On Monday’s edition of CNN’s New Day, Chris Cuomo repeatedly accused the Russian state of waging “war” against America via “election hacking” in 2016. He offered his analysis while reporting from Helsinki, Finland, in anticipation of a meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Cuomo said “meddling” is an insufficiently severe word to describe “election hacking.”
“The big, ugly white elephant in the room will be the U.S. election hacking,” said Cuomo. “We’ve been calling it meddling, but I’m trying to stay away from the word because it’s just way too mild. This is an act of war.”
Cuomo further framed his narrative of “election hacking” as “the truth”: “How does [Donald Trump] raise the act of war of the hacking and different attacks during the U.S. election when Vladimir Putin knows damn well that President Trump doesn’t really believe the truth and doesn’t put a whole lot of stock in the event itself?”
Putin’s mere arrival in Helsinki amounted to a “win” for the Russian president, assessed Cuomo: “It’s a win for Putin the moment he landed safely on the ground because he’s been given legitimacy by the U.S. president. Literally the world is waiting on him to get here. But the easy win for Putin is this happening at all. He’s been given legitimacy on the world stage. End of story.”
“Animus should be directed towards the Russian president [by Trump],” added Cuomo.
New Day co-anchor Alisyn Camerota implicitly advised Trump to publicly denounce Putin towards unspecified ends: “President Trump refused to condemn Putin as a ruthless leader or a foe in this new interview with ITV. … Furthermore, you know, he hasn’t really called Putin a bad guy. In other words, he doesn’t necessarily think that Putin’s a bad guy. In fact, I mean, here’s where his mindset was this morning.”
CNN International’s Christiane Amanpour concurred with Cuomo’s assertions of “election hacking” and “war.” She said, “Yes, it is an act of violation of sovereignty of the United States and the other European countries that have been cyber hacked on their electoral matters.”
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins appraised Trump’s rejection of the “election hacking” narrative as amounting to “repeating exactly what the Kremlin wants to hear.”
At no point did any of CNN’s anchors, correspondents, analysts, or guests qualify “election hacking.”
CNN markets itself as a non-partisan and politically objective news media outlet, branding itself “The Most Trusted Name In News.”
This Is What They Where Doing But No Charges. We Are A Country With No Laws.
The D.C. U.S. Attorney’s office dropped all charges Friday against people awaiting trial for allegedly rioting during President Donald Trump’s Inauguration Day.
The attorney’s office still had a few last words for protesters in a statement made after filing the motion to dismiss.
Don’t Worry The Taxpayers Should Pay For Things These Idiots Destroyed.
“The destruction that occurred during these criminal acts was in sharp contrast to the peaceful demonstrations and gatherings that took place over the Inauguration weekend in the District of Columbia, and created a danger for all who were nearby,” the statement said.
These are children expressing themselves I’m sure.
The attorney’s office had already dropped charges against 150 of the defendants after the first six alleged rioters were acquitted, WaPo reported. Prosecution sometimes used videos they said showed defendants smashing windows, but jurors said the videos were too fuzzy to draw conclusions.
Newly available records do not fully comply with congressional House subpoenas, and barring new developments Friday, recent documents from the FBI and Justice Department do not meet deadlines set by a House resolution, according to a source close to the discussions.
Three House Republican committee chairmen, Trey Gowdy on Oversight, Devin Nunes on Intelligence and Bob Goodlatte on Judiciary, requested the records, with one subpoena issued as long ago as August of last year.
The source said House staffers — who reviewed records Thursday at the Justice Department (DOJ) because lawmakers were out of town for the holiday recess — concluded that Justice and the FBI have still not provided information and records about FBI activities before the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 elections officially opened on July 31 of that year.
“The House Judiciary Committee has been in contact daily with the Justice Department to ensure they produce all the documents subpoenaed by the committee earlier this year,” a Republican House Judiciary Committee aide said. “The Justice Department has produced more documents over the past weeks and has requested more time to produce additional documents. This request seems to be reasonable, and we expect the department to comply with the terms of the subpoena.”
An Intelligence Committee spokesperson told Fox News, “The DOJ gave the committee some, but not all, of the outstanding documents, so they are not in compliance.”
A Justice Department official emphasized last weekend that the DOJ and FBI had told both chambers’ intelligence committees that records, previously limited to congressional leadership known as Gang of Eight, were now available to lawmakers and cleared staff. The records were widely reported to include documents about the FBI’s alleged use of confidential sources to contact Trump campaign aides during the 2016 campaign.
In April, a subpoena was issued for a key set of records, focused on FBI activities before the bureau’s Russia case officially opened.
“What put this in motion? And of course, was what put this into motion, was something that is politically motivated, or was it based on legit law enforcement evidence?” said Thomas Dupree, former deputy assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush. “Based on [last week’s congressional] hearing and the back-and-forth we have seen over the last few months, we are in an extremely unusual, and in my view disturbing, situation, where there has been a complete breakdown and a fracture of trust.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were on Capitol Hill last week, and faced new pressure to comply after the passage, along party lines, of a nonbinding House resolution calling on Rosenstein to provide withheld documents. The resolution had the effect of putting all House members on the record.
Those who have worked with Rosenstein emphasize he is in a difficult position because, they say, it is not routine to provide records from ongoing investigations.
“I know Rod and I think he’s an honorable person and I think anybody in that position would take it personally if they’re going to say, ‘You personally have been obstructing Congress or holding things back,’’’ said Robert Driscoll, former assistant attorney general. “He views himself as a point of a spear in a process and the one who has to interact with Congress.”
Separately on Thursday, Nunes referred 15 names for public testimony to the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees. The majority are directly linked to the infamous Steele Dossier, as well as the firm Fusion GPS that was paid by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign to compile the research.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to answer Fox’s questions, adding that Justice would respond to the House committees directly.
Catherine Herridge is an award-winning Chief Intelligence correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC) based in Washington, D.C. She covers intelligence, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Herridge joined FNC in 1996 as a London-based correspondent.
Former FBI Director James Comey told the inspector general that he forgot Hillary Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin was married to Anthony Weiner, according to a report released Thursday.
In 2016, the FBI identified work-related Abedin emails on a laptop owned by Weiner. A handful contained “confidential” information, the FBI found later.
Andrew McCabe, then FBI-Deputy Director, told the DOJ inspector general that he thought the finding was a “big deal.” Comey, however, acknowledged to the inspector general that at this point he didn’t understand why this was important.(RELATED: Comey Used A Private Email Account For Official FBI Business)
“I don’t know that I knew that [Weiner] was married to Huma Abedin at the time,” Comey told the IG.
Why Can’t Anyone Bring Up That Obama Did This, And Indict That Village Idiot?
Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” House Freedom Caucus chairman Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) said he wanted to know who directed a confidential human source to collect information on the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump.
Meadows said, “What we do know is that there was indeed a confidential human source, which is what the FBI would call it that, was actually giving intel. Not only to the FBI, but you have to ask the question when did it start? We do know that actually, those confidential human sources were engaging prior to the official FBI investigation.”
He continued, “So the question begs: at whose direction, you know, what were they collecting and who were they reporting to? Because that was happening before the FBI actually opened an investigation. And so as we know that—and we know that from nonclassified sources. There is no question that there was a spy that was collecting information, and the definition of that: somebody who does something in secret without the knowledge of another person.”
Put that SOB and his wife in front of a firing squad.
Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute, highlighted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) financial ties to the Chinese government as an example of how politicians monetize political influence while evading financial disclosure regulations.
Schweizer joined Monday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight for an interview with co-hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak to discuss McConnell’s linkages to China, as detailed in his latest book, Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) familial ties to the Chinese state via his father- and sisters-in-law are causes for concern, deduced Schweizer. James Chao, McConnell’s father-in-law, founded Foremost Group, a shipping company that has done “large volumes of business” with Chinese state-owned companies. McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, is the current secretary of transportation.
“So Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, his wife Elaine Chao, who’s the transportation secretary in the Trump administration, her family has deep economic and financial ties to the Chinese government itself,” said Schweizer. “They are in the shipping business, and they own something called the Foremost Group, and really, in 1993, Mitch McConnell, as a senator, travels to China with his father-in-law, James Chao, as guests of the China State Shipbuilding Corporation.”
He continued, “The China State Shipbuilding Corporation is the largest defense contractor in China, and the projections are that by 2030, if current trends continue, they are going to surpass the U.S. Navy as far as naval capability. Basically, what happens is, the China State Shipbuilding Corporation says to the Chao family, ‘Look, we will build your ships. We will finance the purchase of some of your ships. We will provide crews for your ships. We will provide contracts for you to ship state-owned goods from state-owned companies around the Pacific. In other words, we are going to set you up in the shipping business,’ which is exactly what they do, and, in fact, James Chao — this would be Elaine Chao’s father, Mitch McConnell’s father-in-law — and Elaine’s sister, Angela Chao, actually joined the board, in 2007 and 2008, of something called China State Shipbuilding Corporation, CSSC Holdings, which is a subsidiary of the largest defense contractor in China. So you have this powerful American political family that is making U.S. policy related to China, related to trade, and other critical issues that is highly dependent upon the good graces of the Chinese government.”
Schweizer framed McConnell’s “increasingly soft” political positioning towards China as a function of his familial and financial ties to the Chinese state.
“McConnell himself has benefited because a few years ago, James Chao gave Mitch McConnell a gift between five and twenty-five million dollars that more than quadrupled his net worth overnight,” noted Schweizer. “So this is not just about Elaine Chao’s family getting wealthy. That wealth has now trickled into Mitch McConnell’s pocket, as well, and it’s a huge problem because if you chart the positions that Sen. McConnell has taken on China over the last twenty years, guess what? Shock of all shocks, he has become increasingly soft as it relates to China, and I think it is directly related to the fact that he knows his family’s financial future is tied to the good graces and good faith of the Chinese communist government.”
Schweizer described the Chinese government as “freaked out” over the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, owing to the 45th president’s decades-long view of the “rising threat of China.”
“So the election of Donald Trump, there’s no other way to say it, it completely freaked out the Chinese government because Trump has really been focused — whether one agrees with him on trade policy or not — he has focused since the 1980s on what he regards as a rising threat of China; whether it relates to trade, economics, or military power,” surmised Schweizer.
According to Schweizer, China’s decision to appoint McConnell’s sister-in-law, Angela Chao, to the Bank of China’s board of directors — ten days after 2016’s presidential election — was a response to the election of Trump to the White House.
“So when [Donald Trump] gets elected in 2016, China is in a panic. So one of the things that happens is, they appoint, really, the first American, or only the second foreigner to the Bank of China,” Schweizer said. “Now, the Bank of China is government-run, government-controlled, is sort of the backbone of the Chinese government’s economic diplomacy around the world. Ten days after Donald Trump is elected, they put Elaine Chao’s sister — Mitch McConnell’s sister-in-law — on the board of directors of the fourth largest bank in the world, which is run by the Chinese communist government. It’s a shocking development, and, again, unprecedented in American history that you would have senior political leaders have immediate family members that are sitting on the board of foreign government-owned businesses.”
