Mo Norai has worked in Silicon Valley for a decade. He’s done stints at Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Apple, but only as a contract worker, meaning he has missed out on the tech giants’ storied perks, benefits and job security. So when he was approached last April by a recruiter from a company called Tech Jobs Box about a full-time job, he was intrigued.
A woman named Kelly Dale contacted him via LinkedIn promising that “salary and benefits would be competitive.”
“It really hooked me,” Norai told me last month.
After a brief phone conversation, Dale said he seemed like a great candidate and set up in-person interviews with her colleague and an investor in the company. Those went well and for four months last year, Norai thought he had a new job. He was in regular communication with his new colleagues, meeting up with them for dinner, drinks, and a baseball game, but they kept pushing his start date back, saying they were securing office space and finalising funding.
But in fact, there was no job. Tech Jobs Box wasn’t a real company. Kelly Dale and the rest of his new “colleagues” were actually operatives for Project Veritas, a conservative investigative group founded by James O’Keefe that specialises in secretly recording people. It’s perhaps best known for catalyzing the downfall of ACORN, a low-income advocacy group that lost its federal funding after Project Veritas released undercover videos of the group’s employees counseling a sex worker and her “pimp” (a disguised O’Keefe).
Project Veritas traditionally targets politicians, government agencies, and media organisations, but decided to go after Silicon Valley last year because of its perceived biases against conservatives. “Big tech companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter have become media monopolies and they are censoring people,” said O’Keefe by phone.
In January, Project Veritas released three videos about Twitter’s content-moderation practices that feature hidden camera footage of nine current and former Twitter employees – one woman and eight men, including Norai. They even secretly filmed Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey by having an operative pose as a homeless person and confront him at a Blue Bottle coffee shop.
The videos don’t contain blockbuster information. The employees reveal that there aren’t a lot of conservatives at Twitter; that Twitter tries to make spammy content less visible on the platform; that many of the sock puppet Twitter accounts banned in the last year posed as Trump supporters; and that Twitter would cooperate, as required by law, in any investigation of President Trump by handing over his private Twitter messages. The most surprising part was a former engineer’s claim that Twitter historically “shadow banned” users. (A “shadow ban” means that a user’s content on a platform can’t be seen and the user doesn’t realise it.)
Project Veritas points out that Senator Ted Cruz cited their videos while questioning tech companies during a hearing about content moderation, terrorism, and Russia in January.
“The individuals depicted in these videos were speaking in a personal capacity and do not represent or speak for Twitter,” said a Twitter spokesperson by email, pointing me to a page that explains how and why Twitter accounts are censored or made less visible. “Twitter does not shadowban accounts. We do take actions to downrank accounts that are abusive, and mark them accordingly so people can still click through and see this information if they so choose.”
While Project Veritas’s findings weren’t particularly shocking, how they were obtained was. Project Veritas didn’t just fake-recruit its targets, it fake-seduced them. Many of the male employees were secretly recorded while on dates at dimly-lit restaurants, sipping wine. Based on the number of times he appears in the videos in different locations and dress, one security engineer, Clay Haynes, appears to have been enamoured enough with the operative pumping him for information to go out with her at least three times. All of the Veritas operatives’ faces are blurred, but you can see his date’s jangly bracelets and long blond hair. It’s unclear just how far the seduction of Haynes went, but they became serious enough to go on a double date to Morton’s Steakhouse with her friend, a disguised James O’Keefe.
“NO ONE should have to experience this,” said Haynes via Facebook message. Haynes, who is still employed by Twitter, ultimately opted not to talk to me at the company’s request.
Beyond the questionable journalistic ethics of exploiting people’s desires for work and love, Project Veritas’s tactics broke the law, says John Nockleby, a professor who specialises in privacy at Loyola Law School-Los Angeles. While consent laws for recording conversations vary from state to state, California is a two-party consent state, meaning you have to tell someone if you’re recording them, or face up to a year of jail time and a $US2,500 ($3,240) fine. “You’re allowed to do video in a public place without getting consent, but not take audio, unless it’s someone like a politician giving a speech to a crowd,” Nockleby told me by phone. “In California, even in a public place, if you’re audio recording without consent, that’s not legal.” In California, even in a public place, if you’re audio recording without consent, that’s not legal.
O’Keefe, who paid a $US100,000 ($129,600) settlement in 2012 to an ACORN employee who sued him over California’s law against surreptitious recording, expressed the belief that his operatives are allowed to record people in public places, like bars, restaurants or a conference room where a door is open.
“We have a number of lawyers who handle compliance for us. California is a two-party state but we can operate in areas where there are no expectations of privacy,” said O’Keefe by phone. “With the Twitter story, we did not break the law. Period.”
In a follow-up email, a Project Veritas spokesperson pointed to an exception in the law for circumstances in “which the parties to the communication may reasonably expect that the communication may be overheard or recorded.”(Norai says the door to the conference room where his interviews took place was closed.)
The story Silicon Valley likes to tell about itself is that it conquered the world by making it more open and connected, and by getting strangers to trust each other. Project Veritas exploited that ecosystem of connection and trust to wage its year-long investigation, turning the tools that Silicon Valley created against it. In a phone interview, O’Keefe declined to reveal how many undercover journalists were involved or how much it spent on the operation, saying only that it “was very expensive” because travel and lodging in San Francisco “was outrageous.” (Project Veritas doesn’t seem to be having money problems; its budget has nearly doubled every year, according to financial filings. O’Keefe says it raised more than $US7 ($9) million in 2017.) He said he couldn’t talk about his group’s methods because the investigation of tech companies is ongoing. Google and Facebook employees should beware. The investigation of tech companies is ongoing. “We still have active investigators out in the field,” said O’Keefe.
“We still have active investigators out in the field, which is why I can’t reveal the techniques used to gather information,” he told me. “I wish these companies would be honest about what they are doing. Unfortunately, we live in a society where there is so much dishonesty that it requires undercover work.”
In other words, deceit requires more deceit. I was able to unearth some of the group’s methods of deception: It sent targets messages on LinkedIn and dating apps, built false identities on social networks, and operated a fake start-up out of a WeWork blocks from Twitter’s headquarters.
The larger revelation of the project is not that Twitter is biased against conservatives; it’s that Silicon Valley has given strangers who bear you ill will all the tools they need to infiltrate your life. Our identities are scattered across the web on multiple platforms, giving people countless ways to make contact with us as well as dossiers of what we do, whom we like, and where we go.
“You’re on the national news talking about Twitter,” a friend told Mo Norai via Facebook message after the first video was published. Norai had no idea what she was talking about at first. “You know I don’t work at Twitter anymore, right?” he sent back.
Then he went to Project Veritas’s site and watched the video. “Oh fuck, this is bad,” he thought.
In the videos, Norai is dressed formally, wearing a tie and a black suit vest, his long hair pulled back in a ponytail. Norai’s experience at tech companies is in content moderation — deciding, essentially, what speech needs to be taken down. He’s removed spam from iTunes and reviewed posts as a contractor for Facebook. He was hired as a contract worker at Twitter after the Paris attacks in November 2015 because terrorism results in increased offensive postings on social networks. “We were warned it was going to be grisly,” Norai told me.
He was there for just three months, and was gone by March 2016, months before Trump became the Republican presidential nominee. Having “Content Review Agent” for Twitter on his LinkedIn résumé, though, made him a target of Project Veritas. Vaporware,a successful strategy for many a start-up in Silicon Valley, also works well for deceptive investigative operations.
Norai had two interviews with the fake start-up, which was allegedly going to make content recommendations to people based on their location and buying patterns. He says he typed the company’s name into a search engine and didn’t find anything. (Vaporware, a successful strategy for many a start-up in Silicon Valley, also works well for deceptive investigative operations.) “It seemed weird but I met the people,” Norai told me. “They said they wanted to start a start-up. It made sense it wasn’t in existence yet.”
Both his interviews were in May. Kelly Dale, the supposed recruiter, said the office was in downtown San Francisco and gave Norai an address on Mission Street. When Norai got there, it turned out to be a WeWork co-working space, which, again, is not that strange. Lots of early-stage start-ups are based out of WeWorks around the country, because they offer easy plug-and-play office space. The WeWork-Civic Center that Project Veritas used rents office space for as little as $US780 ($1,011) per month.
I went to the WeWork last month – it’s a seven-minute walk from Twitter’s headquarters, in a stylish building on an otherwise seedy street in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district – and asked for Tech Jobs Box. The receptionist recognised the name, but said they weren’t there anymore. She wouldn’t say how long they were there or how many people came in to meet with them. WeWork declined to answer any questions about the fake company that rented space from it.
Norai’s interviews were with a doughy-faced guy who introduced himself as Eric Williams. A grey-haired “investor” named Dan, who Norai later discovered was Dan Sandini, a known operative of Veritas, came to the second interview, the one posted online. Dan and Eric said they lived on the East Coast but wanted to recruit talent in the Bay Area.
Norai thought the interview questions were odd. They asked him theoretical questions about how he might have dealt with tweets from aggressive Trump supporters.
“The political questions were strange but I just thought it was because they weren’t from here,” said Norai, a life-long Californian who grew up in the East Bay.
Norai hadn’t worked at Twitter during the bulk of the 2016 campaign, nor had he dealt with Trump-related content moderation. But his theoretical comments were presented as if from experience. Project Veritas’s habit of presenting comments out of context is part of why people question the credibility of their videos. James O’Keefe says Project Veritas recently formulated a code of ethics that includes “not breaking the law” and not deceptively editing videos or “putting words in people’s mouths.”
After Norai’s interview ended, Eric and Dan took him out for celebratory cocktails at two swanky San Francisco bars, Local Edition and the View. They said Norai was hired. At the View, Norai took out his phone to Snapchat the moment. Dan protested and asked Norai not to put it online. “I just thought he didn’t want to look silly because I gave him cat ears,” said Norai. ”Current or prior Facebook or Twitter experience preferred.”
When Eric came back to town in June, he invited Norai to a Giants game with two other men, who said they were Department of Justice lawyers. The four men sat behind home plate, and Eric asked for Norai’s help in recruiting other people for the start-up. Afterwards he sent him job descriptions for two positions: “software engineer, machine learning” and “spam operations.” “Current or prior Facebook or Twitter experience preferred,” the listings read, suggesting Facebook may get the Veritas treatment next. Norai put Eric in touch with two friends who had experience at Twitter and Facebook, respectively.
The night ended at bars again. After drinks at the Starlight Room, Norai got on the train home to the East Bay. “It felt like we’d established a friendship,” said Norai.
He never saw any of them again. At some point, Norai tried to email Kelly Dale and it bounced. Eric told him she’d gotten married and had a new email address, which made little sense given that her email was “kelly@techjobsbox.com.” A few months later, Eric’s number stopped working. Dan told him Eric had been let go. Still jobless months later, Norai began to wonder if it had been some kind of scam. He decided to take a contract work position at Facebook last September.
When the Project Veritas video came out in January, he found out exactly what kind of scam it was. The videos didn’t include the two friends he put Eric in touch with.
In January, an investigator from Twitter reached out to him to ask if he had known he’d been filmed and asked whether he’d been contacted on Tinder or other dating apps, as others had been. While Norai says he mostly worries about potential professional damage, he also bears psychological scars from the episode. He says he’s paranoid now about meeting new people, and worries when a phone is out during an interview because it could be secretly recording him. He didn’t feel comfortable with me until I showed him my driver’s licence.
