Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Con't

We now know why the White House was in full-blown panic mode for the last 48 hours, culminating in the firing of FBI Director James Comey:  the fecal matter has just impacted the oscillating atmospheric turbine unit as the FBI is now starting to close in on the regime, beginning with grand jury subpoenas of people related to former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn.

Federal prosecutors have issued grand jury subpoenas to associates of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn seeking business records, as part of the ongoing probe of Russian meddling in last year's election, according to people familiar with the matter. CNN learned of the subpoenas hours before President Donald Trump fired FBI director James Comey. 

The subpoenas represent the first sign of a significant escalation of activity in the FBI's broader investigation begun last July into possible ties between Trump campaign associates and Russia. 

The subpoenas issued in recent weeks by the US Attorney's Office in Alexandria, Virginia, were received by associates who worked with Flynn on contracts after he was forced out as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014, according to the people familiar with the investigation. 

Robert Kelner, an attorney for Flynn, declined to comment. The US Attorney's Office in Alexandria, the Justice Department and the FBI also declined to comment. 

Investigators have been looking into possible wrongdoing in how Flynn handled disclosures about payments from clients tied to foreign governments including Russia and Turkey, US officials briefed on the matter have told CNN. 

The Flynn inquiry is one piece of the broader investigation, which FBI Director James Comey testified in a Senate hearing last week is led jointly by the Alexandria US Attorney's Office and the Justice Department's National Security Division.

For those of you asking just where the leaks were if there really was a smoking gun in the Trump/Russia investigation, you have just been presented with your answer within hours of Trump firing the man in charge of said investigation.  There is no doubt that Comey was fired because of this grand jury investigation, and because the grand jury investigation will end up going up the chain well above Flynn.

He was fired to end this investigation, so that he could be replaced by someone who would try to stop it.

They believe they will get away with it.

America must disabuse them of this notion, or we deserve Trump to rule for life.

BREAKING: Trump Fires FBI Director James Comey

The head of the agency investigating the Trump regime has been fired by Trump on the advice of Jeff Sessions.

President Donald Trump has fired FBI Director James Comey – a move that comes as the FBI is probing potential contacts between Trump’s campaign aides and Russian officials ahead of the election.

"The president has accepted the recommendation of the Attorney General and the deputy Attorney General regarding the dismissal of the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation," White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters.

The recommendation letters from AG Sessions and Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein both state that the Comey had to be fired over his handling of...you guessed it!

Clinton's emails, and his failure to bring charges.

I woke up in a mostly-broken representative democracy.  Tonight I fall asleep in a regime.

The Scarlet Letter, Con't

So Sunday when I said that FBI Director James Comey's letter cost Hillary the election and Nate Silver presented the case for that I noted that Comey would have a lot to answer for.  It turns out that we may have reached that point far sooner than anyone had anticipated.

FBI Director James B. Comey overstated key findings involving the Hillary Clinton email investigation during testimony to Congress last week, according to people close to the inquiry. 

In defending the probe, Comey offered seemingly new details to underscore the seriousness of the situation FBI agents faced last fall when they discovered thousands of Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s emails on the computer of her husband, Anthony Weiner. 

“Somehow, her emails were being forwarded to Anthony Weiner, including classified information,” Comey said, adding later, “His then-spouse Huma Abedin appears to have had a regular practice of forwarding emails to him for him I think to print out for her so she could then deliver them to the secretary of state.” 

At another point in the testimony, Comey said Abedin “forwarded hundreds and thousands of emails, some of which contain classified information.’’ 

Neither of those statements is accurate, said people close to the investigation. The inquiry found that Abedin did occasionally forward emails to her husband for printing, but it was a far smaller number than Comey described, and it wasn’t a “regular practice,” these people said. None of the forwarded emails were marked classified, but a small number — a handful, one person said — contained information that was later judged to contain classified information, these people said. 

Justice Department and FBI officials are considering whether and how to clarify the misstatements, said people familiar with the matter. The issue of the misstatements was first reported by ProPublica.

Not giving accurate statements to Congress under oath has a name, and that's perjury.  From that ProPublica story linked above:

According to two sources familiar with the matter — including one in law enforcement — Abedin forwarded only a handful of Clinton emails to her husband for printing — not the “hundreds and thousands” cited by Comey. It does not appear Abedin made “a regular practice” of doing so. Other officials said it was likely that most of the emails got onto the computer as a result of backups of her Blackberry. 

It was not clear how many, if any, of the forwarded emails were among the 12 “classified” emails Comey said had been found on Weiner’s laptop. None of the messages carried classified markings at the time they were sent. 

Comey’s Senate testimony about Abedin came as he offered his first public explanation for his decision to reveal the existence of the emails on Oct. 28, days ahead of the 2016 election and before FBI agents had examined them. 

When agents obtained a search warrant that allowed them to read the messages, they turned out to be mostly duplicates of emails the bureau had obtained earlier in the investigation. Comey announced just before Election Day that nothing had changed in the Clinton case, which had been closed four months earlier without criminal charges. 

During his testimony, Comey said that part of the reason for revealing the existence of the messages was that some appeared to fill an eight-week gap in records from early in Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State. Comey said the FBI viewed them as “the golden missing emails that would change this case” because they might provide insights into Clinton’s intent when she set up her private server. 

