Bannon Does Rope a Dope With House Committee…Plans to Talk to Mueller

Bannon’s performance yesterday “testifying” before the Republican led House committee led by Chumph synchophat and co-traitor David Nunes…Was a bust. Bannon saw no need totestify in front of a Republican lynch mob trying to protect the Chumph. Nunes needs to be convicted and hung before this os over with too.

Gonna save his “gifts” for Mueller. Mueller has the goods to put Bannon in jail…The Republican House ain’t got shit.

Steve Bannon Will Tell All to Robert Mueller, Source Says

Trump’s one-time chief strategist and current frenemy may have been tight lipped with Congress. He won’t be that way with the special counsel.

Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon broke some bad news to House investigators on Tuesday, announcing that the White House has invoked executive privilege to keep him from answering many of their questions.

But executive privilege—the president’s right to keep certain information from the public so he can have frank conversations with aides—will not keep Steve Bannon from sharing information with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team, according to a person familiar with the situation.

“Mueller will hear everything Bannon has to say,” said the source, who is familiar with Bannon’s thinking.

During a closed-door hearing before the House intelligence committee today, Bannon reportedly told lawmakers that President Donald Trump has invoked broad executive privilege for the purposes of Congressional inquiries. Because of that, Bannon refused to answer committee members’ questions about what happened during the presidential transition and in the White House.

This sweeping understanding of privilege will not impact what Bannon tells Mueller’s team, according to our source. (To be sure, Bannon isn’t known for being predictable, and it’s possible his team may still look for ways to dodge Mueller’s queries.)

But it means he isn’t answering many of Congress’s questions. A source familiar with Bannon’s interview told The Daily Beast that despite the subpoena—issued by Devin Nunes, the typically Trump-friendly chairman of the committee—Bannon refused to answer questions about events that happened after Election Day.

“He quickly informed through his counsel the committee he was not going to answer questions that pertained to meetings, conversations, events, etc., that took place either during the transition or while he was part of the administration. And what’s more, we would later learn that would be extended to even after he left the White House,” Rep. Adam Schiff, the committee’s top Democrat, told MSNBC.

 

Flynn Flips on the Chumph

It is official now. Flynn will be testifying against the Chumph and his family.

Not real surprising as Mueller has enough on Flynn and Flynn Jr. to put them away for 100 years.

Michael Flynn Just Flipped on Team Trump

After being charged with lying to the FBI, the former national security adviser said he would cooperate with Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia probe.

Michael Flynn pleaded guilty Friday to the charge he misled FBI agents during a January 2017 interview after being asked about conversations with the Russia’s ambassador to the United States.

The next step: working with special counsel Robert Mueller’s office to go after his onetime confederates in Team Trump.

“My guilty plea and agreement and agreement to cooperate with the Special Counsel’s office reflect a decision I made in the best interests of my family and our country,” said the disgraced retired three-star Army general in a statement after he left a District of Columbia courtroom. “I accept full responsibility for my actions.”

The cooperation of such a senior White House official with a criminal probe raises the stakes substantially for Trump, who has raged against an investigation he has insisted is baseless. And the next shoe to drop, legally, could fall on his son-in-law Jared Kushner, whom Mueller has reportedly interviewed this month.

While he served as President Trump’s national security adviser, Flynn denied asking Ambassador Sergey Kislyak for Russia to “refrain from escalating in response to [American] sanctions” the Obama administration had imposed on Moscow for meddling in the 2016 presidential election and that he asked Kislyak to delay a United Nations Security Council vote on Israeli settlements.

 

Since We are Cleaning House – Uncle Tommie Clarence Needs to Go as Well

The confirmation hearings on Clarence Thomas’ ascension to the Supreme Court featured what was probably the first nationwide coverage of sexual harassment in the workplace.

Uncle Tommie got a walk.

With the number of folks now losing their jobs and positions for acts like those of Thomas…Perhaps the ultimate test of whether the current flurry of sexual harassment punishments is a “fad” or something we will take seriously going forward is whether Thomas receives the same treatment. Whether he is punished or not has some rather serious implications relative to the Supreme Court’s already badly battered credibility.

Clarence Thomas must resign

Utah Republican Orrin Hatch called “bullcrap” on Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown last week. The Senate Finance Committee lion tore into Brown for “spewing” that the Republican tax plan to transfer a trillion dollars to the rich was in reality a Republican tax plan to transfer a trillion dollars to the rich.