“Kelly Dale,” left. Allison Maass, right, who left Project Veritas last year to work for Circa News.Screenshot: LinkedIn and Circa
He asked me if I’d ever done anything like this before, which was an uncomfortable question, because I have. A couple years ago, I created a nonexistent business — the Freakin’ Awesome Karaoke Express, or F.A.K.E. — and made it a website as well as accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Yelp, in order to explore the fake reputation economy. I do believe that some stories can only be told well by going “undercover,” and while I hate to admit it, part of me is impressed by all the work that Project Veritas put into its Twitter exposé. Many a journalist knows it can be hard to get people who work at tech companies to talk. But their specific tactics were deplorable and cruel. They didn’t go undercover to find out how an industry actually works; they went undercover to exploit people’s vulnerabilities in the pursuit of information that could have been unearthed with a more traditional journalistic approach.
O’Keefe disagrees with that sentiment. “It’s hard to get [tech companies] to be honest on the record. You call them as a journalist and they say they don’t do it. We got tipped off to shadow banning and set out to confirm it. And we basically confirmed it,” he told me by phone from an Uber. “Sometimes that’s when you’re most honest, when you’re being recorded in private.”
Twitter disputes the honesty of the investigation. “We deplore the deceptive and underhanded tactics by which this footage was obtained and selectively edited to fit a pre-determined narrative,” said a spokesperson by email. “Twitter is committed to enforcing our rules without bias and empowering every voice on our platform, in accordance with the Twitter Rules.”
Since the Twitter investigation was published, Project Veritas hasn’t done much to cover its tracks. Kelly Dale’s LinkedIn profile is still up, with over 200 followers and claims that Dale worked at CUNY and went to Pace. Neither have records of her for obvious reasons: She doesn’t exist. According to Nexis’s people search engine, there are no Kelly Dales who live in Massachusetts. The profile photo looks to me like it belongs to Allison Maass, who did not respond to a media inquiry sent via LinkedIn. Maass left Project Veritas last year to work for Circa, an online media group owned by the media behemoth Sinclair Broadcasting, which famously requires its television stations to air conservative news daily, and is currently trying to expand its footprint by acquiring Tribune Media. Project Veritas and Sinclair Broadcasting have collaborated in the past.
Leaving behind the traces of abandoned identities is pretty common for Project Veritas, said Lauren Windsor, an executive producer at the web show Undercurrent who was working at Democracy Partners when the group of political consultants was infiltrated by Project Veritas in 2016. After Democracy Partners realised it had been duped and secretly filmed by an intern named “Angela Brandt,” who was in fact Allison Maass, Windsor began preserving evidence for a million-dollar lawsuit against the group. She realised it would be useful to publish that evidence – photos and details of faked identities — to help others avoid the same fate. In January, she published an online dossier with the photos and known aliases of over 150 Project Veritas operatives.
Graphic: ProjectVeritas.exposed
When shown a photo of “Eric Williams,” Windsor recognised him from another Project Veritas operation and sent me photos of him filming activist group Voces de la Frontera in Milwaukee in 2016.
Many of Project Veritas’s recent stings haven’t gone very well. Investigations into the Washington Post and the Soros Foundation were spectacular failures. But even if Project Veritas’s methods are crude and “amateurish” as the New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer put it, Windsor warns that it is a force to be reckoned with.
“They have gotten a lot of funding. They have been on a recruitment surge to try to staff up before 2018,” she said by phone. “I think they’re a real threat to media and political organisations, and, most importantly, to candidates.”
O’Keefe echoes that. “We have an untold amount of people inside organisations and they don’t know that,” he told me. “We are going from the smash-and-grab to the long con.” We are going from the smash-and-grab to the long con.
Windsor says the group’s techniques are “inhumane.” “They see themselves as being at war with the Left but the [people they secretly film] are real people despite how much Project Veritas dislikes them politically,” she said. “A lot of people [who are infiltrated and secretly filmed] have described the experience to me like psychological rape. It felt like that to me. They’re destroying lives and it’s really important to expose their political espionage as much as possible.”
Windsor has been training liberal groups how to spot a Veritas operative, mainly by thoroughly researching the online identity of anyone who offers free help or dangles the offer of donor money. If their online footprint is thin, it can be a clue. But there are, of course, legitimate reasons why someone might have a thin online footprint, so it’s not a sureproof solution.
I don’t actually have any sureproof solutions for you. We could ask social media companies to try to protect us from deceivers by authenticating people’s identities – Tinder could require users’ driver licenses; LinkedIn could ask for business records in order to list a new workplace — but that would simply invite a different sort of dystopia. We’re never going to be able to completely eradicate fake bots on Twitter or faked videos or con men on dating sites. Trolls will always find a way.
Maybe just keep in mind that, despite Silicon Valley marketing to the contrary, being in a more open and connected world has downsides. Project Veritas may not be particularly great at spycraft, but with enough manpower and enough online information at its disposal and enough hidden cameras in enough places, it will compromise people and organisations in damaging ways, fairly or unfairly. It’s the real-life manifestation of the faceless algorithms and unknown data brokers that scrape our profiles for information and constantly sit in the backgrounds of our browsers tracking everything that we do. Instead of using it to serve you Instagram ads for shoes, they’re trying to take down your organisation. You will just be a casualty along the way.
My esteemed colleague Russell Brandom leads our policy team. He was struck by the disingenuous response from conservative lawmakers to the most recent video sting from Project Veritas, which presented YouTube employees in an unfair light. Russell asked if he could take over the column today, and I was happy to oblige. I’ll be back tomorrow with thoughts on Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance at the Aspen Ideas festival.
James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas has been on a tear against Google lately, with the most recent salvo coming this Monday. Like most of O’Keefe’s work, it’s deceptively edited and doesn’t add up to much, but he managed to catch one executive in a pretty poor choice of words. In a hidden camera conversation with Jen Gennai, Google’s Head of Responsible Innovation, the executive is caught saying the following:
Elizabeth Warren is saying we should break up Google. And like, I love her but she’s very misguided, like that will not make it better it will make it worse, because all these smaller companies who don’t have the same resources that we do will be charged with preventing the next Trump situation, it’s like a small company cannot do that.
If you substitute “Cambridge Analytica” for “Trump Situation,” it’s more or less the argument Facebook and Google have been using to fend off antitrust proposals all year. But if you’re inclined to think the whole media is biased against the president, it was exactly what you’d been waiting to hear. When the video was pulled off YouTube for “privacy violations” the next day, it only fueled the paranoia.
The whole situation would probably have stayed quiet if it weren’t for Ted Cruz, who called out the video in an uncomfortable moment at the Senate Commerce hearing the following day. Cruz was questioning Google UX Director Maggie Stanphill, who was nominally there to speak about dark patterns in interface design. Cruz took her to task for the quote in the video, and then again when he realized she hadn’t actually read the report.
“I would recommend people interested in political bias at Google watch the entire report and judge for yourself,” Cruz said. The clip was then circulated on the usual right wing outlets (Town Hall, Breitbart, PJ Media), and got a minor replay from the Homeland Security Committee the next day. After that last hearing, the scandal grew big enough that YouTube decided to issue an official denial, saying simply “we apply our policies fairly and without political bias.”
It’s embarrassing that Congress took this so seriously, and no one wants to give it any more attention than it deserves. But O’Keefe has played this trick over and over, so it’s worth breaking down exactly what’s happening here.
To start with, there’s a fairly straightforward reason why the Veritas video was banned. YouTube’s privacy guidelines ban videos that identify people who don’t want to be identified. There are exceptions for newsworthiness and public figures, but the Veritas video is clearly on the wrong side of the rule. The offending footage is the hidden-camera video of Gennai, who is no one’s idea of a public figure, and obviously didn’t consent to be in the video.
Even if you see Veritas as making a newsworthy point about platform bias, it’s hard to argue that including Gennai’s name and face was necessary to make that point. (Hidden camera footage used on broadcast news typically blurs out faces for exactly this reason.) Given the general temperament of Veritas subscribers, one can only imagine the kind of abuse that’s been pointed at Gennai in the days since the video went live.
This sort of takedown happens often enough that we can assume most YouTubers are aware of them, to say nothing of reporters covering YouTube moderation issues. It’s hard to believe O’Keefe was walking into this blind — just like it’s hard to believe he wasn’t aware that YouTube was scheduled for a run of congressional hearings in the days after the video posted. He was daring YouTube to ban him, knowing that it would elevate a mediocre scoop into two days of congressional berating.
The point wasn’t to force YouTube into better policies or more consistent enforcement. It was simply brute force, letting executives know that every time someone in the conservative clique has trouble with YouTube, there will be a lawmaker ready to sweat them over it. Each time it happens, Google gets a little more gun-shy dealing with high-profile policy violations, whether it’s Alex Jones or Steven Crowder. And as long as the trick keeps working, O’Keefe and Cruz will keep doing it.
Our United States Congress is in dire need of a really good enema, to get out all the shitstains on the underwear of the Founding Fathers and off the Constitution and rule of law that the Red Russian Repugnants have done, wiping their traitorous asses with it, since Putin’s Puppet, Ronald McDonald Trump invaded the White House.
Tomorrow is the end of Democracy as we know it should be
Tomorrow? The Red Russian Repugnants, led by Moscow Mitch McConnell KY and Leningrad Lindsey Graham SC, along with Devin “The Cow” Nunes, Alexander “I Don’t Care” Lamar TN, John Barrasso WY, Marsha Blackburn TN, Roy Blunt MO, John Boozman AR, Mike Braun IN, Richard Burr NC, Shelley Moore Capito WV, Bill Cassidy LA, Susan Collins ME, John Cornyn TX, Tom Cotton AZ, Kevin Cramer ND, Mike Crapo ID, Ted Cruz TX, Steve Daines MT, Michael B Enzi WY, Joni Ernst IA, Deb Fischer NE, Cory Gardner CO, Chuck Grassley IA, Josh Hawley MO, John Hoeven ND, Cindy Hyde-Smith MS, James M. Inhofe OK, Ron Johnson WI, John Kennedy LA, Angus S. King Jr ME, James Lankford OK, Mike Lee UT, Kelly Loeffler GA, Martha McSally AZ, Jerry Moran KS, Lisa Murkowski AK, Rand Paul KY, David Perdue GA, Rob Portman OH, James E. Risch ID, Pat Roberts KS, Mitt Romney UT, Mike Rounds SD, Marco Rubio FL, Ben Sasse NE, Rick Scott FL, Tim Scott SC, Richard C Shelby AL, Dan Sullivan AK, John Thune SD, Thom Tillis NC, Patrick J Toomey PA, Roger F. Wicker MS, Todd Young IN (Note: Names taken from the current list of U.S. Senators of the 116 Congress as well as the information to each Republican Senate contact info listed at end.) will all more than likely violate not only the oath most of them who call themselves Christian, their oath to God and Jesus they took when they were sworn into office, to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, but also the oath they swore before God and Jesus at the start of the impeachment trial of Donald J Trump in the Senate to be impartial jurors and consider all the evidence, are? Going to not remove Donald J Trump for his crimes, when they would have done so if President Barack Obama or Bill Clinton had done what Donald J Trump did with the Ukraine.
Heck they would have demanded their impeachment the moment Obama or Clinton sent out a hateful tweet as Trump does on a daily basis.
They would have demanded that President Barack Obama or Bill Clinton be arrested and tried for High Treason against the United States if they had praised Putin or any other dictator as Donald J Trump has done, or taken the side of Putin over our own CIA, FBI and other State Department agencies. Or if they had held an over two hour private, secret meeting in Helsinki with Putin as Trump did and not release any information about that meeting.
