DOJ Initial Russia Hearings

My point is, all the intelligence officials don't have this information but some White House staff does? What are the chances that this is Bannon?

Also, "incidental" surveillance is not illegal or against any ethics that Trump thinks Obama did. In fact, this flies in the face of Trump's claim that Obama had his building "wire tapped".

This is interesting though.


 
Right, from what I understand it's kind of the "here's the story we want out there" stuff. Tbh, it's hard to want to keep up with all of this sometimes. Nunes' behavior has certainly been...odd.

 
BigRedBuster said:
My point is, all the intelligence officials don't have this information but some White House staff does? What are the chances that this is Bannon?

Also, "incidental" surveillance is not illegal or against any ethics that Trump thinks Obama did. In fact, this flies in the face of Trump's claim that Obama had his building "wire tapped".

This is interesting though.
Click to expand...
I'll tell you exactly what this is.

This is them trying to sweep the story about the WH feeding information directly to Nunes, in secret, under the rug. After the fact, they are trying to make it seem like they're some open, transparent body trying to help this investigation. In reality, they tried to slip to info that helped them to the Chairman of the House Intel Committee covertly so that he could use it to host a press conference and try to defend them.

This is how the Trump administration operates. They will break rules and norms and disregard ethics at will... until they get caught. And then they try to do damage control. Only when they're forced to.

This is a lame attempt to appear as a helpful, neutral arbiter only happening because they got busted.

 
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Here's a couple of really good comments from the reddit thread about this that helped me make sense of it.

This story has more meaning now with regards to Cohen-Watnick: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/trump-national-security-mcmaster-overrule-236065This is huge.



President Donald Trump has overruled a decision by his national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, to sideline a key intelligence operative who fell out of favor with some at the Central Intelligence Agency, two sources told POLITICO.


On Friday, McMaster told the National Security Council’s senior director for intelligence programs, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, that he would be moved to another position in the organization.
The conversation followed weeks of pressure from career officials at the CIA who had expressed reservations about the 30-year-old intelligence operative and pushed for his ouster.
But Cohen-Watnick appealed McMaster’s decision to two influential allies with whom he had forged a relationship while working on Trump’s transition team — White House advisers Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner. They brought the matter to Trump on Sunday, and the president agreed that Cohen-Watnick should remain as the NSC’s intelligence director, according to two people with knowledge of the episode.
Trump is directly implicated in this. Trump -> Cohen-Watnick -> Nunes

Trump's directly involved in obstruction of a congressional investigation into Trump.

Great secondary source on obstruction: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34303.pdf

“The crime of obstruction of [such] proceedings has three essential elements. First, there must be a proceeding pending before a department or agency of the United States. Second, the defendant must be aware of the pending proceeding. Third, the defendant must have intentionally endeavored corruptly to influence, obstruct or impede the pending proceeding.”
1) Obviously there are investigative proceedings taking place in Congress.

2) Despite Trump saying they are a hoax, he is well aware of the investigations. See Twitter.

3) This is the trick. All you have to do is tie Trump to Cohen-Watnick. Shouldn't be too difficult based on what is already public info.

Put Ellis and Cohen-Watnick under oath. Find out where they got the documents from and who told them to leak it to Nunes.

Also, Nunes is going to have to answer some FBI questions now.

Kushner and Bannon are also involved in this. They are the two that carried out Don's orders in intervening and saving Cohen-Watnick from McMaster's dismissal. This is NOT a decision that would be taken without the President's authorization. McMaster just got the job. They took heat for going against him so fast.

Edit: Don't forget Nunes' panic when Manu Raju asked him if the White House asked him to shut down Tuesday's Sally Yates open hearing: https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/846750833534537728

===============================


After Flynn was ousted, his #2, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, was told by Flynn's replacement (McMaster) that he would be re-located in the department. But Cohen-Watnick complained about being moved to Kushner and Bannon, who then got Trump to over-ride McMaster's decision to move Cohen-Watnick, and said he had to stay in his position as intelligence director.

So.

Flynn is fired. Flynn's replacement is going to get rid of Flynn's #2. #2 complains to Kushner/Bannon. Kushner/Bannon tell Trump not to let McMaster move #2. Trump obliges. And now it comes out that this #2 is the one who leaked to Nunes and got him to f#*k up the House Intelligence Commitee. So there now exists a chain where in it's not impossible to believe that Trump was giving orders to Nunes to obstruct the Russia investigation.


 
Let's not gloss over who these aides were, either:

  • Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council....Mr. Cohen-Watnick is a former Defense Intelligence Agency official who was originally brought to the White House by Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser.

  • Michael Ellis, a lawyer who works on national security issues at the White House Counsel’s Office and formerly worked on the staff of the House Intelligence Committee.



So, someone who was brought in by Flynn, who got fired for lying about Russia, and Nunes' OWN FORMER EMPLOYEE who just took a job at the White House a few weeks ago.

Nunes is an embarrassment.

Live look at investigation:

giphy.gif


Edit: Whistle beat me to the punch. The story about the White House is simply the reaction to this bombshell. They're trying to make it seem like this is normal -- essentially saying "Oops, they know we gave the info to Nunes. Better pretend we want to give it to everyone now."

This is not normal.

 
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Whistlebritches said:
Here's a couple of really good comments from the reddit thread about this that helped me make sense of it.

This story has more meaning now with regards to Cohen-Watnick: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/trump-national-security-mcmaster-overrule-236065This is huge.



President Donald Trump has overruled a decision by his national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, to sideline a key intelligence operative who fell out of favor with some at the Central Intelligence Agency, two sources told POLITICO.


On Friday, McMaster told the National Security Council’s senior director for intelligence programs, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, that he would be moved to another position in the organization.
The conversation followed weeks of pressure from career officials at the CIA who had expressed reservations about the 30-year-old intelligence operative and pushed for his ouster.
But Cohen-Watnick appealed McMaster’s decision to two influential allies with whom he had forged a relationship while working on Trump’s transition team — White House advisers Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner. They brought the matter to Trump on Sunday, and the president agreed that Cohen-Watnick should remain as the NSC’s intelligence director, according to two people with knowledge of the episode.
Trump is directly implicated in this. Trump -> Cohen-Watnick -> Nunes

Trump's directly involved in obstruction of a congressional investigation into Trump.

Great secondary source on obstruction: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34303.pdf

“The crime of obstruction of [such] proceedings has three essential elements. First, there must be a proceeding pending before a department or agency of the United States. Second, the defendant must be aware of the pending proceeding. Third, the defendant must have intentionally endeavored corruptly to influence, obstruct or impede the pending proceeding.”
1) Obviously there are investigative proceedings taking place in Congress.

2) Despite Trump saying they are a hoax, he is well aware of the investigations. See Twitter.

3) This is the trick. All you have to do is tie Trump to Cohen-Watnick. Shouldn't be too difficult based on what is already public info.

Put Ellis and Cohen-Watnick under oath. Find out where they got the documents from and who told them to leak it to Nunes.

Also, Nunes is going to have to answer some FBI questions now.

Kushner and Bannon are also involved in this. They are the two that carried out Don's orders in intervening and saving Cohen-Watnick from McMaster's dismissal. This is NOT a decision that would be taken without the President's authorization. McMaster just got the job. They took heat for going against him so fast.

Edit: Don't forget Nunes' panic when Manu Raju asked him if the White House asked him to shut down Tuesday's Sally Yates open hearing: https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/846750833534537728

===============================


After Flynn was ousted, his #2, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, was told by Flynn's replacement (McMaster) that he would be re-located in the department. But Cohen-Watnick complained about being moved to Kushner and Bannon, who then got Trump to over-ride McMaster's decision to move Cohen-Watnick, and said he had to stay in his position as intelligence director.

So.

Flynn is fired. Flynn's replacement is going to get rid of Flynn's #2. #2 complains to Kushner/Bannon. Kushner/Bannon tell Trump not to let McMaster move #2. Trump obliges. And now it comes out that this #2 is the one who leaked to Nunes and got him to f#*k up the House Intelligence Commitee. So there now exists a chain where in it's not impossible to believe that Trump was giving orders to Nunes to obstruct the Russia investigation.
Click to expand...
giphy.gif


(That comparison will never get old.)

 
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Kinda blows my theory that he had already flipped.

But more interesting to me is that his lawyer has shopped around his immunity offer and nobody has accepted it. Tells me that perhaps the dirt we have is pretty solid.

 
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