The following article by Linda Qiu was posted on the New York Times website February 18, 2018:
At the presidential debate in Sept., 2016, Donald Trump said, “I don’t think anybody knows it was Russia that broke into the DNC.” Credit: Damon Winter/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — President Trump falsely claimed in an early Sunday morning Twitter post that he had never rejected the notion that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.
“I never said Russia did not meddle in the election, I said ‘it may be Russia, or China or another country or group, or it may be a 400 pound genius sitting in bed and playing with his computer,’” Mr. Trump wrote. “The Russian ‘hoax’ was that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia – it never did! Continue reading “Trump Falsely Claims, ‘I Never Said Russia Did Not Meddle’”
The following article by Glenn Kessler was posted on the Washington Post website February 18, 2018:
President Trump continues to insist the Democrats are responsible for any story relating to Russian interference in the 2016 election. (Video: Meg Kelly/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The following article by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein was posted on the CNN website website February 10, 2018:
Woodward and Bernstein adapted this piece from their 1976 book, “The Final Days.” This excerpt is appearing both in The Washington Post and on CNN.
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein Credit: Noel St. John
(CNN) — We’re here again. A powerful and determined President is squaring off against an independent investigator operating inside the Justice Department. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s mission is a comprehensive look at Russian meddling in the 2016 election — and any other crimes he uncovers in the process. President Donald Trump insists it’s all a “witch hunt” and an unfair examination of his family’s personal finances. He constantly complains about the investigation in private and reportedly asked his White House counsel to have Mueller fired. No wonder many people are making comparisons to the Saturday Night Massacre of 1973, when President Richard Nixon fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox, and Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus resigned. Continue reading “Woodward and Bernstein: Trump’s Russia response ‘eerily similar’ to Nixon’s leading up to Saturday Night Massacre”
The following article by Salvador Rizzo was posted on the Washington Post website February 8, 2018:
President Trump says the United States is moving gang members out of the country “by the thousands,” but current records suggest otherwise. (Meg Kelly, Claritza Jimenez/The Washington Post)
“We have sent thousands and thousands of MS-13 horrible people out of this country or into our prisons.” — President Trump, State of the Union address, Jan. 30, 2018
“This is after, actually, removing thousands of them out — some into the prisons — but literally thousands of people are removed out.” — Trump, discussing MS-13 during a roundtable at the White House, Feb. 6, 2018
The following article by Robert Moore and Nick Miroff was posted on the Washington Post website February 7, 2018:
Border Patrol agent Rogelio Martinez, whose death in November 2017 fueled President Trump’s calls for a border wall, appears to have died in an accident. (Reuters)
EL PASO — A Border Patrol agent whose death last November fueled President Trump’s calls for a border wall appears to have died in an accident, according to FBI findings released Wednesday.
The following article by Glenn Kessler was posted on the Washington Post website February 7, 2018:
The president is touting gains in wages, but there’s much less than meets the eye. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)
“Something that I’ve been talking about for two years — campaigning, and everyone said, ‘You’ll never do it’ — after years of wage stagnation, wages — so what happened two days ago and a month ago — wages are now, for the first time in many years, rising. In fact, more companies are pursuing pay increases right now than at any time in the last long period of time — they actually say, ’in the 21st century.’ Can you imagine that? It’s amazing what people with some good ideas can do. It’s amazing what we’ve all done together.” — President Trump, remarks during a speech in Cincinnati, Feb. 5, 2018
The following article by Massimo Calabresi and Alana Abramson was posted on the Time website February 4, 2018:
Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page bragged that he was an adviser to the Kremlin in a letter obtained by TIME that raises new questions about the extent of Page’s contacts with the Russian government over the years.
The letter, dated Aug. 25, 2013, was sent by Page to an academic press during a dispute over edits to an unpublished manuscript he had submitted for publication, according to an editor who worked with Page. Continue reading “Carter Page Touted Kremlin Contacts in 2013 Letter”
The following article by John T. Bennett was posted on the Roll Call website February 5, 2018:
Pres. Trump said in Ohio that Democrats committed treason by not applauding his State of the Union address. Credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call file photo
President Donald Trump on Monday labeled Democrats “treasonous” for their reactions to his State of the Union address and said he looks forward to running against them in 2018 and 2020. His allegation, however, fails to meet the Constitution’s standard for that major crime.
