Tag Archives: Russian interference

International news

Trump denies Russians are helping him … imagine that!

(Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

Of course Donald John Trump would deny the Russians are helping him win re-election.

Of course, too, that he would blame the story on Democrats seeking to undermine his effort to win a second presidential term.

Except for this known fact: The president asked another foreign government, Ukraine, to help him win re-election by digging up dirt on a potential political rival. There’s also the denial that Russians delivered in Trump’s presence, which Trump endorsed despite the analysis of the U.S. intelligence network.

Donald Trump’s corrupt tendencies are on full display as this story continues to grow more legs and wings.

Trump fired former acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire because the former DNI had the temerity to brief congressional leaders of both parties about what his office had learned, that Russians are working to attack our electoral system this year, just as they did in 2016. The source of Trump’s anger? That Maguire would tell Democrats while doing his job as the nation’s top intelligence officer.

He now has installed Richard Grenell, a longstanding Trump loyalist, as the latest acting DNI. Grenell has no intelligence experience; he has no background on which to draw even as he fills this post on a temporary basis. He’s a Trump toadie who won’t give an honest and unvarnished assessment of national security threats to the commander in chief.

You want more corruption evidence? How about reports that Trump has instructed the White House personnel office to purge the administration of anyone who has even whispered a negative statement about the president? He wants nothing but yes men and women.

Donald Trump scares the daylights out of me.

International news

The Russians did it … dammit!

Republicans who have circled the wagons around Donald J. Trump keep repeating yet another lie about Russia and the goons who attacked our election in 2016.

I am about to scream at the top of the lungs!

They keep trying to implicate Ukraine as at minimum a co-conspirator in the attack on our electoral system that aimed to help elect Donald Trump.

Wait a second!

The CIA has said the Russians, all by themselves, did it. The Director of National Intelligence said the same thing. So has the FBI. And the National Security Agency. Same for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The Russians did it! The Russians are fomenting the Ukraine lie and the GOP — led by Donald Trump — is parroting the rhetoric being spit out by the Russian propaganda machine.

I cannot stand listening to this lie. When will the leadership of the once-Grand Old Party listen to the truth?

national news

POTUS becomes Russian disinformation mouthpiece … unbelievable!

It wasn’t enough that Donald Trump stood next to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki and said he believed Putin’s denial of Russian interference in our 2016 electoral system.

Oh, no. Nor was it enough that he denigrated our intelligence network’s assertion that the Russians did what was alleged.

Now he has adopted the Russian lyric that Ukraine played a major role in the 2016 election hack. He is helping the Russia propaganda machine spread the lie that the U.S. intelligence experts have debunked.

The director of national intelligence, the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, the Treasury Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff … they all say the same thing. The Russians did it!

And yet the president of the United States continues to double down on the lie being pushed by the Russians and endorsed by congressional Republicans who are dissing Ukraine as part of their strategy to defend the president against the impeachment wave that is swelling in the House of Representatives.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are witnessing an astonishing act of political malfeasance by the president.

He is defending the Russian strongman/president yet again critics here at home who view the Russians as an existential threat to the integrity of our electoral system. The Russians have embarked on a campaign to do to the 2020 election what they did in 2016.

Former special counsel Robert Mueller III told us this past summer that the Russians are mobilizing their election interference machine at this moment. He endorsed fully the intelligence community’s assessment that the Russians pose the threat to our democratic electoral system.

Donald Trump took an oath to protect our system against such an outright attack. He has forsaken that oath for personal political gain.

Shameful.

International news

Going for two in a row, yes, Mr. President?

Donald Trump accepted help from Russian goons in 2016 who decided to hack into our nation’s electoral system to help him win that presidential election.

Now the president appears to be looking toward a Russian neighbor, Ukraine, in digging up dirt on the son of a possible Democratic candidate for president in 2020.

The target this time is Hunter Biden, son of former vice president Joe Biden. The allegation is that Hunter Biden is doing business with a Ukrainian oligarch who also happens to own an energy company.

Trump is pushing back on reporting that he is looking for dirt on Hunter Biden. He denies it … of course! Naturally, he is totally believable in his denial, right? Well, no. He isn’t.

He is blaming the “Democrat Party” and the “Fake News Media” for concocting the story.

Actually, I happen to believe there’s a gun under all that smoke. It’s just me, perhaps. Then again, the president already has proven to be a pathological liar who cannot tell the truth under any circumstance.

Let’s all remember that former special counsel Robert Mueller determined that Russians interfered in our election in 2016. He joined other intelligence experts in making that determination. Trump, as his style, denigrated Mueller and all the other trained spooks who work for this country.

How does anyone believe anything the president ever says?

I cannot.

political news

Was the 2016 election ‘rigged,’ Mr. POTUS?

Mr. President, I lost count of the number of times you said that the 2016 election would be “rigged” if Hillary Rodham Clinton were to win the presidency.

