President Trump in an interview on Thursday called the senior Federal Bureau of Investigation official who texted his lover about an insurance policy in the case of Trump’s election “treasonous.”
“A man is tweeting to his lover that if [Democrat Hillary Clinton] loses, we’ll essentially do the insurance policy. We’ll go to phase two and we’ll get this guy out of office,” Trump said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
“This is the FBI we’re talking about—that is treason,” he added. “That is a treasonous act. What he tweeted to his lover is a treasonous act.”
The official, Peter Strzok, had major roles in the Clinton email investigation and the FBI’s initial investigation into Russian meddling and potential Trump campaign collusion, and had been assigned to the subsequent special counsel team until the text messages were discovered and he was removed.
The Justice Department inspector general, who is conducting an investigation into whether there was political bias in the FBI’s handling of the Clinton and Russia probes, discovered the text messages Strzok had sent to his lover, an FBI lawyer with whom he was having an extramarital affair.
The two last year during the 2016 presidential campaign season exchanged thousands of text messages that revealed they supported Clinton and detested Trump and had discussed an “insurance policy” in the case of his election.
Strzok texted to Page in August 2016: “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration…that there’s no way he gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”
“People familiar with” Strzok’s text told the WSJ he meant the FBI had to aggressively investigate allegations of collusion, and that it was not intended to suggest a secret plan to harm his candidacy.
Strzok was the lead agent on the Clinton email investigation and had watered down language in a statement exonerating Clinton that might have had criminal implications for her.
Trump also said the U.S. is taking steps to ensure Russia and other countries do not try to influence future elections.
“We’re going to be very, very careful about Russia and about anybody else, by the way,” Trump told the paper.
He said his administration is working on different solutions and “all sorts of fail-safes.”
He also flatly denied any collusion with Russia, and said since there was no collusion crime, prosecutors were trying to say he obstructed justice for firing FBI Director James Comey.
“Of course there was no obstruction — there was no crime,” he said. “They make up a crime, and the crime doesn’t exist, and then they say obstruction.”
He said, rather, he should get credit for firing Comey, saying “everybody wanted Comey fired.”
“I should be given credit for having great insight,” he said.
Comey’s firing led to the special counsel probe, and for Democrats to argue that Trump obstructed justice by trying to fire Comey and squelch the FBI’s investigation.
A recent book, Fire and Fury, alleged that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, the president’s son-in-law and daughter, insisted that he fire Comey and that “cosmopolitans” would welcome it, too.
Trump said his lawyers’ initial instinct was to fight the special counsel, but then after reviewing requested documents, decided to be open.
“They said, ‘You never did anything wrong,’” he said. “To be honest, they probably were surprised, as most lawyers would be.”
Mueller has told Trump’s lawyers that he may want to speak with the president in the near future, but Trump on Thursday would not commit to anything.
He said he hoped that investigations in Congress were nearing an end, and that Republicans would be strong and take charge.
Trump addressed former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s remarks that a meeting his son Donald Trump Jr. took with Russians was “treasonous,” although Bannon later said his comments were directed to his then-campaign manager Paul Manafort.
“What he said about my son is horrible,” Trump said.
Why don’t Trey Gowdy talk to someone about getting these SOB’s locked up?
This damn government is so damn corrupt that it is not possible to have a proper investigation. How is it possible that no one is being indicted and locked up. This video proves the FBI and the DOJ is corrupt all the way up to Barack Obama.
Will anyone ever get locked up for all of this corrupt behavior.
These are 2 of the most corrupt mofo’s we have ever seen. But no one has been indicted.
Republicans on key congressional committees say they have uncovered new irregularities and contradictions inside the FBI’s probe of Hillary Clinton’s email server.
For the first time, investigators say they have secured written evidence that the FBI believed there was evidence that some laws were broken when the former secretary of State and her top aides transmitted classified information through her insecure private email server, lawmakers and investigators told The Hill.
That evidence includes passages in FBI documents stating the “sheer volume” of classified information that flowed through Clinton’s insecure emails was proof of criminality as well as an admission of false statements by one key witness in the case, the investigators said.
The name of the witness is redacted from the FBI documents but lawmakers said he was an employee of a computer firm that helped maintain her personal server after she left office as America’s top diplomat and who belatedly admitted he had permanently erased an archive of her messages in 2015 after they had been subpoenaed by Congress.
The investigators also confirmed that the FBI began drafting a statement exonerating Clinton of any crimes while evidence responsive to subpoenas was still outstanding and before agents had interviewed more than a dozen key witnesses.
Those witnesses included Clinton and the computer firm employee who permanently erased her email archives just days after the emails were subpoenaed by Congress, the investigators said.
Lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee who attended a Dec. 21 closed-door briefing by FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe say the bureau official confirmed that the investigation and charging decisions were controlled by a small group in Washington headquarters rather the normal process of allowing field offices to investigate possible criminality in their localities. The Clinton email server in question was based in New York.
In normal FBI cases, field offices where crimes are believed to have been committed investigate the evidence and then recommend to bureau hierarchy whether to pursue charges with prosecutors. In this case, the bureau hierarchy controlled both the investigation and the charging decision from Washington, a scenario known in FBI parlance as a “special,” the lawmakers said.