Comey testified that investigators searching Weiner’s laptop in the days before the election also found that “somehow, her emails are being forwarded to Anthony Weiner, including classified information, by [Clinton’s] assistant, Huma Abedin.” Abedin, he later testified, “appears to have had a regular practice of forwarding emails to him, for him I think to print out for her so she could then deliver them to the Secretary of State.”

In other words, even if you don't buy that Comey perjured himself (and the FBI is apparently still trying to figure out how to get out of that mess), Comey clearly jumped the gun and never should have gone public with what was massively misleading information in an ongoing investigation because -- surprise! -- it directly affected the outcome of a presidential election.

So yeah, Comey's in trouble at this point.  It's all starting to come unglued.

The Great Yates Debates, Con't

Former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates lit into the GOP yesterday as she confirmed under oath widely-reported information about fired Trump National Security Adviser Mike Flynn: that Flynn was absolutely compromised by the Russians, and that Yates made it very clear to the White House that this was an imminent threat to America's national security.

Making her first public statements about the issue, Yates said she feared Moscow could try to blackmail Flynn because it also knew he had not been truthful about conversations he had with Ambassador Sergei Kislyak about U.S. sanctions on Russia.

Flynn, a retired general once seen as a potential Trump vice president, has emerged as a central figure in the Russian probes. Russia has repeatedly denied any meddling in the election and the Trump administration denies allegations of collusion with Russia.

Yates told the hearing she had been concerned that "the national security adviser essentially could be blackmailed by the Russians."

"Logic would tell you that you don't want the national security adviser to be in a position where the Russians have leverage over him," she said.

Trump, who continued to praise Flynn, waited 18 days after Yates' warning before Flynn's forced resignation for failing to disclose the content of his talks with Kislyak and then misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations.

Several Democratic senators questioned Trump's delay. Yates said that in her meetings, McGahn "demonstrated that he understood this was serious. .. If nothing was done, certainly that would be concerning." 

The news also broke yesterday by NBC that President Obama personally warned Donald Trump not to hire Mike Flynn, which Trump regime spokesman Sean Spicer later dismissed as perfectly normal because they thought the warning was "in jest" and then because Flynn was "an outspoken critic" of the former president.

Former President Obama warned President Donald Trump against hiring Mike Flynn as his national security adviser, three former Obama administration officials tell NBC News.

The warning, which has not been previously reported, came less than 48 hours after the November election when the two sat down for a 90-minute conversation in the Oval Office.

A senior Trump administration official acknowledged Monday that Obama raised the issue of Flynn, saying the former president made clear he was "not a fan of Michael Flynn." Another official said Obama's remark seemed like it was made in jest.

According to all three former officials, Obama warned Trump against hiring Flynn. The Obama administration fired Flynn in 2014 from his position as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, largely because of mismanagement and temperament issues.

Obama's warning pre-dated the concerns inside the government about Flynn's contacts with the Russian ambassador, one of the officials said. Obama passed along a general caution that he believed Flynn was not suitable for such a high level post, the official added.

Of course the notion that Obama's November warning "pre-dated" Flynn being compromised by the Russians is not true, as John Schindler made it clear that Flynn was in bed with Moscow back in July, when Flynn was in the running for Trump's possible VP.

It seems that Flynn remains furious at Obama for firing him, and that anger may be the driving force behind his cozy relationship with the Kremlin. General Flynn has frequently appeared on RT (formerly Russia Today), the Russian government’s news channel aimed at the outside world. RT is unadulterated Kremlin propaganda—not a normal news network—as evidenced by its showcasing avowed neo-Nazis and having its own Illuminati correspondent.

Since Flynn is a Cold War veteran and a career spy, he knows exactly what RT is—he has no excuses. Yet this has not deterred him from appearing there regularly. To top it off, last December he attended RT’s 10th anniversary gala in Moscow, including a photo op with President Vladimir Putin.

It’s safe to say Putin would have a word for any top retired Russian intelligence general who regularly appeared on official U.S. television and did a photo op with President Obama. It’s not a nice word, and that general would be well advised to avoid drinking tea.

To make matters worse, neither General Flynn nor RT were willing to comment if he is a paid contributor to the network. If a possible vice president is an actual paid employee of Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin, that seems like something the American people should know.

Those concerns about a top US intelligence official with a suspiciously cozy relationship with Moscow as veep still applies as National Security Adviser.  It's silly to think that by November, President Obama wouldn't have had a pretty clear picture about who Flynn was really working for.

StupidiNews!

• The Trump regime will be considering US troop increase options in Afghanistan this week, ranging from 1,500 to 5,000 or more in order to break a "stalemate" against the Taliba.
• Donald Trump is expected to name two Republicans to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission this week, both would need Senate confirmation.
• South Koreans head to the polls today to choose a replacement for impeached former President Park Geun-hye, record voter turnout is expected with liberal Moon Jae-in as the favorite.
• Texas Republicans have scrapped plans for $30 billion in public-private infrastructure projects as polls show residents are strongly against lawmakers approving new toll roads.
• California lawmakers are considering bi-partisan legislation that would allow residents to cover license plates when parked for privacy reasons.