton for
in the waning days of the 2016
presidential election, in order to settle
his vendetta with President Trump.
Amusingly, Comey's alleged flagrant disregard for FBI
regulations would explain why he also found Clinton's
email server transgressions to not be a material concern,
contrary to what most Republicans claimed at the time.
After all, if it was good - or rather not bad enough for
Clinton, maybe it was the same with Comey's own abuse
of confidential data?
The only problem is that while Comey
was generous enough to let Hillary go,
now that the ex-FBI chief is facing the
president of the US as his adversary, he
may not be quite so lucky.
Upon hearing of Comey's alleged transgressions, the now
former Chair of the House Oversight Committee said
simply that
"IF true, this is bombshell news."

Incidentally, the first to warn of Comey's imminent
headaches, was Breitbart News, which on Friday reported
that a new Senate report said recent leaks by former FBI
Director James Comey’s leaking of memos could
“potentially harm national security.” The report, released
by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs Committee on Thursday, found that there were 125
separate leaks in President Trump’s first 126 days that
were potentially damaging to national security. The report
said it included Comey’s leaking of his memos after he
was fired by Trump in May.
***
Comey's troubles started when he testified under oath last
month that he considered the memos he prepared to be
personal documents and that he shared at least one of them
with a Columbia University lawyer friend.
As Comey later disclosed, he asked that
lawyer to leak information from one memo
to the news media in hopes of increasing
pressure to get a special prosecutor
named in the Russia case after Comey
was fired as FBI director.
The Hill recounts that particular exchange with Senator
Roy Blunt:
“So you didn’t consider your memo or your
sense of that conversation to be a
government document?,” Sen. Roy Blunt
(R-Mo.) asked Comey on June 8. “You
considered it to be, somehow, your own
personal document that you could share to
the media as you wanted through a friend?”
“Correct,” Comey answered. “I
understood this to be my recollection
recorded of my conversation with the
president. As a private citizen, I thought
it important to get it out.”
Comey insisted in his testimony he believed his personal
memos were unclassified, though he hinted one or two
documents he created might have been contained classified
information. “I immediately prepared an unclassified
memo of the conversation about Flynn and discussed the
matter with FBI senior leadership,” he testified about the
368
one memo he later leaked about former national security
adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. Additionally, he added,
“My view was that the content of those
unclassified, memorialization of those
conversations was my recollection
recorded.”
That's when the problems escalated, because according to
The Hill - which for the first time disclosed that the total
number of memos linked to Comey's nine conversations
with Trump - when the seven memos Comey wrote
regarding his nine conversations with Trump about Russia
earlier this year were shown to Congress in recent days,
the FBI claimed all were, in fact, deemed
to be government documents.
Oops. As The Hill reveals, four, or more
than half, of the seven memos had
markings making clear they contained
information classified at the “secret” or
“confidential” level, according to officials
directly familiar with the matter.
This is a major problem for Comey because FBI policy
forbids any agent from releasing classified information or
any information from ongoing investigations or sensitive
operations without prior written permission, and mandates
that all records created during official duties are
considered to be government property.
“Unauthorized disclosure, misuse, or
negligent handling of information contained
in the files, electronic or paper, of the FBI
or which I may acquire as an employee of
the FBI could impair national security,
place human life in jeopardy, result in the
denial of due process, prevent the FBI from
effectively discharging its responsibilities,
or violate federal law,” states the
agreement all FBI agents sign.
FBI policy further adds that
“all information acquired by me in
connection with my official duties with the
FBI and all official material to which I have
access remain the property of the United
States of America” and that an agent “will
not reveal, by any means, any
information or material from or related
to FBI files or any other information
acquired by virtue of my official
employment to any unauthorized
recipient without prior official written
authorization by the FBI.”
Comey indicated in his testimony the memos were in his
possession when he left the bureau, leaving him in a
position to leak one of them through his lawyer friend to
the media. But he testified that he has since turned them
over to Robert Mueller, a former FBI chief and now
spearheading the investigation about possible collusion
between the Trump campaign and Russia. It is not clear
whether Comey as director signed the same agreement as
his agents, but the contract is considered the official policy
of the bureau. It was also unclear when the documents
were shown to Congress whether the information deemed
"secret" or "confidential" was classified at the time Comey
wrote the memos or determined so afterwards, the sources
said.
Meanwhile, Congressional investigators have already
begun examining whether Comey’s creation, storage and
sharing of the memos violated FBI rules,
but the revelation that four of the seven
memos included some sort of classified
information opens a new door of inquiry
into whether classified information was
mishandled, improperly stored or
improperly shared.
Where things get especially ironic, is that this was the
same issue the FBI - under Comey - investigated in 2015-
16 about Clinton’s private email server, at the time the
most sensitive and controversial issue of the Clinton
campaign, where as secretary of State she and top aides
moved classified information through insecure channels.
Ultimately, Comey concluded in July 2016 that Clinton’s
email practices were reckless, but that he could not
recommend prosecution because FBI agents had failed to
find enough evidence that she intended to violate felony
statutes prohibiting the transmission of classified
information through insecure practices. While the news
initially was loved by Democrats as it let Hillary get off
scott-free from any potential criminal probe, Comey's
subsequent decision to restart the FBI probe into Clinton's
email server one week before the election is what
eventually prompted both Hillary and John Podesta to
claim that James Comey was one of the two factors that
cost Clinton the presidency... along with the "Russian
hacking" of course.
369
The only problem is that while there is yet no evidence of
Russian hacking, suddenly with the factual emergence of
Comey's transgression, questions may emerge not only
into the ex-FBI chief's actions and motives, but whether
the FBI's clearance of Clinton's use of an email server
under Comey was proper after all...
***
So what happens next? According to The Hill,
congressional investigators are likely to turn their attention
to the same issues to determine if Comey mishandled any
classified information in his personal memos.
In order to make an assessment, congressional
investigators will have to tackle key questions, such as:
 Where and how were the memos were created, such
as whether they were written on an insecure computer
or notepad.
 Where and how the memos were stored, such as
inside his home, his briefcase or an insecure laptop.
 Were any memos shown to private individuals without
a security clearance and did those memos contain any
classified information
 When was it determined by the government that the
memos contained classified information, before Comey
took them and shared one or after.
One avenue for answering those questions is for a panel
like Senate Intelligence, House Intelligence or Senate
Judiciary to refer the matter to the Justice Department’s
internal watchdog, the inspector general, or to the Director
of National Intelligence and its inspector general.
One thing is certain: the near-future will see
many more of Comey's sworn
Congressional testimonies, and the
vendetta between Trump and Comey is
about to not only be rekindled but escalate
to previously unseen levels.
For an appetizer of what's to come, look closely at Trump's
twitter feed once the president learns the news of Comey's
alleged transgressions.
 Time For Attorney General Jeff Sessions
To Nix Trump's DACA Amnesty
By William Gheen - President Of Americans For Legal Immigration PAC
July 10, 2017
The first extremely powerful endorsement Presidential
candidate Donald Trump received early in his campaign
was from Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions in response to
Trump's campaign promises to restore law and order by
fully enforcing America's existing immigration laws
instead of further compromising our laws through
unconstitutional amnesty orders or Gang of Eight style
amnesty legislation.
Yet, here in July of 2017, it is clear that President Trump
has broken his promise by continuing Obama's DACA
Amnesty for illegals. It was not pressure from Congress,
media, or courts that broke Trump's promise to end
Obama's overtly unlawful Amnesty orders on his first day
in office, but President Trump's own hands that broke faith
with his supporters on this critical issue. Now there is a
window for our laws to be restored because the US
Supreme Court has requested an official opinion on DACA
Amnesty from Attorney General Jeff Sessions who has
been a steadfast proponent of the Rule of Law!
Elected officials like Trump and his appointed bureaucrat
John Kelly, who heads up our Department of Homeland
Security, are committing numerous felonies by giving
work permits and thus jobs to illegal aliens without the
required legislation from Congress to back that Amnesty
up! Each government employee facilitating DACA
Amnesty is either committing felonies or are accessories
before and after the fact!
Under our current US laws, which Trump promised to
enforce fully during his campaign, it is currently a felony
for anyone to encourage an illegal immigrant to enter or
remain in the US unlawfully. It is also a felony to provide
work documents or jobs to illegal immigrants.
Thus, under Obama and now Trump, our own government
has committed in excess of 800,000 felony law violations
by encouraging, aiding, and employing DACA illegals.
And the US taxpayer gets left holding the bag as many
states then force taxpayers to pay for benefits to DACA
Amnesty recipients like in-state tuition. DACA increases
incentives to future illegal immigrants to send their
children to the US where their healthcare and education
costs will be covered by our taxpayers.
.
370
That is why GOP officials in 10 states are now threatening
to sue the Trump administration if he does not end DACA
Amnesty as he promised. Also, the US Supreme court has
recently requested the Department of Justice provide our
highest court with an opinion stating if DACA Amnesty
recipients are indeed "lawfully present" in the United
States.
It is time for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to show
America and the Americans who have supported him over
the years that he will stand up on the side of our existing
Constitution and laws. It is time for Sessions to make clear
to the Trump administration, Supreme Court, states, and
Department of Homeland Security that DACA Amnesty
clearly violates our existing laws and nullifies the outcome
of our elections and Congressional votes on bills that have
passed or failed!
It is time for Sessions to do his job to assure that all
branches of our government operate within the limits of
the US Constitution by ordering an immediate end to
DACA Amnesty for illegals.
And the states should go ahead and file their lawsuit led
once again by Texas. Each American citizen needs to get
on the phone to their state's Governor and Attorney
General to demand they sue the Trump administration for
implementing an Amnesty for illegal aliens that makes a
mockery of our elections, laws, and Constitution.
While the Trump administration may be willing to send a
signal to the world that they are willing to lie to voters
during the campaign and yet pursue the globalist open
borders agenda once elected to Washington, DC, the rest
of America needs to continue standing up and fighting for
our existing laws and prior elections to have meaning and
influence on actual policies of our nation.
If Trump supporters are unwilling to call him out when he
supports Amnesty policies that are identical to the plans
supported by Pelosi, Reid, Obama, and Paul Ryan, then all
of this talk about change in Washington is nothing but
showmanship and lies that will lead America down the
same unwanted path we were on under Bush and Obama.
.
 Another Nothing Burger?
‘Everyone Interested To See Nikki Haley's
Evidence Of Russia Hacking’
Published Time: 10 Jul, 2017 16:08
US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley
© Joshua Roberts / Reuters
CNN and The Times have had their accusations proven to
be false. Until there is clear evidence, it is very difficult for
anyone to act, or anyone to form an opinion, Ben Harris-
Quinney, chairman of the Bow Group think tank, told RT.
After meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20
summit, US President Donald Trump tweeted that, after a
significant deal on Syria, it's time to move forward and
work with Russia.
The US Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley,
said in an interview with CNN that “everybody” knows
Russia meddled in the US presidential election.
Following the summit, Trump also tweeted that he and the
Russian president discussed the creation of a special
working group on cyber security.
However, the idea was roundly criticized by many in the
US establishment on the basis of Russia's alleged hacking
activities.
371
There may be some areas of cyber
security the US and Russia could make
a partnership. Tackling ISIS - both
abroad and in the West - would be the
most obvious one
RT: When will solid, incontrovertible evidence be
provided to back up these hacking allegations? Why hasn't
it been so far?
Ben Harris-Quinney: I think as the President of the US
Trump said:
‘The truth is that no one knows and
although at least very few people know.”
And very few people know because there has been no clear
evidence on either side.’ What we do know, however, is
the Trump administration is certainly concerned about the
allegations that have been made, and it has caused some
drag on the early days of the administration. We also know
that many of the accusations have been disproved and
major media networks, like CNN and The Times, have had
their accusations proven to be false. Until there is clear
evidence, it is very difficult for anyone to act, or anyone to
form an opinion. The words of Nikki Haley that we’ve
heard there – I think everyone’s very interested to learn
what information that she has to back up those
comments… If no evidence emerges, then I would imagine
it would pass into history as an unsubstantiated claim.

372
 Trump: "Comey Leaked CLASSIFIED INFORMATION
To The Media. This Is So Illegal"
By Tyler Durden
Jul 10, 2017 12:30 PM

When we discussed late Sunday's blockbuster report by

The Hill, according to which as part of his leak of personal
recollections of his conversations with Trump in hopes of
(successfully) launching a special probe into the president's
alleged Russian collusion, former FBI director James
Comey also allegedly disclosed classified information in
direct violation of FBI rules and regulations, we said

"for an appetizer of what's to come, look

closely at Trump's twitter feed once the
president learns the news of Comey's
alleged transgressions."

Roughly 8 hours later Trump finally caught up, and around

6am slammed Comey tweeting

"James Comey leaked CLASSIFIED

INFORMATION to the media. That is so For those who missed it, officials familiar with the memos
illegal!" told The Hill that more than half of the documents
contained classified information, raising the possibility that
Comey broke FBI rules and ignored a security protocol in
the days leading up to the 2016 presidential election. Even
more ironic is that Comey allegedl violated the same
protocol which Hillary Clinton was accused of breaching,
and one which James Comey was tasked with investigating
last summer, and ultimately found to be a non-event.

Judging by Trump's tweet, as we expected, this is just the

Trump also retweeted a Fox News report on The Hill’s start of the next round of recriminations between the
article: president and Comey. We look forward to an official
statement from the former FBI chief next.

373
 Trump Again Slams Comey
Over 'Illegal' Leaks Of Classified Info
© Ap Photo/ Andrew Harnik - Us
15:52 10.07.2017(Updated 18:39 10.07.2017)
US President Donald Trump again
slammed former FBI chief James Comey
on Monday over leaking classified
information to the media.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) — On Sunday, The Hill newspaper
reported citing its sources that over half of the memos,
which Comey wrote as "personal recollections" of his
conversations with Trump about Russia's alleged meddling
into the 2016 US presidential election, had contained
classified information. The officials, familiar with the
matter, told the media outlet that four of the nine memos,
had contained "secret" or "confidential" level of secrecy.
"James Comey leaked CLASSIFIED
INFORMATION to the media. That is so
illegal!" Trump said on Twitter.
.
374
On June 8, Comey testified in a US Senate Intelligence
Committee hearing that he made unauthorized disclosures
of privileged conversations with Trump. The ex-FBI chief
gave the memorandums documenting his interactions
with US president to a friend, asking him to leaked them
to the media.
Since the beginning of the United States' last presidential
race, US media have speculated about Trump's campaign
team's alleged ties to Russia and claimed that Moscow
might have influenced the results of the election, a claim
Russia has repeatedly denied.
In May, Trump fired Comey over the poor handling of the
investigation into the Hillary Clinton private server and
email scandal. However, many believe that the decision is
connected with the probe into alleged ties of Trump's
campaign team to Russia, as Comey reportedly was
seeking funding to extend the bureau’s inquiry. Kremlin,
as well as the White House have repeatedly refuted these
allegations.
 Comey’s Leaker Comes Out Of Hiding, Insists:
‘No Memos Given To Me Were Marked Classified’
Cristina Laila
Jul 10th, 2017 7:28 Pm
Comey’s longtime friend and adviser,
Daniel C. Richman came out of hiding to
refute a new report that claims he was
given classified information in the
memos.
As TGP previously reported, Daniel C. Richman,
a Columbia University professor from Brooklyn went into
hiding after James Comey revealed during his Senate
testimony that he gave his memos on his private
conversations with President Trump to a friend to leak to
the press.
Richman vanished from his Henry Street digs by midday,
and family members, friends and neighbors wouldn’t
answer doors or phone calls to shed any more light, The
New York Post reported.
Daniel C. Richman told CNN on Monday,
“No memo was given to me that was
marked ‘classified’. No memo was passed
on to the Times.”
Richman did share the contents of one memo, he said, but
375
“the substance of the memo passed on to
the Times was not marked classified and to
my knowledge remains unclassified.”
As previously reported by The Hill, more than half of the
memos fired FBI Director James Comey wrote during his
private conversations with President Trump have been
determined to contain classified information.
More than half of the memos former FBI chief James
Comey wrote as personal recollections of his conversations
with President Trump about the Russia investigation have
been determined to contain classified information,
according to interviews with officials familiar with the
documents.
This revelation raises the possibility that Comey broke his
own agency’s rules and ignored the same security protocol
that he publicly criticized Hillary Clinton for in the waning
days of the 2016 presidential election.
Comey insisted in his testimony he believed his personal
memos were unclassified, though he hinted one or two
documents he created might have been contained classified
information.
 Trump Cannot Improve Relations With Russia When Trump’s
Government And The US Media Oppose Improved Relations
Paul Craig Roberts
July 10, 2017

President Trump Has Been Contradicted by His Own
Government, Which Has Lined Up Against Him in Favor
of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee,
and the Russophobic Presstitute Media that serves the
military/security complex and the neoconservatives.
I am afraid that The Saker and Finian Cunningham are
correct. Nothing can come of Trump’s meeting with Putin,
because, as Cunningham puts it, “Trump doesn’t have
freedom or real power. The real power brokers in the US
will ensure that the Russophobia campaign continues, with
more spurious allegations of Moscow interfering to subvert
Western democracies. Trump will continue to live under a
cloud of media-driven suspicions. And thus the agenda of
regime change against Syria and confrontation with Russia
will also continue. Trump’s personal opinions on these
matters and towards Vladimir Putin are negligible—indeed
dispensable by the deep powers-that-be.”
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/395782-trump-putin-meeting-
media-syria/
On the same day that President Donald Trump said
“it is time to move forward in working
constructively with Russia,”
and the day after he said
“I had a tremendous meeting yesterday
with President Putin,”
the ignorant, stupid, Nikki Haley, who Trump appointed as
US UN Ambassador, publicly contradicted her president,
forcefully stating:
“we can’t trust Russia and we won’t ever
trust Russia.”
https://www.rt.com/usa/395814-us-trust-russia-
haley/?utm_source=spotim&utm_medium=spotim_recirculation&spotim_
referrer=recirculation&spot_im_comment_id=sp_6phY2k0C_395814_c_r
DCXsj

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47392.htm
The ignorant stupid Haley is still in office, a perfect
demonstration of Trump’s powerlessness.
Cunningham points out that instead of lauding the meeting
as the beginning of the process to defuse the high tensions
The ignorant stupid Haley has gone far beyond Obama’s
between the two major nuclear powers, the US media
crazed UN Ambassador, neocon Samantha Power in doing
denounced Trump for being civil to Putin in the meeting.
everything in her power to ruin the prospect of normal
relations between the two major nuclear powers. Why does
What is missing from the media in the entirety of the Nikki Haley work in favor of a confrontation between
Western world and perhaps also in Russia is the awareness nuclear powers that would destroy all life on earth? What
that the dangerous tensions are orchestrated not only by is wrong with Nikki Haley? Is she demented? Has she lost
Hillary and the Democratic National Committee, the her mind, assuming she ever had one?
neoconservatives, the US military/security complex, and
the presstitutes, but also by President Trump’s own
How can President Trump normalize relations with Russia
appointees.
when every one of his appointees wants to worsen the
relations to the point of nuclear war?
Trump’s own ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, and
Trump’s own Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, sound
How is President Trump going to improve relations with
exactly like Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National
Russia when President Trump stands powerless in face of
Committee, the neoconservatives, the Washington Post,
his dressing down by his UN Ambassador? Clearly, Trump
the New York Times, CNN and the rest of the totally
is powerless, a mere cipher.
discredited presstitute media that is committed to raising
tensions between the US and Russia to the point of nuclear
war. Joining Nikki Haley was Trump’s Secretary of State, Rex
Tillerson. Tillerson, allegedly a friend of Russia, is also

376
working overtime to worsen relations between the two
nuclear powers by publicly contradicting the President of
the United States, thereby making it clear that Trump is
barely even a cipher. Tillerson, a disgrace, said that Putin’s
refusal to admit that Putin elected Trump by interfering in
the US election
“stands as an obstacle to our ability to
improve the relationship between the US
and Russia and it needs to be addressed in
terms of how we assure the American
people that interference into our elections
will not occur by Russia or anyone else.”
https://www.rt.com/usa/395814-us-trust-russia-
haley/?utm_source=spotim&utm_medium=spotim_recirculation&spotim_
referrer=recirculation&spot_im_comment_id=sp_6phY2k0C_395814_c_r
DCXsj
Trump’s incompetence is illustrated by his appointments.
There is no one in “his” government that supports him.
Everyone of them works to undermine him. And he sits
there and Twitters.
So, what is President Putin’s belief that an understanding
can now be worked out with Washington worth? Not a
plugged nickel. Trump has zero authority over “his”
government. He can be contradicted at will by his own
appointees. The President of the United States is a joke.
You can find him on Twitter, but nowhere else, not in the
Oval Office making foreign or military policy. The
president Twitters and thinks that that is policy.
The Trump administration was destroyed when the weak
Donald Trump allowed the neoconservatives to remove his
National Security Advisor, General Flynn. Trump has
never recovered. “His” administration is staffed with
violent Russophobes. Wars can be the only outcome.
377
We know two things about the alleged Russian
interference in the Trump/Hillary presidential election.
One is that John Brennan, Obama’s CIA director, and
Comey, Obama’s FBI director, implied repeatedly that
Trump was elected by Russian interference in the election.
The other is that the charge is false. Neither the CIA nor
the FBI have provided any evidence whatsoever that any
such interference occurred. Indeed, months into the case,
the special prosecutor, the former FBI director, can
produce no evidence. The whole thing is a sham, but it is
ongoing. There will be no end to it as it is designed to
undermine President Trump with the people who elected
him. The message is:
“Trump is not for America. Trump is for
Russia.”
This is astounding! The NSA has intercepts of all
transmitted data. If Russia interfered in the US presidential
election the evidence would be obvious and immediately
available.
Despite the obvious lies told by Brennan and Comey, the
New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC and the
rest of the scum, no one has been arrested and put on trial
for their efforts to overthrow the elected president of the
United States. This proves beyond all doubt that the
President of the United States is a non-entity. A figurehead
incapable of action independently of the Deep State that
controls him.
If Vladimir Putin really believes from his meeting with
Trump that all of the orchestrated false charges against
Russia can now be removed and normal relations restored,
Putin is in la-la land. Nikki Haley says that the US will
NEVER trust Russia. If Putin trusts Washington, Russia
will be destroyed. And the rest of the world with Russia.
 The Latest Trump/Russia
Non-Scandal
By Stephen Lendman - Stephenlendman.Org
7-10-2017
Another day, another bogus anti-Trump/Russia accusation.
The latest one comes from the disreputable NYT -
gratuitous mudslinging its speciality, especially anything
about Trump team and Russia.
On July 9, it claimed Donald Trump Jr. met with
“Kremlin-connected lawyer (Natalya
Veselnitskaya) for “promised damaging
information about Hillary Clinton during the
2016 campaign” - according three
unnamed sources, another Times
specialty.
Allegedly Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and
campaign manager at the time Paul Manafort were
involved in the meeting. The Times cited unverified
“confidential government documents” - perhaps
nonexistent ones.
The meeting supposedly took place on June 9, 2016 in
Trump Tower New York. The Times, without justification,
alleged it’s more evidence of Kremlin meddling in last
year’s presidential election, saying:
“The accounts of the meeting represent the
first public indication that at least some in
the campaign were willing to accept
Russian help.”
“It is unclear whether the Russian lawyer,
Natalia Veselnitskaya, actually produced
the promised compromising information
about Mrs. Clinton. But the people
interviewed by The Times about the
meeting said the expectation was that she
would do so.”
Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin never
heard of this woman is. It’s unaware of any meetings she
may have had with members of Trump’s team.
Trump Jr said
“(a)fter pleasantries were exchanged, the
woman stated that she had information that
individuals connected to Russia were
funding the Democratic National
Committee and supporting Mrs. Clinton.”
378
“Her statements were vague, ambiguous
and made no sense. No details or
supporting information was provided or
even offered. It quickly became clear that
she had no meaningful information.”
As for compromising information about Hillary, volumes
of it exists in the public domain, easily obtainable by any
diligent researcher wishing to discuss it.
Numerous anti-Trump/anti-Russia accusations proved
dubious or entirely discredited - after the media damage
was done by blasting it in headlines, The Times perhaps the
leading offender, publishing rubbish amounting to
disinformation, Big Lies and fake news.
Commenting on the latest issue, Law Professor Jonathan
Turley quoted GW Bush administration so-called ethics
lawyer Richard Painter, saying Trump Jr’s meeting with a
Russian lawyer for damaging information on Hillary
“borders on treason,” Turley adding:
Others call the disclosure a possible long-
sought “smoking gun,” exposing Trump
team collusion with Russia.
Not according to Turley, saying
“(t)here is not a clear criminal act in such a
meeting based on” what’s known.
“Moreover,” the meeting “is not necessarily
unprecedented.”
“There is no crime in listening to people
who say that they have incriminating
information on a political opponent, even a
foreigner.”
Constitutional
“Article III defines treason as ‘levying War
against (the United States), or in adhering
to their Enemies, giving them Aid and
Comfort.’ “
“To say that this type of meeting even
borders on treason is quite a departure
from the language and cases governing
that crime.”
 It’s common practice practically everywhere. It’s the
It’s also neither unusual, disturbing or shocking for nature of politics to want to besmirch or denigrate the
members of one political campaign wanting dirt on reputation or integrity of an opponent.
another.
The Times and other media scoundrels attack Trump this
way daily, inventing reasons to bash him instead of
focusing on plenty of legitimate ones.
.

379
 Vladimir and Donald:
They Spoke
By Israel Shamir
Global Research, July 10, 2017
The highly anticipated encounter of the two presidents
went better, much better than anybody predicted. There
was a lot of anxiety, and expectations were low as heavy
rain clouds, especially after Trump’s visit to Warsaw
where he obediently repeated the Cold War platitudes
dictated by his minders. Trump had been sent off to
Hamburg by Washington establishment with warnings a
convent novice gets before an unfortunate but unavoidable
meeting with a Don Juan. They didn’t trust the
inexperienced youngster, and insisted he should speak with
Vlad only in presence of grown ups, like Auntie Fiona
(Hill) or Uncle HR (McMaster), well known for their
aversion to Russians.
They warned him that, short of a nuclear strike, every
other reaction will be considered betrayal of the Shining
City upon a Hill. Every neocon and Cold Warrior in the
West gave his advice to the President, how should he
humiliate Putin and put him on his place, below the salt.
They actually didn’t allow Trump to have a proper meeting
with Putin, with full agenda, advisers and ministers,
preferably a few days long, in a Camp David format or
similar. But they failed profoundly.
The meeting on the margins of G-20 had become the
central event, while G-20 became a meeting on the
margins of Putin-Trump summit. When Donald and Vlad
had met, there was no stopping: a great sympathy they had
felt for each other manifested itself in every smile. At the
beginning, Putin had been quite reserved; he steeled
himself to a possible rejection, to a possible affront, even
to insult. But Trump skilfully put him at ease.
Instead of planned thirty minutes, they spoke for over two
hours; even an attempt by Trump’s wife to restrain her
husband wasn’t crowned with success. They just could not
380
tear themselves apart. After a few hard months of enforced
separation by the self-appointed duennas, the pals were
together, at last.
The Western media, trying its damnedest to cause ill
feeling between the two men, spoke of Putin’s victory, of
the Russian becoming the boss, the top dog. A typical
reaction was that of the liberal Center for American
Progress Action Fund, which declared that Trump had
“just unilaterally surrendered to Russia”. They hoped that
vain Trump would be upset at being bettered by Vlad. We
shall not join their legion by ceding victory to Putin. Both
won, and we won with them.
At such an event, one can hardly expect real tangible
results. The results need more time. Creating conditions
for future work together would suffice. And still there
were some achievements.
I’d suggest you watch the long but rewarding film “Putin
Interviews” by Oliver Stone as prolegomena to the
meeting reports. In the film, Stone asks Putin about
accusations of cyber-meddling in the US elections, and
Putin gives a full explicit answer. He said that he had
offered President Obama a treaty on cyber security,
properly describing what the states can, and can’t do in
cyberspace to each other.
Obama did not take the offered ball, for the US felt it had
vast superiority in the field, and didn’t want to give the
advantage away. “According to an unnamed senior
intelligence official with the US government, the Obama
administration has penetrated Russia’s electric grid,
telecommunications networks and the Kremlin’s command
systems. The purported hack means that critical parts of
Russia’s infrastructure are now vulnerable to attack by
secret American cyber weapons”, reported Australian news
agency.
Indeed complaints of “Russian hackers” sound false,
bearing in mind that NSA spies against everybody in the
world, including Russia. Millions of Russian calls are
intercepted by the American secret services annually, as
Snowden told us. The idea of drafting and concluding a
treaty forbidding offensive hacking is a good and timely
one. At the meeting in Hamburg, President Trump agreed
with that, and the presidents decided to appoint a bilateral
commission to sort it out and to prepare the treaty. It will
be good for all the nations, not only for Americans and
Russians, as NSA spied even on American allies like Mme
Merkel.
The treaty should also deal with really dangerous viruses,
like Stuxnet that was unleashed against Iran, and its newer
versions like WannaCry. Julian Assange provided us with
the provenance of the viruses: they are from the NSA
collection of tools, and they already caused mayhem from
Russian banks to British hospitals. The NSA factory of
viruses should be brought under control by the treaty.
Interference in elections is also a valid point addressed by
the two presidents. Not the silly story of Russian
interference in the last American elections, but the very
real one of American interference in the elections in
Russia, France and elsewhere. President Trump apparently
agreed that it should be covered by the treaty and stopped.
Professional Cold Warriors were alarmed: how can you
compare Russian meddling with our Western pro-
democracy drive! That reminds me of an old Jewish joke,
preceding World War One: – Let us go and kill some
Turks! – And what if they will kill us? – Why would they?
We didn’t wrong them!
“How can you compare” is a favourite Jewish cliché,
frequently used if you compare a killed Jew and a killed
Palestinian. I never could understand it. If it is ok for the
US to meddle in Russian elections, why can’t Russians
meddle in the US elections? Perhaps the two presidents
will agree to cease meddling, but I won’t bet my socks on
it.
They made a move forward in Syria, too, by approving the
agreement prepared by their teams in Amman, Jordan. For
a first time, this agreement contains a declaration in favour
of the territorial integrity of one, undivided Syria; this is an
important Russian achievement. If carried out, the
agreement will bring a ceasefire to South-Western Syria, in
the area adjacent to Jordanian border and to the Israeli
armistice line on the Golan Heights.
In a surprising move, President Trump agreed that the area
would be patrolled by Russian military police. This
suggestion had been hotly argued against by the Israelis.
381
Despite their frequent visits to Moscow, they really trust
only the US. There should be American troops on the
ground in Syria, and no Russian troops close to our lines
are acceptable, said Israeli politicians. If indeed Russian
military police will patrol the area, the Israelis will eat a
big fat frog.
There is an additional nuance: the Russian military police
in Syria have been staffed with Chechens, who are good
fighters, Muslim by faith, and devoted to President Putin –
though he fought them, defeated them, and brought them
back under Kremlin rule. There was a time when the
enemies of Russia would profess their love of Chechens,
but not anymore. Now their own leader Ramzan Kadyrov,
the son of their previous rebel president and a former rebel
himself is a strong supporter of Putin, and a subject of a
hate campaign by Western liberals – and by Russian
nationalists. Placement of Chechens in the military police
in Syria is a success of Putin’s national policies, especially
relevant in the light of a new development.
This week, the Russian authorities blocked public access to
the Russian far right nationalist site Sputnik and Pogrom,
as you can read in the column of my worthy colleague
Anatoly Karlin. It’s got its name from (allegedly) the only
two Russian words that have entered English dictionaries.
They are Nazi sympathisers, like the Ukrainian
nationalists, and that is not a popular view in Russia,
which bore the brunt of fight with Nazis. Their chief editor
published a column on June 22, saying that every good
Russian was happy when the Germans invaded their
country.
They are also extreme anti-Communists, and this is also
not too popular a view in Russia. This site had been
established with help of Western secret services to sow
discord between Russian citizens of different ethnic origin,
just like the US-sponsored Radio Liberty did in the Soviet
days, and the Germans during the war it, too. They do
instigate hostility between Russians and Ukrainians,
between Russians and the people of the Caucasus.
Typically for such political organisations, despite the site’s
name (pogrom was, after all, an anti-Jewish riot), they are
quite pro-Jewish and fervently pro-Zionist. Otherwise, the
IA wouldn’t dare support them. However, they always
have something bad to say about Putin (they hate him) and
the Chechens and their leader.
Now we see that Putin was right in encouraging the
Chechens to fight for Russia. It is indeed a good idea to
use Sunni Muslims as a police force in this heavily Sunni
Muslim area being liberated from ISIS, and Chechens are
known as fierce fighters that nobody wants to mess with. It
is better to have them on the side of Moscow than on the
side of its enemies, and it is definitely worth while to block
the Sputnik and Pogrom, leaving moral considerations
aside.
The two presidents spoke about North Korea. Some years
ago, Russians had supported sanctions against DPRK
(Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the official name
of North Korea), and the Americans had no problem in
passing a sanctions-enforcing resolution in the Security
Council. Not anymore. Last month, the Russians made a
radical shift on Korea. Now they are strongly against
sanctions likely to economically strangle the country and
definitely against military action there. So, the Russian
position has become quite close to the North Korean one,
surprisingly more so than that of the Chinese, although
Chinese trade with Korea dwarfs the Russian trade. If the
Americans want the North Koreans to stop their nuclear
tests, Putin said to Trump, they should refrain from
carrying out large-scale military exercises. The Russians
also want to encourage North-South dialogue. Such
dialogue had been very successful and popular in its time,
but then the US interfered in South Korean elections and
blocked pro-dialogue politicians. The Northern rulers,
however, would like the dialogue to resume with
unification of Korea in mind. The Russians and their
Chinese allies object greatly to the American THAAD
missile defence system being installed in South Korea.
On Ukraine, the presidents agreed to establish a special
bilateral channel of communications between the US
special envoy and his Russian counterpart. They also
confirmed their faith in the Minsk agreements, and this is
an important diplomatic achievement for the Russians.
.
382
However, these agreements did not prevent Kiev troops
shelling the cities of Donbass.
To sum it up, Putin and Trump managed to save the day,
despite all odds. Their immediate achievements are indeed
modest, but they established the ground for progress.
Future steps will depend mainly on Trump’s ability to
withstand the pressure, to set himself free from his
minders. He is the first American president experiencing
such a continuous media onslaught, and he still stands. It
seems that his advisers urge him to surrender to his
enemies in the media and in the congress, but he is a
stubborn man. He also discovered that in Vladimir Putin,
he can have a real friend and partner.
The world has changed: in 1980s, the Russians were happy
that their leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, had met with Ronald
Reagan and that he was admired and lionised by Western
media. They thought it natural that Gorbachev admires
Reagan. Then, the Western support was a real asset for a
Russian politician. Gorbachev came to power in aftermath
of Margaret Thatcher’s blessing.
Now, the Russians are happy that they have a leader who
can withstand any pressure, a leader who is admired for his
strength. If he is hated in the West, they feel he is doing
something right. Probably the Western media, if they want
to undermine Putin, should begin to sing him dithyrambs.
 ‘He Has Best CIA Stuff’: Wikileaks Nominates Assange To
Run Trump’s ‘US-Russia Cyber Security Unit’
Published Time: 10 Jul, 2017 03:20 Edited Time: 10 Jul, 2017 04:52
© Neil Hall / Reuters
The whistleblowing website Wikileaks has suggested that
Donald Trump appoint Julian Assange as the chief of the
joint cyber security unit as discussed with President
Vladimir Putin. Trump, however, clarified that discussions
do not mean any plans for such unit are in the works.
On Sunday, Trump announced on Twitter that among other
pressing issues he and his Russian counterpart had
“discussed” was creating “an impenetrable Cyber
Security unit.”
WikiLeaks was quick to respond and nominated Assange,
the whistleblowing platform’s founder, to run the unit.
“Why not put @JulianAssange in charge of it? He's
trusted by the public and has the CIA’s best stuff anyway,”
Wikileaks said in a sarcastic tweet, linking the message to
the Vault 7 series of documents which revealed the CIA’s
espionage programs.
383
Appointing Assange might prove to be, kind of difficult,
considering that he is wanted by the Americans for being
involved in leaking US government secrets.
He is sought in the US over WikiLeaks publications, even
though Swedish authorities in May this year withdrew the
allegations of sexual assault – the accusations which
forced the Australian to seek refuge in the Ecuadorian
embassy in London in 2012. UK police insist that Assange
would still be arrested if he left the embassy because he
had broken his bail conditions and failed to surrender
despite an arrest warrant being issued for him.
Amid the ongoing leakage of US secrets and mounting
speculations of alleged Russian meddling in the US
elections, Trump and Putin discussed in Hamburg the
possibility of sharing the responsibility to protect the cyber
space.
On Saturday, Putin said that during his first encounter with
Trump, they shared their views on cybersecurity and had
agreed to “create a working group on how to jointly
monitor security in cyberspace.”
Trump’s interpretation of the issue was much more bold
and drew more heat for his alleged collusion with the
Kremlin. So later Sunday, the US president had to clarify
his statement on the cyber unit.
 “The fact that President Putin and I discussed a Cyber
Security unit doesn't mean I think it can happen,” Trump
said while praising the success of the ceasefire deal in
southwest Syria brokered with Russia.

