Big Tech Giant Companies Have A Private Meeting To Censor AmericaReps from up to a dozen of the US’s biggest tech companies plan to meet in San Francisco to discuss efforts to counter manipulation of their platforms.
Representatives from a host of the biggest US tech companies, including Facebook and Twitter, have scheduled a private meeting for Friday to share their tactics in preparation for the 2018 midterm elections.
Last week, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, invited employees from a dozen companies, including Google, Microsoft, and Snapchat, to gather at Twitter’s headquarters in downtown San Francisco, according to an email obtained by BuzzFeed News.
“As I’ve mentioned to several of you over the last few weeks, we have been looking to schedule a follow-on discussion to our industry conversation about information operations, election protection, and the work we are all doing to tackle these challenges,” Gleicher wrote.
The meeting, the Facebook official wrote, will have a three-part agenda: each company will present the work they’ve been doing to counter information operations; there will be a discussion period for problems each company faces; and a talk about whether such a meeting should become a regular occurrence.
In May, nine of those companies met at Facebook to discuss similar problems, alongside two US government representatives, Department of Homeland Security Under Secretary Chris Krebs and Mike Burham from the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, created in November. Attendees left the meeting discouraged that they received little information from the government.
Tech companies, Facebook and Twitter in particular, have faced intense scrutiny for how slowly they initially reacted to reports that foreign intelligence and affiliated operations used their platforms to manipulate users ahead of the 2016 election, leading to drops in user confidence and a threat of regulation from lawmakers.
In February, special counsel Robert Mueller’s office charged 13 people affiliated with Russia’s Internet Research Agency — a “troll factory” where employees created personas across multiple platforms — with breaking laws in order to influence American voters. Since then, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, and YouTube have each had at least one public purge of accounts believed to be foreign influence operations.
The meeting highlights tech companies’ recent efforts to be more proactive with governments’ use of their sites to achieve political goals. Several companies have announced operations this week where they partnered with other organizations to address such problems.
On Tuesday, Microsoft announced that it had, for the 12th time since 2016, legally acquired control of a handful of web domains registered by Russian military intelligencefor phishing operations, then shut them down. The next day, after receiving a tip from the threat intelligence company FireEye, Facebook and Twitter announced they had taken down a network of fake news sites and spoofed users meant to create sympathy for the Iranian government’s worldview. Google made a similar announcement about YouTube on Thursday.
President Trump continued to attack his attorney general a day after Jeff Sessions hit back following Trump’s criticism that Sessions had no control over the Justice Department.
Sessions released a statement on Thursday saying he was in control of the Justice Department, hours after Trump disparaged him in an interview with Fox & Friends for recusing himself from the special counsel’s probe into Russian interference in 2016 election.
In his statement, Session said he would not be influenced by politics. “While I am Attorney General, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations,” he wrote. “I demand the highest standards, and when they are not met, I take action.”
In response, Trump took to Twitter Friday morning to taunt Sessions about his statement.

Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
“Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.” Jeff, this is GREAT, what everyone wants, so look into all of the corruption on the “other side” including deleted Emails, Comey lies & leaks, Mueller conflicts, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Ohr……
6:17 AM – Aug 24, 2018
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Referring to Sessions’ line about the Justice Department not being influenced by politics, Trump said, “Jeff, this is GREAT, what everyone wants, so look into all of corruption on the ‘other side…'”
He then urged Sessions to investigate several high-profile people who the president frequently targets, including Hillary Clinton, special counsel Robert Mueller, former FBI director James Comey, former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, former FBI agent Peter Strozk, former FBI attorney Lisa Page, and former Justice Department prosecutor Bruce Ohr.
He also urged Sessions to investigate “Christopher Steele & his phony and corrupt Dossier, the Clinton Foundation, illegal surveillance of Trump Campaign, Russian collusion by Dems.”
“Come on Jeff, you can do it, the country is waiting!” Trump said.

Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
….FISA abuse, Christopher Steele & his phony and corrupt Dossier, the Clinton Foundation, illegal surveillance of Trump Campaign, Russian collusion by Dems – and so much more. Open up the papers & documents without redaction? Come on Jeff, you can do it, the country is waiting!
6:28 AM – Aug 24, 2018
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The president also commented on Reality Winner, the former National Security Agency contractor who was sentenced on Thursday to 63 months for leaking evidence of Russian election hacking.
Trump called her crime “small potatoes compared to what Hillary Clinton did.” He then slammed Sessions saying, “So unfair Jeff, Double Standard.”
