Thursday, May 2, 2019
Dossier Not What ‘Started All of This’
Factcheck
In an interview about the special counsel’s report, Rep. John Ratcliffe said that what “started all of this” was “a fake, phony dossier.” But a House Republican intelligence committee memo said it was information about a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser that sparked the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference in the election.
Ratcliffe, a Texas Republican who is a member of the House intelligence committee, said in the interview on Fox Business Network that “I had seen every classified document that any member of Congress was allowed to see. So I wasn’t surprised at all at the findings” of the special counsel investigation, as revealed in a four-page memo on March 24 by Attorney General William P. Barr. He then turned to the dossier.
Explained
What Started the Trump-Russia Investigation? Not the Steele Dossier as Trump Claims
haaretz
Republican memo released in February affirmed a story from the New York Times which traces the beginning of the investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia to campaign aide George Papadopoulos
FOX NEWS' CHRIS WALLACE WARNS OF OWN NETWORK'S BIAS: 'OPINION PEOPLE' ON FOX 'MAY BE PUSHING POLITICAL AGENDA' ON MUELLER LETTER
Fox News host Chris Wallace on Wednesday warned viewers that some opinion-based coverage of special counsel Robert Mueller’s letter to Attorney General William Barr on his own network may be biased and to set the record straight, he went over the “facts.”
Without naming specifically which hosts he was referring to, Wallace urged viewers to focus on the “facts” and to disregard the other Fox News figures downplaying of the significance of Mueller’s letter during a Wednesday appearance on Shepard Smith Reporting.
“I know there are some people who don’t think this March 27 letter is a big deal,” Wallace said. “Some opinion people, some opinion people who appear on this network, who may be pushing a political agenda.”
“But, you know, we have to deal in facts. And the fact is that this letter from the special counsel, and it was one of at least three contacts with the Attorney General between March 25 and March 27, was a clear indication that the [special counsel] was upset, very upset, with the letter that had been sent out by the Attorney General, and wanted it changed, or wanted it at least added to and the Attorney General refused to do so,” he continued. “He felt the Attorney General’s letter was inaccurate.”
“What he says in the letter is, ‘You didn’t reflect what we found in the report,’ and there were a lot of people—having read now the full report, or as much as it has not been redacted—agree that he didn’t reveal what was fully in the report,” the host added.
“Again, those aren’t opinions, that’s not a political agenda, those are the facts.
James Comey: How Trump Co-opts Leaders Like Bill Barr
nytimes
People have been asking me hard questions. What happened to the leaders in the Trump administration, especially the attorney general, Bill Barr, who I have said was due the benefit of the doubt?
How could Mr. Barr, a bright and accomplished lawyer, start channeling the president in using words like “no collusion” and F.B.I. “spying”? And downplaying acts of obstruction of justice as products of the president’s being “frustrated and angry,” something he would never say to justify the thousands of crimes prosecuted every day that are the product of frustration and anger?
How could he write and say things about the report by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, that were apparently so misleading that they prompted written protest from the special counsel himself?
How could Mr. Barr go before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday and downplay President Trump’s attempt to fire Mr. Mueller before he completed his work?
And how could Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, after the release of Mr. Mueller’s report that detailed Mr. Trump’s determined efforts to obstruct justice, give a speech quoting the president on the importance of the rule of law? Or on resigning, thank a president who relentlessly attacked both him and the Department of Justice he led for “the courtesy and humor you often display in our personal conversations”?
What happened to these people?
I don’t know for sure. People are complicated, so the answer is most likely complicated. But I have some idea from four months of working close to Mr. Trump and many more months of watching him shape others.
Amoral leaders have a way of revealing the character of those around them. Sometimes what they reveal is inspiring. For example, James Mattis, the former secretary of defense, resigned over principle, a concept so alien to Mr. Trump that it took days for the president to realize what had happened, before he could start lying about the man.
But more often, proximity to an amoral leader reveals something depressing. I think that’s at least part of what we’ve seen with Bill Barr and Rod Rosenstein.
TEN KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM WILLIAM BARR’S SENATE HEARING ON RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE IN 2016 ELECTION
newsweek
Atttorney General William Barr testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday afternoon about the specifics of the report prepared by special counsel Robert Mueller on Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential elections and possible obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump. There, Barr answered questions about his conclusion that there was no obstruction of justice and that the president had been cleared of wrongdoing.
Underlying the hearing was a last-minute revelation that Mueller had written a letter to Barr saying that he disagreed with Barr’s four-page summary of his report, and the two had followed up with a phone call.
Below are 10 standout moments from Wednesday’s hearing:
Religious Objections to the Measles Vaccine? Get the Shots, Faith Leaders Say
nytimes
The measles outbreak in the United States is now the largest since the disease was declared eliminated here 19 years ago. The return of this scourge has been driven by one factor in particular: misinformation, spread by vaccine critics, that scares parents into not immunizing their children.
Along with rumors that vaccines cause autism or that the trace amounts of mercury and aluminum in them are dangerous — falsehoods that were long ago debunked — have come innuendos aimed at deeply religious parents.
Vaccines, the activists say, contain ingredients made from pigs, dogs, monkeys and aborted fetuses. Indeed, most of those assertions are based in fact. Ingredient lists published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins show that vaccines may contain these elements (although any residual DNA is present only at the parts-per-million level).
Nonetheless, vaccination is endorsed by top Jewish and Islamic scholars, and by the Vatican. Religious authorities have meticulously studied how vaccines are made and what is in them, and still have ruled that they do not violate Jewish, Islamic or Catholic law.
Although no vaccine is without side effects, immunization is one of the greatest advances in medicine. The World Health Organization estimates that vaccines have saved more than 10 million lives in just the last decade.
Trump’s Stonewall Is Beginning to Crack
theatlantic
To date, the cover-up has worked about as well as President Donald Trump could have hoped.
Almost four years after Trump declared his campaign for the presidency, and more than 30 months since he won that office, he has successfully kept secret almost all the things he wished to keep secret. How much debt does he owe, and to whom? How much of his income derives from people who do business with the U.S. government? How much of his income derives from foreign sources? Who are his business partners, and do any of them present ethical or national-security concerns?
These basics of post-Watergate official disclosure have all been suppressed.
Incredibly, even after the delivery of the Mueller report, the American people still have only the haziest idea of Trump's business connections to Russia and Russians. Do those connections cast any light on why the Russian government was so eager to elect him president in 2016? Perhaps that information is held somewhere within the Department of Justice or the FBI, but citizens and taxpayers can only guess.
Wednesday, May 1, 2019
Hirono accuses Barr of lying, tells him to resign
During During testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) accused Attorney General William Barr of lying to Congress and tells him he should resign
The Mueller report: A catalog of 77 Trump team lies and falsehoods
cnn
The Mueller report documents at least 77 specific instances where President Donald Trump's campaign staff, administration officials and family members, Republican backers and his associates lied or made false assertions(sometimes unintentionally) to the public, Congress, or authorities, according to a new CNN analysis. The plurality of lies came from Trump himself, and most of them took place while he was president.
The redacted version of the 448-page report released by the Justice Department earlier this month didn't find conspiracy or coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Special counsel Robert Mueller did not decide whether Trump obstructed justice in violation of the law, though he investigated it thoroughly and found in several instances both potentially obstructive behavior and motive.
WILLIAM BARR TORCHED BY HARVARD LAW PROFESSOR, TOP LEGAL SCHOLARS OVER 'INDEFENSIBLE' MUELLER SUMMARY: AG ‘MUST BE IMPEACHED'
After special counsel Robert Mueller’s letter to William Barr complaining about his summary of the Russia investigation was revealed on Tuesday, top legal scholars — including a longtime Harvard law professor — condemned the Attorney General for allegedly misrepresenting the special counsel’s findings, with some calling on him to resign or be impeached.
The New York Times and the Washington Post reported on the existence of the letter, sent by Mueller to Barr in late March, earlier today, where the special counsel told the Attorney General: “The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions.”
“There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation,” Mueller added in his letter sent days after Barr released his four-page summary of the special counsel’s findings, according to the Post. “This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”
Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, a constitutional legal expert who has taught at the leading academic institution for almost half a century, condemned Barr for misleading public opinion in a statement posted to Twitter, and called for the attorney general to be impeached for his actions. “Mueller says AG Barr misrepresented the ‘context, nature & substance’ of his probe. What else is there? Barr is a total disgrace and a phony,” Tribe wrote. “He must now testify under Rep. Jerry Nadler’s rules, then resign.”
“Mueller must now testify as well. This is a new ballgame,” the professor continued. “AG Barr flat-out lied to the American people about the Mueller report’s incrimination of President Trump. He’s been outed as a total fraud. We can’t let Barr — or Trump — get away with such gross abuse of power.”
“Barr must be impeached if he doesn’t resign first,” Tribe added.
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
Mattis ignored orders from Trump, White House on North Korea, Iran: report
Former Defense Secretary James Mattis declined to carry out orders from President Trump or otherwise limited his options in various attempts to prevent tensions with North Korea, Iran and Syria from escalating, The New Yorker reported Monday, the latest account of Trump’s own officials trying to check his worst instincts.
"The president thinks out loud. Do you treat it like an order? Or do you treat it as part of a longer conversation? We treated it as part of a longer conversation," a former senior national security official told The New Yorker.
"We prevented a lot of bad things from happening."
In 2017, following a series of North Korean ballistic missile tests, Trump ordered the Pentagon to begin removing the spouses and children of military personnel from South Korea, where the U.S. military has a base. An administration official told the magazine that "Mattis just ignored" the order.
In another instance in the fall of 2017, as White House officials were planning a private meeting at Camp David to develop military options for a possible conflict with North Korea, Mattis allegedly stopped the gathering from happening. He ignored a request from then-national security adviser H.R. McMaster to send officers and planners, according to a former senior administration official.
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