384
 Trump And Putin Claw Us Out Of The Swamp
There Is A Lot Of Work To Be Done. But Putin Was Likely Relieved To
Find A Kindred Soul Of Pragmatism Now Occupies The White House
Versus The Ideologues That Have Brought The World
To The Brink Of Madness.
Tom Luongo
July 10, 2017
What could have been a complete disaster in Hamburg on
Friday thanks to Trump’s overly-aggressive rhetoric in
Warsaw the day before, ended up far better than I could
have hoped. Trump and Putin began the process of
draining the foreign policy swamp that has existed since
the 1970s.
And they did it with such style that it has the Beltway
Intelligentsia frothing at the mouth and scrambling to
maintain a narrative of contrived hostility that serves no
one save them.
My only regret was that Zbigniew Brzezinski wasn’t alive
to see it, so he could choke on his own bile. I’ll have to
settle for his partner-in-regime-change-crime, George
Soros, doing so. I’m sure Soros’ dinner last night was a
little too rich for him even if he only ate a salad.
But it is the delicious silence from Senators John McCain
(RINO-AZ) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC) that is the most
satisfying.
I’ve said previously that I believe Trump and Putin have
before them the opportunity to broker a Grand Bargain for
Middle East Peace. That process can only move forward
with the U.S. and Russia as first, willing partners and
second, as guarantors of everyone’s good behavior.
The announcement of a cease-fire and establishment of de-
escalation zones in southwestern Syria, near the Golan
Heights and Dara’a is a shot across the bow to every
interested party in the bitter Syrian civil war.
385
You say you want peace? Prove it.
By getting Israel and Jordan to sign up for this it gives
Trump the opportunity to be the hero and for Putin to test
his resolve.
Putin doesn’t want the honor. He wants the results. He’s
driven by pragmatism not vainglory.
Putin is also no dummy. Despite the smiles and the
positive words at Putin’s press conference, he knows that
Trump has a long way to go in getting control of his
administration. And so, he will be watching for signs of
betrayal of this agreement.
Just like the multitude of ceasefires in Syria and Ukraine
which have been betrayed in the past. Putin and his
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have both termed the U.S.
government “Not agreement capable” and there is still the
opportunity for someone to screw this up.
And that someone could still be Trump.
But, now that the two have met and gotten along
constructively, it will be harder to betray this deal than
before they’d met. Trump and Putin have the measure of
each other. Fake intelligence reports and biased profiles
won’t be as persuasive as before.
This is why the Beltway was so dead set against them
meeting. They would lose control of the narrative to
Trump and Putin.
My worries over Trump’s speech in Poland have come for
naught. And I’m happy to see them dissipate. Putin was
asked directly about Nordstream 2 and he reiterated the
basic truth. He welcomes competition in the European gas
market but knows Russia and Gazprom have an enormous
cost advantage and therefore are not worried.
If Trump pulls back on the political pressure surrounding
Nordstream 2 -- and a symbolic veto of the sanctions bill
would do it -- then we’ll know that issue is truly settled
between these two. While the McCain/Graham opposition
to Nordstream will continue, it’ll get no support from
Trump.
And that allows Trump to focus his opposition to German
Chancellor Angela Merkel on immigration and national
sovereignty, not petty gas politics. This is where his focus
should be. These are the issues he was elected on.
No more confrontation and nation-building overseas and
cultural/national pride restored at home. These are the
.
386
kinds of wins that build him the political capital necessary
to go after the dead-enders in D.C.
We’re not out of the woods yet. There is a lot of work to
be done. But, Putin was likely relieved to find a kindred
soul of pragmatism now occupies the White House versus
the ideologues that have brought the world to the brink of
madness.
And if Trump says some objectionable things on the
stump, Putin now knows, as he said, that the public Trump
is different than Trump behind closed doors, where actions
matter and words have minimal value.
 NY Times FAIL: New Attempt To Resurrect The Phony
“Trump-Russia” Narrative Goes Down In Flames As Prez
Lawyers Cite DEMOCRAT Collusion
By JD Heyes
Monday, July 10, 2017
Over the weekend, while President Donald J. Trump was
out of the country attending the G20 conference and
freaking out the world’s Left-wing globalists as he kept
talking up his “America first” agenda, The New York
Times published a couple more “Russian collusion” stories
that, as before, turned out to be yawners rather than
‘bombshells.’
As the New York Post reported, the stories were based on
new leaks of recent disclosures by Donald Trump Jr. 1) in
which he updated previous disclosures of contacts with
foreign sources before, during and after the election to
include a short 20-minute meeting with a Russian lawyer
to discuss a U.S. law, the Magnitsky Act, that allows the
US to deny visas to Russians thought guilty of human
rights violations — a law signed in 2012 by President
Obama that was said to have infuriated Russian President
Vladimir Putin; and 2) he met with this Russian lawyer
under the alleged pretense of being given damaging info
about Donald J. Trump’s presidential opponent, Hillary
Clinton.
“President Trump’s eldest son, Donald
Trump Jr., was promised damaging
information about Hillary Clinton before
agreeing to meet with a Kremlin-connected
Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign,
according to three advisers to the White
House briefed on the meeting and two
others with knowledge of it,” the second of
the two stories began.
387
Well, well…roll out the impeachment papers and line up
the prosecutors. We’ve got a real crime here.
Except that we don’t. Once again, the Times has scored
with the low-IQ, non-thinking reactionaries who read the
paper regularly with this red meat for #NeverTrumper
supporters, but a deeper read into the story reveals:
“It is unclear whether the Russian lawyer,
Natalia Veselnitskaya, actually produced
the promised compromising information
about Mrs. Clinton. But the people
interviewed by The Times about the
meeting said the expectation was that she
would do so.”
We don’t know that; all we do know is what the Times
reports, and there’s no other verification for or against
what the paper is claiming. We also know that what the
Times has been told about the Trump administration in the
past has been wrong or over-hyped. (RELATED: In
bizarre plot to discredit Trump, NY Times says NY
Times is fake news)
But what’s interesting about both stories, the Post notes, is
that just as the “Russia collusion” hoax was beginning to
fade away, here comes the Times with a new pair of
nothing burgers in a vain attempt to revive it.
Even if the story is true and the Trump campaign may have
had an opportunity to get some dirt on an opponent —
because that’s the purpose of opposition research — why
is this a scandal? As it turned out, nothing was delivered.
Donald Jr. told the Times:
“Her statements were vague, ambiguous
and made no sense. No details or
supporting information was provided or
even offered.”
So in the end, the lawyer didn’t have anything, did not give
Trump anything and got nothing in return from the Trump
campaign during a meeting that lasted 20 minutes.
Again, why is this a scandal?
If anything, it’s a scandal heading the other way. Circa
reported over the weekend that the president’s legal team
smells a Democratic rat:
The president’s legal team said … they
believe the entire meeting may have been
part of a larger election-year opposition
effort aimed at creating the appearance of
improper connections between Trump
family members and Russia that also
included a now-discredited intelligence
dossier produced by a former British
intelligence agent named Christopher
Steele who worked for a U.S. political firm
known as Fusion GPS.
“We have learned from both our own
investigation and public reports that the
.
388
participants in the meeting misrepresented
who they were and who they worked for,”
said Mark Corallo, a spokesman the for
president’s legal team. “Specifically, we
have learned that the person who sought
the meeting is associated with Fusion GPS,
a firm which according to public reports,
was retained by Democratic operatives to
develop opposition research on the
President and which commissioned the
phony Steele dossier.
“These developments raise serious issues
as to exactly who authorized and
participated in any effort by Russian
nationals to influence our election in any
manner,” Corallo continued.
Perhaps. But far more clear is the fact that the real scandal
here is another fake news “bombshell” from The New York
Times.
 The Trumps Are America’s Most Easily Duped Family
‘I Was Tricked!’ Has Become Such A Fallback Excuse That
It Should Be On The Trump Family Crest.
Erin Gloria Ryan
07.10.17 10:25 PM ET
Gary Cameron/Reuters
A famous presidential son once said,
“There's an old saying in Tennessee—I
know it's in Texas, probably in
Tennessee—that says, fool me once,
shame on—shame on you. Fool me—you
can't get fooled again.”
Ten years later, another president’s son in over his head
would prove the adage wrong and be fooled, again and
again. It’s a long way from Texas to Trump Tower.
This weekend, the New York Times reported that last June
9, Donald Trump Jr. met with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a
Kremlin-affiliated Russian attorney, to discuss damaging
information the Russian government had on Hillary
Clinton’s campaign. Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort,
then the Trump campaign chair, were also in attendance.
The meeting occurred at the request of Emin Agalarov, son
of Aras Agalarov, a real estate developer who had
partnered with Trump Senior on some real estate and Miss
Universe-related activities. The parties met in Don Jr.’s
office, in which he does his most important retweeting.
Junior used the most believable explanation for the
meeting at his disposal, which was that he had no idea
what was going on. But Monday night, the New York
Times reported that an email trail indicated that the eldest
Trump son was promised damaging Hillary dirt in advance
of the meeting—and that the dirt in question had come
from the Russian government.
389
Junior’s explanation changed as soon as the Times dropped
one bombshell after another. Prior to the Times report
about the meeting’s contents, he claimed its purpose was
to discuss child adoption. Once that was blown up, he
claimed that his story never changed. Now he expects us to
believe that he agreed to attend the meeting because his
friend, a middle-aged music industry publicist who dresses
like somebody who would get turned away at the door of a
Des Moines nightclub, set it up. Junior says he didn’t
know who he was meeting with, but, just for shits, Jared
Kushner and Paul Manafort dropped by anyway.
Never in my life have I voluntarily attended a meeting
without knowing who was in it or what its purpose was,
but that’s just how dedicated Trump’s team of geniuses is
to the very concept of meetings.
It was a bait-and-switch, the president’s son insists. Or
maybe it wasn’t a switch at all. Or maybe Junior, who the
Times describes as having “a reputation for taking
meetings with people eager to speak with him,” is an easy
mark.
The no-longer-secret meeting with a Kremlin-connected
lawyer last June stands out for a number of reasons.
First, because of how treason-y it sounds,
even with Junior’s new explanation.
Second, because it makes Junior sound
like a real chump.
Third, because it makes a person wonder how many other
people were able to fake out the Trump apparatus, get
access, and then yank the football away at the last minute,
Lucy-to-Charlie-Brown-style.
“I was tricked!” has become such a fallback
excuse that it practically should be on the
Trump family crest.
When Russian state media posted photographs of President
Trump meeting with Russian officials back in May (a
meeting that he had banned U.S. journalists from sitting in
on), a White House official claimed they had been
“tricked.” President Trump also claimed—well, shouted—
that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas “tricked” him into
believing that Palestinians want peace with Israel. Trump
may have been “tricked” into pulling out of the Paris
climate agreement.
Trump has further been tricked into retweeting a photo of
British liberal leader Jeremy Corbyn when one Twitter
user claimed the lefty firebrand was a first-time Trump
voter. Gawker “tricked” Donald Trump into retweeting a
Mussolini quote that they attributed to him. In September
2014, somebody tricked then-future President Trump into
retweeting a photo of Fred and Rose West, a pair of British
serial killers. Trump threatened to sue over that trickery.
But perhaps he, too, was tricking.
Like father, like offspring. In summer 2016, Ivanka
Trump, the smart one, was tricked into donating to the
Hillary Clinton campaign by a Brooklyn jewelry designer.
Eric Trump was tricked into taking a photo with a woman
wearing an anti-Trump shirt, a fact he’d have picked up on
had he spoken even elementary-level Spanish. He’s been
duped by a fake news site with an easy-to-suss bogus
URL. Donald Trump Junior would retweet any conspiracy
theory that reinforces his world view, would meet with any
lawyer that promised to help him further his cause, no
matter how illegal. The Trump family is intellectually
kneecapped by its own insistent self-regard.
The Trumps have made their fortune on the expectation
that they are, in turn, capable of tricking the masses—a
pyramid scheme of foolhardiness. It’s why Ivanka was
able to cultivate a reputation as a savvy businesswoman by
hawking cheaply made basic bitchwear at Nordstrom. It’s
why people threw millions into the black hole of Trump
University. It’s why Eric Trump was able to use his charity
to funnel millions into the Trump organization’s pockets.
.
390
But in a position of real power, their gullibility endangers
the entire world. Who knows how many other meetings,
how many other compromises these easy marks have made
at the expense of American interests?
If the Trumps are anything, they’re a family brand. Their
name isn’t as much a thing as it is shorthand for what
Donald Trump wants the name to represent—wealth,
success, abundance. Don Jr.’s unfortunate recent stint in
the news, including his decision to hire a lawyer that has
represented four of the five New York crime families, is
evocative of another great moment in branding in
American history.
In 1782, Congress approved a proposed national seal that
featured the bald eagle in its center, paving the way for the
scavenging bird of prey to be declared the national symbol
of the United States. But not everybody thought it
deserved it.
Benjamin Franklin did not lobby for the turkey to occupy
the bald eagle’s position of honor, contrary to popular
myth. He merely surmised, in a letter to his daughter in
1784, that something “like a turkey” would be a more
appropriate national symbol than the eagle, which Franklin
thought was a real shithead. Turkeys are native to America
and can be brave when pressed. Eagles are of “bad moral
character.”
In a way, Ben Franklin was right. From where I’m
standing, a turkey—a porcine slowpoke with ample neck
folds, an aimless dummy that spends its days gobbling
nonsensically, a stumbling oaf that is easy to corral—
encapsulates the 2017 American milieu like nothing else.
 Trump Jr. Was Allegedly Told Russian
Government Behind Damaging Clinton Info: NYT
By Tyler Durden
Jul 10, 2017 10:57 PM
With the shift in the "Russian collusion" narrative over the
last 24 hours, which has seamlessly drifted away from
Donald Trump (Senior) and now seeks to pin the Putin-
Puppet tail on his son, Donald Trump Jr, it appears The
New York Times is also once again shifting the narrative.
Having admitted he took a meeting regarding potentially
compromising information on Hillary as part of opposition
research - just as the Clinton campaign did against Trump,
only using Ukraine sources –
NYT now reports that three people have
told them that Trump Jr. was told the
damaging information promised about
Hillary Clinton was part of a Russian
government effort to help his father's
presidential campaign.
With Donald Trump Jr volunteering to cooperate with any
and all intelligence probes into the original narrative (and
lawyering up) - where the only compromising information
was that an allegedly Kremlin-linked lawyer represented to
having anti-Clinton information which she did not - the
focus has now shifted on Trump Jr. taking the meeting
"knowing" the source of the information was the Kremlin,
at least according to what the three NYT sources allege.
Before arranging a meeting with a Kremlin-connected
Russian lawyer he believed would offer him compromising
information about Hillary Clinton,
Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an
email that the material was part of a
Russian government effort to aid his
father’s candidacy, according to three
people with knowledge of the email.
The email to the younger Mr. Trump was
sent by Rob Goldstone,
a publicist and former British tabloid reporter who helped
broker the June 2016 meeting. In a statement on Sunday,
Mr. Trump acknowledged that he was interested in
receiving damaging information about Mrs. Clinton, but
gave no indication that he thought the lawyer might have
been a Kremlin proxy.
Mr. Goldstone’s message, as described
to The New York Times by the three
391
people, indicates that the Russian
government was the source of the
potentially damaging information. It
does not elaborate on the wider effort by
Moscow to help the Trump campaign.
Once again, the NYT admits:
There is no evidence to suggest that the
promised damaging information was
related to Russian government
computer hacking that led to the release
of thousands of Democratic National
Committee emails.
But, then prompts the narrative...
...the email is likely to be of keen
interest to the Justice Department and
congressional investigators, who are
examining whether any of President
Trump’s associates colluded with the
Russian government to disrupt last year’s
election. American intelligence agencies
have determined that the Russian
government tried to sway the election in
favor of Mr. Trump.
Trump Jr.'s newly-appointed lawyer dismissed the Times'
report in a statement to the newspaper.
“In my view, this is much ado about
nothing. During this busy period, Robert
Goldstone contacted Don Jr. in an email
and suggested that people had information
concerning alleged wrongdoing by
Democratic Party front-runner, Hillary
Clinton, in her dealings with Russia,” he
said to The Times in an email on Monday.
“Don Jr.’s takeaway from this
communication was that someone had
information potentially helpful to the
campaign and it was coming from someone
he knew. Don Jr. had no knowledge as to
what specific information, if any, would be
discussed.”
And yet, since the meeting touches on a question at the
heart of several concurrent investigations into Russian
collusion with the Trump campaign, namely whether
Trump associates colluded with Russian officials or
representatives, the latest narrative involving Trump Jr.
extends the shelf life of the "Russia" story well into the
foreseeable future, much to the delight of Adam Schiff, the
ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee,
who on Monday suggested that Donald Trump Jr. may
have been the first individual to become aware of the
Russians’ intention to help his father in the 2016
presidential election.
“So if this is correct, the first person who
may have found out that the Russians had
decided not just to gather information about
what the candidates’ positions might be or
what they might do in office,” was Trump's
eldest son, Schiff told Maddow.
“But they had made a decision to intervene to try to help a
candidate, the first person who may have learned that was
the president’s son, through this email because at that time,
we couldn’t be sure whether this was going to go beyond
the intelligence gathering operation.”
Three things, however, are problematic.
First, we know the meeting ended with nothing - implying
that if indeed the Kremlin was the source of this
intelligence gatherin operation, then they wasted a
perfectly good meeting to build goodwill with Trump.
Furthermore, the meeting took place one month before the
alleged Russian hacking of the DNC and long before the
Podesta emails were distributed on Wikileaks.
Second, those at the top of the campaign said they never
heard about the meeting because it was inconsequential
(The Kremlin obviously also denied knowledge of the
meeting).
Third, NYT admits 19 paragraphs down that the author of
the email that allegedly confirms the source is the Kremlin
denies it.
But Mr. Goldstone, who wrote the email
over a year ago, denied any knowledge
of involvement by the Russian
government in the matter, saying that
never dawned on him. “Never, never
ever,” he said. Later, after the email was
described to The Times, efforts to reach
him for further comment were
unsuccessful.
In the interview, he said it was his
understanding that Ms. Veselnitskaya
was simply a “private citizen” for whom
Mr. Agalarov wanted to do a favor.
392
He also said he did not know whether Mr. Agalarov’s
father, Aras Agalarov, a Moscow real estate tycoon known
to be close to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, was
involved. The elder Mr. Agalarov and the younger Mr.
Trump worked together to bring a Trump Tower to
Moscow, but the project never got off the ground.
Mr. Goldstone also said his recollection of the meeting
largely tracked with the account given by the president’s
son, as outlined in the Sunday statement Mr. Trump issued
in response to a Times story on the June 2016 meeting.
Which means, that the New York Times found three
sources who claim that the man who actually wrote the
email is lying about the email he wrote, and that the
president's son is also lying, and that (given the Kremlin
was involved) the Russian government was clueless as
there was no actionable information (Trump Kr walked out
of the meeting). Unless, of course, the Kremlin was never
involved in the first place, especially since nothing ever
came out of the meeting, and Trump senior was likewise
never involved, in which case it would merely come down
to Goldstone boasting about his non-existent connections.
Still, the angle here is clear. By seeking to involve Trump
Jr. in lieu of his father, the NYT article may potentially
draw the younger Trump into special counsel Robert
Mueller’s investigation of possible collusion between the
Trump campaign and representatives of the Russian
government. And, as Bloomberg reports, whether the
meeting violated federal election law would depend on
showing the younger Trump knowingly solicited or
accepted information from the Russian lawyer, Natalia
Veselnitskaya, that could be of value to the campaign.
Since we know that no actionably information was
revealed (suggesting either the Russian government knew
nothing, or said lawyer had nothing to do with the
Kremlin) the only question is whether Trump Jr. "actively
solicited" a meeting which was pitched to him by a person,
whose narrative differs from that of the NYT sources.
In short, the situation could be resolved quickly and
effectively once the Goldstone's email is presented.
Incidentally, as Bloomberg also adds,
"the election commission - which is
frequently gridlocked along partisan lines -
also could decline to act."
Finally, as The Caller reminds us, the Clinton campaign
did the same thing with the Ukraine government that
Trump Jr. is now being accused of doing with a Russian:
A veteran DNC operative who previously
worked in the Clinton White House,
Alexandra Chalupa, worked with
Ukrainian government officials and
journalists from both Ukraine and
 America to dig up Russia-related
opposition research on Trump and
Manafort. She also shared her anti-Trump
research with both the DNC and the Clinton
campaign, according to the Politico report.
Chalupa met with Ukrainian ambassador Valeriy Chaly
and one of his aides, Oksara Shulyar, at the Ukrainian
Embassy in March 2016 to talk about unearthing Paul
Manafort’s Russian connections, Chalupa admitted to
Politico. Four days later, Trump officially hired Manafort.
“The day after Manafort’s hiring was
revealed, she briefed the DNC’s
communications staff on Manafort,
Trump and their ties to Russia,
according to an operative familiar with
the situation,” Politico reported.
The Politico report also notes that the DNC encouraged
Chalupa to try to arrange an interview with Ukrainian
President Petro Poroshenko to talk about Manafort’s ties to
the former pro-Russia president of Ukraine, Viktor
Yanukovych, whom Manafort previously advised.
***
.
393
After Trump’s shocking electoral victory, the Ukrainian
government told Politico,
“We have never worked to research and
disseminate damaging information about
Donald Trump and Paul Manafort.”
But Andrii Telizhenko, a former Ukrainian embassy
officer, told Politico that he was assigned to work with
Chalupa.
“Oksana said that if I had any information,
or knew other people who did, then I
should contact Chalupa,” said Telizhenko
“They were coordinating an
investigation with the Hillary team on
Paul Manafort with Alexandra Chalupa.”
And while we doubt this particular set of similarities will
be featured in the press, we are confident that now that the
"Russian collusion" story has gotten its latest boost of
Adrenalin courtesy of Trump Jr, even as the similar
narrative involving his father had gotten absolutely
nowehere, the only topic across virtuall all media outlets
for the coming week will be, you guessed it, Russia,
something which will promptly drag Trump kicking and
screaming on twitter, where he may finally say or do
something that does have negative consequences.
 Kremlin Denies Knowledge Of
Meeting Between Russian Lawyer & Trump Jr.
Published Time: 10 Jul, 2017 15:46 Edited Time: 11 Jul, 2017 08:06

Committee and supporting Mrs. Clinton,”

he said.
“Her statements were vague, ambiguous
and made no sense. No details or
supporting information was provided or
even offered. It quickly became clear that
she had no meaningful information.”

Donald Trump Jr © Eduardo Munoz / Reuters

The Kremlin does not know Russian lawyer Natalya

Veselnitskaya and was not aware of her reported meeting
with US President Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald
Trump Jr., which he said occurred during the 2016 election
campaign.
The dialogue then switched to the adoption program which
“No, we don’t know who [Natalya was shut down by Moscow after several Russian children
Veselnitskaya] is, and obviously we can’t were killed by their American foster parents, and following
track the meetings of all Russian lawyers at the US adoption of the so-called Magnitsky Act, Trump Jr.
home or abroad,” Kremlin spokesman said.
Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.
“It became clear to me that this was the
The New York Times was the first to publish reports that
true agenda all along and that the claims of
Donald Trump Jr., together with Trump’s son-in-law,
potentially helpful information were a
Jared Kushner, and then campaign chairman Paul J.
pretext for the meeting,” he added.
Manafort met with Veselnitskaya on June 9, 2016.

Trump’s team agreed to get together with the Russian legal

expert after being promised damaging information about
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Trump Jr. said on Saturday that the meeting with

Veselnitskaya took place at Trump Tower in New York,
saying that the adoption of Russian children in the US was
also discussed during it.
The US media said “it is unclear whether
However, on Sunday he added that it took place at the the Russian lawyer… actually produced the
request of an acquaintance from the 2013 Miss Universe promised compromising information about
Mrs. Clinton.”
pageant, which was staged in Russia by his father.

A spokesman for Donald Trump's legal team, Mark

“After pleasantries were exchanged the
Corallo, said that the now US president wasn’t present at
woman stated that she had information that
the meeting with Veselnitskaya and was unaware that such
individuals connected to Russia were
talks took place.
funding the Democratic National

394
Trump’s campaign statements on the need for better
relations with Moscow led to a wave of accusations that he
and his team secretly colluded with the Russian authorities
to win the US presidential election last year.
395
The claims, which have not been backed up with any
convincing proof, have been repeatedly denied by both the
Trump team and Moscow. The US president’s
administration is currently under a congressional
investigation over alleged collusion with Russia.
 Halperin: Whoever Is Helping NY Times
Is Seeking To Do ‘Maximum Damage’ To Trump Jr.
By Jeff Poor
11 Jul 2017
Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” network analyst
Mark Halperin observed that whoever might be the source
for The New York Times’ reporting on Donald Trump, Jr.
about a meeting between a Russian lawyer and Trump, Jr.
was attempting to inflict “maximum damage.”
Partial transcript as follows:
SCARBOROUGH: So Mark Halperin, notice that the first
explanation — on Saturday, the meeting is about
adoption, it’s about their kids.
396
Their statement on Saturday says absolutely nothing,
about, as The New York Times says, ‘dirt’ offered on
Hillary Clinton.
HALPERIN: I’m hearing a lot of interesting things and one
of the things that is not explained here is why he said
what he said on Saturday and then was forced to change
his story.
SCARBOROUGH: Forced.
HALPERIN: Forced to change his story, by seemingly,
what The New York Times say what they’ll learn.
And whoever is helping The New York Times with these
stories seems to be doing it in a way like maximum
damage on Donald Trump Jr. Even if you accept his
Sunday version — accept his Sunday version — ask no
questions, have no suspicions, he’s in a world of hurt.
 Democrats Intentionally Used
Disinformation From Russia To Attack Trump,
Campaign Aides
By Rowan Scarborough - The Washington Times
Tuesday, July 11, 2017
While the mainstream news media hunts for evidence of
Trump-Russia collusion, the public record shows that
Democrats have willfully used Moscow disinformation to
influence the presidential election against Donald Trump
and attack his administration.
The disinformation came in the form of a Russian-fed
dossier written by former British intelligence agent
Christopher Steele. It contains a series of unverified
criminal charges against Mr. Trump’s campaign aides,
such as coordinating Moscow’s hacking of Democratic
Party computers.
Some Democrats have widely circulated the discredited
information. Mr. Steele was paid by the Democrat-funded
opposition research firm Fusion GPS with money from a
Hillary Clinton backer. Fusion GPS distributed the dossier
among Democrats and journalists. The information fell
into the hands of the FBI, which used it in part to
investigate Mr. Trump’s campaign aides.
Mr. Steele makes clear that his unproven charges came
almost exclusively from sources linked to the Kremlin and
Russian President Vladimir Putin. He identified his
sources as “a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure,” a
former “top level Russian intelligence officer active inside
the Kremlin,” a “senior Kremlin official” and a “senior
Russian government official.”
The same Democrats who have condemned Russia’s
election interference via plying fake news and hacking
email servers have quoted freely from the Steele anti-
Trump memos derived from creatures of the Kremlin.
In other words, there is public evidence of significant,
indirect collusion between Democrats and Russian
disinformation, a Trump supporter said.
“If anyone colluded with the Russians, it
was the Democrats,” said a former Trump
campaign adviser who asked not to be
identified because of the pending
investigations. “After all, they’ve routinely
shopped around false claims from the
debunked Steele dossier, which listed
sources including senior Kremlin officials. If
397
anyone should be investigated in
Washington, it ought to be Adam Schiff,
Eric Swalwell, Mark Warner and their
staffers.”
That is a reference to Rep. Adam B. Schiff of California,
the top Democrat on the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence; Sen. Mark R. Warner, Virginia
Democrat and vice chairman of the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence; and Rep. Eric Swalwell, a
California, Democrat on the House intelligence panel.
By his own admission, Mr. Steele’s work has proved
unreliable.
As first reported by The Washington Times on April 25,
Mr. Steele filed a document in a sealed court case in
London acknowledging that a major dossier charge about
hacking Democrats’ computers was unverified. The entire
dossier never should have been made public and Fusion
GPS should not have passed it around, Mr. Steele said in a
filing defending himself against a libel charge.
About Carter Page
Other dossier targets vehemently deny the dirt thrown by
the Kremlin sources.
Mr. Steele’s Russian sources accused Mr. Trump’s
attorney, Michael Cohen, of attending a meeting with
Russian agents in Prague to cover up their role in
Moscow’s hacking. Mr. Cohen has said he has never been
to Prague and was in California at the time.
One of the main targets of Mr. Steele’s Russian sources is
Carter Page, who lived and worked in Moscow as a Merrill
Lynch investor. He had loose ties to the Trump campaign
as a foreign policy adviser and surrogate.
Mr. Steele’s Russian sources accused Mr. Page of a series
of crimes: teaming up with former Trump campaign
manager Paul Manafort to help Russia hack Democratic
computers, meeting in Moscow with two Putin cronies to
plot against Mrs. Clinton and working out a shady
brokerage deal with a Russian oligarch.
Mr. Page told The Washington Times that he has never met
Mr. Manafort, knew nothing about Russian hacking when
it was happening, never met the two Russians named by
Mr. Steele and never completed the supposed investment
deal.
The dossier accusations against Mr. Page surfaced during
the campaign in a Yahoo News story, citing not Mr. Steele
but intelligence sources. It then went out on the U.S.
government’s Voice of America.
In the meantime, the Clinton campaign used the Yahoo
story to attack Mr. Trump:
“Hillary for America Statement on
Bombshell Report About Trump Aide’s
Chilling Ties to Kremlin,” blared the Clinton
campaign’s Sept. 23 press release.
Since the dossier was circulated widely among Democrats,
Mr. Page said, he believes the Clinton team possessed it
and relied on it based on what some of Mrs. Clinton’s
surrogates said publicly.
“After the report by Yahoo News, the
Clinton campaign put out an equally false
press release just minutes after the article
was released that afternoon,” said Mr.
Carter, who has tracked what he believes
is a series of inaccurate stories and
accusations against him.
“Of course, the [Clinton campaign
representatives] were lying about it with the
media nonstop for many months, and
they’ve continued until this day,” Mr. Carter
said. “Both indirectly as they planted
articles in the press and directly with many
TV appearances.”
Democrats cite Russia’s dirt
Even before the Yahoo story, then-Senate Minority Leader
Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, was using the Russian-
sourced dossier.
On Aug. 27, with the campaign in high gear and
knowledge that Russian hackers had penetrated Clinton
campaign computers in the public domain, Mr. Reid
released a letter to then-FBI Director James B. Comey.
Mr. Reid called for an investigation into Mr. Carter’s trip
to Moscow, where he supposedly
“met with high-ranking sanctioned
individuals. Any such meetings should be
investigated and made part of the public
record.”
398
Mr. Reid’s evidence surely came from the dossier and its
Russian sources.
In the dossier, Mr. Steele clearly states that his anti-Trump
accusations are from the Kremlin, which means some
Democrats have been willingly repeating Moscow
propaganda for public consumption in Washington.
No Democrats have embraced the Russian-sourced dossier
more than members of the House intelligence committee,
which is investigating Moscow’s interference in the
election.
Mr. Schiff read from the dossier extensively at a March
hearing featuring Mr. Comey and Navy Adm. Michael
Rogers, who leads the National Security Agency.
As Mr. Schiff and other Democrats were bemoaning
Kremlin activities against Mrs. Clinton, they were more
than willing to quote Kremlin sources attacking Mr. Trump
during the election campaign.
Mr. Schiff lauded Mr. Steele for disclosing that Rosneft, a
Russian-owned gas and oil company, planned to sell a 19.5
percent share to an investor and that Mr. Page was offered
a brokerage fee.
Trouble is, the 19.5 percent share was announced publicly
by Moscow before Mr. Steele wrote that memo. Mr. Page
said he was never involved in any talk about a
commission.
Mr. Schiff was more than willing to quote Kremlin
sources.
“According to Steele’s Russian sources,
the campaign has offered documents
damaging to Hillary Clinton, which the
Russians would publish through an outlet
that gives them deniability like WikiLeaks,”
he said.
Mr. Schiff also said:
“According to Christopher Steele, a former
British intelligence officer, who is reportedly
held in high regard by U.S. intelligence,
Russian sources tell him that Page has
also had a secret meeting with Igor Sechin,
CEO of the Russian gas giant, Rosneft.
Sechin is reported to be a former KGB
agent and close friend of Putin’s.”
Mr. Page has said repeatedly that he does not know Mr.
Sechin and did not meet with him in Moscow.
Meanwhile, Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas, another
Democrat on the House committee, lauded Mr. Steele’s
Kremlin sourcing.
“I want to take a moment to turn to the
Christopher Steele dossier, which was first
mentioned in the media just before the
election and published in full by media
outlets in January,” Mr. Castro said. “My
focus today is to explore how many claims
within Steele’s dossier are looking more
and more likely, as though they are
accurate.
“This is not someone who doesn’t know
how to run a source and not someone
without contacts. The allegations it raises
about President Trump’s campaign aides’
connections to Russians, when overlaid
with known established facts and timelines
from the 2016 campaign, are very
revealing,” he said.
Rep. Andre Carson, Indiana Democrat, said: “There’s a lot
in the dossier that is yet to be proven, but increasingly as
we’ll hear throughout the day, allegations are checking
out.”
On MSNBC in March, Rep. Maxine Waters, California
Democrat, said she believed the dossier section on Mr.
Trump and supposed sex acts with prostitutes in Moscow
were true.
.
399
“Oh, I think it should be taken a look at,”
she said. “I think they should really read it,
understand it, analyze it and determine
what’s fact, what may not be fact. We
already know that the part about the
coverage that they have on him with sex
actions is supposed to be true. They have
said that that’s absolutely true. Some other
things they kind of allude to. Yes, I think he
should go into that dossier and see what’s
there.”
Fusion GPS widely circulated the dossier during the
presidential race. The public got its first glance when the
news site BuzzFeed posted it online in January, with its
editor saying he doubted it was true.
One person who says he knows it is a fabrication is
Russian entrepreneur Aleksej Gubarev.
The dossier quotes Russian sources as saying Mr.
Gubarev’s technology company, XBT, used botnets to
flood Democratic computers with porn and spying devices.
Mr. Gubarev is suing Mr. Steele for libel in London and is
suing BuzzFeed in Florida.
It is in the London case that Mr. Steele acknowledged that
his memo on Mr. Gubarev was unverified.
 Lawyers: Donald Trump Jr.
Is Getting Terrible Legal Advice
Career Prosecutors And Criminal Defense Attorneys Are Aghast At The
Behavior Of The President’s Eldest Son—Who Appears
Determined To Make Matters Worse.
Betsy Woodruff
07.11.17 1:00 AM ET
Stephanie Keith/Reuters
The legal advice—or lack thereof—that Donald Trump Jr.
is getting has criminal defense attorneys scratching their
heads and suspecting he’s making matters worse for
himself.
Over the course of the 48-hour period in which he found
himself at the center of the Russia investigation, the
president’s oldest son was either receiving terrible legal
advice, ignoring good legal advice, or not getting any legal
advice at all, according to the estimation of career
attorneys. And the damage he did to himself in that
window of time could dog him for months.
It all started Saturday, when The New York Times first
reported that Don Jr. had met with a Kremlin-linked
lawyer at Trump Tower during the campaign. Don Jr.
tried, unsuccessfully, to downplay its significance. When
the paper followed up that first report with another item
indicating he agreed to the meeting in hopes of getting
information the campaign could use against Hillary
Clinton, Don. Jr. did something very, very strange: He
himself confirmed all the Times’ reporting and gave them
additional details about the meeting.
“After pleasantries were exchanged, the
woman stated that she had information that
individuals connected to Russia were
funding the Democratic National
Committee and supporting Mrs. Clinton,”
400
Trump told the paper. “Her statements
were vague, ambiguous, and made no
sense. No details or supporting information
was provided or even offered. It quickly
became clear that she had no meaningful
information.”
Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor, told The
Daily Beast that Don Jr.’s comment wasn’t very smart.
“He’s stupid for saying what he said about
why he took the meeting,” said Mariotti,
who now does criminal defense work at
Thompson Coburn.
“It’s very hard for me to believe that any
lawyer would advise him to make a public
statement containing factual assertions
about what happened in a meeting with an
agent of the Russian government,” he
added. “What’s more likely is that Donald
Trump Jr. spoke without consulting legal
counsel.”
It was also deeply unwise for him to speak for himself,
said Scott Greenfield, a New York criminal defense
attorney. Lawyers usually speak for their clients in these
situations to keep them from saying something that could
hurt them in court. That’s why Jared Kushner and Michael
Flynn are keeping mum about the Russia probe: They have
good lawyers and appear to be following their advice. Not
so, at least over the weekend, for Don Jr.
Mariotti said Don Jr.’s one-man legal team—composed of
New York attorney Alan Futerfas, according to Reuters—
is also curious. Futerfas has extensive criminal defense in
New York, including on Securities and Exchange
Commission investigations, but isn’t admitted to the D.C.
bar, and helms a tiny three-lawyer practice.
“This is a case that could be very complex
and could involve rarely charged statutes
and factual situations that are
 unprecedented,” Mariotti said. “If Bob
Mueller is going to have dozens of lawyers
and investigators on his side, if I were the
subject of his inquiry, I would want to have
more than one person on my side.”
And that one person has his work cut out for him. On
Monday afternoon, he tweeted that he would happily
“work with” the Senate Intelligence Committee on its
Russia probe. And it made criminal defense attorneys
cringe.
“A good lawyer would have advised him to
stop talking, stop tweeting, stop giving
comments of any type or description until
we have a firm grasp of what all the facts
are,” said Greenfield. “Regardless of
anything, you don’t go shooting off your
mouth until you have a clear idea of what’s
at stake.”
“He doesn’t have any intention of following
his lawyer’s instructions,” Greenfield
added. “It seems remarkably typical of what
is coming out of the administration, from a
legal viewpoint. It’s insanely asinine.”
Mariotti added that lawyers usually go through all their
clients’ communications—emails, texts, voicemails, etc.—
before making any commitments about cooperating with
.
401
investigators. The process usually takes days, at the least.
But Don Jr. announced his eagerness to help out the Senate
committee less than three hours after Sen. Susan Collins
called on him to testify.
Lawyers who spoke with The Daily Beast agreed that one
person who seems to be receiving and following very good
legal advice is Jared Kushner. The president’s son-in-law
doesn’t tweet, rarely if ever makes public statements, and
has Washington superlawyer Jamie Gorelick—who is
friendly with Mueller himself—on retainer to handle the
probe.
“In terms of reacting to the allegations, he
appears to be either smarter to begin with
or smarter in terms of listening to lawyers,”
said Ken White, who does federal criminal
defense work in Los Angeles and was
formerly an assistant U.S. attorney. “In
terms of doing things, maybe not so
much—in terms of taking meetings he
shouldn’t take.”
Don Jr.’s decision to finally lawyer up may mean his
Twitter feed is less interesting. But it won’t undo the
damage he did in the past two days.
 Russian Lawyer Who Met With
Donald Trump Jr. Denies Kremlin Links, Clinton Info
By Adam Shaw
11 Jul 2017
Yury Martyanov /Kommersant/via AP
The Russian lawyer who met with
Donald Trump Jr. last year has denied
claims that she is linked to the Kremlin
in an interview published Tuesday, and
says that she didn’t meet with him to
hand over information about the Clinton
campaign — pouring cold water on the
latest attempts to tie the Trump
campaign to an alleged Russia
conspiracy.
The New York Times has run multiple stories in recent
days reporting on a meeting that occurred during the
presidential campaign between President Trump’s son and
Natalia Veselnitskaya. The Times reported Sunday that
Trump Jr. took the meeting in the belief that the
participants may have had compromising information on
Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Trump Jr. joked
Monday that he was “the first person on a campaign to
ever take a meeting to hear info about an opponent.”
Obviously I'm the first person on a
campaign to ever take a meeting to hear
info about an opponent… went nowhere
but had to listen. https://t.co/ccUjL1KDEa
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr)
July 10, 2017
The Times reported Monday that Trump Jr. was informed
in an email that the potential information was part of a
402
Russian effort to aid the campaign. It did not publish the
email, which was only described to Times reporters.
The Times refers to Veselnitskaya as a
“Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer.”
But in an interview with NBC News, Veselnitskaya denied
any such connection and said she only works to challenge
the Magnitsky Act.
The Times has reported that the meeting merely discussed
the Magnitsky Act — which imposed sanctions on Russian
officials linked to human rights abuses. Russian President
Vladimir Putin responded by banning adoption of Russian
children by prospective American parents.
Veselnitskaya painted a similar picture. She said that while
the participants in the meeting, that included former
campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Trump’s son-in-
law Jared Kushner, may have hoped for information on
Clinton, she offered no such thing.
“I never had any damaging or sensitive
information about Hillary Clinton. It was
never my intention to have that,” she said.
“It is quite possible that maybe they were
longing for such an information. They
wanted it so badly that they could only hear
the thought that they wanted.”
As opposed to a meeting reeking of collusion,
Veselnitskaya paints a picture of a short meeting that
lasted approximately 20-30 minutes, in which the
participants were disinterested. She said Manafort was
looking at his phone during the meeting and seemed
“absent-minded,” while Kushner left after 10 minutes and
Trump Jr. only asked her one question.
“The question that I was asked was as
follows: whether I had any financial records
which might prove that the funds used to
sponsor the DNC were coming from
inappropriate source,” she told NBC.
Trump Jr. has mocked the controversy surrounding the
meeting. On Tuesday, he called the controversy
“nonsense” and suggested it was a sign of desperation
from the media and Democrats.
.
403
Media & Dems are extremely invested in
the Russia story. If this nonsense meeting
is all they have after a yr, I understand the
desperation!
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr)
July 11, 2017
 Don Jr. Russia ‘Scandal’ Is Perfect Illustration
Of The Stinking Political Swamp Trump Must Drain
Because “Russia”…Again
By Usafeaturesmedia
Posted On July 11, 2017
(National Sentinel) Politics: So, collecting opposition
research from a foreign source on President Donald J.
Trump — even when it’s complete BS — is good. But if
Donald Trump Jr. attempts to collect some opposition
research on Hillary Clinton from a foreign source, that’s a
“scandal.”
That’s what we’re being told to believe regarding this
latest manufactured dust-up involving the president’s son,
“Russia,” and a brief meeting he had with a Russian
lawyer who claimed to possess information that was
damaging to Clinton’s campaign.
In the latest from The New York Times — which is doing
its best to continue beating this dead Russian horse — Don
Jr. was supposedly sent an email describing the Russian
government’s “efforts” to “aid” his father’s campaign:
Before arranging a meeting with a Kremlin-
connected Russian lawyer he believed
would offer him compromising information
about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr. was
informed in an email that the material was
part of a Russian government effort to aid
his father’s candidacy, according to three
people with knowledge of the email.
The email to the younger Mr. Trump was
sent by Rob Goldstone, a publicist and
former British tabloid reporter who helped
broker the June 2016 meeting. In a
statement on Sunday, Mr. Trump
acknowledged that he was interested in
receiving damaging information about Mrs.
Clinton, but gave no indication that he
404
thought the lawyer might have been a
Kremlin proxy.
It should be noted, by the way, that the Times has never
seen nor actually read the email in question, otherwise the
paper would have reported as much. And lest we forget,
last month, former FBI Director James Comey told
Congress that a February 14 article by the Times alleging
Trump associates “had repeated contacts with senior
Russian intelligence officials in the year before the
election” was, “in the main,” untrue. That article at least
cited “four current and former American officials.”
Monday’s article only cites “three people.”
Also, this: In an exclusive with NBC News, the lawyer —
Natalia Veselnitskaya — denied being connected to the
Kremlin, at least in the nefarious manner the Times is
suggesting, saying she met with Don Jr. and Trump
campaign officials to to press her client’s interest in the
Magnitsky Act — not to hand over information about
Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
So there’s that.
“Obviously I’m the first person on a
campaign to ever take a meeting to hear
info about an opponent… went nowhere
but had to listen,” Don Jr. tweeted
sarcastically on Monday.
But wait — what about that now-infamous, and widely
discredited, “Trump dossier?” Remember that? Talk about
the mother lode of opposition research; and that, too, if
you recall, was collected by a foreign source with alleged
“connections” to Russia — former British operative
Christopher Steele.
Except that it wasn’t really opposition research. It was a
political hit job all the way. And what’s more, it was very
likely fabricated as part of a Democrat-led effort to
undermine Trump.
There’s also this. If you recall, one of the first buffoons to
pretend like the dossier was real in an attempt to hurt
Trump was someone from his own party: #nevertrumper
Sen. John McCain, RINO-Arizona. And now he faces new
questions about his involvement in handing the phony
dossier over to then-FBI Director James Comey to ‘look
into,’ as though it were real, in connection to a pair of
defamation lawsuits filed by defendants in the UK and
U.S. who were named in the document. Steele also faces
questioning.
So in the end, Americans are supposed to believe that any
and all opposition research on Donald J. Trump, no matter
how questionable the source and content, is perfect fine,
405
regardless of the source — but any attempt to dig up dirt
on Trump’s opponent by his son or members of his
campaign team is a big, fat scandal.
Because “Russia.”
“If those are the characters through which
the Russian government tries to influence
foreign elections, the Kremlin suffers from a
serious recruitment problem,” writes
Breitbart’s Joel Pollack.
Again, we’re not buying this, and frankly, neither should
you.
 GOP Senator: Time ‘Running Out’
To Pass Trump Agenda
By Nicholas Ballasy
July 11, 2017

