wolfd Loc: Vancouver, Canada

You really are ignorant and each of your subsequent posts provides further evidence of that. Please provide details of the 'Task Force(s) that you keep mentioning. Who appointed it / them? (ie Congress, Senate, Justice dept? etc.) When were they set up / disbanded ?
Nowhere did I say Mueller's investigation was the only one going. My response was in reply to your ridiculous comment that the Trumpgate investigations have been going for about two years.

The key investigations going on right now and the respective dates of commencement are as follows:

Senate Intelligence Committee - Jan 10/17
Senate Judiciary Committee - Feb 2 / 17
House Intelligence Committee - March 1 / 17
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee - March 22 / 17
Special Counsel via the Justice Dept. - May 17 / 17

Each of the noted committees have specific authorities although most of them overlap.
BTW It was tRump's efforts to control the FBI investigation that led to Comey's firing. I don't remember the last time an FBI Director was fired.
Trump has a smoking-gun connection with Russia and he wanted to replace Comey with someone who would whitewash the investigation
That is called obstruction of justice, if Republicans in Congress ever remember to put their country ahead of their party.
There is one defensible case for firing James Comey. During the election, he handled the presentation of the Clinton and Trump investigations pretty unfairly, and may have helped swing a Presidential election in the process.
If you look at the grounds for Comey’s firing — that he was partisan and unprofessional in his handling of the Clinton case no. Donald Trump doesn’t get to make that case. Not only was Trump the direct beneficiary of the very behavior they fired him for, but Trump the Candidate GLOATED about those revelations on a daily basis and praised Comey for coming forward with the information.

drainbamage

Oh dear, it seems like your newly found pal, that you told not to keep so quiet, is now not keeping quiet enough? I've got my lawn chair and popcorn LOL!

KGOldWolf

Yeah , it is confounding that two people with similar political preferences should feuding like this.

I can only imagine the Cheshire Cat-like grin on your face! You will undoubtedly sleep well tonight.
🤯🤯 😴

drainbamage

Mmmmmm, this popcorn is good.

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

SHARE

DISPATCH JANUARY 4, 201

WHY THE FBI BEGAN INVESTIGATING TRUMP-RUSSIA

As Bannon and Trump take their feud public, it’s important not to overlook the New York Times Papadopoulos piece from last week. It answers the question of why the FBI began investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. But Papadopoulos’s revelations weren’t the first the FBI heard on the subject; rather, he seems to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
By May of 2016, the US intelligence community already had plenty of information to go on:

• Intel on connections between Trump and Russia reportedly dates all the way back to spring 2015, when, according to The Wall Street Journal, “U.S. spy agencies captured Russian government officials discussing associates of Mr. Trump.”

• Foreign intelligence began picking up on Russia’s conversations with people in Trump’s orbit as well: According to The Guardian, the UK spotted suspicious “interactions” during “routine surveillance of Russian intelligence assets” in late 2015 —and told the US.

• “A number of western agencies shared further information on contacts between Trump’s inner circle,” including Germany, Estonia, Poland, Australia, France, and the Netherlands.

• In April 2016, “an intelligence agency of one of the Baltic states” reportedly gave CIA Director John Brennan “a tape recording of a conversation about money from the Kremlin going into the U.S. presidential campaign,” prompting him to convene a joint counter-intelligence task force with 5 other agencies, including the FBI.

In other words, Papadopoulos’s drunken boast just forced the FBI to do what it should have been doing already: investigate an unprecedented attack on American democracy—and the potential complicity of a presidential campaign.

https://themoscowproject.org/dispatch/fbi-began-investigating-trump-russia/




6 different agencies have come together to investigate Trump's possible Russia ties

New reports indicate it’s been going on since last spring.

By Zeeshan Aleem@ZeeshanAleemzeeshan.aleem@vox.com Jan 21, 2017, 9:30am EST

Donald Trump has dismissed allegations that he’s in some way connected to Russian attempts to influence the presidential election as nothing but a “political witch hunt.”

But a number of reports in the past couple of weeks have revealed that according to unnamed sources, investigators from six different US intelligence and law enforcement agencies have been looking into possible links between Russian officials and Trump’s presidential campaign as far back as last spring.

Reports from BBC, McClatchy, the New York Times, and others make distinct but overlapping claims about the collaborative investigation into a host of questions about the Trump team’s possibly connections with the Kremlin.

BBC’s report claims that an interagency group was created when the CIA director last April allegedly received “a tape recording of a conversation about money from the Kremlin going into the US presidential campaign.” The McClatchy report says the interagency group is looking into whether the Kremlin itself funneled money to hackers as part of Russia’s attempt to covertly help Trump win his campaign. And the Times report says that key former Trump advisers are being scrutinized closely for potential links with Moscow.

Crucially, all the reports indicate that this investigation began before the FBI was fed the now-infamous dossier alleging that Russian operatives had sensitive information that would embarrass and undermine Trump, and that there was “a continuing exchange of information during the [presidential] campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government.”

The new reports offer no insight into the claims made in the dossier, but they do show that many in the US intelligence community are taking claims about Trump’s links to Russia very seriously. And if they were to find concrete evidence of links between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, it would have the potential to unravel Trump’s entire presidency.

For that reason, it’s quite likely that they could be stonewalled as Trump’s appointees to head these agencies take their posts — in fact, the New York Times said that its sources spoke to reporters precisely because they feared that Trump would do just that.

Here’s a quick rundown of what we know so far, what we don’t, and how Trump could shut down the whole investigation.

The intelligence community is concerned about Trump-Russia links

It’s worth stepping back and noting that at this point there’s a consensus in the intelligence community that the Kremlin was behind the email hacks of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta.

Earlier in January, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declassified a report that concluded with “high confidence” — based on intelligence gathered by the FBI, CIA, and NSA — that Russia’s Vladimir Putin oversaw an “influence campaign” designed to interfere in the 2016 election. The report explicitly stated that the intention was to denigrate the US electoral process, hurt Clinton’s chances, and raise Trump’s.

What these emerging reports suggest, though, is that officials in several US intelligence agencies have evidently decided that it’s worth investigating the possibility of links between Trump’s campaign and Russia.

[b]The BBC report, published on January 12, claims that after the CIA was allegedly shown a tape with a compromising conversation about money being funneled from the Kremlin to Trump’s campaign, a joint task force was formed. Personnel from the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency, Justice Department, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, and representatives of the director of national intelligence formed an interagency working group to look into the matter.

According to the BBC, the interagency group obtained a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the highly secretive US court that overseas warrants related to national security investigations, to intercept electronic records from two Russian banks. A lawyer familiar with the case told the BBC that three of Trump’s associates were the primary targets of the inquiry, but that ultimately “it's clear this is about Trump.”

The McClatchy report, published on Tuesday, claims that the joint task force’s investigation looked into, among other things, “how money may have moved from the Kremlin to covertly help Trump win.” This includes looking into whether the Kremlin may have sent money to the hackers of the DNC servers and Podesta’s email address to help get Trump elected.

According to the report, “One of the allegations involves whether a system for routinely paying thousands of Russian-American pensioners may have been used to pay some email hackers in the United States or to supply money to intermediaries who would then pay the hackers.”

The Times report says the working group is analyzing “intercepted communications and financial transactions” as part of a larger inquiry into links between Russian officials and Trump’s associates.

The Times piece also specifically names three former Trump advisers in particular who its sources say are under the magnifying glass: Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chair; Carter Page, a former foreign policy adviser for Trump; and Roger Stone, a former key adviser for Trump. Trump’s camp and the former advisers denied the possible links discussed in the New York Times report.

So far the reports all indicate that these links are possibilities that are being investigated. We don’t know that any of these connections this interagency group is reportedly investigating will actually materialize — or how well-grounded the concerns are. It does appear, though, that they’re substantial enough to merit the sustained attention of a six-agency task force.

The crucial question now is whether they’ll continue their investigations, or if the new Trump administration will take measures to disband the group, as some of its members seem to think they will.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/21/14335112/trump-russia-intelligence-fbi

drainbamage

[quote=Twardlow]SHARE

DISPATCH JANUARY 4, 201

WHY THE FBI BEGAN INVESTIGATING TRUMP-RUSSIA



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Annnnd there you have it. Twardlow cutting and pasting an answer to a well thought out post by wolf, who wrote his ideas on his own.
I actually walk away from wolf's postings thinking about them. They pose good, thoughtful ideas on behalf of the left. Though I don't agree with a lot of what he posts, I appreciate the position he takes. Twardlow, on the other hand, I'm sick of reading his cut-and-paste leftist crap whenever he tries to argue a point of his own with more and more cutting and pasting.

cwp3420

[quote=drainbamage]

That’s really all he has. Someone else’s ideas taken as his own.

drainbamage

Always. Wolf's ideas cause reflection. Twardlow's cause suspicion because the ideas he copies are others, not his own.

wolfd Loc: Vancouver, Canada

Thanks for your comments guys / gals.
Twardlow's replies are not really worth my time to respond.

elad Loc: Arizona

Good decision "wolf". This morning it was reported that the FBI had indeed used the phony dozier to get their fisa warrant to spy on the Trump campaign. It's difficult for most of us to believe that our "pristine" FBI can be so deceiving, dishonest, and obviously dishonest.

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

Your replies weren’t worth reading, you won’t be missed?

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

Sorry, you choose to be wildly misinformed! The truth is out there. FBI began investigation when some member of the Trump administration first called them “in conscience.” They had a task force of CIA, FBI, Treasury Department Financial Crimes people, and more—and way before the dossier.

thom w Loc: San Jose, CA

He doesn't have to check before saying something. When he gets it wrong or forgets what his beliefs are kevin Mccarthy sets him straight and he changes it. I've never heard him acknowledge a flip or a flop yet.
He said he would sign a clean DACA bill. Then he said there had to be funding of the wall for him to sign it. Then he said he would sign anything they bring him. Then he said it had to include the wall. I haven't checked his tweets this morning so I wouldn't want to guess his position right now.

thom w Loc: San Jose, CA

We will probably have to accept it to some extent. It may be that or having an elective atomic war. Do you really want 25 million or more to die, just so Trump can pretend he's a tough guy? (NK)
If Obama hadn't done what he did Iran might very well have nuclear weapons now.

thom w Loc: San Jose, CA

What would you have had Obama do?