It’s Getting Deep: Dem Says Russians Promoted 2nd Amendment so Americans Would ‘Kill Themselves’

Not understanding that maybe Americans actually want to be free and armed to ensure it stays that way, one Democrat is instead employing mental gymnastics. Adam Schiff thinks that the Russians promoted the second amendment because Americans would “kill each other.”

Pulled right out of the “You can’t make this stuff up file,” Schiff made his latest absurd remarks last week at a University of Pennsylvania event where he claimed that Russians were posting content “designed to pit us against each other, to exploit our divisions.” Those pesky Russians must have nothing more to do than interfere with the lives of individual Americans…

According to the Daily Wire, Schiff made some rather mentally deranged comments that will have your sides sore with laughter. “They also trumpeted the Second Amendment,” Schiff said. “Apparently, the Russians are very big fans of our Second Amendment. They don’t particularly want a Second Amendment of their own, but they’re really glad that we have one. The Russians would be thrilled if we were doing nothing but killing each other every day, and sadly we are.”

Schiff recently went on two national TV shows to suggest that another Oklahoma-City style bombing is also going to happen because President Donald Trump and the Republicans released the House Intelligence Committee’s memo on Friday.

 Watch video

Ryan Saavedra ✔@RealSaavedra

Democrat Adam Schiff: Russians Promoted 2nd Amendment So Americans Would ‘Kill Each Other’

Although funny, several Democrats in the comments agreed with Schiff’s assessment.

5 Feb

Ryan Saavedra 

✔@RealSaavedra

Democrat Adam Schiff: Russians Promoted 2nd Amendment So Americans Would ‘Kill Each Other’ pic.twitter.com/WW5P1K70pm

𝔼𝕋𝕖𝕩ℂ𝕠𝕟𝕤𝕖𝕣𝕧𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕧𝕖@mlemons1970

Lay off the Tide pods #SchiffForBrains.

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

The post It’s Getting Deep: Dem Says Russians Promoted 2nd Amendment so Americans Would ‘Kill Themselves’ appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

Top Democrats Demand Censorship & Blame Russia For #ReleaseTheMemo Movement

Top Democrats penned a letter to Twitter and Facebook last week demanding the censorship of those who use the hashtag #ReleaseTheMemo.  The Democrats claimed Russia is behind the movement, and therefore seek censorship.

The hashtag began after word broke of the jaw-dropping memo on the United States government’s surveillance abuses. Republicans have been working to release the memo to the public, which supposedly contains damning evidence the Obama administration used FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) warrants to spy on the Trump campaign and his transition team ahead of the president’s inauguration.

So far, the battle to make the memo public has been hard fought and uphill.  But those who want the government to be transparent and release it so we can decide for ourselves what’s in it face censorship by Democrats who are begging social media outlets to kill the accounts of those who use the hashtag.

Senator Diane Feinstein and Representative Adam Schiff sent the letter to both Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, and Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter demanding the censorship while claiming it’s “Russia-backed.” Meanwhile, Twitter’s internal analysis of the hashtag has thus far found that authentic American accounts, not Russians, are driving #ReleaseTheMemo, according to The Daily Beast.

Democrats have been invoking Russia to try to shut down the free speech of those desiring transparency.

They [Feinstein and Schiff] relied on a report from the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy claiming that #ReleaseTheMemo had become the favorite hashtag of Russian-sponsored Twitter accounts. (The report did not make any judgements about such activity on Facebook.)

“If these reports are accurate, we are witnessing an ongoing attack by the Russian government through Kremlin-linked social media actors directly acting to intervene and influence our democratic process,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Adam Schiff, two California Democrats, wrote to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

But a knowledgeable source says that Twitter’s internal analysis has thus far found that authentic American accounts, and not Russian imposters or automated bots, are driving #ReleaseTheMemo. There are no preliminary indications that the Twitter activity either driving the hashtag or engaging with it is either predominantly Russian. -The Daily Beast

How dare people want the truth! Especially when living in times when the media lies to our faces, is biased in their reporting, and hides documents from the public to try to sway opinion. All these things are what they accuse Russia of doing, but they themselves are deceiving everyone.

Are Democrats just going to cry “Russia” when there’s any sign of public dissent?

Trump Attorney Quashes Rumors Of Impending Mueller Firing

An Attorney for President Trump has vehemently denied rumors that special counsel Robert Mueller will be fired over revelations of politically motivated malfeasance by the FBI towards Hillary Clinton and against Donald Trump, including disturbing text messages which were sent between top FBI investigators implying the Trump-Russia investigation may have been launched as an "insurance" policy in the event Trump won the 2016 election. Furthermore, GOP lawmakers have asserted that FBI top brass relied on a salacious and unverified "dossier" to launch the Trump-Russia investigation. Also noted by critics is the fact that Robert Mueller"s "right hand man," Aaron Zebley represented Clinton IT staffer Justin Cooper - a Bill Clinton aide who "jerry-rigged" Hillary Clinton"s "private, illegal" server in her Chappaqua home. 

Peter Strzok, Robert Mueller, Ty Cobb

Despite all of that, Trump attorney Ty Cobb told Politico, "As the White House has repeatedly and emphatically said for months, there is no consideration at the White House of terminating the special counsel.” 

Earlier in the day we reported that Trump transition team attorney Kory Langhofer sent a seven-page complaint to House and Senate oversight committees investigating the 2016 election to lodge a complaint that the special counsel improperly obtained "many tens of thousands" of emails from the Trump transition team from the General Services Administration - the government agency responsible for setting up and administering the transition email system which uses a "ptt.gov" address. Kanghofer says these emails were obtained through "unlawful conduct," and that the Trump team had been segregating emails with "Executive Privilege" in anticipation of giving the rest to Mueller"s team. 

On Friday, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said there was a rumor floating around DC that President Trump will fire Mueller before Christmas, but after congress leaves for winter recess. 

“The rumor on the Hill when I left yesterday was that the president was going to make a significant speech at the end of next week. And on Dec. 22, when we are out of D.C., he was going to fire Robert Mueller," Speier told California"s KQED News.

"We can read between the lines I think," Speier told KQED, adding "I believe this president wants all of this shut down. He wants to shut down these investigations, and he wants to fire special counsel Mueller."

Speier joined Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) over concerns that the House Intelligence Committee"s Russia investigation would be shut down by the end of the year. 

Reps Jackie Speier (D-CA) and Adam Schiff (D-CA)

Schiff shot off a series of nine tweets explaining why he"s "increasingly worried Republicans will shut down the House Intelligence Committee investigation," pointing to the fact that "Republicans have scheduled no witnesses after next Friday and none in 2017. We have dozens of outstanding witnesses on key aspects of our investigation that they refuse to contact and many document requests they continue to sit on." 