I got my first dose of Hatch during the wall-to-wall coverage of the confirmation of Clarence Thomas, George H.W. Bush’s Supreme Court nominee. Hatch was the Republicans’ designated questioner of Anita Hill. She was called to testify because she’d told the FBI that Thomas had sexually harassed her 10 years earlier, when he was her boss at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Education.

Sitting behind her were her mother, Erma (“who is going to be celebrating her 80th birthday”); her father, Albert; her sisters, Elreathea, Jo Ann, Coleen and Joyce; and her brother, Ray. No way she was going to lie to the committee, or to us, in front of them.

Hill testified that Thomas had repeatedly asked her out, and that she repeatedly refused. So he demeaned her. He told her someone had once “put a pubic hair” on his Coke can. He said porn star Long Dong Silver had nothing on him in the endowment department.

Hatch called her charges “contrived” and “sick.” He claimed she’d stolen them. The pubic hair, she’d taken from page 70 of “The Exorcist.” Long Dong Silver, she’d lifted from a Kansas sexual harassment case.

Hill agreed to a polygraph test, and passed. Thomas refused. He called the hearings a “high-tech lynching for uppity blacks.”

It was painful to watch Hatch slime Hill. Women who’d also been sexually harassed found in the hearings no reason to be less fearful of telling their stories. Nor, later, could they take comfort in how Bill Clinton’s accusers were reviled. Or Bill O’Reilly’s. Or Roger Ailes’s.

But something changed. The tipping point may have been Donald Trump bragging to Billy Bush about assaulting women. Sixteen of his victims had the courage to say he’d harassed or groped them.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump’s escape from accountability for that predation contributed to the decisions by Harvey Weinstein’s victims to talk on the record to Jodi Kantor and her New York Times colleagues and to Ronan Farrow at the New Yorker. Before long, more than 80 women attested to Weinstein’s assaults as far back as 1990.

Then nine women gave the Washington Post detailed accounts of Alabama Republican senatorial candidate Roy Moore’s history of pedophilia and abuse. They knew the blowback would be brutal. They did it anyway.

Still, Moore won’t quit. Why would he? Kay Ivey, Alabama’s Republican governor, says she’ll vote for him even though she believes his accusers. Better to elect a pedophile than a Democrat who’d vote against a Supreme Court nominee who’d overturn Roe v Wade.

Now Senator Al Franken is in the crosshairs. The Minnesota Democrat offered an apology to Leann Tweeden for “completely inappropriate” behavior in 2006, which she accepted, and he asked for an ethics investigation of the incident. Calls for his resignation illustrate the fallacy of false equivalence; they’re the witch-hunt Trump claimed had victimized him.

Hill was a thoroughly credible witness. Thomas has no stronger case for his innocence than do Trump, Moore or Weinstein. Pressed to defend Trump’s sexual improprieties, his press secretary said the American people “spoke very loud and clear when they elected this president.” No to put too fine a point on it, but she’s spewing bullcrap. Elections don’t decide culpability.

In the wake of the Hill/Thomas hearings, a record-breaking 117 women made it onto the federal ticket in the 1992 election. The 24 women elected to the House that year was the largest number in any single House election, and the three elected to the Senate tripled the number of women senators.

That sharp uptick didn’t persist. If you think that today’s 80% male Congress isn’t good enough, check out Project 100, which is working to elect 100 progressive women to Congress by 2020, the 100th anniversary of women’s right to vote. Full disclosure: my daughter is a co-founder. As her dad, and as the onetime speechwriter for the first presidential candidate to pick a woman as his running mate, you can imagine how proud of her I am. And how hopeful she and her young teammates make me feel.

 

 

Alabama Police Assigned a Cop to Stop Roy Moore From Molesting High School Cheerleaders

Even the Police knew of Roy Moore’s pedophilia…

Here is the Chumph defending the pedophile…

 

British publicist who arranged Don Jr’s Trump Tower meeting with Russian Agents set to Squeal to Mueller

Another of the Chumph Family crime syndicate is in Mueller’s sights. Chumph Junior is under investigation for meeting with Russian “KGB” Agents to discuss their help in the election.

Publisher Rob Goldstone is set to testify before Mueller’s investigators.

Rob Goldstone ready to come to U.S. and talk to Mueller

Trump meeting with Emin Agalarov and Goldstone (left)

The Russian pop star identified as having arranged a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer is the son of an oligarch (Russian mob?) with ties to Vladimir Putin.

The British publicist who helped set up the fateful meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a group of Russians at Trump Tower in June 2016 is ready to meet with Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s office, according to several people familiar with the matter.