The FBI declined comment on McCabe’s closed-door testimony and the evidence being shared with Congress.
Some Republicans on the committee say the findings and revelations have left them more convinced than ever that FBI leadership rigged the outcome to clear Clinton.
“This was an effort to pre-bake the cake, pre-bake the outcome,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), a House Judiciary Committee member who attended the McCabe briefing before the holidays. “Hillary Clinton obviously benefited from people taking actions to ensure she wasn’t held accountable.”
Gaetz said he could not divulge the specifics of what McCabe told lawmakers, but that he left the Dec. 21 session believing the FBI had deviated from its “normal objective practices” while investigating Clinton.
The top Democrat on the panel acknowledged the FBI’s handling of the case was unique, but argued Republicans are politicizing their own panel’s work.
“To the extent that the Assistant Director of the FBI was involved in that investigation, and recognizing that the investigation itself presented a unique set of circumstances, his testimony did not raise any concerns that would justify the Republicans’ outsized obsession with Hillary Clinton’s emails two years after the fact,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y) who recently took over as the top Democrat on House Judiciary after former Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) stepped aside after sexual misconduct allegations were made against him.
Yes this idiot thinks that minorities are to damn stupid to think for themselves.
I’m sure this Hillary supporter has hot sauce in her purse right?
Two professors from San Diego State University claim in a new book that farmers’ markets in urban areas are weed-like “white spaces” responsible for oppression.
Pascale Joassart-Marcelli and Fernando J Bosco are part of an anthology released this month titled “Just Green Enough.” The work, published by Routledge, claims there is a correlation between the “whiteness of farmers’ markets” and gentrification.
“Farmers’ markets are often white spaces where the food consumption habits of white people are normalized,” the SDSU professors write, the education watchdog Campus Reform reported Wednesday.
The geology professors claim that 44 percent of San Diego’s farmers’ markets cater to “households from higher socio-economic backgrounds,” which raises property values and “[displaces] low-income residents and people of color.”
“The most insidious part of this gentrification process is that alternative food initiatives work against the community activists and residents who first mobilized to fight environmental injustices and provide these amenities but have significantly less political and economic clout than developers and real estate professionals,” the academics write.
The authors claim that negative externalities of “white habitus” formed at farmers’ markets can be managed through “inclusive steps that balance new initiatives and neighborhood stability to make cities ‘just green enough.’”
Netanyahu tells Saban Forum in D.C. that half of Middle East believes that their respective countries could benefit from Israel ties
WASHINGTON – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised concerns over the threat posed against Israel by Iran while addressing the Saban Forum taking place in Washington, D.C. via satellite from his office in Jerusalem.
To really understand Israel and the Middle East – subscribe to Haaretz
Iran has “ruthless commitment to terror” and “ruthless commitment to kill Jews,” much like Nazi Germany during World War II, the premier stressed while addressing the forum.
As the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu said he did not “have the luxury of discounting” threats to destroy the Jewish people, and for this reason he continues to speak about Iran.
skip – Netanyahu at Saban Forum
Netanyahu further echoed his statements from over the weekend, vowing to stop Iran from entrenching itself in Syria. On Friday, Israel allegedly struck an Iranian military base in Syria.
Keep updated: Sign up to our newsletter
Email*Sign up
He called for the policy community in Washington D.C. to take the opportunity set up by U.S. President Donald Trump to “erase the great flaws” of the Iran nuclear deal, as its current status allows Tehran to build up a nuclear arsenal.
Netanyahu added that Israel will be the first to restore relations with Iran once its current regime falls, and that in the future, Israel will be “embraced openly by its Arab neighbors, rather than in secret as it’s done today.”
He further added that “half of the public in the Middle Eastern countries that were surveyed appreciate Israel’s strengths and assets” and that “they believe that their country could benefit from having ties with Israel.”
Excerpts of his speech were published on Saturday night, in which he vowed to stop Iran from entrenching itself in Syria.
The Saban Forum is an annual conference on U.S. policy in the Middle East organized by the Brookings Institution.
>>Israeli attempts to kick Iran out of Syria could escalate into war | Analysis
Other Israeli speakers at the event this year included former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and the new leader of the Labor Party, Avi Gabbay. Topics discussed included the Iran deal and Saudi Arabia’s role in the Middle East.
Later on Sunday, Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, will speak publicly for the first time about the Trump administration’s attempts to facilitate an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. Kushner will talk about the administration’s peace efforts together with Haim Saban, the Israeli-born business mogul who funds the annual event.
ABC News announced Saturday that Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross would be suspended for four weeks without pay over a botched “exclusive” about former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
During a live “special report” Friday morning, Ross reported that Flynn would testify that Donald Trump had ordered him to make contact with Russians about foreign policy while he was still a candidate. The report raised the specter of Trump’s impeachment and sent the stock market plummeting.
Later in the day, ABC issued a “clarification” to Ross’s report, saying that Trump’s alleged directive came after he’d been elected president. Ross himself appeared on “World News Tonight,” several hours after the initial report, to clarify his error.
In a statement, ABC News said Ross’ report “had not been fully vetted through our editorial standards process.”
“It is vital we get the story right and retain the trust we have built with our audience,” ABC’s statement added. “These are our core principles. We fell far short of that yesterday.”