sure we have plenty of time to get all of that

done.”

Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) compared Congress to

struggling college students.

“We’ve got healthcare. We’ve got budgets.

We’ve only got 31 scheduled days in the
Senate between now and the end of our
fiscal year, Sept. 30, to get a budget
GOP senators hold a news conference in the Capitol to encourage the
passed. This past year we were 7 months
Senate to work through the August recess on July 11, 2017. (Tom into the fiscal year before we finally passed
Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images) a budget,” Daines said.
“So I don’t see any reason why we need to
WASHINGTON – Republican senators who successfully be leaving this town in August. We should
lobbied Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to be here doing the people’s business. If you
truncate lawmakers’ summer break said today that with were going to school and you were getting
limited working days left between now and the end of the failing grades in your spring semester, you
fiscal year they have to tackle multiple items on President better stay in school for the summer and go
Trump’s agenda. to summer school, not take a recess,” he
added.
“The president basically said at the first of
the year that there were four major
priorities this year. One was healthcare,
one was regulation, one was tax and one
was the Supreme Court,” Sen. David
Perdue (R-Ga.) said during a press
conference with a group of GOP senators.
“We’re moving on most of those, but right
now even if we get through healthcare in
the next week or two, between now and the
end of the fiscal year, we only have 31
working days left and we have the debt
ceiling to get through, the budget for 2018,
the reconciliation that goes with that and Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) agreed with Daines.
the appropriations process to fund the
government before September 30,” he “What we don’t have is time. What we are
added. running out of is time … so what do we do?
We can create more time. We can do that,”
Perdue said not taking the traditional August recess is Sullivan said.
“much bigger” than repealing and replacing Obamacare.
After the senators’ presser, McConnell announced he
“We need to get to this tax bill. This bill is would trim the five-week break by two weeks, letting
the final chapter in getting this economy lawmakers go home the third week of August.
going that the president laid out earlier this
year,” Perdue said. “We just want to make
406
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said there’s an “enormous
amount” of work for Congress to do and that the Senate’s
“artificially imposed” deadlines do not “serve the interest”
of the American people.
“Whether you are on the left end of the
political spectrum or the right end or
somewhere in between, it’s difficult to
dispute the fact that there’s a lot that needs
to be done,” Lee said.
“At this time, it doesn’t make any sense for
us to just take the month of August off and I
think we ought to continue to work through
it. We also even need to look at things like
weekends, particularly as we are up
against certain time crunches. We’ve got to
be prepared to work long hours and
certainly not take this recess,” he added.
Lee said he is still currently against the Senate healthcare
bill unless some changes are made including allowing
people to use pre-tax dollars from health savings accounts
to pay premiums as well as adopting the “consumer
freedom” language that’s been discussed.
“That’s one way to get me to yes on the bill.
If it’s not that particular amendment, some
other form of meaningful release from the
Title I regulations in the Affordable Care
Act,” he said.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said the Senate is moving in
the right direction on healthcare and must finish the job
before the end of the fiscal year.
.
407
“Wouldn’t it be nice for the first time in
years to actually go back to the American
people and say while we are trying to fix a
system that’s not working we will at least let
you know in advance of the beginning of
the next fiscal year what we intend to
spend,” he said.
Rounds said the Senate GOP healthcare bill is “better
than” Obamacare.
“Our biggest challenge here is trying to get
over an Obamacare hangover,” he said.
“We can make this a better product than
what we have today.”
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said the Senate has to work
“all or a portion” of the August recess to “show some
results” to the American people.
“We have got to work longer and harder,”
he said. “We can’t pass bills back home.
We’ve got to be here.”
Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.) said the Senate should work
on weekends to tackle the agenda Trump was elected to
implement.
“Keep us here through the weekends. Let
us work late at night, early in the morning.
After all, soldiers, men and women around
this world are working all hours of the day
and night to protect our country,” he said.
“We owe no less than to address the
issues and take the time to do it.”
 Which Campaign
Truly Colluded With Russia?
Posted By B
July 11, 2017

Case 1: Case 2:

A Hillary Clinton campaign cut-out hires the (former?) Some lobbyist for Russian business interests contacts the
British intelligence agent Steele to pay money to (former?) Trump campaign with a promise to deliver some dirt on
Russian intelligence agents and high-level Kremlin Hillary Clinton. She meets campaign officials but no dirt
employees for dirt about Donald Trump. They deliver on Clinton is offered. Instead the lobbyist uses the time to
some dirty fairy tales. The resulting dossier is peddled far lobby for the business' cause. There is no follow up.
and wide throughout Washington DC with the intent of
damaging Trump.
Question:
Which of the two cases stinks of "collusion with the Russians"?

408
 Countercoup 6:
Did @Crowdstrike Fabricate ‘#Russianhacking By
#Guccifer2.0’? Did Peegate Dossier Authors At FusionGPS
Arrange For ‘Kremlin Connected Lawyer’s Meeting’
With Donald Trump Jr.?
Posted By James The Russian Analyst
July 11, 2017

Setting aside the unsolved Seth Rich murder,

there is a separate bombshell threatening to
blow apart the mainstream media and the
largely accepted by Congress ‘slam dunk’ case
that the Russian government ‘hacked the
election’. And unlike the Rich case, it doesn’t
revolve around any lost or covered up forensic
evidence, or a cooperative but terrified witness
having to come forward.
The Crowdstrike Cookie Crumbles:
Trying and Failing to Explain Why FBI
Didn’t Get the DNC Server
The credibility of the U.S. Intelligence Community (US
IC) assessment produced by the politicized by the Obama
Administration directors of four agencies (CIA/FBI/NSA
and ODNI), rather than the long (and falsely) repeated
claim of unanimity among 17 rests on two foundations:
alleged NSA or 5Eyes partner ‘trunk’ data which (sorry
Reality Winner) will likely remain forever classified to
‘protect sources and methods’, and IT forensics conducted
by a single company: Crowdstrike. Sure, ThreatConnect a
separate cyber security firm claimed to have authenticated
Crowdstrike’s findings that the DNC ‘hackers’ left behind
traces consistent with an alleged state sponsored Russian
hacking group dubbed ‘Fancy Bear’. But the connections
between Crowdstrike’s USSR-born CEO Dmitry

409
Alperovich, the military industrial complex/foreign
government funded NATO think tank the Atlantic Council,
and Alperovich’s wife at the Obama Department of
Homeland Security have raised questions about the firm
since last year.
Crowdstrike’s Ukrainian Army Artilleryists ‘Hacked
by GRU’ Story:
A Bad Screw Up of Cyber-Attribution or
a Flagrant Falsehood?
More important than suspected partisan political
allegiances or Cold War 2.0 axes to grind with Moscow,
two serious problems have developed since last summer
for Alperovitch and his company’s credibility. The first is
the company’s identification of the GRU FancyBear
hackers it says were behind the DNC breach and data
dump as having also hacked iPads and other personal
devices of Ukrainian Army artilleryists from late 2014 to
2016. The Russian military sponsored or directed
FancyBear hackers goal, according to the Crowdstrike
report released in December, was to identify the positions
of Ukrainian self-propelled and towed artillery on the
Donbass battlefield to facilitate Russian proxies destroying
them. Crowdstrike erroneously cited a report by the UK
based think tank the International Institute for Strategic
Studies (IISS) claiming that the Ukrainian military had
suffered losses of up to 80% of its prewar stocks of its
deployable, 1980s Soviet Army vintage D-30 howitzers.
However, in a major embarrassment for a cyber security
firm so closely tied to the pro-Kiev Atlantic Council, the
Ukrainians denied the level of losses and that the Russian
military had hacked any app used by artillery officers to
improve their battlefield accuracy. After looking at the
story, the Russia Analyst determined the most likely
explanation for heavy losses of Ukrainian artillery pieces
was a combination of several factors, and likely had little
to do with any hacking of UAF officers’ iPads or tablets.
While GRU signals intelligence officers based in Donetsk
likely did hack into Ukraine’s cellphone towers network to
better triangulate UAF positions from the Kiev forces
cellular signals (a technique likely beyond the capabilities
of formerly Ukrainian citizen hackers native to the
breakaway republics), this has nothing to do with the
specific exploit that Crowdstrike alleged had been used by
FancyBear.
410
A screenshot of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s denial of
Crowdstrike’s claim that its artilleryists personal tablets or iPads
were hacked by the Russian security services for purposes of
battlefield geolocation and counterbattery fire.
Skeptics like Jeffrey Carr documented within days of the
original Crowdstrike report that the exploits cited in it
were available ‘in the wild’ to Russian and Ukrainian
hackers alike, without being necessarily attributable to
Russian state sponsored actors. One explanation for
Ukrainian artillery losses, however falsified by Kiev’s
(thousands of UAF casualties hiding) Ministry of Defense,
likely had to do with cannons shipped off to Syrian
jihadists ‘moderate’ and otherwise via Odessa and Turkey.
These were probably being counted by enterprising and
corrupt UAF officers as ‘destroyed in the ATO’, since
many artillery pieces were cannibalized for spare parts or
lost in the heaviest fighting around the so-called ‘Southern
Cauldron’ south of Ilovaisk and at Debaltsevo between
July 2014 and February 2015. Another explanation, and
one that has considerable evidence to support it, is
crushing counter-battery fire from the so-called
‘vacationers’ visiting Donbass — or Russian Army
artillery based near the border during the pivotal battles of
mid-to-late summer 2014.
POTUS Tweets: Why Didn’t FBI Ever
Obtain the DNC Server and Rely on
Crowdstrike Instead?
The second major problem for Crowdstrike’s credibility is
far better known than the Ukrainian artilleryists getting
hacked by Russian forces that Kiev says didn’t happen.
That is, the presidential highlighted failure of the FBI to
obtain the actual DNC server, and the agency’s reliance
under since fired director James Comey on Crowdstrike
for alleged forensics proving Russian government hacking.
This supposed non-issue with the entire case against the
Russians ‘meddling in the election’ has been persistently
challenged by President Trump and his political allies,
especially Fox News host Sean Hannity and his regular
guest, talk radio host Laura Ingraham:
 parent organization. I was envious of their resources and
organizational support. While in the FBI, Henry was
already tracking the activities of Russian intelligence and
criminal hackers. That continued once he retired from the
FBI and began working at CrowdStrike. Those in the FBI
who took CrowdStrike’s research probably did so because
of Henry’s reputation.

And why didn’t the DNC turn their email servers over to
the FBI? For one thing, remember that Hillary Clinton was
under FBI investigation at the time for her own email
troubles. She and the DNC saw no upside to turning over
anything that the FBI could use against her in that
investigation. That’s just as prudent as Trump not
voluntarily handing over detailed records of his business
and financial dealings with Russians. This is especially
true since Mueller has assembled a team of experienced
federal prosecutors, not investigators.
The response from anti-Trump and especially ex-US IC
#NeverTrump ers has been to ignore the oddness of trying
to have the cyber equivalent to a murder investigation
without a body. Instead, they rely on the unseen and likely
to never be released data the NSA may have as well as the
supposedly impeccable professional background of
Crowdstrike’s management to maintain a weakening
Narrative, one that Trump has doubted and the Russians
have consistently denied. Russian President Vladimir Putin
denied any election meddling to Trump’s face during last
week’s G20 meeting in Hamburg, and claimed at the
subsequent press conference that Trump accepted his
denial — an account disputed by Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson.

Here for example, is a less partisan source, and one that

has been highly critical of Washington’s ‘Borg’ist foreign Crowdstrike CEO Dmitry Alperovitch, who sits on the NATO
supporting, foreign governments funded Atlantic Council think
policy Establishment at retired Army Col. Pat Lang’s tank’s advisory board (photo used for U.S. Fair Use purposes of
Turcopolier blog, trying to explain the FBI’s failure to comment or criticism)
obtain the server from the DNC. Writer ‘TTG’, who
Comey’s Reliance on Crowdstrike and
believes that Russia indeed hacked the DNC and/or waged
Failure to Get a Justice Dept.
information warfare against the U.S. in 2015-16, had this
Subpoena for the DNC Server
to say:
TTG’s claim that the Democrats feared there might be
You, David Habakkuk and many others seem to rely on the
incriminating material for the FBI to find on the DNC
questionable parentage and demeanor of Dimitri
server seems persuasive, but doesn’t quite wash with
Alperovitch to justify your conviction that Russia had
Comey’s tendency to absolve Hillary Clinton from
nothing to do with the DNC or Podesta hacks or did not
prosecution based on her alleged state of mind. That of
attempt to influence our 2016 election. Beyond your
course, despite the media and his friends campaign to
reasonable and justifiable skepticism of the IC, I think
portray him as a non-partisan lawman, spared Attorney
you’re all trying too hard to exonerate Putin and prevent
General Loretta Lynch from having to take the politically
any besmirchment of the immaculate glory of Trump’s
difficult course after her infamous private jet meeting with
election to the Presidency of the United States.
Bill Clinton last summer of saving candidate Hillary from
legal consequences for her home bathroom server storage
Alperovitch did not run the team investigating the DNC of highly classified data. Comey’s reopening of the
hack. It was Shawn Henry, a twenty plus year veteran FBI investigation into the Clinton email server, widely blamed
agent. He was assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber by Democrats for Hillary’s loss before the Russian hacking
Division from 2008 to 2010 and is credited with boosting excuse took preeminence in the media, turned out to be
the FBI’s computer crime and cybersecurity capabilities. I little more than a gesture by an FBI director hoping to
was intimately familiar with the FBI Cyber Division, their
robust capabilities and the respect they received from their
411
hedge his bets as the pre-election polling tightened in
Trump’s favor.
Comey’s political games and attempts to cover for the
Clinton crime family while promoting the Deep State
#MuhRussia vendetta against Trump justly cost him his
job. Now Comey stands accused of leaking classified data
in memos to a friend, who gave them to The New York
Times. But this is far from his most serious betrayal of the
public trust as FBI Director, if the latest bombshell
analysis of the #DNCLeaks data is correct.
Guccifer 2.0 as Lone Wolf Hacker Out to
Expose DNC Corruption, a Russian
Intelligence-Created Persona? Research
Strongly Suggest BOTH IDs Are
Fraudulent and #DNCLeaks Was an
Inside Job
Two individuals — one named and one anonymous —
have come forward with cyber forensics expertise
demonstrating that someone must have had physical access
to the DNC system computers, in order to download the
DNC Leaks dump released into the wild by the person or
persons claiming to be ‘Guccifer 2.0’. According to British
cyber researcher Adam Carter and a source known as The
Forensicator, no overseas hacker, whether Russian or
Romanian, altered metadata linked to what the US IC’s
January 2017 assessment said was a Russian intel created
‘persona’ Guccifer 2.0 behind last summer’s #DNCLeaks
email dump. Instead the data was uploaded using a USB
drive by someone physically accessing the DNC data
operating on U.S. Eastern Time:
Disobedient Media previously reported that Crowdstrike is
the only group that has directly analyzed the DNC servers.
Other groups including Threat Connect have used the
412
information provided by Crowdstrike to claim that
Russians hacked the DNC. However, their evaluation was
based solely on information ultimately provided by
Crowdstrike; this places the company in the unique
position of being the only direct source of evidence that a
hack occurred.
The group’s President Shawn Henry is a retired executive
assistant director of the FBI while their co-founder and
CTO, Dmitri Alperovitch, is a senior fellow at the Atlantic
Council, which as we have reported, is linked to George
Soros. Carter has stated on his website that “At present, it
looks a LOT like Shawn Henry & Dmitri Alperovitch
(CrowdStrike executives), working for either the HRC
campaign or DNC leadership were very likely to have been
behind the Guccifer 2.0 operation.” Carter’s website was
described by Wikileaks as a useful source of primary
information specifically regarding Guccifer 2.0.
Carter recently spoke to Disobedient Media, explaining
that he had been contacted by The Forensicator, who had
published a document which contained a detailed analysis
of the data published by Guccifer 2.0 as “NGP-VAN.”
The document states that the files that eventually published
as “NGP-VAN” by Guccifer 2.0 were first copied to a
system located in the Eastern Time Zone, with this
conclusion supported by the observation that “the .7z file
times, after adjustment to East Coast time fall into the
range of the file times in the .rar files.” This constitutes the
first of a number of points of analysis which suggests that
the information eventually published by the Guccifer 2.0
persona was not obtained by a Russian hacker.
Try and ‘debunk’ this to salvage
@Crowdstrike and the Dem-corrupted
Deep State’s collapsing case, Mr. ‘ex’
GCHQ @PwnAlltheThings:
 someone playing a role and acting the part of ‘Eastern
Bloc’ hacker.

Other bits of metadata found in G2.0’s publically released

metadata, such as the Cyrillic name and patronymic ‘Feliks
Edmundovich’ (short for ‘Iron’ Feliks Dzherzhinsky, the
first chairman of the Soviet secret police during the
Bolshevik terror) was seized on by ThreatConnect and
reporters sympathetic to the Crowdstrike
#RussiansHacking Hillary for Trump narrative as
fingerprints of a Russian state-sponsored or directed cyber
attack. The question as to WHY Russian pros working for
GRU/SVR would leave behind such proudly sovok traces
was downplayed, or cited as proof the Russians brazenly
wished to leave behind an electronic calling card to taunt
The ‘Ex’ GCHQ British Connection —
U.S. spooks.
@PwnAlltheThings, WSJ ‘Scoops’
About an Independent Republican’s
Efforts to Obtain Hillary’s Disappeared
Bathroom Server Emails, and the Ben
Wittes/Jim Comey Plot Against Trump

Adam Carter has previously written a summary published

by Disobedient Media in June 2017, carefully dissecting
the timeline of the alleged DNC hack and the release of
internal emails by ‘Guccifer 2.0’, as well as problems
journalists quickly and (too) easily identified with the
persona’s claims to be a Romanian. At the time, when
journalists pointed out Guccifer 2.0 did not appear to
understand questions posed to him by reporters over
encrypted chat programs in the Romanian language, the
Russia Analyst assumed G2.0’s mother tongue was
Russian, but as a Moldovan SSR born man he self- In addition to Crowdstrike and Threatconnect, reporters
identified as ethnically Romanian. Alternatively, we being carefully shepherded to the conclusion that
surmised G2.0 had obtained a Romanian passport for Russians and only hackers sponsored by the Russian state
Schengen zone work or family reasons, just like tens of could’ve breached the DNC or dumped its emails to
thousands of his Moldovan countrymen (some Romanians Wikileaks and on the newly created DNCLeaks.org web
have historic claims on Moldovan territory and ultra- site relied on another ‘independent’ source for
nationalists resent what they see as Russian occupation confirmation: Matt Tait. Better known by his Twitter
since 1992 of the unrecognized statelet of Transnistria aka handle of @PwnAlltheThings. Why do we mention Mr.
the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic). Tait’s careful promotion of the #RussianHacking theory
last summer here? Because Mr. Tait recently published an
article in Lawfare, a Democratic party friendly national
Despite G2.0’s protestations of disagreements with
security blog titled “The Time I Got Recruited to
Russian foreign policy (a hint of distaste for the PMR?) as
Collude with the Russians“.
a self-identified Romanian, our theory of G2.0 as a
Moldovan hacker for hire or a lone wolf who perhaps, had
turned to the Russian security services for protection once
he got in over his head could not be
substantiated. According to Adam Carter, G2.0 is very
likely a made up persona, not invented by Russian
cyberspies, but by someone working with the DNC (to
create a ‘Russians!’ distraction from Seth Rich’s murder?)
or alternatively, Crowdstrike employees. The use of
indefinite articles like a native English speaker and/or his
improving rather than degrading English as online
conversations went on with reporters and Republicans
Who publishes Lawfare, you may ask? Why of course,
looking for DNC dirt reaching out to him was a giveaway Benjamin Wittes, a figure who became prominent on
that G.20 was likely neither Romanian nor Russian, but Twitter since last year with a large following of
#TheResistance activists determined to uncover proof that
413
Trump had been installed in the White House by the
Kremlin. Wittes recent ‘tick tock’ promises on Twitter of
shocking revelations regarding President Trump or his
campaign’s alleged collusion with the Russians turned out
of course, to be duds, albeit nothing-burgers promoted by
the Dow Jones owned Wall Street Journal, whose owner
Rupert Murdoch and the late Fox News boss Roger Ailes
had been at odds with Trump since the New Yorker
decided to run for president in 2015. Naturally, Lawfare
and is fiercely defending Comey against charges that he
illegally leaked information and/or violated certain FBI
non-disclosure agreements.
In @PwnAlltheThings account of email exchanges with
Peter W. Smith, a Republican investor from the wealthy
Chicago north shore suburb of Lake Forest who died
weeks before Tait published his recollections (and thus
wasn’t around to dispute them), the ‘former’ GCHQ
analyst provides no actual evidence Smith was in touch
with Russian government operatives. Neither does the
WSJ article which inspired Tait to come forward, on a
website that just happens to be published by a close
Comey ally and card carrying member of the Democratic
Party Deep State. The best Tait could claim is that Smith
didn’t care who may have obtained Hillary’s bathroom
server emails, even if they were Russian intelligence
service supported hackers. But Tait like his friend and
Comey- buddy Wittes, has no proof Smith obtained any
actual Hillary emails via anonymous interlocutors on the
‘dark web’ or elsewhere from anyone, much less the
Russians, nor that Trump campaign staff directed his
efforts. As former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy
observed in National Review (a publication, it must be
repeated here, that published an entire issue devoted to the
#NeverTrump cause):
Smith’s desire to obtain the hacked emails, if there were
any, peaked around Labor Day 2016 — i.e., during the last
weeks of the campaign. This was many months after the
FBI had taken physical custody of Clinton’s homebrew
server and other devices containing her e-mails. It was also
two months after the Bureau’s then-director, James
Comey, had told the country that the FBI had found no
evidence that Clinton had been hacked . . . but that her
carelessness about communications security, coupled with
the proficiency of hackers in avoiding detection, meant her
e-mails could well have been compromised throughout her
years as secretary of state.
In other words, Peter W. Smith was one of about 320
million people in the United States who figured that
Clinton’s e-mails had been hacked — by Russia, China,
Iran, ISIS, the NSA, the latest iteration of “Guccifer,” and
maybe even that nerdy kid down at Starbucks with “Feel
the Bern” stickers on his laptop. Besides having no
relationship with Trump, Smith also had no relationship
with the Russian regime. Besides not knowing whether the
Clinton e-mails were actually hacked, he also had no idea
whether the Kremlin or anyone close to Vladimir Putin had
414
obtained the e-mails. In short, he wouldn’t have been able
to tell you whether Trump and Putin were colluding with
each other because he wasn’t colluding with either one of
them. But — here comes the blockbuster info — Smith
was colluding with Michael Flynn. Or at least he kinda,
sorta was . . . except for, you know, the Journal’s grudging
acknowledgement that, well, okay, Smith never actually
told the paper that Flynn was involved in what the report
calls “Smith’s operation.”
Is the Soft Coup Against Trump an Example of BoG —
British Occupied Government?
‘In other words’, the Tait story promoted by Wittes after
the Lawfare publisher hyped it on Twitter is just more of
the #TrumpRussia screaming headlines backed by little
more than baseless claims or outright bullshit we’ve seen
since January 20. But the pattern of a great deal of this
bullshit swirling around friends of the now fired FBI
director Comey or his pal the newly appointed special
prosecutor Robert Mueller has been well-established. So
too, as our friend Harley Schlanger and the good people at
LaRouchePAC have noticed, is the pattern of British
nationals pushing falsified #TrumpRussia claims or
supposed intel since 2015, when Judge Andrew Napolitano
and others have alleged GCHQ was spying on candidate
Trump. That is, Mr. Tait’s ‘former’ 5Eyes employer:
Matt Tait is the CEO and founder of Capital Alpha
Security, a UK based security consultancy which focuses
on research into software vulnerabilities, exploit
mitigations and applied cryptography. Prior to founding
Capital Alpha Security, Tait worked for Google Project
Zero, was a principal security consultant for iSEC
Partners, and NGS Secure, and worked as an information
security specialist for GCHQ.
Of course, some of the Brits pushing #TrumpRussia
conspira-idiocy have proven embarrassing to their
handlers. Heat Street, the ‘conservative’ ezine edited by
Louise Mensch and funded by the aforementioned
Murdoch media empire, recently folded. Some said it was
due to a lack of clicks and interest in an already crowded
right leaning media space, but others viewed Heat Street‘s
demise as directly due to its editor Louise Mensch’s
‘everyone associated with Trump or doubting my claims is
a Russian agent’ lunacy on Twitter. The ex-Tory MP has A spokesman for the President’s legal team told The
previously admitted to taking a lot of drugs when she was Independent they now believed Ms Veselnitskaya and her
a young and nubile rock and roll groupie in England, so colleagues had misrepresented who they were and who
perhaps she was viewed as a wasting asset by her low they worked for.
down dirty psyops handlers.
In a statement, Mark Corallo added: “Specifically, we have
Steele Rain — learned that the person who sought the meeting is
the Fusion GPS Set Up of Donald Trump associated with Fusion GPS, a firm which according to
Jr. as ‘Meeting with a Pro-Kremlin public reports, was retained by Democratic operatives to
Russian Lawyer’? develop opposition research on the President and which
commissioned the phony Steele dossier.”
Last but not least, another British connection to the
allegations against Trump that is ‘out in the open’, is of Fusion GPS, which is based in Washington DC and was
course, is the ‘dodgy dossier’ concocted by ‘ex’ MI6 agent established by former Wall Street Journal reporters Glenn
Christopher Steele. Mr. Steele has under legal pressure in Simpson and Peter Fritsch, found itself in the spotlight
British libel court disavowed some of his dossier’s earlier this year after it emerged it was behind an “oppo
findings, claiming the document was never intended for research” dossier containing unproven and often salacious
public release after Buzzfeed‘s editor Ben Smith published allegations about Mr Trump.
it. However, the question as to why an opposition research
firm run by ex-Wall Street Journal reporters (the
WSJ/Murdoch connection again) called Fusion GPS hired
Mr. Steele to ‘prove’ Trump’s connections to the Kremlin,
would also have done work with a Russian lawyer opposed
to the 2012 Sergey Magnitsky Act named Natalia
Veselnitskaya, is most curious. For her part, Ms.
Veselnitskaya denies representing the Russian
government, or anyone but herself in the meeting with Don
Jr. (she has not worked for any governmental entity in
Russia since leaving the Moscow City prosecutor’s office
in 2002). Ms. Veselnitskaya insists that she only wished to
discuss her issue of the Magnitsky Act and its effect on the
Russian government banning Americans from adopting
The ‘ex’ British intelligence aided soft coup
children from Russia, and that she never offered any dirt
to overturn the election of Donald J. Trump
on Hillary Clinton’s ties to Russians.
as president of the United States,
supported by social justice warriors and
Was Donald Trump Jr. ‘set up’ and baited into a meeting eternal Cold War demanding deep staters
with Ms. Veselnitskaya in June 2016, with the promise of alike, isn’t going all that well. The best the
kompromat on Hillary Clinton’s connections to Russia coup plotters have managed to accomplish
(connections already established via Peter Schweitzer’s is demonstrate Trump’s inability to readily
book Clinton Cash detailing Russian oligarch donations to or easily deliver on his campaign promise
the Clinton Foundation)? Some ‘ex’ spooks touted in the of improved relations with Russia — the
legacy media think so, but have no proof that it was the President cannot even fire his own UN
Kremlin’s security services rather than Fusion GPS doing Ambassador when she seeks to undermine
the dangling, via the bizarre-looking publicist Rob his policy of detente after meeting with
Goldstone. Mr. Goldstone works for Trump’s 2013 Miss Putin in Hamburg.
Universe beauty pageant business partner the Russian-
Azeri oligarch Aras Iskenderovich Agalarov, or
specifically his pop star son Emin:

The President’s eldest son said he met lawyer Natalia

Veselnitskaya, after being told she had information that
individuals connected to Russia were funding the
Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms
Clinton. He said it soon become clear she had no such
information and rather wanted to press him about her effort
to overturn the Magnitsky Act, a US law that blacklists
several Russians linked to the 2009 murder of another
Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky.

