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Hillary still publicly making excuses for election loss

Teri Webster
The Blaze
Sun, 17 Dec 2017 13:20 UTC
Hillary Clinton Ellen DeGeneres
© YouTube screenshot
Hillary Clinton appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show to talk about her book and why she lost the 2016 presidential election.
Hillary Clinton, appearing on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," blamed misogyny, voter suppression, and "FBI intervention," as some of the key reasons for her loss in the 2016 presidential election.

Clinton told DeGeneres she wrote her book, "What Happened" because wanted to figure out...what happened. The book details her experiences during the presidential race.

Writing the book was so painful, Clinton said, that she would have to take small rest breaks to regain her strength to continue.

Comment: It's difficult to tell is Hillary is just delusional in pathologically and persistently insisting that she didn't lose the presidency fairly, or if she's creating spin for another shot at the White House in the future. Either way, she's crooked to the core and there's some satisfaction in seeing her run around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to make excuses for her failings. See also:

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Briefcase

Blackmail material? Mueller obtains tens of thousands of Trump transition emails - potentially illegally

Max Greenwood
The Hill
Sat, 16 Dec 2017 20:56 UTC
mueller
© Larry Downing / Reuters
Special counsel Robert Mueller's team of investigators is in possession of tens of thousands of emails from the Trump transition team, Axios reported Saturday.

Those emails include messages belonging to President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, as well as other members of the transition team's political leadership and the foreign policy team, according to Axios.

Mueller's prosecutors reportedly used the emails to question witnesses, and are also looking to the messages to confirm information and follow new leads.

According to Axios, Mueller obtained the emails from the General Services Administration, which managed the transition team's email accounts. Transition officials had reportedly assumed that Mueller would want the emails, and separated ones that they believed contained privileged information.

But Mueller was reportedly able to obtain all the emails from 12 accounts.

Comment: According to Trump's lawyer, who wrote to Congress about it, Mueller did not obtain these emails legally:
In a letter sent to the House and the Senate and seen by Fox News, Kory Langhofer, lawyer for Trump's transition team, claimed that Mueller obtained "tens of thousands of emails," including confidential communications between a client and a lawyer, due to "unlawful conduct" by the staffers at the General Services Administration (GSA), which hosted the Trump team's email servers during the transition.

Accusing the GSA of "unauthorized disclosures" for giving Mueller access to private information it "did not own or control," Langhofer went to blame the agency for infringing on the right of the US citizens to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures, as guaranteed by the 4th Amendment.

The special counsel's office has reportedly made "extensive use"of the texts seized from Trump's transition team that include "materials that are susceptible to privilege claims," Langhofer wrote, adding that apart from internal emails, the GSA also handed over laptops, cell phones and an iPad at its own liberty.

Trump's team discovered what it believes a breach of privacy on December 12 and December 13, the lawyer said, noting that some of the compromised materials were leaked to the media by "unknown persons."

Appealing to the Senate Homeland Security and House Oversight Committee, Langhofer called on them to ensure future transitions are secured form being mishandled by government bodies, in particular when it is under an investigation driven by political motives.

With the lingering probe into Trump's alleged ties to Russia having failed so far to produce any proof to support the allegations, it itself has been hit with claims of potential conflict of interest. Last week, it was revealed that one of Mueller's investigative team members, prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, publicly expressed his admiration to former US Attorney General Sally Yates, fired by Trump after defying a travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries. It was also reported that Weissmann attended former Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's election party in November 2016.

In another revelation, Mueller's "right-hand man" investigator Aaron Zebley was found to have acted as an attorney for an IT staffer, who installed Clinton's email private servers and destroyed her old Blackberry phones. The report by Fox News raised more questions about the independence of the former FBI director's investigative machine.
This is essentially what they did with Flynn. They have the communications (obtained in a manner most politely termed "shady"), then try to catch you in a lie about things they already know about. If Mueller has any self-respect or concern for his credibility, he won't use the same dirty trick twice.

UPDATE - 12/17/2017: The Mueller office responded to Langhofer's accusation:
Special counsel Robert Mueller's office on Sunday defended its work after a lawyer for President Trump's transition team accused investigators of improperly obtaining thousands of emails from transition officials.

"When we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we have secured either the account owner's consent or appropriate criminal process," Peter Carr, a spokesman for the special counsel's office, said in a statement to The Hill.


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Quenelle

Trolling Nikki! Russian Embassy online poll shows 82% think US is real threat in Middle East - Iran gets less votes than Aliens

Andrés Perezalonso
Sott.net
Mon, 18 Dec 2017 09:35 UTC
nikki haley
© Yuri Gripas / Reuters
Nikki Haley makes an embarrassment of herself - again.
After the disastrous wars on Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, nowadays whenever a politician tries to pull a 'Colin Powell' on us, they deserve to be trolled. We are glad that the Russian Embassy in the Republic of South Africa has taken the initiative on this most important duty.

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Attention

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi to run for President of Libya in 2018

Adam Garrie
The Duran
Sun, 17 Dec 2017 00:00 UTC
A family spokesman has broken the news on Egyptian television.
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi
© EPA
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the second son and erstwhile heir apparent to revolutionary leader Muammar Gaddafi has confirmed to Egyptian television, through a family spokesman, Basem al-Hashimi al-Soul, that he seeks to run in next year's tenuous Presidential elections in Libya.

While Libya remains a failed state in the wake of the 2011 NATO war against the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, many have pinned their hopes on Saif al-Islam Gaddafi who since his release from captivity this year, has been touring the country and buildilng support among Libya's many tribal factions.

According to his spokesman,
"Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of the former Libyan president, enjoys the support of major tribes in Libya so he can run for the upcoming presidential elections due in 2018.

Saif al-Islam plans to impose more security and stability in accordance with the Libyan geography and in coordination with all Libyan factions".

Comment: See also:

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Attention

US defense secretary James Mattis rejects war on Iran

Adam Garrie
The Duran
Sun, 17 Dec 2017 00:00 UTC
James "Mad Dog" Mattis has injected some sanity into mad Nikki Haley's tirades.
Mad Dog Mattis
© Unknown
US Defense Secretary James "Mad Dog" Mattis has refuted claims that the US is preparing for war on Iran after US Ambassador to the UN, Nikkie Haley led a bizarre press conference in which she stated that Iran has armed Houthi fighters in Yemen and thus violating the terms of the JCPOA (aka Iran nuclear deal). Haley did not provide any evidence to substantiate her claims, claims which are logistically impossible given the Saudi led blockade of Yemen which predates the JCPOA by nearly four months.
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Star

Russian Presidential election campaign has officially launched


Sputnik
Mon, 18 Dec 2017 00:53 UTC
The Russian upper house has issued a resolution on the launch of the Russian presidential campaign.

Moon over Moscow's Kremlin Tower
© Sputnik/Vladimir Sergeev
Moon over Moscow's Kremlin Tower
The Russian presidential campaign has officially started, the relevant upper house's resolution was published in Monday's edition of the government's Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper.

The Russian upper house, the Federation Council, officially set March 18, 2018 as the day for the presidential vote on Friday.
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Light Sabers

Investigations of Trump and Clinton stacked with 'conflicts upon conflicts of interest'

John Hayward
Breitbart
Sat, 16 Dec 2017 20:30 UTC
Hillary Clinton Donald Trump
© Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer talked during his appearance on Friday's Breitbart News Tonight with SiriusXM hosts Rebecca Mansour and John Carney about the discovery of politically charged text messages between Peter Strzok, an FBI official involved in both the Trump and Clinton investigations, and his mistress.

"We all expect that people at the FBI are going to have private political opinions," Schweizer allowed. "You know, these people vote, and they have views, and that's fine. In this particular case, Strzok had particularly strong feelings about Trump."

He said the text message of greatest concern was part of a conversation between Strzok and the woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair, in which they talked about developing an "insurance policy" in the event Donald Trump won the 2016 election.

"They never sort of spell out what the insurance policy is, but it's kind of implied in the context of the communication and what's going on at the time, which is this FBI investigation," he observed.

"What is an insurance policy? I'd take out an insurance policy because I want to be prepared if disaster strikes. If in my mind a disaster occurs - a hurricane, an earthquake, a fire - I've got something in my back pocket to help set things right. Well, Strzok, who clearly did not like Trump and liked Hillary, said that they had an 'insurance policy.' In that context, what he seems to be saying is disaster striking would be Trump being president and that they had some insurance policy to sort of deal with that disaster," Schweizer explained.

Comment: See also: Democrats counter-attack, claim Strzok texts exposing FBI's anti-Trump bias are "irrelevant"

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Bizarro Earth

Inside Russia-gate without Russia, the scary void

Stephen F. Cohen
Consortium News
Fri, 15 Dec 2017 00:00 UTC
Russiagate
© Der Spiegel/KJN
The foundational accusation of Russia-gate was, and remains, charges that Russian President Putin ordered the hacking of Democratic National Committee e-mails and their public dissemination through WikiLeaks in order to benefit Donald Trump and undermine Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, and that Trump and/or his associates colluded with the Kremlin in this "attack on American democracy."

As no actual evidence for these allegations has been produced after nearly a year and a half of media and government investigations, we are left with Russia-gate without Russia. Special counsel Mueller has produced four indictments: against retired Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump's short-lived national-security adviser, and George Papadopolous, a lowly and inconsequential Trump "adviser," for lying to the FBI; and against Paul Manafort and his partner Rick Gates for financial improprieties. None of these charges has anything to do with improper collusion with Russia, except for the wrongful insinuations against Flynn.

Instead, the several investigations, desperate to find actual evidence of collusion, have spread to "contacts with Russia" - political, financial, social, etc. - on the part of a growing number of people, often going back many years before anyone imagined Trump as a presidential candidate. The resulting implication is that these "contacts" were criminal or potentially so.

Comment: Below is an interview with Professor Cohen on media malpractice and healthy skepticism of intelligence reports:



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Arrow Down

Former CIA Director Morell: We didn't think about the downside of the intel community becoming political

Matt Vespa
Townhall
Thu, 14 Dec 2017 05:45 UTC
MichaelMorell
© Common Dreams
Former CIA Director Michael Morell
Former CIA Director Michael Morell sat down with Politico's Susan Glasser, where he admitted that he and others from the intelligence community didn't think through the consequences of them becoming political last year. Last year, Morell wrote an op-ed in The New York Times that endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. Within the agency, Morell sharked his way up the halls of the CIA becoming the chief intelligence briefer to President George W. Bush, and then acting director twice. Intelligence analysts serve the country. There is no politics involved in any of their analyses - at least not until Trump was elected. Morell noted that putting himself in 'Trump's shoes' did not factor into his decision to become political, and that is something he admits he fell short on concerning the backlash for the community. At the same time, he doesn't think that going public with that op-ed was a mistake.

Comment: The separation of aspects of the government, which included the neutrality of ancillary agencies, was meant to be a failsafe, a counterweight keeping the Ship of State on a straight and narrow course. With the abandonment of these principles, DC finds itself in political and moral free fall, the complacent public barely realizing the difference.

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Snakes in Suits

Merk and Mac say they would support EU move against Poland


Radio Poland
Fri, 15 Dec 2017 16:52 UTC
MerkMac
© Daily Express
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said at a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron in Brussels that if the EU's executive decides on such a move against Poland "then we will support it."

The European Commission is on Wednesday due to assess sweeping changes to Poland's Supreme Court and the National Council of the Judiciary (KRS), an influential body that nominates new judges, which were passed by lawmakers in Warsaw last week. The Commission is then expected to decide whether to activate Article 7.1 of the EU treaty.

The article means that, at the request of a third of member states, the European Parliament or the European Commission, the EU Council can declare that there is a "clear risk of a serious breach" by an EU country of the bloc's values.

Comment: See also:

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