But? The Republican Senators are going to walk all over the Constitution and the rule of law tomorrow, the same rules and Constitution they state they are the defenders and protectors of, and find this son of a bitch criminal Donald J Trump? Not guilty. And? By doing so? Prove how much a bunch of complete and total hypocrites they truly are in their refusing to the same rules they demanded during Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial, that witnesses should be called and evidence admitted, not be applied to Donald J Trump’s impeachment trial. And? Even before the trial? Admit they were never going to find him guilty or remove him from office. So that when they took that oath to swear to be impartial jurors and hear all the evidence and decide on that? They were committing willful perjury because they knew they were never going to keep that oath they swore to take in the first place. And these same hypocrites absolve Donald J Trump of his crimes that they would in fact? Demand President Barack Obama or Bill Clinton be impeached and removed from office for if they had done the same thing.
We who abide by the rule of law and the Constitution could go all meltdown snowflake freakshow like the Trumpsters have, like the psycho Christotaliban preachers Robert Jeffress, Franklin Graham, Jim Bakker, Rick Wiles and others have called for a Civil War if Traitor Trump is removed from office and demand if he is not removed we should start a Civil War. But that is not our style. No, we still believe in the rule of law and the Constitution even if the Red Russian Republicans no longer do.
And of course? With the Red Russian Repugnants absolving Traitor Trump for his crimes, they are also now telling him? YOU are right, just like you said in your campaign, you can in fact? Shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and you will not lose any support from us and we will fight tooth and nail to find you not guilty.
It is time for all of us to do all we can to vote out these Red Russian Repugnants. Get your voting age children, get everyone you know and tell them how serious this is. The Red Russian Republicans have already made their choice to violate their oaths of office, to violate the oaths they took before the trial and to violate the Constitution and rule of law in defense of Traitor Trump.
So, come November 3rd, 2020? Get off your asses and vote Blue no matter who. We created one tsunami during the Mid Terms…this time? Let’s bury them in the biggest Blue Wave they have ever seen.
I find it interesting. During the Clinton Impeachment Trial Graham and the other Republicans had no problem demanding witnesses and evidence be entered. Now? Under Trump? It is a flip-flop.
They say that the impeachment of Trump and the attempted “coup” of him by the Democrats was going against the will of the voters who elected Trump. Yet by Trump even being in the White House? That went against the will of the voters who actually elected Hillary Clinton by their vote. It was only the Electoral College that got Trump in.
In poll after poll, even Fox polls, the majority wanted Trump impeached and the majority also wanted Bolton and Mulvaney, and even Trump and Guiliani to testify as well as more evidence entered. But the Republicans went even against this.
And now they say, why yeah, what he did was wrong, what he did was not right, but hey, it did not rise to the level to where he should be removed from office. But heck, they wanted to have Bill Clinton removed for lying about getting a bj in the oval office.
Now they say that they will allow the voters to decide. REALLY? We did decide the last time and that got over-ruled. Moscow Mitch KNOWS that the electronic voting machines also need paper back up, and more security needs to be done with the not only voting machines, but voter rolls. Of course the Repugnants will do all they can to also suppress the vote through voter id laws and gerrymandering.
One of the reasons why Trump is so desperate to stay in power is? He knows once he walks out of that White House? He will be in handcuffs along with dear old Diaper Donnie Jr, Eric, Ivanka and many others. He knows that he is looking at facing a whole host of charges. So we know he will do all he can to stay where he is.
But the thing we really got to figure out is what hold is over the Republicans that they would actually, knowingly sell out this country to Traitor Trump, Putin and the Russians? There is more here than meets the eyes with McConnell, Cruz, Graham, and why Boehner and Ryan left. I believe there is more to the connection with Butina, the NRA and Russia and the donations to the Republicans than meets the eyes.
One thing is for sure. We got to get off our butts, get the kids off their butts and vote, go out and vote blue and get out all these Republicans who are standing behind and defending Trump and his actions. We got to get Trump out of office. Trouble is? Like Cohen says, even if he loses his re-election? He is not going to leave quietly. And he has his Right Wing Christos like Robert Jeffress, Franklin Graham, Jim Bakker, and Rick Wiles along with a whole lot of extremist, right wing, white supremacist supporters of Trump all who were calling for a Civil War if Trump was removed.
We are in for a whole lot of trouble and Putin and Russia, China and North Korea? Are all loving what is happening here because of Trump and the Republicans.
But we have to at least try to continue to abide by the law and the Constitution. So,
REGISTER TO VOTE, AND VOTE AS YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT.
AND SADLY GET READY, BECAUSE THE PSYCHOPATHS OF TRUMP JUST MIGHT GET WHAT THEY WANT AND START A CIVIL WAR AND THEN? IT IS TIME FOR ALL OF US TO TRULY COME TOGETHER AND PUT THEM DOWN LIKE THE RABID DOGS THEY ARE.
The minute Moscow Mitch McConnell, Leningrad Lindsey, and the rest of the Russian GOP’s tucked their little dicks between their legs and started sucking on Traitor Trump’s tiny dick.
Republicans defeat Democratic bids to hear witnesses in Trump trial
Two Republicans — Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah — joined all 47 Senate Democrats in voting for the motion. Two potential GOP swing votes, Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, stuck with their party, ensuring that the Democratic motion was defeated. It came after the House’s impeachment prosecutors argued for weeks that voting against new witnesses and documents would render the trial a “sham” and a “cover-up” of the president’s alleged misconduct.
“Senators who opposed hearing from these witnesses, when their testimony would have better informed a judgment on the guilt or innocence of the president, will be hard pressed to explain why,” the House impeachment managers said in a joint statement. “Senators chose instead to set a dangerous precedent that will have long-lasting repercussions for the United States Congress, the balance of powers, and our democracy as a whole.”
Although Alexander said he believed Trump’s conduct was inappropriate — and that Democrats had “proven” the case against him — he said hearing from additional witnesses would not change his view that Trump did not commit impeachable offenses.
First? Let’s see the hypocrisy of the Russian Repugnants shall we?
Republicans demand more impeachment witnesses during Clinton Impeachment Senate Trial
This segment shows how Republican Henry Hyde, the House Judiciary Committee chairman leading the 1999 Clinton impeachment, explicitly backed new witnesses for the senate trial of Clinton. Hyde told NBC “this is a trial, not a grand jury proceeding… and we have a tremendous burden” of proof.
Senator Lindsey Graham saying you must have impeachment witnesses during Clinton’s Impeachment Senate Trial
Lindsey Graham Said You Must Have Impeachment Trial Witnesses… In 1999: GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham sounded a lot different on the idea of having witnesses in a Senate impeachment trial two decades ago when the president at the center of things was Bill Clinton. Aired on 01/16/20.
Senator Lindsey Graham, again, during Clinton’s Senate Impeachment Trial, demanding what the Democrats demanded during Trump’s farcial impeachment trial before the Russian Repugnants defending him
Watch Lindsey Graham Go Back to 1998 To Slam President Donald Trump Impeachment inquiry | NBC News
The Russian Repugnants were very different during Clinton’s Senate Impeachment Trial over witnesses and evidence.
Fifteen of the Senate Republicans who will try President Trump’s impeachment were in Congress during the Clinton impeachment. Only one voted to acquit Bill Clinton. Here’s columnist Ruth Marcus’s advice to them.
More Russian Repugnants demanding more impeachment witnesses during Bill Clinton’s Senate Impeachment Trial
Watch: Republicans Demand More Impeachment Witnesses, When Clinton Was On Trial | MSNBC
And now? Let’s look at the High Treason of the Russian Republicans, in defense of Putins Puppet, Donald J Trump and throw the rule of law and the Constitution out the window.
Moscow Mitch McConnell already declares the fix is in and the Russian Repugnants will not abide by their oath they swore to at the start of the impeachment trial of Traitor Trump
In between public impeachment hearings, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell outlined what would happen when the impeachment process reaches the Senate. McConnell said he did not believe there would be enough votes to impeach President Trump.
Retiring Russian Repugnant Senator Lamar Alexander, even though he believes Trump committed these acts? He does not care about the real truth, and folds under Traitor Trump’s hairy orange balls.
Senator Lamar Alexander, who had been considered a pivotal vote on witnesses, said late Thursday that he will not vote for witnesses in President Trump’s impeachment trial. CBSN political contributor Molly Hooper, CBS News White House reporter Kathryn Watson and Loyola law school professor Jessica Levinson joined CBSN to discuss the ninth day of the impeachment trial.
Russian Repugnant Senator Lisa Murkowski again? Sells out the Nation and the Constitution and the rule of law, by selling out to her fellow Russian Repugnants and Traitor Trump
Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the last true publicly undecided Republican senator, said she would oppose witnesses in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, meaning the vote that’s slated for Friday is very likely to fail 49-51.
The Russian Repugnants in the act of committing High Treason against the United States in defense and support of the Putin Puppet, Traitor, Donald J Trump
The Senate voted to block any witnesses from being called in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, a move that will mark the beginning of the end of the third Senate trial for a president in US history. The Senate voted 51-49 to defeat a motion to allow subpoenas for witnesses and documents, with two Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah, joining Democrats to back extending the trial.
Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz weighs in on the impeachment trial as it nears the final vote.
The Russian Republicans have committed High Treason in their defense of Putin’s Puppet, Donald J Trump
18 U.S. Code CHAPTER 115— TREASON, SEDITION, AND SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITIES
18 U.S. Code § 2381. Treason
Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.
18 U.S. Code § 2382. Misprision of treason
Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States and having knowledge of the commission of any treason against them, conceals and does not, as soon as may be, disclose and make known the same to the President or to some judge of the United States, or to the governor or to some judge or justice of a particular State, is guilty of misprision of treason and shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than seven years, or both.
Traitor Trump and his praising and defense of Putin and Russia
Trump Best Comments on Vladimir Putin, Russia
Trump Best Comments on Vladimir Putin, Russia
Putin praises Trump
VIDEO: Putin & Assad Caught Laughing at Trump
More evidence of Trump’s High Treason
Trump jokes with Putin about election interference
In a bilateral meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin at the G20 Summit in Japan, President Trump joked about the Kremlin’s attacks on US democracy. This comes after Trump told reporters on Wednesday that his conversations with Putin are none of the media’s business.
Donald Trump: I congratulated Putin on his Victory
U.S. President Donald Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday to congratulate him on his re-elction
While Trump changes his position on an almost daily basis on whether or not Russia did exactly what four intelligence agencies confirmed that they did, and which no one in Congress now denies, his new communications director confirmed that Trump is still unsure that Russia was responsible for the hacks performed to influence the 2016 presidential elections in Trump’s favor. Citing an unnamed source that Scaramucci was later forced to admit was none other than the president himself, the new communications director told Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union that:
‘Somebody said to me yesterday—I won’t tell you who—that if the Russians actually hacked this situation and spilled out those emails, you would have never seen it, you would have never had any evidence of them.’
It seems baffling that Trump is still holding to that line, but a new report by The New York Times makes the president’s position far more clear. Trump changes his position on Russian hacking at times when his feet are held to the fire, but:
‘When Mr. Trump met Mr. Putin in Hamburg, Germany, two weeks ago, he did not utter similar suspicions, at least in public. In fact, he emerged to tell his aides that the Russian president had offered a compelling rejoinder: Moscow’s cyberoperators are so good at covert computer-network operations that if they had dipped into the Democratic National Committee’s systems, they would not have been caught.’
A belief in those assertions certainly falls in line with statements made by Trump throughout the campaign and during his presidency. Shortly before Trump’s inauguration, the president tweeted:
Unless you catch “hackers” in the act, it is very hard to determine who was doing the hacking. Why wasn’t this brought up before election?
While that claim is entirely untrue, it also speaks to Trump’s assurance from Putin that if Russia had been responsible for the hacks, there is no way U.S. intelligence and cybersecurity experts would have been able to identify the hackers or their country of origin. Russian cyberattackers are just that good, according to Putin, and it seems the president is more than ready to believe him lest the legitimacy of his 2016 win be questioned.
Malcolm Nance, a former U.S. Counterterrorism & Intelligence Official, argues that Putin has an ‘information dominance’ over President Donald Trump reacting to their meeting at the G20 summit.
Donald Trump heaps more praise on Putin Trump on Putin’s alleged killing of journalists: ‘At least he’s a leader’
Donald Trump heaps more praise on Putin: ‘At least he’s a leader’An excerpt of Donald Trump’s interview on ‘Morning Joe’ on Thursday.
Donald Trump hesitated on Friday to criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin for allegations the Kremlin has killed high-profile journalists critical of the leader, saying “our country does plenty of killing also.”
During an interview with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Trump expanded upon his welcoming of praise from Putin, remarking that “when people call you brilliant, it’s always good, especially when the person heads up Russia.”
Co-host Joe Scarborough then asked Trump what he thought about the number of high-profile murders of journalists who have been critical of Putin. “He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader, you know unlike what we have in this country,” Trump responded.
Scarborough pressed Trump again on the issue.
“Well I think our country does plenty of killing also, Joe,” Trump said. “So, you know. There’s a lot of stupidity going on in the world right now, Joe. A lot of killing going on, a lot of stupidity.”
Asked then, whether he would condemn Putin’s hostility toward journalists, Trump said, “Oh sure, absolutely.”
According to data from the Committee to Protect Journalists, 23 members of the media have been killed in Russia since Putin took power in 2000, though not all of their deaths appear to be related to their work. The 2006 murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, one of the highest profile media cases internationally, resulted in prison sentences for five men in 2014, though it is unclear who ordered the contract killing. Later in 2006, former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, who had fled to the United Kingdom and accused Putin of ordering Politkovskaya’s killing, fell ill the same day he met with two former KGB officers. He later died, with British health investigators finding a significant amount of radioactive polonium-210 in his body, the first documented instance of such a poisoning.
Mitt Romney, who was outspoken during the 2012 campaign about the threat Russia posed to the United States, implicitly rebuked Trump on Twitter later in the morning.
“Important distinction: thug Putin kills journalists and opponents; our presidents kill terrorists and enemy combatants,” the former Republican nominee tweeted Friday, following Trump’s repeated praise of the Russian president’s strength, despite his condemnation of his alleged ordered killing of his political and media opponents.
It is the second time in recent weeks that Romney has criticized the Republican poll leader’s comments, tweeting on Dec. 8 that Trump “fired before aiming” with his call to temporarily ban all Muslims from entering the U.S.
Throughout the course of his interview, the Manhattan mogul explained why he felt the United States and Russia would have a better relationship in a Trump administration, remarking repeatedly upon the poor “chemistry” between Putin and President Barack Obama.
In looking at photos of Putin and Obama seated together, Trump mused, “Nothing good is going to come of that.”
“I’ve always felt fine about Putin. I think that he’s a strong leader,” he said, proceeding to rattle off his recollections of the Russian leader’s polling. “I think he’s up in the 80s, which is you see where Obama’s in the 30s and the low 40s and he’s up in the 80s, and I don’t know who does the polls, maybe he does the polls, but I think they’re done by American companies, actually.”
As far as dealing with Putin’s aggression in Crimea and in eastern Ukraine, Trump reiterated his longstanding position that European countries like “big, monstrous” Germany should do more. “They accept his oil and gas and lots of other things, and here we are fighting like hell,” he said.
On whether that would mean “leading from behind,” Trump demurred. Scarborough asked Trump whether he would give Poland its antimissile defense system, plans for which the Obama administration scuppered in 2009.
“I would consider that, absolutely,” Trump said. “You know, when you say follow, I think that’s great, but maybe we should do a little bit of following and let the neighbors sort of tell us, you know, like, let us let the neighbors take more of an active role in the Ukraine.”
He added, “Frankly I’d like to see a little more enthusiasm from those affected, Joe.”
President Donald Trump Praises Montana Congressman Who Assaulted Reporter
President Trump on Thursday spoke at a rally in Montana in attempt to fire up his base ahead of the midterms. He took a moment to praise Republican Rep. Greg Gianforte of Montana for physically assaulting a reporter in 2017. Gianforte later pleaded guilty to an assault charge and issued an apology.
Trump sides with Saudi Crown Prince over CIA on Kashoggi Murder: Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t.”
Trump’s history of trusting Saudi Arabia, Russia, and North Korea
Dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was allegedly murdered after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, according to Turkish authorities. Saudi’s crown prince denies any knowledge of what happened to Khashoggi, a Virginia resident, and President Trump is taking the monarch at his word, despite Saudi’s known record of targeting journalists and human rights activists. It’s not the first time Trump has put his trust in a dangerous world leader.”
And this is the scumbag they believe is a great person, fit to be president of the United States.
Donald Trump compilation: The 90 most shocking things he’s said during election campaign
From calling Mexicans’ rapists to “locker room talk” and “such a nasty woman.” Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said and done some outrageous things on the campaign trail. Here’s the 90 most memorable.
THIS IS WHO THE RUSSIAN REPUGNANTS ARE PROTECTING AND DEFENDING.
If President Barack Obama or Bill Clinton had been recorded defending Putin and Russia over our own CIA and other intelligence agencies? Why the Repugnants would be demanding they be arrested for High Treason and executed at Gitmo.
But? Because it is Putin Puppet Traitor Trump praising Putin, and other dictators? That is ok.
If it was President Barack Obama or Bill Clinton doing ANY of these things that Trump has been bagged for? They would demand their impeachment and their removal from office.
But because it is Traitor Twitter Tyrant Trump? Why he gets a pass.
And the Repugnants just proved Traitor Trump right.
HE COULD SHOOT SOMEONE IN THE MIDDLE OF FIFTH AVENUE, IN BROAD DAYLIGHT, AND IT WOULD BE RECORDED ON VIDEO, AND MITCH MCCONNELL, LINDSEY GRAHAM, DEVIN NUNES AND ALL THE REST OF THE RUSSIAN REPUGNANTS? WOULD STILL DEFEND HIM.
Is it time for a new Civil War?
The Trumpsters stated that if Trump was removed from office, they would start a new Civil War.
But should we who know that Trump is guilty and should be removed from office, also proclaim we should start a Civil War if the Repugnants do not remove him from office.
First? NO.
I believe we should continue to work in the system, and get out the vote. To get EVERYONE, including teens and millenials, who are eligible to vote, off their asses and get them to vote. The ONLY way we can overcome this right now from a legal standpoint is to overwhelmingly vote out all the Repugnants who supported and defended this Treasonous Trump.
Yet, what if the election machines are rigged? And they change the votes from Democrat to Republican as has been shown on a few of these machines? And what if the Repugnants do lose like they did in the last mid-terms and Traitor Trump loses and refuses to leave office, and institutes Martial law even? What do we do about this?
THE FOUNDING FATHERS? TOLD US WHAT TO DO IN THIS CASE.
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, IT IS THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO ALTER OR TO ABOLISH IT, AND TO INSTITUTE A NEW GOVERNMENT, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, IT IS THEIR RIGHT, IT IS THEIR DUTY, TO THROW OFF SUCH GOVERNMENT AND TO PROVIDE NEW GUARDS FOR THEIR FUTURE SECURITY.
Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence.
YES, WE CONTINUE TO ABIDE BY THE LAWS AND RULES OF THE CONSTITUTION, BUT WHEN THE REPUGNANTS AND TRAITOR TRUMP TRULY THROWS THOSE RULES AND LAWS OUT THE WINDOW AFTER THE NEXT ELECTION?
THEN? IT IS TIME FOR A NEW CIVIL WAR, A WAR OF INDEPENDENCE AGAINST THE RUSSIAN REPUGNANTS AND TRAITOR TRUMP WHO HAS STOLEN OUR COUNTRY.
Traitor Trump, Moscow Mitch, Leningrad Lindsey, and the rest of the Treasonous GOP, who care more about their party and keeping power than they do about the oath of office they all placed their hands on a bible and swore to? Have committed High Treason Against the United States and as such? Deserve to be taken to Gitmo, waterboarded until they give up all their dirt they sold us out to Putin and Russia, Un, Erdogran and al the rest of the dicktaters they sold us out to, before we give them all one last Happy Meal and then? Execute these fuckers in front of a firing squad.
The minute Traitor Donald J Trump withheld the Congressional approved funds and military weapons to the Ukraine, in order to use as a carrot to dangle in front of the President of the Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, to do his bidding and dig up dirt on the Bidens, Burimsa and find out about the bogus claims of Crowd Strike and the DNC server and it being the Ukraine that interfered in his election to the Presidency, not the proven fact it was Russia and Putin and their troll bots who did so? He committed High Treason Against the United States. And ANY Republican who defends and supports the actions of Donald J Trump? Have also committed High Treason Against the United States.
I shall reveal his and the Republicans High Treason Against the United States by posting three news stories and nine video links that back up my assertions and my own comments after posting those stories and videos.
Donald J Trump and the Republicans who support and defend him? Have in fact? Given aid and comfort to Putin and the Russians in the Ukrainian fight against the Russian and Putin’s invasion of and annexation of Crimea and their proxy war against the Ukraine. The U.S. is in a “proxy war” with Putin and Russia in our support and defense of the Ukraine. By Traitor Trump withholding the money and weapons the Ukrainians need to fight Putin and Russia’s illegal invasion of the Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea? He gave aid and comfort to Putin and Russia and adhered to the will of Putin, and his own interests, not the intersts of the United States national security, or even Ukraines security against Russia.If President Barack Obama or Bill Clinton or any other Democrat did any of this? The Republicans would be not only demanding their impeachment and removal from office, but their arrest and prosecution for High Treason Against the United States. But seeing it is their own Donald J Trump who did all of this? Why he gets a pass.
Story One: Impeachment Day 3: Republicans Continue Their Attack on Reason and Reality
Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman’s testimony was devastating. So GOP lawmakers resorted to spin and conspiracy theories.
By David Corn, Washington DC Bureau Chief, Mother Jones
On Tuesday, the third day of the House impeachment hearings, the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee were confronted by witnesses, particularly Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council official, who presented unambiguous evidence that President Donald Trump used his office to pressure Ukrainian officials to launch investigations to produce dirt on Joe Biden and prove a debunked conspiracy theory that absolved the Russians of hacking the 2016 US election.Vindman and Jennifer Williams, a State Department official assigned to Vice President Mike Pence’s office, each told the committee that Trump, during his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, pressed the Ukrainian to initiate these two inquiries and that Burisma—the Ukrainian energy company that Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s son, worked for—was referenced by name.(The reconstructed transcript of the call released by the White House, for some not-yet-explained reason, did not mention “Burisma.”) Vindman also testified about a July 10 White House meeting with Ukrainian officials in which Ambassador Gordon Sondland, who was working with the private channel overseen by Rudy Giuliani, piped up and said that before Zelensky could get a much-desired meeting with Trump, the Ukrainians had to “deliver specific investigations.” Other witnesses have told the committee that the release of nearly $400 million in security assistance that Trump put a hold on was also tied to Ukraine pursuing investigations of the Bidens and the conspiracy theory that holds that Ukraine, not Russia, intervened in the US election.
So it’s as clear as the sky is blue: Trump was muscling the Ukrainians to help him influence the 2020 election and to clear Moscow. The quasi-transcript of the July 25 call even shows Trump saying that if Zelensky wants more Javelin anti-tank weapons, he will have to do Trump the “favor” of kicking off these investigations.(And as Vindman said, considering the power disparity between the two men, this was not a polite request that could be turned down—it was a “demand.”)Yet when Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the pro-Trump bulldog recently placed on the intelligence committee by the GOP leadership, had his chance to ask questions of Vindman and Williams, he seized his moment in the sun to declare the sky is green. Or purple. Or whatever. There is no evidence of “linkage,” he thundered. “The transcript shows no linkage…to an investigation.”
But that’s exactly what the transcript shows. You want Javelins? Then we have this favor for you to do—investigations. This is brazen linkage. And there’s now a mountain of testimony linking a White House meeting and the release of the security assistance to Ukraine opening the political investigations Trump craved. But…still…nevertheless, the Republicans on the committee won’t accept this basic reality.
Instead, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the top Republican on the committee, Jordan, and their party-mates have forged an alternative reality in which this controversy is no more than a “hoax” concocted by Democrats and the media and that the focus should be not on Trump’s action but on the whistleblower who initiated the Trump-Ukraine scandal and on the involvement of Hunter Biden in Burisma and the fact-free allegation that his dad took action to thwart an investigation of the firm.
Traitor Congressman Devin Nunes, defending Traitor Trump at all costs during the Impeachment Investigation of Donald J Trump.
In his opening statement, Nunes depicted a wide-ranging conspiracy of Democrats and mainstream media outlets that first cooked up “the Russia hoax” and then, when that scandal did not lead to Trump’s ouster, devised a whole new bogus Ukraine scandal. In this world, Russia’s attack on the 2016 election (which was mounted partly to help Trump win) does not exist. Rather, Ukraine was somehow the true meddler. (Republicans have repeatedly cited the public anti-Trump statements of a few Ukrainian officials who in 2016 were worried about Trump—and justifiably so, after Trump had said that perhaps Russia should be allowed to keep Crimea, the chunk of Ukraine that Vladimir Putin seized in 2014.) The Republicans were hardly slowed by Vindman’s reality-based statement that the Ukraine-meddled accusation “is a Russian narrative that President Putin has promoted.”
Nunes even exclaimed that the Democratic media conspiracy against Trump included “a concerted campaign” of journalistic organizations “smearing” John Solomon, the writer for The Hill who published a series of stories that disseminated unfounded allegations about the Bidens and former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. In a bizarre twist, Nunes pointed to the fact that The Hill is now reviewing Solomon’s articles as proof of this sub-conspiracy and an indication this despicable cabal would go to any lengths to prosecute its evil plan.
Nunes declared that what most needed exposing was the whistleblower’s contacts with the media and the Democrats on the committee. He did not explain the relevance of this. But Nunes was suggesting that the whole Ukraine business was manufactured by the Ds and the press—and the whistleblower is the key to uncovering this diabolical plot. The whistleblower’s lawyers have denied on the record that their client has been talking to the media or coordinating with Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), chair of the intelligence committee, or other Democrats.
Nunes also promoted the never-will-die innuendo that Joe Biden pushed for the dismissal of a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor to protect his son and Burisma. And there were other insinuations hurled by the Republicans. At one point, they dwelled on an anecdote—a Ukrainian official once asked Vindman if he wanted to serve as defense minister for Ukraine, and Vindman dismissed the offer as a joke—to hint that Vindman, who was born in Ukraine when it was part of the Soviet Union, possessed dual loyalties.
The Rs have concocted a dark world in which Trump is an innocent victim. In their view, he was the target of foreign intervention in 2016, not the beneficiary; there was nothing to the Russia investigation. (Don’t mention the convictions of his campaign manager, his national security adviser, his longtime political adviser, and others.) And the Ukraine scandal—based on a suspect whistleblower (disregard all the testimony from known officials)—is merely another front in the unrelenting war the Democrats have been waging against Trump because, as Jordan yelled on Tuesday, “the Democrats have never accepted the will of the American people.”
Toward the end of Vindman’s and Williams’ time before the panel, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) asked Vindman to read aloud the last paragraph of the prepared testimony he delivered at the start of the hearing: “Dad, [that] I’m sitting here today in the US Capitol talking to our elected officials is proof that you made the right decision forty years ago to leave the Soviet Union and come here to the United States of America in search of a better life for our family. Do not worry, I will be fine for telling the truth.” Maloney asked why he reported Trump’s phone call to lawyers at the National Security Council. “Because that was my duty,” Vindman replied.
With his testimony, Maloney told Vindman, “You were putting yourself up against the president of the United States.” (Trump and his henchmen have viciously attacked Vindman.) Maloney asked the colonel, “Why did you have confidence you can do that?” Vindman, a recipient of the Purple Heart, answered, “Because, Congressman, this is America. This is the country I have served and defended…And here right matters.” The audience responded with loud applause. The Republicans on the panel looked glum. Moments later, when Nunes had the chance to make a concluding statement, he snorted, “Act One of today’s circus is over.”
Story Two: Impeachment hearings reveal the extent of the damage Trump’s inflicted on our national security
The GOP is trying to use the broken national security system to discredit and undermine the officials who are testifying, rather than fix it.
By Brett Bruen, former director of global engagement in the Obama White House. Brett Bruen was the director of global engagement in the Obama White House and a career American diplomat. He currently runs crisis communications agency the Global Situation Room and teaches crisis management at Georgetown.
We are in real danger. There are certainly many conclusions to be drawn from the recent days of detailed testimony by officials on the National Security Council and at the State Department in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. But beyond the political points scored and the possibility of removing a president, there’s an even more unsettling feeling that I can’t shake. These hearings have laid bare just how crippled the staff, systems and structures designed to protect our country really are.
This troubling state of insecurity ought to jolt even the most jaded member of Congress into sitting up straight and starting to think about how to straighten it out really fast. But instead of trying to address the damage to our defenses, Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, which is conducting the inquiry, opt to exacerbate matters. They are trying to use this broken system to discredit and undermine the witnesses who are testifying to Trump’s bad behavior.
Repeatedly, these members of Congress have asked the public servants testifying— who have information about Trump allegedly pressuring Ukraine into investigating a major political rival, Vice President Joe Biden, and his son in exchange for aid and a White House visit — whether they themselves had ever met the president. The implication they hope will be drawn from their answers that they never once met him is that these individuals lack the stature and direct knowledge to be credible.
Trump himself cast the same aspersion Tuesday, specifically about the top National Security Council expert on Ukraine, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who that day provided devastating testimony about the president’s impropriety in a now-infamous July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Vindman and other staff had listened in on that call from a separate room.
“I don’t know him,” Trump said at Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting
in response to a question about whether Vindman was credible. “I never
saw the man.” It’s worth bearing in mind he said the same thing about Brett McGurk, the former presidential envoy
to counter the Islamic State militant group when he left. It just seems
to be standard practice for the commander in chief not to meet his most
senior advisers.
At the hearing, Ohio Rep. Michael Turner asked Vindman directly: “You’ve never met the president of the United States, right?” And then followed up with, “So you’ve never advised the president of the United States on Ukraine?”
Republican Congressman Michael Turner, standing up for Traitor Trump while attacking a real hero, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman. Michael Turner and the rest of the Treasonous Repugnants standing up for Traitor Trump and attacking the witnesses and whistleblower? Do not even have the right to tie his or any of the other witnesses shoes.
While
Vindman said he advised him “indirectly,” through preparing calls and
materials for him without having met him, Walked rejoined: “But you’ve
never spoken to the president of the United States and told him advice
on Ukraine?” Vindman conceded, “That is correct.”
The problem with putting down Vindman and other witnesses because they never met Trump is that it shows the president’s gross negligence in handling national security rather than the inadequacy of those testifying on impeachment. The lack of contact and communications between the National Security Council and the Oval Office, especially on critical issues such as Ukraine and ISIS, should set off alarm bells; we are precariously close to a catastrophic crash.
When I was on the National Security Council under President Barack Obama, the staff interacted fairly regularly with the big boss. Depending on the portfolio, someone at Vinman’s level could see him every week.
It was our job, as advisers on the White House
body devoted to gathering information and forming policy on
international and security issues, to brief President Barack Obama
before key calls and meetings. So even though I wasn’t particularly
senior, I occasionally spent up to two and a half hours meeting with
him, where there would be opportunities to both present and answer his
questions. Obama was notorious for calling on those sitting on the back
benches to get different views on key issues.
This president is flying blind. I was struck in listening to the testimony over the past week how few of his advisers are consulted on major policy decisions. Sure, we have long known about his tendency to freelance. Yet, there’s a difference between dismissing or discounting advice and never getting it in the first place. I was shocked that Trump had never spoken to either of our top diplomats in Ukraine prior to halting aid and endangering the country.
There are two primary effects of this
disconnect. First, as we have clearly seen in the testimony, our people
have no clue what they are supposed to do. They play an elaborate and
elusive game of telephone, trying to figure out how the heck they should
steer the ship through rough waters. Messages get relayed through
multiple layers in the Trump administration, often passed by external,
self-interested actors.
The second effect is that those who know national security best are unable to warn the president about potential risks or unintended consequences. Trump’s sudden decision to pull our troops out of northern Syria is a prime example of such impulsive and ill-informed decisions. Without the benefit of GPS, we regularly find ourselves driving far off course, as has been the case with North Korea. There is then the challenge of the president taking counsel directly from unscrupulous actors who often drive him into minefields, such as Rudy Giulliani and Lev Parnas, as they did on Ukraine.
And
Trump has gone even further. The president and the White House have
tweeted against Vindman and Vice President Mike Pence’s aide on Ukraine,
Jennifer Williams. During Vindman’s testimony, Trump tweeted that his boss “had concerns about Vindman’s judgment.” And he slammed Williams
as a Never Trumper “who I don’t know.” Attacks like these don’t just
shatter the confidence of Williams and Vindaman but also shake the
confidence of everyone working on the National Security Council.
Our
country is endangered when those responsible for the most serious
threats we face have to worry about personal threats from our leaders.
And the number of those interested in taking on this difficult if
important work will only decrease. Service on this National Security
Council was already fairly unpopular these days. I know from speaking
with friends that many are already shunning the previously prestigious
positions at the White House. The developments of the last few weeks
will make it untenable for many of those who are best qualified for
those positions.
We will end up in a
situation where the most important jobs for protecting our country are
going to be occupied by second- and third-string players. Again, this
creates massive vulnerabilities that should alarm lawmakers and those
responsible for the defense of our country.
What happens when the next person sees
something of concern? After having witnessed the fierce political
attacks to which we now subject whistleblowers and those such as
Williams and Vindman who reluctantly speak up publicly, many will be
simply too afraid to come forward. Instead, they will allow problems to
fester and dangerous decisions to go unchallenged. This again places our
nation in a very serious situation. Fraud, waste and abuse will spread,
eating away at the pillars of stability and security on which our way
of life has depended for so long.
Some may argue that I’m overdramatizing the risks. But the testimony has brought to light some of the dark developments of the last several years. Our national security officials now have little contact with an isolated and erratic president. They don’t have clear guidance or even a basic plan for how to execute our foreign policy. Many of them are overly afraid for their jobs, their colleagues and even their safety. It is exceptionally hard to keep America safe when you’re in the dark, alone and afraid.
Isn’t it amazing how at one time, Republican Congressman Kevin McCarthy said that he thought Putin paid Trump. Now he got his nose buried so deep up inside of Traitor Trump’s asshole? His breath smells like a well used outhouse every time he opens it to defend the treasonous actions of Donald J Trump.
Story Three: Does Ukraine have the DNC server like Trump says? We fact checked that.
President Donald Trump, hitting back after a marathon week of public impeachment hearings, continued Friday to promote the debunked conspiracy that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, falsely claiming that “a Ukrainian company” is harboring a hacked server belonging to the Democratic National Committee.
During a nearly
hourlong phone interview with “Fox & Friends,” Trump defended his
administration’s freeze on military aid to Ukraine this year as well as
his July 25 call with the Ukrainian president that prompted a whistleblower complaint, saying he was simply trying to root out corruption in the country.
“A
lot of it had to do, they say, with Ukraine,” he began, before alleging
that the country has the DNC server that was hacked in 2016.
“The FBI went in and they told them get out of here, we’re not giving it to you. They gave the server to CrowdStrike … which is a company owned by a very wealthy Ukrainian, and I still want to see that server,” Trump said of the DNC’s actions upon learning that it had been hacked in the run-up to the election. “You know, the FBI has never gotten that server. That’s a big part of this whole thing. Why did they give it to a Ukrainian company?”
Almost none of these claims are remotely true.
CrowdStrike is the California-based cybersecurity firm hired by the DNC to investigate a breach that turned out to be a Russian hack aimed at sowing discord and disrupting the U.S. election. It’s not owned by a wealthy Ukrainian — it’s publicly traded on the Nasdaq. Its largest shareholder is Warburg Pincus, a private equity firm with ties to Trump himself. One of CrowdStrike’s founders, Dmitri Alperovitch, is a Russian-born American citizen, which may be what Trump is getting at. But Alperovitch frequently consults with the U.S. government on cybersecurity, Esquire reported.
It is true that the FBI was not given the DNC’s physical computer equipment, but there’s no evidence that the Democratic Party held anything back from U.S. law enforcement investigating the breach. During investigations, it’s common for physical servers to be digitally copied and preserved as evidence, as Robert Johnston, a cybersecurity expert who led the investigation into the DNC hack in 2016, explained to NBC News earlier this year.
There’s also not just one server, as Trump seems to think. The DNC has said they decommissioned 140 servers and rebuilt 11, to be specific, related to 2016. One of them is on display at the DNC’s office in Washington, next to a filing cabinet broken into by Watergate burglars, according to this 2016 photo in The New York Times.
With those claims, Trump made clear Friday
that he is holding fast to the broader, debunked conspiracy that Ukraine
was responsible for interfering in the 2016 election. Republicans on
the House Intelligence Committee, which is leading the impeachment
inquiry, framed much of their questioning around this idea, so much so
that Trump’s former Russia expert, Fiona Hill, targeted it in her
testimony Thursday for a thorough dismantling.
“Some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country — and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves,” Hill said. “In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.”
Hill, one of the foremost U.S. experts on Russian President Vladimir Putin, reiterated in public — as she had in her closed-door testimony — that she would refuse to be a part of “an alternative narrative” that Ukraine was the country that attacked the U.S. in 2016, because it boosts Russian and not American interests.
“These fictions are harmful even if they are deployed for purely domestic political purposes,” she said.
The broader conspiracy of Ukraine election
interference Trump hints at in his interview purports that the
Democratic Party orchestrated, with that nation’s help, the hacking of
their own systems and framed Russia in order to discredit a Trump
presidency.
The president has for years been alluding to this baseless theory — the origins of which NBC News’ Ben Collins traced back
to far-right message boards as early as March 2017 — though he does not
spell it out, perhaps because it’s quite a stretch to suggest that
Democrats ran a massive, international conspiracy to lose the election.
Behind closed doors, Trump has claimed Ukraine tried to stop him from winning.
Ukraine “tried to take me down,” Trump said in a meeting with his advisers, according to the impeachment inquiry testimony of U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, and Kurt Volker, then-U.S. special envoy to Ukraine.
Despite being repeatedly
dismissed by Trump’s own intelligence community and advisers, the theory
appears to have been a motivating factor behind the efforts of his
personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to run a highly unusual shadow policy
team with the goal of pressuring the Ukrainian government to announce
investigations into the 2016 election and Burisma Holdings — the
Ukrainian gas company that Hunter Biden joined as a board member in
2014.
Fox News’ Steve Doocy on Friday pressed the president on whether he was “sure” about the claims.
“Are you sure they did that? Are you sure they gave it to Ukraine?” he asked of the DNC server.
“Well, that’s what the word is,” Trump said.
“That’s
what I asked actually in my phone call, if you know. I mean I asked it
very point blank, because we’re looking for corruption. There’s
tremendous corruption. We’re looking for — why should we be giving
hundreds of millions of dollars to countries when there’s this kind of
corruption?”
The foreign aid to Ukraine
that the Trump administration held up for 55 days is one aspect of the
Democratic-led impeachment inquiry, as witnesses have alleged that there was an effort
to condition the release of that aid on public assurances that Ukraine
would launch the politically advantageous investigations Giuliani and
Trump desired
Video One: Ukrainian forces at risk as Trump admin. withheld military aid
The lives of Ukrainian troops fighting a hot war against Russian forces were on the line as the Trump administration withheld aid now at the center of the Trump impeachment inquiry. Retired U.S. Navy Adm. James Stavridis reacts.
Video Two: Jordan interrupts Holmes while answering his question
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, frequently interrupted David Holmes as he tried to answer his question about a call he overheard between President Trump and Amb. Gordon Sondland.
Republican Congressman Jim Jordan, who protected a pedo doctor, is now protecting a traitor to the United States: Donald J Trump.
Video Three: It doesn’t matter if Trump committed a crime. He should still be impeached.
With impeachment depositions set to begin soon, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats have narrowed the focus of the impeachment inquiry to Trump’s Ukraine call and the subsequent whistleblower complaint. Corey Brettschneider, professor of political science and policy at Brown University, joined THINK to explain why he thinks that’s a mistake.
Video Four: Trump calls impeachment proceedings an ‘overthrow attempt’ during interview
President Trump dismissed the impeachment proceedings as an “overthrow attempt” during a phone interview with Fox News. NBC News’ Hans Nichols details how this plays into the White House’s strategy.
Video Five: Day 1,037: Trump floats Russian conspiracy theory on Ukraine on FOX News
After Fiona Hill blasted lawmakers on the Hill for sharing a Russian-created conspiracy theory about Ukraine hacking the 2016 U.S. election, Trump went on FOX News and again repeated the bogus allegation.
Video Six: Russia expert Fiona Hill blasts ‘fictional narrative’ of Ukraine election interference
President Trump’s former top Russia advisor Fiona Hill testified on the fifth day of public impeachment hearings, blasting Republicans for unfounded theories of Ukrainian election interference and taking aim at the president’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani. Embassy aide David Holmes also testified, detailing a cell phone conversation he says he overheard between Ambassador Gordon Sondland and Trump.
Video Seven: Hill and Holmes: Everyone knew Burisma investigation was about the Bidens
After Gordon Sondland and Kurt Volker testified they did not realize talk of a Burisma investigation was about the Bidens, Fiona Hill and David Holmes tore that claim apart in their testimony.
Video Nine: ‘I don’t know what the hell Jim Jordan is doing’: Congressman says
Rep. Adam Smith discusses the impeachment inquiry hearings this week and the Republican defense of President Trump. Smith says about Rep. Jim Jordan, “I don’t know what the hell he is doing. He is obviously sticking to this narrative that is untrue.”
House Republicans make it clear they feel Trump has done nothing wrong
House
Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., talking to reporters at the
GOP House leadership press conference, was asked by a reporter if he
would say Trump has done nothing wrong.
“A very clear
yes,” he responded. The cadre of House GOP leaders standing behind him
yelled in affirmation as McCarthy responded.
Responding
to a subsequent question, McCarthy claimed Republicans in Congress will
vote on impeachment — if and when articles are formally introduced —
“based on the facts.”
“Show us the truth. We always vote based on the facts,” he said.
Rep. Jim Jordan: Americans ‘will not tolerate this’
Republican
House leaders, speaking at their post-vote press conference, continued
their criticism of House Democrats, accusing their rival party’s leaders
of going against the wishes of the American people
“The
American people see this for what it is,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the
ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said.
“They will not tolerate this.”
Rep. Michael McCaul, a
member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, claimed the Democrats’
procedural approach to the impeachment inquiry “defies historic
precedent.”
Rep. Dingell ‘very disturbed by the undue influence’ being put on Republicans
Rep. Debbie Dingell, R-Mich., said Friday that she was “very
disturbed” by the pressure she said is being put on Republican
lawmakers to toe the line during the House impeachment inquiry.
Asked
on Fox News whether Democrats should move forward with impeachment
without GOP backing, Dingell responded, “First of all, I don’t know that
there is no Republican support. I have talked to a number of people who
are deeply disturbed, and they’re being very cautious in their words.
Their arms are being broken, and I’m very disturbed by the undue
influence I’m seeing put on Republicans too.”
Dingell
said what she heard in testimony over the last two weeks “deeply
disturbed” her and would accurately be described as bribery.
“It
is very clear that the Ukrainian president was — the word ‘bribe’ does
work with being told you are not going to get this aid that you need
unless you agree to do this investigation, and you do it publicly,” she
said. “And we do have evidence that money was held up.”
The
congresswoman added that the Intelligence Committee was already
drafting its report, after which the Judiciary Committee will make its
recommendations, and she would wait to see those before coming to any
conclusions about impeachment.
Dingell also weighed in on
the debunked conspiracy theory Trump and his allies have been chasing
that it was really Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016
election — which former top Russia expert Fiona Hill called a “fictional narrative” that echoed Russian propaganda during her testimony on Thursday.
“One
of the things we do know and one of the reasons why I have been fearful
about impeachment, but I am getting madder and madder … is that we do
know, there were Republican Cabinet members that testified that Russia
interfered in our last elections. Russia is trying to divide us as a
country. That’s documented in the Mueller report. Intelligence agency
after intelligence agency around the world is saying that they’re trying
to destabilize democracy.
“We need a president that’s
going to protect the United States of America, not help destabilize
democracies around the world,” she said.
DONALD J TRUMP, RUDY GUILIANI, WILLIAM BARR, RICK PERRY, MIKE POMPEO, MITCH MCCONNELL, LINDSEY GRAHAM, MICK MULVANEY, DEVIN NUNES, JIM JORDAN, AND THE REST OF THE REPUBLICANS WHO SUPPORT AND DEFEND DONALD J TRUMP? HAVE ALL COMMITTED HIGH TREASON AGAINST THE UNITED STATES.
18 U.S. Code § 2381. Treason
Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States. (June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 807; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(2)(J), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2148.)
Treason is an act of disloyalty or betrayal of trust to a person’s own government. Examples include assassination of a state figure, fighting against his or her own nation in a war, assisting enemy combatants, or passing vital government information to the enemy. Historically, this crime has been severely punished, because an act of treason can destroy a nation. In the modern day, a conviction is accompanied at a minimum by a long jail sentence and a heavy fine, and may merit the death penaltyunder certain circumstances.
18 U.S. Code § 2384. Seditious conspiracy
If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both. (June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 808; July 24, 1956, ch. 678, § 1, 70 Stat. 623; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(1)(N), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2148.)
Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States and having knowledge of the commission of any treason against them, conceals and does not, as soon as may be, disclose and make known the same to the President or to some judge of the United States, or to the governor or to some judge or justice of a particular State, is guilty of misprision of treason and shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than seven years, or both. (June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 807; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(1)(H), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2147.)
While we may not be officially at war with Russia and Putin, we are in a proxy war with them through the Ukraine. The Ukraine is an ally of ours. We are supporting and helping them because of the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea and their proxy war, using Russians, to overtake the Ukraine. We are in essence? In a proxy war, defending the Ukraine against Russia and Putin against their invasion of the Ukraine.
This would be similar to what Traitor Trump just did in helping his disgusting, dicktater buddy Erdogan in Turkey and Syria and his now allowing the Kurds to be slaughtered by the Russian backed and supported Turkish government.
By Traitor Trump withholding the funds and the military weapons that were to go to the Ukraine, under the rules and laws of Congress, that approved these funds and military weapons for the Ukraine to fight the Russian invasion and Putin? All so he could have the Ukrainians dig up dirt on Biden and all the bullshit con of the DNC server? He immediately gave aid and comfort to his Puppet Master, Putin and Russia and by his actions? Caused Ukrainians to be killed. This again? Is giving aid and comfort to our enemy Russia and Putin.
Russia’s Crimea plan detailed, secret and successful
The annexation of Crimea was the
smoothest invasion of modern times. It was over before the outside world
realised it had even started.
And until Tuesday 18 March, when a
group of pro-Russian gunmen attacked a small Ukrainian army base in
Simferopol, killing one officer and injuring another, it was entirely
bloodless.
For much of February, thousands of extra soldiers were
quietly sent in to the bases which Russia was permitted by treaty to
own in Crimea. Civilian “volunteers” moved in too. The plan was carried
out secretly and with complete success.
The first obvious sign that Crimea was being taken over was on Friday 28 February, when checkpoints were established at Armyansk and Chongar – the two main road crossings from mainland Ukraine to the Crimean peninsula.
These
cut-off points were controlled by men wearing a variety of uniforms:
Ukrainian army, Ukrainian police, as well as camouflage without national
insignia. Several wore civilian clothes.
When I tried to get
through the Armyansk checkpoint on Saturday 1 March, together with a BBC
cameraman, these men were hostile and threatening.
They stole the
bags containing our body armour from the boot of our taxi, and went
through our suitcases aggressively, pulling out the things inside and
dropping some of them on the road. They took our camera away and filched
the expensive electronic recording cards from it, together with the
camera battery.
They knew exactly what they were looking for.
There were more bags containing body armour piled up at the side of the
road, where other journalists had tried to get through before us.
The
men at the checkpoint were stopping everyone except local people from
passing through. I found it hard to work out what was going on.
It was only when one of them, wearing a police uniform, called out “Welcome to Russia!” that I understood – their uniforms might be Ukrainian, but they were sealing off Crimea on behalf of Moscow.
By the next day, Sunday 2 March, it was all over. The outside world
was still expecting Russian ships to arrive and capture Crimea. But it
had already happened by stealth.
On Sunday and Monday the
Ukrainian military bases were taken over by tough-looking soldiers. They
carried the latest Russian military weapons, but their uniforms had
neither national or unit markings, nor badges of rank.
Alongside
them were the “volunteers” – usually older men, many of whom had
apparently come in from Russia itself. Some wore bits and pieces of
uniform, others plain clothes. They lined up outside the Ukrainian bases
and prevented anyone getting too close.
Presumably they were
Russian reservists. They were tough and aggressive, but they obeyed the
orders of their superiors. Many were obviously heavy drinkers, and at
night a few were openly drunk.
Yet their discipline held. There was no looting, and although their behaviour was threatening they did not attack civilians.
In the days that followed, other groups appeared. These were genuine volunteers, who had come from Moscow to join what they saw as the liberation of Crimea. I spoke to three members of an ultra-nationalist group whose uniforms bore the colours of an extreme royalist organisation.
They were all from Moscow, and they all planned to move on from Crimea to the mainly Russian-speaking cities of Kharkiv and Donetsk. Why? To show solidarity, they said.
Later I came across a
group of seven or eight bikers wearing leathers with badges of rank on
them – president, vice-president and so on. They had also come down from
Moscow, and were planning to head off to Kharkiv and Donetsk. “It’s a
great day,” the “president” said.
But these were
Johnny-come-latelys – amateurs who just wanted to join the fun. There
was absolutely no sign the Russian government had sent them.
In
modern times, Moscow has staged three major invasions: Hungary in
November 1956 and Czechoslovakia in August 1968, when the Communist
governments there began showing dangerously Western tendencies; and
Afghanistan in December 1979, when the pro-Communist regime was on the
point of collapse.
These were huge and brutal operations, involving large numbers of tanks, and sometimes great bloodshed.
The
takeover of Crimea has been completely different. This was an
infiltration, not an invasion. And unlike in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and
Afghanistan it was welcomed by a large proportion of the local
population.
According to a well-known opponent of Mr Putin’s, the
vote in Crimea to join the Russian Federation was “a referendum under
the Kalashnikov”. But it wasn’t. The outcome was what the vast majority
of Russian-speakers in Crimea really wanted, and there was little need
for Kalashnikovs in the streets.
Those who wanted to keep Crimea a part of Ukraine were far too shocked and intimidated to resist.
The
entire operation was very cleverly planned and carried out. But there
is absolutely no doubt what it was – a remarkable, quick and mostly
bloodless coup d’etat.
How U.S. military aid became a lifeline for Ukraine
The U.S. provided about $1.5 billion in military aid to Kiev between 2014 and this past June, according to a Congressional Research Service analysis.
The military aid scandal that spawned
the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump has a very different
significance for Ukraine, where years of U.S. assistance have just
begun to turn a ragtag army into a better-armed and professional force to counter Russian aggression.
The U.S. has provided about $1.5 billion in military support to Kiev between 2014 and this past June, according to an updated analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. And Trump’s temporary cut off of the aid represented a significant setback for the country.
“Ukraine would never be where it is without that support from the United States,” said Ash Carter, who served as President Barack Obama’s defense secretary from 2015 to 2017. “Everything we were doing there to train their military forces, their National Guard, to improve the professionalism and reduce corruption in the defense ministry … all that was critical.”
Before the aid influx, “the
Ukrainian military was in woeful shape,” said Mariya Omelicheva, a
professor of national security strategy at the Pentagon’s National
Defense University who specializes in the region.
“There has been a tangible, measurable impact,” added Omelicheva, who visited the Ukrainian training center in March. And beyond that, she said, the help created “an immeasurable, psychological impact — that the U.S. has our back.”
Now Trump’s aborted aid cutoff — first reported by POLITICO in late August
— has mushroomed into a titanic political fight, centered on
allegations that the president was using the military assistance as
leverage to push Ukraine’s government to investigate former Vice
President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. House oversight committees are
demanding more data from the White House Office of Management and Budget
on when and how the decision to sever the aid arose, including
requesting that some documentation be delivered to Capitol Hill by
Tuesday.
The military aid program has steadily
shifted American support in recent years much more heavily toward
security after economic development, loan guarantees and anti-corruption
programs defined much of the support following Ukraine’s independence
from the Soviet Union in 1991.
The U.S. bumped up its military support in 2014, soon after a popular uprising ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Russian troops annexed the Crimean peninsula while fomenting a separatist uprising in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region.
The vast majority of the funds, approved with bipartisan support in Congress, has financed items such as sniper rifles; rocket-propelled grenade launchers; counter-artillery radars; command and control and communications systems; night vision goggles; medical equipment; as well training and logistical support.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is especially interested in buying more Javelin anti-tank missiles to combat Russian tanks and other armored vehicles — a topic he broached during his July 25 telephone call with Trump that is at the center of the impeachment inquiry .
“Mr. Trump brought up American aid to
that country — without explicitly mentioning that he had just frozen a
military aid package of hundreds of millions of dollars — and then
pressed the Ukrainian leader to investigate Mr. Biden,” says the unclassified
copy of the whistleblower complaint that the Trump administration
released last week. “White House officials believed they had witnessed
Trump abuse his power for personal political gain.”
The call came a week after Trump ordered his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to instruct OMB to halt the remainder of $390 million in military aid appropriated by Congress this year in the Pentagon and State Department budgets. The administration released the aid earlier this month after demands from Congress.
Even before the current furor,
questions of how much or how little to help Ukraine’s military counter
Russian aggression have embroiled Washington for years.
Nowhere was it more pointed than the Ukrainians’ request, as far back as 2014, to purchase the advanced Javelin anti-tank missiles.
The Javelin issue “became fetishized
and it became a litmus test: ‘Will you stand up to Putin or will you
kowtow to him?’” said Samuel Charap, a former senior adviser at the
State Department specializing in Russia and Eurasia. “It was like a
Rorschach test.
“It had nothing to do with the merits
of the Javelin or the question of what would actually be most effective
and important for helping Ukraine,” added Charap, who is now a senior
political scientist at the government-funded Rand Corp.
The Obama administration agonized over
the issue but never approved the sale out of fear of escalating the
conflict — despite entreaties from Carter, who served in several top
Pentagon positions at the time.
The aim was to “do everything we could within the boundaries of what was wise without baiting the Russians into doing something worse,” recalled Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator who was Obama’s secretary of defense from 2013 to 2015.
The Javelins also helped spur a controversy over the Republican Party’s platform in 2016, after Trump’s campaign succeeded in watering down anti-Russia language and ensuring it would not call for “providing lethal defensive weapons” to Ukraine.
Yet once Trump was in office , the Ukrainian government and its allies in Congress kept pushing the request.
Finally, in 2018, long after the
Russian tanks pulled back from the front, the State Department finally
approved a foreign military sale of 210 Javelin missiles, along with
launchers and training, for $47 million.
Charap said the missiles’ military value was limited — they “ended up on the other side of the country from where the conflict is and under lock and key.” But they held significant value in eastern Ukraine, where retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. John Gronski credits the missiles with helping to stabilize the military crisis by “deterring the separatists from bringing armor into the region.”
The Ukrainians “really appreciate the
Javelins,” said Gronski, who served as the deputy commanding general of
U.S. Army Europe until June of this year.
Michael Kofman, a senior research
scientist at CNA, a government-funded think tank, also called the
Javelins an “insurance policy” against Russian escalation.
But in Carter’s view, “its political significance was greater than its military significance.”
However, the less controversial military aid — including some of the $390 million dollars slated to go to Ukraine this year from the Pentagon and State Department — has come to represent a lifeline for the Ukrainian military, which has achieved key milestones in recent months.
And Trump’s recent assertion that the
aid initiated under Obama has merely provided “sheets and pillows” is
directly refuted by those who oversaw it.
The Pentagon, which opposed cutting off the
aid this summer, told Congress in May that efforts to help reform the
country’s military and armaments industry, which has historically been
notoriously corrupt, have paid major dividends.
“Through these engagements, the United
States has effectively helped Ukraine advance institutional reforms
through a number of substantial actions to align Ukraine’s defense
enterprise more closely with NATO standards and principles,” John Rood,
the undersecretary of Defense for policy, told oversight committees.
He certified that Ukraine’s military
“has taken substantial actions” to tackle corruption, improve
accountability and is “sustaining improvements to combat capability
enabled by U.S. assistance.”
That applies especially to the
U.S.-financed military training, which takes place at the Yavoriv
training center in western Ukraine near the border with Poland.
Initially, American, Polish,
Lithuanian and Canadian troops conducted the training of Ukrainian
forces — first for smaller, company-sized units of several hundred
soldiers and then up to the level of a brigade, which can include
thousands of troops.
But now, battle-experienced Ukrainian troops are conducting most of the training, Gronski said, leaving the U.S. forces “in more of an observer role.”
And U.S. instruction in combat
medicine has had a direct impact on the battlefield in the east, Gronski
said. “Several times, across several visits, Ukrainian battalion
commanders told me that those kits and that training absolutely saved
lives.”
