Category: collusion

Rep. Schiff reminds GOP colleague that Trump-Russia collusion was all too real

Posted on by Aldous J Pennyfarthing

Contrary to Donald Trump’s usual attempts to pulverize reality into an unrecognizable heap of dust he can power-snort directly into his fib-pickled brain, the Trump-Russia investigation was neither a witch hunt nor a hoax.

For one thing, Robert Mueller’s report—which former Attorney General Bill Barr (mostly successfully) hid from public scrutiny like a 3-year-old flushing a poopy Underoo—identified at least 10 instances of likely obstruction on the part of our erstwhile pr*sident. The report flatly stated that Trump “engaged in a second phase of conduct, involving public attacks on the investigation, non-public efforts to control it, and efforts both in public and private to encourage witnesses not to cooperate with the investigation.”

That sure smells like obstruction to me, and because Trump’s involved, it’s also faintly redolent of deep-fried lard pops with rainbow sprinkles. Unfortunately, Republicans in Congress and elsewhere have taken it as an article of faith that Trump was fully exonerated by Mueller, even though Mueller pointedly stated he’d done no such thing. But Republicans have long since decided to pretend that the most corrupt and dishonest human ever to sully this nation’s shores is America’s true savior and lone beacon of truth.

But despite Republicans’ efforts to sweep Trump-Russia collusion under the rug, it’s still there. And occasionally Rep. Adam Schiff, a dogged critic of Trump who was front-and-center during the venal makeup mannequin’s first impeachment, brings some of that dirt back out to show everyone what Trump really was—and is.

Here he was on Thursday, slapping down yet another lost GOP sheep, Kentucky Rep. James Comer:

Yesterday, a Republican said he’d be excited if I would share the facts of Trump’s Russia collusion with him. I was more than happy to take him up on his offer. He was less happy when I did. pic.twitter.com/D74zC044at

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) December 10, 2021

COMER: “Mr. Speaker, every time Chairman Schiff rises to speak about intelligence and security and holding the president accountable, I get excited hoping that we’re going to hear about that evidence of collusion and all the other investigations that were conducted in this House over the past year … I’ll yield back, absolutely.”

SCHIFF: “Will the gentleman yield? Will the gentleman yield? Well, let me ask the gentleman, are you aware, just by way of illustration, that the president’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, secretly met with an agent of Russian intelligence and provided Russian intelligence with internal campaign polling data as well as strategic insights about their strategy in key battleground states? Are you aware of that?”

COMER: “I think everyone’s aware of every bit of information that you all have tried to peddle over the past four years.”

SCHIFF: “Let me ask you, are you aware that while the Trump campaign chairman was providing internal polling data that Kremlin intelligence was leading a clandestine social media campaign to elect Donald Trump? Are you aware of that?”

COMER: “I think we see every day, Facebook just announced that Russia was trying to do a Facebook campaign in Ukraine, if I remember reading that correctly. Mr. Schiff …

SCHIFF: “Would you like me to go on?”

I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want you to go on, Rep. Schiff. But I can, if you don’t mind.

In fact, collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia wasn’t just proven—it was a flashing red light that should have been widely acknowledged as a scandal for the ages.

As Franklin Foer, a staff writer for The Atlantic, noted in Aug. 2020, Manafort was in near-constant contact with a bona fide Russian agent during the 2016 presidential election campaign:

When Mueller’s prosecutors appeared in court, in February 2019, they implied that the most troubling evidence they had uncovered implicated Manafort, the Trump campaign chairman. This wasn’t a surprising admission. Throughout their filings, Mueller’s team referred to Manafort’s Kyiv-based aide-de-camp, Konstantin Kilimnik, as an active Russian agent. Manafort had clearly spoken with Kilimnik during the campaign, and had even passed confidential campaign information to him, with the understanding that the documents would ultimately arrive in the hands of oligarchs close to the Kremlin.

Well, there’s your collusion, Rep. Comer. Pretty cut and dried. But that’s not all!

