Liberal Forum

General Michael Hayden: I think where this is going, Michael, and I think is the lifeline that I think the administration is hoping they can grab onto is something that we call incidental collection.

And it may take a minute but I can explain to you and your viewers how this might work if you like.

Michael Smerconish: Do it.

GMH: Yeah, if we’re up against a legitimate foreign intelligence target, and let me just for purposes of explanation say, we’re up against, we’re targeting, and you’d want us to do this, a Russian oligarch who is involved in money laundering or how about sanctions busting, all right.

And so we’re on that target. And this is, by the way – Michael, this happens fairly routinely.

If that target now gets involved in a communication to, from, or even about a U.S. person we’re still allowed to continue to cover the target.

We just have to protect the U.S. person privacy. We do what’s called minimize the information.

So we might say this Russian oligarch in an extended conversation with a named U.S. person so on and so forth said this.

And we keep the U.S. identity minimized, unavailable, to our customers unless of course, Michael, the name U.S. identity is critical to the intelligence.

Let’s say, for example, that the oligarch was actually arranging an illegal transfer of funds in which case we would unmask the identity so that we’d have a full picture of the intelligence.

Now keep in mind, we’re just targeting the foreigner.

This is called incidental collection and the unmasking of the U.S. identity isn’t Trump, isn’t Bush.

It goes back 40 years these procedures to the reforms in the American intelligence community in the 1970’s.

So I suspect if there is any example of a U.S. identity being unmasked that has any relationship to the Trump Campaign or Trump Tower – and again, Michael, very normal, very correct, very legal – I think at that point the White House goes, ah-ha, I told you so.

I think this is where it’s going.

MS: Do I understand General Hayden to be predicting that perhaps the next step of this is that the Trump White House seeks to criminalize the incidental collection of U.S. intelligence? Is that what you’re saying?

GMH: Yeah, mischaracterize and criminalize, and Michael very tellingly, Devin Nunes and Adam Schiff share in ranking of the House Intelligence Committee within the last 36 hours has actually asked the American intelligence community was there any incidental collection, were any identities unmasked, and who requested the unmasking?

So I do think that we are going to that point, again, which I think at the end of the day will be mischaracterized and there will be an attempt to claim that that’s some sort of violation.

http://cnn.it/2mj3BgF

Devin Nunes’ Entire Net Worth Sunk In Company With Strong Ties To Russia

Nunes has put almost his entire net worth into a winery with strong ties to Russia.

How strong?

Well, the Alpha Omega Winery has distributors all over the U.S., but just a few abroad.

One of those overseas distributors is the Luding Trading Company in Russia.

Luding is, in fact, Russia’s largest distributor for alcoholic beverages.

But they don’t just operate in Russia – they also appear to have a relationship with Vladimir Putin:
If Russia were truly a free, democratic state, then maybe this could be overlooked as nothing more than a large company wishing the leader of a country that had given them so much a happy birthday.

But Russia, under Putin, is anything but truly free.

With Luding being the country’s largest distributor of alcohol, it’s highly unlikely that Putin doesn’t have his fingers in it somewhere.

The fact that Nunes has his money sunk there is a pretty big deal.

It’s also odd that Alpha Omega Winery would have a relationship with Russia’s largest distributor when they only have a relationship with one Western nation (Switzerland).

They don’t have any relationships with any other distributor in the EU, which means no relationships with NATO allies at all.

Then there’s the fact that Nunes is one of the people Trump called upon to refute news about the whole Russia scandal.

That right there compromised the House’s investigation into Trump and Russia because it blurs the lines between the intelligence community, the White House, and Congress.

And Nunes actually did what Trump asked him to – he started sending messages to reporters challenging the Russia stories.

As the chairman of the committee investigating the Trump-Russia tie, he should never have done that.

It appears more and more likely that Nunes was never acting independently in this investigation.

And given that he’s got business ties to Russia—tenuous or not—he should have recused himself from this investigation the instant it got underway.

Termin8tor » 08 Mar 2017 7:18 pm » wrote: I correctly predicted six out of seven elections, liar.

You've been too cowardly to even offer a prediction.

RichClem » 14 Jul 2015 2:59 pm » wrote: have been right 5 out of 6 in the last six elections I predicted.

