An associate of Arizona Sen. John McCain is invoking his Fifth Amendment rights in order to avoid revealing information to Congress about the Steele dossier.
David J. Kramer, a former State Department official, pleaded the fifth in response to a subpoena issued in December by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Fox News reported.
In a Dec. 19 interview with the committee, Kramer said that he had information about some of the sources of information in the dossier, which was written by former British spy Christopher Steele and financed by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
Kramer learned the information in Nov. 2016, after traveling to London to meet with Steele. Kramer and McCain, a Republican, first learned of the dossier earlier that month after meeting with an associate of Steele’s.
After the London meeting, Steele provided a copy of the dossier to Kramer with instructions to share it with McCain. The senator then provided a copy of the document to then-FBI Director James Comey during a Dec. 9, 2016, meeting.
The House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena on Dec. 27 to compel Kramer to discuss the dossier’s sources.
Kramer, who was a director at the McCain Institute and now works for Florida International University, has avoided speaking publicly about his handling of the dossier. There has also been widespread speculation that he is BuzzFeed’s source for the document. The website published the dossier on Jan. 10, 2017.
In addition to his interview with the Intelligence Committee, Kramer was deposed in December as part of a lawsuit filed against BuzzFeed for publishing the dossier. Kramer’s lawyers have requested that his deposition in that case be sealed.
Steele, McCain and Fusion GPS, the firm that hired Steele to write the dossier, have all denied being BuzzFeed’s source. Kramer is the only person known to have handled the completed dossier who has not denied providing it to BuzzFeed.
Kramer and his attorney have not responded to numerous requests for comment.
McCain Associate Who Handled Dossier Asks Judge To Seal Deposition
An associate of Arizona Sen. John McCain’s who handled the dossier is asking a federal judge to block the release of a videotape and transcript of a deposition he recently gave in a lawsuit related to the salacious document.
David Kramer, a former State Department official and former director at the McCain Institute for International Leadership, filed a motion in federal court in Florida asking a judge for a protective order to block the public release of his deposition.
Kramer was deposed last month by lawyers for a Russian businessman suing BuzzFeed News for publishing the dossier. The lawyers for the businessman, Aleksej Gubarev, are interested in Kramer because he is one of just a few people known to have handled the dossier after it was completed by former British spy Christopher Steele and before its Jan. 10, 2017 publication.
Gubarev’s attorneys want to find out whether BuzzFeed’s source gave any warnings about the veracity of the dossier and whether it was verified or unverified.
Steele, McCain and Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that commissioned the dossier on behalf of Democrats, have all denied being BuzzFeed’s source.
Kramer has not commented publicly on the issue.
Kramer’s lawyer, Marcos Jiminez, argued in a motion to seal that the release of the deposition would jeopardize his personal safety, make him subject to hounding from the press, and conflict with congressional investigations looking into the dossier.
Kramer was interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee last month and has also met with the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“Mr. Kramer seeks to prevent the Plaintiffs from sharing his videotaped deposition and accompanying transcript beyond the instant litigation,” wrote Jiminez.
He asserted that Kramer’s deposition in the BuzzFeed lawsuit “would reveal the extent of the Congressional Committees’ knowledge regarding the information provided by Mr. Kramer in closed-door sessions.”
Jimenez also argues that should Kramer’s deposition be released to the public, he “will be hounded by the press.”
Kramer and McCain first learned of the dossier shortly after the 2016 election while attending the Halifax International Security Forum. On the sidelines of that event, Kramer and McCain had a conversation with Sir Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Russia and associate of Steele’s.
Kramer then traveled to London to meet with Steele. While there, the pair made arrangements for Kramer to obtain the dossier back in the U.S. and to provide a copy to McCain.
McCain shared an incomplete version of the dossier with then-FBI Director James Comey on Dec. 9, 2016. The Republican was unaware at the time that Comey and the FBI were already aware of Steele’s report. FBI agents met with the ex-spy multiple times prior to the election.
Steele published his final dossier memo on Dec. 13, 2016. It is that document which alleges that Gubarev used two of his web-hosting companies to hack into the Democratic National Committee’s computer systems prior to the election. The dossier also alleges that Gubarev was recruited under duress by Russia’s spy services. He denies all of the allegations. In addition to suing BuzzFeed, he is suing Steele in London, where the former spy is based.
In court filings there, Steele has acknowledged that the Dec. 13 memo contained unverified information.
As of the beginning of this month, Steele and Fusion GPS have dodged requests for depositions from Gubarev’s lawyers.
David Kramer Motion to Seal deposition in BuzzFeed lawsuit by Chuck Ross on Scribd
Arm the teachers if you are not going to stop mentally ill people.
During the meeting with Parkland students at the White House on Wednesday President Trump said arming teachers is a step that can be taken to make schools less-attractive targets for attackers.
He said that as things stand, attackers have nothing to lose because no one can shoot back.
CNN quoted Trump saying, “Gun-free zone to a maniac—because they’re all cowards—a gun-free zone is ‘let’s go in and let’s attack because bullets aren’t coming back at us.’” He said adopting a policy where “20 percent” of teachers were armed would reduce or eliminate the perception of weakness, making schools a riskier target to strike.
Trump said, “If you had a teacher who was adept with the firearm, they could end the attack very quickly.”
Newsweek reports that Trump also emphasized mental health and raising “the minimum age for purchasing a firearm,” but the push for arming teachers took center stage.
Students showed considerable support for the idea of arming teachers. Hunter Pollack, who lost his sister Meadow in the attack, said, “I’m not here to debate, but I lost my sister. And like Mr. President said, if you could find 20% of maybe retired law enforcement officers, or a teacher who could go through discreet training to carry a firearm around his waist, it could’ve been a very different situation.”
President Trump campaigned on allowing teachers to be armed for self-defense. He said gun-free zones provide “target practice for sickos” and, on October 8, 2016, theWashington Post quoted him saying, “I will get rid of gun-free zones on schools.”
Archie Bunker Called Him Meathead Because Damn He Has A Big Head. I wish there was a brain in there.
His had was not as big back then but I wish someone would punch him in that big mouth.
Rob Reiner escalated his attacks on President Donald Trump on Sunday, taking to social media to demand that GOP “patriots” take a stand to “end” what he called the “sickness” of his presidency.
The 70-year-old LBJ filmmaker — a frequent critic of the president who previously launched a committee to explore possible Russian interference in the 2016 presidential race — blasted Trump in a Twitter post in apparent response to a school shooting in Florida this week that left 17 people dead and 15 others injured.
“How much longer do we have to put up with a mentally ill sociopath?” Reiner wrote. “When the f*cked up psyche of the leader of the free world comes before the horrific deaths of innocent children, it’s time for GOP patriots to stand up and end this sickness.”
Rob Reiner
✔
@robreiner
How much longer do we have to put up with a mentally ill sociopath? When the fucked up psyche of the leader of the free world comes before the horrific deaths of innocent children, it’s time for GOP patriots to stand up and end this sickness.
10:50 AM – Feb 18, 2018
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10.2K people are talking about this
The actor and director repeatedly criticized Trump on his Twitter account this week, both in response to the Florida attack and to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictments of 13 Russian nationals for alleged interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.
In a Friday post, Reiner appeared to accuse the president of treason after the indictments were announced.
“It is now crystal clear that Russia had a profound impact on the 2016 election,” he wrote. “They have attacked US, they are continuing to attack US. If Trump is unwilling to acknowledge this and unwilling to protect US, the word TREASON is now center stage.”
Reiner also accused Trump of failing to act on guns due to influence from the NRA.
“There are 21,000,000 reasons why Donald Trump refuses to protect our children from being slaughtered by guns,” he wrote. “The NRA has deep pockets. But we will show them that our hearts and our pockets are deeper than theirs.”
Reiner spoke at the anti-Trump Women’s March Los Angeles in January, where he accused the president of “tearing away at the fabric of our democracy.”
This month, the filmmaker referred to Trump’s presidency as “the last battle of the Civil War” while accepting a social justice award at the African American Film Critics Association Awards in Beverly Hills.
This Muslim woman tried to burn the school down and join Al-Qaida. But the FBI let her go.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — After Tnuza Jamal Hassan was stopped from flying to Afghanistan last September, she allegedly told FBI agents that she wanted to join al-Qaida and marry a fighter, and that she might even wear a suicide belt.
She also said she was angry at U.S. military actions overseas and admitted that she tried to encourage others to “join the jihad in fighting,” but she said she had no intention of carrying out an attack on U.S. soil, according to prosecutors. Despite her alleged admissions, she was allowed to go free.
Four months later, the 19-year-old was arrested for allegedly setting small fires on her former college campus in St. Paul in what prosecutors say was a self-proclaimed act of jihad. No one was hurt by the Jan. 17 fires at St. Catherine University, but her case raises questions about why she wasn’t arrested after speaking to the agents months earlier and shows the difficulty the authorities face in identifying real threats.
“She confessed to wanting to join al-Qaida and took action to do it by traveling overseas. Unless there are other circumstances that I’m not aware of, I would have expected that she would’ve been arrested,” said Jeffrey Ringel, a former FBI agent and Joint Terrorism Task Force supervisor who now works for a private security firm, the Soufan Group, and isn’t involved in Hassan’s case. “I think she would’ve met the elements of a crime.”