Rob Goldstone has been living in Bangkok, Thailand, but has been communicating with Mueller’s office through his lawyer, said a source close to Goldstone.

Goldstone’s New York lawyer, G. Robert Gage, declined to comment other than to say, “nothing is presently scheduled.”

However, sources close to Goldstone and familiar with the investigation say they expect he will travel to the United States at some point “in the near future,” as one put it.

Goldstone helped set up — and attended — the June 9, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower at which Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya says she presented information to Donald Trump Jr. and other key Trump aides. The meeting has emerged as a focus of Mueller’s investigation into whether the Trump team colluded with the Russian effort to meddle in the 2016 presidential election.

In an email that later became public, Goldstone wrote to Trump Jr. that “the Crown prosecutor of Russia … 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.”

There is no office of crown prosecutor, but Goldstone appeared to be referring to the Russian prosecutor general.

He added that “this is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump — helped along by Aras and Emin,” a reference to his long-time clients, oligarch Aras Agalarov and his son, Emin, a Russian pop singer. Much of Goldstone’s publicity business involves music promotion. He also represented the Miss Universe pageant, at one time owned by President Trump.

In reply to Goldstone’s email, Trump Jr. wrote, “if it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”

Trump Jr. hosted the Russians alongside Paul Manafort, then Trump’s campaign chairman, and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and adviser. Along with Veselnitskaya, the Russian delegation included Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze, who works for the Agalarov family in the U.S., and Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian-American lobbyist engaged in trying to lift Obama administration sanctions on Russia and Russian entities.

Also in the room was Russian-American translator Anatoli Samochornov, who had done work for the State Department and had translated previously for Veselnitskaya.

Investigators are trying to determine whether the promised assistance from the Russian government was provided, and whether it was part of what a dossier compiled by a former British intelligence officer called “a well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Veselnitskaya told NBC News she first received the supposedly incriminating information she brought to Trump Tower — describing alleged tax evasion and donations to Democrats — from Glenn Simpson, the Fusion GPS owner, who had been hired to conduct research in a New York federal court case.

A source with firsthand knowledge of the matter confirmed that the firm’s research had been provided to Veselnitskaya as part of the case, which involved alleging money-laundering by a Russian company called Prevezon.

Veselnitskaya said she turned Simpson’s research over to the Russian prosecutor.

A spokesman for Mueller’s office declined to comment.

Chumph with Russian Mobster, money launderer, and felon Felix Slater (r)

 

Jeff Davis’s Day Gets Worse…

Ouch!

“Did you lie then, or are you lying now”?

 

Al Franken Rips Jefferson Davis Sessions a New One

Ouch!

 

Session Wants to Perjure Himself…Again

Here is a guy who has already lied to Congress. And by all rights should have been tried and convicted of perjury and kicked out of office.

In the never-ending Chumph reality show…They are going to let him on the stand to lie his ass off …Again.

Jeff Sessions makes last-minute request to testify in public so ‘people hear the truth directly’

Attorney General Jeff Sessions reportedly wants his Tuesday testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee to be open to the public.

Following allegations that Sessions failed to disclose a third meeting with Russian officials, the attorney general canceled his Appropriations Committee testimony and agreed to testify in a closed session to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Democratic lawmakers scolded Sessions for refusing to answer questions in a session open to the American people. And on Monday, the former Alabama senator relented.

In a statement, the Department of Justice said that Sessions is calling for his Tuesday testimony to be available to the public.

“He believes it is important for the American people to hear the truth directly from him,” a spokesperson said.

 

The GOP’s Run For Lifejackets

Not quite time for the Rethugs to throw the women and babies off the life rafts yet…

But the is a serious inventory going on in counting life jackets and available seats on the lifeboats.

This Chumph cookie is beginning to crumble .. fast.

Comey fallout weighs on the GOP

Republicans are trying to figure out a way past swirling questions about ties between the Trump administration and the Russian government, with GOP strategists calling the investigation and surrounding controversies a public relations nightmare that has dragged on for too long.

Former FBI Director James Comey did not inflict any deadly blows against President Trump when he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, Republicans believe, but they’re concerned there will be more damaging revelations in the weeks ahead.

One worrisome prospect Comey’s testimony raised for Republicans is that there may be additional damaging revelations about Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Comey testified that the FBI was “aware of facts that I can’t discuss in an open setting” that would have made it impossible for Sessions to oversee any Russia-related investigation.

It’s not clear whether he was only referring to Sessions’s failure to disclose two meetings with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak or something that may come to light later.

Another potential headache for Republican lawmakers is that Trump himself continues to keep the story alive.

Trump’s bitter fighting with the media over Russia and his dismissal of Comey has fueled a story that even the president’s legislative director, Marc Short, acknowledged this past week was detracting from the president’s agenda.

But one senior GOP aide said that lawmakers aren’t holding out much hope of changing Trump’s Twitter habit, despite Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) publicly expressed hopes that there be “less drama” from the White House.

The aide quipped that getting Trump to tweet less is like “tilting at windmills.”

Republican lawmakers are under increasing pressure as, four months into Trump’s first term, they cannot point to any major accomplishments besides conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. Instead, Trump’s political problems have distracted from the agenda.

Republicans have publicly downplayed Comey’s testimony, but privately they’re nervous that they’re burning through the legislative calendar while remaining deadlocked over healthcare reform. Meanwhile, unfinished work on tax reform, infrastructure investment and the budget piles up behind it.

The biggest frustration for many Republican lawmakers is that Trump has helped keep the controversy in the headlines by picking fights with the media on Twitter instead of keeping the focus on his own agenda or simply staying quiet at key moments.

“At minimum, it is an unforced PR nightmare that’s gone on for far too long, and at maximum it could be something approaching a scandal,” said one Senate GOP strategist.

“The story doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. Whether or not there’s something there, it’s been a huge drag on the last couple of months and I hope they figure out to stop it soon,” he added.

GOP lawmakers and aides say that continuing to pick a fight with Comey is not smart.

“Comey was very compelling. People talked about how credible he seemed,” said the strategist.

Nevertheless, Trump couldn’t resist slamming the former FBI director Friday morning.

“Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication … and WOW, Comey is a leaker!” Trump tweeted, referring to Comey’s admission that he shared a memo summarizing his interactions with the president with a Columbia Law School professor to give to the media.

The emerging consensus among GOP lawmakers, aides and strategists is that the best way for the party to get past the turbulence is for Republicans to pledge to get to the bottom of allegations of collusion with Russia and in the meantime to get to work on passing Trump’s agenda.

“It’s real simple: Go do something. If you don’t have the votes to repeal ObamaCare in the Senate, then get a budget passed, do tax reform. Get some stuff done,” said Chip Saltsman, a Republican strategist.

“The worst thing they can do is get absolutely nothing done and go out for August recess,” he added.

 

 

Why Sessions May be Next to Exit Chumphland

Sessions has a couple of issues –

1. His fight with Trump
2. His failure as a department head to to provide guidance on the Trump-Comey conversations

Dan Rather points out that Sessions days may be numbered as a card carrying, brownshirt member of Chumphland.

 

Former CIA Director Brennan Sez “The Evidence is There” on Chumph/Russia Collusion

Republican Trey Gowdy (AKA The Penguin) is trying to get Former CIA Director Brennan to say something in public, which Gowdy knows would be illegal. The effort being to make such evidence inadmissible in Court, and opening Brennan to criminal prosecution.

Brennan nails it – that there was evidence of collusion between he Chumph campaign and the Russians…But I can’t talk about it in public.

The CIA cannot investigate an American Citizen on American soil. That is the job of the FBI.

 

 

 

Sally Yates Smackdown of Smarmy Ted Cruz

Bad news Ted Sleazy – the kind of folks who rise to high positions in the DOJ without political appointments during, at least, Democrat Presidencies tend to be both smart and qualified, and real lawyers. Which is why Sally Yates just had your ass for lunch.

 

Sally Yates and the Throwdown on Chumph-Putin Collusion

Sally Yates was the acting US Attorney General after Loretta Lynch submitted her resignation as part of the administration turnover.

Jake Clapper is the former CIA Director.

Both were in positions with high enough security clearances to see all the actionable intelligence relative to collusion between the Chumph campaign and the Russians.

While both are prohibited from disclosing details – they are not prohibited from discussing their conclusions based on the evidence.

Yates in particular has a few bones to pick with the Chumph, based on her firing, and the continued coverup by Republicans in Congress.

This well could be the prelude to letting the whole cat out of the box in public on national TV.

Time to take Putin’s Bitch down for the traitor he is.

 

Report – Flynn Turns State’s Evidence on Trump

The Chumph treasonous cabal has begun to crack. The first of the group, former General Michael Flynn has reportedly turned FBI stool pigeon, I would bet Manafort is next, trying to avoid extradition to the Ukraine for his nefarious criminal activity and money laundering Facing life in prison, I think all of the key players will ‘fess up..

CNN analyst: Sources say Mike Flynn may have turned on Trump and become a witness for the FBI

As of Saturday evening, rumors are swirling that Pres. Donald Trump’s ousted national security adviser Mike Flynn has cut a deal with the FBI and is now informing on his old boss, the president.

CNN national security analyst Juliette Kayyem discussed the possibility in a panel discussion on Friday night when she said that former Trump foreign policy consultant Carter Page, ex-campaign manager Paul Manafort and longtime Trump ally Roger Stone will all testify before the House Intelligence Committee regarding their ties to Russia.

“It’s not that interesting to me because I don’t think they’ll be under oath,” Kayyem said. “The one name not mentioned is a name I mention often on this show: Mike Flynn, the former national security adviser.”

“It is starting to look like — from my sources and from open reporting — that Mike Flynn is the one who may have a deal with the FBI and that’s why we have not heard from him for some time,” she said.

Flynn, a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General, was forced to step down from the Trump administration when it came to light that he lied to Vice President Mike Pence and the public about his contacts with Russian Ambassador and former FSB spy recruiter Sergey Kislyak.

This week, retired CIA Director James Woolsey said that he sat in on a secret meeting with Flynn and officials from Turkey’s authoritarian Erdogan regime in which Flynn entertained the idea of illegally sidestepping U.S. diplomatic protocols to return a fugitive Muslim cleric to Turkey. Woolsey describe the proposed operation as a “dead of night” mission to “whisk away” Fethullah Gulen and return him to Erdogan’s far-right government.

 

Majority of Americans Want Sessions Head on a Pike

Republicans will always come to the support of traitors and bigots.

Liar! Liar! Pants on Fire!

Majority of Americans want Attorney General Sessions to resign for lying under oath

New poll finds that more than half of all U.S. voters believe Sessions lied under oath at his confirmation hearing

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has served as a controversial national figure since President Donald Trump nominated the former Republican Alabama senator to serve as the nation’s top cop. Now, less than four weeks since assuming office, a majority of Americans already want Sessions out.

According to a majority of voters polled in a Quinnipiac University survey released Wednesday, Sessions lied under oath during his confirmation hearing about his contact with the Russians while serving as an emissary for the Trump campaign and should resign. Reports emerged earlier this year that top aides and allies to Trump’s 2016 campaign were in constant contact with senior Russian intelligence officials before election day.

Unsurprisingly, that number breaks mostly along partisan lines. More than eight in 10 Democrats said the attorney general should resign, while only 11 percent of Republicans said Sessions should step down. Additionally, 43 percent of American voters already had an unfavorable opinion of Sessions’ job performance. The poll of 1,123 American voters took place from March 2 to March 6, and has a margin-of-error of +/- 2.7 percent.

Pollsters also found more than half of those surveyed believe Sessions lied about speaking with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at his January hearing. According to the poll, 52 percent of voters believe Sessions committed perjury when he said he “did not have communications with the Russians” during his Senate confirmation hearings.

In January, Sessions was under oath when he told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he had not been in contact with any Russian official. However, as reports from the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal at the beginning of this month revealed, Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak met twice ― once at a Heritage Foundation event in July, and another time in Sessions’ Senate office in September― while Session served in a senior surrogate role for the Trump campaign and now the attorney general is being probed by federal investigators for those communications.

“The gavel comes down hard on Attorney General Jeff Sessions,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.  “He lied and he should quit because of it, say Americans, who are clearly very concerned about the Russian affair and all the administration personnel involved with it.”

A majority of Americans voters are expressing a sentiment that only one U.S. senator has dared to utter, so far.

“Listen, I’ve been cutting him a lot of slack. I’ve been refusing to say that he lied,” Democratic Minnesota Sen. Al Franken told CNN‘s Jake Tapper on Tuesday. It was a question asked by Franken at Sessions’ confirmation hearing that got the loyal Trump supporter tripped up. Even as he recused himself from any Department of Justice investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, Sessions insisted that he had not lied when he told Franken that he “did not have communications with the Russians:”

SEN. FRANKEN: If there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do?

SEN. SESSIONS: Senator Franken, I’m not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, and I did not have communications with the Russians, and I’m unable to comment.

Thirty-four percent of voters said Sessions did something illegal by making that claim, and 29 percent said his testimony was unethical but not illegal.

Following his recusal, Sessions followed-up with a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday insisting his statements were correct all along and that he would not return for any additional testimony.

“I wanted to wait for this letter to come out. It’s hard to come to any other conclusion that he just perjured himself,” Franken said, accusing Session of committing a crime in order to be confirmed as the nation’s top prosecutor: