US General Election 2016

A parsing of Sessions's statements in his confirmation hearings suggests the most charitable conclusion is that he misunderstood the question he was being asked about contract with Russia and offered too broad a denial. The more apparent conclusion is that Sessions's denials are falling apart.

Sarah Isgur Flores, Session's spokeswoman, explained in a separate statement to The Post on Wednesday night: “He was asked during the hearing about communications between Russia and the Trump campaign — not about meetings he took as a senator and a member of the Armed Services Committee.”

That's not really true.

Sessions was clearly asked whether there was anyone “affiliated with the Trump campaign” who communicated with the Russian government during the campaign. Sessions admitted that he fit this definition of being affiliated with the campaign — as a surrogate (and, really, a top adviser as well) -- and said he “did not have communications with the Russians.”

And

An anonymous Trump administration official told John Harwood on Wednesday night that the election was indeed discussed, but only in “superficial” terms and it wasn't the “substance of their discussion.”

More in link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/03/02/jeff-sessionss-denials-of-contact-with-russians-are-falling-apart-quickly

Sessions said in a statement in the wee hours of Thursday morning that “I never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign.”

This came after his first statement about no contact with the Russians during the campaign, and I take it as a clarification. As a senator it's his job to meet with all sorts of people, so knowing that the questioning must have referred to campaign complications, I am willing to accept that his first statement was in the spirit of the second.

As far as the Trump campaign goes, unless they asked the Russians to interfere there's nothing to litigate about.  If someone is interested what your future policies would be if elected, are you supposed to selectively refuse discussion?

If there was reasonable cause to suspect the Trump team expected the Russians to interfere and interfaced with them in hopes of bringing such interference about, then yes, that's cause for criminal investigation.  But Trump making an offhand comment that the Russians should hack Clinton's emails during a campaign speech is not acceptable evidence that he realistically asked them to do so, not given all the other hogwash that comes out of his mouth in public.

I have no doubt that the Russians hacked the DNC because they liked what they heard from the Trump administration.  But that's a long ways from saying there was collusion.  Yes, there should be investigation on the FBI level, but not yet on the congressional level.  Not until proof exists.  Otherwise it's a political fracas when it should be purely a criminal investigation at this point, which for good reason occurs under the radar.  Flynn is the only one I'd suspect right now.

halfwise wrote:
I have no doubt that the Russians hacked the DNC because they liked what they heard from the Trump administration.  But that's a long ways from saying there was collusion.

I heard an analysis on NPR yesterday that made a persuasive case for Putin having the DNC hacked to as a direct attack on Clinton with whom he had a longstanding feud, but that he never had any expectation that she could lose. There was a good quote about a bank heist gone wrong, were rather than blowing the doors of the safe they destroyed the whole safe.

I'll see if I can find it.

Here it is :
http://www.npr.org/2017/03/01/517921957/sensing-chaos-russia-takes-a-wait-and-see-approach-to-trump

Despite ordering an "influence campaign" to help Donald Trump in last year's election, the Kremlin is scrambling to respond to a win it didn't expect, New Yorker editor David Remnick and staff writer Evan Osnos tell Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

Remnick, who lived and worked in Moscow from 1988 to 1992, and Osnos say Trump's victory has created unintended consequences for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"This was like a bank heist that, instead of blowing the doors off the safe, they blew the safe up entirely," Osnos says.

Remnick adds that Russia's state-controlled media, which was full of praise for Trump during the campaign, has changed its outlook of late: "We've now had a month of chaos, and they've decided to take much more of a wait-and-see attitude."

I like the section concerning the phrase "the enemy of the people"

I don't know how self-aware Donald Trump is of that kind of phrase. I guarantee that Steve Bannon knows what "enemy of the people" means. Stalin used it to keep people terrified.

American allies, including the British and the Dutch, had provided information describing meetings in European cities between Russian officials — and others close to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin — and associates of President-elect Trump, according to three former American officials who requested anonymity in discussing classified intelligence.

Separately, American intelligence agencies had intercepted communications of Russian officials, some of them within the Kremlin, discussing contacts with Trump associates.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/03/british-dutch-passed-along-intel-about-meetings-between-trump-team-and-russia

halfwise wrote:

Sessions said in a statement in the wee hours of Thursday morning that “I never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign.”

This came after his first statement about no contact with the Russians during the campaign, and I take it as a clarification.  As a senator it's his job to meet with all sorts of people, so knowing that the questioning must have referred to campaign complications, I am willing to accept that his first statement was in the spirit of the second.

As shown above, if the statement of John Harwood is correct, he straight up lied.

An anonymous Trump administration official told John Harwood on Wednesday night that the election was indeed discussed, but only in “superficial” terms and it wasn't the “substance of their discussion.”

Then that's a lie, albeit one of limited consequence.

It's not just a lie. Under oath that's called perjury.

Bluebottle wrote:It's not just a lie. Under oath that's called perjury.

Technically true, but if you combed back through any court records you'd find them peppered with lies of all sizes that have never been prosecuted as perjury. In this case it seems clear that the subject of perjury only comes up to be used as political hockey puck, just as it was with Hillary and Benghazi. There's a real issue here, but perjury isn't it!

The major fallout from this will be political, agreed. But this matter is also a legal one.

https://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/aclu-calls-for-perjury-investigation-into-sessions-its-now-clear-he-plainly-lied-under-oath/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/03/02/al-franken-reminds-jeff-sessions-the-ambassador-from-russia-is-a-russian

Given that the whole point of this thing is find out if the Trump campaign had colluded with the Russians, the fact that Sessions did not point out that he met with the Russians in the normal course of duty is not that important. He knew very well what the questions were about. He edited his comments later to say what he should have said in the first place. It's really not worth wasting time on.

Let the FBI keep digging. If they come up with something, hopefully Comey will do the right thing, and then congress can take up time with it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/03/02/six-times-jeff-sessions-talked-about-perjury-access-and-special-prosecutors-when-it-involved-the-clintons

Yes, which is exactly why I am so against using the same tactics yet again. It's all about obstructionism, not productive government. It's perfectly fine for democrats to throw these things in Republican's face, but then they should say "we're better than you. We will keep government running, but want you to know anytime you try to pull something we've got a stuffed file cabinet of examples of how to mimic your behavior the last 8 years."

I'm all for making that point; but remember the Republicans were largely doing what Democrats had begun during Bush II; and if it continues it will only keep getting worse. It's time to end it. Would be better to end it under an adult presidency, but the reason to end it now is that it can't help but be much worse under Trump than ever before.

The latest big buzz is about Jeff Sessions, the attorney general. It turns out that he lied during his confirmation hearings, denying that he had met with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign. In fact, he met twice with the Russian ambassador, who is widely reported to also be a key spymaster.

Not incidentally, if this news hadn’t come to light, forcing Mr. Sessions to recuse himself, he would have supervised the investigation into Russian election meddling, possibly in collusion with the Trump campaign.

But let’s not focus too much on Mr. Sessions. After all, he is joined in the cabinet by Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, who lied to Congress about his use of a private email account; Tom Price, the secretary of health and human services, who lied about a sweetheart deal to purchase stock in a biotechnology company at a discount; and Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, who falsely told Congress that his financial firm didn’t engage in “robo-signing” of foreclosure documents, seizing homes without proper consideration.

And they would have served with Michael Flynn as national security adviser, but for the fact that Mr. Flynn was forced out after the press discovered that, like Mr. Sessions, he had lied about contacts with the Russian ambassador.

At this point it’s easier to list the Trump officials who haven’t been caught lying under oath than those who have. This is not an accident.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/opinion/goodbye-spin-hello-raw-dishonesty.html?

Mark Levin's "evidence" was a series of newspaper reports (from places like the NY Times, etc) stating that over the past year a wide range of federal agencies were investigating the Trump campaigns connection to the Russians.  From this Levin concluded that such interest would only happen if President Obama directed it.  I saw Levin feed this to Fox and Friends and they lapped it all up without question.  Their viewership will likely do the same.

The news reports that Mark Levin bases his claims on appear to be questionable.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/03/05/trumps-evidence-for-obama-wiretap-claims-relies-on-sketchy-anonymously-sourced-reports/?utm_term=.03a4ad729673

Chuck Schumer (leader of the Democrats) pointed out that however this comes out it will be bad for Trump.  Wire Tapping can only occur if a judge approves it, which means that there had to be sufficient evidence of collusion with the Russians to pass muster.  If it isn't true, then obviously Trump is blowing smoke, but making such a serious accusation is no mere smoke.

Finally the former director of National Security, James Clapper, said without hesitation that if there was such a court approval, he would know of it, and he didn't.  Therefore there was no wire tapping.  James Comey, FBI director, is reported to have asked the Justice Department to refute the wire tapping charge, because it implies the FBI would have broken the law.

Since a slim majority of Trump supporters seem to believe anything that comes out of his mouth, this will probably help cement his base while causing the more sober members of the Republican party to start to rethink their recent support of him.  The political process will only become more fractured.

On Sunday, former press secretary Josh Earnest told ABC: "This may come as a surprise to the current occupant of the Oval Office, but the president of the United States does not have the authority to unilaterally order the wiretapping of an American citizen.

"If the FBI decided to use their wiretapping authority in the context of the counterintelligence or criminal investigation, it would require FBI investigators, officials at the Department of Justice going to a federal judge, and making a case, and demonstrating probable cause to use that authority to conduct the investigation. That is a fact."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39172635

Former director of the CIA Michael Hayden says Trump "forgot he was president"

https://www.yahoo.com/news/ex-cia-director-on-wiretap-claim-trump-apparently-forgot-that-he-was-president-143941457.html

halfwise wrote:Former director of the CIA Michael Hayden says Trump "forgot he was president"

https://www.yahoo.com/news/ex-cia-director-on-wiretap-claim-trump-apparently-forgot-that-he-was-president-143941457.html

I think it's more like he never understood what being president means or how it works to begin with . I've been waiting since January to see what his team of Assistant Attorneys General will look like. That's his offensive line. It's how the Executive Office interacts with the law. But we're into March and he's hardly looked at putting his team together. Was he thinking Sessions would do this for him???

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/us/politics/trump-rejects-comeys-assertion-that-wiretapping-claim-is-false-spokeswoman-says.html?

Here is Martha Raddatz picking the deputy white house spokesperson apart. Sean Spicer must be on leave for nervous breakdown.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/white-house-spokesperson-qualifies-trump-wiretap-assertion/story?id=45911282

bless