The president has berated and disparaged his attorney general repeatedly over two years ever since Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation.
On Thursday, in an interview with Fox News’ Ainsley Earhardt, Trump questioned the “kind of man” Sessions was for recusing himself after he took the job of attorney general.
“Even my enemies say that Jeff Sessions should have told you that he was going to recuse himself and then you wouldn’t have put him in,” Trump said. “He took the job and then he said, ‘I’m going to recuse myself.’ I said, ‘What kind of a man is this?’”
The only reason Trump said he gave Sessions the job was his loyalty and because he was an “original supporter.”
In his statement, Sessions said, “I took control of the Department of Justice the day I was sworn in, which is why we have had unprecedented success at effectuating the president’s agenda — one that protects the safety and security and rights of the American people, reduces violent crime, enforces our immigration laws, promotes economic growth, and advances religious liberty.”
This appears to be the second time this year that Sessions hit back against the president’s attack. In February, Sessions released a statement saying the Justice Department would act in a “fair and impartial manner” for “[a]s long as [he is] the Attorney General,” after Trump criticized his decision to have the inspector general look into allegations of abuse by the Justice Department in obtaining a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrant.
BuzzFeed News, which published the infamous dossier, is refusing to comment on recent comments from Lanny Davis, the Clinton-connected lawyer representing Michael Cohen
Davis is emphatically stating that the dossier’s allegations about Cohen are “100 percent” false. Davis claims that Cohen “never, never, ever” went to Prague, as the dossier alleges
The dossier is Exhibit A in Trump critics’ collusion conspiracy theory
For nearly 20 months, the allegations made in the infamous Steele dossier have hung like a cloud over the Trump administration and several of his former advisers.
The salacious 35-page document has become Exhibit A in President Donald Trump critics’ conspiracy theory that the campaign colluded with the Russian government to influence the 2016 election. Numerous news outlets, pundits and lawmakers have also pushed the theory.
But the dossier arguably suffered its heaviest blow on Wednesday after Clinton-connected lawyer Lanny Davis emphatically denied one of the document’s most intriguing allegations.
Davis said the dossier’s claims that his client, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, traveled to Prague in August 2016 as part of a conspiracy with the Kremlin are “100 percent” false.
Davis’ comments received little attention from the both the mainstream press and the entities that have pushed the dossier.
“We have no comment on Mr. Davis’s statements,” said Matt Mittenhal, a spokesman for BuzzFeed News, which published the dossier on Jan. 10, 2017.
Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that commissioned the dossier on behalf of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee, has also not weighed in. Joshua Levy, a lawyer for the firm, did not respond to a request for a response to Davis’ comments.
The DNC did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Marc Elias, the attorney who hired Fusion GPS on behalf of the Clinton campaign and DNC.
McClatchy News, which in April reported that special counsel Robert Mueller has evidence that Cohen did travel to Prague, says that it is sticking by its report. The article, written by reporters Greg Gordon and Peter Stone, breathed new life into the dossier’s claims about Cohen, but it has never been corroborated.
“We stand by our reporting,” said Jeanne Segal, a spokeswoman for McClatchy.
***
Denials about the dossier’s claims are as old as the salacious document itself.
Then President-elect Trump called the dossier “crap” during a press conference a day after BuzzFeed published the report. Cohen vehemently denied the allegations, as did former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Page is alleged in the dossier of being the Trump campaign’s conduit to the Kremlin. Though the allegations remain unverified, the FBI relied heavily on the dossier to obtain four surveillance warrants against Page.
Davis’ statements would seem to add substantial weight to Cohen’s denials, largely because he is far from a Trump supporter.
Davis is close friends with former President Bill and Hillary Clinton. He held an unofficial role as a surrogate for the Clinton campaign, which partnered with the DNC to pay Fusion GPS $1 million for the dossier.
Davis has also made it his mission over the past couple of months to discredit Trump regarding hush money payments to women who claimed to have had affairs with the former real estate mogul. The 74-year-old PR guru gave CNN an audio clip earlier this month of Cohen speaking with Trump about payments to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy playmate who claimed to have an affair with Trump in 2006.
Cohen pleaded guilty to a series of charges on Tuesday, including some that are related to the payoff to McDougal and Stormy Daniels. He also pleaded guilty to tax evasion and bank fraud.
***
Cohen last publicly disputed the dossier on June 28, when he wrote on Twitter that the “dossier misreports 15 allegations about me.”