Authorities aren’t talking about the case and it’s not clear how closely Hassan was monitored before the fires, if at all. When asked if law enforcement should have intervened earlier, FBI spokesman Jeff Van Nest and U.S. Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Tasha Zerna both said they couldn’t discuss the case.
Counterterrorism experts, though, say it seems she wasn’t watched closely after the FBI interview, as she disappeared for days before the fires. But the public record in a case doesn’t always reveal what agents and prosecutors were doing behind the scenes.
Authorities are often second-guessed when someone on their radar carries out a violent act. Some cases, including Wednesday’s mass shooting at a Florida high school that killed 17 people, reveal missed signs of trouble. The FBI has admitted it made a mistake by failing to investigate a warning last month that the suspect, Nikolas Cruz, could be plotting an attack.
U.S. officials were also warned about Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev two years before his 2013 attack, though a review found it was impossible to know if anything could’ve been done differently to prevent it. And the FBI extensively investigated Omar Mateen, the gunman in the June 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting. As part of an internal audit, then-FBI Director James Comey reviewed the case and determined it was handled well.
Hassan, who was born in the U.S., has pleaded not guilty to federal counts of attempting to provide material support to al-Qaida, lying to the FBI and arson. She also faces a state arson charge. One fire was set in a dormitory that has a day care where 33 children were present.
Although her attempts to set fires largely failed, Hassan told investigators she had expected the buildings to burn down and “she hoped people would get killed,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Winter said in court. He added that she was “self-radicalized” and became more stringent in her beliefs and focused on jihad.
Hassan’s attorney, Robert Sicoli, declined to talk about whether the family saw warnings. Her mother and sister declined to speak to The Associated Press.
According to prosecutors, Hassan tried to travel to Afghanistan on Sept. 19, making it as far as Dubai, United Arab Emirates, before she was stopped because she lacked a visa.
Prosecutors say that when the agents interviewed Hassan on Sept. 22, she admitted she tried to join al-Qaida, saying she thought she’d probably get married, but not fight. When pressed, she allegedly told investigators she guessed she would carry out a suicide bombing if she had to do it but she wouldn’t do anything in the U.S. because she didn’t know whom to target.
Hassan admitted that she wrote a letter to her roommates in March encouraging the women to “join the jihad in fighting,” prosecutors allege. The letter was initially reported to campus security, and it’s unclear when it was given to the FBI or if the agency made contact with Hassan before the September interview.
It’s also unknown how closely U.S. authorities were monitoring Hassan between the interview and Dec. 29, when she was barred from traveling to Ethiopia with her mother. Prosecutors say at the time, Hassan had her sister’s identification and her luggage contained a coat and boots, which she wouldn’t have needed in Ethiopia’s warm climate.
Hassan later ran away from home and her family reported her missing Jan. 10. Her whereabouts were unknown until the Jan. 17 fires.
Ron Hosko, a retired assistant director of the FBI’s criminal division who has no link to Hassan’s case, said that based on an AP reporter’s description of it, “I would certainly look at this person, not knowing more, as somebody who would be of interest to the FBI.” However he cautioned that the public doesn’t know the extent of the agency’s efforts to monitor Hassan, including whether she was under surveillance, what sort of background investigation was done and how agents might have assessed her capacity to follow through on a threat. He also said the FBI might have made decisions based on her mental capacity.
“Not every subject requires 24/7 FBI surveillance,” he said. The reality is that hard decisions on resources are being made constantly, with the biggest perceived threats receiving the most attention.
“I’m sure there are plenty of days where they hope they are right and they are keeping their fingers crossed,” he added.
Stephen Vladeck, professor of law at the University of Texas, said monitoring possible threats is a delicate balance, and law enforcement can’t trample civil rights while trying to prevent violence.
“This is a circle that can’t be squared,” he said. “We are never going to keep tabs on every single person who might one day pose a threat.”
I’m glad to see arrest, now build the wall and secure the border.
Federal deportation officers staged one of the biggest enforcement actions in years against businesses in Los Angeles this week, arresting 212 people and serving audit notices to 122 businesses who will have to prove they aren’t hiring illegal immigrants.
Nearly all of those arrested were convicted criminals, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
ICE said it targeted Los Angeles because it’s a sanctuary city, meaning it refuses to fully cooperate with federal authorities on deportations from within its jails.
They do the jobs Americans will not right?
That means agents and officers have to go out into the community, said Thomas D. Homan, the agency’s deputy director.
“Fewer jail arrests mean more arrests on the street, and that also requires more resources, which is why we are forced to send additional resources to those areas to meet operational needs and officer safety,” Mr. Homan said. “Consistent with our public safety mission, 88 percent of those arrested during this operation were convicted criminals.”
The actions and notices came even as Congress was debating — and failing to pass — legislation that would have legalized about a sixth of the illegal immigrant population in the U.S.
ICE said some of those nabbed will be prosecuted for illegal entry or re-entry after a previous deportation, while others whose cases aren’t prosecuted will face deportation.
Perhaps more striking that the arrests, however, is the renewed focus on business that employ illegal immigrants.
The 122 notices come on top of 77 notices served on businesses in northern California earlier this year.
ICE said California’s sanctuary city status notwithstanding, businesses are still required to follow federal law, which demands they conduct verification checks before hiring employees.
Democrats in Congress had objected to ICE’s attempts to enforce immigration laws at businesses.
In a Jan. 31 letter, 17 of the chamber’s more liberal lawmakers said they were “troubled” by the justifications ICE had cited for the previous round of business enforcement.
“ICE officers have a mission to promote homeland security and public safety, not to act as an arm of the government designed to intimidate and harass business owners, their employees or their patrons, and certainly not to use raids as a threat of ‘what’s to come,’” said the Democrats, led by Rep. Karen Bass, California Democrat.
I will not hold my breath on anyone in the Obama Administration going to jail.
Friday on Fox News Channel’s “The Ingraham Angle,” host Laura Ingraham gave her take on the indictments handed down by special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe regarding interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Ingraham told viewers the indictments illustrated how Russia was still a threat to the United States despite then-President Barack Obama’s dismissal during the 2012 presidential election. She also said Mueller should interview 2016 Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State John Kerry, former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes and former President Barack Obama as part of his investigation.
Partial transcript as follows:
INGRAHAM: We finally have indictments in the Mueller investigation related to meddling in the 2016 election and the only ones being charged are Russians. A federal grand jury has now indicted 13 Russian individuals and companies for interfering in the 2016 election.
They are charged with a bunch of things like creating fake ads, staging pro and anti-Trump campaign events and also setting up bogus-run organizations, but they’re not accused of rigging the election for Trump, but instead of waging information warfare to sow discord in the political system.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced the indictments and added this important caveat.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROD ROSENSTEIN, DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL: There is no allegation in this indictment that any American was a knowing participant in this illegal activity. There is no allegation in the indictment that the charge conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Did you hear that? No American knowingly took part in the meddling and the plot had no effect on the outcome of the election. The facts, as we know them right now, support the president’s argument, an argument we have been making on this show for months, that there was no Russian collusion.
Trump took a bit of a victory lap, tweeting today, “Russia started their anti-U.S. campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for president. The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong. No collusion.”
Well, it certainly looks that way, but we don’t know for sure what else Mueller may have up his sleeve. Though, I’ll tell you who this totally vindicates. Conservatives and Republicans who have been warning people for years about how devious the Russians can be in this situation.
Remember, when President Obama sarcastically mocked Mitt Romney’s Russia warning back in 2012 during the presidential debate.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FORMER PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: When you’re asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia. Not al Qaeda, you said Russia. In the 1980s or now, calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the cold war has been over for 20 years.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Now, Obama was so convinced of that, his DOJ and FBI did next to nothing about the Russian skulduggery. I love that word. His State Department actually approved the visas for the Russian operatives that were indicted by Mueller today.
His FBI began spying on Trump Campaign Advisor Carter Page with a FISA warrant in the fall of 2016. Now details in today’s indictment do point to vindication for the Trump team. This is Jonathan Turley from tonight’s “Special Report.”
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JONATHAN TURLEY: This makes more sense than the narratives that everyone has been throwing around in conspiracies. This began in 2014, began before the presidential election. The Russians were taking targets of opportunity and shooting at everybody in the election but certainly working more against Hillary Clinton. But what it does show is that they did a really quite impressive job in finding this cyber trail to these individuals.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: I’ll say. And the indictment describes rallies that took place after the election, both in support of and against Trump, and by the way, some of them happened on the same day, all allegedly promoted by these Russian accounts.
You see this ad? Well, according to “Buzzfeed,” this anti-Trump rallies staged just four days after the election was promoted by something called “Black Matters U.S.,” a social media campaign thought to be organized by Russians.
So, why would Trump collude with Russians to stage anti-Trump rallies? Does that make any sense? Here’s the bottom line. The Trump campaign did not know about Russian interference in the election. But the Obama administration certainly did and may have in fact enabled it.
Given that we already know Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the DNC paid for that fake Russian dossier, it’s time for the special counsel to interview Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, and maybe even Barack Obama. I say it’s high time that we determine who really colluded with the Russians.