415
 Since James Comey’s supposedly
damning testimony, the U.S. Senate and
House committees established to
investigate Russia’s alleged meddling in
the 2016 election have failed to turn up any
evidence of collusion between Mr. Trump,
his associates, and the Kremlin. CNN, the
‘Clinton News Network’, has been exposed
by James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas as
cynically admitting behind the cameras that
they have no proof of Trump-Russia
collusion, but push the story for ratings
anyway (ratings it turns out, often are
worse than Nick at Nite reruns of 1990s
sitcoms like Friends, underlying the failing
network’s desperation).
The New York Times latest story citing
what it says are ‘three sources’ about
Donald Trump Jr. having been warned in
an email about Kremlin efforts to aid the
Trump campaign prior to his fruitless, ten
minute-length meeting with Ms.
Veselnitskaya is just another pathetic effort
to produce some ‘evidence’ of
#TrumpRussia collusion. Despite the
story’s overnight prominence on the
Drudge Report, the email has yet to be
produced and it’s likely to miss the mark
again — a dying legacy media’s last
wannabe Watergate hurrah.
To Msrs. Steele, Tait, and Alperovitch — and those allied
to them coordinating leaks after leaving office like Ben
Rhodes, James Comey and ‘Riyadh’ John Brennan — we
just have a few words left: tick, tock. Some GOP
Congressmen are not cowed by your cult of the
unimpeachable supposedly non-partisan U.S. ‘intelligence
community’ and have had enough of the derp state
416
attempting to overturn an election by leak (and through
disinformation generated by foreign intelligence agencies
including those of Estonia, Ukraine and Great Britain):
“This is not just standard Washington fair”
[Rep. Ron] DeSantis [R-FL] said. “It’s
happening on such a scale with this
president that it’s much different.”
“Really, it has a whiff of people inside
the bureaucracy who do not accept the
election results, so they’re rebelling
against the elected president by leaking
and doing things to damage him
politically,” the lawmaker explained. “It’s
unprecedented, certainly in modern
American history. The way you stop the
leaks is if people are leaking info that is
classified, and that’s a crime, DOJ has got
to pursue that.”
“If the bureaucracy is going to
weaponize this stuff, I think Congress is
going to be much less willing to give
them the authority to do this,” DeSantis
said. “It is a big deal, and if no one is held
accountable it’s going to continue to
happen.”
And here are his thoughts on Comey…
“Congress needs to press Sessions and
other people to make sure they are
investigating this because the American
people need the truth,” DeSantis told the
Free Beacon in a wide-ranging
interview. “If he did violate any laws, he
needs to be held accountable. If you’re
violating laws in service of doing
political warfare, that is just absolutely
unacceptable, particularly for someone
who held such a high position in the
government.”
“Not only is he leaking this stuff, not only
were the memos done in the course of his
employment and likely government
property, he may have disclosed classified
information in this quest to basically wage
a vendetta against the
president because the president fired him
and to try and create a special counsel,”
DeSantis said.
“This guy is really a creature of the
swamp. He maneuvers around D.C. in
ways that are very similar to how D.C.
insiders operate,” DeSantis said of Comey.
“He’s one of the best in those regards.”
“Comey has made a concerted effort to not
disclose these memos,” DeSantis revealed.
 “I think Congress obviously has a right to
get them.”

UPDATE 7:20 p.m. Eastern 07/11/2017

Donald Trump Jr. has released the email

from the publicist Rob Goldstone, who
set up his meeting with the Russian
attorney, to preempt the NYT’s plan to
publish it (and from whom they obtained
it, if not Goldstone, is unknown outside
the paper):

UPDATE 2 11:51 p.m. Eastern Time

07/11/2017 Don Jr. appeared on Fox
News’ Sean Hannity show Tuesday
night to defend himself:

417
 Does It Even Matter
Whether Donald Trump Jr.
Met With Someone Purporting To Be A
“Russian Government Lawyer?”
Not At All
By JD Heyes
07/11/2017
Okay, so we’ll admit that the evidence, such as it is,
against Donald Trump Jr.’s supposed “Russia collusion” is
pretty damning, if you take it at face value and you don’t
bother to look into the story any further.
Reporting by The New York Times, once again using
leaked information that is no doubt illegal, appears to have
Don Jr. cold: Emails he himself has released indicate that
yes, he knew he was likely to be meeting a “Russian
government lawyer,” which — despite the fact that there is
nothing illegal about that, it destroys the position the
Trump administration (and Don Jr.) has held for months,
that no, there has never been any “collusion.”
As The National Interest reported, none of that looks good:
Over now to Donald Trump Jr., last seen
backtracking out the White House door
after a meeting he attended last summer
with Russian attorney Natalia
Veselnitskaya was exposed in the press.
The president’s son claimed back in March
that he’d never met with any Russians as a
representative of the Trump campaign.
That was later contradicted by the New
York Times, which reported that he’d
418
huddled with Veselnitskaya after she
promised him dirt on Hillary Clinton. He
then asserted that the meeting was all
about Russian adoption in America, a pet
cause of Veselnitskaya’s. Except
subsequent emails obtained by the Times
showed that Trump Jr. was promised
evidence that would “incriminate Hillary and
her dealings with Russia and would be very
useful to your father.”
Now mind you, there still is no evidence that a crime has
been committed. More caveats: The lawyer did not provide
Don Jr. with the promised goods — far from it. Indeed,
subsequent reporting has noted that the conversation did
indeed center mostly on the adoption issue, and that other
meeting attendees — then-Trump campaign manager Paul
Manafort and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner —
seemed either disinterested or, in the case of Kushner, left
the meeting way early.
Nevertheless, this has the Left and the #NeverTrump
media salivating because they now think this is the
smoking gun of “collusion” everyone’s been looking for.
You have every partisan idiot from former Clinton running
mate Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., to most talking heads on
CNN, MSNBC, and the rest of the cable news alphabet
soup of networks screaming “Treason! Treason!” —
which is especially hypocritical, given the Clinton
campaign’s use of Ukrainian operatives to dig up dirt on
the Trump campaign. Besides, according to real legal
eagles, Don Jr.’s behavior doesn’t even come close.
And lest we forget, last month, former FBI Director James
Comey told Congress that a February 14 article by
the Times alleging Trump associates “had repeated
contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the
year before the election” was, “in the main,” untrue. That
article at least cited “four current and former American
officials.” Monday’s article only cites “three people.”
(RELATED: Are Democrats behind the dubious
Trump dossier that has triggered so many ‘Russia’
investigations?)
What’s the point? Only this: The so-called battle lines
between the Trump administration, the Trump-hating
political and media establishment, and the #NeverTrump
elements of the Deep State long ago launched their multi-
pronged campaign to disrupt, delegitimize, defame and
unseat our duly elected president, and they’ve attempted to
do so directly and by chipping away at his inner circle.
Don Jr. is merely the latest victim. He won’t be the last.
419
What should Trump do at this juncture? He’s already
signaled his support for his son (and really, what father
wouldn’t?); what else is there?
Nothing. The chances are good that politically speaking,
this episode isn’t going to move the needle for or against
the administration or the president much, if at all. Trump’s
detractors are only going to howl louder, while his
supporters — who are very used to their president and his
administration being unfairly targeted by the elitists in
D.C. — will most probably circle their wagons in defense,
again.
 What Putin Really Thought After Finally Meeting Trump
He Might Well Have Concluded That Trump Cannot Be Relied On To
Make Or Keep Agreements, And That His Best Hope Is To Try To Get
Something Done Via The State Department
John Helmer
Tue, Jul 11, 2017
Thousands of years after spies were invented, and thirty
years before the digital computer, there was SIGABA, an
electric motor-powered mechanical apparatus for ciphering
and protecting one’s communications from being
intercepted or overheard by one’s enemies.
Invented by two employees of the US National Security
Agency, secretly patented in 1944 but not declassified
until 2001, its name was assigned by the US Army which
used it throughout World War II. The Germans called it
the American Big Machine, but they couldn’t break its
rotor system for coding . The Germans had their own
version of the electric-motor cipher machine called
Enigma, but it was broken by the Poles and British.
Whether the Soviets had broken SIGABA or Enigma isn’t
known for sure; probably not. What is certain is that they
were more successful at using spies instead of machines.
420
The main Russian evening news report of
the meeting, which focused on Melania
sitting next to Putin at the dinner after his
meeting with Trump, and Melania's
attempts to end the meeting. Very different
from what you will see on Western media.
Interesting.
So it comes as a surprise that last week in Germany,
President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump
agreed, in front of their respective foreign ministers, to
form a working group of their subordinates to devise a
scheme for protecting them both from the most modern
machines for cracking ciphers. That’s to say, machines
operated by their enemies. The working group won’t be
allowed to share details of the machines they currently use
on each other.
How pointless the working-group agreement will be was
revealed unexpectedly for the Russians, halfway into
their talks, when the president’s wife, Melania Trump,
knocked on the meeting-room door, and came in to make
sure her husband hadn’t been cracked by Putin. She
suggested it was time for Trump to leave.
This break-in is unprecedented in the history of more than
two centuries of American-Russian state negotiations.
Unreported by most US media, but corroborated by US
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Melania Trump cracked
her husband's code in front of America’s enemies. This is
what Putin meant when he told the press that at the
meeting with Trump, he had discovered
“Mr. Trump's television image is very
different from the real person.”
Several SIGABA machines are still preserved in working
order. Combined with the cipher keys revealed by
Tillerson and Mrs Trump, SIGABA allows the text of
Putin’s description of the meeting with Trump to be
decoded. Tillerson also admitted publicly that “several
times” he tried himself to stop the meeting and remove
Trump from the room. According to Tillerson, “they [sic]
even sent in the First Lady at one point to see if she could
get us out of there…We went another hour, so clearly she
failed.”
SIGABA decodes these remarks sentence by sentence.
These are the results:
CapLeft: Tillerson, escorted by the President’s daughter Ivanka,
arriving at the US delegation’s hotel in Hamburg on July 6. Right:
Melania meets Putin, July 7.
Tillerson’s briefing lasted for 24 minutes; it is available
only in audio recording, without pictures. For more, open
to listen. The disclosure of the Melania break-in starts at
Minute 21.
Putin’s briefing of the press lasted a little longer, 32
minutes. There were no crossovers of reporters attending
both press conferences, although at least one US reporter
did ask Putin questions. The Kremlin recording allowed
release of both audio and video, plus an official English-
language transcript; . As he reported his personal
impression of Trump at the meeting, Putin’s face and body
movements are less revealing than his words. That’s
because he was controlling himself, shoulders locked
behind hands gripping the lectern, feet planted to the floor.
He was speaking in code.
CaptionSource: The Kremlin videotape, minute 0925 to 10:00
English text. The President is showing red patches on either side of his
face. Dermatologists call this rosacea, a condition that may be caused
by stress, heavy exertion, the banya, or damp weather. Humidity in
Hamburg last Thursday and Friday averaged 75%.
This is what Putin said: “As regards
personal relations [with Trump], I believe
that they have been established. This is
how I see it: Mr Trump's television image is
very different from the real person; he is
a very down to earth and direct person,
and he has an absolutely adequate attitude
towards the person he is talking with; he
analyses things pretty fast and answers
421
the questions he is asked or new ones that
arise in the course of the discussion. So
I think that if we build our relations
in the vein of our yesterday's meeting,
there are good reasons to believe that we
will be able to revive, at least partially,
the level of interaction that we need.”
 In cipher: “as regards personal relations, I believe that
they have been established.” SIGABA: “I’m obliged to
state the obvious for in over two hours of conversation
there was no basis to detect that Trump has qualities
which can be predicted, let alone trusted.”
 In cipher: “Mr Trump’s television image is very different
from the real person”. SIGABA: “Familiarity with such
an individual is impossible so I cannot refer to him by
his first name. He has demonstrated he uses a slightly
smaller vocabulary than his television scripts have
allowed, awkward as they have been for Trump to read
them from his prompter….”
 In cipher: “he is a very down to earth and direct
person.” SIGABA: “The man is a simpleton.”
 In cipher: “he has an absolutely adequate attitude
towards the person he is talking with.” SIGABA: “His
attention span and cognitive capacity are so limited, he
prefers bluff and bluster, but this all-or-nothing
approach isn’t capable of reciprocal understanding, let
alone negotiating. Tillerson tried to extricate him
several times. The problem is so serious, his wife was
despatched to save him from exposing himself to us,
as he did. His impulse control is poor. He trusts only
women – he thinks they are simple enough for him to
manage.”
 In cipher: “he analyses things pretty fast…” SIGABA:
“His comprehension is slow, and works by breaking
down complex topics into simple slogans. Then he has
trouble sequencing. He can’t remember what he has
said or thought before, so he isn’t capable of
consistency. He tweets so he can look up what he’s
just said.”
 In cipher: “he answers the questions he is asked or
new ones that arise in the course of the discussion.”
SIGABA: “He has one-line statements for North Korea,
Syria, Ukraine, cyber security, nuclear arms, missile
systems, elections, sanctions. These are neither
consistent nor negotiable. He is incapable of either.”
 In cipher: “So I think that if we build our relations in the
vein of our yesterday's meeting…” SIGABA: “If is the
operative word – there’s no telling what will happen
next because Trump is in charge of nothing, not even
of his wife, and nothing he says can be relied on.
Tillerson is as impotent as his boss.”
 In cipher: “there are good reasons to believe that we
will be able to revive, at least partially, the level of
interaction that we need.” SIGABA: “The best that can
be hoped for is that Tillerson can control the working
 groups to which he’s persuaded Trump to delegate
everything of substance. So everything with the
Americans is partial. I have gained nothing I need.”
The Kremlin publicity version isn’t divulging the state
secrets revealed by the SIGABA machine. One reason is
that the decrypts confirm Russian intelligence assessments
Putin has been receiving on Trump. This secret also means
another one -- the briefings Putin gets from press arranged
by his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov (right), have proved
false. Peskov’s version of the success of the meeting can
be read in RT here.
“Accusations that Trump is somewhat
incompetent or that he is a novice, can be
classified as delusional trash,” Peskov told
Russian state television, intimating he was
addressing western media, not the General
Staff or SVR. “He has expert knowledge,
422
he is a very determined negotiator and
skilful at using his knowledge to put his
position across.”
Kremlin insiders acknowledge that Peskov tried to order
the omission from the Russian press of details of
Tillerson’s and Mrs Trump’s attempts to stop the meeting
before the 60-minute mark. Instead, Peskov has announced
that “a ‘certain affection’ had developed between the
Russian leader and Trump’s wife, Melania, who sat next to
the Russian president at the official G20 dinner, revealing
that the two discussed several issues on the summit
agenda, including gender equality and women’s economic
participation.”
Peskov in cipher: “We can now confidently declare that
this was a win-win encounter.” SIGABA: “There is no
confidence. This was a lose-lose encounter -- for Peskov.”
 Trump Administration
Run By Zionists, For Zionists: Analyst
Tue Jul 11, 2017 6:24PM
numerous Arab leaders had complained to him that Qatar
is supporting terrorism.
The administration of US President
Donald Trump is run by Zionists and
Qatar was singled out by the White
House in retaliation for refusing to
engage in pro-Israeli policies, an
investigative journalist in Washington
says.
“I certainly hope Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson acts as an honest broker in trying
to get the Saudis and their Wahhabist
friends in Bahrain, the United Arab
Emirates and their military dictator friend in
Egypt, general el-Sisi, to cease and desist
with this economic blockade that they have
created for Qatar,” said Wayne Madsen, an
author and columnist specializing in
intelligence and international affairs.
The top US diplomat traveled to Qatar on Tuesday as part
of his Persian Gulf tour to break the five-week rift between
Doha and several Arab states.
Tillerson will visit Saudi Arabia before leaving the Persian
Gulf region on Thursday. He will hold a meeting with the
foreign ministers of the four countries involved in the
dispute on Wednesday in Riyadh.
Ahead of his Doha visit, Tillerson made a stop in Kuwait,
which is still trying to mediate the dispute.
The split among the Arab states erupted in May after
Trump visited Saudi Arabia and then pointing out that
.
423
“The issue is that President Trump, when
he was visiting [Saudi Arabia]… Trump
went on to back the Saudis in this unusual
tirade that the Saudis are pushing that
Qatar is financing terrorists, when in fact
there were no Qataris among the 9/11
hijackers, but there were Saudis among
these hijackers,” Madsen said during a
phone interview with Press TV on Tuesday.
“So, I think what this boils down to is the
fact that we now know that Trump’s son in
law, Jared Kushner, tried to basically extort
$500 million from Qatar to invest in his
failed building in Manhattan,” he added.
“The Qataris turned him down and Jared
Kushner, who is some sort of svengali over
Trump, this sort of vampire that shadows
Trump at every move, was likely
responsible for Trump siding with the
Saudis against Qatar because Qatar didn’t
fork over a half a billion dollars on
Kushner’s failed real estate venture in
Manhattan.”
“This goes to show that with the Trump
administration, with his ambassador to
Israel [David] Friedman and special envoy
[Jason] Greenblatt and his other special
envoy Jared Kushner, that this
administration is run by Zionists, for
Zionists, for the interest of Israel and
against the interest of any country that
refuses to engage in the criminal
gangstarism of the Trump administration,
and Qatar is actually no different than
many countries that have now been singled
out for this type of retribution and retaliation
by the criminal gang that runs the White
House.”
 SEDITION: U.S. Intelligence Community
Conducting Soft Coup In Washington, D.C.
By State Of The Nation
Posted On July 11, 2017
Deep State will not stop their stealthy
Purple Revolution until Trump is gone
C.I.A. using Mainstream Media to run
propaganda campaign against Trump
administration—24/7
“The C.I.A. always softens up the
government and propagandizes the
citizenry of a targeted country before a
soft coup. If that doesn’t work, they
simply execute a covert but
violent overthrow via assassination like
they did with JFK. Lastly, they will
resort to an outright attack on the key
organs of government authority and/or
military power, but only when absolutely
necessary.”
— Veteran Intelligence Analyst
Do you get it yet?
The NWO globalist entity known as
Deep State, along with the Democratic
Party, will — under no conditions —
accept Donald Trump as the legitimate
POTUS.
For that matter, neither will the many turncoat RINOs
within the Republican Party. You can add to this list of
traitors most of the sultans of Silicon Valley, Hollywood
moguls and actors, East Coast intelligentsia and
Mainstream Media magnates.
Because of this unrelenting predicament, there’s no
stopping the USS Donald Trump from hitting the Deep
State iceberg. By the way, no one said that Trump is at the
helm of a 21st century Titanic.
He may just be the captain of a
humongous icebreaker.
Only time will tell, however, and that time is fast
approaching.
KEY POINT:
424
Destiny cannot be thwarted when it is
preordained in such a profound and
fundamental way as it is right now for
the United States of America. Not only
is the continuity of the American
Republic at stake, the future of the
planetary civilization hangs in the
balance. In other words the final
outcome of “Trump versus Deep State”
will ultimately determine the fate of
humanity as it will for the world
community of nations.
RUSSIA SCARE: C.I.A. Running PsyOp on the
American People
For the uninitiated, ever since Election Day on November
8, 2016, The Company (aka the C.I.A.) has been very busy
implementing “Plan B”, often referred to as the Purple
Revolution. Understanding the true purpose and key
players behind this highly organized plot is crucial if it to
be averted. As follows:
BEWARE: The Purple Revolution Comes
To America…
This seditious revolution has several pillars that define
both its strategy and MO (see the preceding graphic). The
whole world has been watching daily the “Russia scare”
strategy— one of the main pillars. Deep State knows that
the Russian boogeyman was effective during the Cold War
so why should they reinvent the wheel?
The following exposé details some of the subterfuge by
Deep State and their agents within the Democratic Party
which gave rise to the bogus “Russian hacking claim”. In
the face of so much MSM fake news about Russia, who
will now believe the obvious truth in this post?
CONFIRMED: DNC paid the ‘Russian’
founder of CrowdStrike to hack its
server so it could be blamed on Russia!
C.I.A. and MSM: Fric & Frac of Deep State
Truly, no one has ever seen anything like it.
 The C.I.A. uses their primary organs of
propaganda — CNN, NBC, ABC and
CBS — to run an unprecedented
propaganda war against a sitting
POTUS.
Likewise, the spook agency uses every major newspaper of
record — especially The New York Times, The Washington
Post, USA Today, and Los Angeles Times — to float
patently false accusations and deliberately misleading
headlines on their front pages.
KEY POINT:
Even Nixon was not subjected to such
a daily barrage of fake news during
the height of Watergate. And, “Yes!”,
much of that media hysteria was also
contrived fake news, produced to
facilitate his premeditated removal
which was in actuality a soft coup.
The CIA knows full well how to execute a color
revolution. They’ve conducted many around the globe
over several decades. Their trademark MO is to
sufficiently frighten the citizenry about ‘dangers’
associated with their current government and/or head of
state. This is why the American people are now treated to
a nonstop campaign of Trump-bashing by the MSM. The
CIA is aware that eventually a critical mass of citizens will
actively support an overthrow. And that those who don’t
show up will at least lend their moral support to it.
The false story about ‘Russia election hacking’, of course,
was the perfect pretext for the U.S. Intelligence
Community to rally around. Agents in all 17 agencies
could be compelled to go with the flow — seditious flow
— because the POTUS was said to be working with
America’s historical enemy — R U S S I A! Throw in a
Democratic Party that is still beside itself with rage and
madness about Hillary’s defeat and you have a full-blown
Purple Revolution in the works. See the following link for
valuable perspective: Former Democrat Insider Goes
Rogue—Exposes Plot To Falsely Blame Russia
This transparent scam being run on the American people is
not unprecedented. Both World Wars of the last century
saw similar inflammatory propaganda being thrown about
here, there, and everywhere. That’s just how it’s always
done. They did it against Germany prior to World War II
after they demonized the Kaiser prior to World War I.
The salient point here is that it’s now Putin who is being
vilified and Russia that is being represented as the mortal
enemy of the West. Nothing could be further from the
truth, and yet a vast majority of Americans still believe the
lies. Whenever a really big lie is repeated frequently, it
starts to sink in. That’s what CNN and NBC are all about
425
today. So are the NYT and WaPo. Their CIA masters in
Deep State know all of the best mind-control programs, as
well as the magic formulas for effective war propaganda.
Massive Conspiracy to Deceive the American People
Exposed
The MSM and C.I.A. are guilty of sedition
There’s one major advantage that the President has at this
pivotal stage of the Purple Revolution. The MSM now
commits sedition on a weekly basis. The C.I.A. likewise
openly perpetrates treason against the nation. These
traitors to the American Republic expose themselves
regularly because they think they can act with impunity.
This public display of arrogance and hubris has never
happened before in the USA.
As a consequence, the MSM can legally be shut down with
one executive order. The C.I.A. can be dissolved with one
stroke of the presidential pen. Even the FCC can close
down various MSM organs of propaganda for blatantly
violating various rules and regulations. The law is squarely
on the side of the FCC in this regard.
Hence, the longer that Trump permits the traitors to out
themselves for all to see, the more of them he can get rid
of when the time is right. That moment is fast approaching
as Deep State is getting closer to pressing the button on
stage 2 of the 2017 revolution. Their implementation plan
has been designed according to a set schedule which sees
this Fall as a crucial phase of the Purple Revolution.
What began with a clandestine partnership between
George Soros and Hillary Clinton back in 2016 has
evolved into a full-blown conspiracy to bring down the
U.S. Federal Government under President Trump. Clearly
the growing insurrection against Trump has many ultra-
liberal groups and faux progressives, far left-wingers and
brainwashed Democrats, among them. However, it’s the
hardcore Obamabots, Clintonistas and Berniacs who are
the most dangerous. Rep. Steve Scalise found that out the
hard way.
Scalise Shooter Was Staunch Supporter of Bernie Sanders
As always, George Soros is front and center in this
treasonous plot. Therefore, at the very least, he should be
arrested post-haste for sponsoring seditious activity which
has resulted in so much personal injury (including
numerous deaths) and property damage. One need look no
further than the European Union to view the societal
mayhem that Soros & Company has purposefully wrought.
Now they’re hellbent on doing it here in the USA. The
Clintons And Soros Launch America’s Purple Revolution.
Special Note:
 The violent coup executed by the C.I.A.
(and facilitated by the U.S. Department of
State) in Kiev during February of 2014 is
quite instructive. Even President Putin was
caught flat-footed while the Maidan
Nezalezhnosti was turned into a war zone
overnight. That takeover was also
preceded by a massive propaganda
campaign aimed directly at Ukrainian
President Viktor Yanukovych. The country
was split in two just like America is today.
With each passing day of naked lies and
misrepresentations circulated by the MSM,
enough insurgents eventually showed up at
the city’s main square to effectuate a full-
blown coup d’état. Yes, it was deliberately
staged while Putin was preoccupied with
the Sochi Winter Olympics, but both he and
Yanukovych were completely blindsided by
the swiftness and severity of the
manufactured violence. Team Trump
ought to be paying very close attention
from this point forward as there are several
plans afoot to depose the POTUS. These
are operating on parallel tracks, some of
which are decoys and distractions. Then
there are those covert operations which are
mutually supporting each other in the event
of a full-scale Purple Revolution.
Even Tim Kaine’s wife (far right) was dressed in purple
during Clinton’s inflammatory concession speech that was
actually a veiled call to insurrection.
Conclusion
Where is this all going?
.
426
God only knows.
If the American people do not demand an end to the
violence and lawbreaking, the Bolshevik perps will only
become more emboldened. These Obama-led and Soros-
backed agitators will eventually intensify their insurgency
nationwide. They will surely increase the number of
rioters and protesters — from the ranks of so many
disillusioned illegal aliens — who are quite willing to
disrupt civil society.
The Bolshevik Left now demonstrates an unparalleled
willingness to harm people and destroy property never
seen within the body politic. Their use of agents
provocateur has become obvious to even the most naive
and uninformed. Hence, President Trump is completely
within his power to immediately prosecute all of those
culpable agents of Deep State.
These subversive mercenaries are all cut from the same
RED bolt of cloth as those who incited and carried out the
Bolshevik Revolution. In fact, the Left is becoming more
vicious and violent by the event. Just as their ilk terrorized
the major cities throughout Russia in 1917, they use the
same brutal tactics in 2017 across the USA.
Exactly 100 Years After the Bolshevik Revolution of
1917→Comes the Percolating Purple Revolution of 2017
One thing is for sure: the C.I.A. will not stop this uprising
until Trump is frogmarched out of the White House. The
question then remains:
What will the patriots and nationalists do to
prevent that from happening?
 GOP Rep. Names Ben Rhodes As Source
Of White House Leaks – Demands Investigation of Comey
Carter
Jul 11th, 2017 9:15 pm

Rhodes to testify . . . He may be able to

Rep. Ron DeSantis, a member of the
House Committee on Oversight and
Government Reform, called on the DoJ
to “launch a formal investigation” into
former FBI Direct Comey’s leaks, the
Washington Free Beacon reports.
invoke executive privilege from when
Obama was president but he definitely
can’t do that in any interactions he’s had
since then.”

DeSantis named Ben Rhodes—the former National

Security Council official responsible for creating an in-
house “echo chamber” meant to mislead reporters and the
public about the landmark nuclear deal with Iran—as a
primary source of these leaks and urged the House
Intelligence Committee to call Rhodes and other former
Obama officials to testify publicly about any role they may
be playing in spreading classified information to reporters.

Close associates of Ben Rhodes are reportedly still in the

White House.

In the same breath, DeSantis called on the President to do

what many supporters urged him to do from the start –
purge former Obama administration officials. DeSantis,
the chairman of the House National Security
Subcommittee, says the holdovers are responsible for “an
unprecedented series of national security leaks”, and all
roads lead back to one man.

DeSantis named former National Security Council official

Ben Rhodes as being responsible for “creating an in-house
‘echo-chamber’ meant to mislead reporters and the
public”.

DeSantis commented: Another major part of DeSantis’

commentary was the fact that he “identified
“Any Obama holdover at any of these Rhodes and other senior Obama
agencies, you’ve got to get them out of administration officials” as being
there because clearly they’re not on the responsible for “feeding journalists some of
same team and particularly on the [White these [leaks].”
House] National Security Council”.
A 4Chan user on the board known as “/pol/” wrote on
DeSantis goes on to say: Saturday, 7/08/2017 in typical 4Chan fashion:

“I think Congress and some members of be me

the Intelligence Committee can call Ben work for god-emperor

427
 imjustapoorboy.jpg
start new admin job
bored as f*ck drinking coffee
start googling people I work with
realize all of Ben Rhodes’s friends still work
in WH
week later stumble across them all still
talking sh*t about Trump and how he’s too
dumb to fire them
WYD

428
 Trump’s Former Campaign Manager
Predicts Mass Firings Over Trump Jr. Leaks
Jul 12th 2017 11:47PM
Whoever leaked information about Donald Trump Jr.'s
meeting last year with a Russian Lawyer will be fired,
according to Trump's Former Campaign Manager Corey
Lewandowski.
As the White House reportedly scrambles to find the
source, Lewandowski went on Fox & Friends Wednesday
saying anyone who is not on the president's agenda should
be removed immediately and that Trump himself will do
the same.
.
429
"I don't know who the leaker is but let me
tell you this, if it were up to me, and
somebody was speaking to the media and
leaking information detrimental to Trump, I
would fire them on the spot and Donald
Trump will do the same," Lewandowski
said.
Now, Lewandowski, who was still the campaign manager
at the time of the meeting went on to say that he knew
nothing about the meeting because it was a quote, "nothing
meeting."
The meeting between Donald Jr and the Russian lawyer
with alleged ties to the Kremlin happened in June of 2016.
Emails released by Trump Jr. himself revealed he met with
the lawyer under the impression that she was was going to
provide damaging information about Hillary clinton.
 John McCain Faces
Questions In Trump-Russia Dossier Case
By Kevin G. Hall - Khall@Mcclatchydc.Com
July 11, 2017 5:00 AM

allies,” the document says, explaining why

Steele and his partner, Christopher
Burrows, felt it necessary to share the
dossier’s findings.

WASHINGTON - Sen. John McCain faces questions in a

defamation lawsuit about leaks leading to publication of
the now-infamous dossier that alleged Donald Trump’s
campaign had connections to Russian operatives,
McClatchy has learned.

The dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher

See text below
Steele and his London firm, Orbis Business Intelligence
Ltd., amounted to a collection of uncorroborated reports of IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
collusion gathered as political research for sale to Trump’s QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION
opponents. It proved explosive when published by online Claim no. HQ17DOD413
news site BuzzFeed on Jan. 10.
BETWEEN
Now, two lawsuits — one in the United States and a (1) ALEKSEJ GUBAREV
second in the U.K. — are being brought by lawyers for
Aleksej Gubarev, a Cyprus-based Internet entrepreneur (2) WEBZILLA av.
whom Steele’s Russian sources accused of cyber spying (3) WEBZILLA LIMITED
against the Democratic Party leadership.
(4) XBT HOLDING S.A