So here we see that Traitor Trump, in his actions, gave aid and comfort to our enemy Russia and his Puppet Master Putin, in his withholding the funds and military weapons to the Ukraine to fight the Russians annexation of Crimea and their proxy war against the Ukraine. And this costed Ukrainians lives by his actions.
And by Traitor Trump and the Republicans spreading the bullshit story that it was the Ukraine and not the Russians and Putin who interfered in the election of Traitor Donald J Trump? They are all giving aid and comfort to the enemy Russia and Putin.They are spreading the bullshit propoganda of Putin and Russia on Ukraine everywhere to defend the actions of this treasonous scumbag Donald J Trump.
While we are in essence a peacetime and not at officially declared war with Putin and Russia? Historical prosecution of people who have been arrested, tried and convicted and executed for Treason against the United States during peacetime? Is the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg, Ethel Rosenberg née Ethel Greenglass, (respectively, born May 12, 1918, New York, New York, U.S.—died June 19, 1953, Ossining, New York; born September 28, 1915, New York City—died June 19, 1953, Ossining), the first American civilians to be executed for espionage and the first to suffer that penalty during peacetime.
The Rosenbergs were charged with espionage and brought to trial on March 6, 1951; Greenglass was the chief witness for the prosecution. On March 29 they were found guilty, and on April 5 the couple was sentenced to death. (Sobell and Gold received 30-year prison terms, and Greenglass, who was tried separately, was sentenced to 15 years in prison.) For two years the Rosenberg case was appealed through the courts and before world opinion. The constitutionality and applicability of the Espionage Act of 1917, under which the Rosenbergs were tried, as well as the impartiality of the trial judge, Irving R. Kaufman—who in pronouncing sentence had accused them of a crime “worse than murder”—were key issues during the appeals process. Seven different appeals reached the Supreme Court of the United States and were denied, and pleas for executive clemency were dismissed by Pres. Harry Truman in 1952 and Pres. Dwight Eisenhower in 1953. A worldwide campaign for mercy failed, and the Rosenbergs were executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York. Ethel became the first woman executed by the U.S. government since Mary Surratt was hanged in 1865 for her alleged role in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
If Julius and Ethel Rosenberg can be prosecuted for High Treason against the United States, during peacetime? Then the same rules and laws can be used that prosecuted them, 18 U.S. Code § 2381. Treason , and sedition: 18 U.S. Code § 2384. Seditious conspiracy for the treasonous actions on the crimes of Donald J Trump, Rudy Guiliani, William Barr, Mick Mulvaney, et al and their withholding Congressionally approved funds and military weapons to go to the Ukraine, to fight the Russians and Putin’s invasion of and annexation of Crimea and their war against Ukraine, who are our ally. This gave aid and comfort to our enemy, Russia and Putin.
Any Republican Senator or Congressperson who stands up and defends Traitor Trump and spreads the bullshit lies that it was the Ukraine that interfered in our elections and not the Russians, as has been proven? Then they are in fact? Guilty of 18 U.S. Code § 2382. Misprision of treason. Such as Senators Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, and Congressmen Devin Nunes, Jim Jordan and many others.
Moscow Mitch, Putin Puppet and Treasonous Russian Republican Traitor to the United States.
Well, here is one way that Traitor, Pathological lying, rapist, pedophile, misogynist pig, thief and conartist, and of course, Putin dick sucking, ass fucked Puppet, Donald J Trump can Make America Great Again.
What can I say about that Hitler-wanna be, that Dicktaker of Putin in Chief, Bone Spurs wish he was a President, let alone human being, Donald J Trump, his fellow Fascist pig fucking scumbag shit stains of the #GOP who sold us out to Russia, like #MoscowMitchMcConnell? Or that closeted Queen bitch Lindsey Graham? Or all the other traitorous Republicans who also sold us out to Russia and the RussianNRA? Like Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan, and others?
WHEN DID WE GO FROM HANGING OUR TRAITORS TO ELECTING THEM TO OFFICE?
Then? You have the Trumpanzee Propoganda Channels like Fox News, Breibart and many other Reich-Wing, ChristoFascist pig fucking stations and websites, all supporting and defending this Turd Reich Hitler wanna be Donald J Trump.
Real shitstains on the underwear of humanity, like Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Andrew Napolitano, Laura Ingraham, Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson, Lisa “Kennedy” Montgomery, and many others, spew all kinds of lies out of their well used outhouse shitholes they use as mouths, to spread the pathological lies and treasonous actions of Donald J. Trump and his cronies.
Oh and these are the same assholes who dare to also call themselves? Christians. Yeah they are as much a Christian as Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mussolini and many other Fascist pig fuckers of humanity were. Because Sean, Ann, Andrew, Megyn, Laura, Tucker, Lisa and all the rest? You are nothing more than treasonous scumbag fuckers, selling us out to Russia and Trump, all for the sake of making a buck, and you cunts should be brought to Gitmo, along with Traitor Trump and the rest of the Treasonous GOPigs, and waterboarded on a ten minute cycle, before being tortured some more and then lined up against a wall, given a last cigarette, and then executed for High Treason before a firing squad. Hell, I would even volunteer to be on that firing squad.
Yeah, I do not watch Fox News for the same reason I don’t eat out of the toilet.Handjob Hannity of Fox News is about a corrupt fake news pundit, and treasonous dick sucking shitstain on the underwear of humanity, running his propoganda for his Hitler-wanna-be Donald J Trump. Well Hannity, you should be lined up against a wall right besides your fellow Traitors at Fox News and executed by a firing squad for High Treason against the People of the United States.
Now? For Moscow Mitch McConnell, the white supremacist, racist pig fucking, treasonous traitor, Russian Putin Puppet. Sure he might be married to a Chinese cunt….notice how all of our traitors like Moscow Mitch and Dotard Trump are married to whores and sluts and trailer park trash cunts who are from nations that are our enemies?
There is nothing worse in my book, to be the head of the Senate, and sell your country out for some pieces of silver from the Russian NRA and a cunt like Donald J Trump.
Mitch McCuntall, you will eventually pay for all your shit. For all those innocent children and teens shot down in massacres because you refuse to do something to stop the madness.
But worst of all McCuntall? If Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Monroe, James Madison, Thomas Paine or the others were around today? They would drag you and each and every one of your Treasonous, Traitorous, scumbag assed Repugnant brethren out of the Senate and House chambers, whipping and beating you towards the front of the White House, and along with Traitor Trump and Pence and his cabinet already lined up, put you fucking cunts on the gallows and hang you all for High Treason Against the United States.
Too bad they are not alive to do so. But I would not bet people who are just like them? Are alive today and just waiting to hang all you fucking Putin Dick Sucking, Russian Treasonous shitstains.
Yes you Putin Dick Sucking Hillbilly Traitor Moscow Mitch McConnell, you are an insult to the dignity of the office you hold. YOU should be dragged out of the Senate and hung for Treason against the United States, along with the rest of your Traitorous Trump supporting GOPigs.
AND LAST, BUT CERTAINLY NOT LEAST, THIS IS FOR THE TREASONOUS, RAPIST, PEDOPHILE, PATHOLOGICAL LYING, THIEF, CON-ARTIST, PUTIN DICK SUCKING PUPPET, DONALD J TRUMP.
Donald J Trump, you are in fact? GUILTY OF HIGH TREASON AGAINST THE UNITED STATES BY GIVING AID AND COMFORT TO OUR ENEMY, RUSSIA AND TO PUTIN.
Hey Donnie, you may have your mental midget moron Trumpanzees fooled. You may even have Faux Nitwit Newsless, Breibart, Facebook and Twitter under your Commander Bone Spurs command. You might be that wanna-be dicktater Hitler you love oh so much in your own fucking twisted, shit mind.
You have in fact? Sold us out to Vlad Putin and Russia. That is no doubt a truth and a fact. You obstructed justice. You can lie all you want and trash the Bob Mueller report, the FBI, the Democrats, etc all you want to, but your dumb ass is only fooling your brain dead loser followers.
You are a racist pig. You are a white supremacist cunt. You think you are supreme and a super stable genius and etc. Well all you are? Is a turd that was flushed the day your mom shit you out of her blown out asshole and you crawled out of the fucking sewers and back into her asshole to wait a few more months. And the day you were truly born? All the demons of hell fucked you in the ass and let loose a stream of demon sperm into your shithole. That is why you got such a small set of hands and a tiny little dick there Donnie.
About the only thing that Dotard Donnies mouth is good for. Isn’t that right? Well just ask those Russian hookers who pissed on him.I know I would be one of the first ones in line.
Then you got that skank of a turd wife of yours Melania. What a fucking treasure to have a fucking stripper and porn queen for a first lady huh? Such classy trash from a Ukrainian hooker and whore huh?
And then? You got the fucking nerve to bitch about immigrants coming in from Central America and Muslim countries, while you got this Russian slut a “genius” visa, knocked the skank up and married her? Yeah, that cunt and her family and that brain dead piece of shit off spring of hell you both produced need to go back to the Russian countries they came from.
The First Whore Melania Trump…even her own son knows she is a whore.Oh Melania Trump, you inspire trailer park trash sluts and whores for Traitor Trump each and every day.Hey if your husband can be a misogynist pig, a rapist and a pedophile? Then I got a right to trash both him and you for it.
Then you sick and twisted, disgusting pervert, you pedophile piece of shit, you rapist cunt. YOU go and perv on your daughters? Especially Ivana? You talk about how she has a great ass and how if she wasn’t your daughter you would date her? You probably raped that girl, considering all the pictures I have seen of the two of you together. And then you also perved on your daughter Tiffany when she was only one year old during a People Magazine interview? For that alone? You should be fucking skinned alive.
You perv on 2-14 yr old girls singing Xmas carols in Rockerfeller Plaza? You perv on naked teen underage girls in the dressing room of your Miss Teen USA pagent? You brutally rape a 14 yr old girl at your buddy Jerry Epstein’s NY sex palace? You hit upon a 12 yr old girl going up an escalator? You perv on 12 yr old Paris Hilton?
Too bad Donnie we cannot bring back the old Roman Catholic Inquisitional Tortures, especially the Rat Torture, cause if any scumbag shitstain pedophile pervert, rapist and scumbag like you deserve to deal with the Rat Torture as punishment? It would be you. Along with your buddies Roy Moore and Brett Kavanaugh. Oh and what is the rat torture?
That is where we strip your fat fucking ass, bind you to a table, place a rat on your little crotch dick place a cage over the rat, then a bowl of hot coals on top of the cage, and let the rat eat your junk. Though in your case? We could probably get away with using a baby mouse.
Yes, Pedo Pervert and Rapist in Chief Donald J Trump, Roy Moore, Brett Kavanaugh and any other misogynist pig GOP who stands up and defends rapists and pedophiles like Trump, Moore, Kavanaugh or others? Should be tortured using the Rat Torture.
Well Dotard Donnie…again, the best way you can make America great again? Is to take a gun, stick it up your fat fucking ass, pull the trigger and blow what little brains you got out.
But really? I would love it Donald J Trump, if you were arrested for all your Crimes and then convicted and sentenced to death. Then you and Moscow Mitch and all the rest of your Treasonous GOPigs can be brought right on down to your favorite place called GITMO, and waterboarded on an hourly basis. Oh yeah, and stripped and stomped on, and your heads smashed into bars and bricks, and all kinds of manner of torture and treatment given to you scum fucking treasonous pieces of shit traitors, before you are all lined up against a wall given a last cigarette and then executed by firing squad for High Treason.
Atheist Militants Rising 
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