“My entire statement must be quoted – I had nothing to do with Russian collusion or meddling!” he said.
It had been unclear if Cohen planned to maintain those denials in the wake of guilty plea earlier this week. But Davis answered the question in a series of interviews on Wednesday.
“Thirteen references to Mr. Cohen are false in the dossier, but he has never been to Prague in his life,” Davis said Wednesday in an interview on Bloomberg.
“Never, never in Prague. Did I make that? Never, never, ever. Ever,” Davis told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd.
“And the reason, just to let your viewers know, what we’re talking about is that the dossier, so-called, mentions his name 14 times, one of which is a meeting with Russians in Prague. Fourteen times false,” he continued.
Davis was even more emphatic in an interview with BBC Newsnight.
“The answer is 100 percent ‘no.’ Never has he ever been in Prague. And the 13 other references to my client in the so-called dossier are false,” Davis said in the interview, pounding the table to underscore each specific denial.
BBC Newsnight
✔@BBCNewsnight
“I told you I’m an Anglophile and you asked me the question I wanted you to ask me” Lanny Davis, Michael Cohen’s lawyer speaks to Evan Davis.@LannyDavis | @EvanHD | @BBCTwo | #newsnight
BuzzFeed and other news outlets ignored Davis’ statements (CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times and other major outlets have not picked up the story as of this writing), however, an attorney for another dossier target is weighing in.
“The one thing that we’ve always know for certain is that the allegations concerning Gubarev, Webzilla, and XBT are completely false, and to the extent that those allegations overlap with allegations concerning Mr. Cohen we knew those had to be false as well,” said Evan Fray-Witzer, a lawyer for Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian tech executive suing BuzzFeed over the dossier.
Cohen and Gubarev are both mentioned in the 17th and final dossier memo, dated Dec. 13, 2016. The memo alleges that Cohen traveled to Prague to pay hackers for cyber attacks against the Democratic National Committee.
The memo then claims that Gubarev’s companies infiltrated the DNC’s computer networks using viruses, bots and malware.
“The special counsel indicted the people involved in the hacking and those people aren’t our clients. We may never know precisely how Gubarev, Webzilla, and XBT ended up in the Dossier, but we do know that after more than a year of trying, Buzzfeed has no evidence to support the allegations that they published about them,” Fray-Witzer told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Trump is punking the former tough talking Obama officials.
President Donald Trump tweeted Monday morning that those former intelligence officials who had emerged publicly to defend former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director John Brennan had done so to protect their former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director John Brennan interests.
Trump drew attention to the fact that holding high-level security clearance is often a prerequisite for the top jobs in Washington, DC, and that retaining that clearance after retirement — when it is no longer needed for public purposes — is a well-known perk of life at the top of the food chain in the Beltway “swamp.”
So Drain The Damn Swamp Now.
Trump began by responding to Brennan’s threat hat he might sue the president after Trump revoked his clearance last week. Brennan has described that decision as an attempt to stifle freedom of speech, and criticism of the president in particular.
But Trump said he would welcome a lawsuit as a chance to use discovery to uncover Brennan’s involvement in allegedly conducting surveillance on his campaign during the 2016 election, which led indirectly to the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller:
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
I hope John Brennan, the worst CIA Director in our country’s history, brings a lawsuit. It will then be very easy to get all of his records, texts, emails and documents to show not only the poor job he did, but how he was involved with the Mueller Rigged Witch Hunt. He won’t sue!
Trump then followed up by calling out the practice of using security clearance for economic gain:
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
Everybody wants to keep their Security Clearance, it’s worth great prestige and big dollars, even board seats, and that is why certain people are coming forward to protect Brennan. It certainly isn’t because of the good job he did! He is a political “hack.”
Trump’s argument about corrupt relationships at the top levels of intelligence and Beltway companies is bolstered by a new book by Seamus Bruner of the Government Accountability Institute: Compromised: How Money and Politics Drive FBI Corruption.
Democratic Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison wants ex-girlfriend Karen Monahan to know that the two “don’t have to destroy each other” over her claim that Ellison physically abused her.
Monahan, a liberal activist for Sierra Club, accused Ellison of physically and emotionally abusing her and claims to have a video of him dragging her off a bed, although she has yet to produce it.
Ellison is the deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and on Tuesday won the party’s nomination for Minnesota attorney general. He has repeatedly denied Monahan’s allegations.
A reporter for local Minnesota station WCCO asked Ellison on Wednesday what he would say to Monahan if he could.
“I would say: we loved each other, we don’t have to destroy each other,” Ellison said.
“Is that what you think she is trying to do?” asked the interviewer.
“I don’t know, I don’t want to speculate on motive,” Ellison answered.
Monahan’s son Austin first aired the allegations against Ellison on Saturday and claimed to have witnessed the alleged video of Ellison’s abuse.
“I was using my moms computer trying to download something and I clicked on a file, I found over 100 text and twitters messages and video almost 2 min long that showed Keith Ellison dragging my mama off the bed by her feet, screaming and calling her a ‘fucking bitch’ and telling her to get the fuck out of his house,” Austin wrote in a viral Facebook post.
“Sitting all this time, watching what our mom went through and not being able to say or do anything was hard as hell. None of you know the hell our family has gone through. I don’t think half of you would even care,” Austin added.
“We watched her so called political friends stand by say or do nothing. People had an idea what happened and never reached out to my mom. The same people who are posting about social justice are ready to smear my mom, protect a person who abused her and broke the law.”
Like her son, Monahan has also said that she expects to be smeared for speaking out against Ellison.
“I was well prepared for the smears, etc. It is exactly what I wanted to bring to light,” she tweeted Monday.
“This issue is so much bigger than my story, but with each story that surfaces, we make a dent each time and it brings us closer to justice.”
DOJ attorney George Toscas will be deposed Thursday as part of a congressional investigation into possible FISA abuse.
Staffers with the House Judiciary and House Oversight Committees will quiz Toscas about DOJ official Bruce Ohr.
Ohr will be interviewed on Aug. 28.
House Republicans will resume an investigation of the FBI and DOJ’s handling of the Russia investigation on Thursday with a deposition of George Z. Toscas, a national security attorney at the Department of Justice.
Toscas, who handles counterterrorism and counterespionage cases, will appear for a deposition at 10 a.m. before staffers with the House Judiciary and House Government & Oversight Committees, a source familiar with the matter tells The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Toscas was one of 17 current and former FBI and Justice Department officials included on a list submitted to the two House committees by California Rep. Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
Nunes suggested interviewing Toscas and the other officials regarding an investigation into the FBI and Justice Department’s possible abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
Congressional Republicans have probed whether the agencies misled federal surveillance judges by relying on the unverified Steele dossier to obtain FISA warrants against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Toscas is mentioned throughout text messages exchanged between former FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page. Strzok and Page, neither of which work for the FBI (Strzok was fired on Aug. 10), mentioned Toscas most often during the FBI’s Hillary Clinton email investigation.
The Washington Post has reported that Toscas was the Justice Department official who reminded then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe about Clinton emails found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. McCabe had been informed about the emails weeks earlier but failed to take action on them until late-October 2016.
Strzok and Page, who have already been interviewed by the House panels, also mention Toscas in text messages sent at key points in the FBI’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign.
Strzok sent one message to Page on July 30, 2016, the day before the FBI opened the Russia probe, that appears to reference Toscas and then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
“Do you know if Andy got concurrence back from George about the preamble? No need to ask Andy right now, I think we can in very good faith date the [letterhead memorandum] July 2016,” Strzok wrote.
TheDCNF’s source says that Republicans will ask Toscas about the origins of the government’s Russia probe as well as about Bruce Ohr, the Justice Department official who served as a back channel between the FBI and Christopher Steele, the former British spy who wrote the dossier.
Ohr was also in contact with Glenn Simpson, the founder of Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that hired Steele as part of an anti-Trump project financed by the Clinton campaign and DNC.
Ohr’s wife, a Russia expert named Nellie Ohr, worked for Fusion GPS on the Trump project.
Ohr, who was demoted in December from his position as assistant deputy attorney general, will be interviewed by the two House committees on Aug. 28.
Republicans want to know who at the Justice Department, if anyone, directed Ohr to maintain contact with Steele. The relationship has raised questions because the FBI cut ties with Steele on Nov. 1, 2016 because of the former spy’s unauthorized contacts with the media.
Lawmakers have also questioned why Ohr was meeting with Steele despite claims from top DOJ officials that he was not on the team leading the Russia investigation.
“To my knowledge he wasn’t working on the Russian matter,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein testified on June 28.
Ohr was interviewed a dozen times by the FBI after the election about his interactions with Steele. Text messages and emails recently provided to Congress also show that Ohr and Steele were in contact throughout 2016 and 2017.
