Tag: Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation

Former CIA Director John Brennan pushed back Friday on President Trump's charge that he knew about or participated in an attempt to overthrow the American government. "I don't think it's surprising at all that we continue to hear the sociopathic ramblings of Mr. Trump claiming that there was this effort to try to prevent him from being elected or to unseat him," he told MSNBC's Hallie Jackson. Brennan was reacting to comments Trump made during an interview with Sean Hannity on Thursday night. His comments followed the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report which stopped short of accusing the president of either obstruction of justice or collusion with Russia. Brennan added he welcomed further investigation into his and other officials' conduct while they served in government. "I've testified in front of Congress ... Absolutely, I'll do it again," he said. Brennan also disputed Sen. Rand Paul's, R-Ky., claim that he "insisted that the unverified and fake Steele dossier be included in the Intelligence Report." "That's absolutely incorrect and 180 degrees from the truth. It was CIA that was pushing not to have it included and not to be taken into account at all in that intelligence community assessment.

Let’s try to boil this down. Some of his aides destroyed evidence, and Trump didn’t want his team to cooperate. Trump wanted his team to make up stories. There’s also no smoking gun, no iron-clad document or recording showing that Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin had a plan, or money changed hands. “Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference efforts,” the Mueller report, released Thursday, said. What started as politics ends in politics. Unable to play video. HTML5 is not supported! Now it’s up to the House to decide whether it’s worth the effort of impeachment when there’s an election next year and Republicans control the Senate. If this conduct is unbecoming of a president, the House should initiate impeachment proceedings, at least to draw a line in the sand on future conduct.

Mueller report reveals text messages showing the Trump campaign was privately aware as early as October 2016 — more than two months before BuzzFeed News published the Steele dossier — that embarrassing tapes of then-candidate Donald Trump might exist in Russia. According to the report, on October 30th, 2016, Trump’s private attorney and fixer Michael Cohen received a text from a Russian businessman involved in the Trump Tower Moscow deal, in progress for more than a year. Cohen told investigators he spoke to Trump about the issue after receiving the texts from Rtskhiladze. Rtskhiladze’s description of the tapes’ content tracks with the unverified information included in the Steele dossier, which claimed that Trump watched Russian prostitutes urinate in a Moscow hotel room in 2013. “Rtskhiladze said ‘tapes’ referred to compromising tapes of Trump rumored to be held by persons associated with the Russian real estate conglomerate Crocus Group, which had helped host the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Russia.” The Crocus Group’s president is Aras Agalarov. It was Agalarov’s son, the Russian pop star Emin Agalarov, who brokered the June 9th, 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Kremlin-linked lawyer, who promised to deliver “official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary.” Besides the Trump Tower Moscow project, the report also says Rtskhiladze was involved in discussions for a Trump-branded project in Astana, Kazakhstan, and had previously been involved in a development deal with the Trump Organization in Batumi, Georgia. Separately, the report says Rtskhiladze had worked on business ventures in Moscow, including a licensing deal with the Agalarov-owned Crocus Group. According to the report, Cohen forwarded a preliminary design study for the Trump Moscow project to Rtskhiladze, in September 2015 writing, “I look forward to your reply about this spectacular project in Moscow.” Rtskhiladze forwarded Cohen’s email to an associate and wrote, “[i]f we could organize the meeting in New York at the highest level of the Russian Government and Mr. Trump this project would definitely receive the worldwide attention.” In his book, A Higher Loyalty, James Comey wrote that after he briefed Trump, the then-president-elect asked him to investigate and prove the report was a lie. “He brought up what he called the ‘golden showers thing’…adding that it bothered him if there was ‘even a one percent chance’ his wife, Melania, thought it was true,” Comey writes. “He just rolled on, unprompted, explaining why it couldn’t possibly be true, ending by saying he was thinking of asking me to investigate the allegation to prove it was a lie.

Just like his boss and hero former FBI Director James Comey, former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe has written a Trump-trashing book. Truth means nothing. He's worse than Comey. It barely matters to his interviewers that he was fired from the top of the FBI for ... allegedly lying his face off to the FBI. While the media relish the idea of jail time for Trump aides caught lying to investigators, this man gets a red carpet and a pat on the back. McCabe's book tour has created headlines like this, from a CNN interview: "McCabe: It's Possible Trump Is a Russian Asset." Thirty minutes on CBS' "60 Minutes," 15 minutes on NPR's "Morning Edition," 24 minutes on ABC's "The View," an hour on NPR's "Fresh Air," 30 minutes on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360," 40 minutes on MSNBC's "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell," 20 minutes on CBS' "Late Show With Stephen Colbert." McCabe despises Trump. The media love McCabe. McCabe's lying under oath also drew several minutes on NPR's "Morning Edition," and even then, NPR cut the interview into two segments and eagerly promoted the other half -- the Trump-and-Russia half.

Donald Trump plans to nominate Jeffrey Rosen as the next deputy US attorney general, a senior administration official said on Tuesday night. Rosen, currently deputy secretary of the US Department of Transportation, would succeed Rod Rosenstein, who after the firing of the FBI director James Comey appointed special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate possible ties between Russia and Trump’s campaign. Rosenstein is expected to step down by mid-March, a justice department official said on Monday. Rod Rosenstein, key figure behind Mueller inquiry, expected to step down in mid-March Read more The attorney general, William Barr, welcomed the choice of the new deputy, saying in a statement that Rosen had 35 years of experience at the highest levels of government and in the private sector. “His years of outstanding legal and management experience make him an excellent choice to succeed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who has served the Department of Justice over many years with dedication and distinction,” Barr said. The transportation secretary, Elaine Chao, said Rosen had played a critical role in her department. “I will be sorry to lose him, but I am confident that he is the right lawyer to help the new Attorney General succeed at the Justice Department, for the benefit of the American people,” she said in a statement. Rosen’s nomination must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

The trove of documents turned over by the FBI, in response to a lawsuit by the transparency group Judicial Watch, also included discussions by former FBI lawyer Lisa Page concerning a potential quid pro quo between the State Department and the FBI -- in which the FBI would agree to effectively hide the fact that a Clinton email was classified in exchange for more legal attache positions that would benefit the FBI abroad, and allow them to send more agents to countries where the FBI's access is ordinarily restricted. Despite claims by top FBI officials, including Strzok, several of those emails were determined to contain classified information. "I received the email below from David Kendall and I called him back," then-FBI General Counsel James Baker wrote to the agency's top brass, including Comey, Page and Strzok, in an email. However, at least 18 classified emails sent from Abedin's account were found by the FBI on the Weiner laptop. “It is big news that, just days before the presidential election, Hillary Clinton’s personal lawyer pressured the top lawyer for the FBI on the infamous Weiner laptop emails,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. When will the Justice Department and FBI finally do an honest investigation of the Clinton email scandal?” Separately, another email from Page, apparently sent in response to a Judicial Watch lawsuit, discussed an apparent attempt by the State Department to pressure the FBI to downgrade the classification level of a Clinton email. Fox News has previously reported, citing FBI documents, that a senior State Department official proposed a quid pro quo to convince the FBI to strip the classification on an email from Clinton’s server – and repeatedly tried to “influence” the bureau’s decision when his offer was denied, even taking his plea up the chain of command. "Prior to the initiation of the FBI’s investigation of former Secretary Clinton’s personal email server, the FBI was asked to review and make classification determinations on FBI emails and information which were being produced by the State Department pursuant to FOIA [a Freedom of Information Act request]. A senior State Department official requested the FBI re-review that email to determine whether it was in fact classified or whether it might be protected from release under a different FOIA exemption," the FBI said. "The FBI official subsequently told the senior State official that the email was appropriately classified at the Secret level and that the FBI would not change the classification of the email.

Donald Trump will deny having ever discussed former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn with former FBI director James Comey, if he is questioned about it in a sit down interview with special counsel Robert Mueller, according to the president’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Comey testified to senators in last year that Trump told him during an Oval Office meeting that he wished Comey would drop a probe into Flynn’s contact with Russian diplomats before Trump was sworn in as president. The conversation underpins any potential obstruction of justice claim that Mueller may bring as part of the investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Giuliani’s comments on Sunday appear to contradict a previous appearanceon ABC last month, in which he said Trump did not directly ask Comey to drop the investigation but offered a more nuanced, ‘Can you give him a break?’ that in his experience as a prosecutor “doesn’t determine not going forward”. “There was no conversation about Michael Flynn. The President didn’t find out that Comey believed there was until about, I think, it was February when it supposedly took place. Memo came out in May. “Then all of the sudden in May he says he felt obstructed. “The president says he never told Comey he should go easy on Flynn. “So if he goes in and testifies to that under oath, instead of this being a dispute, they can say it’s perjury.” Giuliani gave further insight into the Trump team’s thinking, softening claims that a sitting president can never be subjected to obstruction of justice complaints.

A Republican strategist leapt to the defense of President Donald Trump following comments made by former FBI Director James Comey at the weekend. Comey told ABC news Sunday that Trump is "morally unfit to be president." "There are so many in Congress that are morally unfit," she told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" Tuesday. "I know a lot of politicians that are morally unfit, and what ideal do we have? Trump fired Comey last year during an FBI probe into possible ties between alleged Russian meddling in the U.S. election and Trump's 2016 campaign. Both Moscow, Trump and the White House deny any wrongdoing. "Are we going to have an idealistic view or are we going to have a problem-solver in there? (in the White House)," she asked. I think there's an objective view about what you should expect of your leaders and Donald Trump is not even close to that," he said Tuesday morning. "Do you believe this (Trump) is a person who's a man of principle and character, the answer is clearly no, so then the question is why do you defend him?," he questioned.

Hillary Clinton in an interview that aired Sunday again blamed former FBI Director James Comey for her loss in the 2016 presidential election. "I would have won but for Jim Comey's letter on Oct. 28," Clinton told CNN. "I think every day that goes by, the evidence of that becomes clearer." She added: "And I don't blame any woman who hears that, 'Oh the FBI's opening another investigation into Hillary Clinton' for saying 'Well, I'm not wasting my vote' or 'I can't vote for her' or 'I'm just not going to vote now.' "And there was unfortunately a lot of noise at the end with the Comey letter and WikiLeaks that raised a lot of questions in the minds and hearts of a lot of women." Clinton has in the past put blame on Comey for her election loss. In an interview last month, she said she was "dumbfounded" when she learned the former FBI director was renewing the investigation into her private email server just days before the election. Clinton during the interview that aired Sunday also said she was "appalled" by the level of sexism she saw. "And obviously the behavior of Trump, both in the past and during the campaign, was kind of 'exhibit A' of what we're up against," she said.