The Senate Select Committee’s Aug. 2020 report on Russian interference in the 2016 election went into great detail about Manafort’s Russian connections, but it didn’t get nearly the attention the long-anticipated Mueller report had. Nevertheless, it was damning.

The committee fills in the gaps somewhat. It reports that Manafort and Kilimnik talked almost daily during the campaign. They communicated through encrypted technologies set to automatically erase their correspondence; they spoke using code words and shared access to an email account. It’s worth pausing on these facts: The chairman of the Trump campaign was in daily contact with a Russian agent, constantly sharing confidential information with him. That alone makes for one of the worst scandals in American political history.

And in case you think Trump himself was innocent in all this, think again:

When Manafort—with a pardon dangling in front of him—brazenly lied to prosecutors, he helped save Trump from having to confront this damning story. He wasn’t the only Trump associate to obstruct justice. (The committee has referred five Trump aides and supporters to the Justice Department for possibly providing false testimony.) By undermining investigators, Trump’s cronies rendered Mueller’s report a hash lacking a firm conclusion. They helped detonate the charge of collusion, letting it fizzle well ahead of the 2020 election.

And, of course, in one of the most corrupt moves in U.S. presidential history, Trump later pardoned Manafort, his confederate in collusion.

One can only hope Trump will face his comeuppance before too long—and it appears New York Attorney General Letitia James is bound and determined to make that happen. In the meantime, we all need to speak up whenever MAGAs try to claim the Russia investigation was nothing but a hoax—because, in reality, it clearly exposed Trump as the corrupt asshole we always knew he was.

It made comedian Sarah Silverman say, “THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT,” and prompted author Stephen King to shout “Pulitzer Prize!!!” (on Twitter, that is). What is it? The viral letter that launched four hilarious Trump-trolling books. Get them all, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.

CNN: Conservatives Leaving Facebook And Twitter For Parler Is A ‘Threat To Democracy’

Posted on by John Hanson

In CNN’s analysis of how conservative voters are handling the presidential election results, reporter Pamela Brown said that conservatives leaving social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook over speech suppression was a “threat to democracy.” 

CNN’s Brian Stelter complained about smaller right-leaning news channels, like Newsmax, getting more viewers recently as conservatives hammer Fox News over its election coverage and what they view as anti-Trump bias.

RELATED: Meghan McCain Confronts CNN Host Brian Stelter On His Network’s Many Failings

Stelter: Conservatives Leaving Facebook And Twitter For ‘Safer Space’

Stelter said to Brown, “I think, big picture, Pamela, here is the concerning trend line here. People are going more and more into their own echo chambers, more into their own bubbles, especially Trump voters.”

“There’s this new social media app, called Parler, getting a lot of attention,” Stelter continued. 

He added, “Because conservatives are leaving, saying they’re leaving Twitter and Facebook, going off to Parler because they believe Parler is a safer space for them.”

“What we’re seeing is even more of a bunker mentality in right-wing media,” Stelter said.“Ultimately, that’s not good for the country.”

That’s when Brown associated freedom of speech and choice with undermining democratic values.

“No, it is not good,” Brown responded (emphasis added). “It is a threat to democracy that these people are in echo chambers and they’re getting fed a diet of lies essentially.”

CNN Is An Echo Chamber

That’s rich.

The freedoms enshrined in our Bill of Rights are not threats to democracy.

The freedom of speech. Freedom of the press. Freedom of association. None of these are threats to democracy. 

It’s the exact opposite. Suppression of these freedoms is a threat to democracy. 

And really, is there a bigger echo chamber than CNN?

For years, Americans were constantly bombarded with “new” or “breaking” “information” that all supposedly pointed to Donald Trump allegedly colluding with Russia to throw the 2016 presidential election his way.

Then the Mueller report ended up as a huge nothingburger. Did the media ever apologize for it?

Impeachment was not an issue in this election. If Joe Biden even said it once, most missed it.