Read the rest by clicking on Schiff"s tweet and scrolling down. 

I’m increasingly worried Republicans will shut down the House Intelligence Committee investigation at the end of the month.

Here’s why:

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) December 15, 2017

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders denied rumors that President Trump was considering firing Mueller in October, stating "There is no intention or plan to make any changes in regards to the special counsel," adding "I think we should let the process play through before we start looking at that."

Perhaps GOP lawmakers would be more comfortable with Mueller"s special counsel if Attorney General Jeff Sessions would appoint a second special counsel to investigate the FBI? Alas, it looks like that may be nothing more than wishful thinking for the time being. 

Blackwater Founder Erik Prince: Obama Put Me Under "Illegal" Surveillance and Leaked It To WaPo

Blackwater USA founder Erik Prince blasted the US Intelligence community for a "political abuse of the intelligence infrastructure" after leaking information on his whereabouts to the Washington Post. The former Navy SEAL and brother of Trump"s Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, made the comments during his November 30 testimony in front of the House Intelligence Committee, according to transcripts released Wednesday. 

Committee members asked Prince about a business trip to the Indian Ocean country of Seychelles for a summit with United Arab Emirates business associates, with Senator Tom Rooney (R-FL) claiming "there"s an inference that you are acting on behalf of the Russian -- or the Trump campaign and meeting with Russian people." 

During the January 11, 2017 Sychelles meeting, Prince said he was introduced to Russian fund manager, Kirill Dmitriev, who he spoke with for approximately 30 minutes at the bar. Prince made it clear that he has had very little to do with the Trump campaign aside from donating money, attending fundraisers, and writing "some papers on different foreign policy positions" which he gave to Steve Bannon. 

Prince scoffed at the notion he was acting on behalf of the Trump campaign during his January meeting, and then lambasted the US Intelligence community for leaking the details of his meeting to the Washington Post in a story which ran in April, accusing Prince of establishing a backdoor channel to Moscow on behalf of then-candidate Trump.   

"What really bothers me and what I would hope the Intelligence Committee is doing is questioning why Americans that were caught up in waves of signals intelligence, why on Earth would The Washington Post be running an article on any meeting that a private citizen, me, was having in a foreign country? That"s illegal. That is a political abuse of the intelligence infrastructure.

 

And that is really dangerous, especially as this committee and the Congress thinks about reauthorizing very wide-ranging intelligence authorities to dig into private Americans" electronic communications of any sort. That"s what I have an issue with. 

Prince says he was told that an Obama National Security Council staffer provided the intelligence to the Washington Post, after the administration opened a counter-intelligence investigation into the Trump campaign in July 2016 based in part on a salacious dossier funded by Hillary Clinton and the DNC. 

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) pressed Prince on his relationship to the Trump campaign, asking "Did you discuss having any channel of communication between the United States and Russia?" To which Prince replied "No," adding:

Congressman, Erik Prince, a private citizen, traveled to the Seychelles to meet with some Emirati people that he’d known for a few years. And while there, they said, ‘Oh, there is this Russian guy that’s also here to see us. Might be useful for you to meet him.’ And like I said, I met him for a maximum of 30 minutes, probably much less than that because it doesn’t take me that long to drink a beer in a bar.”

Prince suggested that the Obama administration "unmasked" his name from intelligence reports which were then leaked to the Post, and that the article damaged his relationship with the UAE. 

“What are you doing to prevent the illicit use of the intelligence apparatus by a political party, particular the previous one that did that to me,” Prince asked Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA), adding “I’m really bothered by that - and any American should be, particularly as Congress votes to reauthorize significant ability for the intelligence community to dig into our lives, whether you’re a private citizen or not, from all the electronics that you do.”

CIA Narrative on WikiLeaks Dominates Media Coverage of Trump Jr. Correspondence

(SP) — The CIA contends WikiLeaks is not a media organization but rather a “non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.” Response by the U.S. press to a report from The Atlantic on correspondence between WikiLeaks and Donald Trump Jr. wholly adopted the CIA’s narrative, even though the public still lacks proof of such cooperation.

Moreover, although The Atlantic report merely shows communications between a Trump campaign official and WikiLeaks, it was treated as significant confirmation of Russian collusion.

Former CIA director Leon Panetta appeared on CNN and said the correspondence was “another additional piece of evidence related to the activities of either [Trump] family members or members of his campaign working with the Russians in one way or another.” Panetta maintained there was no question WikiLeaks was a cutout for the Russian government.

“The basic message that should have gone out to all campaign individuals is do not interact with the Russians,” Panetta added, when asked what the Trump campaign should have done when contacted by WikiLeaks. “Do not interact with a foreign adversary that could very well come in and try to influence this election.”

“This is yet another level interest by the campaign in foreign assistance and not just any foreign assistance but foreign assistance tied to the Kremlin,” Democratic Representative Adam Schiff, a ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said on CNN.

When host Wolf Blitzer asked Schiff to be precise on the relationship between the Kremlin and WikiLeaks, Schiff answered, “Well, the Kremlin, well, was certainly using WikiLeaks to publish these documents. I think it gave them a certain level of deniability that the more direct cutouts like Guccifer 2.0 or DCLeaks that could be traced right back to the Kremlin would ultimately not provide them. But nonetheless, WikiLeaks is a sophisticated actor.”

“I fully believe that they knew exactly where they were getting this information about and were more than happy to coordinate with the Russians. I don’t think that this is an issue so much of they’re being useful idiots as opposed to witting participants. There is a division of opinion, I think, among members about just how witting or useful they were. Nonetheless, the fact of the matter was this was clearly one of the outlets the Russians were using for publication.”

Tony Blinken, a former deputy secretary of state under President Barack Obama, also appeared on CNN and stated, “WikiLeaks was basically a cutout. That is, everything that was exfiltrated from the DNC to the Clinton campaign was apparently passed on to WikiLeaks and WikiLeaks put it out. So this is pretty close to a direct connection.”

He conceded it is not publicly known “exactly what the cooperation/coordination was between Russia and WikiLeaks,” but argued this correspondence fit into a pattern of WikiLeaks aiding and abetting Russia’s attempts to favor one candidate over another in the election.

During “Anderson Cooper 360,” former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper reminded viewers that he was not certain if WikiLeaks had wittingly collaborated with Russia, but later said, “It certainly has the appearance and smell and feel of a developing conspiracy” and the Trump campaign should have viewed WikiLeaks the same as CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

Former deputy of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center Philip Mudd took a slightly different tack. “Let’s be clear: WikiLeaks published thousands of stolen U.S. government documents that were classified by the U.S. government.”

“Regardless of whether this is illegal, for the son of a U.S. candidate to willingly cooperate in a conversation with an organization that publishes stolen U.S. classified information is an ethical breach. He should never have done this regardless of whether it’s illegal,” Mudd suggested.

A day after the report, Samantha Vinograd, who was part of the National Security Council under Obama, took a massive leap on CNN. “This is a really good day for Vladimir Putin.”

She was responding to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ testimony, but she also contended all the conversation about when Trump Jr. was or was not in contact with WikiLeaks “accomplishes Vladimir Putin’s goal of undermining confidence in our institutions.”

“It’s clear that Donald Trump Jr., for example, was in touch with an organization that Mike Pompeo has called a ‘non-state hostile intelligence service.’ That organization, the intelligence community agrees, received information from the Russian government. So it’s clear to me that Donald Trump Jr. was an intelligence target of the Russian services, and he fell for it.”

The incorporation of the CIA narrative into coverage was not unique to CNN. On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow insisted this was an admission that Trump Jr. helped Russia’s allies distribute their stolen materials.

David Corn, the Washington bureau chief for the liberal Mother Jones, reacted, “More Trump-Russia collusion!”

Ed Krassenstein, an entrepreneur and journalist with over a half million followers on Twitter (who has “#ImpeachTrump” in his bio), wrote, “The Wikileaks Correspondence with Don Jr. confirms that Julian Assange & Wikileaks are agents of the Russian government & that they are not the ‘neutral’ party that many people make them out to be. This changes everything & reinforces the allegations that Trump colluded w/ Russia.”

But what The Atlantic report by Julia Ioffe shows is WikiLeaks recognized the Trump campaign could be useful to their goal of pushing out the release of emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta. Likewise, the Trump campaign recognized WikiLeaks may have some value because it was capable of being such a thorn in the side of Clinton and Democrats, which it had been since it published disclosures from Chelsea Manning in 2010.

At worst, it shows Trump Jr. ignored a warning on October 7 from U.S. security agencies because he continued to reply to WikiLeaks messages. However, the warning only said the disclosures were “consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts.” It was not an official report that rested upon conclusive evidence like the U.S. intelligence community report released in January.

That report did not prove WikiLeaks was wholly compromised by the Russian government. New York Times reporter Scott Shane wrote, “What is missing from the public report is what many Americans most eagerly anticipated: hard evidence to back up the agencies’ claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack. That is a significant omission.”

It claimed with “high confidence” the General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate or GRU, which is Russian military intelligence, used the “Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com to release U.S. victim data” to WikiLeaks. Yet, it did not prove that WikiLeaks had any idea this material was coming from hackers tied to the Russians.

When Assange commented on the intelligence community’s assessment and called it “embarrassing,” he accused agencies of deliberately obscuring the timeline. He said they do not know when the Democratic National Committee was hacked.

“The U.S. intelligence community is not aware of when WikiLeaks obtained its material or when the sequencing of our material was done or how we obtained our material directly. So there seems to be a great fog in the connection to WikiLeaks,” Assange maintained.

There are several former intelligence professionals, a few with whistleblowing pasts, who have questioned the veracity of the report. Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector and ground intelligence officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, disputes the “theology” around the alleged Russian hacking.

Challenging officials like Schiff, Ritter contends, “There simply isn’t any hard data in the public domain to back up these statements of fact. What is known is that a persona using the name Guccifer 2.0 published documents said to be sourced from the DNC on several occasions starting from June 15, 2016. Guccifer 2.0 claims to have stolen these documents by perpetrating a cyber-penetration of the DNC server.

“However, the hacking methodology Guccifer 2.0 claims to have employed does not match the tools and techniques allegedly uncovered by the cybersecurity professionals from CrowdStrike when they investigated the DNC intrusion.”

Ritter also points out that malware at the center of allegations was “available on the open market, making it virtually impossible to make any attribution at all simply by looking at similarities in “tools and techniques.” Virtually anyone could have acquired these tools and used them” in the way they were deployed against the DNC. Plus, Russia would not have used an open source tool in its professional hacking, or “offensive intelligence,” operations.

The Nation Magazine was hammered for publishing a report based on conclusions by these former U.S. intelligence professionals that questioned the dominant narrative pushed aggressively by agencies, such as the CIA. To its credit, it stood by the publication saying it was “troubled by the paucity of serious public scrutiny of the January 2017 intelligence community assessment.”

“This official intelligence assessment has since led to what some call “Russiagate,” with charges and investigations of alleged collusion with the Kremlin, and, in turn, to what is now a major American domestic political crisis and an increasingly perilous state of US-Russia relations,” editor-in-chief Katrina Vanden Heuvel wrote. “To this day, however, the intelligence agencies that released this assessment have failed to provide the American people with any actual evidence substantiating their claims about how the DNC material was obtained or by whom. Astonishingly and often overlooked, the authors of the declassified ICA themselves admit that their ‘judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact.’”

The narrative around WikiLeaks collaborating with Russia as an agent of the Kremlin remains one that lacks concrete evidence. Even officials, current and former, who comment on television, find themselves saying, “I believe,” not “I know,” or, “We know.”

There is so much hysteria around the Trump administration and the investigation into its connections with Russians or Russian intermediaries that there is little space for sober examinations of evidence to demonstrate what could be true and what could not possibly be the case no matter how much Americans want to believe Trump is a puppet of Putin so impeachment proceedings can start immediately.

The focus on an alleged Trump-Russia conspiracy that so far lacks the facts necessary to connect dots distracts attention from pressing issues of social, economic, racial, and environmental justice. It does as much if not more to embolden Putin because he can be pleased U.S. officials are still chasing trails of smoke in every which way imaginable. And to the extent that it demonizes an outfit that has published documents which reveal key truths about the inner workings of the U.S. government, this is a gift that keeps on giving to the national security state.

After all, WikiLeaks published a 2010 Red Cell memorandum from the CIA that analyzed the wide perception that the U.S. exports terrorism. It released a CIA report from 2009 that examined the effects of strikes against “high value targets.” In publishing over a half million U.S. diplomatic cables, it brought attention to the CIA’s use of diplomats to spy on officials from the United Nations.

There is a reason why the CIA sees WikiLeaks as “hostile.” WikiLeaks is largely opposed to the agency and consistently has exposed the organization to greater scrutiny. But that does not make it a Kremlin-backed outfit. It simply makes it an adversarial press operation that unlike many news organizations has no interest in protecting the interests of spy agencies.

By Kevin Gosztola / Republished with permission / Shadow Proof / Report a typo

This article was chosen for republication based on the interest of our readers. Anti-Media republishes stories from a number of other independent news sources. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect Anti-Media editorial policy.

Washington Stomps On Civil Liberty

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

The insouciant American electorate is so inattentive that it routinely elects enemies of civil liberty to represent the public in Congress. Last Wednesday Rep. Adam Schiff (D, CA), Rep. Trey Gowdy ( R, SC), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D, CA), Sen. Mark Warner (D, VA), Rep. Jackie Speier (D, CA), Sen. Tom Cotton (R , AR ), and Rep. Joaquin Castro (D, TX) tried to intimidate executives from Facebook, Twitter, and Google into blocking all digital dissent to the anti-Trump/Russian line taken by the DNC and military/secrurity complex and to serve as spy agencies for the CIA.

Two of the above - Gowdy and Cotton - are Republicans who have aligned themselves with the attack on Russia and Republican President Trump. What unites the members of the two parties is that they want a police state. Jackie Speier demands to know from Google why Google hasn’t “shut down RT on YouTube.” Joaquin Castro wants messages linked to Russia turned over to the US government. Trey Gowdy wants false statements blocked, which would mean that the entire print and TV media in the US would be shut down along with Congress, John Brennan, Robert Mueller, and James Comey. Gowdy does not know that the First Amendment guarantees free speech and leaves it up to the public to decide what is true and what is false.

You tell me.

What kind of insouciant people are capable of electing representatives who do not respect the Bill of Rights?

Is a country whose government does not respect its own Constitution a democracy? Is such a country an exceptional, indispensable country?

Or is it a completely corrupt entity whose government no longer has the slightest allegience to the Bill of Rights and the US Constitution?

What is the quality of an electorate that sends those with a police state mentality to represent them in the government that has power over them?

Are we witnessing the destruction of democracy by the electorate?

Is the failure of the American people staring us in the face?

Are you amazed that it is the executives of Facebook, Twitter, and Google, and not the members of Congress who have sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States, who point out to US Representatives and Senators that their demands for censorship and spying are unconstitutional?

What is the liberal/progressive/left, which believes that good resides in government and evil in the private sector, to make of this?

Is the hatred of dissent so great that nothing else is important?

Here is a report on Wednesday’s hearings by the House and Senate Intelligence (sic) committees on “extremist” views (via Global Research"s Andre Damon)...

Lawmakers Demand Tech Companies Censor Journalists and Conduct Mass Surveillance

Wednesday’s hearings by the House and Senate Intelligence committees on “extremist” political views served as the occasion for members of Congress to urge technology companies to flagrantly violate the US Constitution by censoring political speech, carrying out mass surveillance, and muzzling journalists in pursuit of the government’s geopolitical aims.

The hearings revolved around allegations, promoted ceaselessly in recent months by the intelligence agencies, leading figures within the Democratic Party, and newspapers such as the New York Times, that social opposition to the political establishment results from “fake news” promoted by Russia.

As Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff put it, “Russia” promoted “discord in the US by inflaming passions on a range of divisive issues” and sought to “mobilize real Americans to sign online petitions and join rallies and protests.”

The basic problem, however, as Schiff put it, is “not just foreign.” The algorithms used by Facebook and Twitter have the “consequence of widening divisions among our society.” Schiff complained:

“What ends up percolating to the top of our feeds tends to be things we were looking for,” as opposed to US government propaganda disseminated by the establishment media, which he referred to as “true information.”

Congressman Adam Schiff

In line with Schiff’s assessment, members of Congress who participated in the hearings spent the bulk of their time demanding that the companies censor such “fake” news, which they equated with the writings of exiled journalist Julian Assange and other political dissidents.

It is a testament to the decay of American democracy that it was left to the representatives of Facebook and Twitter, who have been broadly accused of violating users’ privacy for their own financial gain, to inform members of Congress about the ABC of constitutional law.

In an exchange that embodied the total contempt for freedom of speech that pervades the ruling elite, South Carolina Representative Trey Gowdy demanded that Facebook and Twitter block their users from making inaccurate statements about the current day of the week.

“Can I ‘say today is Thursday’,” the South Carolinian demanded. “What are you going to do with that?” Gowdy asked which constitutional amendment protects the right of people to make such statements, totally oblivious that almost all false statements are protected under the First Amendment.

Colin Stretch, Facebook’s general counsel, fighting back a skeptical smile, replied:

“There is Supreme Court precedent on that…”

Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch

Gowdy, befuddled, demanded: “On which side?” Stretch answered:

“That it is, in most cases, protected.” He continued: “On Facebook, our job is not to decide whether content is true or false.”

Although the representatives of the technology companies largely played along with the narrative of “Russian meddling” in American politics, their resistance to the most flagrant censorship demanded by the government piqued the ire of the senators leading the witch-hunt.

“I don’t think you get it,” fumed Senator Dianne Feinstein, who said the past year had seen “a cataclysmic change” in American politics. This is “the beginning of cyber warfare,” she declared, and technology companies “have to really take a look at that and what role you play.”

Senator Mark Warner, for his part, complained that his accusations had been “frankly blown off by the leaderships of your companies and dismissed.”

Earlier this month, Google removed Russia Today (RT), a Russian-sponsored TV station and online news outlet that reports stories largely censored by the mainstream press, from its list of “preferred” channels on YouTube. Feinstein took issue with Google’s statement that it revoked RT’s status as a preferred channel for non-political reasons, and demanded to know why Google had not acted against RT earlier.

Google’s general counsel Kent Walker replied:

“We have carefully reviewed the content of RT to see that it complies with the policies that we have against hate speech, violence, etc. So far, we have not found violations.”

California Democratic representative Jackie Speier asserted that RT “seeks to influence politics and fuel discontent in the United States.” She asked:

“Why have you not shut down RT on YouTube? … It’s a propaganda machine, Mr. Walker, the intelligence community says it’s an arm of one of our adversaries.”

The clashes continued. Senator Tom Cotton demanded to know why Twitter refused to turn its platform over to the CIA in order to conduct mass surveillance. He asked:

“Do you see an equivalency between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Russian intelligence services?”

Sean Edgett, Twitter’s general counsel, replied:

“We’re not offering our service for surveillance to any government.”

Cotton likewise demanded that Twitter censor WikiLeaks’ editor Assange.

“The current director of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, as well as this committee, has labeled WikiLeaks a non-state hostile intelligence service who aids hostile foreign powers like the Kremlin,” he said. “Yet, to my knowledge, Twitter still allows him to operate uninhibited.”

Receiving a reply from Twitter general counsel Edgett that the company applies its policies “without bias,” Cotton retorted:

“Is it biased to side with America over our adversaries?”

In yet another incitement for technology companies to violate the Constitution, this time the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, Texas Democratic Congressman Joaquin Castro asked:

“Are you also intending to turn over to the committee any kind of direct messages” on accounts suspected of being linked to Russia?

When Edgett pushed back that this would be possible only through legal channels, Castro responded:

“Certainly you’re not making the argument that a Russian account, a fakely created account, has some protection of privacy here.”

Edgett replied:

“Some users may end up being fake. Others will be real.”

The most surprising element of the hearings, however, was the extent to which Walker, Google’s general counsel, sought to separate Google’s search tools from the social networks operated by Facebook and Twitter when it comes to “fake news.”

In reference to a question regarding fake news, Walker interjected:

“I think there’s a distinction between say Google search, whose goal is to provide accurate, relevant, comprehensive information and social network concerns,” such as those related to Twitter and Facebook. “We think the heart and soul of the products is to try to provide useful and, to the extent we can, accurate information to users.”

This was in addition to his prepared testimony, where he noted:

“At Google News, we use fact check labels to spot fake news. At Google search, we have updated our quality guidelines and evaluations to help surface more authoritative content from the web.”

Based on the stated goal of fighting “fake news,” Google has implemented sweeping changes to its search algorithm that has led search traffic to 13 leading left-wing, progressive and anti-war sites to plunge 55 percent. Search traffic from Google to the World Socialist Web Site has fallen by 74 percent, and the site has been blocked from Google News.

Wednesday’s testimony makes clear the political motives behind Google’s actions. Rather than seeking, as it publicly claims, to provide “true” and “authentic” content, Google is acting as the proxy of the US government and its agencies to muzzle its critics and political opponents.

Congress Relying On Debunked "Guilt By Association" Online Tool To Track "Russian Influence"

As we previously warned, the latest McCarthyite scam called "Hamilton 68" is increasingly serving as a go-to source for major media outlets and more disturbingly, now even members of Congress. This week Republican Senator James Lankford (Oklahoma) added another layer to the seemingly endless "Russiagate" conspiracies - he claimed Wednesday during a hearing on threats faced by the US that Russia is using the NFL anthem kneeling controversy to drive a wedge through the American populace.

Lankford, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, made the bizarre claim that, "We watched, even this weekend, the Russians and their troll farms, their internet folks, start hashtagging out #TakeAKnee and also hashtagging out #BoycottNFL,” during a hearing on threats faced by the United States. Lankford, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, explained further that, "They were taking both sides of the argument this weekend... to try to raise the noise level of America and make a big issue seem like an even bigger issue as they are trying to push divisiveness in this country."

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK). Image source: C-Span

Representative Adam Schiff of California, a Democrat, has also been a leading congressional voice demanding investigations into supposed Russian social media manipulation and election meddling. Stories in Reuters and the New York Times this week which uncritically amplified the claims, referenced the Hamilton 68 online platform as a key source of information for congressional investigators. Reuters described the online tool as:

A website built by researchers working with the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan, transatlantic project to counter Russian disinformation, showed tweets promoting both sides of the football debate from 600 accounts that analysts identified as users who spread Russian propaganda on Twitter. A Senate aide said the website was viewed as credible among congressional investigators.

But a cursory glance at Hamilton68 - which is mostly funded by the US and NATO states (Bill Kristol is on the project"s board, need we say more?) - reveals that both its list of "600 accounts" and methodology for determining these accounts as purveyors of "Russian disinformation" are largely hidden from public view. As we concluded when we initially profiled the platform and the organization behind it, the online tool is lacking in any semblance of scientific data-driven analysis, and its conclusions are thus meaningless. It exists to give gullible audiences the illusion that a data analysis driven tech tool produced via a "bipartisan" think tank has meticulously and objectively proven the "there"s a Russia connection lurking behind every corner" conspiracy theory.

Unless I am reading this wrong, it shows Russians bought ads to try and help Democrat causes? ???? ????????‍?? pic.twitter.com/6f8TLzKaa7

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) September 27, 2017

But the senselessness of Senator Lankford"s shrill and bizarro assertions hardly needs much comment: he"s essentially claiming that nefarious Russian-backed social media accounts promoted two contrary positions at a moment when much of the American populace itself was doing the exact same thing through millions of tweets, Facebook posts, and online message boards. As Mark Zuckerburg pointed out this week in what was surely a disappointing moment of truth for promoters of Russiagate conspiracies in general, "campaigns spent hundreds of millions advertising online" which was "1000x more than any problematic ads we"ve found."

It"s important to remember that Hamilton 68 dashboard"s "monitoring" of content primarily features what it calls "second tier Russian propaganda". As we previously reported this involves the following:

It tracks and stores information about others who have no connection to Russia but who "on their own initiative reliably repeat and amplify Russian themes." This is what the German Marshall Fund calls a "network" of second tier disinformation distributors.

If an article, tweet, or headline is trending among "Russian influence" accounts - which in this case means Alliance for Securing Democracy"s secret list of 600 twitter accounts - the trending URL appears on the dashboard"s front page. Essentially this is simple guilt by association, as we described:

What does this "network" of people with no connection to Russia but who amplify Russian "themes" do?

It "reflects Russian messaging priorities, but that does not mean every name or link you see on the dashboard is pro-Russian. The network sometimes amplifies stories that Russia likes, or people with like-minded views but no formal connection to Russia."

So, according to the self-proclaimed alliance for securing democracy you might not even know it when you are pushing Russian state propaganda!

So if even if stories from mainstream or establishment news organizations like The Washington Post, Bloomberg, or Reuters happen to be tweeted frequently by "Russian influence accounts" these mainstream sites appear on Hamilton 68"s dashboard. Again, given that originating account identities are not revealed, the information is meaningless - it"s but a mere reflection of what happens to be trending all over social media at any given moment.

Indeed below is an example of sites the tool was tracking within the first week Hamilton 68 was launched at the beginning of August. The below dashboard pane is accompanied with the descriptor: "Top websites tweeted by a monitored set of accounts related to Russian influence campaigns." Both Bloomberg and The Washington Times and other mainstream and long established outlets appear somewhat regularly on this dashboard which claims to identify Russian meddling.

Alliance for Securing Democracy"s online tracking tool reads: "Top websites tweeted by a monitored set of accounts related to Russian influence campaigns." 

But the dashboard more often targets hugely popular independent news sites like Robert Parry"s Consortium News, The Federalist, Breitbart, and WikiLeaks. As The New York Times mentions, "Of 80 news stories promoted last week by those accounts, more than 25 percent "had a primary theme of anti-Americanism"". It is impossible to know what, according to the site"s designers, "anti-Americanism" means, but it no doubt involves articles which are critical of US foreign policy. This means that if a Washington Post or Reuters article, for example, highlights "staggering" Iraqi civilian deaths under US coalition bombings, that article would likely register as "anti-American" by the platform and its creators. By such methods, the Washington Post, Reuters, and numerous independent sites are brought under suspicion alongside RT News and Sputnik. But "anti-American" could also simply mean any article produced by a site that Hamilton 68"s creators don"t like. Again, the data is meaningless. 

Indeed, on Thursday both The Intercept and Antiwar.com were top trending sites on the Hamilton"s 68 dashboard. Ironically, The Intercept has take various editorial positions concerning Russian hacking allegations, and last June published a rather sensational headline, Top-Secret NSA Report Details Russian Hacking Effort Days Before 2016 Election, which ended up making only a small splash, but landed NSA leaker Reality Winner in jail.

Thursday"s (9/28) list of Top Trending Domains advanced by what Hamilton 68 identifies as Russian backed social media accounts. Antiwar News and The Intercept were trending.

Antiwar.com was founded as far back as 1995 for the purpose of opposing American militarism and interventionism. It was one of the early and consistent few news and activist sites which opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Starting in 2011 it came under FBI investigation after what the FBI admitted was a "mistake". The site"s founders, who were also personally under FBI monitoring for their "anti-war views", estimate that they had lost at least $75,000 per year after donors pulled their support while citing fears that the FBI might monitor them too. Antiwar was forced to sue in federal court just to clear its name and reputation, and yet the damage is long lasting and not fully quantifiable.

Similarly, as Hamilton 68"s methodology is based entirely on guilt by association, it could potentially do some real damage to the independent sites it targets. This is an increased possibility given that highly visible outlets like the New York Times, Reuters, and NPR are now citing it. And this is precisely what it aims to do: silence dissenting voices and independent thought. But like the first round of McCarthyite hysteria, this too shall hopefully pass, and history will not look kindly on those engaged in this shrill and absurd witch hunt which doesn"t appear to be relenting anytime soon.

Schiff Accuses Intel Chair Nunes Of Conspiring With Trump To Distract From Russia Probe

Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, accused the White House and Devin Nunes, his Republican counterpart and the Chair of the House Intel Committee, of conspiring to divert attention from Moscow’s actions.  Schiff said Nunes had colluded with Trump as part of a White House ploy, in an “attempt to distract” the public from links between Trump and Russian meddling.

Schiff said on CNN’s State of the Union that Nunes and the White House had made an “effort to point the Congress in other directions, to basically say, ‘Don’t look at me, don’t look at Russia, there’s nothing to see here’.”

“It certainly is an attempt to distract and to hide the origin of the materials, to hide the White House"s hand. The question is, of course, why? And I think the answer to the question is this effort to point the Congress in other directions, basically say, ‘Don"t look at me, don"t look at Russia, there is nothing to see here,’” Schiff said.

Schiff also slammed Nunes for the way in which he reviewed the source’s intelligence reports. “It doesn"t need to be done, you know, by night through stealth at the White House. The only reason to do that, again, is if you want to hide where these materials are really coming from and who is behind it,” the Democratic lawmaker said, adding that both the Senate and House intelligence committees should be able to review the documents.

Schiff on Friday viewed the documents, telling Tapper on Sunday some red flags were raised.  “First, the deputy assistant to the White House informed me when I went to see them that these are exactly the same materials that were shown to the chairman. Now, this is a very interesting point. How does the White House know that these are the same materials that were shown to the chairman, if the White House wasn"t aware what the chairman was being shown?” Schiff asked. 

“And the second point was also made to me. And this is -- I think was also underscored by Sean Spicer -- and that is, it was told to me by the deputy assistant that these materials were produced in the ordinary course of business,” Schiff added.

That said, Schiff largely ignored to discuss the essence of the docs, and whether they confirmed what Nunes said, namely that Trump had indeed been the subject of surveillance; instead reverting back to the narrative that the events detracted from his priority: investigating Russia’s interference in the election.

“I think part of the reason why that was done is this effort to deflect attention from the Russia investigation, to raise other issues, to effectively create a cloud through which the public cannot see what is at stake here. And what is at stake here is a foreign intervention in our election, a very serious issue about whether U.S. persons were involved, an investigation that is being conducted by the FBI into possible coordination with the Trump campaign,” Schiff said.

* * *

Meanwhile, Trump over the weekend continued to seize on Nunes’s original allegation that the identities of Americans caught up in the surveillance had been improperly “unmasked” by US officials, for internal use during the Obama presidency. “If this is true, does not get much bigger,” Trump said on Twitter. “Would be sad for US” On Sunday he added: “The real story turns out to be SURVEILLANCE and LEAKING! Find the leakers.”

The real story turns out to be SURVEILLANCE and LEAKING! Find the leakers.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 2, 2017

Schiff in turn responded by saying that “alarm bells” should go off whenever President Trump calls something “fake”: “I would tell people, whenever they see the president use the word "fake," it ought to set off alarm bells,” Schiff told CNN"s Jake Tapper.

Schiff added that the the White House is trying to mislead the country into believing there is no connection between Russian officials and Trump campaign associates, which - again - is an odd thing to say for the House Intel Committee member who complains that he is unable to conclude his probe due to distractions by Trump, unless of course he has decided what the conclusion of the "investigation" will be ahead of time.

And so, despite the FBI admitting on several occasions that there does not appear to be any evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia, the media circuit continues to be wrapped tighly around this narrative which serves as the true public distraction, and as a strawman foil to accuse anyone who is, or voted against Hillary Clinton/the establishment - now including supporters of Bernie Sanders - of being "influenced" by Putin, in what has become the biggest US witch hunt since Joe McCarthy.

White House Makes Surveillance Documents Available To Lawmakers

Even as another scandal appears to be emerging, involving Donald Trump"s former national security advisor, Mike Flynn who according to the WSJ has offered to testify in exchange for immunity, the Trump administration on Thursday invited leaders of congressional intelligence panels to review the documents it said raise indicate government spy agencies improperly identified President Donald Trump’s campaign officials and associates in the course of routine foreign surveillance.

According to Bloomberg, in a letter signed by White House Counsel Donald McGahn, the administration said Thursday it was responding to a March 15 request from intelligence committees for “documents necessary to determine whether information collected on U.S. persons was mishandled and leaked.” Specifically, it asks the committees to probe whether the intelligence was properly gathered, whether names were improperly revealed and “to the extent that U.S. citizens were subject to such surveillance, were civil liberties violated?”

The invitation announcement was made Sean Spicer during a briefing with reporters in Washington Thursday, shortly after a New York Times report that two White House officials had provided House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes with reports showing that Trump and his associates were "incidentally surveilled" by U.S. spy agencies.

The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff who previously called for Nunes to recuse himself of the Russian investigation, said he’s "more than willing" to review the material but questioned the administration’s motives, saying officials may be trying to disseminate information that helps Trump’s case. “I hope they’ll have some kind of explanation for why they chose this path,” Schiff told reporters at the Capitol.

Schiff has also accused Nunes of doing the president’s bidding. On Thursday, Schiff also said that the broader investigation must continue. “This is not going to distract us from doing our Russia investigation,” Schiff said, adding that the White House action “raises profound questions.” Schiff also said he didn’t know whether the material being offered is the same as the documents that were viewed by Nunes.

Meanwhile, at an open Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Thursday on Russian interference in the elections, several experts testified that Russia’s efforts began as early as 2008 and peaked during last year’s election. In a depature from the conventional narrative that only Democrats were hacked, Clint Watts, former FBI agent who is now a national security expert at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said other targets were prominent Republicans, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senator Marco Rubio, a member of the intelligence panel.

Rubio of Florida said Thursday that staff members on his presidential campaign were unsuccessfully targeted in July 2016 by hackers using an address in Russia and that former campaign aides were again targeted on Wednesday.

Ah yes, the old government-sponsored Russian hackers using "an address in Russia" to make sure they are not discovered by a cybersleuthing US senator.

In any case, while Nunes had refused to disclose who showed him the classified material, the New York Times reported on Thursday that Nunes was shown the material by Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, who works at the White House Counsel’s Office and previously worked on the House Intelligence Committee staff. As reported earlier, Cohen-Watnick was an aide brought into the White House by Michael Flynn, who was fired as national security adviser in February after Trump concluded Flynn had given misleading information about contacts with Russian officials.

Nunes has said, and the Times said it confirmed, that the material isn’t related to the investigation into Russian attempts to influence the election, nor did it necessarily show any illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens.

While the House investigation has been stymied by the dispute over the material shown to Nunes, the Senate Intelligence Committee is proceeding with its own investigation. Panel Chairman Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, vowed that the probe won’t be politicized.  “The public deserves to hear the truth about possible Russian involvement in our elections,” Burr said.

In light of the events in just the past several hours, we find that rather improbable.

Paul Craig Roberts: "Adam Schiff Is A Traitor To Humanity"

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

Adam Schiff is a traitor to the United States. Indeed, to all of humanity. He is a traitor, because he is undermining American democracy and the forces for peace.

The Clintons and the Democratic Leadership Council sold out the Democratic constituency, that is, the working class and peace, because they were convinced that they could get more money from Wall Street, the global corporations, and the military/security complex than they could from the labor unions.

The labor unions were going to be destroyed by jobs offshoring and the relocation of US manufacturing abroad. This relocation of American manufacturing would destroy the budgets of the state and local governments in America’s manufacturing regions and result in fierce pressure on the public sector unions, which are being destroyed in turn.

In short, Democratic Party funding was evaporating, and Democrats needed to compete against Republicans for funding from the One Percent.

George Soros helped the Clinton Democrats in this transition, and soon there was no one representing the working class.

Consequently, since Clinton the real median family income of the working class has been falling, and in the 21st century the working class has been buried in unemployment and debt.

But the Democratic Party has prospered, and so have Bill and Hillary Clinton. The Democratic Party raised far more money, especially from the One Percent, than Trump, who allied with the working class, in the past presidential election. Bill & Hillary have a personal fortune of $120 million at least, and $1.6 trillion in their personal foundation that supports their daughter.

Using Government to get rich is an old trick in America, but the Clintons took it to new highs when they flushed the working class and became the whores for Wall Street, Israel, and the military/security complex.

This is where the Democratic Party is today.

The despicable Adam Schiff’s function is to discredit the presidency of Donald Trump by creating an atmosphere in which any interest in establishing normal relations with Russia, thus reducing the tensions that could result in nuclear war, is proof of being a “Putin agent” and a “traitor.”

What Schiff is doing is making it impossible for President Trump to reduce the dangerous tensions between the nuclear superpowers that the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes created. These tensions can easily result in nuclear war, as I have often emphasized.

It is extraordinary that Schiff, who endangers the existence of all life on planet Earth, is a hero of the liberal/progressive/left. The pressitute media whores love him. He always gets top billing as he urges on humanity to its final destruction.

How is it that Donald Trump, who says he wants to reduce tensions with Russia is portrayed as a threat, while the liberal/progressive/left, the CIA, and the Democratic Party are portrayed as the salt of the Earth for promulgating nuclear war with Russia (and China)?

I have no explanation as to why the peoples of the West, as ignorant and idiotic as they are, and their ignorance and idiocy are extreme, prefer nuclear war with Russia (and China) instead of normal relations.

But the utterly evil Adam Schiff prefers nuclear war, and that is where he is leading the insouciant West.

And you can bet your last cent that the media whores will continue cheering Schiff on.

Schiff Calls On House Intel Chair To Recuse Himself From Russia Probe; Nunes Refuses

Update: Nunes has refused to step down from the Russia probe, The Hill reports. The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee told reporters Monday evening he will not step down from the committee"s investigation into Russia"s interference in the United States presidential election, despite a chorus of Democratic lawmakers demanding he recuse himself. 

"Everything is politics here," Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said, as reported by a journalist from Voice of America.

* * *

Following similar calls by his ideological peers, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff demanded on Monday evening that Committee Chair, Devin Nunes, should recuse himself from "any further involvement" into President Trump’s campaign ties with Russia.

"After much consideration I believe Chairman should recuse himself from involvement in investigation/oversight of Trump campaign & transition,” Schiff tweeted on Monday evening, as Nunes was giving an interview to CNN about his visit to the White House grounds to view classified material last week.

“This is not a recommendation I make lightly, as the chairman and I have worked together well for several years,” Schiff said in a statement and added that “I take this step with he knowledge of the solemn responsibility we have not he Intelligence committee to provide oversight on all intelligence matters, not just to conduct the investigation.... There was no legitimate justification for bringing that information to the White House instead of the committee. That it was also obtained at the White House makes this departure all the more concerning. In the interests of a fair and impartial investigation whose results will be respected by the public, the Chairman"s recusal is more than warranted."

