Then who did? Trump has them all looking like idiots again. #KeystoneKops.
FBI Director James Comey Says NO, FBI Did Not Wire Tap Trump Tower… https://t.co/vzMXCHZhBa pic.twitter.com/kcykF8lHdd
— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) March 5, 2017
FBI Director James Comey Says NO, FBI Did Not Wire Tap Trump Tower… https://t.co/vzMXCHZhBa pic.twitter.com/kcykF8lHdd
— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) March 5, 2017
34 comments:
Trump just expanded the investigation of intelligence regarding Russiagate to the entire intelligence community and President Obama.
It's is necessary to understand that these investigations are fishing expeditions. Trump's opposition is pressing for a fishing expedition intoTrump and his associates.
Now Trump has extended that fishing expedition to President Obama and the intel under him.
And in the background is still the Clinton servers. That will eventually be brought in, too, and HRC could be in the hot seat.
Pass the popcorn.
Comey also demanded that the DOJ to publicly reject the presidents claim. Comey said it is false, and must be corrected.
Is it paranoia if everyone is really against you?
Comey and and his buddies at the CIA did it that is why they are denying it so fast. Step on a few toes and you get a quick reaction.
Comey is the FBI directorr, he cannot speak for the CIA. And it would be unusual for him to request the DOJ to refute the presidents statement as false if he was hiding something, since the FBI is under the DOJ. Not saying I'm right, after all there is much we don't know. But if there was something to this the DOJ would be directing the FBI to turn over evidence to them.
"Trump has them all looking like idiots again."
How do you figure? Having sent out a stupid tweet, Trump's bluff rebounded. Now he's scrambling and the agencies have rounded on him, telling the world it's a figment of his imagination. It's Trump who looks like an idiot. The only people who believe anything Trump has to say is his deluded base. Whether it's how many electoral college votes he got, the numbers attending his inauguration, the birtherism scandal, Obama tapping his phone, the 45% unemployment rate, a GDP of 0% ("who ever heard of such a thing," he asked), the $800 billion trade deficit, Ted Cruz's father was involved in the assassination of JFK, terrorist attacks not being reported, that between three million and five million illegal residents voted for Killary, that it was made impossible for Christian refugees to enter the country, that he opposed the Iraq war, that he'd appoint on "day one" a special prosecutor to investigate Killary, that the murder rate is the highest in 47 years, etc, etc, etc.
He's a pathological liar. His administration is in shambles, and he himself has little interest in the details of governing. Every disaster is farcically spun to make Trump look anything but the incompetent schmuck that he is. Only the rabidly stupid Fox and rabidly racist Breitbart keep up the pretence. To divert attention, Trump makes up a story that he cannot verify and more importantly cannot be verified, and that the FBI claims is untrue. So it's the CIA, then? Good luck getting any information from them, after comparing them to Nazi Germany. The Trumptards can't be swayed. Their glorious leader has spoken. Everyone else thinks he's a whack job. Four more years of this? There isn't enough popcorn in the world! Get rich by investing in corn!
All human beings lie. As with all investigations, it comes down to what can you prove. Can Trump prove his allegations? If he can, then he will be in the cat bird seat. If he can't, he just made the FBI his enemy, which it clearly wasn't based on how they helped him get elected.
Magic Mike: "Bunch of f'cking liars: Clapper, Brennan, Comey...all of them. Obama the biggest of all."
Sure, but making all the intelligence agencies your sworn enemies isn't the wisest move.
Dave: "All human beings lie. As with all investigations, it comes down to what can you prove. Can Trump prove his allegations?"
That is precisely what it comes down to. The fact is that Trump is now stuck with this accusation. This may be his Watergate, not anyone else's. Naturally, every American is going to ask "Where's your evidence, Mr. President, against the intelligence agencies?" What's Trump going to say? That he read it on Breitbart? That he saw it on Fox? This attempted diversion is going to smack him in the face. The stupidity of Trump's move is shocking.
How hard would it have been for Trump after being tipped off by Rogers post election to create a fictitious "Russian!" named Monika Blewklinski and then set up some fictitious meetings at the Tower which then are now showing up in intel reports...
And then what Matt, he did this to blame it on Obama? Still doesn't splain why the DOJ isn't investigating. Or why the FBI is convinced enough that it is false that Comey is willing to go in the record.
Bottom line, the proof. Where is it?
My feeling is the Russia thing is much ado about nothing. I'm not sure people really care that much. Some do. Probably Trump has business deals, maybe even a stake in the newly privatized Russian oil deal. And, yeah, the prostitutes, that seems likely or something in that zip code. So what? We all knew this about Trump, and his supporters don't care. And it won't affect his ability to govern if he doesn't let it.
But, his enemies know that he can be provoked to make big mistakes. What, you think these career intelligence people have not done a psych evaluation on this guy, after he compared them to Nazis? Puhleeze.
So now, they set the bait. They need the go ahead to create a commission, or get a special prosecutor. So they poke the bear. And he reacts, on twitter, as they knew he would. Presto, now the story is we need an investigation. Even the White House is calling on congress to investigate. The IC rubs their hands with glee. One can even hear high fives in the distance.
The story now becomes, when will ordinary Americans grow tired of this? And how long can a 70 yr old billionaire really put up with this nonsense, knowing that his entire brand, which he spent his whole life creating, could be destroyed in an instant?
Will he fight to the bitter end, knowing that it may mean the end of his precious business empire?
Of course, he loves a good fight. As Tom and John said, get your popcorn ready.
Matt, you're giving these guys too much credit. This is nothing more than a bad move by a president who sees enemies everywhere and is starting to crack. It's certainly true that the establishment want to bring his down or make him kiss the ring, and it is also certainly true that they have the resources to make every day of his presidency a living nightmare, but Trump has sadly gotten it into his head that he can "drain the swamp". The "swamp" is enormous and unimaginably powerful, so it can't simply be "drained".
If Trump had any sense he'd just stick to job creation, tax reform, trade deals and the other things that made him popular among working class voters. A lot of these pro-worker reforms are not of any great concern to the deep state. He could yet achieve a lot of good. If he persists in this Breitbartian fight to the death with the deep state, he's finished.
If I were within the deep state establishment, I'd be sitting pretty right now and smelling the roses. There's been six weeks of utter chaos, and now the prez has capped it all with an accusation so serious that if true would require an entire purging of the intelligence establishment, and not only can he not verify a single word of it but the agencies and the DoJ refute it, thus making Trump look like a deranged fantasist. Ball's in your court, how do you prove this? Heaven knows if Trump can row back from this, but he should very quickly stop picking fights he cannot win and instead strongly concentrate on domestic issues, the very things that the deep state is at best ambivalent about and won't rise their collective ire.
And now what, Trump's set to sign a new executive order allowing people from Iraq to travel to the US! Hilarious, fucking hilarious. What a shambles.
In between the kite surfing and the multimillion dollar book deals and the lucrative lecture circuit and the Wall Street executive directorships that'll be flowing in, the awful Obummer must be laughing himself silly.
Dave just nails it.
You have to examine the timeline...
If there is exclusively post election generated information in the reports, then Obama obviously did it and did it post election...
Now Clapper has said there was no FISA warrant he was aware of, and Comey is saying there was no criminal warrant the FBI is using, so the taps would seem to be perhaps warrant-less a la GG Liddy & Co...
dont underestimate the zealousness of leftist political appointees...
Its going to have to be investigated by the committees.... we dont have any of the data...
Comey and and his buddies at the CIA did it that is why they are denying it so fast. Step on a few toes and you get a quick reaction.
Sen. Schumer summed it up. Payback.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) let slip a terrifying reality when it comes to the power of our nation’s president over “executive branch” agencies like the CIA. In an interview Tuesday with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Schumer said President-elect Donald Trump is “being really dumb” by taking on the intelligence community because if he does “they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”
http://whowhatwhy.org/2017/01/04/schumer-says-trump-dumb-cross-intelligence-community-payback-likely/
Matt I do think Trump Tower was under investigation for a server that was connected to a Russian Bank at one point. Also, I believe any satellite communications overseas would have been monitored by the NSA, this is I believe regular operating procedure. Trump may think that Obama officials got their hands on this info, hence Obama Tapped my phones.
David Johnson at Johnson's Russia List:
Just for arguments sake here’s one speculative hypothesis about how we got to where we are today vis-a-vis the “Russian hacking” story. In the context of the 2016 highly emotional presidential election pitting Clinton vs. Trump there was a concerted effort on the part of Clinton-partisans to try to make the central campaign theme an expose of alleged Trump-Russia connections. If you voted for Trump you were voting for Putin. Careless remarks by Trump facilitated this. This thrust was accelerated when there was a need to deal from Wikileaks revelations of going-ons at the Democratic National Committee. The DNC working with its employee Crowdstrike built the “Russian hacking” story first. Of course, no one involved really thought that Trump would win the election. When Clinton won the “Russian connection” story, having served its election purpose, would recede from prominence. As so many campaign themes do. But to the consternation of nearly everyone Trump won. And immediately alarmed people in and out of government seized on the “Russian hacking” story to try to impact the threatening Trump environment. Once launched to such prominence natural inclinations toward paranoia, partisanship, and historical animosities took hold and accelerated. In the best of all world’s a real investigation of the “Russian hacking” story would begin with an investigation of the DNC and Crowdstrike. First question: Why did the DNC prevent the FBI from examining the alleged hacked computers? Just keep in mind that everyone involved feels that they were doing the right thing, however careless.
http://russialist.org/david-johnson-how-we-got-here-one-theory/
To recap, there has a stream of claims published in the NYT and WaPO citing anonymous intelligence sources about Trump and Trump associates ties with Russia based on US intelligence. So far it is all innuendo and inference but not evidence.
Then the intelligence community heads declared that there was evidence but did not cite any. HRC had cited "16 branches of the intelligence services."
No evidence was forthcoming.
Last week David Nunes, head of the House Intelligence Committee, declared, David Nunes: “There’s no evidence of anything” regarding Russia-Trump campaign contacts
So Trump is saying where is the evidence. If there is evidence as insinuated, Obama did it, apparently illegally. Why Obama? The buck stops at the Oval Office. And if there is no evidence, STFU.
" Trump may think that Obama officials got their hands on this info, "
Well duh it says they did right in the NY Times here:
"The F.B.I. is leading the investigations, aided by the National Security Agency, the C.I.A. and the Treasury Department’s financial crimes unit. The investigators have accelerated their efforts in recent weeks but have found no conclusive evidence of wrongdoing, the officials said. One official said intelligence reports based on some of the wiretapped communications had been provided to the White House."
so this says the tapped info was provided to Obama and the FBI is in on it...
???????? Pretty simple...
Tom, interesting. That is a real possibility. And why not lay it at Obama's feet, since he is Trumps favorite punching bag.
Big gamble though. Once the investigation takes off, no one knows where it could lead.
If a special prosecutor is assigned, then they can ask for financial records.
The dreaded tax returns.
If they didn't wiretap his communications then they weren't doing their jobs.
If you are aware of a crime and you dont report it then you are also guilty in the US...
Once you find out about it, you have to report it to the authorities immediately...
If they didn't wiretap his communications then they weren't doing their jobs.
The FBI would have needed a FISA court order or a presidential directive. Comey says there no court order. If there was an FBI wiretap, it was either done illegally or President Obama personally ordered it.
Didn't George Bush say that he would do secret investigations regardless of the FISA court? Didn't he basically say he could do anything without being prosecuted? Also, Dave, do you not think that there is a chance that the CIA and the FBI work together on a lot of things in secret? I don't understand why the idea of the organizations working together sounds so strange.
Yeah GLH, I think they work together, but I am going by what we know from the NYT story. This is what I understand, and of course I could be wrong, or only have half the story.
I am simply going on what has been released to the public. Matt's quote sums it up:
"The F.B.I. is leading the investigations, aided by the National Security Agency, the C.I.A. and the Treasury Department’s financial crimes unit. The investigators have accelerated their efforts in recent weeks but have found no conclusive evidence of wrongdoing, the officials said. One official said intelligence reports based on some of the wiretapped communications had been provided to the White House."
That tells us what we already know: the FBI is leading the investigation, and is getting aid from multiple security agencies. We know they have tapped communications from Russia, and we do not know with who. We can speculate, we can connect the conspiratorial dots, but at the end of the day, there is no proof that Obama Ordered a wiretap of Trump Tower, or that multiple agencies of the US government conspired with him to execute this.