According to a new court document in the British lawsuit, And

counsel for defendants Steele and Orbis repeatedly point to
McCain, R-Ariz., a vocal Trump critic, and a former State
Department official as two in a handful of people known to
have had copies of the full document before it circulated
among journalists and was published by BuzzFeed.
The court document obtained by McClatchy confirms that
Sir Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to
Moscow and a Russia adviser to former Prime Minister
Tony Blair, discussed the 35-page dossier with McCain.
“The Defendants considered that the
issues were self-evidently relevant to the
national security of the US, UK and their
430
(1) ORBIS BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE LIMITED
(2) CHRISTOPHER STEELE
Defendants
RESPONSE TO REQUEST FOR FURTHER
INFORMATION PURSUANT TO CPR PART 18
Under paragraphs 7 and 8
01?: "At all material times Fusion was subject to an obligation not
to disclose to third parties con?dential intelligence material
provided to it by the Defendants in the course of that working
relationship without the agreement of the Defendants.
REQUESTS
1. Whether the alleged duty of confidentiality is said to arise by
contract or in equity.
2. If by contract, state whether the duty arose under a general
contract of retainer; or specific contracts relating to the specific
work.
3. In either event state whether any contract(s) relied on were
written or oral; if oral, stating when and between whom they were
made.
RESPONSE
The duty arose both by contract and in equity. A written non-
disclosure agreement was concluded between the First Defendant
and a representative of Fusion in January 2010 in relation to work
conducted by Fusion for the First Defendant. Furthermore, Fusion
was aware of the con?dentiality of intelligence reports through the
course of business with the Defendants and, in relation to the
disclosure of the memoranda to Mr Kramer, the Second Defendant
and Fusion had had specific discussions in which the confidentiality
of the memoranda had been emphasised and Fusion was
instructed to inform Mr Kramer of their con?dentiality.
REQUEST
-1- RFC
4. State whether the alleged duty not to disclose such intelligence
to 'third parties' without the prior agreement of the Defendants in
the course of the working relationship extended to disclosure by
Fusion to their own clients (ie the clients who had commissioned
the intelligence material: see paragraph 6 of the Defence).
RESPONSE
In relation to the pre?election memoranda the duty not to disclose
intelligence to third parties without the prior agreement of the
Defendants did not extend to disclosure by Fusion to its ciient(s),
although the Defendants understand that copies of the memoranda
were not disclosed by Fusion to its client(s).
In relation to the December memorandum, this was not prepared
pursuant to any contract as stated at paragraph ?18 of the
Defence. The duty not to disclose this intelligence report to third
parties without the prior agreement of the Defendants therefore did
extend to disclosure by Fusion to its client(s).
REQUEST
5. State whether the Defendants owed any reciprocal duty of
confidence to Fusion and/or Fusion?s clients in relation to the
intelligence they provided.
RESPONSE
Since it was not produced pursuant to the engagement with Fusion
described at paragraph 9 of the Defence, the Defendants did not
owe any obligation of confidence to Fusion and/or Fusion?s
client(s) in relation to the intelligence contained in the December
memorandum.
REQUEST
6. State whether Fusion?s clients, insofar as disclosure to them
was permitted (see Request 4), were under any duty to the
Defendants and/or Fusion not to use and/or disclose the
intelligence, and, if so, give like particulars as to how that duty is
alleged to arise.
RESPONSE
The response to question 4 above is repeated. The Defendants
understood that the arrangement between Fusion and its client(s)
431
was that intelligence would not be disclosed. As explained above,
the December memorandum was not produced pursuant to the
engagement referred to at paragraph 9 of the Defence and
therefore disclosure of the December memorandum to their
client(s) was not permitted.
Under paragraphs 9 and 10
0f "BeMeen June and early November 2016 Orbis was engaged by
Fusion to prepare a series of con?dential memoranda based on
intelligence concerning Russian efforts to influence the US
Presidential election process and links between Russia and Donald
Trump
-2- RPC
7. Please identify (see paragraph 6 of the Defence) Fusion's
client(s) in relation to this particular engagement.
RESPONSE
This request is neither reasonably necessary nor proportionate to
enable the Claimants to prepare their own case nor to understand
the case they have to meet.
Of "The Defendants produced sixteen such memoranda. These will
be referred to for convenience as 'the pie?election memoranda',
having been prepared before the 2016 US Presidential election.
The last one was produced in the latter part of October 2016. None
were produced in November 2016, None of the pre?election
memoranda contained any reference to, or intelligence about, the
Claimants?.
REQUEST
6. In view of the assertion that no memoranda were produced in
November 2016, please state the nature of the engagement in
early November 2016 as referred to in paragraph 9, and whether
this engagement was performed and what intelligence it related to.
RESPONSE
The nature of the Defendants? engagement by Fusion did not
change during the period between the preparation of the last pre-
election memorandum" on 20 October 2016 and the date of the US
Presidential election. However since the Defendants did not
receive any relevant intelligence concerning Russian efforts to
influence the US Presidential election process and links between
Russia and Donald Trump during this period, no memoranda were
produced pursuant to the engagement after 20 October 2016.
Under paragraphs 12 and 13
Of "Senator John McCain is the Chair of the US Senate Armed
Services Committee and a member of the Us Senate Committee
on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs" and "David
Kramer is a former US State Department civil servant and was US
Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor from 2008 to 2009. He is the Senior Director for Human
Rights and Human Freedoms at Senator McCain '3 institute for
International Leadership
REQUEST
9. Please con?rm (as paragraph 29b(i) of the Defence suggests)
that Senator McCain and Mr Kramer are alleged to have been
acting in these of?cial capacities; and only in relation to those
capacities in the course of the matters pleaded in paragraphs 14 to
17 and 21b; and, if not, identify any other capacity in which they
were acting and when and for what purpose(s).
RESPONSE
-3- RFC
The Defendants believed that Senator McCain and Mr Kramer
were acting only in their of?cial capacities and were not informed of
any other capacity or purpose in which they were acting. There
were no grounds that led the Defendants to suspect that Senator
McCain and Mr Kramer were not acting in their official capacities at
any time up to and including the publication of the December
memorandum to Mr Kramer,
Under paragraph 14
Of "As a result of these discussions Sir Andrew arranged for the
Second Defendant to meet Mr Kramer, as the representative of
Senator McCain, in order to Show him the pre-election memoranda
on a confidential basis".
new
10. State what is meant by ?on a confidential basis?, indicating
precisely what use or uses Senator McCain was/were permitted to
make of the pre-election memoranda and whether these uses were
specified to Senator McCain and Mr Kramer.
RESPONSE
The Defendants understood that the contents of the memoranda
would be treated in the strictest confidence and would only be used
by Senator McCain in his official capacity for the sole purpose of
analysing, investigating and verifying their contents to enable such
action to be taken as necessary for the purposes of protecting US
national security. The Second Defendant expressly informed Mr
Kramer that the pre-election memoranda were only to be used for
this exclusive purpose before he showed Mr Kramer any of the
memoranda. Mr Kramer was not at this time provided with copies
of the memoranda that had been prepared as at that date, but was
shown copies,
Under paragraph 18
Of "The Defendants continued to receive unsolicited intelligence on
the matters covered by the pre-election memoranda after the US
Presidential election and the conclusion of the assignment for
Fusion
REQUEST
11. Please state whether such intelligence was actively sought by
the Second Defendant or merely received (as presently pleaded).
RESPONSE
Such intelligence was not actively sought; it was merely received.
Under paragraph 19
-4- RPC
Of "After receiving some such intelligence the Second Defendant
prepared the confidential December memorandum, referred to at
paragraph 8.1, on his own initiative on or around 13 December
2016".
BECLESI
12. Please state whether the words 'on his own initiative' mean that
the December memorandum was not created; or provided to
Fusion pursuant to any contract. If not, please specify the contract
in question.
RESPONSE
The December memorandum was not created or provided to
Fusion pursuant to any contract.
Under paragraph 20
432
Of "The Defendants considered, correctly, that the raw intelligence
in the December memorandum: a. was of considerable importance
in relation to alleged Russian interference in the US Presidential
election; b. had implications for the national security needed to be
analysed and further investigated/verified".
REQUEST
13. Please state whether the Second Defendant only reached this
conclusion on behalf of the First Defendant or whether Christopher
Burrows andior Sir Andrew were party to his assessment.
RESPONSE
The Defendants? assessment that the pre-election memoranda
and any subsequent related intelligence which they received
should be disclosed to the individuals referred to at paragraph 21 of
the Defence was reached following separate discussions between
the Second Defendant and Christopher Burrows of the First
Defendant; (ii) Sir Andrew Wood (who had spoken with Senator
McCain); David Kramer (who was acting on behalf of Senator
McCain) and (iv) the UK national security official referred to at
paragraph 21(b) of the Defence. Mr Burrows shared the Second
Defendant?s assessment at the relevant time. The Defendants
considered that the issues were self?evidently relevant to the
national security of the US, UK and their allies and that subsequent
inteliigence relating to these issues ought to be disclosed to the
individuals referred to at paragraph 21 of the Defence. Each of the
individuals with whom the Second Defendant discussed the issue
shared this View at the time and, to the Second Defendant's
knowledge and belief, continue to hold that View.
Under paragraph 206 and 21 REQUEST
?14. Please state whether the December memorandum was
provided to the UK national security official; and/or (13) Fusion;
and/or (0) Mr Kramer and Senator McCain with the source of the
allegations against the Claimants redacted or not.
RESPONSE
Information pertaining to the status of the source(s) of the
intelligence contained within the December memorandum was not
redacted when it was provided to either the UK national security
official and/or Fusion and/or Mr Kramer and Senator McCain. The
information contained within the intelligence reports pertaining to
the status of the source(s) was consistent with the Defendants?
conscious efforts to protect the identity of the source(s).
REQUEST
15. Please state whether the instruction to Fusion contained any
express reference to confidentiality (contrast paragraph 21a which
expressly refers to 'on a confidential basis?).
RESPONSE
In the Second Defendant's communications with Fusion
surrounding the provision of the instruction by enciphered email, it
was explicitly stated that the memoranda were only to be provided
to Mr Kramer for the purpose of passing them on to Senator
McCain. Substantive conversations between the Second
Defendant and Fusion relating to this matter were conducted using
secure telephone communications. During those secure
communications, the Second Defendant expressly emphasised that
the December memorandum was subject to the same strict
restrictions on disclosure to third parties as were contained in the
written agreement described in the response to requests 1 to 3
above.
Under paragraph 21a and
Of ?D?lccordingly the Second Defendant provided a copy of the
December memorandum to: a. a senior UK government national
security official acting in his of?cial capacity, on a con?dential basis
in hard copy form; and b. Fusion, by enciphered email with an
instruction to Fusion to provide a hard copy to Sen. McCain via Mr
Kramer".
REQUEST
16. Please state whether intelligence provided by the Defendants
to Fusion was generaliy provided in enciphered form.
-5- RFC
RESPONSE
Intelligence provided by the Defendants to Fusion was provided
securelyand where provided electronically it was provided in
enciphered form.
Under paragraphs 23 and 24
Of ?it is denied that in their natural and ordinary meaning, in their
proper context, the words complained of bore or were capable of
bearing the meaning pleaded at paragraph 7" and "Read in context
the natural and ordinary meaning of the words complained of was
that there were grounds to investigate whether the Claimants had
been coerced by Russia into hacking the computers used by the
US Democratic Party leadership, transmitting viruses, planting
bugs, stealing data and conducting altering operations".
REQUEST
17. Please identify the context relied on and the reader(s) to whom
it was allegedly known.
RESPONSE
The readers referred to are the readers of the December
memorandum who accessed and read the words complained of via
the article that was published on the BuzzFeed website on ?10
January 2017.
The December memorandum was a raw intelligence report which
contained information gathered from a confidential source(s) about
various national security issues that warranted further investigation.
Further, the words complained of were published by BuzzFeed as
part of an article which stressed that the contents of the dossier
(which included the December memorandum) were "unveri?ed?,
?unconfirmed? and contained ?unverified, and potentially
unverifiable allegations?. The article added that, ?BuzzFeed News
reporters in the US and Europe have been investigating the alleged
facts in the dossier but have not verified or falsi?ed them.? The
article reported that the President?elects attorney, Michael Cohen,
had said that allegations in the dossier ?were absolutely false?.
In these circumstances, readers of the words complained of were
therefore aware that the contents of the December memorandum
did not represent (and did not purport to represent) verified facts,
but were raw intelligence which had identified a range of
allegations that warranted investigation given their potential
national security implications; (ii) persons mentioned in the
December memorandum were unlikely to have been approached
for comment, and therefore many of those persons were likely to
deny the allegations contained in the raw intelligence; and while the
December memorandum was prepared in good faith, its content
must be critically viewed in light of the purpose for and
circumstances in which the information was collected.
RFC
Under paragraph 32
433
Of "Save that it is admitted that the Second Defendant gave off the
record brie?ngs to a small number of journalists about the
bra?election memoranda in late summer/autumn 2016,
sub?paragraph 8.2.6 is denied".
18. Please identify the journalists briefed by the Second Defendant
and state when and how the briefing was done in each case and
the gist of what was conveyed.
RESPONSE
The journalists initially briefed at the end of September 2016 by the
Second Defendant and Fusion at Fusion?s instruction were from
the New York Times, the Washington Post, Yahoo News, the New
Yorker and CNN. The Second Defendant subsequently participated
in further meetings at Fusion?s instruction with Fusion and the New
York Times, the Washington Post and Yahoo News, which took
place in mid?October 2016. In each of those cases the briefing was
conducted verbally in person. in addition, and again at Fusion?s
instruction, in late October 2016 the Second Defendant briefed a
journalist from Mother Jones by Skype. No copies of the pro-
election memoranda were ever shown or provided to any
journalists by, or with the authorisation of, the Defendants. The
briefings involved the disclosure of limited intelligence regarding
indications of Russian interference in the US election process and
the possible co?ordination of members of Trump's campaign team
and Russian government of?cials.
REQUEST
19. Please state what is meant by ?ofi the record' and, in particular
whether it means:
The information provided was not to be published (but might be
used);
The information might be published but not attributed to the
Defendants in any way;
(0) As but the Defendants could be generically described, but not
by name. RESPONSE
The Second Defendant understood that the information provided
might be used for the purpose of further research, but would not be
published or attributed. The Defendants repeat that no off the
record briefing ever took place concerning the December
memorandum, and no copies of any of the bra?election
memoranda or the December memorandum were ever provided to
journalists by, or with the authorisation of, the Defendants,
REQUEST
20. Please state whether these terms were agreed to by the
journalists concerned.
H3- RPC
RESPONSE The Second Defendant was told by Fusion that the
terms had been explained to the relevant journalists in advance by
them and the Second Defendant reinforced the basis on which he
was speaking to each of the journalists he met in person. None of
the journalists raised any objection.
Under paragraphs 36 to 39
REQUEST
21. Please state whether the defence of qualified privilege is relied
on by the
Defendants if they are held to be liable for publication to the world
at large as distinct from the admitted publication to the individuals
identified by the Defendants in the Defence.
 RESPONSE In recent congressional testimony, ex-FBI Director James
Yes. Comey, fired by Trump amid a widening probe,
acknowledged receiving the dossier from McCain on Jan.
STATEMENT OF TRUTH 6. Kramer, a former State Department official who until
The Defendants believe that the facts stated in this Response are recently served as a senior director at Arizona State
true. University’s McCain Institute for International Leadership,
declined comment.
Nicola Cain Position: Legal Director, Defendants? legal
representative Date: 18 May 2017
The British court documents are legal responses in the
RFC British suit and do not reflect the entire docket. The British
V1 suit is related to a similar lawsuit in the United States
against online news site BuzzFeed.
Claim No. HQ17D00413
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE BENCH DIVISION
BETWEEN (1) ALEKSEJ GUBAREV (2) WEBZILLA BM. (3)
WEBZILLA LIMITED (4) XBT HOLDING 5.A.
Claimants and
(1) ORBIS BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE LIMITED
(2) CHRISTOPHER STEELE
Defendants
RESPONSE TO PART 18 REQUEST
RPC
Tower Bridge House St Katherine?s Way London
E1W 1AA
T: 020 3060 6000
Reference: ORB4.1
Soiicitors for the Defendants

Wood had told Britain’s The Guardian in January that

McCain had reached out to him about the dossier, and had
obtained it through other means. The court document
At least a dozen national media organizations had a copy
confirms that Wood, Steele and former State Department
official David Kramer decided together that new of the Steele dossier before it became public but hadn’t
information gathered after the election should be shared published details because much of the information had not
been corroborated.
with authorities in Britain and the United States.

McClatchy was among them and subsequently published

numerous reports on people named in the dossier,
including a Russian diplomat and a supposed hacker who
apparently is an imprisoned pedophile.

The dossier, without substantiation, said Gubarev’s U.S.-

A McCain spokesperson declined to comment Monday on
the new court document, pointing instead to a Jan. 11
statement from the veteran senator about the dossier.
“Upon examination of the contents, and unable to make a
judgment about their accuracy, I delivered the information
to the director of the FBI,” McCain had said then. “That
has been the extent of my contact with the FBI or any
other government agency regarding this issue.”
434
based global web-hosting companies, XBT and Webzilla,
planted digital bugs, transmitted viruses and conducted
altering operations against the Democratic Party
leadership.
While one key name in the dossier was blackened out by
BuzzFeed, Gubarev’s was not. He alleges that he was
never contacted for comment, suffering reputational harm
in the process.
In the court document, Steele’s barrister, Nicola Cain,
argued that the portion of the dossier dealing with
Gubarev, which came in weeks after Trump’s election and
after Steele was no longer paid by his client for research,
amounted to raw intelligence and was advertised as such.
She did not return a call or email requests for comment.
Val Gurvits, an attorney leading the U.S. suit against
BuzzFeed, dismissed the idea that Gubarev was just caught
up in raw intelligence.
“The value of this document (dossier) is
only if it is published,” said Gurvits. “It is
absolutely of no value to anybody unless it
is published. Slander is slander when you
say it to one person.”
In a recent development in the U.S. lawsuit, BuzzFeed
attorneys subpoenaed the former heads of the FBI, CIA
and the Directorate of National Intelligence, seeking
information about the dossier. Politico reported on June 30
that the demand for documents and testimony was aimed at
learning the existence and scope of any federal
investigation into Steele’s dossier.
Similarly, Gubarev’s attorney hopes to soon put Steele
under oath, particularly about how the accusations about
XBT and Webzilla came about.
“I plan to take the necessary steps to
depose him as an important witness to my
case,” Guvarits said, dismissing the
chances of a settlement. “We have not had
any serious settlement discussions in quite
some time. My client certainly wants to take
the case to trial. He wants his reputation
back.”
435
The British court document also confirmed that
Washington research firm Fusion GPS, co-founded by
former Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn Simpson, had
been hired to conduct opposition research by one of
Trump’s GOP primary opponents. Later, Democrats paid
for the same research on Trump’s past and alleged Russian
ties.
Fusion GPS contracted with Steele, who had once worked
as an undercover spy in Moscow. The court document
lifted a veil on Washington’s inner workings, with Steele
laying out how Fusion briefed select reporters on the
material for which it and Steele had been paid to gather.
“The journalists initially briefed at the end of
September 2016 by the Second Defendant
(Steele) and Fusion at Fusion’s instruction
were from the New York Times, the
Washington Post, Yahoo News, the New
Yorker and CNN,” Steele’s lawyers said,
adding that he “verbally and in person”
briefed the first three organizations in mid-
October and a reporter from Mother Jones
via Skype.
These reporters were not shown the dossier, the lawyers
noted, and received instead a “disclosure of limited
intelligence regarding indications of Russian interference”
in the campaign. The information was off the record,
meaning it could be used for further research but not
published nor attributed.
Simpson declined comment. Steele declined past attempts
to discuss his dossier with McClatchy.
--Greg Gordon and special correspondent Peter Stone
contributed.
 Russian Lawyer Veselnitskaya Is
McCain Supporter – Posted Anti-Trump Posts On
Facebook
Jim Hoft
Jul 12th, 2017 9:18 Am

More information is leaking out on Russian attorney

Natalia Veselnitskaya.

The Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. in

Trump Tower also spent quite a bit of time in Washington
DC.

In December 2015 she posted a photo

on Facebook of Senator John McCain at
a meeting.

The meeting was previously held in McCain’s office.

Natalia Veselnitskaya posted an anti-Trump article on her

Facebook page 4 days before her meeting with Donald
Trump Jr.

Natalia Veselnitskaya also posted several anti-Trump posts on

Facebook.

436
Veselnitskaya’s facebook page shows she was in New
York City on the 10th and in Washington DC on June 14,
2016.
Veselnitskaya told NBC News on Monday she was not
with the Kremlin as was reported by The New York Times.
Committee hearing, 8 days after cold-
contacting Trump Jr. in Trump Tower.
Here is another shot from the June 14, 2016 Congressional
hearing on Russia and the Ukraine.

She confirmed her meeting with Donald Trump Jr. was

about Russian adoptions in the US.

The law firm where Veselnitskaya is listed as managing

partner, Kamerton Consulting, is based in a Moscow
suburb and does not even have a website.

A staff member at Kamerton told The Associated Press

Veselnitskaya was unavailable for comment on Monday.

Her office in Moscow may be a shell. There is no working

phone, email or website.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry

Peskov said Monday that the Kremlin is unaware of a
meeting between Trump’s senior staff and Veselnitskaya
and “does not know who that is.”

Peskov said,

“No, we don’t know who that is and

obviously we can’t monitor all meetings
Russian lawyers hold both in Russia and
abroad.”
Now this…
Another shot from the confirmed hearing.
Natalia Veselnitskaya was sitting with
Obama’s Ambassador to Russia Michael
This post has been updated.
McFaul during a Foreign Affairs
.

437
 British Lawsuit Raises New Questions Over
John McCain's Involvement With The "Trump Dossier"
By Tyler Durden
Jul 12, 2017 4:15 AM

In the aftermath of BuzzFeed's release of the now- didn't get a copy of the dossier until January 6th.
infamous "Trump Dossier," much time has been spent Precisely who saw what and when during that interim
speculating exactly who paid for dirt on the Trump period still remains a mystery.
administration and who had the opportunity to take a sneak
peak at the findings before the report was passed off to the
FBI. Media reports have suggested that the "opposition
research" was ordered by one of Trump's presidential
primary competitors though that detail has never been
officially confirmed.

That said, a name that continues to pop

up every time the dossier is mentioned
is that of Senator John McCain (R-AZ), a
rather outspoken and unapologetic critic of
President Trump.

As a recap, for those who have manged to avoid the head

trauma of this particular narrative, the dossier in question
was compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele and A McCain spokesperson declined to comment Monday on
his London firm, Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd. The the new court document, pointing instead to a Jan. 11
intelligence produced amounted to a collection of statement from the veteran senator about the dossier.
uncorroborated reports gathered by Steele primarily from
intelligence contacts he developed while working “Upon examination of the contents, and
undercover in Moscow. Provocative details relating to unable to make a judgment about their
Trump, hookers and 'golden showers' in Russian hotel accuracy, I delivered the information to
rooms proved explosive when they were published by the director of the FBI,” McCain had said
BuzzFeed on January 10th, but were quickly debunked as then. “That has been the extent of my
nothing more than 'fake news.' contact with the FBI or any other
government agency regarding this
But now, courtesy of a lawsuit filed by issue.”
Aleksej Gubarev in the U.K., additional
In recent congressional testimony, ex-FBI
details are emerging which raise new
Director James Comey, fired by Trump
questions about McCain's links to the
amid a widening probe, acknowledged
dossier.
receiving the dossier from McCain on
Jan. 6.
As McClatchy notes today, according to a new court
document filed in the British lawsuit, the counsel for Chris
Kramer, a former State Department official who until
Steele repeatedly points to Senator McCain and a former
recently served as a senior director at Arizona State
State Department official as two of just a handful of people
University’s McCain Institute for International Leadership,
known to have had copies of the full document before it
declined comment.
circulated among journalists and was ultimately published
by BuzzFeed.
Two defamation lawsuits — one in the United States and a
second in the U.K. — have been brought by lawyers for
It's unclear exactly when McCain got his first look at the
Aleksej Gubarev, a Cyprus-based Internet entrepreneur
dossier and his staff has refused to provide additional
whom Steele’s Russian sources accused of cyber spying
comment beyond a statement released back in January. As
against the Democratic Party leadership.
a result, all we know for sure is that Steele finished his
opposition research in October and Comey testified that he
438
The dossier, without substantiation, said Gubarev’s U.S.-
based global web-hosting companies, XBT and Webzilla,
planted digital bugs, transmitted viruses and conducted
altering operations against the Democratic Party
leadership.
While one key name in the dossier was blackened out by
BuzzFeed, Gubarev’s was not. He alleges that he was
never contacted for comment, suffering reputational harm
in the process.
In the court document, Steele’s barrister, Nicola Cain,
argued that the portion of the dossier dealing with
.
439
Gubarev, which came in weeks after Trump’s election and
after Steele was no longer paid by his client for research,
amounted to raw intelligence and was advertised as such.
She did not return a call or email requests for comment.
Of course, with discovery still ongoing in both lawsuits,
we suspect additional details on this narrative will continue
to leak out slowly over time despite the best efforts of the
mainstream media to conceal the fact that opposition
research was being gathered, not just on the Clinton
campaign, but on Trump as well.
 As Russia Scandal
Touches His Son, Trump Privately Rages
By JONATHAN LEMIRE And JULIE PACE, Associated Press
Jul. 12, 2017 2:33 AM ET
WASHINGTON (AP) — The snowballing revelations
about Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer
during last year's presidential campaign have broadsided
the White House, distracting from its agenda as aides
grapple with a crisis involving the president's family.
The public has not laid eyes on the president since his
return from Europe Saturday. But in private, Trump has
raged against the latest Russia development, with most of
his ire directed at the media, not his son, according to
people who have spoken to him in recent days. The only
comment from Trump on the matter for much of the day
came in a brief statement via spokeswoman Sarah
Huckabee Sanders, who said Tuesday that the president
believes his son is "a high-quality person."
The bombshell revelation that Trump Jr. was eager to
accept information from the Russian government landed
hard on weary White House aides. While staff people have
grown accustomed to a good news cycle being
overshadowed by the Russia investigations, Trump aides
and outside advisers privately acknowledged that this
week's developments felt more serious.
Trump Jr. released four pages of emails Tuesday in which
he communicates with an associate trying to arrange a
meeting with a Russian lawyer. In the emails, the
intermediary says the attorney has negative information
about Democrat Hillary Clinton that is part of the Russian
government's efforts to help Trump in the campaign. The
then-candidate's son responds:
"I love it."
This new setback raises new questions about whether the
Trump campaign coordinated with Moscow during the
election, a charge the president has denied for months. And
it points those questions more directly at the inner circle of
Trump's own family.
As has been the pattern for Trump's White House, the
controversy has sparked a new round of recriminations
among the president's team. Nearly a dozen White House
officials and outside advisers spoke on the condition of
anonymity in order to discuss the mood in the West Wing.
440
The president, in conversations with confidants, has
questioned the quality of advice he has received from
senior staff, including chief of staff Reince Priebus.
However, Priebus has been a frequent target of criticism
for months and even those taking aim at him now said it
did not appear as though a shakeup was on the horizon.
There has also been a difference of opinion within the
West Wing has to how to handle the crisis, with some
aides favoring more transparency than others. Some of the
unhappiness centers on Trump's legal team, which is led
by New York attorney Marc Kasowitz.
An unusual statement Saturday night from the legal team's
spokesman Mark Corallo appeared to claim Trump Jr.,
Kushner and Manafort were duped into meeting with the
Russian lawyers, and was viewed as particularly unhelpful
by senior White House officials.
The revelations come at a pivotal moment for Trump and
the Republican Party, as GOP senators race to finish work
on a health care overhaul that has divided the party. Trump
has largely stayed on the sidelines of the policy
negotiations on the measure, but has still publicly pressed
GOP senators to wrap up work on legislation this summer
and fulfill one of the party's central promises to voters.
On Capitol Hill, some Republican lawmakers cast the
snowballing Russia controversy as a distraction from the
health care debate.
"We ought to be disciplined and not be
distracted by things that may be legitimate
but not right now in our lane," said Sen.
Thom Tillis of North Carolina.
The matter has also distracted from a brief stretch in which
some White House advisers believed they were finding
their footing.
Trump aides, who view clashes with the media as central
to the president's agenda, were emboldened when three
journalists from CNN resigned after the network withdrew
a story about a Trump ally. Trump's allies were also
heartened by his trip to Europe last week, feeling that his
speech saluting national pride in Poland was a high point
of his presidency and believing that he held his own during
meetings with foreign leaders at an international summit in
Germany.
But the afterglow of Trump's trip quickly vanished,
replaced once again with questions about the swirling
federal and congressional investigations into Russia's
election meddling.
And Trump allies took notice Tuesday when Vice
President Mike Pence distanced himself from the
revelation by the president's son.
In a statement, Pence spokesman Marc
Lotter said the vice president "was not
aware of the meeting," adding Pence was
"not focused on stories about the campaign
especially those pertaining to the time
before he joined the campaign."
Pence was named Trump's running mate in the middle of
July 2016, several weeks after the meeting involving the
president's son.
441
Trump Jr, who is running the family business with his
brother, huddled with friends and close business associates
after the first stories dropped, his mood shifting from
worry to defiance over the story's lifespan, according to
confidants. He has told those close to him that while he
realizes the optics of the meeting aren't ideal, he has
echoed his father in believing that the media have
overblown the matter and, despite some opposition among
his allies, has said he wants to publicly fight back.
But White House aides struggled with mounting a strong
defense against the scandal that also touched Jared
Kushner, the president's son-in-law and senior adviser who
attended the 2016 meeting. Though Sanders called charges
of collusion "ridiculous," the White House press briefing
remained off-camera for the second consecutive day,
limiting the power of her pushback.
And the president himself was slated to stay out of sight.
He had no public events scheduled for Wednesday until he
departs for another overseas trip, this time to France.
 Alan Dershowitz Slams
New York Times For Trump Jr. "Treason" Claims
By Tyler Durden
Jul 12, 2017 8:10 PM
Over the past couple of days, the emergence of details
regarding Trump Jr.'s meeting with the Russian-born
lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya has prompted a return of the
Trump-Russia mass hysteria on the part of the mainstream
media and the left. Hillary Clinton's former running mate,
Tim Kaine, even went so far as to refer to Don Jr.'s
meeting as "treasonous."
Meanwhile, the New York Times published
an op-ed detailing how treason statutes
could potentially be adapted for the sole
purpose of incriminating Don Jr. for
taking the meeting with Veselnitskaya.
Although we do not yet have enough facts to judge,
Donald Jr. and others may also be liable for conspiracy
with respect to espionage, depending on how any illicit
information was obtained and the level of their awareness
of any spying. Because the Russian campaign that
followed was nothing less than an assault on our
democracy, we understand why some are raising issues of
treason as well. Prosecution under the federal treason
statute is ultimately unlikely because we are not at war
with Russia.
But during the Cold War, treasonous
conduct was often prosecuted under
other statutes.
(Alger Hiss was sentenced to four years in prison for
“forgetting” in sworn testimony that he had met with
Whitaker Chambers, an American working for the
Russians.)
But former Harvard Law Professor, Alan Dershowitz, a
constant voice of reason throughout the post-election
hysteria, says all of the discussion of "treason" on the left
is nothing more than wishful thinking. As Dershowitz
reasonably points out, while the act of actually stealing or
hacking information is illegal,
"seeking to obtain the work product of a
prior hack would be no more criminal
than a newspaper publishing the work
product of thefts such as the Pentagon
Papers and the material stolen by
Snowden and Manning."
442
Obviously if anyone conspired in advance with another to
commit a crime – such as hacking the DNC – that would
be criminal. But merely seeking to obtain the work product
of a prior hack would be no more criminal than a
newspaper publishing the work product of thefts such as
the Pentagon Papers and the material stolen by Snowden
and Manning.
Moreover, the emails sent to Trump Jr.
say that the dirt peddled by
Veselnitskaya came from “official
documents.” No mention is made of
hacking or other illegal activities. So it
is unlikely that attendance at the
meeting violated any criminal statute.
Meanwhile, regarding all those 'collusion' claims,
Dershowitz points out that while the act of 'colluding' with
a foreign government maybe should be made illegal in the
future, it is not currently a crime under existing laws....so
tough luck there too.
Whether or not such collusion, if it occurred, is a crime, it
is clear that the American people have the right to know
whether any sort of collusion –legal or illegal – took
place. And, if so, what was its nature.
The Mueller investigation is limited to possible criminal
activity. Probing the moral, political or other non-criminal
implications of collusion with, or interference by, Russia is
beyond the jurisdiction of the special counsel. It is the role
of Congress, not the Criminal Division of the Justice
Department, to make changes in existing laws.
Perhaps mere collusion by a campaign
with a foreign government should be
made a crime, so as to prevent future
contamination of our elections. But it is
not currently a crime.
Nor will it be easy to draft a criminal statute prohibiting a
campaign from using material provided by a foreign
power, without trenching on the constitutional rights of
candidates. But this is all up to Congress and the courts,
not the special counsel, with his limited jurisdiction.
And here is the full interview with Dershowitz from earlier
today:

443
 Lavrov: US Election Meddling
Claims Not Backed Up By Facts
Wed Jul 12, 2017 12:59PM
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov looks on during a press
conference in Brussels, Belgium, July 12, 2017. (Photos by AFP)
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
has once again dismissed allegations of
Russia’s meddling in the 2016 US
presidential election, saying he would
like to be shown at least one fact
proving this “amazing” claim.
"I don't know anything about this fact. It's
amazing that serious people are making a
mountain out of a molehill," Lavrov said at
a news conference in the Belgian capital
Brussels on Wednesday.
Lavrov’s comments came in the wake of new
developments in the ongoing investigation into US
President Donald Trump’s alleged “collusion” with Russia
to beat his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton during the
November 8 face-off.
The New York Times reported over the weekend that
Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr., had met with Russian
lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who had alleged ties to the
Kremlin, during the campaign.
Trump’s son confirmed in a statement that he had indeed
met Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower in June last year on
the grounds that she had damaging info about Clinton and
her ties to Moscow. However, he cut the meeting short
because the information provided was “vague and made no
sense.”
444
Donald Trump Jr. arriving at Trump Tower in New York, January
11, 2017. (Photo by AFP)
Accompanying Donald Jr. in the meeting were Trump's
son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Trump's then-campaign
chairman, Paul Manafort, suggested the report confirmed
by five unnamed sources.
Kremlin denies ties to Veselnitskaya
The Kremlin also reacted to the report on Wednesday, with
spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying the Russian government
has never been in touch with Veselnitskaya.
"We have already said we are absolutely
unaware of this story, we have never been
in contact with this lawyer... She has
nothing to do whatsoever with us," he told
reporters during a press briefing.
The Times had claimed in its follow-up reports that emails
sent to Trump’s son before the meeting had clear
references to the Russian government as a source of
damaging info on Clinton.
In an interview with Fox News, Donald Jr. said the
meeting was “such a nothing” that he didn’t feel the need
to fill in his father on it.
"I mean, I wouldn't have even remembered
it until you started scouring through this
stuff. It was literally just a wasted 20
minutes, which was a shame," he said.
The FBI and some congressional committees have been
running a probe into allegations of coordination between
the Russian government and some Trump associates
during the 2016 campaign and transition.
.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said he firmly denied the
allegations once again as he met Trump for the first time
on the sidelines of the annual G20 summit in Hamburg,
Germany, on Friday.

445
 ‘Category 5 Hurricane’: White House
Under Siege By Trump Jr.’s Russia Revelations
By Philip Rucker And Ashley Parker
July 12 At 6:42 AM
Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer who promised
damaging information about Hillary Clinton during his father's
presidential campaign, after being told the information was "part of
Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump." (Video: Elyse
Samuels, Jenny Starrs/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The White House has been thrust into chaos after days of
ever-worsening revelations about a meeting between
Donald Trump Jr. and a lawyer characterized as
representing the Russian government, as the president
fumes against his enemies and senior aides circle one
another with suspicion, according to top White House
officials and outside advisers.
President Trump — who has been hidden from public view
since returning last weekend from a divisive international
summit — is enraged that the Russia cloud still hangs over
his presidency and is exasperated that his eldest son and
namesake has become engulfed by it, said people who
have spoken with him this week.
The disclosure that Trump Jr. met with a Russian attorney,
believing he would receive incriminating information
about Hillary Clinton as part of the Kremlin’s effort to
boost his father’s candidacy, has set back the
administration’s faltering agenda and rattled the senior
leadership team.
On Wednesday, in his first Twitter posts since the email
disclosures, Trump defended his son as “open, transparent
and innocent” and repeated past claims that his
administration is the subject of a “witch hunt” fueled by
leakers.
“My son Donald did a good job last night,”
Trump wrote, referring to his son’s
appearance on Fox News. “He was open,
446
transparent and innocent. This is the
greatest Witch Hunt in political history.
Sad!”
What you need to know about Donald Trump Jr.'s ties to Russia.
(Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post)
Trump also took aim at anonymous leaks from “sources”
— even though Trump Jr. gave a step-by-step email
chronology of the plans for the meeting with the Russian
lawyer in 2016.
Even supporters of Trump Jr. who believe he faces no
legal repercussions privately acknowledged Tuesday that
the story is a public relations disaster — for him as well as
for the White House.
One outside ally called it a “Category 5
hurricane,” while an outside adviser said a
CNN graphic charting connections between
the Trump team and Russians resembled
the plot of the fictional Netflix series
“House of Cards.”
Vice President Pence sought to distance himself from the
controversy, with his spokesman noting that Trump Jr.’s
meeting occurred before Pence joined the ticket.
Inside a White House in which infighting often seems like
a core cultural value, three straight days of revelations in
the New York Times about Trump Jr. have inspired a new
round of accusations and recriminations, with advisers
privately speculating about who inside the Trump orbit
may be leaking damaging information about the
president’s son.
This portrait of the Trump White House under siege is
based on interviews Tuesday with more than a dozen West
Wing officials, outside advisers, and friends and associates
of the president and his family, many of whom spoke on
the condition of anonymity to be candid.
The makeup of Trump’s inner circle is the subject of
internal debate, as ever. Ivanka Trump, the president’s
daughter and senior adviser; Jared Kushner, her husband
and another senior adviser; and first lady Melania Trump
have been privately pressing the president to shake up his
team — most specifically by replacing Reince Priebus as
the White House chief of staff, according to two senior
White House officials and one ally close to the White
House.
The three family members are especially concerned about
the steady stream of unauthorized leaks to journalists that
have plagued the administration over the nearly six months
that President Trump has been in office, from sensitive
national security information to embarrassing details about
the inner workings of the White House, the officials said.
Stephanie Grisham, the first lady’s communications
director, said:
“Of course, the first lady is concerned
about leaks from her husband’s
administration, as all Americans should be.
And while she does offer advice and
perspectives on many things, Mrs. Trump
does not weigh in on West Wing staff.”
Lindsay Walters, a deputy White House press secretary,
disputed reports about Priebus’s standing.
“These sources have been consistently
wrong about Reince, and they’re still wrong
today,” she said.
After this story first published, Josh Raffel, a White House
spokesman, said in a statement on behalf of Kushner and
Ivanka Trump:
“Jared and Ivanka are focused on working
with Reince and the team to advance the
President’s agenda and not on pushing for
staff changes.”
Trump recently publicly praised Priebus’s work ethic, and
the chief of staff’s allies note that Priebus has done as good
a job as can be expected under the unique circumstances of
this administration. Defenders of Priebus have long said
they expect him to make it to a year in the position, and
Trump is said to be hesitant to fire him or any other senior
staffer amid the escalating Russia investigation led by
special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.
447
The mind-set of Trump Jr. over the past few days has
evolved from distress to anger to defiance, according to
people close to him. He hired a criminal defense attorney
but maintains that he is innocent of any wrongdoing. After
his tweets commenting on the matter drew scrutiny, he
agreed to his first media interview — with his friend Fox
News Channel host Sean Hannity on his show on Tuesday
night.
One friend of Trump Jr.’s said the presidential son saw the
Hannity appearance as an opportunity to give his version
of Richard Nixon’s “Checkers” speech, a 1952 address in
which the then-vice-presidential candidate defended
himself against accusations of financial improprieties.
Trump has had no public events since returning Saturday
night from Germany but has been closely monitoring
developments with his eldest son in the news.
Trump continues to view the Russia controversy as an
excuse used by Democrats for losing an election they
thought they would win — and an attempt to undermine
the legitimacy of his victory, aides said. They said that the
president’s frustration is based on the media coverage of
his son’s actions, as opposed to the actions themselves.
“He just looks at this as the continuum of
taking a group of unrelated facts and
putting them together in concentric circles
and saying, ‘Aha — look what happened!’ ”
said Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a longtime
friend of the president who was chairman
of the Presidential Inaugural Committee.
“With Don Jr., whatever set of facts there
are may not lead to the conclusion that the
establishment media is making.”
Trump and his advisers are deeply frustrated that the
disclosure by Trump Jr. has overshadowed the positive
coverage they expected to receive from the president’s trip
abroad, as well as other issues they hoped to spotlight this
week, such as the Senate health-care bill and trade.
A handful of Republican operatives close to the White
House are scrambling to Trump Jr.’s defense and have
begun what could be an extensive campaign to try to
discredit some of the journalists who have been reporting
on the matter.
Their plan, as one member of the team described it, is to
research the reporters’ previous work, in some cases going
back years, and to exploit any mistakes or perceived
biases. They intend to demand corrections, trumpet errors
on social media and feed them to conservative outlets,
such as Fox News.
But one outside adviser said a campaign against the press
when it comes to Trump Jr.’s meeting could be futile: “The
meeting happened. It’s tough to go to war with the facts.”
In the West Wing, meanwhile, fear of the Mueller probe
effectively paralyzed senior staffers as they struggled to
respond.
No official has yet delivered a robust defense of Trump Jr.,
although Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the principal deputy
press secretary, told reporters Monday,
“I would certainly say Don Jr. did not
collude with anybody to influence the
election.”
At Tuesday’s press briefing, Sanders read a brief statement
from the president —
“My son is a high-quality person and I
applaud his transparency”
— but declined to speak further on the issue, referring all
questions to Trump Jr.’s attorney.
Other senior White House officials were hesitant to talk
about Trump Jr. — even on the condition of anonymity —
for fear of exposing themselves legally.
Some top officials, as well as outside advisers, had earlier
suggested that the White House conduct its own internal
review to identify any potential problem areas related to
Russia so that it can release the information on its own
rather than be caught unaware by news reports. But that
notion went nowhere, in part because officials were afraid
to discuss any potential Russia interactions that could
make them targets of Mueller’s probe.
One White House official went so far as to stop
communicating with the president’s embattled son,
although this official spoke sympathetically about his
plight, casting Trump Jr. as someone who just wants to
hunt, fish and run his family’s real estate business.
“The kid is an honest kid,” said one friend
of Trump Jr. “The White House should’ve
never let that story go out on the
president’s son … What he’s upset about
was that it was a minor meeting and the
media glare — anything that’s Russia-
related, gets picked up the way roaches get
caught in a roach motel.”
Eric Trump, another son of the president, defended his
older brother Tuesday night by retweeting a message from
British politician Nigel Farage, who said Trump Jr. was
.
448
under attack because he is “the best public supporter” of
the president. Eric Trump tweeted:
“This is the EXACT reason they viciously
attack our family! They can’t stand that we
are extremely close and will ALWAYS
support each other.”
Critics of Trump Jr. counter that he should have known
better than to accept a meeting with someone who was
explicitly described in an email as a “Russian government
attorney.”
“It wasn’t naivete,” said Michael McFaul,
the U.S. ambassador to Russia in the
Obama administration. “It was, ‘Oh, they
have some dirt on our opponent and I’m
eager to receive it.’ Nobody thought to
think, ‘Well, how did they obtain that? Is
this coming from the Russian government,
Russian intelligence?’ Those are the kinds
of obvious questions that should have been
asked, in my opinion.”
Pence found out about Trump Jr.’s meeting with the
Russian attorney Friday evening in advance of the first
Times story, said one person familiar with the discussions.
Both Pence and his team view the Russia coverage as a
distraction, and are working to keep the vice president
clear of it and focused on Trump’s policy goals — such as
health care, the subject of his scheduled visit to Kentucky
on Wednesday.
“The vice president is working every day to
advance the president’s agenda, which is
what the American people sent us here to
do. The vice president was not aware of
the meeting,” Pence’s press secretary,
Marc Lotter, said in a statement. “He is not
focused on stories about the campaign,
particularly stories about the time before he
joined the ticket.”
On Capitol Hill — where Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell (R-Ky.) announced Tuesday that he is delaying
his chamber’s August recess by two weeks — Republican
senators were becoming increasingly frustrated with the
White House, which they blame for Congress’s inability to
pass any major legislation.
A growing number of senators believe that the widening
Russia probe — as well as the Trump-
fueled tumult that seems to dominate nearly every news
cycle — have stalled their legislative agenda, leaving them
nothing to offer their constituents by way of achievements
when they head home over the break.
 Trump V. Everyone
Sam Jayne
July 12, 2017
President Trump increasingly feels (and knows) that he's
fighting virtually every force in U.S. and global politics —
even those who initially wanted to give him the benefit of
the doubt or seem friendly.
 The only people truly on his side are the 40 percent
of voters who continue to cheer his middle finger to the
powerful.
 All those forces — basically permanent
Washington, plus crucial world leaders — are
deeply suspicious of Trump, and see an increasing
duty to thwart him for moral or practical reasons.
 "What goes around, comes around," said one of
Washington's Republican pillars. "He was very critical
of each of those groups. So why are they going to go to
the man for him? He has done so many things outside
the norms of behavior."
There's been a huge swing in the barometric pressure for
these groups:
449
 CEOs, many of whom whom engaged with this White
House over the opposition of employees and
shareholders, face increasingly intense resistance to
oppose him.
 Outside of the Saudis, the Poles and Putin, very few
world leaders want to get his back or offer cover.
 Most elected Republicans in town would privately
prefer a President Pence. When push comes to shove,
they may not protect Trump. Indeed, their natural
impulse will be to throw him overboard.
 Finally, there's M & M: Bob Mueller and big media, all
combing through every meeting, business deal, and
foreign contact by Trump and his staff.
On congressional Republicans, from Jonathan Swan:
 For the moment, they'll stay quiet and muscle through
because they want their tax reform, and they need a
Republican president to sign it. But when [stuff] really
hits the fan he'll have very little goodwill on the Hill to
back him up."
 Trump burned so much goodwill when he trashed the
House health care bill as 'mean' after lobbying the hell
out of them and celebrating with them in Rose Garden.
That was a really profound moment — that he'd throw
them under bus so casually on a piece of legislation
that were already so leery about supporting."
Be smart: Trump increasingly questions the loyalty of
everyone, including his own staff and personal lawyer.
Every day, it feels like the walls are closing in and it's
unclear who to trust.
 The Non-Issue
Of Trump Jr.’s Emails
By Stephen Lendman - stephenlendman.org
7-12-2017
Anything about Russia, Trump, his family and team
consistently is overblown, misrepresented and lied about
by what he justifiably calls the “dishonest media.” Indeed!!
Trump Jr.’s meeting and email correspondence with
Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya amounted to much
ado about nothing.
A nothing story disgracefully became a cause celebre,
anything to bash, denigrate and weaken Trump for the
wrong reasons, ignoring plenty of justifiable ones - done
directly or through other parties, in this case his son.
Russian lawyer Veselnitskaya is a private citizen
unconnected to the Kremlin. There was nothing improper
or illegal about Trump Jr. meeting with her. No
“collusion” occurred, no connection to Russia, no other
known criminal activity of any kind.
Trump Jr. published emails between himself and
Veselnitskaya, showing they had nothing to do with
Russia. Issues discussed related to adoption of children and
related charitable activities.
Emails between himself and publicist/tabloid writer Rob
Goldstone claimed a Russian government lawyer had
incriminating documents about Hillary, yet nothing of the
sort was discussed or transmitted.
Goldstone said he had no knowledge of Veselnitskaya’s
connection to the Kremlin. Putin spokesman Dmitry
Peskov said the Russian government knows nothing about
this woman.
On June 9, 2016, Trump Jr., presidential campaign
manager at the time Paul Manafort, and Trump’s son-in-
law Jared Kushner met with her at Trump Tower in New
York.
Trump Jr. said the following:
“I was asked to have a meeting by an
acquaintance I knew from the 2013 Miss
Universe pageant with an individual who I
was told might have information helpful to
the campaign.”
450
“I was not told her name prior to the
meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to attend,
but told them nothing of the substance.”
Veselnitskaya said
“she had information that individuals
connected to Russia were funding the
Democratic National Committee and
supporting Ms. Clinton.”
“(H)er statements were vague, ambiguous
and made no sense. No details or
supporting information was provided or
even offered. It quickly became clear that
she had no meaningful information.”
“She then changed subjects and began
discussing the adoption of Russian children
and mentioned the Magnitsky Act.”
“It became clear to me that this was the
true agenda all along and that the claims of
potentially helpful information were a
pretext for the meeting.”
Goldstone called the meeting
“the most insane nonsense I ever heard.”
In a Tuesday interview on NBC News, Veselnitskaya
denied any connection to Vladimir Putin or Russia’s
government, explaining she didn’t meet with Trump Jr. to
discuss Hillary or last year’s presidential campaign.
Unprincipled claims by undemocratic Democrats and
media scoundrels about alleged Trump team wrongdoing,
including possible treason, show how low they’re willing
to stoop to damage the president for the wrong reasons.
It’s more hard evidence of the deplorable state of America,
a serial aggressor, a fantasy democracy, an unscrupulous
rogue state.
.
 Liberal Media Claims
“Alt-Right” Memes Will Take Down Democracy
Www.Thedailysheeple.Com
July 12, 2017
Leftists have a new warning for everyone using social
media: the memes will take down democracy. One liberal
rag is now claiming that the sharing of memes is a bigger
weapon than fake news.
As humorous as it is to most, this overt media propaganda
is actually working on some. Look at how effective the
media was at shifting the blame from Hillary Clinton after
the Podesta emails were released. The problem quickly
became about the individuals who released the
information, rather than the psychos who actually wrote
the emails. Even now, the DNC has admitted to rigging the
primary election, but that’s being hidden from the public at
large to protect the reputation of leftists. But the bigger
problem, according to Salon, is the memes.
A Salon write-up warned of the growing threat of alt-right
memes, saying they potentially pose a bigger threat to
American democracy than “fake news,” said the Daily
Caller. And that’s how the article read too. Salon is
actually afraid of memes taking the government down.
They don’t seem to mind that CNN admitted to being fake
news and pushing a false narrative for ratings, they care
that President Donald Trump tweeted a gif of himself
thumping CNN. The astonishing amount of mental
gymnastics used to reach the conclusion that “memes will
damage democracy” is palpable. The article is even titled:
Forget Fake News — Alt-Right Memes Could Do More
Damage To Democracy.
Interestingly enough, they claim that talk radio, you know,
that pesky idea that there’s such a thing as freedom of
speech on the radio, was the previous crisis, but now it’s
memes.
Just like talk radio before it, growth of alt-right social
media is the real crisis behind Trump’s CNN tweet.
451
If you think it’s funny that Salon is attacking memes,
you’d be joining most others. The problem is that
their followers actually believe that freedom of speech is
somehow a bad thing. Meaning, you can say and meme
whatever you want, as long as it agrees with a left leaning
agenda. Same with talk radio. You can say anything you
want, even if it’s not true. Just make sure it’s leftist
government worshiping propaganda.
Well beyond the problem of fake news, which at least tried
to pose as news, these posts are pure opinion, outburst and
excess. There is nothing about these posts that even
remotely compares to news reporting — and that’s why
they are popular. At a moment in U.S. history where trust
in the news is at a record low, we are seeing the growing
power of individuals outside of traditional media circuits
who have built a following by suggesting that their voices
are more authentic and more accurate than those of the so-
called liberal, elitist, majority-silencing news. –Salon
It’s almost as if the writer didn’t actually read this before
publishing the piece. Salon admits the memes aren’t news
but says the fake news is to be defended because it’s trying
“to pose as news.” Then they continue to admit that trust in
the mainstream media is at an all-time low (it couldn’t
possibly be because of propaganda laden false narratives
designed to tell a viewer what to think instead of actual
journalism though, could it?) so blame those whose brains
aren’t as weak, and go outside mainstream media’s mind
control tactics for their news.
What this week’s Trump Twitter war against the
mainstream news media teaches us is that CNN should be
worried —
but not about Trump’s attacks, rather
about the fact that an increasing
 number of U.S. citizens are forming their
political ideas based on alt-right rants,
and not on anything that even remotely
resembles information.
Oh, the horror of US citizens forming their own ideas! It’s
like Armageddon!
.
452
Is the author referring to the “information” CNN has
admitted is fake? It seems like Salon is playing fast and
loose with the word “information.” But let’s get at least
this straight; CNN admits that they push fake news for
ratings and “witch hunt” Donald Trump because their
viewers “want it to be true,” but Salon is concerned with
free speech in the form of memes on the internet? Again,
this is straight up propaganda, and it’s almost too obvious
this time.
The most dangerous threat to Salon’s precious democracy
is not memes. It’s free thinkers. It’s individuals who wake
up one day to realize the truth: The government is taking
their freedom, not brown kids overseas. The police are
enforcing the government’s freedom-trampling edicts, not
the Middle-Eastern terrorists. And the media is hiding and
covering for the government in an attempt to elect the
correct king to rule the rest of us so they may earn political
favor in the form of tax money stolen from those who
disagree.
 Remember That Trump ‘Dossier?’
That Was Democrats Using RUSSIA-Fed
Info To Attack The Prez
By Usafeaturesmedia
Posted On July 12, 2017
Don’t let the Democrats tell you they are innocent of any
Russia-related collusion
(National Sentinel) Political conspiracy: Remember that
time Democrats finally developed a conscience and, in
doing so, were able to fulfill the party’s longstanding
promise of becoming champions for regular Joe and Jane
America?
Yeah, neither do we — because it hasn’t happened. And it
won’t.
Democrats who swear they’ve found a “smoking gun” in
the latest “Russia” brouhaha involving Donald Trump Jr.
and who claim that taking a meeting with an alleged
Russian government lawyer to gather opposition research
on then-Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton
is treason are able to do so because they have short,
selective memories.
Remember that so-called “dossier” gathered by an ex-
British spy, Christopher Steele, that contained salacious
(and bogus) allegations of Russian nefariousness by then-
GOP nominee Donald J. Trump? Well, most all of the
details contained in that 35-page document a) came from
sources close to the Kremlin; and b) was commissioned
and paid for by a Democrat-aligned firm.
As the Washington Times reported:
The disinformation came in the form of a
Russian-fed dossier written by former
British intelligence agent Christopher
Steele. It contains a series of unverified
453
criminal charges against Mr. Trump’s
campaign aides, such as coordinating
Moscow’s hacking of Democratic Party
computers.
Some Democrats have widely circulated
the discredited information. Mr. Steele was
paid by the Democrat-funded opposition
research firm Fusion GPS with money from
a Hillary Clinton backer. Fusion GPS
distributed the dossier among Democrats
and journalists. The information fell into the
hands of the FBI, which used it in part to
investigate Mr. Trump’s campaign aides.
Mr. Steele makes clear that his
unproven charges came almost
exclusively from sources linked to the
Kremlin and Russian President Vladimir
Putin. He identified his sources as “a
senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure,”
a former “top level Russian intelligence
officer active inside the Kremlin,” a
“senior Kremlin official” and a “senior
Russian government official.”
The same Democrats who have
condemned Russia’s election interference
via plying fake news and hacking email
servers have quoted freely from the Steele
anti-Trump memos derived from creatures
of the Kremlin.
In other words, there is public evidence
of significant, indirect collusion
between Democrats and Russian
disinformation, a Trump supporter said.
“If anyone colluded with the Russians, it
was the Democrats,” a former Trump
campaign adviser who asked not to be
identified because of the pending
investigations told the Times. “After all,
they’ve routinely shopped around false
claims from the debunked Steele dossier,
which listed sources including senior
Kremlin officials.
 “If anyone should be investigated in
Washington, it ought to be Adam Schiff,
Eric Swalwell, Mark Warner and their
staffers,”
the source said, referencing the House Intelligence
Committee’s ranking member, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-
Calif.; Sen. Mark R. Warner, Virginia Democrat and vice
chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence;
and Rep. Eric Swalwell, a California, Democrat on the
House intelligence panel.
As we reported, Steele himself has admitted the dossier
was bunk, and has slammed the web site Buzzfeed for
publishing it earlier this year, even with the caveat that
none of it could be substantiated. The Times was the first
to report Steele’s revelations.
Buzzfeed has been named in a libel suit, as has Steele, filed
by Russian technology company figures named in the
dossier.
The Times goes on to cite numerous occasions when
Democrats cited the bogus dossier to attack, smear or
level insinuations against President Trump, his
administration and especially his inner circle. The paper
noted further:
One person who says he knows it is a
fabrication is Russian entrepreneur Aleksej
Gubarev.
.
454
The dossier quotes Russian sources as
saying Mr. Gubarev’s technology company,
XBT, used botnets to flood Democratic
computers with porn and spying devices.
Mr. Gubarev is suing Mr. Steele for libel in
London and is suing BuzzFeed in Florida.
In January, during an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer,
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said whoever leaked the dossier in
the first place deserves to spend some time behind bars.
“A leak like that is so significant if it came
from the intelligence community, they
should go to jail. If it came from the Obama
administration, they should go to jail. You
cannot allow the leaking of classified
documents, particularly whens it goes to
someone’s character. So I think this is a
tragedy and Donald Trump is right to be
mad,” he said.
We continue to hold out hope that someday soon the
leakers will indeed be held to account.
In the meantime, don’t let the Democrats tell you they are
innocent of any Russia-related collusion. They are neck-
deep in it.
 Is Mike Pence
Leaking To Take Down Trump?
Chris Menahan - Informationliberation
Jul. 12, 2017
Ever notice how Vice President Mike Pence is never
implicated in any of President Donald Trump's scandals
and always comes out looking pure as the driven snow?
With the leaking of Don Jr.'s emails to the New York
Times, which they sourced to
"three advisers to the White House briefed
on the meeting and two others with
knowledge of it,"
people are finally starting to ask questions about whether
or not this establishment Republican cold warrior is
leaking to take Trump down so he can become President.
Julian Assange tweeted this article from Business Insider
out on Tuesday:
From Business Insider,
"Why does it look like somebody close to
the White House is trying to destroy Don
Jr.?":
The call is coming from inside the White House -- or near
it, at least.
A remarkable fact about The New York Times' Sunday
report of the meeting of a Kremlin-linked lawyer and
Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort is
that the story was sourced to
"three advisers to the White House briefed
on the meeting and two others with
knowledge of it."
455
Subsequently, The Times obtained Trump Jr.'s email
exchange with the publicist Rob Goldstone to set up the
meeting. That is the exchange during which Goldstone
promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton
obtained as
"part of Russia and its government's
support for Mr. Trump."
And Trump Jr. responded not by saying,
"What Russian effort to support my dad?"
but rather, "I love it especially later in the
summer."
The Times cannot have gotten the emails from Goldstone.
After all, The Times knew that Trump Jr. had
"forwarded the entire email chain to Mr.
Kushner's company work email, and to Mr.
Manafort at his Trump campaign email."
Goldstone wasn't included on that forward, as we can see
from Trump Jr.'s publication of the email chain on Twitter
after The Times called him for comment about it.
So five people in or around the White House have been
spilling highly incriminating information to The Times
about Trump Jr.'s meeting, and an email chain that only
Kushner, Manafort, and Trump Jr. possessed also made its
way to The Times somehow.
He notes this latest scandal came after Trump's over 2 hour
meeting with President Putin.
Pence is an establishment cold warrior who hates Russia
and does not want to see relations normalized.
A theory I saw some people floating on Sunday was that
Kushner was putting information out to throw his brother-
in-law under the bus, getting everyone to think of this as
"Don Jr.'s meeting" rather than "Jared's meeting." And that
was maybe plausible before we learned that Trump Jr. had
been told the meeting would be part of a Russian operation
to support his father, and before we learned that Trump Jr.
forwarded Kushner and Manafort an email saying as much.
Disclosure of this email exchange is a disaster for both
Kushner and Trump Jr. It's hard to imagine why Kushner
would have seen any advantage in getting it out.
Of course, the other person who initially had the email
chain was Manafort. I don't know what Manafort's
interests are right now. Manafort doesn't work at the White
House, but given this Politico story from May, it does
seem that one might be able to describe him as an adviser
to the White House.
It also occurs to me that when candidate Trump was
itching to put Chris Christie on the ticket and his offspring
were pushing him, for some reason, toward Newt
Gingrich, Manafort was the prime mover behind the Mike
Pence choice. One report alleged Manafort faked a
mechanical problem with Trump's plane so Trump would
be forced to spend a night in Indianapolis, where Pence
could pitch himself for the job.
456
The person in the West Wing most plausibly a winner in
this episode is Pence, who would stand to become
president if Trump were forced from office. Pence, who
has an unusually vigorous fund-raising operation for a
first-term vice president, has been putting out ice-cold
statements about this story.
"The vice president is working hard to
advance the president's agenda every
day," Marc Lotter, his spokesman, said on
Tuesday. "He was not aware of the
meeting. He is also not focused on stories
about the campaign -- especially those that
pertain to the time before he joined the
campaign."
Pence appears to have made similar leaks back in May
while the Flynn scandal was ongoing:
From NBC, "VP Mike Pence Was Never Informed
About Flynn: Source":
Pence has been kept in the dark about
former National Security Adviser Mike
Flynn's alleged wrongdoing, according to a
source close to the administration, who
cited a potential "pattern" of not informing
the vice president and calling it
“malpractice or intentional, and either are
unacceptable."
[...]"You never saw him promoting Flynn,"
the source asserted.
From CNN, Trump. Indeed, their natural impulse will be
to throw him overboard."
"Pence is a loyal soldier, but news cycle is
wearing on him":

"We certainly knew we needed to be

prepared for the unconventional," but, the
source adds, "not to this extent."

[...]On whether Pence would make any explanatory

statements about the meeting between Trump and Russian
Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak:

"I certainly hope not."

Axios reported Wednesday:

"Most elected Republicans in town would

privately prefer a President Pence. When
push comes to shove, they may not protect
.

457
 Was Russian Lawyer Who Met Don Jr. A Dem Plant?
Natalia Veselnitskaya Pictured With Obama Ambassador
8 Days After Trump Jr Meeting
Paul Joseph Watson | Infowars.Com
July 12, 2017
Questions are swirling over Russian
lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya after a
picture of her with Obama’s
ambassador to Russia emerged that
was taken just eight days after she met
with Donald Trump Jnr.
Veselnitskaya first met with Don Jr. after promising him
political dirt on Hillary Clinton, although the meeting,
during which Veselnitskaya mainly talked about Russian
adoptions, was a complete waste of time.
Eight days after the meeting, Veselnitskaya was pictured
sitting behind Obama’s Ambassador to Russia Michael
McFaul during a Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on
June 14, 2016.
Emin Agalarov, who helped set up the meeting with Don
Jr., is also pictured sititng next to Veselnitskaya.
“So why was Veselnitskaya hanging out
with Obama officials just days after her
meeting with Donald Trump Jr.? And why
was Veselnitskaya given a privileged seat
up front during the Congressional hearing?”
asks Gateway Pundit.
458
Was Veselnitskaya part of a ruse to entrap Don Jr. in an
embarrassing situation that could later be used to implicate
him as having colluded with Russia?
The theory would be tenuous if not for the fact that
Veselnitskaya is directly linked to the group behind the
infamous ‘pissgate’ dossier.
“Specifically, we have learned that the
person who sought the meeting is
associated with Fusion GPS, a firm which
according to public reports, was retained by
Democratic operatives to develop
opposition research on the President and
which commissioned the phony Steele
dossier,” said Mark Corallo, a spokesman
for the President Trump’s legal team.
Fusion GPS hired British intelligence agent Christopher
Steele shortly after Veselnitskaya’s meeting with Trump
Jr. His dossier later claimed that President Trump had been
compromised during a trip to Moscow in 2013 during
which Russian prostitutes had defiled a bed previously
slept in by the Obamas.
The dossier was swiftly debunked and cited as evidence
that the deep state and the Democratic Party were trying to
de-lelgitimize and possibly impeach Trump with false
claims to tie into the Russian collusion narrative.
Could Natalia Veselnitskaya have been another servant of
that very same deep state?
 Former DOJ Official:
Trump Jr. Didn’t Commit A Crime
Dr. Fly
Wed Jul 12, 2017 12:10am EST

Unfortunately, the smoking gun evidence of Trump Jr.

meeting with a Russian lawyer isn’t a crime, according to
Robert Driscoll, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General
and Chief of Staff, Civil Rights Division, U.S. Department
of Justice.

This man’s integrity and mastery of the law cannot and

will not be repudiated. All of you crackpot internet lawyers
need to shut up and take those nooses that were made for
Trump Jr. and save them for Comey. More on that in a
minute.

“I think people will make hay over the
willingness to have the meeting. At the
end of the day, it’s still very vague as to
what statuary violations there would be.
Collusion, in and of itself, isn’t a crime.
There would need to be conspiracy to
violate another law. And so this notion
that there was a meeting, it may be
politically unpalatable, but it’s certainly
not a crime to say ‘ok I’ll listen.’ If you
wanted to piece together a legal theory
of criminal activity… I haven’t seen
anything, other than esoteric campaign
finance theories that don’t make a lot of
sense.”
Disgraced Former FBI Head, James Comey, heading into
NY Times, most likely in tow with Rod Goldstone emails
While everyone is fixated on the contents of the Trump Jr.
emails, which of course are important, I think more energy
should be directed into finding out who leaked them. After
all, these leaks are far more serious than the Wikileaks that
the democrats bemoan over. They were used in an effort to
derail a reviled and corrupt Presidential candidate, whereas
these leaks are meant to destroy and take down a sitting
President. The implications of the latter could have
profound effects, including loss of life, should the schemes
bear any fruit.
Enter Ben Wittes, Senior Fellow at the Brookings
Institution, a close friend of James Comey.

Shortly after Comey got fired, Wittes told CNN’s

Anderson Cooper that Comey ‘had a story to tell’ and that
the President should be scared.

On the matter of Comey, inquiring minds want to know

why he was seen walking into the NY Times building on
June 22nd, 2017. The official story was Comey’s
attendance of nice charity event. But that easily could’ve
been arranged by the Times as a cover to meet with him.

I want you to pay attention to the following timeline,

illustrated beautifully by Zerohedge.
459
On May 16th, Wittes tweeted this, just before the contents
of Comey’s memo contents were leaked to the NY Times.

He did it again on May 18th, just before a story broke that

said Comey asked AG Sessions to not leave him alone
with Trump.

Then on June 23rd, just 1 day after Comey was seen

entering the NY Times building, Wittes, aka Mr. Tick,
tweeted this gem.

Today, following Trump Jr. published the Goldstone

emails, Wittes gloated with a “Boom” tweet.

Perhaps he’s just a shitposter and this is all one big odd
coincidence. Or, on the maniacal side, he’s a sociopath
who cannot help but attract attention to himself by blurting
out cryptic messages to his sycophantic fans regarding
illegal intelligence leaks.

Your call.

460
 NYT Disinformation
On Trump Jr.’S Emails
By Stephen Lendman - Stephenlendman.Org
7-12-2017
The Times is an unscrupulous lying machine on issues
mattering most, a disgrace to the profession of journalism,
especially anything to do with US aggression, Russia and
Trump.
On July 11, its editors turned truth on its head, headlining
“Donald Trump Jr. Makes the Russian Connection.”
Fact:
No connection was made or exists, not now
or earlier. Times editors maliciously lied,
part of their anti-Trump jihad for defeating
Hillary, their favorite, providing press agent
services during the presidential campaign.
The Times:
Trump Jr.’s “emails confirm what the
president, his son and others have denied
repeatedly for more than a year: that top
members of the Trump campaign met with
representatives of the Russian government
in the expectation of help in damaging
Hillary Clinton and getting Donald Trump
elected.”
Fact:
False!! They reveal nothing of the sort.
Malicious Times’ lies can’t change cold,
hard, facts. No Trump team meeting(s) with
Russian government representatives
occurred for any reasons related to the
presidential campaign.
The Times quoted publicist/tabloid writer Rob Goldstone,
claiming
“a Russian government lawyer had ‘offered
to provide the Trump campaign with some
official documents and information that
would incriminate Hillary and her dealings
with Russia and would be very useful to
your father.’ “
It ignored him saying he had no knowledge of
Veselnitskaya’s connection to the Kremlin because she’s a
private citizen, not a government operative.
The Times:
Trump Jr. met at Trump Tower with the
Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, who
has connections to the Kremlin.”
.
461
Fact:
False!! She denied it. So did Putin
spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
The Times maliciously lied, accusing Trump Jr. of
“multiple conflicting accounts” about what happened in his
meeting with Veselsitskaya. His email exchanges and
account of what they said explained otherwise.
The Times:
“Donald Trump Jr. appears to be in real
legal jeopardy. Federal campaign finance
law prohibits political campaigns from
soliciting any ‘thing of value’ from foreign
nationals.”
“By that standard, Mr. Trump’s acceptance
of the offer to see Ms. Veselnitskaya
certainly looks bad.”
Fact:
During his meeting with her, no information
on Hillary or anything else related to the
campaign was discussed.
Fact:
No documents of any kind were passed
from her to him.
Fact:
No evidence of Russian interference in the
presidential campaign exists.
Fact:
No US law prohibits its citizens or residents
from meeting with anyone anywhere for
personal discussions, a First Amendment
right.
Fact:
No collusion occurred during Trump Jr.’s
meeting with Veselnitskaya, no connection
to Russia’s government.
The Times is a national disgrace, mocking what journalism
is supposed to be.
 Assange: I Urged Trump Jr. To Release
Emails On Russian Lawyer Before NYT Story
Published Time: 12 Jul, 2017 03:52 Edited Time: 12 Jul, 2017 07:13
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (L), Donald Trump Jr. (R).
© Reuters
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange tweeted he advised
Donald Trump Jr to release the email chain related to his
meeting with a Russian lawyer before the story hit the
media.
The New York Times had been reporting on the meeting
between Trump Jr and Russian lawyer Natalia
Veselnitskaya for a few days, and had contacted Trump Jr
for a statement on the content of the emails it had obtained.
Trump Jr released his email chain along with a statement
Tuesday, which was seemingly a pre-emptive action to
minimise the upcoming Times story.
According to Assange, he made contact with Trump Jr on
Tuesday morning and advised him to release the emails to
WikiLeaks.
462
“Two hours later, does it himself,” Assange
said.
“I argued that his enemies have it -- so why
not the public? His enemies will just milk
isolated phrases for weeks or months with
their own context, spin it according to their
own strategic timetable,” Assange
explained. “Better to be transparent and
have the full context but it would have been
safer for us to publish it anonymously
sourced.”
“By publishing it himself it is easier to
submit as evidence,” Assange added. “He’s
surely had advice and/or is confident on the
facts. I’d argue that even the completely
innocent need WikiLeaks.”
CNN journalist Brian Stelter tweeted a NYT source said it
was “preparing to publish” the email story and Trump Jr’s
people “asked for more time” and then “pre-empted” the
NYT by publishing the emails.
The emails between Trump Jr and publicist Rob Goldstone
about meeting with a Russian lawyer were sent in June
2016. Trump’s son was told a Russian government lawyer
had documents that would “incriminate” Hillary Clinton.
Trump Jr, along with “Paul Manafort (campaign boss)”
and his “brother-in-law,” Jared Kushner, met with
Veselnitskaya on June 9.
However, he added that
“I was asked to have a meeting by an
acquaintance I knew from the 2013 Miss
Universe pageant with an individual who I
was told might have information helpful to
the campaign. I was not told her name prior
to the meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to
attend, but told them nothing of the
substance,” Trump Jr said Monday.
.
463
The woman claimed that
“she had information that individuals
connected to Russia were funding the
Democratic National Committee and
supporting Ms. Clinton,” Trump Jr said.
“her statements were vague, ambiguous
and made no sense. No details or
supporting information was provided or
even offered. It quickly became clear that
she had no meaningful information. She
then changed subjects and began
discussing the adoption of Russian children
and mentioned the Magnitsky Act. It
became clear to me that this was the true
agenda all along and that the claims of
potentially helpful information were a
pretext for the meeting.”
 Lavrov Shocked At US Media Claims
Against Trump’s Son Over Talks With Russian Lawyer
Russian Politics & Diplomacy
July 12, 16:22
Lavrov said he was shocked to learn about the accusations
against Russian defense attorney Natalya Veselnitskaya
and Donald Trump Jr, the US president’s eldest son, over
communication between them.
© Alexander Shcherbak/TASS
BRUSSELS, July 12. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Minister
Sergey Lavrov said at a news conference following talks
with his Belgian counterpart Didier Reynders on
Wednesday that he was shocked to learn about the
accusations against Russian defense attorney Natalya
Veselnitskaya and Donald Trump Jr, the US president’s
eldest son, over communication between them.
"I was amazed when I found out that
Trump’s son is being accused of
communicating with her," the minister said.
"For me this is mind-boggling, if truth be
told. When somebody talks to an attorney,
how can this pose a threat to anyone?"
Russia’s top diplomat noted that he had learned about the
meeting from news reports.
.
464
"This morning, when I turned on the TV, all
the Western TV channels were discussing
that," he said. "It is amazing how serious
people can blow things out of proportion."
"We have not seen a single hard fact
[confirming this]," Lavrov emphasized. "If
journalists are ready to work only on the
basis of unsubstantiated statements and
are not prepared to take into account the
fact that there is no hard evidence, then I
can’t do anything. Thus, this is the sort of
profession, which relies on such
approaches given today’s environment."
On Sunday, the New York Times reported that Donald
Trump Jr had a meeting with Veselnitsksya who is
allegedly linked to the Russian authorities in New York in
June 2016. According to the report, the incumbent
president’s son agreed to meet with her, as he was
promised compromising information on Trump’s chief
rival, the then Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary
Clinton.
Trump and senior officials in his administration have
rejected numerous rumors about any improper contacts
with Russia on many occasions. They expressed the
conviction that all efforts in this regard are politicized and
aimed at delegitimizing the US executive branch. Moscow
has likewise denied the allegations that Russia attempted
to meddle in the US election campaign.
Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told
reporters on Monday that the Kremlin is not familiar with
attorney Natalya Veselnitskaya.
 Donald Trump’s Popularity:
His Approval Rating Among His Base Voters Is Back Up
By Tim Marcin
7/12/17 At 2:46 PM
The people who loved Donald Trump in November largely
still love him in July. But America as a whole isn’t thrilled.
The president’s approval rating, historically speaking, is
quite low. The weighted average from data-focused
website FiveThirtyEight, for instance, had him at 39.3
percent Wednesday. FiveThirtyEight’s tracker shows that
in the history of modern polling, only former President
Gerald Ford had a worse approval rating at this point in his
presidency—and that’s largely because it plummeted after
he pardoned his predecessor, Richard Nixon, who resigned
in disgrace after the Watergate scandal.
A new poll from The Economist/YouGov released
Wednesday showed that Trump’s base largely approves of
the job he’s doing. Fifty-eight percent of people who voted
for Trump in November “strongly approve” of the job he’s
doing as president, according to the survey. Thirty percent
of Trump voters “somewhat approve,” meaning 88 percent
of folks who voted for the president have approved of his
time in office to some degree. The Economist/YouGov poll
pegged Trump’s overall approval, however, at 37 percent,
while 52 percent disapproved of the job his is doing.
Ariel Edwards-Levy, a reporter who is polling director at
Huffington Post Politics, pointed out on Twitter that the
new poll showed Trump’s “strong” approval among his
voters had risen to 58 percent from 52 percent earlier this
month. During his tenure in the White House, that figure
has risen as high as 66 percent and dropped as low as 48
percent.
The Economist/YouGov poll interviewed 1,500 U.S. adults
from July 9 through July 11 and had a margin of error of
plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
465
Trump’s popularity has suffered amid a steady drumbeat
of controversy and pushback against his decisions in
office. An ongoing debate over the Republican plan to gut
Obamacare and the investigation into his team’s potential
ties to Russia have proved especially detrimental to his
approval rating. The several iterations of the GOP health
care plan have had one thing in common: tens of millions
of Americans losing coverage, according to scores from
the Congressional Budget Office.
The Russia controversy, meanwhile, took a new turn this
week. Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., tweeted out an
email conversation that showed he set up a meeting during
the campaign with a person he believed was an operative
of the Russian government in an attempt to land negative
information about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
The same conversation included a line from a Trump
associate that read,
“This is obviously very high level and
sensitive information but is part of Russia
and its government’s support for Mr.
Trump.”
All in all, not a great week for the president. But he can
take solace knowing a good portion of his most devoted
voters still like him.
 Coulter: Republican Obstructionists
'Hate Trump Every Bit As Much As MSNBC Does'
Chris Menahan
Informationliberation
Jul. 12, 2017
Ann Coulter said Tuesday on Fox Business that many
Republican obstructionists on Capitol Hill
"hate Trump every bit as much as MSNBC
does."
From Breitbart:
Coulter said,
466
“I do think we’re getting a little Republican
obstructionism with Trump as well. Come
on. It takes 51 votes to confirm a nominee,
so they put in, what, these blue slips and
say, ‘no I’m holding.’ A one-person
filibuster? No. McConnell should say
you’ve taken this too far. We’re not going to
let you put in your blue slips or yellow slips
or whatever they call them and have one
person stop a nominee. In one case, Thom
Tillis, he is going precisely against the
Trump agenda. He refuses to confirm the
head of the Immigration Service unless he
can get a bunch more cheap foreign
workers for the Chamber of Commerce.”
She continued,
“McConnell could do something, and also I
think some of these Republicans like Tillis
ought to be called out.”
Coulter added,
“A lot of them really, really hate Trump
every bit as much as MSNBC does and
they’re slow-walking everything, and they
are not helping him.”
She's absolutely right. They're stalling his agenda because
their mega-donors don't support it and they're all hoping he
will get impeached.
 Was Trump Jr. Meeting
Deep-State Setup For FISA Wiretaps?
By Zeropointnow
Jul 12, 2017 3:40 PM

dossier designed to take down Donald Trump, yet which

failed miserably after being largely debunked.

Trump Jr. diffused an upcoming New York Times piece on

the meeting by issuing a statement and Tweeting copies of
the emails exchanged in the setup of the sit-down,
scooping NYT reporter who had a Twitter "he broke me"
meltdown.

 Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya who met with

Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner is
openly anti-Trump.
 Mark Corallo, a spokesman for the president’s lawyer
said that Veselnitskaya misrepresented who she was.
 Veselnitskaya has made anti-Trump postings to her
Facebook page, and posted a picture taken by
someone else in John McCain's office in 2015.
 Rob Goldstone - the man who arranged the meeting -
is associated with Fusion GPS, the firm which created
the debunked 'pissgate' dossier.
 Veselnitskaya also has ties to Fusion GPS founder
Glenn Simpson, who helped lobby against the same
case.
 The meeting with Trump Jr. is suspected to be the
basis for the FISA request to surveil (and unmask) the
Trump team.
(And just how did Sexton know about this a year ago?)
Less than a week after news broke of Donald Trump Jr's
meeting with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya - the
delayed "Boom" to deep state cheerleader and James Meanwhile, Trump Jr. said that Veselnitskaya had no
Comey friend Benjamin Wittes's cryptic "Tick, Tick, Tick" meaningful information and the meeting was a total dud.
tweet, Ms. Vesselnitskaya has been revealed as an anti-
Trump shill whose meeting with Trump Jr. appears to Ms. Veselnitskaya is HUGELY Anti-Trump
be a deep-state setup used to justify the FISA warrant
which the Obama administration used to spy on the Her Facebook page is littered with anti-Trump posts, and
Trump team via 'unmasking' - which was accidentally she either attended or at least posted a picture from an anti-
revealed by former Obama admin official Evelyn Farkas Trump rally on January 22nd, 2017.
on live TV.
And as The Gateway Pundit and Conservative
Moreover, the meeting in Trump Tower between Treehouse report, Veselnitskaya was pictured in the front
Veselnitskaya and Trump Jr. was arranged by Rob row at a House Foreign Affairs Committee meeting on
Goldstone, is associated with Fusion GPS - the firm June 14th, 2016 behind the anti-Russia-Russian US
behind the largely-debunked salacious 35 page 'pissgate' Ambassador, Michael McFaul- just five days after the
reported meeting with Trump Jr.
467

It should be noted that Ambassador McFaul was very
publicly discussing the ‘Muh Russia’ conspiracy narrative
in the media and appeared on numerous NBC and MSNBC
broadcasts during the 2016 campaign, and immediately
after the election.
468
Additionally, it was Michael McFaul who was the
architect of the Obama/Clinton “Russian Reset”, that
eventually led McFaul to becoming the Ambassador to
Russia (NYT Link).
McFaul was notably kicked out of Russia after he
allegedly tried to help overthrow President Putin.
Michael McFaul, the U.S. ambassador in Moscow from
2012-2014, was accused by Russian state television of
seeking to orchestrate the overthrow of President Vladimir
Putin after hosting opposition activists and Kremlin critics
at the embassy in his second day on the job. (Politico
Link)
Furthermore, Veselnitskaya posted a picture taken
in John McCain's office in December of 2015, 6 months
before the meeting in Trump Tower.
FISA Timeline
Recall that the Dept. of Justice drew up the original FISA
application to surveil the team, which was rejected outright
by the court. The second application - written more
narrowly, was denied in July. Finally - three weeks before
the election on October 15th, the order was finally
granted for three of Trump's associates - ostensibly the
three who were in the meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya -
Denied Visa
Natalia Veselnitskaya was denied an entry visa into the
United States in 2016, only to be overruled by a NY
Court so she could participate in an lawsuit opposite fired
US Attorney Preet Bharara, which the U.S. District Court
of New York later granted on appeal.
Why was her entry initially denied?
The actual date of the arguments in the case U.S. -v-
Prevezon Holdings was the EXACT SAME date as the
meeting in Trump Tower – June 9th 2016 CASE LINK -
Conservative Treehouse
Link to 'Pissgate' Dossier Research Firm - Fusion GPS
And as The Independent reported on Monday,
the man who arranged the Trump Jr.
"setup" is music publicist and friend of
Don Jr. - Rob Goldstone - is reportedly
linked to Fusion GPS
- the firm which Democratic operatives retained to develop
the now infamous (and largely debunked) 35 page
'pissgate' opposition research dossier on Donald Trump.
A spokesman for the President’s legal team told The
Independent they now believed Ms Veselnitskaya and her
.
469
Trump Jr., Trump advisor Jared Kushner, and former
campaign manager Paul Manafort.
Here's the plot:
colleagues had misrepresented who they were and who
they worked for.
“Specifically, we have learned that the person who sought
the meeting is associated with Fusion GPS, a firm which
according to public reports, was retained by Democratic
operatives to develop opposition research on the President
and which commissioned the phony Steele dossier.” -Mark
Corallo
And from the Daily Caller
The Washington Post suggested the person was Rob
Goldstone, a music publicist and personal friend of Don Jr.
Don Jr. has neither confirmed nor denied Goldstone’s
involvement.
Whoever the acquaintance was, subsequent reporting by
Circa News said that members of the President’s legal
team have confirmed that the acquaintance
“who sought the meeting is associated
with Fusion GPS.”
In closing - Why would a Russian attorney who hates
Donald Trump and has ties to the 'pissgate' dossier firm -
Fusion GPS, agree to provide Trump Jr. with opposition
research on Hillary Clinton unless it was a setup?
 Trolls Are Now Running The Government,
Led By Donald Trump And Republicans Like Steve King
By Alexander Nazaryan
7/12/17 At 6:27 PM
It used to be that American political discourse involved
debate, a contest of ideas refereed by reason and
undertaken for the sake of civic society, to which we all
presumably belong, whatever cable news network we
watch. And when politicians went on television, they did
so to seriously discuss serious proposals, because that’s
what their constituents demanded of them.
But that was long ago. The era of American civility is as
thoroughly over as the era of the fax machine. Today,
when politicians talk, they troll. That is, the goal of
political speech is no longer to promote argument but to
incite ire, to annoy one’s opponents into fits of rage.
Because the left knows it can’t convince the recalcitrant
right, while the right knows the left secretly wishes it were
French. “What is the use of talking!” the poet Ezra Pound
once wrote. Not much, anymore. Better to troll instead.
And nobody trolls quite like six-term congressman Steve
King of Iowa. His latest coup de troll came on Wednesday,
during an appearance on CNN. King, a conservative who
has agitated for tougher immigration laws, reaffirmed his
longstanding support for President Donald Trump’s
proposed border wall with Mexico. No surprise there.
What followed, however, was a masterful act of trolling,
with King explaining how he would increase funds for that
wall by $5 billion.
470
“I would find half of a billion dollars of that
right out of Planned Parenthood's budget,"
King explained. "And the rest of it could
come out of food stamps and the
entitlements that are being spread out for
people that haven't worked in three
generations."
The gentleman from Iowa wasn’t done, introducing what
appeared to be an anti-obesity plan that dovetailed with the
increased border-wall funding.
“When you match up the EBT card with
what the scales say on some of the folks, I
think it's worth looking at. Michelle Obama
looked at it, Republicans should be able to
look at it too," he said.
King’s ingenuous plan stands about as much chance of
being realized as California’s proposed wall against the
United States. Actually, I’d put the chances of the
California border wall a little higher. You never know
what may catch Elon Musk’s interest next.
Then again, I doubt King seriously thinks a border wall is
going to be built with Planned Parenthood funds. But
where better to introduce such an incendiary idea than on
CNN, where it is sure to annoy liberals? What better way
to remind them that they lost the presidential election?
King is especially adept at this brand of politics, which
involves little seriousness or substance. It is a brand of
politics practiced by many Republicans (and a few liberal
Democrats) today. None practice it quite as well as King.
Back in July 2016, he went on an even more liberal
network than CNN — MSNBC — to offer his views on
Western civilization, suggesting that non-whites have not
contributed sufficiently to civilizational progress.
“Where are these contributions that have
been made by these other people that you
are talking about?” he asked a fellow
MSNBC guest who’d suggested “old white
people” were becoming politically
irrelevant. “Where did any other subgroup
of people contribute more to civilization?”

The comments, which many said endorsed white
supremacy, created a predictable firestorm on Twitter.
Which was precisely the point. King didn’t want to argue
about the relative merits of civilizational models, to learn
about the contributions of the Ottoman Empire or the Han
Dynasty. He wanted to troll liberals on their own turf, to
thump his chest and shout to all the world,
“She should have campaigned in
Wisconsin!”
Trump didn’t introduce incivility to American politics, but
his ascent to the presidency has turned the problem into
something grave. Bipartisanship means nothing in a
political and media milieu where scoring cheap points
means everything.
King has embraced this brand of politics more eagerly than
most. Seemingly wanting to revisit the previous year’s
controversy over his MNBC comments, King tweeted in
March that we, whoever we are, cannot “restore our
civilization” with “somebody else’s babies.”
“I'd like to see an America that's just so
homogenous that we look a lot the same,
from that perspective,” King subsequently
explained on CNN, just in case the racial
subtext of the tweet were unclear.
After a young undocumented immigrant was deported to
Mexico in April, King celebrated the news by tweeting a
picture of himself enjoying a beer.
In 2013, he said the following of young undocumented
immigrants who’d been brought to the United States by
their parents:
“For every one who’s a valedictorian,
there’s another 100 out there who weigh
130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size
of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75
pounds of marijuana across the desert.”
King’s trolling may be offensive, uncivil and racist, but it
fits perfectly into the mission of a Republican Party under
471
the complete thrall of Fox News. The mission of the GOP
as it is constituted today has nothing to do with cultural
conservatism, fiscal responsibility and America’s role as a
global superpower. That was the party of Ronald Reagan.
That party is dead.
Instead, the party being led by the world’s greatest Twitter
troll, Donald J. Trump, is occupied solely by the desire to
troll liberals, to offend their sensitivities, to mock their
ideas, disparage their efforts at compromise, smear them
with the darkest insinuations. It is the party of Roger Ailes,
the Fox News chairman who died earlier this year.
It was Ailes who gave us the nightly programs featuring
“commentary” by Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck and Sean
Hannity. Their single goal, expressed with grotesque,
conspiratorial creativity on a nightly basis, was to depict
liberals as enemies of the state who needed to be mocked
and maligned into silence, trolled into submission and
electoral irrelevance. Earlier this year, Eric Trump told
Sean Hannity that Democrats “aren’t even people. ” Fox
News had been working toward that point for years. How
proud executives must have been to hear it voiced by the
president’s own son!
In other words, while King is an acutely active troll, he is
but one example of the Republicans’ unwillingness to
engage in anything resembling serious thought. Liberals
troll, too, of course, but not nearly as much (Kathy
Griffin’s “Trump beheaded” tweet is a reminder that
Republicans don’t have a monopoly on crudity). Besides,
they are the minority party in Washington. All of Capitol
Hill now belongs to the Republicans. They have the White
House and Congress.
And what are they doing with their newfound power?
Mocking liberals with “ideas” about border walls and
Planned Parenthood, sending wrestling memes at CNN.
Hannity must be proud. But what about their constituents
.
back home? They were surely expecting their emboldened
representatives in Washington would show themselves to
be more than just Twitter trolls.

472
 Did The Deep State Plan It’s Bogus “Russia Narrative” To
Discredit Trump Because They Believed All Along He
Would BEAT Hillary Clinton?
By JD Heyes
Wednesday, July 12, 2017
Another supposed “bombshell” alleging more nefarious
‘collusion’ between Russia and the Trump campaign
emerged over the weekend as The New York Times
published new illegally leaked details of a short meeting
between Donald Trump Jr., some members of the Trump
campaign and a connected Russian lawyer just weeks after
his father officially became the Republican nominee for
president.
“The previously unreported meeting was
also attended by Mr. Trump’s campaign
chairman at the time, Paul J. Manafort, as
well as the president’s son-in-law, Jared
Kushner, according to interviews and the
documents, which were outlined by people
familiar with them,” the Times noted,
naming Russian lawyer Natalia
Veselnitskaya as the contact.
In a follow-up report, the Times — citing anonymous
sources who said they are “familiar” with the meeting —
then claimed the meeting was all part of Russia’s effort to
help Trump beat his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton:
The meeting — at Trump Tower on June 9,
2016, two weeks after Donald J. Trump
clinched the Republican nomination —
points to the central question in federal
investigations of the Kremlin’s meddling
in the presidential election: whether the
Trump campaign colluded with the
Russians. The accounts of the meeting
represent the first public indication that
473
at least some in the campaign were
willing to accept Russian help.
Uh-oh, right? Smoking gun! Left-wing Democrats and
their media allies everywhere are no doubt shouting,
“Ha! We knew it!” And “impeachment!”
But if this all sounds just a bit too convenient — having
shown up only now after months and months and months
of nothing burgers — it is just a bit too convenient. Even
the Times reported in its second story:
“It is unclear whether the Russian
lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, actually
produced the promised compromising
information about Mrs. Clinton. But the
people interviewed by The Times about the
meeting said the expectation was that she
would do so.”
Of course. After all, if the goal has always been to saddle
Trump and his inner circle with a garbage narrative like
this, who needs proof when pure speculation will do?
To that point, as reported by Circa News, lawyers for
Team Trump smell a big, fat Deep State rat in all of this
new reporting that handily connects the “collusion” dots.
Circa reports that Donald Trump Jr. was approached
shortly before his father was nominated by Veselnitskaya,
who wanted to set up a meeting to discuss Russian policy,
according to Trump family lawyers. The site noted further:
President Trump’s eldest son briefly
gathered others for the meeting, including
his brother-in-law Jared Kushner, as well
as then-presidential campaign manager
Paul Manafort for the meeting at Trump
Tower in New York City with the lawyer,
identified by Trump family lawyers as
Natalia Veselnitskaya.
Veselnitskaya used the meeting in June
2016 to have a conversation about a U.S.
law called the Magnitsky Act that Russia
 leader Vladimir Putin reviles and has
retaliated against by blocking U.S.
adoptions of Russian children.
The encounter was short and the Trump
team had no further contact with the
woman or the policy issue, lawyers said.
The meeting was recently disclosed to
congressional investigators by one of
the attendees, according to sources
directly familiar with the disclosure.
Hence, the leak of this newly divulged information. Take
note of the fact that nothing discussed was out of sorts,
illegal, or had anything at all to do with the Times’ claim
of “collusion” in accepting dirt on Clinton…that no one
has said was actually delivered. Circa noted further that
Trump himself was not aware of the meeting and did not
attend it.
Circa then dropped this genuine bombshell:
The president’s legal team said … they
believe the entire meeting may have
been part of a larger election-year
opposition effort aimed at creating the
appearance of improper connections
between Trump family members and
Russia that also included a now-
discredited intelligence dossier
produced by a former British
intelligence agent named Christopher
Steele who worked for a U.S. political firm
known as Fusion GPS.
And, as investigative reporter Paul Sperry recently
reported, it’s very likely that Democrats were indeed
behind that fake dossier, which has been debunked even
by the guy who wrote it.
“We have learned from both our own
investigation and public reports that the
participants in the meeting misrepresented
who they were and who they worked for,”
said Mark Corallo, a spokesman for the
president’s legal team. “Specifically, we
have learned that the person who sought
the meeting is associated with Fusion
GPS, a firm which according to public
reports, was retained by Democratic
operatives to develop opposition research
on the President and which commissioned
the phony Steele dossier.
“These developments raise serious
issues as to exactly who authorized and
participated in any effort by Russian
nationals to influence our election in any
manner,” Corallo continued.
474
Starting to get the picture?
Circa noted further that Veselnitskaya is identified in court
papers as being a former Russian prosecutor and private
Moscow-based lawyer who was representing Denis
Katsyv, a Russian businessman, and his Prevezon
Holdings, in a case against the U.S. Department of Justice
involving civil asset forfeiture. One document said she had
a difficult time getting a visa from American authorities.
So, how does this all fit in with Fusion GPS? Circa noted:
The connection drawn by the president’s
lawyers between Veselnitskaya and Fusion
GPS comes from a letter this spring by the
Senate Judiciary Committee chairman
Charles Grassley, who disclosed that
Fusion GPS also provided litigation support
in the Prevezon case.
Prevezon also apparently lobbied against
the Magnitsky Act, according to Grassley’s
letter.
“Prevezon’s lobbying efforts were
reportedly commissioned by Mr. Katsyv,
who organized them through a Delaware
non-profit he formed and through the law
firm then representing Prevezon in the
asset forfeiture case, Baker Hostetler.
Among others, the efforts involved lobbyist
Rinat Akhmetshin and Fusion GPS, a
political research firm led by Glenn
Simpson,” Grassley noted in his letter.
And as The National Sentinel has reported, Grassley has
charged that former FBI Director James Comey made
inconsistent statements about the bureau’s relationship
with Steele (and, by default, Fusion GPS).
What we have here is precisely what the Trump legal team
is asserting: A year-long effort (at least) to plant a false
narrative of “collusion” involving the president, his inner
circle and the Russian government. (Related: The ‘Deep
State’ Is At War With Trump And Will Continue To
Undermine Him Throughout His Presidency.)
With that, then consider this: We have been told for
months that prior to the November election the Obama
administration, the Deep State and the Democratic
establishment all believed that Trump didn’t have a chance
against Clinton in the general election. The media’s polling
all showed that Trump would get skunked; the pundits all
believed it; even some Republicans thought so.
So maybe, just maybe — given this new information —
the Deep State saw how handily Trump had dispatched 16
other mostly qualified, experienced GOP candidates to win
his party’s nomination and in reality believed he had a
good shot of winning all along, thus creating the need to Who would go to all of this effort otherwise?
develop some fake narrative in order to undermine his
victory and delegitimize his presidency.
.

475
 EXCLUSIVE: Radical Dem Worked
For Russian Lawyer Who Met With Trump, Jr.
Richard Pollock - Reporter
9:47 PM 07/12/2017
Radical left-wing icon former California Democratic Rep.
Ron Dellums was a hired lobbyist for Natalia
Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who met with Donald
Trump Jr. June 9, 2016, the Daily Caller News Foundation
Investigative Group has learned.
Dellums, who represented liberal San Francisco and
Oakland, Calif., is a long-time darling of left-wing political
activists. He served 13 terms in Congress as an African-
American firebrand and proudly called himself a socialist.
He retired in 1996.
The former congressman is one of several high-profile
Democratic partisans who was on Veselnitskaya’s payroll,
working to defeat a law that is the hated object of a
personal vendetta waged by Russian President Vladimir
Putin.
A national outcry has erupted in the establishment media
about Trump Jr.’s meeting with Veselnitskaya. But there
has been little focus on the Democrats who willingly
served for years on her payroll helping to wage a Russian-
led lobby campaign against the law. Congress passed the
legislation, the Magnitsky Act, in response to the murder
of Sergei Magnistky, a Russian lawyer who alleged
corruption and human rights violations against numerous
Russian officials.
According to a complaint filed to the Department of
Justice Foreign Agents Registration Act division last July,
Dellums failed to register as a foreign agent representing a
Russian-driven effort led by Veselnitskaya to repeal the
Magnitsky Act.
The act was a bipartisan bill enacted in December 2012
intended to punish Russian officials responsible for the
death of Magnitsky, who died in a Moscow prison in 2009.
President Barack Obama signed the act into law.
The legislation bars 18 Russians from entering the United
States because of the lawyer’s death. Putin retaliated by
freezing American adoptions of Russian children and
barred 18 Americans from entering Russia.
Magnitsky was a tax lawyer with the Hermitage Fund, a
London-based firm that invested in Russia. The tax lawyer
uncovered a $230 million scheme allegedly run by Russian
mobsters. He informed Russian officials of the corruption.
476
Instead of investigating Prevezon Holdings Ltd., a
Russian-owned firm implicated in the scandal, Russian
officials arrested Magnitsky. He died in prison in 2009
after being tortured and killed in prison, according to the
Russian Presidential Human Rights Commission.
Prevezon was owned by Denis Katsyv who, along with
Veselnitskaya, created the Human Rights Accountability
Global Initiative Foundation in the U.S. The foundation
was designed to repeal the Magnitsky Act using a lobbying
team that included Dellums.
This is not the first time Dellums’ advanced the interests of
dictatorships. As a congressman, he was fond of Cuban
President Fidel Castro, and he supported Cuba’s military
intervention in Africa.
Dellums also sued President George W. Bush’s 1991
military effort to liberate Kuwait after Saddam Hussein
invaded the country.
The former congressman is only one of a notable team of
partisan Democrats Veselnitskaya hired to defeat the
Magnitsky Act.
Glenn Simpson, founder of Fusion GPS, also joined the
Russian lawyer and “worked with her on a legal case for
years,” according to The Washington Post.
Fusion GPS is the firm that reportedly commissioned a
phony “dossier” authored by former British spy
Christopher Steele that alleged salacious and largely
erroneous charges about President Donald Trump.
Most news organizations reject the dossier as dubious at
best, but it eventually was published by BuzzFeed 10 days
before Trump was inaugurated.
Christopher Cooper, the founder and CEO of Potomac
Square Group, also joined Veselnitskaya. His company
does campaign work for foreign principles and foreign
governments including the governments of Azerbaijan, the
Democratic Republic of the Congo, UAE, and Nigeria as
well as Russia. The company’s clients have included
Democratic California Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic
presidential hopeful Vermont Gov. Howard Dean.
Potomac Square also partnered with Dean’s campaign to the Magnitsky Act. Witnesses are expected to include,
manger Joe Trippi on behalf of the families of radical among others, William Browder, the founder of the
Islamic terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay. Hermitage Fund.

The Senate Committee on the Judiciary will convene a TheDCNF contacted Dellums’ lobby firm but received no
hearing next week on the Russian government’s opposition reply to inquiries about his role with the Russian lawyer.

477
 Martin Armstrong Rages
"Indict Comey Or Snowden Should Be Pardoned"
Authored By Martin Armstrong Via Armstrongeconomics.Com,
Jul 12, 2017 5:15 PM
Comey is as guilty as Hillary for treating government
work product including top secret information as
personal.
Comey, just like Hillary, claimed the memos were all
“personal” that he made talking to Trump because he did
not trust him (contrary to his trust for Clintons). There is
no such “personal” qualification and he leaked those
memos to the New York Times which he admitted
openly in Congress. But those memos contained
classified information and that was a CRIME for him to
leak them, no less pretend they were his “personal”
property. Every FBI agent signed a confidentiality
agreement as do traders working for a bank.
The agreement signed by Comey states plainly: “all
information acquired by me in connection with my
official duties with the FBI and all official material to
which I have access remain the property of the United
States of America.”
This means (1) he stole government documents obstructing
any investigation of him, and (2) he then leaked classified
information to the New York Times. Let’s see; they say
Snowden should be indicted for the same thing.
Curious!
This is why Comey never recorded Hillary’s
“interview” before the FBI to ensure she could never be
charged as Martha Stewart was for “lying to the FBI”
in such an interview and sent to prison. Comey wrote
private memos when talking to Trump, but not Hillary, and
then leaked classified information to the New York Times
.
478
releasing his memos. Legally, he should be prosecuted as
they prosecuted Lewis “Scooter” Libby who was Dick
Cheney’s chief of staff for leaking information.
In United States v. Libby, he was put on trial for
interfering with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s
criminal investigation of the Plame affair by lying in an
interview with the FBI for which he was indicted by a
federal grand jury on five felony counts of making false
statements to federal investigators. This is what Comey
protected Hillary from by not recording the “interview”
which is standard operational procedure. Libby served as
assistant to the President under George W. Bush and Chief
of Staff to Dick Cheney from 2001 to 2005. Bush denied
giving Libby even a pardon.
Then Comey granted immunity to Hillary Clinton’s
lawyer Cheryl Mills to protect her against
prosecution. In fact, Comey strikingly gave wholesale
immunity deals to virtually every person who had intimate
knowledge of Hillary Clinton’s illegal private server and
emails. This protected Hillary beacause nobody would
testify against her under threat of imprisonment. Comey
abused his discretion and made sure that Hillary could not
be prosecuted nor any of her staff.
There is now more than enough information to hand to
a Grand Jury for Comey to be indicted the same as
Libby. Comey stole government work product (memos)
and who knows what else and that is a crime in itself. Then
they had classified information – count #2. And he should
be indicted to colluding with Hillary not to record her
“interview” and then giving immunity to everyone around
her obstructing justice. You give immunity to someone for
testifying against someone – not on a wholesale agenda to
cover everything up.
If Congress FAILS to prosecute Comey, then Trump
should pardon Snowden!!!!!!!!
What happened to “Equal Protection of Law” and where is
“justice for all” we indoctrinate children to pledge in
school? If Comey can walk on water, then so should
Snowden.
 Exclusive: DOJ Let Russian
Lawyer Into US Before She Met With Trump Team
By John Solomon And Jonathan Easley
07/12/17 09:23 PM EDT
The Russian lawyer who penetrated Donald Trump’s inner
circle was initially cleared into the United States by the
Justice Department under “extraordinary circumstances”
before she embarked on a lobbying campaign last year that
ensnared the president’s eldest son, members of Congress,
journalists and State Department officials, according to
court and Justice Department documents and interviews.
This revelation means it was the Obama Justice
Department that enabled the newest and most intriguing
figure in the Russia-Trump investigation to enter the
country without a visa.
Later, a series of events between an intermediary for the
attorney and the Trump campaign ultimately led to the
controversy surrounding Donald Trump Jr.
Just five days after meeting in June 2016 at Trump Tower
with Trump Jr., Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and
then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Moscow
attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya showed up in Washington
in the front row of a House Foreign Affairs Committee
hearing on Russia policy, video footage of the hearing
shows.
She also engaged in a pro-Russia lobbying campaign and
attended an event at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.,
where Russian supporters showed a movie that challenged
the underpinnings of the U.S. human rights law known as
the Magnitsky Act, which Russian President Vladimir
Putin has reviled and tried to reverse.
The Magnitsky Act imposed financial and other sanctions
on Russia for alleged human rights violations connected to
the death of a Russian lawyer who claimed to uncover
fraud during Putin's reign. Russia retaliated after the law
was passed in 2012 by suspending Americans' ability to
adopt Russian children.
At least five congressional staffers and State Department
officials attended that movie showing, according to a
Foreign Agent Registration Act complaint filed with the
Justice Department about Veselnitskaya’s efforts.
479
And Veselnitskaya also attended a dinner with the
chairman of the House subcommittee overseeing Russia
policy, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) and roughly 20
other guests at a dinner club frequented by Republicans.
In an interview with The Hill on Wednesday, Rohrabacher
said, “There was a dinner at the Capitol Hill Club here
with about 20 people. I think I was the only congressman
there. They were talking about the Magnitsky case. But
that wasn’t just the topic. There was a lot of other things
going on. So I think she was there, but I don’t remember
any type of conversation with her between us. But I
understand she was at the table.”
Rohrabacher said he believed Veselnitskaya and her U.S.
colleagues, which included former Rep. Ronald Dellums
(D-Calif.), were lobbying other lawmakers to reverse the
Magnitsky Act and restore the ability of Americans to
adopt Russian children that Moscow had suspended.
“I don’t think this was very heavily lobbied at all
compared with the other issues we deal with,” he said.
As for his former congressional colleague Dellums,
Rohrabacher said he recalled having a conversation about
the Magnitsky Act and the adoption issue: “Ron and I like
each other … I have to believe he was a hired lobbyist but
I don’t know."
Veselnitskaya did not return a call seeking comment
Wednesday at her Moscow office. Dellums also did not
return a call to his office seeking comment.
But in an interview with NBC News earlier this week,
Veselnitskaya acknowledged her contacts with Trump Jr.
and in Washington were part of a lobbying campaign to
get members of Congress and American political figures to
see "the real circumstances behind the Magnitsky Act.”
That work was a far cry from the narrow reason the U.S.
government initially gave for allowing Veselnitskaya into
the U.S. in late 2015, according to federal court records.
The Moscow lawyer had been turned down for a visa to
enter the U.S. lawfully but then was granted special
immigration parole by then-Attorney General Loretta
Lynch for the limited purpose of helping a company
owned by Russian businessman Denis Katsyv, her client,
defend itself against a Justice Department asset forfeiture
case in federal court in New York City.
During a court hearing in early January 2016, as
Veselnitskaya’s permission to stay in the country was
about to expire, federal prosecutors described how rare the
grant of parole immigration was as Veselnitskaya pleaded
for more time to remain in the United States.
“In October the government bypassed 
the normal visa
process and gave a type of extraordinary 
permission to
enter the country called immigration parole,” Assistant
U.S. Attorney Paul Monteleoni explained to the judge
during a hearing on Jan. 6, 2016.
“That's a discretionary act that the statute allows the
attorney general to do in extraordinary circumstances. In
this case, we 
did that so that Mr. Katsyv could testify.
And we made the 
further accommodation of allowing his
Russian lawyer into the 
country to assist,” he added.
The prosecutor said the Justice Department was willing to
allow the Russian lawyer to enter the United States again
as the trial in the case approached so she could help
prepare and attend the proceedings.
The court record indicates the presiding judge asked the
Justice Department to extend Veselnitskaya’s immigration
parole another week until he decided motions in the case.
There are no other records in the court file indicating what
happened with that request or how Veselnitskaya appeared
in the country later that spring.
The U.S. Attorney’s office in New York confirmed
Wednesday to The Hill that it let Veselnitskaya into the
country on a grant of immigration parole from October
2015 to early January 2016.
Justice Department and State Department officials could
not immediately explain how the Russian lawyer was still
in the country in June for the meeting with Trump Jr. and
the events in Washington.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-
Iowa) has demanded the U.S. government provide him all
records on how Veselnitskaya entered and traveled in the
U.S., a request that could shed additional light on her
activities.
Interviews with a half dozen Americans who came in
contact with Veselnitskaya or monitored her U.S. activities
in 2016 make clear that one of her primary goals was to
480
see if the Congress and/or other political leaders would be
interested in repealing the 2012 Magnitsky Act punishing
Russia or at least ensure the Magnitsky name would not be
used on a new law working its way through Congress in
2016 to punish human rights violators across the globe.
“There’s zero doubt that she and her U.S. colleagues were
lobbying to repeal Magnitsky or at least ensure his name
was removed from the global law Congress was
considering,” said U.S. businessman William Browder,
who was the main proponent for the Magnitsky Act and
who filed a FARA complaint against Veselnitskaya,
Dellums and other U.S. officials, claiming they should
have registered as foreign agent lobbyists because of the
work.
The 2012 law punished Russia for the prison death of
Sergei Magnitsky, a Moscow lawyer and accountant who
U.S. authorities allege uncovered a massive $230 million
money laundering scheme involving Russian government
officials that hurt U.S. companies.
Magnitsky became a cause celeb in the United States after
his mysterious death in a Russian prison, but Russian
officials have disputed his version of events and in 2011
posthumously convicted him of fraud in Russia.
It is that alternate theory of the Magnitsky fraud cause that
Veselnitskaya and her U.S. allies tried to get into the hands
of American officials, including Rohrabacher, the Trump
team and other leaders.
Browder's complaint, which alleges that Washington
lobbyists working with Veselnitskaya failed to register as
foreign agents, is still pending at the Justice Department. It
identified several events in Washington that Veselnitskaya
and her allies attended or staged in June 2016.
All of them occurred in the days immediately after the
Russian lawyer used a music promoter friend to get an
audience June 9 with Trump Jr. promising dirt on then-
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton but
instead using the meeting to talk about Magnitsky and the
adoption issue, according to Trump Jr. and Veselnitskaya.
On June 13, 2016, Veselnitskaya attended the screening of
an anti-Magnitsky movie at the Newseum, which drew a
handful of congressional staffers and State Department
officials, according to Browder’s complaint.
The next day, she appeared in the front row of a hearing
chaired by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed
Royce (R-Calif.), sitting right behind a former U.S.
ambassador who testified on the future of U.S-Russia
policy.
Rohrabacher said he recalled around the same time a
conversation with Dellums about Magnitsky and the
adoption issue and then attending a dinner that included
Veselnitskaya at the Capitol Hill Club with about 20
people.
Sources close to the lobbying effort to rename the
Magnitsky Act, conducted over the summer of 2016, said
it fizzled after only a month or two. They described
Veselnitskaya, who does not speak English, as a
mysterious and shadowy figure. They said they were
confused as to whether she had an official role in the
lobbying campaign, although she was present for several
meetings.
The sources also described their interactions with
Veselnitskaya in the same way that Trump Jr. did. They
claimed not to know who she worked for or what her
motives were.
.
481
“Natalia didn’t speak a word of English,” said one source.
“Don’t let anyone tell you this was a sophisticated
lobbying effort. It was the least professional campaign I’ve
ever seen. If she’s the cream of the Moscow intelligence
community then we have nothing to worry about.”
The sources added they met with Veselnitskaya only once
or twice over the course of the lobbying campaign, which
culminated with airing of a Russian documentary that
challenged the notion that Magnitsky was beaten to death
in a Russian prison
About 80 people, including congressional staffers and
State Department employees, attended the viewing at the
Newseum.
 'Everybody Would Do That':
Trump Downplays Son's Meeting With Russian Lawyer
Fox News
Published July 13, 2017

sirens went [off] or my antenna went up at

this time because it wasn’t the issue that
it’s been made out to be over the last nine
months, ten months."
The president’s eldest son also described
the meeting as "a nothing," adding, "I
wouldn’t have even remembered it until you
started scouring through this stuff. It was
literally just a wasted 20 minutes, which
was a shame."

President Trump on Wednesday told Reuters that he was

unaware of Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian
lawyer until a “couple days ago,” and did not fault his son
for accepting the meeting.

“It was a 20-minute meeting, I guess, from

what I’m hearing,” Trump said. “Many
people, and many political pros, said
everybody would do that.”

The White House on Wednesday worked to try and go on

the offensive, and change the conversation into what it
sees as a Democrat double standard for their associates’
alleged coordination with foreign governments in 2016.

But one important issue is that Trump Jr. was did not
immediately report that he met with the lawyer. The New
York Times claimed that Trump Jr. only tweeted images of
the emails after The emails between Trump Jr. and Goldstone contain no
evidence that the president’s son was informed of the
“he was told NYT was about to publish the larger alleged Russian effort to meddle in the U.S.
contents of the emails.” presidential election.

Trump Jr. acknowledged in an exclusive interview with Trump, for his part, said on Twitter that the White house
Fox News' "Hannity" Tuesday night that he "probably was
would have done things a little differently"
“functioning perfectly, focused on
"This [was] pre-Russia fever. This [was] HealthCare, Tax Cuts/Reform & many
pre-Russia mania," Trump Jr. told Fox other things. I have very little time for
News' Sean Hannity. "I don’t think my watching T.V.”
.

482
 CNN Cracks The Case, Publishes Video Of Trump Dining
With Goldstone And Agalarov's
By The_Real_Fly
Jul 13, 2017 12:13 AM

The plot just thickened, yet again. You have to play six
degrees of separation in trying to understand how Trump
Jr. got in touch with that Russian lawyer. There are
varying theories out there -- from Trump Jr. being set up
by the deep state -- to this meeting being the touchstone
which introduced Wikileaks and John Podesta's emails to
the world.
Judging by the evidence available, I'd say the Russian
lawyer who met with Trump Jr., at a minimum, is suspect.
Nevertheless, here's CNN, publishing 'exclusive' video of
Trump dining with Goldstone and the Agalarov's --
proving the point that the President was familiar with them
and that he had 'Russian ties.'

EXCLUSIVE: One of Trump's Russian ties

483
 Why Middle America Doesn't Care
About The Trump Jr. Narrative: Reuters Explains
By Tyler Durden
Jul 13, 2017 10:55 AM

For almost a full year now the New York Times,
Washington Post, MSNBC and CNN, among others, have
teamed up to bring us one Russian collusion story after
another. Yet, after all of it, even including the New York
Times' most recent Trump Jr. 'bombshell', they are still no
closer to actually presenting any tangible evidence that
anyone within the Trump administration actually colluded
with the Russian government and/or otherwise committed
any actual crimes of any type throughout the 2016
campaign.
And while we suspect that these media outlets somehow
feel it is their duty to advance the cause of 'The Resistance'
at all costs, even if it means destroying their own
journalistic integrity from time to time with a few fake
news reports, we get the feeling that this crusade could end
up backfiring 'bigly' with the folks of middle America.
As Reuters points out today, absent any tangible evidence
to the contrary, the media's breathless Russian coverage
has done little to turn the pro-Trump sections of middle
America against the President...if anything, it has only
served to bolster their support of the President and further
erode their confidence in the media.
and Trump family members who many in the area see as
embattled victims.
In Hillsboro, the county seat of Highland County, the
editor of the Hillsboro Times Gazette, Gary Abernathy,
says many people in the county believe the media is trying
to destroy Trump.
"I don't mind Donald Trump being
treated critically or aggressively, but not
in a way that is an effort to drag him
down. Donald Trump Jr. had one 20
minute meeting with a lawyer from
Russia and it's wall-to-wall coverage."
In reality, it's quite obvious that the media's mass hysteria
is really only serving to bolster 'The Resistance' in the
major metro areas of the country. But, as Democrats
should have learned by now, rallying the disaffected liberal
voters of New York and California is not going to win any
national elections.

Many of the 20 people interviewed in

several Ohio towns were dismissive of
the barrage of headlines about a June
2016 meeting between Trump's eldest
son Donald Jr. and a woman he was told
was a Russian government lawyer who
might have damaging information about
Democratic election rival Hillary Clinton.

In Little Hocking, Ohio, Lisa Walker, 54, runs a small

thrift shop. Wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the
American flag, she says her husband has expressed fears
that somebody is going to try and assassinate Trump.
She and her husband voted for Trump. She has followed
the revelations about the younger Trump on the news. She
sees the Russia investigation as proof that "people are out
to get Trump. I would hope they have better things to do
than play games and attack Trump."
Of course, this isn't a new phenomenon. Recent polls
have suggested that voters grew weary of the media's
constant Russia hysteria some time ago. In fact, a recent
Marist poll conducted before the latest Trump Jr. story was
released suggested that only 25% of Americans thought
that Trump had done "something illegal." Meanwhile,
even among Democrats, only 41% thought that something
criminal happened in the 2016 election.

Similarly, in Jackson and Piketon, Ohio, Donald Trump

Jr.'s troubles appeared to strengthen support for his father
484
 written Trump off - then perhaps consider changing the
strategy when it comes to impacting roughly half of
America, as the current path appears self-destructive with
those voters who will matter the most when 2020 comes
along.

Moreover, only slightly more people, 33%, thought any of

Trump's campaign associates had done anything illegal.

In short, for those folks at the NYT, CNN, etc, whose goal
is the destruction of Trump - even if simply to validate
their erroneous reporting in 2016 when everyone had
.

485
 Pence Affirms He Held No
Meetings With Russian Officials During 2016 Campaign
© REUTERS/ David Swanson/The Philadelphia Inquirer - US
19:31 13.07.2017(updated 19:33 13.07.2017)
US Vice President Mike Pence did not
meet with any people connected to the
Russian government during the 2016
presidential campaign and transition
period, his spokesperson said on
Thursday.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Earlier this week, President
Donald Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was
accused by US media of holding an unreported meeting
with a Russian lawyer in 2016. On Tuesday, Trump Jr.
released an email chain with UK-born publicist Rob
486
Goldstone about a meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya
to allegedly discuss compromising information on then-
presidential nominee and Trump rival Hillary Clinton.
"[Pence] had no meetings with any individuals associated
with the Russian [government] during the campaign or
transition," the spokesman said as quoted by NBC News.
On Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he
did not know who Veselnitskaya is.
Veselnitskaya herself denied any connection to the
Kremlin, said she did not request a meeting with Trump Jr.
during the 2016 presidential campaign, and noted that she
has no information damaging Clinton.
President Trump has frequently called the investigation
into his team’s alleged ties with Moscow "a witch hunt."
He denied that any kind of collusion between the Trump
campaign and Russia had happened and stressed that the
probe should be concluded with dignity as soon
as possible. The Kremlin called the allegations absurd and
stressed that it never interferes in foreign affairs of other
states.
 Ex-DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schulz Launches
Bid To Strip Jared Of Security Clearance
(After Leaving The Democratic Servers Open
To Hacking And Turning Down Offer Of Assistance)
 Trump Son-In-Law Jared Kushner Has Revised A Disclosure Form He Completed In Connection
With Joining The White House
 An Initial Version Failed To Disclose All His Contacts With Foreign Officials
 An Updated Version Reveals More Than 100 Contacts
 Former Democratic National Committee Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz Introduced
Amendments That Would Strip Kushner Of His Security Clearance
 The DNC Got Hacked In An Intrusion The Intelligence Community Says Moscow Was Behind
 It Later Emerged That The DNC Turned Down Offers Of Assistance From The Government
 Republicans On The Appropriations Committee Called It A Political Stunt
 Among Meetings Kushner He Failed To Disclose Was One With Russian Ambassador To The U.S.
Sergey Kislyak
 The Form Was Required For Kushner To Get A Security Clearance
By Geoff Earle, Deputy U.S. Political Editor For Dailymail.Com
Published: 18:26 EDT, 13 July 2017 | Updated: 21:08 EDT, 13 July 2017

Former Democratic National Committee chair Rep. Debbie

Wasserman Schultz introduced amendments that would Wasserman Schultz offered a series of amendments,
seek to strip Donald Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner of joining Democrats including minority leader Nancy Pelosi
his security clearance. who have questioned Kushner's ongoing security
clearance, despite his undisclosed Russia meetings.
The former DNC chair and Florida Democrat ran the
organization when it got hacked in an intrusion that the
intelligence community concluded was orchestrated by the
Kremlin. The disclosures that ensued proved embarrassing
to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, and ultimately led
to Wasserman Schultz stepping down from her post.

In the aftermath of the election, it was revealed that the

DNC turned down offers of assistance form the FBI and
the Homeland Security Department.

'Sometime in 2016, I became aware of a

hack into systems of the Democratic
National Committee,' former Homeland
Security Secrtary Jeh Johnson testified in
late June.
'I pressed my staff to know whether DHS Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schult (D-Fla.), who ran the Democratic
was sufficiently proactive, and on the scene National Committee when it got hacked, introduced amendments
helping the DNC identify the intruders and that would effectively strip Donald Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner
patch vulnerabilities. The answer, to the of his security clearance
best of my recollection, was not reassuring:
the FBI and the DNC had been in contact One amendment to a spending bill read:
with each other months before about the
intrusion, and the DNC did not feel it "None of the funds made available in this
needed DHS's assistance at that time.' Act may be used to issue, renew, or

487
 maintain a security clearance for any
individual in a position in the Executive
Office of the President who is under a
criminal investigation by a federal law
enforcement agency for aiding a foreign
government.
'Mr. Kushner didn't only leave out a couple
of meetings, he's had to amend his form
three times, with over 100 meetings with
foreign nationals," Wasserman Schultz
said, Business Insider reported. She said
some of those individuals 'were with the
state of Russia, an enemy state.
Specifically designed to aid his father-in-
law's campaign and assist him in being
elected president of the United States.'
confirmed that Kushner had met Veselnitskaya during the
meeting.
Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort also attended the
June 2016 meeting – the type of contact officials are asked
to disclose when applying for a government security
clearance.
According to the Gorelick statement: ''[D]uring the
campaign and transition, he had over 100 calls or meetings
with representatives of more than 20 countries, most of
which were during [the presidential] transition.'

Rep. John Culberson of Texas called the amendments a

'political stunt.'

Kushner has amended a government disclosure document

to belatedly reveal contacts with more than 100 foreigners.

WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 11: Russian Ambassador to

the United States Sergey Kislyak (2nd L) leaves after a
reception at St. Regis Hotel July 11, 2017 in Washington,
DC. The U.S.-Russia Business Council hosted a farewell
reception for the Russian diplomat who will be stepping
down as ambassador. Kushner didn't initially disclose his
meeting with Kislyak

Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner had more than 100

foreign contacts during the campaign and transition,
according to his lawyer

Kushner has been providing 'updates' to his SF-86 national

security form, after it was revealed he did not disclose any
foreign contacts on his initial form.

His attorney has said he is providing 'updates' after
discovering the original omission. The New York
Times reported Thursday that Kushner supplemented the
list three times, adding more than 100 names.
Donald Trump Jr (left) has become the central figure of the firestorm
surrounding Russian meddling in the 2016 election, as he failed to
reveal a meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya (right), a Russian
attorney, until earlier this week

She added: 'Mr. Kushner has submitted additional [federal

That number jibes with a recent statement by Kushner's
disclosure] updates and included, out of an abundance of
attorney, Jamie Gorelick, in response to revelations about
caution, this meeting with a Russian person, which he
Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Kremlin-linked Russian
briefly attended at the request of his brother-in-law,
lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya. The statement essentially
Donald Trump Jr. As Mr. Kushner has consistently stated,
he is eager to cooperate and share what he knows.'
488
Many of Kushner's foreign contacts were hardly a secret.
During the transition, the husband of Ivanka Trump
became known as the president's go-to person for foreign
leaders.
President Trump (left), standing alongside French President
Emmanuel Macron (right), said Thursday that his son's meeting with
a Russian lawyer wasn't a 'very big deal'
'If this were a normal political world, Jared
Kushner wouldn't have a job by the end of
today,' Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of
Connecticut told The Hill.
Jared Kushner, senior White House adviser, listens during
a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump and Moon
Jae-in, South Korea's president, not pictured, in the
Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, D.C.,
U.S., on Friday, June 30, 2017. The president relied on
Kushner as an advisor and emissary during the campaign
In photos released during the transition, Kushner was
pictured with an array of world leaders, as he was
with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in an image
released by the Japanese foreign ministry.
489
But his meetings with Russians are of particular interest to
investigators who are probing contacts between Trump
campaign officials and Russia following the intelligence
communities conclusion that Russia interfered in the
presidential election.
Kushner is now known to have had three contacts with
Russians during the campaign: One with outgoing Russian
ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak, one
with Veselnitskaya, and one with Sergei Gorkov, chairman
of state-owned Sberbank.
The president defended his son during a Paris press
conference for attending the meeting with Veselnitskaya
that Kushner attended.
'My son is a wonderful young man. He
took a meeting with a Russian lawyer,'
Trump said Thursday. 'It was a meeting
that went very, very quickly, very fast.'
Trump said the 'press made a very big deal over something
really a lot of people would do,' then blamed former
Attorney General Loretta Lynch for letting the Kremlin-
linked woman into the country in the first place.
'So, again, I have a son who's a great
young man, he's a fine person. Took a
meeting with a lawyer from Russia, it lasted
for a very short period and nothing came of
the meeting. And I think it's a meeting most
people in politics probably would have
taken' the president continued.
The meeting occurred after music publicist Robert
Goldstone contacted Trump Jr with an offer of dirt on rival
Hillary Clinton and a claim that the Russian government
supported his campaign.
 It’s Official: Impeachment Resolution
Against President Donald J. Trump. H. RES. 438
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, July 13, 2017
Rep. Brad Sherman
An impeachment motion against President Donald John
Trump was introduced on July 12 in the US House of
Representatives by Rep Brad Sherman (D-CA) and
Rep Al Green (D-TX).
The Article of Impeachment (H. Res. 438)
against President Donald J. Trump points
to “High Crimes and Misdemeanors”.
According to Rep. Brad Sherman, “the
Article is based on Article 1, dealing with
“Obstruction of Justice,” which was passed
by the Judiciary Committee on a bipartisan
vote on July 27, 1974, regarding Richard
M. Nixon.”
Sherman accuses Trump of
“obstructing investigations into Russian
meddling in the 2016 presidential election”.
Article H RES. 438 calls for the removal of President
Trump from office.
According to reports:
“The effort is likely to stall in the
Republican-controlled congress…” (Al
Jazeera).
490
There is no indication at this stage that Republicans would
support an Impeachment procedure.
Read Sherman’s statement below, he refers to a resolution
which will put Mike Pence into the White House.
“I served with Mike Pence in Congress for
twelve years and I disagree with him on
just about everything. I never dreamed I
would author a measure that would put
him in the White House”
The “Russia Probe” is central to the Impeachment
procedure: one does not go without the other.
Moreover, reference to the Donald Trump Jr. encounter
with a Russian lawyer (which borders on ridicule) is being
used as a justification. According to Rep.Sherman:
“Recent disclosures by Donald Trump
Jr. indicate that Trump’s campaign was
eager to receive assistance from
Russia.” The NYT candidly states without
a shred of evidence that the Russian
lawyer is “connected the Russian
government” intimating that she is a stooge
of the Kremlin.
Below is the statement of Rep. Brad Sherman
“I am pleased that Congressman Al Green
(D-TX) has joined me in filing Articles of
Impeachment against Donald J. Trump. We
now begin the effort to force the House
Judiciary Committee to hold hearings on
Obstruction of Justice and Russian
interference in our election.
Recent disclosures by Donald Trump Jr.
indicate that Trump’s campaign was
eager to receive assistance from
Russia. It now seems likely that the
President had something to hide when he
tried to curtail the investigation of National
Security Advisor Michael Flynn and the
wider Russian probe. I believe his
 conversations with, and subsequent firing
of, FBI Director James Comey constitute
Obstruction of Justice.
Every day Democrats, Republicans, and
the entire world are shocked by the latest
example of America’s amateur President.
Ignorance accompanied by a refusal to
learn. Lack of impulse control,
accompanied by a refusal to have his staff
control his impulses. We’re no longer
surprised by any action, no matter how far
below the dignity of the office—and no
matter how dangerous to the country.
But the Constitution does not provide for
the removal of a President for impulsive,
ignorant incompetence. It does provide for
the removal of a President for High Crimes
and Misdemeanors.
As the investigations move forward,
additional evidence supporting additional
Articles of Impeachment may emerge.
However, as to Obstruction of Justice, as
defined in 18 U.S.C. § 1512 (b)(3), the
evidence we have is sufficient to move
forward now. And the national interest
requires that we do so.
.
491
Introducing Articles of Impeachment will
have two possible outcomes. First, I have
slight hope it will inspire an ‘intervention’ in
the White House. If Impeachment is real, if
they actually see Articles, perhaps we will
see incompetency replaced by care.
Perhaps uncontrollable impulses will be
controlled. And perhaps the danger our
nation faces will be ameliorated.
Second, and more likely, filing Articles of
Impeachment is the first step on a very
long road. But if the impulsive
incompetency continues, then eventually—
many, many months from now—
Republicans will join the impeachment
effort.
I author Articles of Impeachment not to
change our national policy. I served with
Mike Pence in Congress for twelve years
and I disagree with him on just about
everything. I never dreamed I would author
a measure that would put him in the
White House. I am introducing Articles of
Impeachment to begin a long process to
protect our country from abuse of power,
obstruction of justice, and impulsive,
ignorant incompetence.” Brad
Sherman (emphasis added)
The Article (H. R. 438) concludes with the following
statement:
Full text of Article of Impeachment (H. Res. 438)
For further details click Rep. Brad Sherman’s
Congressional website
 Revealed: 'Ordinary 'Citizen' John McCain Dispatched A
Trusted Aide Across The Atlantic To Get Dirty Dossier
From Ex-Spy After Former British Diplomat Told
Him About Blackmail Tapes
 The Guardian Charted The Path The Dirty Dossier Made From A British Intelligence
Professional To Sen. John Mccain And Then The FBI
 Mccain, 80, Put Out A Statement Wednesday Saying That He Was The Bureau's Source Of
The Controversial Dossier
 The Arizona Republican Found Out About The Dossier's Existence While At A Meeting In
Canada And Dispatched An Emissary To Hunt It Down
 He Met An Ex-British Diplomat In Canada - Now Identified As Sir Andrew Wood -Who In
One Version Of Events Told Him About The File
 Wood Is A Former Associate Of Tony Blair The Ex-British Prime Minister, And Admitted
Talking To Mccain
 He Issued A Nuanced Statement Saying He Did Not Give Mccain The Dossier And Had 'Done
Nothing Wrong' - But He Did Not Deny Telling Mccain The File Existed
By Nikki Schwab, U.S. Political Reporter For Dailymail.Com
Published: 16:33 EDT, 12 January 2017 | Updated: 23:59 EDT, 12 January 2017

Sen. John McCain said he did 'what any citizen would do'
in turning over the dirty dossier, which contained
unconfirmed secrets about the president-elect, over to the
FBI.
Andrew Wood. He issued a nuanced explanation of his dealings with
McCain: 'I would like to stress that I did not pass on any dossier to
Senator McCain or anyone else and I did not see a dossier at the
time.' He did not deny alerting McCain to its existence.

The Guardian charted the path of how the dossier came

to be and how it was that McCain got his hands on the
controversial documents.

The story of the dossier began with an investigative firm in

Washington, D.C., being tapped by one of Trump's
primary allies to dig up some opposition research on the
Republican hopeful.

Aide: Sir ANdrew Wood was

Tony Blair's ambassador to Moscow until 2000

In turn, that firm outsourced the research to a 'retired

western European former counter-intelligence official,
with a long history of dealing with the shadow world of
Moscow's spooks and siloviki (securocrats),' explained the
Guardian.

Shortly after the election,John McCain (right) was attending a Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal identified the ex-spy
conference in Canada and spoke with a 'former senior western
diplomat' who knew of the dossier's existence. That man was Sir
as Christopher Steele.
492
By the time the contractor had started digging, Trump's Wood told the Independent that he had met McCain,
primary opponent had dropped out. But the firm found a spoken to him about Trump, and about the potential for
Democrat who wanted dirt on the now Republican him to be compromised.
nominee instead.

The Guardian pointed out that just because a Democrat

was willing to pay for the information that didn't mean that
said Democrat was Hillary Clinton's campaign or the
Democratic National Committee.

Sometimes donors seek out this information in order to

ensure they've made a sound investment.

The contractor, who the Guardian didn't name, but the

Wall Street Journal identified as Steele, reportedly found
the information that he dug up to be concerning. He and
another ex-British diplomat, Christopher Burrows, run
their own company, Orbis Business Intelligence.

'If the allegations were real, their

implications were overwhelming,' the
Guardian wrote.

So over the summer he delivered the intelligence he had

gathered from his Russian sources, living within the
country and also in the west, to former colleagues in the
FBI.

The Guardian suggested he also delivered the documents

to his country's own intelligence service.

As fall approached, and he heard nothing about any FBI

investigation into the documents, he was persuaded to tell Report: Christopher Steele (left) and Christopher Burrows (right)
jointly run Orbis Business Intelligence which produced the report
journalist David Corn, of Mother Jones, of their existence.

The veteran reporter wrote about the dossier on October

31.

The intelligence agent, the Guardian reported, was worried

about an FBI cover-up, as the bureau seemed to be
spending most of its time and energy on an investigation
into Hillary Clinton's private email server.

It wasn't until mid-November, and after the presidential

election, that the chips fell in place for the dossier to make
its more public way to Washington.

On November 18, at the Halifax International Security

Forum, McCain was introduced to a 'former senior western
diplomat' who had set eyes on the documents and knew
who put them together, telling the Arizona Republican that
the individual was 'highly reliable.'

That man can now be named as Sir Andrew Wood, British

London headquarters: This is the prestigious London headquarters
ambassador to Moscow from 1995 to 2000.
of the intelligence firm run by an ex-spy who authored the
discredited dirty dossier on Trump

493
In a carefully nuanced statement he said:
'Yes I did meet Senator McCain and his
aides at the conference.
'We spoke about the kind of activities the
Russians can be engaged in.
'We also spoke about how Mr Trump may
find himself in a position where there could
be an attempt to blackmail him with
Kompromat [a Russian term for
compromising material] and claims that
there were audio and video tapes in
existence.'
He added:
'I would like to stress that I did not pass on
any dossier to Senator McCain or anyone
else and I did not see a dossier at the time.
I do know Christopher Steele and in my
view he is very professional and thorough
in what he does.'
He did not however address whether he told McCain there
was a dossier - and how to get it.
Clearly, somebody did.
Ultimate recipient: The FBI Director James Comey was handed the
document by McCain after its extraordinary transatlantic journey
494
Dossier of unverifiable sleaze
Lurid sex claims
The report states that in 2013 Trump hired prostitutes to
urinate on the bed of the Presidential Suite at the Moscow
Ritz Carlton, where he knew Barack and Michelle Obama
had previously stayed.
It says:
'Trump's unorthodox behavior in Russia
over the years had provided the authorities
there with enough embarrassing material
on the now Republican presidential
candidate to be able to blackmail him if
they so wished.'
Trump ridiculed the idea, pointing out that Russian hotel
rooms are known to be rigged with cameras and describing
himself as a 'germophobe'.
Property 'sweeteners'
The document states that Trump had declined 'sweetener'
real estate deals in Russia that the Kremlin lined up in
order to cultivate him.
The business proposals were said to be
'in relation to the ongoing 2018 World Cup
soccer tournament'.
Russia 'cultivated' Trump for five years
The dossier claimed that the Russian regime had been
'cultivating, supporting and assisting Trump
for at least five years'.
According to the document, one source even claimed that
'the Trump operation was both supported
and directed by Russian President Vladimir
Putin' with the aim being to 'sow discord'.
A dossier on Hillary Clinton
At one point the memo suggests Kremlin spokesman
Dmitry Peskov 'controlled' another dossier containing
compromising material on Hillary Clinton compiled over
'many years'.
Elsewhere in the document, it is claimed that Putin was
 'motivated by fear and hatred of Hillary
Clinton.'

Peskov poured scorn on the claims today and said they

were

'pulp fiction'.

Clandestine meetings

At one point the memo says there were reports of

'clandestine meetings' between Donald Trump's lawyer
Michael Cohen and Kremlin representatives in August last
year in Prague.
However, Trump's counsel Michael Cohen today spoke out
against allegations that he secretly met with Kremlin
officials - saying that he had never been to Prague.
It has now emerged that the dossier was referring to a
different person of the same name.
BACKGROUND: WHO IS SIR ANDREW WOOD?
Sir Andrew Wood's five years as British Ambassador to
Russia coincided with the arrival of Vladimir Putin first as
FSB security service chief then premier, and finally acting
president.
He was in charge of the UK embassy across the Moscow
River from the Kremlin during some of the most
momentous and fraught times in post-Soviet Russia.

From there, McCain dispatched a 'trusted emissary' who He saw the decline of the ailing vodka-soaked rule of
flew across the Atlantic to meet the source of the Boris Yeltsin and the rise of ex-spy Putin, and was among
documents at an airport that the Guardian did not name. the first to publicly question his second bloody war in
Chechnya, an early sign of the new leader's ruthlessness.
The aide was instructed to look for a man with a copy of
the Financial Times and that's how the individuals met,
with the source taking McCain's emissary back to his
house and giving the American a copy of the documents.

Within 24 hours, the dossier was in Washington, though

the contents of the file couldn't be verified without an
investigation.

McCain, the Guardian said, was worried that his actions

might be interpreted as revenge for some of the
controversial comments Trump made about him – such as
knocking the fact that the longtime senator had been a
prisoner of war.

However, McCain decided to hand over the documents to
FBI Director James Comey on December 9.
'Upon examination of the contents, and
unable to make a judgment about their
accuracy, I delivered the information to the
Director of the FBI,' McCain said
Wednesday in a statement about that
matter.
'That has been the extent of my contact
with the FBI or any other government
agency regarding this issue,' McCain said.
He also choreographed Tony Blair's first visit to Moscow
as prime minister, briefly losing touch with the new British
prime minister in the crowds on on the Moscow metro.
Known for being understated and cool under fire in his
dealings with the Russians, and famed for his discretion,
Sir Andrew, now 77, represented Britain at the funeral of
former Soviet first lady Raisa Gorbachev in 1999, seeing
her sobbing husband Mikahil Gorbachev lean over her
open coffin to give her one final hug.
A year earlier he represented Britain at the burial of the
remains of the murdered last tsar Nicholas II and
immediate members of his family, which had been dug

495
from a mineshaft in a Urals forest. He witnessed Yeltsin
bow his head and denounce the 'monstrous crime' of
killing the last tsar - 'one of the most shameful pages in our
history'.
He faced several espionage scandals during his tenure
from 1995 to 2000.
A Russian diplomat was caught red handed by FSB
counter-intelligence officers using high-tech
communications equipment to pass secrets to British 'spies'
in Moscow.
The Russians claimed no less than nine members of Sir
Andrew's diplomatic team were involved in walking past
the double agent with receiver devices to pick up coded
messages he transmitted.
A furious Moscow initially demanded nine expulsions
from the embassy, but in lengthy negotiations by the
ambassador it was reduced to four. Britain in a tit for tat
move threw out four Russians.
Sir Andrew also had to deal with the gruesome beheading
of three Britons and a New Zealander in Chechnya,
accused of being spies, and forced to make a confession,
saying on camera:
'We have been recruited by the English
intelligence service.'
The ambassador protested: 'It's totally absurd, everyone
knows, especially in Russia, how these confessions can be
obtained. Why would our special services be in Chechnya?
It's not rational,'
Darren Hickey, Peter Kennedy and Rudi Petschi and Stan
Shaw were installing a satellite communications system for
British company Granger Telecom in Chechnya when they
fell victim to the spate of kidnappings.
Earlier he worked with controversial tycoon Boris
Berezovsky - who would in 2013 die in Britain in
unexplained circumstances - to free aid workers Camilla
Carr and Jon James, taken hostage by bandits in Chechnya,
denying claims that a ransom was paid to terrorists to
secure their freedom.
He was aware of the risk of sexual entrapment in Moscow.
In 1997 when then Home Secretary Michael (Lord)
Howard - later to be Tory Party leader - visited Moscow,
.
496
the ambassador expressed alarm at his sudden decision to
go out in the evening unchaperoned by diplomats in a Lada
car to visit a newly-opened Irish pub in the company of a
British journalist.
Sir Andrew was also caught in a row over an expensive
£11 million refurbishment of the then British embassy,
converting it into solely the palatial residence for the
ambassador, with Chancellor Gordon Brown complaining
about the lavish lifestyle of diplomats.
Sir Andrew's led trade missions to distant regions of the
country - including parts of Siberia - but he also saw the
1998 rouble crash when cowboy capitalist Russia, having
rejected communism, witnessing millions lose their life's
savings amid rampant inflation.
During Blair's walkabout in Moscow, the bald mayor Yuri
Luzhkov sought to muscle in on event to the evidence
annoyance of press secretary Alastair Campbell who
barked at Sir Andrew: 'Break a line and cut him off. We're
off.'
Despite this uninspiring start with the new premier, Sir
Andrew later worked for Blair as an advisor on Russian
investment. He also witnessed the 1996 election when
Reds-to-Riches tycoons intervened to prop up a visible
sick Yeltsin by bankrolling his campaign in return for
ownership of Russia's most prized industrial assets.
This stopped the Communists retaking power but it was
the start of the oligarch era in Russia. After retiring from
the diplomat service, Sir Andrew developed business
interests linked to Russia.
He became caught in controversy over Labour premier
Blair's role in helping rescue a controversial £4.2 million
BP deal in Russia. Earlier Sir Andrew served as
ambassador to Belgrade, and in 1989 was appointed
number two at the British embassy in Washington - when
he is likely to have come across John McCain.
In recent years, he has been a regular at conferences in the
West about Russia. He has also expressed concern at the
direction of Russia under Putin. Last month he was
scathing in dismissing as nonsense Russian claims to have
had nothing to do with hacking the US election.
'Russia always denies bad news,' he said
on Sky News. The Putin regime 'has a
strong record... of this sort of behaviour'.
 REPORT: John McCain Was The Globalist
Point Man In Efforts To Destroy Trump Campaign
By DCwhispers
Posted On July 13, 2017

However, McCain decided to hand over

the documents to FBI Director James
Comey on December 9.
‘Upon examination of the contents, and
unable to make a judgment about their
accuracy, I delivered the information to
the Director of the FBI,’ McCain said
Wednesday in a statement about that
matter.”

All of this anti-Trump cloak and dagger machinations were

Evidence is now mounting that Senator John McCain was
among the highest ranking members of a globalist effort to
dismantle the then-insurgent Donald Trump presidential
campaign. This evidence points to Mr. McCain’s direct
involvement with foreign agents to do so – the very kind of
election influencing he has repeatedly charged against
POTUS Trump and the Russian government.
Check out this excerpt from a now breaking report by the
Daily Mail:
initiated around the same time of the stunning Brexit vote
that had Great Britain withdrawing from the globalist EU
organization – an outcome Donald Trump applauded and
globalists leaders seethed over. It is unlikely the timing is
mere coincidence.
Senator McCain is now claiming his apparent obsession in
obtaining the anti-Trump dossier was purely motivated by
concern over American security.

“…McCain dispatched a ‘trusted

emissary’ who flew across the Atlantic
to meet the source of the documents at
an airport that the Guardian did not
name.
The aide was instructed to look for a
man with a copy of the Financial Times
and that’s how the individuals met, with
the source taking McCain’s emissary
back to his house and giving the
American a copy of the documents.
Within 24 hours, the dossier was in
Washington, though the contents of the
file couldn’t be verified without an Yeah. Right. Here are the senator’s words last year
investigation. denouncing the Brexit vote:
McCain, the Guardian said, was worried
that his actions might be interpreted as “The need for a strong and united
revenge for some of the controversial Europe is greater than ever. The United
comments Trump made about him – States has long benefited from British
such as knocking the fact that the leadership in NATO and the EU – for
longtime senator had been a prisoner of instance, leading sanctions against
war. Russia, providing vital support to
Afghanistan and Ukraine, and grappling

497
 with the refugee crisis fueled by It appears John McCain was working hand-in-hand with
Vladimir Putin.” the Obama administration, the Clinton campaign, media
sources, and multiple foreign operatives to try and destroy
The British contact McCain used to secure the anti-Trump the Trump campaign. This same effort has been ongoing
dossier (which has since been dismissed as a mish-mash of since Donald Trump became POTUS.
speculative nonsense) was Sir Andrew Wood, a former
British ambassador to Russia during the Tony Blair
administration. Blair is another globalist leader who was
dismayed by the Brexit vote and a staunch anti-Trumper.

Then there is this interesting tidbit from the same Guardian

report that indicates a real dossier on Hillary Clinton was
known to be available – compiled over years by Russian
operatives. Unlike Donald Trump, the Clintons and their
associates have benefited from many millions of dollars of
support over the years:

“…At one point the memo suggests

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov
‘controlled’ another dossier containing
compromising material on Hillary That is the real story of the 2016 election. That is the real
Clinton compiled over ‘many years’.” collusion of a government that does not want the first true
political outsider in generations to have access to the keys
So consider the fact that Senator McCain, upon hearing of of power in this country.
a possible anti-Trump dossier, immediately dispatched an
operative to fly across the Atlantic to meet with a British Donald Trump wasn’t supposed to win – but he did.
operative to obtain the information which he then handed
over to then FBI Director James Comey. (who then likely
The Deep State globalists have been working to silence the
began leaking its contents to the press.)
voices of millions of voters ever since.
And yet, when Mr. McCain was told of a dossier on
Don’t let them succeed.
Hillary Clinton existed, one that spanned many years, the
senator did nothing. Nor did FBI Director Comey. Or the
media. We are all at war.

Take a big whiff. That’s the smell of a sinking ship

overrun with rats.

498
 Why Did Loretta Lynch Grant
Trump Jr's Russian Lawyer A Special Visa
To Enter America?
By Tyler Durden
Jul 13, 2017 10:40 AM
With everyone now rummaging through every document,
intercept, and memo for something, anything tying Trump
to Russia, The Hill's John Solomon and Jonathan Easley
have unearthed details that show the Russian lawyer who
penetrated Donald Trump’s inner circle was initially
cleared into the United States by Loretta Lynch's
Justice Department under "extraordinary
circumstances" after she had initially been turned
down.
Simply put, as The Hill notes, this
revelation means it was the Obama
Justice Department that enabled the
newest and most intriguing figure in the
Russia-Trump investigation to enter the
country without a visa.
The Moscow lawyer had been turned
down for a visa to enter the U.S. lawfully
but then was granted special
immigration parole by then-Attorney
General Loretta Lynch for the limited
purpose of helping a company owned
by Russian businessman Denis Katsyv,
her client, defend itself against a Justice
Department asset forfeiture case in
federal court in New York City.
During a court hearing in early January 2016 as
Veselnitskaya’s permission to stay in the country was
about to expire, federal prosecutors described how rare the
grant of parole immigration was as Veselnitskaya pleaded
for more time to remain in the United States.
499
“In October the government bypassed the
normal visa process and gave a type of
extraordinary permission to enter the
country called immigration parole,”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Monteleoni
explained to the judge during a hearing
Jan. 6, 2016.
“That's a discretionary act that the
statute allows the Attorney General to
do in extraordinary circumstances. In
this case, we did that so that Mr. Katsyv
could testify. And we made the further
accommodation of allowing his Russian
lawyer into the country to assist,” he
added.
The prosecutor said Justice was willing to allow the
Russian lawyer to enter the United States again as the trial
in the case approached so she could help prepare and
attend the proceedings.
But just five days after meeting in June 2016 at Trump
Tower with Donald Trump Jr., presidential son-in-law
Jared Kushner and then Trump campaign chairman Paul
Manafort, it seems the Justice Department had lost track of
her... (as The Hill details)
Moscow attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya
showed up in Washington in the front
row of a House Foreign Affairs
Committee hearing on Russia policy,
video footage of the hearing shows.
 She also helped arrange an event at the
Newseum in Washington, D.C. where
pro-Russian supporters showed a
movie that challenged the
underpinnings of the U.S. human rights
law known as the Magnitysky Act,
which Russian leader Vladimir Putin has reviled and tried
to reverse. About 80 people, including congressional
staffers and State Department employees attended the
viewing at the Newseum.
At least five congressional staffers and
State Department officials attended that
movie showing,
according to a Foreign Agent Registration Act complaint
filed with the Justice Department about Veselnitskaya’s
efforts.
And Veselnitskaya also attended a dinner with the
chairman of the House subcommittee overseeing Russia
policy,
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) and
roughly 20 other guests at a dinner club
frequented by Republicans.
500
All of which was a far cry from the
narrow reason the U.S. government
initially gave for allowing Veselnitskaya
into the U.S. in late 2015, according to
federal court records.
“There’s zero doubt that she and her
U.S. colleagues were lobbying to repeal
Magnitsky or at least ensure his name
was removed from the global law
Congress was considering,” said U.S.
businessman William Browder,
who was the main proponent for the Magnitsky Act and
who filed a FARA complaint against Veselnitskaya,
Dellums and other U.S. officials claiming they should have
registered as foreign agent lobbyists because of the work.
Furthermore, as The Hill notes, the U.S. Attorney’s office
in New York confirmed Wednesday to The Hill that it let
Veselnitskaya into the country on a grant of immigration
parole from October 2015 to early January 2016.
Justice Department and State
Department officials could not
immediately explain how the Russian
lawyer was still in the country in June
for the meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and
the events in Washington D.C.
Maybe Washington is a "sanctuary for Russian operatives"
City?
We look forward to the hearing where Lynch has to
explain how she gave this "russian operative" special
access to America, then lost track of her, only to discover
her again via NSA intercepts, trying to pitch Magnitsky
Act repeal to Trump Jr.
 BREAKING: Hillary Campaign
Used Phony Information Obtained Through Collusion w/
KREMLIN To Damage Trump Campaign
Lucian Wintrich
Jul 13th, 2017 5:58 pm
While lying MSM outlets such as CNN (Clinton News
Network) and Carlos Slim’s Blog (New York Times)
continue to pump out false Trump-Russia narratives, a new
emerging truth is being exposed each day. Maybe the left
shouldn’t have kept shining the spotlight on relationships
with Russia, because it turns out that the only actual guilty
parties are on the left.
Charges that members of the Clinton campaign were in
cahoots with a far left opposition research and propaganda
firm, Fusion GPS,
it is becoming more and more apparent
that many of the false stories that
Fusion GPS was pushing came directly
from the Kremlin.
Story VIA Michael Ahrens, GOP Communications:
While most in the media continue to focus
on a meeting that all parties involved say
resulted in no damaging material against
Hillary Clinton, there’s little attention being
paid to the fact that Hillary’s supporters
were able to successfully use a foreign
intelligence agent to disseminate false
information to the mainstream American
press. The phony information allegedly
came from inside the Kremlin and sought to
damage then-candidate Donald Trump.
501
Newly-released British court documents show that Fusion
GPS, an “oppo firm” funded by Hillary’s supporters,
successfully managed to get a former spy to discuss the
phony foreign intelligence with The New York Times, The
Washington Post, Yahoo News, The New Yorker, Mother
Jones and CNN.
From McClatchy:
“Later, Democrats paid for the same
research on Trump’s past and alleged
Russian ties.
Fusion GPS contracted with Steele, who had once worked
as an undercover spy in Moscow. The court document
lifted a veil on Washington’s inner workings, with Steele
laying out how Fusion briefed select reporters on the
material for which it and Steele had been paid to gather.
‘The journalists initially briefed at the end of
September 2016 by the Second Defendant
(Steele) and Fusion at Fusion’s instruction
were from the New York Times, the
Washington Post, Yahoo News, the New
Yorker and CNN,’ Steele’s lawyers said,
adding that he “verbally and in person”
briefed the first three organizations in mid-
October and a reporter from Mother Jones
via Skype.”
On the heels of a CNN report refuting Clinton campaign
officials’ claims that the DNC never worked with a foreign
government to dig up dirt on Donald Trump, we now know
that Democrats actually used a foreign agent to
disseminate phony information to the American
mainstream media that allegedly came from inside the
Kremlin.
And hardly anyone is paying any attention to it.
Background
 Fusion GPS is an opposition research
firm funded by Hillary Clinton
supporters in the summer of 2016.
“But congressional sources say it’s actually
an opposition-research group for
Democrats, and the founders, who are
more political activists than journalists,
have a pro-Hillary Clinton, anti-Trump
agenda. ‘These weren’t mercenaries or
hired guns,’ a congressional source familiar
with the dossier probe said. ‘These guys
had a vested personal and ideological
interest in smearing Trump and boosting
Hillary’s chances of winning the White
House.’ Fusion GPS was on the payroll of
an unidentified Democratic ally of Clinton
when it hired a long-retired British spy to
dig up dirt on Trump. In 2012, Democrats
hired Fusion GPS to uncover dirt on GOP
presidential nominee Mitt Romney. And in
2015, Democratic ally Planned Parenthood
retained Fusion GPS to investigate pro-life
activists protesting the abortion group.
Moreover, federal records show a key co-
founder and partner in the firm was a
Hillary Clinton donor and supporter of her
presidential campaign.” (Paul Sperry,
Sketchy firm behind Trump dossier is
stalling investigators,” New York Post,
6/24/17)
Fusion GPS hired foreign intelligence
agent Christopher Steele to compile the
now-infamous dossier containing
unproven allegations against President
Trump.
“Fusion GPS, which is based in
Washington DC and was established by
former Wall Street Journal reporters Glenn
Simpson and Peter Fritsch, found itself in
the spotlight earlier this year after it
emerged it was behind an “oppo research”
dossier containing unproven and often
salacious allegations about Mr. Trump.
The company had originally been hired by Republican
rivals of Mr. Trump during the primary campaign. After he
secured the party’s nomination, the company was instead
paid by Democratic financial supporters of Ms. Clinton. In
the summer of 2016, GPS hired former British intelligence
agent, Christopher Steele, to help their work.” (Andrew
Buncombe,
.
502
“Russian lawyer who met with Donald
Trump Jr linked to investigation group
behind salacious Steele Dossier,” The
Independent, 7/10/17)
 Steele “once worked as an undercover spy in
Moscow.” “Fusion GPS contracted with Steele, who
had once worked as an undercover spy in Moscow.”
(Kevin G. Hall, “John McCain faces questions in
Trump-Russia dossier case,” McClatchy, 7/11/17)
The dossier contains several
anonymous sources from inside the
Kremlin. “The dossier quotes from a large
number of anonymous sources. It cites ‘a
former top level Russian intelligence officer
still active inside the Kremlin’, ‘a senior
Russian foreign ministry figure’ and “a
senior Russian financial official’.” (Luke
Harding, “What we know – and what’s
true – about the Trump-Russia
dossier,”The Guardian, 1/11/17)
Despite denials from multiple DNC and
former Clinton campaign officials, a
DNC contractor worked with the
Ukrainian government “to dig up dirt on
Donald Trump and his top aides.”
“Multiple Democratic National Committee
officials, former Clinton campaign officials
and Democratic sources denied that the
Democratic committee or Clinton campaign
worked with the government of Ukraine to
dig up dirt on Donald Trump and his top
aides. But multiple Democratic sources
said that a DNC contractor, whose work
included organizing political events for
Ukranian-Americans, did tell DNC
operatives that Ukrainian officials would be
willing to deliver damaging information on
Trump’s campaign and, most notably, Paul
Manafort, his then-campaign head who has
previously advised Viktor Yanukovych, the
former Ukrainian President who has close
ties to Moscow.”
(Dan Merica, “DNC denies working with
Ukrainian government, but contractor
floated anti-Trump material,” CNN, 7/12/17)
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