President Trump on Saturday reacted to the indictment of 12 Russian military officers “for conspiring to interfere with the 2016 presidential election” by blaming former President Obama and the “deep state.”
“The stories you heard about the 12 Russians yesterday took place during the Obama Administration, not the Trump Administration,” he tweeted from Scotland. “Why didn’t they do something about it, especially when it was reported that President Obama was informed by the FBI in September, before the Election?”
He also expelled 35 Russian diplomats from the U.S. and ordered two Russian compounds to be closed.
Special counsel Robert Mueller is now leading the investigation into Russian interference in the election, as well as possible collusion within the Trump campaign. His probe led to the 12 indictments announced on Friday by the Justice Department. They are charged with hacking Democratic National Committee (DNC) officials and dispersing the stolen documents online.
The Trump administration has emphasized that the indictments do not indicate any level of collusion by a member of the Trump campaign. Trump has repeatedly said there was no collusion.
Trump went on to question “Where is the DNC Server, and why didn’t the FBI take possession of it?”
He proposed that the server could have been kept hidden by the “Deep State.”
The deep state is a conspiracy theory that claims high-level officials run a shadow government working against Trump.
Trump has suggested in the past a conspiracy around the computer servers at the DNC that Russians hacked during the election.
The FBI reportedly has not directly assessed the hacked server during the agency investigation, instead relying on information from a private security firm.
House Committee on the Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte on Friday subpoenaed former FBI Agent Peter Strzok to appear for a deposition next week.
Goodlatte issued the subpoena even though Strzok’s attorney said that Strzok is willing to testify voluntarily before Congress.
“We regret that the Committee felt it necessary to issue a subpoena when we repeatedly informed them that Pete was willing to testify voluntarily,” Strzok lawyer Aitan Goelman said in a statement after Goodlatte issued the subpoena.
A statement on the Judiciary Committee’s website said that the panel has “repeatedly requested to interview Mr. Strzok regarding his role in certain decisions, but he has yet to appear.”
As the FBI’s deputy chief of counterintelligence, Strzok oversaw the bureau’s investigation into possible Trump campaign ties to the Russian government. He was also a top investigator on the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton email probe. (RELATED: Strzok: ‘We’ll Stop’ Trump Presidency)
While working on the Trump-Russia matter, Strzok sent numerous text messages criticizing the then-presidential candidate. In one Aug. 8, 2016 text message, Strzok told FBI attorney Lisa Page that “we’ll stop” Trump’s presidency.
A Department of Justice inspector general’s report released June 14 blasted Strzok over the text messages, saying that the messages indicated a “biased state of mind” and implied “a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidate’s electoral prospects.”
Strzok was escorted from FBI headquarters June 15. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on Thursday that Strzok no longer has his security clearance. (RELATED: Strzok Loses Security Clearance)
Goelman said that his client “intends to answer any question put to him, and he intends to defend the integrity of the Clinton email investigation, the Russia collusion investigation to the extent that that’s a topic, and his own integrity,” in a letter sent to Goodlatte on Saturday.
Goelman said that Strzok “wants the chance to clear his name and tell his story.”
People These Guys Believe They Know What’s Best For You. Both Are Damn Traitors.
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) on Monday evening became the first sitting GOP member of the House of Representatives to publicly call for the removal of House Speaker Paul Ryan now, rather than on Ryan’s planned schedule post-election, during an interview onBreitbart News Tonight on SiriusXM.
During a discussion with host and Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Rebecca Mansour about Ryan’s failures on immigration with a looming pro-amnesty discharge petition hanging in the balance, Gosar hammered the entire current leadership team.
“Part of the problem is I think the whole leadership team is toxic,” Gosar said. “And that’s part of the problem. How did we choose this? These are the same group of people that conveyed the jurisdiction of the omnibus. These are the same group of leaders that haven’t honored a promise.”
Gosar pointed to the founding chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), as a solid replacement of Ryan when the time comes. Mansour had asked him about a call from Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney—a Freedom Caucus House member before he joined President Donald Trump’s administration—for Ryan to be removed now to force House Democrats to demonstrate in a floor Speakership vote their true allegiance to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
“There’s a movement of people that are backing Jim Jordan from the Freedom Caucus,” Gosar said. “He would be a great person to get back to having leadership for change and well-statute reform. That’s how you look at this: it’s got to be somebody that is going to bring back good process which brings back good policy which builds good politics. This is problematic.”
News broke this weekend that a group of grassroots conservatives—well more than a hundred of them—are calling to draft Jordan for the speakership.
He further elaborated on his support for Jordan for Speaker.
“I think Jim Jordan is a great person. I think the move is afoot to draft Jim Jordan,” Gosar said. “I think if the votes were already had I think the replacement would have already been there. I think the further this goes down the road—I think this was the latest warning call in regards to that process, on the farm bill. I think it’s time. I think it would energize our base. It would get somebody who would actually get back the jurisdiction and the clout to Congress and the House as equal footings with the Senate and stop taking this crap allowing the Senate to back us into corners and mitigate with ourselves instead of being a fair and equal component like the Senate. This would be the perfect scenario—otherwise we’re going to have the same kind of problems over and over again.”
When Mansour asked again if Gosar was specifically saying call the vote for Speaker now and elect Jordan before the election in November, he replied: “Absolutely.”
“It allows us to pony up but it also allows us to get things done,” Gosar said. “Because we haven’t seen it done.”
Gosar listed a number of things Ryan promised but has not delivered as speaker.
This all comes amid a fraught political time for the House GOP leadership. Ryan, who announced he is not seeking re-election thereby ceding his authority as Speaker by taking a lame duck approach to the midterm elections, is widely viewed as not doing enough to stop an effort by pro-amnesty open borders Republicans to use a discharge petition to force the issue of amnesty onto the floor of the House of Representatives.
“Once again, the damage is done because if you’re a member of the moderates why would you sign onto that when you know you can have the discharge petition come forward if this Goodlatte bill doesn’t come forward? So they’ve played this whole hand out publicly which is totally bananas,” Gosar said.
Meanwhile, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy—the presumed heir apparent as Speaker—has a major uphill battle ahead of him to convince members like Gosar and other conservatives to vote for him if and when he does have a speakership vote on the floor. While McCarthy is indeed personally close with President Trump, he was thwarted by these same conservatives in his last bid for speakership back in 2015 which cleared the way for Ryan’s ascendancy to third place in the line of the presidential succession. McCarthy could very well win them over in the end, but he has an enormous amount of work to do—and palling around with Ryan, when Ryan is not stopping this discharge petition, does not help his case.
Waiting in the wings is House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, also viewed as a potential contender for the speakership should McCarthy not succeed. Scalise would face many of the same hurdles as McCarthy faces.
It remains to be seen how this all will go down but one thing is certain at this stage: Ryan is in serious trouble, and is very likely to not survive to his desired expiration date at the beginning of next year at the end of this Congress.
She’s also facing three counts for fraudulent use of an application for ballot by mail. These are state jail felonies. That can include up to four years in state prison and a fine of $10,000.
According to the affidavits, Barron signed up a felon to receive a ballot by mail due to a disability.
Investigators say the felon denied being disabled as he was a cowboy. He also claimed raising the concern to Barron before being signed up.
Yes Democrats would like every dead vote.
Two other affidavits have similar accounts of two separate voters. The voters denied filling out the form stating that they had a disability.
The investigation is under the Starr County District Attorney’s Office.
District attorney Omar Escobar says they seek to ensure the sanctity of voting especially when the ballot is outside of a polling site.
“It’s too easy to exert influence and pressure on somebody at home. An assistant, a worker, an election worker to go and ask them, ‘did you already receive your ballot by mail?’ ‘Yes. I got it here’. And then to hover over the ballot and to vote a particular way,” said Escobar.
The affidavits also state another woman was seen with Barron. There is a potential for other arrests.
Barron is an employee of Rio Grande City Consolidated Independent School District. She has been put on administrative leave.
An internal investigation is also being carried out.
The school district’s attorney says the terms of her leave are still being worked on, this includes whether or not she will be paid during her leave.
The “populist surge” in Europe has far from peaked and is the most significant change to the European order since the end of the Cold War, a new report by former British left-wing Prime Minister Tony Blair’s own think tank has claimed.
Assessing what the report identifies as a “populist threat” as a means to defeat it and “renew the centre”, the globalist Institute for Global Change document questions widely-held assumptions that right-populist politics is an “interlude”, or blip in history which “optimistic” observers believe will burn out.
