AG Barr...

AG Barr says “I think spying did occur” against Trump campaign 

The criticism of Barr reached a crescendo after he used the word “spying” in congressional testimony to refer to the surveillance of Trump campaign officials in 2016. 

The reaction to his testimony was over-the-top. Yes, the word “spying” has a negative connotation, but it’s functionally indistinguishable from “surveiling.”  

There is no doubt that Trump officials were surveilled or spied on. The FBI famously acquired a FISA warrant against Carter Page, but the warrant allowed it to look back at his time with the campaign.

The FBI also gathered information on Page and campaign adviser George Papadopoulos via an informant, who contacted Trump aide Sam Clovis, as well.

The question is whether this surveillance was properly predicated. Barr is being attacked as a partisan hack for saying he’s going to find out. 

Democrats fear that Trump will use whatever is found for his own political purposes, but this isn’t a good reason to oppose Barr determining whether the intelligence agencies conducted itself in good faith during this episode. 

The public certainly has an interest in knowing the facts, this may be the next emails mishap of 2016.

Barr wrote a memo prior to his appointment as attorney general outlining his view that the legally aggressive theory of obstruction of justice that Mueller seemed to be operating on was flawed.  

Barr didn’t take the job of attorney general for the sake of résumé padding he already had the job on his résumé. He thought his experience, knowledge, and credibility gave him a unique ability to lead the Justice Department at an incredibly fraught time. Nothing he has done so far has cast any doubt on that assessment.  [MSN-News]

Wiki...

One guy cause a lot of heart aches.

Bias...

CNN has often been the subject of allegations of party bias. In research conducted by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University and the Project for Excellence in Journalism, the authors found disparate treatment by the three major cable networks of Republican and Democratic candidates during the earliest five months of presidential primaries in 2007: 

"The CNN programming studied tended to cast a negative light on Republican candidates – by a margin of three-to-one. Four-in-ten stories (41%) were clearly negative while just 14% were positive and 46% were neutral.

The network provided negative coverage of all three main candidates with McCain faring the worst (63% negative) and Romney faring a little better than the others only because a majority of his coverage was neutral. With the exception of Obama, 

Former Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, and Media Research Center founder Brent Bozell, among others, have referred to CNN as the "Clinton News Network".^[2] DeLay has also called it the "Communist News Network".^[3] In its early days, CNN was sometimes referred to as "Chicken Noodle News".^[4] 

In September 2009, a Pew Research Poll showed that Democrats were much more likely than Republicans to rate the network favorably, and Republicans were much more likely than Democrats to see CNN unfavorably.^[5] 

Emails...

Charge...

 

 

There is no constitutional difference between WikiLeaks and the New York Times.

If the New York Times, in 1971, could lawfully publish the Pentagon Papers, knowing that it included classified documents stolen by Rand Corporation military analyst Daniel Ellsberg from our government, then WikiLeaks was entitled, under the First Amendment, to publish classified material that Assange knew was stolen by former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning from our government.

Charge Assange with espionage or any other crime for merely publishing the Manning material, this would be another Pentagon Papers case with the same likely outcome. 

The Supreme Court ruling in the 1971 case, did not say that the newspapers that were planning to publish the Pentagon Papers could not be prosecuted if they published classified material. It only said they could not be restrained that is, stopped in advance from publishing them. They did publish, and they were not prosecuted.

Prosecutors have chosen to charge him with conspiracy to help Manning break into a government computer to steal classified material. Such a crime, if proven beyond a reasonable doubt, would have a far weaker claim to constitutional protection.  

It alleges that "Assange encouraged Manning to provide information and records" from government agencies. It alleges that "Manning provided Assange with part of a password" and that "Assange requested more information." But it goes on to say that although Assange had "been trying to crack the password," he had "no luck so far." Not the strongest set of facts!

The last question is whether Manning will testify against Assange. 

 [Alan Dershowitz, opinion contributor, The Hill]

Leaks...

Attorneys for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange are vowing to fight his possible extradition to the United States. British police forcibly removed Assange from the Ecuadorean Embassy, where he had taken asylum for almost seven years. 

U.S. authorities unsealed an indictment accusing him of conspiring with Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who leaked a trove of sensitive documents to WikiLeaks. That  includes evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition to the Democratic National committee's emails that was scandalous.

In London, Assange’s attorney Jennifer Robinson warned the prosecution of Assange could jeopardize press freedom.

Attorney for Assange said: “This sets a dangerous precedent for all media organizations and journalists in Europe and elsewhere around the world. 

This precedent means that any journalist can be extradited for prosecution in the United States for having published truthful information about the United States. I’ve just been with Mr. Assange in the police cells. He wants to thank all of his supporters for their ongoing support.

El Sisi...

The White House said Monday the two leaders will have a "very frank and open" conversation about human rights and civil society, but officials emphasized their "warm and personal" relationship, adding that expanding on that is among the visit's goals.

But Sisi's trip comes a week before the Egyptian parliament votes on constitutional amendments that would ensure the general-turned-president remains in power until 2034. The amendments proposed by the pro-Sisi parliament majority, Support Egypt Coalition, would allow the president to run for two six-year terms compared with four-year terms. 

In addition, it adds a clause that allows the changes to apply to Sisi, whose last term should end in 2022. The changes would also grant him executive authority over the judiciary and further expand the role of the military in political life.

* For those who knows it all in the Fake News of the Liberal Media" here it is. No one wants these folks who Europe, and USA have had a sample of it in the near past and still chasing those who are al-Qaida affiliate members. 

So Good luck with what you know. It is outdated.   Just a thought.

Pay...

The City of Chicago gave Smollett a deadline of April 4 for him to pay $130,106 or they would sue him. That civil suit was levied one week after the deadline passed without payment.

"In investigating Defendant's false statements and false police report, the City incurred significant costs in order to provide services reasonable related to Defendant's conduct."

The lawsuit lays out a very detailed account of the allegations against Smollett, who told police in the early morning hours of Jan. 29 that he was attacked by two men who hurled homophobic slurs at him, wrapped a noose around his neck and poured an unknown liquid over him. 

The timeline includes a 41-point blow-by-blow, from when Smollett first met the Osundario brothers -- the purported attackers -- in the fall of 2017 until the final allegation that Smollett continued to be in contact with the brothers in the days after the alleged attack.

Any publicity is a good publicity?

Cooked...

“Spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” Attorney General William Barr told a Senate committee. Barr's comments came in the context of potential Justice Department reviews of the Trump-Russia investigation and how it began in 2016.   

While it is important that the top law enforcement in the United States publicly acknowledged that the Obama administration and its intelligence agencies surveilled its domestic political opponents during the heat of a presidential election, the CIA and other federal agencies in addition to the FBI may have been involved. "I’m not talking about the FBI necessarily, but intelligence agencies more broadly," he said.

The FBI, which has incredibly friendly relations with the media, has taken the brunt of the public outcry against the anti-Trump operation. That project included the use of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants, national security letters, human informants, and strategic leaking to craft a narrative of treasonous collusion with Russia to steal an election from Hillary Clinton.

It even included leaks of classified records from former FBI director James Comey, which he said was done for the purpose of launching a special counsel investigation as retaliation for his firing.

There have always been indications that the operation went far beyond the FBI, however. For example, former CIA director John Brennan, now an MSNBC contributor, separately briefed Sen. Harry Reid, (D-Nev.) about the operation. Reid understood that move was undertaken so he could publicize the Russia investigation to influence the ongoing presidential election campaign.

Former director of national intelligence James Clapper, now a CNN contributor, admitted to discussions with media outlets about the investigation. The U.S. embassy in London was used contrary to established protocol to funnel hearsay that was used as a pretext to officially launch a wide-ranging investigation against the entire Trump orbit.

Clinton-connected officials in the State Department were also used to disseminate unverified gossip and allegations about Trump throughout the federal government.

The use of covert individuals to surreptitiously obtain information on private American citizens and share it with the government is the most obvious publicly known indication that agencies beyond the FBI may have been intimately involved in the operation.

The use of Stefan Halper, for example, a London-based American academic with longstanding ties to the FBI, CIA, and Defense Department, raises serious questions about whether CIA assets or resources were used against American citizens. 

Following Nixon-era domestic spying abuses by the U.S. intelligence community, oversight bodies restricted the authority of the CIA to spy on U.S. citizens on U.S. soil.

Numerous Trump affiliates were lured to meetings overseas that were then used as the basis for domestic intelligence collection.

The formal launch of an enterprise investigation against the Trump campaign was opened following a report that George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign advisor, had told a foreign diplomat in London about another overseas meeting during which he was told Russians had dirt on Clinton.

The Washington Post's Aaron Blake is representative of the media's award-winning complicity in furthering a baseless conspiracy theory of Russian collusion and concealing the troubling behavior of their most prized sources:

[Mollie Hemingway MSN News.]

Greg...

A federal grand jury indicted Greg Craig, a prominent Democratic attorney who worked for two presidents, Obama and Clinton, charging him with false statements and concealing material information in connection with work he performed for Ukraine.

Craig, 74, is the highest-profile Democrat to be indicted in a matter stemming from Mueller's work, which resulted in charges against numerous Republicans connected to President Donald Trump. 

The case is being handled by the US Attorney's office for the District of Columbia in connection with the Justice Department's national security division.

Craig was charged with misleading the Justice Department about his role in writing a report in 2012 on the prosecution of Yulia Tymoshenko, a former Ukrainian prime minister, while he was a partner at the law firm Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom. Manafort arranged to hire Skadden on behalf of the Ukrainian government, although a Ukrainian oligarch paid most of the firm’s fees, according to the indictment.