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The House GOP’s premature ending of the Trump-Russia investigation-one of the most important in our nation’s history-is a moral travesty. As ranking House Intel Dem, Adam Schiff, says, the GOP’s take amounts to ‘Sorry, we’d rather not know.’

When Schiff was on the Rachel Maddow show recently, he related a very telling anecdote: that after Comey testified before the House Intelligence Committee on March 8, 2017, many Republicans were complaining after that it was just a terrible day.

Sure-a terrible day for so-called President Trump-who Nunes and friends believe they work for rather than the American people. House GOPer Ted Yoho-in a clear Freudian slip-had defended Devin Nunes by saying ‘He works for the President, he’s accountable to the President.’

Later Yoho sort of walked this back but it’s clear he let slip how he and many of his Republican colleagues see things. And this is how they’ve run this so-called investigation.

It’s been entirely behind closed doors-which is totally unacceptable. This is an attack on our election system itself; how can our confidence in the system be restored if its done behind closed doors? Now the House GOP comes out and declares Trump innocent of collusion-while even contradicting the intelligence community in claiming Russia hadn’t wanted to help Trump-as a fait accompli.

You’re only mollified by this if you trust the House GOP, a trust they surely haven’t earned. Again, this is potentially the biggest domestic political crime in our nation’s history. We, the people, need to see some testimony and have access to the relevant facts. Sources and methods can always be protected-it isn’t rocket science.

UPDATE: With the release of the redacted Mueller Report, Coverup AG Barr is pretending that it is rocket science pretending that the request for the full unredacted Mueller Report is the Democrats demanding he ‘break the law’-rather than just follow a precedent in previous investigations from Watergate to Emailgate-the GOP House has 800,000 pages of intel on Emailgate without anyone declaring they were trying to break the law. 

Meanwhile after no public hearings during the GOP Congress with the new Dem Congress there’s been one public hearing. Hopefully this is going to change very soon. The impeachment phobic Dem leadership insists that impeachment is too divisive let’s just do public hearings yet there’s been one public hearing all year and none post the release of the redacted Mueller Report.

Presumably we’re going to hear from Mueller-and maybe McGahn at some point soon. The Dems promise that if McGahn-or Mueller-don’t come voluntarily they will subpoena them.

This is why we need a Democratic House and the Dems have vowed that if-God willing-they do take back the House and are able to reopen the hearings they will be public.

The GOP says ‘No collusion’ yet consider who they didn’t interview at all in coming to this conclusion:

1 Manafort

2. Flynn’

3. Papdopoulos

4. Rick Gates

5. Ralph Nader

All who were convicted

How can you say there was no collusion before speaking to Papadopoulos who was told the Russians have thousands of emails damaging to Hillary Clinton?

Now we’ve learned that Roger Stone told at least two Trump associates by at least April of 2016 that Wikileaks had emails damaging to Hillary Clinton. If the House GOP really wanted the truth about collusion either way they’d want to speak to Stone again.

“Roger Stone Knew in Advance About the Stolen Emails. Did He Tell Trump?”

Talk about asked and answered: asking the question answers it. Is it in any way conceivable that if Stone did know, he would not tell Donald Trump? Indeed, he was telling everyone-that’s a big part of why Stone is in this mess-he talks so much.

From these Trump associates the Intel Committee received a limited response:

1.Hope Hicks

2. Corey Lewandowski

3. Donald Jr

4. Steve Bannon

With the exception of Bannon-who’s personal non grata with ‘The Boss’ after his blabbing to author Michael Wolff-Nunes and friends made no effort to subpoena or hold in contempt any of these major Trump associates of interest.

In any case thankfully, we have the Mueller probe-and for now the Senate Intelligence Committee that comparably at least seems a little fairer. To be sure, Congress has its own role to play which is why we desperately need a Dem House next year.

For now the House Dems released their own Russia status report:

“Below is a partial list of key witnesses that the Committee has yet to contact or interview, as well as document production requests that the Committee has yet to make from persons and entities of relevance to the investigation. As noted in the appendices below, many of these persons and entities were previously requested by the Minority—some as early as August 2017 and many repeatedly—but have yet to be contacted by, appear before, or produce documents to the Committee.”

“Appendix A details the Committee’s outstanding lines of inquiry, some of which have been addressed only in part and others not at all. Many of the Minority’s requests bear directly on the second and third prongs of our investigation: whether the Russian active measures campaign included links between Russia and individuals associated with political campaigns or any other U.S. persons, and what we need to do to protect ourselves and our allies from election interference in the future.”

“Appendix B outlines more than 30 key witnesses that the Committee has yet to interview. This list, chosen from a broader set of individuals and entities of interest, includes witnesses to whom the Committee has already sent letters, but who so far have failed to respond to the Committee’s request for voluntary cooperation; witnesses that the Minority has previously requested and whom the Majority has not agreed to call in for testimony or to request documents from; and pertinent new witnesses that the Committee has discovered in the course of the investigation.”

Among other witnesses, Appendix B includes:

“formal and informal campaign foreign policy advisors who have yet to appear before or produce documents to the Committee, including Reince Priebus, Stephen Miller, KT McFarland, Sean Spicer, Keith Kellogg, Joseph E. Schmitz, and Tera Dahl;

UPDATE: Joseph Schmitz is central to the question of conspiracy-he was part of Trump’s original National Security Team along with Carter Page and George Papadopoulos and he brought material from the dark web to the FBI that he’d thought were Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails. Seth Abramson has hypothesized plausibly that Peter Smith-who also sought the dark web-in search of Clinton’s emails-was Schmidt’s client.

In Chapter A I hypothesized if the fake emails Schmdit gave to the FBI were from where Comey got his own fake Russian document he used as a false premise to do the July 5, 2016 careless presser-the extreme carelessness was his.

This is a question Comey should be asked-it’s relevant both to the Comeygate investigation that still needs to happen-the Democrats need to figure out the status of the IG report-has it been tabled-as well as Russiagate itself-the fake Russian documents were a big part of Russia’s interference-and the Trump campaign’s clear coordination and collusion.

Indeed what is clear from even the unredacted Mueller Report is the extent to which the Trump campaign sought Clinton’s deleted emails as if they were the campaign’s white whale. Michael Flynn told Mueller how frustrated Trump was that they hadn’t obtained it.

The question as to why this wasn’t an indictable conspiracy is an excellent question for the Democrats when they do finally hear from Mueller. The explanation in the MR-that as the Russians didn’t actually have Clinton’s emails there was no crime-seems pretty dubious. After all, isn’t intent the big stumbling block in charging a crime? Yet what could be more clear than  Peter Smith’s-and Trump himself’s- clear intent for the Russians to hack the emails-the crime of conspiracy to commit computer crimes-and hand them over to the campaign?

Russia, if you’re listening!

End of UPDATE

“Individuals with knowledge about the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russian emissaries, the stated purpose of which was to provide damaging information on Hillary Clinton, including Natalia Veselnitskaya, who offered to cooperate, and Roman Beniaminov, a witness with relevant information who resides in the United States; persons and entities tied to the Trump campaign’s digital operation, including relevant personnel from contractors such as Cambridge Analytica, along with documentary evidence that would shed light on Cambridge Analytica’s efforts to obtain stolen DNC emails from WikiLeaks; individuals or groups who were involved in or may have knowledge of third-party political outreach from the Kremlin to the Trump campaign, including persons linked to the National Rifle Association (NRA) and who can shed light on the NRA’s relationship with Alexander Torshin, a close ally of Russian President Putin, such as Maria Butina, Paul Erickson, and Cleta Mitchell; and U.S. government officials and experts focused on election security, such as officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National Association of Secretaries of State, the Department of Homeland Security, and key employees from CrowdStrike.”

“Appendix D outlines more than 15 persons and entities for which the Committee believes compulsory process for appearance and/or document production to the Committee is necessary. Included are witnesses who have refused to appear; who have invoked a nonexistent privilege to avoid pertinent testimony or who have simply refused to answer questions because the answers may be adverse to the interests of the President or his campaign; who have not produced any documentation; or whose production was insufficient and for whom we have a reasonable basis to believe that they possess documents responsive to the Committee’s investigation. This list includes, among others: Donald Trump Jr., Michael Cohen, Jared Kushner, Hope Hicks, Attorney General Sessions, Erik Prince, and the White House. The Committee must also initiate a contempt process to compel Stephen Bannon to testify to the Committee fully and without constraints.”

UPDATE 2.0:

We now know a lot more about Bannon’s role than was known than was publicly known regarding Bannon’s role when the Dems released their own memo to counter Nunes back on March 13, 2018.

Well done! We know that he corresponded and planned a coordination strategy with Roger Stone and emailed him a well done after the release of the first tranche of Podesta’s emails back on October 7, 2016.

Speaking of the conspiracy to obtain Clinton’s emails Bannon told Mueller that the campaign was inundated with materials from supporters alleged to be her emails-including Joseph Schmidt. Bannon of course was CCed in the late Peter Smith’s email to the highest echelon’s of the Trump campaign where Smith expressed his clear intent to work with both the Russian hackers and Wikileaks to obtain Clinton’s emails.

We now know based on a just recently broken story that Bannon also urged Andy McCabe to bury the hatchet between the FBI and the Russia House the day after Trump’s inappropriate private dinner with Comey where he asked if Comey could see his way to let it go on the Flynn investigation.  

End of UPDATE 2.0

“In consideration of the Special Counsel’s ongoing investigative equities, the Committee also has deferred interviewing Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, and George Papadopoulos, but these interviews will be essential to a complete understanding of the issues of collusion and obstruction of justice. To conduct a legitimate investigation, the Committee would need to interview these individuals, whether or not they have reached plea agreements or are the subject of criminal indictments. For example, Mr. Flynn specifically informed the Committee via his attorney on June 7, 2017 that he planned to invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege against selfincrimination; the Committee did not demand his appearance, as a result. In light of Mr. Flynn’s guilty plea, the Committee should revisit his appearance and seek to negotiate his testimony. The Committee also ought to interview other individuals who may be of investigative interest to the Special Counsel, reportedly such as George Nader and Simona Mangiante.”

While the GOP used Mueller as the excuse not to interview many witnesses they can’t have it both ways. If you are using the Mueller investigation as an excuse not to interview Papadopoulos that’s one thing-how ever lacking in merit that argument is. But then how can you say there’s no evidence of collusion when you haven’t spoken to the witnesses whose testimony bears most on the question of collusion?

The GOP can’t say there was no collusion, at most they can say they don’t know as they’ve chosen not to interview the most relevant witnesses-ergo they’d rather not know PACE Schiff.

Trey Gowdy, however, is breaking with his GOP House colleagues and points out that quite obviously the distinction between Russia wanting to hurt Hillary and help Trump is a dinstinction without a difference.

UPDATE 3.0: Though now that he’s left Congress he’s totally changed his tune-showing his true colors.

As for Michael Flynn Judge Emmet Sullivan-Thank God for Judge Emmet Sullivan-is going to release the unredacted parts of the Mueller Report related to Flynn-that’s a lot.

A great deal has already been revealed-that a GOP Congressman or staffer tried to talk Flynn out of cooperating and that Flynn emailed  GOP arch co-conspirator Matthew Gaetz and urged him to keep up the pressure.

The more you learn about it the worse it looks for Flynn. 

Just months into a cooperation agreement with special counsel Robert Mueller, former national security adviser Michael Flynn sent an unsolicited text message to one of President Donald Trump’s top allies in Congress, urging him to “keep the pressure on.”

“You stay on top of what you’re doing. Your leadership is so vital for our country now,” Flynn wrote to Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), one of Congress’ most vocal critics of the Mueller investigation. “Keep the pressure on.”

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/13/gowdy-russia-undermine-clinton-republicans-461612?lo=ap_b1

 

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October 28, 2016: a Day That Will Live in Infamy Copyright © by . All Rights Reserved.

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