(image via Jeremiah Tolbert)
https://twitter.com/kshipwhitecat/status/818886280402518016
Trump
Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him. Holy shit.
Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN.
The allegations were presented in a two-page synopsis that was appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The allegations came, in part, from memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative, whose past work US intelligence officials consider credible. The FBI is investigating the credibility and accuracy of these allegations, which are based primarily on information from Russian sources, but has not confirmed many essential details in the memos about Mr. Trump.
And the kicker:
The two-page synopsis also included allegations that there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government, according to two national security officials.
Buzzfeed reports on the full documents:
A dossier making explosive — but unverified — allegations that the Russian government has been “cultivating, supporting and assisting” President-elect Donald Trump for years and gained compromising information about him has been circulating among elected officials, intelligence agents, and journalists for weeks.
Among the statements in the documents:
- “Russia has been cultivating, supporting and assisting Trump for at least five years.”
- “FSB has compromised Trump through his activities in Moscow sufficiently to be able to blackmail him.”
- While staying at the Ritz Carlton in Moscow, Trump rented the presidential suite where the Obamas had stayed and hired prostitutes to urinate on its bed in front of him–all of which was picked up on the room’s FSB bugs.
- Paul Manafort knew about the DNC hacking effort and in exchange agreed to weaken the GOP platform’s opposition to Russian interference in Ukraine
McCain passed this report to the FBI in December. James Comey, who broke tradition and released spurious information about Hillary Clinton’s emails under investigation days before the election, told Congress on Tuesday that he could not verify whether Trump’s campaign was under investigation for ties to Russia because he could not comment on an investigation in an open forum. What a flaming hypocrite.
The FISA court, which rubber-stamps almost all warrants, turned down the FBI’s request to monitor the Trump team for Russian contact over the summer.
"Don't let the golden showers distract you from the treason" is a thing we are now saying about our soon-to-be president.
— ✨ Myisha Haynes ✨ (@palaceofposey) January 11, 2017
In other news…
Health insurers are afraid to defend Obamacare for fear “Mr. Trump would attack them on Twitter.”
Judge dismisses libel suit against Trump because his tweets are ‘hyperbolic’
Transition Team & Cabinet Appointees
Jeff Sessions’s confirmation hearing started today. He said a lot of things that would be amazing if you didn’t know a thing about Jeff Sessions:
- Discrimination existed–past tense
- The NAACP is un-American
- Roe vs. Wade violated the Constitution (but he would defend it)
- He’s not sure whether journalists who leak information should be prosecuted (DOJ guidelines say no)
- On hate crimes: “I am not sure women or people with different sexual orientations face that kind of discrimination.”
- “being called a racist is the worst thing that can ever happen to someone”
- he’s “not sure” whether secular people understand the truth as well as religious people
Here's Lindsey Graham joking about the concerns of 1,424 law professors from across the US that Jeff Sessions won't protect civil rights pic.twitter.com/38BHw1jnRc
— David Mack (@davidmackau) January 10, 2017
In 1986, Coretta Scott King wrote a letter that helped deny Sessions a federal judgeship. It was never entered into the congressional record and was considered lost until Tuesday evening.
At the time of the hearing, Judiciary Committee Chairman Strom Thurmond never put the letter into the congressional record, and its contents remained largely unknown. In the only line that was made public at the time — published in June 1986 by Knight Ridder reporter Aaron Epstein — King made clear her opposition to Sessions’ nomination.
“For a century, the racial practices that characterized our region were established and enforced by men who, like Mr. Sessions, protested that they, too, were not personally hostile to blacks,” King’s letter said, according to Epstein’s dispatch.
In his own confirmation hearing, “Retired Gen. John F. Kelly, the Homeland Security nominee, said that a wall on the border with Mexico would not by itself remedy illegal immigration.”
Five Trump nominees gave $100K to members of committees running their confirmation hearings
Monica Crowley plagiarized lines in Washington Times columns. Are we surprised? HarperCollins has pulled her book from shelves.
Robert Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaxxer, says he will chair “vaccination safety” committee for Trump
What you can do
Call your Congressmen, all of them, even if you hate making phone calls. (I do.) Call their local offices if you’d rather speak to a person than an answering machine, especially the smaller regional offices. Here’s a guide on how to contact them and what to say.
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