There is evidence Russia hacked the DNC. There is no evidence of any criminal activity by the Trump campaign, and certainly no evidence of criminal activity by the Obama administration to illegally interfere in an election, led by a conspiracy between the FBI and CIA.
What Trump is doing, in my opinion, makes him look guilty.
There is evidence Russia hacked the DNC
Oh? Where?
"High confidence" is not indicative of evidence. It's inference.
The so-called evidence was provided by CrowdStrike, which has connections to Ukraine nationalists that had a stake in HRC, some of which were closely associated with her.
The DNC would not let the FBI have access to the servers.
Credible reports suggest that this was an insider leak rather than a hack.
Tom again I am going on the reports. If there is an investigation, then we will know for sure. Even then, there will be debate and discussion on the deep state, and what was withheld, and conspiracy, etc.etc.
Also I said there was "evidence" not proof. We can parse words, but the FBI is investigating. And there is more evidence for that than an Obama led conspiracy involving the fisa court, the intelligence agencies, and James Comey.
What was the evidence and who said there was evidence?
I have seen rumors, allegations, inferences, innuendos and insinuations but no hard evidence and no government official claiming their was evidence. The talks was of "confidence," and William Binney has said that "confidence" is used with there is no evidence
The only evidence that I have heard of is supposed tracks left on servers traceable to "Russia" or "Russians."
Security experts have said that no competent high-level hackers would have left such "evidence" other than to point guilt at another party to distract attention from them.
What I detect is a lot BS.
Perhaps. You may be right. So what's the problem? Why is Trump so nervous? Why is he losing his shit?
He is the President Tom. He has access to all the intel. He could change the narrative right now, but instead he blames the black guy.
Makes him look guilty. If your sources are right, someone needs to talk to him because he is moving all the momentum towards an investigation. And once that happens, no one knows where it will go.
I am not sure he is losing it. That is the assessment of the opposition that Trump is taking aim at now.
I suspect that Trump likely has information on which he is basing his attack.
Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly says President Trump possesses credible evidence that former President Barack Obama ordered the wiretapping of Trump Tower in New York City last year.
Trump claimed on Twitter last Saturday that Obama had his “wires tapped” in Trump Tower before Election Day last year, making the accusation without offering any evidence.
“If the president of the United States said that, he’s got his reasons to say it,” Kelly said Monday on CNN’s “The Situation Room." "[Trump’s] got some convincing evidence that that took place.”
Kelly admitted he had learned about Trump’s claims from watching CNN, adding he would not guess why the Obama administration might have wiretapped a 2016 presidential candidate.
“I don’t know anything about it other when I was sitting off-studio here watching CNN,” he told host Wolf Blitzer.
“I don’t pretend to even guess what the motivation may have been for the previous administration to do something like that,” the retired Marine Corps general added.
DHS head: Trump has ‘convincing’ wiretap proof
NSA Director Michael Rogers participated in session at Intelligence and National Security Summit in Washington. It turns out that Obama officially blamed Puttin on October 8th, 2016. Then on Thursday November 17th, 2016, Rogers traveled to New York and met with President-Elect Donald Trump without informing others. Then the next day, the Washington Post reported on a recommendation in “October” that Mike Rogers be removed from his NSA position. This was a recommendation from the Pentagon and the NSA to President Obama that Rogers must be removed. This was delivered to Obama by Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. Reuters reported on November 19th, that Carter and Clapper demanded to fire Rogers. Rogers didn’t want to participate in the Obama spying scheme led by Clapper.
Martin Armstrong, Jarrett from within White House May Have Launched a Watergate Style Attack on Trump During Election
I saw that on CNN. We will see. Right now, I don't think it looks good for him, but he has survived in the past, and he may very well do so again.
Maybe Obama and Jarrett were told 'dont leave town...' so that is why they moved in together in DC...
Obama and the deep state should have known Trump's reputation for getting even and it wouldn't have taken much foresight to realize that if and when he became president that he would go after them. As far as the denials are concerned here is another perspective that doesn't come from the evening "news."
According to ALEXANDER MERCOURIS the denials weren't complete denials.
http://theduran.com/clapper-comey-wiretap-qualified-denials/
By the way, if SC and HRC knew of the "investigation" would that not make them co-conspirators? If so, then this sounds more and more like Watergate.
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