Blair Gifts Money to Set up New Anti-Populist ‘Institute
To the contrary, the Institute’s own research shows “the trend line suggests that populists will continue to gain strength in the next round of elections”, and particularly in Eastern Europe, the report noting: “Populists are strongest in Eastern Europe. They routinely out-compete the political mainstream and have already taken power in seven countries: Bosnia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Serbia, and Slovakia.”
Populism could instead prove to be “the new normal” and may “drive European politics into a more nationalist and protectionist direction… governments would move decisively towards restricting net migration flows; make access to some social benefits conditional on citizenship status; and undermine minority rights in key respects.”
Populist Woman Mayor Wins Rome by Landslide: ‘New Era’ Begins
Looking forward, the paper predicted that should the next decade see populist parties enjoying the same growth as they had in the past ten years, then nations like Germany and Sweden could too see themselves “vulnerable” to such movements.
The report comes as left-wing papers including The Guardian and New York Times mourned the “demise of Europe’s centre-left”, at the expense of the populist right, noting surging right-wing parties across the continent.
EXCLUSIVE: Polish Senator SLAMS ‘Offensive’ BBC Hit Job on Anti-Mass Migration Poland, Hungary
EXCLUSIVE: Top Polish Government Minister Hits Back at ‘Offensive’ BBC ‘Illiberal Democracy’ Smears
A senior Polish politician has hit back as the BBC airs a documentary on Poland and Hungary which accuses them of being anti-democratic.
Beyond protecting Europe’s borders, one of the areas of right-populist influence that apparently most concerned the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change authors was changes to institutions, across Europe often created or shaped in the post-war period and widely acknowledged to be totally in the hands of mainstream, politically-left management as a result of the famed “long march through the institutions”. One prominent example of such change being presently wrought by a European populist government is reform of the judiciary in conservative Poland.
A hangover of the old Communist system, the Polish government was elected on a platform of judicial reform to increase accountability in the courts, but has been relentlessly attacked by globalist institutions such as the European Commission for attempting to rebalance. Poland and Hungary are both key points of interest in the Tony Blair report, where the ruling parties of both nations are accused of emphasizing “a nationalism based on soil, blood, or culture”.
Despite the criticism, the report concedes “populist governments in Hungary and Poland are as popular as ever”.
A lawyer for the Trump presidential transition team is accusing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office of inappropriately obtaining transition documents as part of its Russia probe, including confidential attorney-client communications, privileged communications and thousands of emails without their knowledge.
In a letter obtained by Fox News and sent to House and Senate committees on Saturday, the transition team’s attorney alleges “unlawful conduct” by the career staff at the General Services Administration in handing over transition documents to the special counsel’s office.
The transition legal team argues the GSA “did not own or control the records in question” and the release of documents could be a violation of the 4th Amendment – which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Kory Langhofer, the counsel to Trump for America, wrote in Saturday’s letter that the GSA handed over “tens of thousands of emails” to Mueller’s probe without “any notice” to the transition.
The attorney said they discovered the “unauthorized disclosures” by the GSA on December 12th and 13th and raised concerns with the special counsel’s office.
“We understand that the special counsel’s office has subsequently made extensive use of the materials it obtained from the GSA, including materials that are susceptible to privilege claims,” Langhofer writes.
The transition attorney said the special counsel’s office also received laptops, cell phones and at least one iPad from the GSA.
Trump for America is the nonprofit organization that facilitated the transition between former President Barack Obama to President Trump.
The GSA, an agency of the United States government, provided the transition team with office space and hosted its email servers.
“We continue to cooperate fully with the special counsel and expect this process to wrap up soon,” Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, said Saturday.
The special counsel’s office declined to comment Saturday.
Langhofer wrote that some of the records obtained by the special counsel’s office from the GSA “have been leaked to the press by unknown persons.”
The transition lawyer also argued the actions “impair the ability of future presidential transition teams to candidly discuss policy and internal matters that benefit the country as a whole.”
Langhofer requests in the letter that Congress “act immediately to protect future presidential transitions from having their private records misappropriated by government agencies, particularly in the context of sensitive investigations intersecting with political motives.”
The letter was sent to the Senate Homeland Security and House Oversight Committees.
The committees did not immediately return a request for comment.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/12/16/trump-lawyer-mueller-improperly-obtained-transition-documents-in-russia-probe.html