During an official event obstensibly about the GOP tax law at a cylinder factory in Ohio, Trump called congressional Democrats “treasonous” for not applauding during his State of the Union address last Tuesday night.
Their collective reaction shows they “would rather see Trump do badly than our country do well. It’s very selfish,” he said. “They were like death and un-American. Someone said … treasonous.. Yeah, why not? They certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.” Continue reading “Trump Whips Out the ‘T’ Word in Ohio”
“He’s a showboat. He’s a grandstander,” Trump told NBC’s Lester Holt at the time. “The FBI has been in turmoil. You know that, I know that, everybody knows that.”
Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, attempting to buff up the president’s claims, said she’d talked to more than 50 FBI officials and employees in the 48 hours following Comey’s firing, all of whom, she said, were jubilant about the president’s decision.
“The president knew that Director Comey was not up the task,” she said. “He wanted somebody that could bring credibility back to the FBI. That had been lost over these last several months.”
The rationale behind Trump’s firing of Comey has since been widely debunked and ridiculed. Now, newly revealed internal documents from the FBI show just how far off the White House was in its claims.
A trove of emails was acquired over the weekend by Lawfare Blog, which had submitted four Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in June for “communications to the workforce from senior FBI leadership regarding Comey’s firing.” The more than 100 pages of internal emails they got back showed that the FBI’s rank-and-file were shocked by the firing of a widely-respected director.
“The first reaction the documents reflect is simple shock, confusion and disbelief,” Lawfare’s Nora Ellingsen, Quinta Jurecic, Sabrina McCubbin, Shannon Togawa Mercer, and Benjamin Wittes wrote. “The words ‘unprecedented’, ‘tumultuous’, ‘shock’ and ‘surprise’ appear in a great many of the emails.”
According to Lawfare, many members of various FBI field offices went out of their way to deliver gifts to the former director in the wake of his dismissal. The special agent in charge of the Minneapolis field office, Richard Thornton, shared an anecdote about how Comey made it a practice to thank his local law enforcement escort while traveling — even in Los Angeles after finding out he had been fired.
“You could see him take the time to greet and speak to the motorcade escort police… In spite of him just finding out he had been fired as the Director,” Thornton wrote in one email. “He demonstrated his appreciation and respect for the FBI’s law enforcement partners.”
At the time, the bureau also released a rare statement from then-Acting Director Andrew McCabe about the Comey firing, in which he implored his staff to “hang in there.”
“As men and women of the FBI, we are at our best when times are tough,” he wrote. “Please stay focused on the mission, keep doing great work, be good to each other and we will get through this together.”
McCabe resigned last week, after being targeted by Trump and accused of political bias.
How can FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the man in charge, along with leakin’ James Comey, of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation (including her 33,000 illegally deleted emails) be given $700,000 for wife’s campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation?
Together, these emails show an agency shocked and struggling to cope with the increasing politicization at the hands of Trump and House Republicans, rather than a bureau upset and demoralized by Comey’s leadership, as both the president and the White House suggested in the immediate aftermath.
The politicization appears likely to continue in the wake of Rep. Devin Nunes’ (R-CA) supposedly “shocking” intelligence memo, which was made public on Friday and alleges that the Justice Department’s ongoing Russia investigation has been tainted by political bias. Over the weekend, Republicans and the White House alike suggested that the memo — which focuses on a surveillance warrant requested by the FBI to monitor former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page — proved there was corruption at the highest levels of the department and that the Justice Department’s investigation was simply a witch hunt intended to undermine Trump’s election victory.
As many on Capitol Hill and beyond have since noted, the memo fails to mention any of the underlying documents and research which led to the surveillance request. It also does not take into account the fact that Page was previously known to the FBI due to his many communications with Russian individuals over the years.
The following article by Karla Adam was posted on the Washington Post website February 5, 2018:
Thousands of protesters marched in London on Feb. 3, demanding more funds for the National Health Service. (Newsflare/AP)
LONDON — President Trump took a swing at Britain’s beloved National Health Service on Monday, tweeting that Britons were marching in the streets because their universal health-care system was financially strapped and dysfunctional, and got a swift rebuke from the British prime minister.