A dishonest troll like you will cherry pick only the mistakes I made from the one time I was wrong.

While refusing to admit the five times I was correct.

Babbling lying psychotic.

Trump Heads To Golf Club For the Twelfth Time In 9-Week Presidency

So far, President Donald Trump hasn’t had much follow-through on his campaign promises to skip golfing and rarely leave the White House.

Trump arrived at Virginia’s Trump National Golf Club on Saturday morning, making it the twelfth time in his 9-week presidency that he’s made a trip to a golf club, NBC News editor Brad Jaffy pointed out on Twitter.

Bradd Jaffy: President Trump is now at Trump National Golf Club in Virginia, per pool; it's his 12th golf course trip since taking office 9 weeks ago.

It was not immediately clear whether Trump was actually playing golf.

Pool reporters were told that Trump was at the club for “meetings,” though as of Saturday afternoon they had been given no information about the nature of said meetings or who was involved.

The jaunts are in stark contrast to promises Trump made on the campaign trail, when he promised he would “rarely leave the White House because there’s so much work to be done,” and declared he would “not have time to go play golf.”

The president also derided former President Barack Obama on numerous occasions for purportedly playing golf too much.

Potential 'smoking gun' showing Obama administration spied on Trump team, source says
James Rosen By James Rosen
Republican congressional investigators expect a potential “smoking gun” establishing that the Obama administration spied on the Trump transition team, and possibly the president-elect himself, will be produced to the House Intelligence Committee this week, a source told Fox News.


Classified intelligence showing incidental collection of Trump team communications, purportedly seen by committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and described by him in vague terms at a bombshell Wednesday afternoon news conference, came from multiple sources, Capitol Hill sources told Fox News. The intelligence corroborated information about surveillance of the Trump team that was known to Nunes, sources said, even before President Trump accused his predecessor of having wiretappedhim in a series of now-infamous tweets posted on March 4.
The intelligence is said to leave no doubt the Obama administration, in its closing days, was using the cover of legitimate surveillance on foreign targets to spy on President-elect Trump, according to sources.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/03 ... -says.html

Did Obama Abuse Raw Intelligence?
I couldn’t have seen those transcripts when I led the House intel committee
By PETER HOEKSTRA
March 23, 2017 6:56 p.m. ET
555 COMMENTS

It was remarkable when Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, revealed Wednesday that Trump campaign officials were caught up in the inadvertent collection of intelligence. Read between the lines with a clear understanding of the intelligence community,
and it’s positively astonishing....

Things begin to get a little frightening when we learn that this inadvertent collection of Trump staff conversations was followed up with transcriptions of those conversations and the disclosure (or unmasking) of the persons involved in the conversation. These transcripts would be considered raw intelligence reports....according to Mr. Nunes, such information made its way to the Obama White House before Inauguration Day.

Few if any people working in the White House would ever need to see raw intelligence. Like intelligence committee members, they are typically consumers of intelligence products,
not raw intelligence.

The raw transcripts of masked persons—or unmasked persons, or U.S. persons who can be easily identified—making their way to the White House is very likely unprecedented.

One can only imagine who, at that point, might be reading these reports. Valerie Jarrett? Susan Rice? Ben Rhodes? The president himself? We don’t know, and the people who do aren’t talking at the moment....
Mr. Trump was a little inarticulate in the context of Twitter’s 140-character limit, but it seems he got the general picture right.

Then there’s Mr. Comey’s testimony that the FBI had been investigating Trump staff for eight months. It almost certainly included surveillance; an investigation without surveillance would approach farcical....

rather damningly, I believe that Mr. Comey and Adm. Rogers would have to have known that raw transcripts of captured conversations that included members of the Trump team were at the White House. It is inconceivable that people in those positions of power would not know. While this may not be criminal, it is at least a cause for them to be fired.

My greatest concern—the one that keeps me awake at night—is that the awesome powers of our intelligence community might have been corrupted for political purposes.

While we’re not witnessing broad, Stasi-style surveillance of citizens, it’s clear there have been serious errors of judgment and action among our otherwise professional intelligence community.

This is truly scary.