After much consideration I believe Chairman should recuse himself from involvement in investigation/oversight of Trump campaign & transition pic.twitter.com/jpfA1x80Si

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) March 27, 2017

Schiff"s call for Nunes to recuse himself follows that of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who on Monday said Speaker Paul Ryan should replace Nunes in order for the Russia probe to be “credible.”

“Chairman Nunes is falling down on the job and seems to be more interested in protecting the president than in seeking the truth,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Monday. “If Speaker Ryan wants the House to have a credible investigation, he needs to replace Chairman Nunes.”

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), who also sits on the House Intelligence Committee, reiterated the call for Nunes to recuse himself, along side fellow California Democrat Eric Swalwell. Swalwell, the ranking member of an intelligence subcommittee, said, “Chairman Nunes should no longer be anywhere near this investigation, let alone leading it. 

"For the sake of our duty to independently find the truth, and for the sake of his ability to chair the committee in its other important duties, he should recuse himself from our committee"s Russia investigation.”

At the same time as Schiff made his statement, Nunes spoke to CNN on Monday evening after the previously discussed revelation that the republican had visited White House grounds the day prior last week"s stunning announcement that members of Trump"s campaign had been "accidentally" surveiled, to view confidential documents that allegedly prove potential surveillance of Trump team members. Nunes said that he was sure the West Wing was unaware of his visit to White House grounds to view said documents.. 

Some have speculated that the White House was the source of the intelligence viewed by Nunes. He would not give details to CNN Monday evening, but maintained that he had to view the documents on White House grounds, as they could not be brought to the Capitol complex.

Nunes on Monday denied that there was anything untoward in his Tuesday visit to the White House, pushing back on reports that the venture took place at night and calling the visit “pretty common.”

“At least once a week, if not more than that, we have to go to the executive branch in order to read classified intelligence,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.  “The sun was out,” he said. “If I really wanted to I could have snuck onto the grounds late at night, but I wasn’t trying to hide.”

Nunes said he was “quite certain that no one in the West Wing knew I was there.”

But Democrats have accused Nunes of acting as an agent of the White House and say he can no longer lead a credible investigation.

Perhaps the only silver lining to come out of this is that Nunes has become the Democrats top persona non grata, diverting attention from Trump, if only for the time being.

Benghazi Liar Adam Schiff Slimes Devin Nunes

By Daniel John Sobieski

March 24, 2017

It is said that the Senate plays chess while the House of Representatives plays smash mouth hockey. The revelation by House Intelligence  Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes that, yes, members of Team Trump were in fact surveilled and the contents of their conversations and their names were recorded and disseminated set off ranking member Rep. Adam Schiff from the People’s Republic of California. As Fox News Politics reported:

Members of the intelligence community “incidentally collected” communications from the Trump transition team during legal surveillance operations of foreign targets, a top Republican lawmaker said Wednesday afternoon.

House Intelligence Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said this produced “dozens” of reports which eventually unmasked several individuals’ identities and were “widely disseminated.”…

“This afternoon, Chairman Devin Nunes announced he had some form of intercepts revealing that lawfully gathered intelligence on foreign officials included information on U.S. Persons, potentially including those associated with President Trump or the President himself. If accurate, this information should have been shared with members of the committee, but it has not been… The Chairman also shared this information with the White House before providing it to the committee, another profound irregularity, given that the matter is currently under investigation. I have expressed my grave concerns with the Chairman that a credible investigation cannot be conducted this way.”

Neither can they be conducted through leaks to the media. Rep. Schiff has no problem with intel leaks to the New York Times, but an intelligence committee chairman giving the President a heads-up that his transition team was in fact caught up in surveillance by his own government is out of bounds? Schiff insisted that it was and claimed Nunes was not acting as a committee chair but as a surrogate of Team Trump:

At his own news conference later that afternoon, Schiff sharply criticized Nunes, given that his committee is in the middle of an active investigation that includes the question of whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia’s suspected attempts to meddle in last year’s election.

“The chairman will need to decide whether he is the chairman of an independent investigation into conduct which includes allegations of potential coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russians, or he is going to act as a surrogate of the White House, because he cannot do both,” Schiff told reporters.

Schiff has had no problem in himself acting as a surrogate for Team Obama or Team Hillary. That deafening silence you hear is the outrage he has expressed over the leaking of classified information to the press designed to fatally wound the Trump transition. Schiff had no problem repeating claims without evidence that Team Trump was colluding with the Russians. Now he is troubled by Nunes citing reports proving President Trump was right about his team being monitored.

Schiff and his brethren insist that this still doesn’t prove Trump’s claim that Obama ordered the surveillance. This is a distinction without a difference. It was Obama who ordered a review of alleged Russian hacking of our elections, demanding that he receive it before he left office. It was President Obama who expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share monitored communications with the 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections. Obama made the leaking of communications he arguably knew were being monitored easier and more likely. President Obama wanted to damage the incoming Trump administration.

Schiff should be shouting from the rooftops demanding the intelligence leakers be found and incarcerated and that the names of those who approved he “unmasking” of the names of American citizens caught up in the “incidental” collection of the conversations with foreign nationals be revealed. Names of such Americans are supposed to be masked by default, unless unmasking is approved for some reason.

As the Weekly Standard reported:

Nunes told reporters Wednesday that Trump transition members’ communications were repeatedly intercepted during legal surveillance on a foreign target, otherwise known as incidental collection. These communications were then disseminated in intelligence reports, despite having “little or no apparent foreign intelligence value.” A number of Trump transition members’ names were also revealed through a process known as “unmasking,” he said….

April Doss, a former NSA lawyer who spent over a decade at the agency, told THE WEEKLY STANDARD earlier in March that intelligence officials are required to follow strict procedures governing foreign intelligence collection. These procedures protect the identity of U.S. persons.

“If the communication appears likely to be worth reporting on — there’s a reason why other people in government need to see an intelligence report that says, “here’s what our foreign target was doing”– they’ll write the report in a way that focuses only on the foreign target and that doesn’t name the U.S. person, that literally inserts something like ‘U.S. person number one,"” Doss said.

Schiff was the individual who called the heroes who fought off terrorists from the roof of the CIA annex in Benghazi liars for their account of the Obama/Clinton administration’s denying security improvements, ignoring warnings of the attack, and the issuance of a stand-down order for any rescue, an order they ignored.

[snip]

Schiff thought the Benghazi heroes were making it up and now he thinks Nunes and Team Trump are making up the fact that they were caught up in Obama administration monitoring of conversations in which they were involved or mentioned. Schif was not being honest then or now. It is he who is not telling the truth.

Read more at American Thinker

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