RELATED: What The Media’s Not Talking About: Republican Election Victory That Will Affect The Next 10 Years

Fake News Is A Threat To Democracy

But fake claims about collusion is what animated the Democratic Party for most of Trump’s presidency.

When an entire major political party defines itself by a fantasy of their own making, that’s a bubble.

And save for (sometimes) Fox News and alternative news outlets, the mainstream media protected that bubble.

We all live in our own bubbles to some extent. CNN tries to present its bubble as truth.

Some might call that a threat to democracy.

The post CNN: Conservatives Leaving Facebook And Twitter For Parler Is A ‘Threat To Democracy’ appeared first on The Political Insider.

Kamala Harris Didn’t Make One Mention Of Impeachment During Debate – But Mike Pence Did

Posted on by John Hanson

2020 Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris curiously didn’t have anything to say Wednesday night about her party’s years-long impeachment crusade against President Trump over alleged “Russian collusion.”

But Mike Pence did.

I can’t be the only person in America who finds it strange that neither the Democrat Party’s presidential or vice presidential nominees mentioned that their opponent was impeached (even if the Senate failed to convict).

After all, impeachment is extremely rare. So why don’t the Democrats attack the Trump administration for it?

RELATED: Mike Pence: Democrats Don’t Talk About Joe Biden’s Agenda, ‘And If I Were Them, I Wouldn’t Either’

Pence to Harris: Democrats Spent The Last 3.5 Years Trying To Overturn The Last Election

Democrat reticence to attack Trump for being impeached is especially ironic, given the deluge of claims from the media and Democrats that Trump will “refuse to peacefully transfer power” if he loses the election.

The impeachment scam was the culmination of Democrats refusing to accept the results of the 2016 election.

Some are even saying the left will refuse to accept the results again in 2020, should Trump emerge victorious.

When Susan Page, the moderator of the first and only 2020 vice presidential debate, asked if President Donald Trump would accept a “peaceful transfer of power” should he lose in November, Pence decided it was a good time to bring the issue up.

“When you talk about accepting the outcome of the election, I must tell you, Senator, your party has spent the last three and a half years trying to overturn the results of the last election,” Pence charged.

“It’s amazing,” he added.

Pence Says Democrats Spied On Trump-Pence 2016 Campaign

Vice President Pence took it a step further – noting that the left’s refusal to accept the results of the 2016 election came even before the election happened.

“When Joe Biden was vice president of the United States, the FBI actually spied on President Trump and my campaign,” Pence said.

He continued, “There were documents released this week that the CIA actually made a referral to the FBI documenting that those allegations were coming from the Hillary Clinton campaign, and of course, we’ve all seen the avalanche, what you put the country through for the better part of three years until it was found that there was no obstruction, no collusion, case closed.”

Just before the debate, the Director of National Intelligence declassified files that show Pence is right.

Don’t forget, an investigation into the Obama administration’s actions during the 2016 campaign is ongoing.

And one FBI lawyer has already pled guilty to making false statements.

It’s not hard at all to follow the string that leads from “spying on the Trump campaign” to “refusing to accept the election results” to “impeachment.”

And it’s something they don’t want to talk about much these days. Just ask Kamala Harris.

Vice President Pence added, “And then, Senator Harris, you and your colleagues in the Congress, trying to impeach the President of the United States over a phone call.”

Hillary Clinton to Biden: Don’t Concede The Election

On left-wing charges that Trump won’t accept a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the election, Pence flipped the script.

“And now, Hillary Clinton actually said to Joe Biden that, in her words, under no circumstances should he concede the election.”

The media bias is plain as day.

Why haven’t reporters or debate moderators harangued Team Biden about accepting the results of the election should they lose?

RELATED: Mike Pence Eager To Debate Biden’s Hotheaded VP Nominee Kamala Harris And Set The Record Straight

Only Republicans Seem To Talk About Impeachment These Days

In the first presidential debate, impeachment was not mentioned by the moderator Chris Wallace, though President Trump cited it a few times.

In the vice presidential debate, it was only mentioned when Mike Pence did so.

For years, impeachment seemed to be the only thing Democrats wanted to talk about.

Now you won’t hear about it – unless Republicans remind us of the duplicity the Democrats perpetrated.

The post Kamala Harris Didn’t Make One Mention Of Impeachment During Debate – But Mike Pence Did appeared first on The Political Insider.

The Country Should Be Pulling Together Right Now – But Then Again, We Have Democrats And The Media

Posted on by Wayne Dupree

The radical press and Nancy Pelosi are both complicit in lying to the American people with their misleading statements and actions that are not related to President Trump in any way.

DISHONESTY OF THE MEDIA

If the ignorant press would look into who is directly (not indirectly) responsible for the safety of the American people, it is the state governors who are on the front lines. Trump can only provide national support, like restricting flights, releasing the military, and forcing the production of needed supplies.

MORE NEWS: Gingrich: Coronavirus Pandemic Is ‘A Global Problem Caused By The Chinese’

The governors are those who direct what their state’s people are to do and how to do it. I am tired of everything being blamed on Trump when it is not up to the President to make those decisions. Did Trump delay action in New York City on telling people not to congregate in groups? No, it was the city’s health commissioner advising just the opposite and Mayor Bill de Blasio not making any directives until well after it was a huge problem. That was not Trump’s fault.

DEMS HAVE BEEN ON THE WRONG SIDE SINCE BEGINNING

Let’s look back at everyone’s comments three or four weeks ago. Democrats did not want Trump to ban travel from China. Do I “blame” them for that? No. They did not have ESP. However, for them to turn around and expect the President or any politician to have the same ESP they didn’t have is disingenuous. Anyone who does not rally behind the President who represents our country at this time of crisis is not patriotic. Quit criticizing and taking political shots. It shows ignorance, hatred, and a lack of patriotism.

The Democrats in Congress and the Senate, along with their friends in the media, need to be held accountable for disregarding the safety of our country for the last three years, to set up the Russia collusion hoax, the Ukraine impeachment hoax and any little thing to stop the progress of fixing this country after Barack Obama. They interrupted any and all activities in Washington, just to reverse the 2016 elections.

MORE NEWS: President Trump Has Done The Right Things To Combat Coronavirus From Day One

AMERICAN DYING

People were dying while Pelosi was messing around with impeachment. People were dying while Pelosi was sneaking in funding for the Kennedy Center and other projects unrelated to these same people she talks about. She only needs to look at herself to see who is fiddling.

As more people become ill, each country’s health care systems will be pushed to the brink to treat an increasing number of patients. Under President Trump’s leadership, the United States is helping its citizens and small businesses with a $2 trillion rescue package. Our President also made the right call by shutting down all passenger air traffic with China and Europe, and fast-tracking desperately needed medical equipment and supplies to critical hotspots like New York. He has the right team in place to see us through this crisis.

NEGATIVITY IS NOT CONSTRUCTIVE

The only way Mr. Trump, or any other heads of state, could have reacted better would have required them to be able to predict the unpredictable, to be prepared for the unpreparable. This is a WORLDWIDE pandemic. The spread in our country was unavoidable. We were under attack before we knew there was an attack before we knew what the enemy was. 20/20 hindsight and arguing about would have, could have, should have is not constructive. The only way to defeat this enemy is for EVERYONE to do their part and stay focused on that victory. The safety of others depends on YOU.

MORE NEWS: It’s Time To Remove Pelosi From Congress So This Country Can Move Forward

I can only speak for myself, but nobody is wholly prepared for something like this to happen. Frankly, I think Trump has done an excellent job of trying to minimize the fear-mongering the media has put out there. It’s not up to the government to save people; it’s mostly up to the people themselves.

They say you tell a lot about a person by how they behave during a crisis. How will Pelosi and the MSM be remembered after we get through this one? Just remember when a liberal blames somebody else, it is the liberal who is more guilty of that thing.

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