We have to learn the entire truth before anyone, in or out of Congress, can again have confidence in our intelligence community.
Mr. Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican, was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, 2004-07.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/did-obama- ... 1490309760

Cannonpointer » 25 Mar 2017 8:46 pm » wrote:It looks like there WAS some improper spying on tRump, following his crushing defeat of hitlery.

Misty » 26 Mar 2017 10:21 am » wrote: Nunes now says that he doesn't know if Trump officials were 'monitored' or merely 'mentioned' in the reports he was talking about.
Did he even see these so-called reports?

The fact that two foreigners who were being monitored may have 'mentioned' the names of members of the Trump team right after Election Day, is not exactly a scandal.

Thus far Nunes has not even shared anything about this with the members of his own committee.
That smells a little.

Misty » 26 Mar 2017 10:21 am » wrote:The fact that two foreigners who were being monitored may have 'mentioned' the names of members of the Trump team right after Election Day, is not exactly a scandal.

Termin8tor » 26 Mar 2017 10:20 am » wrote:I managed to slip this by the Chief Censor.

Misty » 26 Mar 2017 11:37 am » wrote: **** you.
You slipped nothing by me.

No, Trump Isn’t Under Criminal Investigation by the FBI
by DAN MCLAUGHLIN March 24, 2017 12:40 PM @BASEBALLCRANK The bureau is conducting a counterintelligence investigation, which is a whole different beast. There is no ongoing criminal investigation of President Trump or his campaign. I realize that may not be what you expect to hear, if you’re only casually consuming the news. But it’s what FBI director Jim Comey told Congress, and no available evidence contradicts it....

Democrats are desperate to draw a parallel between Comey’s testimony Monday before the House Intelligence Committee — about an ongoing FBI investigation that includes any connections between the Trump 2016 campaign and Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election — and Comey’s statements in July and October 2016 about the criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server. But if you listen to what Comey actually told Congress under oath, you get a very different picture. Let’s quote the key portion:

As you know, our practice is not to confirm the existence of ongoing investigations, especially those investigations that involve classified matters, but in unusual circumstances where it is in the public interest, it may be appropriate to do so as Justice Department policies recognize. This is one of those circumstances.

I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts. As with any counterintelligence investigation, this will also include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed....

In short, the investigation Comey references is not a criminal investigation; it’s a counterintelligence investigation, and crimes will be investigated or charged only if they happen to be uncovered in the process.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/4 ... t-criminal

Misty » 26 Mar 2017 11:37 am » wrote:When and where did Nunes say that transcriptions of Trump staff conversations made their way to the Obama White House before Inauguration Day?

Nunes is now saying that he's not sure if members of Trump's team were actually 'monitored' or just 'mentioned' in these intelligence reports.
From his own mouth.

P.S. Pete Hoekstra is a wingnut.

Termin8tor » 26 Mar 2017 10:39 am » wrote:The scandal is that at least one felony was committed and likely many nire by illegally leaking classified information to the MSM in order to damage the Trump presidency.
Another likely scandal is that Obama apparently tried to cover up these felonies afterwards or assist further felonies by spreading this intell to 16 agencies that ordinarily would not have had access to it.
And given that Nunes said the surveillance was legal but baseless implies a further scandal; that Obama and officials used a pretext to wiretap Trump, apparently back to July.
If that's true, US intelligence was used to interfere in a US election, which is a massive scandal.

Termin8tor » 26 Mar 2017 11:46 am » wrote:This refutes yet another of your endless lies.
Lying so much must be exhausting.

AP Exclusive: US probe of ex-Trump aide extends to Cyprus

The U.S. government investigation of President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, crossed the Atlantic earlier this year to the Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus, once known as a haven for money laundering by Russian billionaires.

Treasury agents in recent months obtained information connected to Manafort's transactions from Cypriot authorities, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly.

The request was part of a federal anti-corruption probe into Manafort's work in Eastern Europe.

The Cyprus attorney general, one of the country's top law enforcement officers, was also aware of the American request.

Manafort was Trump's unpaid campaign chairman from March until August last year, during the critical run-up to the Republican National Convention.

He's been a leading focus of the U.S. investigation into whether Trump associates coordinated with Moscow to meddle in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Termin8tor » 26 Mar 2017 10:21 am » wrote: