Excerpt: "The House intel committee GOP leader refused to answer behind closed doors if he coordinated with the president's team on his report blasting Rosenstein, Comey, and McCabe."
House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes. (photo: Getty Images )
Devin Nunes Won't Say If He Worked With White House on Anti-FBI Memo
31 January 18
The House intel committee GOP leader refused to answer behind closed doors if he coordinated with the president�s team on his report blasting Rosenstein, Comey, and McCabe.
he Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee refused to answer when a colleague asked him if he had coordinated his incendiary surveillance memo with the White House, The Daily Beast has learned.
During Monday�s contentious closed-door committee meeting, Rep. Mike Quigley, a Democrat, asked Nunes point-blank if his staffers had been talking with the White House as they compiled a four-page memo alleging FBI and Justice Department abuses over surveillance of President Trump�s allies in the Russia probe.
According to sources familiar with the exchange, Nunes made a few comments that didn�t answer the question before finally responding, �I�m not answering.�
Spokespeople for Nunes and for the White House did not immediately respond.
Now that the committee Republicans voted to release the memo, it has been reportedly delivered to the White House. Under congressional rules, Trump has four more days to decide if he will assent to the memo�s public release.
Quigley�s question harkened back to Nunes� history of surreptitiously working with the White House to deflect from the myriad inquiries into possible coordination between Trump�s associates and the Kremlin.
In March, a day after then-FBI Director James Comey confirmed the bureau was investigating that prospect, Nunes claimed he had seen alarming information indicating Trump advisers had been swept up in surveillance. Nunes said he had seen �dozens of reports� supporting his claim, which appeared to substantiate the president�s baseless claim that the Obama administration had wiretapped Trump Tower.
But Nunes did not reveal that senior White House officials had provided him with the information when he made a late-night trip to the White House. Nunes then lied to Bloomberg�s Eli Lake to conceal the White House�s role.
Backed by House Speaker Paul Ryan, Nunes withstood Democratic demands for him to recuse himself from the committee�s Russia probe. Instead, he formally placed the inquiry in the hands of fellow committee Republicans Mike Conaway and Trey Gowdy while he underwent a House ethics committee investigation.
But Nunes remained in an influential position within the committee, using his chairman�s prerogative to unilaterally subpoena to Trump targets like the Fusion GPS firm. And now that Nunes is out from under the ethics committee�s scrutiny, he has intensified his moves to deflect blame from Trump.
His four-page surveillance memo has now far overshadowed the committee�s Russia investigation. As The Daily Beast first reported, it names Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, former FBI Director James Comey, and retiring Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. Every Democrat on the House intelligence committee has said Nunes� memo manipulates the intelligence behind the surveillance request in order to exculpate Trump.
�A misleading set of talking points attacking the FBI...yet another desperate and flailing attempt to undermine Special Counsel Mueller and the FBI,� Democrats characterized it in a Jan. 19 statement.
The New York Times reported this week that Rosenstein this spring signed off on renewing a surveillance warrant on Trump campaign aide Carter Page�who had previously passed documents to a Russian spy�indicating that even Trump appointees saw a sufficient basis for a counterintelligence investigation into Page.
But Rosenstein, who oversees special counsel Robert Mueller�s investigation of Trump�s circle and Russia, is specifically named in Nunes� memo�and has become a right-wing target of opportunity. After Nunes won a vote on Monday to declassify his memo, the Fox News commentator Jeanine Pirro said on Sean Hannity�s show that the alleged abuses in the memo merit a special prosecutor, �not Rod Rosenstein, who right now is in the middle of all this.�
Democrats are warning that Pirro�s sentiment reflect the true purpose of Nunes� memo: to provide a pretext for firing Mueller or his allies in the Justice Department and the FBI; or to have a ready-made narrative to undermine any legal move Mueller ultimately makes against Trump. Mueller is reportedly now seeking to interview Trump personally but it is unclear if Trump�s lawyers will assent.
Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, tweeted Wednesday that Nunes� memo is �a partisan sham cooked up to undermine the FBI, DOJ, and the Mueller probe. House Republicans are playing a very dangerous game.�
It is also unclear if the House intelligence committee�s Russia investigation will go anywhere. It has not held an open hearing since Nov. 1, and now Nunes has opened a murky investigation into the FBI and Justice Department itself�one that Nunes used on Monday to dismiss law enforcement concerns about releasing his memo.
Nunes� Democratic counterpart, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, pledged Monday night that the Russia inquest would continue, and announced that Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, would testify on Wednesday. But since then, a Democratic staffer confirmed to The Daily Beast, Bannon�s appearance has been postponed.
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Your love for the Constitution-ha ting NSA is duly noted.
Walter? Did you write this?
The Canadian equivalent is the Toronto Globe&Mail which likes to fancy itself as Canada's "newspaper of record". I parted company with them when they recommended electing a Conservative majority govt (Stephen Harper as PM) in the last federal election campaign. They got their wish - I often wonder if they regret it. Common sense would suggest that they should. Anyway, for that and other reasons I gave up on them and shifted to the Toronto Star - which is also partisan but unlike the G&M doesn't pretend it isn't - and is partisan in a more civilized way. Also, the Star has much better columnists: Haroon Siddiqi, Heather Mallick, Linda Mcuaig, Thomas Walkom, Tim Harper, Rick Salutin, Chantal Hebert, ...
1) Participatory Media who's shares are owned by all Founder, Worker, Supplier & Consumer stakeholders who are represented in systems of Progressive Ownership in distinct associations & on the corporate board of directors. Time-based accounting in participatory companies accords credits for each stakeholder's exceptional natural contributions. When each of these 4 stakeholders exceptionally contribute expertise, time, resources, money, property, good, services or patronage, there are ways to measure the market value & accord shares.
https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/structure/7-participatory-companies
2) The news presented covers all perspectives, reporting from all sides with often conflicting vantages given. If media is not presenting all sides, they have a particular agenda, are lazy & usually are deliberately lying. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/structure/both-sides-now-equal-time-recorded-dialogues
In 1975, the WP's unionized printers went out on strike. The post's response was to fire them and replace them with non-union labor. One can I think make a reasonable case that this became the precedent for Ronald Reagan doing the same thing to the unionized air traffic controllers in 1981 (hard to imagine Reagan's staff was unaware of this move on the part of the "liberal" WP and figured hey if the "liberal" WP can do it it's a no brainer for us to do the same).
We cannot.
And All Scoundrels Rejoice.
What goes around comes around. What do we expect for the invasions & destruction of humanity's sustainable vastly abundant worldwide 'indigenous' (Latin 'self-generatin g') cultures? Do we expect to just continue on in the destructive colonial patterns we worship? If we want to move forward as a sustainable people, then we will have to address our foundations. www.indigenecommunity.info
Major General Albert Stubblebine, a member of U.S. Military Intelligence Hall of Fame,
tried to get the truth out that no plane hit the Pentagon and the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition. No mainstream media including The Guardian would cover his statements.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daNr_TrBw6E
Ted Gunderson, former head of FBI for Los Angeles, Houston and Memphis, gave his opinions on why 9/11 was an inside job. No mainstream media would cover that either.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRaezLTU2a0
So why is the media covering Snowdon?
9/11 is the key to ending war forever, in my opinion.
If the majority knew the truth, it would certainly end the fake war on terror. But would that cause our illusion of democracy to be replaced with the very apparent police state that is lurking in the background, stockpiling millions of rounds of hollow-point bullets?
They have the wealth. They own the media.
They have the police state in place.
And most of the people I talk to have bought their lies.
So why is he cheap if you didn't know?
The answers are 1) Nothing, and 2)Because the rightwing (and extreme left) saw this as an opportunity to vilify Obama.
The uninformed majority in this country would most likely buy the false premise that if it is criminal to reveal the spying, the spying must be legal.
Are Snowden's actions worse than Berger's who only had to pay a fine?
Yes, of course they are! Snowden stole and SHARED classified US intelligence with foreign powers who do not necessarily have our best interests at heart. That's textboook espionage and probably legally treasonous.
Just keep tracking !
Anyone read today's Paul Craig Roberts article about Putin's remarks at the G8?
So thankful for anyone (like Greenwald) who believes that facts are good things, and competency should be a requirement in journalism. Or call the reports and paper, "opinion", not news.
God protect and preserve you, and the nothing but True Liberty and Freedom, and True Journalism, that you represent and uphold, Glenn Greenwald. God speed, True Patriot; and may you live long and prosper in those continued pursuits!
The case of Gary Webb is monumental. When he published his stories in the San Jose Mercury about CIA and cocaine traffic to gangs in LA, the WaPo lead the attack on Webb for his reporting. I recall Pincus was a leader in that attack.
We must remember that Walter Pincus was one reporter exposed in the 70s as having taken payments from the CIA. The Church Committee exposed 300 US journalists who took bribes from the CIA -- regular payroll they called it.
The WaPo story on Greenwald is not new. This is what Pincus and the Post have done over and over. They are the gatekeepers of news. They break the stories that they think americans should know and they cover up what they think americans should not know. Katherine Graham, long time owner of the Post, said exactly this in an interview, "there are some things the people should not know." Hardly, the right attitude for an owner of a major newspaper.