I remember how it became a sort of campaign stump speech mantra. You kept hammering away at what you said would be a “rigged” result stemming from what you said were “Crooked Hillary’s” instincts. I recall how you said the Democratic Party rigged its nomination outcome to ensure Clinton would carry the party banner against you over Bernie Sanders.

Well, your victory surprised a lot of us, Mr. President.

But then came the reports of Russian hackers interfering in our electoral system. I accept that Robert Mueller’s investigation said you and your campaign didn’t conspire to collude with the Russians.

However, his insistence that the Russian interfered on your behalf brings to mind the question: Was the 2016 election “rigged” to benefit you, Mr. President, over your opponent?

You have kept so very quiet about that aspect of the election. I know you have stood by your pal Vladimir Putin’s denial that he interfered in our electoral process. I also know how you’ve undercut the nation’s intelligence network that says categorically that the Russians interfered in our election.

I once thought out loud that the Russian attack didn’t have a discernible impact on the election result. I have changed my mind.

national news

Mueller said it … in so many words: Trump obstructed justice

Let me be crystal clear: Robert S. Mueller III told congressional questioners that Donald J. Trump, the nation’s president, obstructed justice.

No, he didn’t say the words: “Donald Trump obstructed justice.”

But he made a couple of key points that need to be reaffirmed. So I will do so.

He said in May that if there were grounds to “exonerate” the president of obstruction of justice in the Russia investigation, “we would have said so.” He didn’t.

Then this past month, in testimony before the U.S. House Judiciary and Intelligence committees, Mueller was asked whether he would indict Trump were he not president. He said “yes” both times.

So, the way I interpret the former special counsel’s findings is that he believes the president obstructed — or sought to obstruct — justice while he was looking for nearly two years into whether the Trump presidential campaign conspired to collude with Russian goons who attacked our electoral system in 2016. He couldn’t prove conspiracy. I accept that finding.

Mueller left the obstruction of justice matter up to Congress.

Therefore … he concluded that Trump obstructed justice.

Is any of this impeachable? It is likely that there are grounds for impeachment somewhere in this mess.

The bigger question facing House members, though, is whether there are sufficient grounds to move congressional Republicans — namely those in the Senate — off their stubborn resistance to doing what they must, which is to impeach the president and then convict him of those deeds in a Senate trial.

If the answer is “no,” then there is no point to impeaching this con artist/clown/carnival barker.

national security

DNI Dan Coats on his way out? That, too, is a shame

Donald Trump reportedly is preparing to rid his administration of yet another seasoned political professional, someone with experience, knowledge and credibility in the job he is doing on our behalf.

That would be Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, one of the remaining adults working within the Trump administration.

I understand the president hasn’t gotten over the way Coats reacted to the surprise announcement that Trump was going to meet with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin in 2018. Coats was being interviewed by a network TV reporter when he got the news via Twitter that the president and Putin would meet.

“Isn’t that special?” Coats told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell.

Trump is seeking a DNI successor

Trump is supposedly conducting informal interviews with individuals who might succeed Coats as DNI, which I guess means that Trump has spilled the proverbial beans regarding Coats’ future.

I hate to see this happening. Dan Coats has done a credible and competent job as DNI, seeking to bring some semblance of order and discipline to the nation’s intelligence-gathering network. He has stood with other intelligence executives to declare, for instance, that the Russians indeed did attack our electoral system in 2016, a declaration that the president continues to dismiss.

The CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, the Joint Chiefs of Staff all have said the same thing: The Russians did it! Trump’s response? He has sided with Putin, who told him he didn’t do it.

I don’t want Dan Coats to leave his post. He is a solid public servant with many years of service behind him. Donald Trump needs more — not fewer — men and women of Coats’ caliber around him.

Of course, none of that matters to the man with the self-described “big brain.”

national news

39th POTUS lowers the boom on No. 45

James Earl Carter made a little news today.

I don’t know if it’s ever happened before, but the 39th president of the United States likely is the first former president to question the legitimacy of the current president.

And to think it came from someone — President Carter — who has said publicly that he prays for Donald Trump to succeed while he is serving as president of the United States. Indeed, Carter recently spoke of a phone call he took from Trump in which the president, according to his predecessor, could not have been more gracious, kind and respectful.

Has the former president turned on the current guy in the White House? President Carter said the Russian attack on our election in 2016 was intended to elect Donald Trump. It succeeded. Without the Russian interference, according to Carter, Trump would have lost the election to Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Most remarkable of all, perhaps, is that Vladimir Putin has actually said on the record that he interfered for the expressed purpose of electing Donald Trump.

Therefore, in the former president’s mind, Donald Trump is an “illegitimate” president.

To my way of thinking, the idea that such a condemnation would come from a man of impeccable integrity gives this accusation added gravitas. Of course, one must take into account the undeniable fact that Jimmy Carter likely isn’t privy to the details of what might have occurred while the Russians were attacking our electoral process.

Still, the former president has sounded a stern word of condemnation about one of his presidential successors. We should not dismiss it out of hand.

national news

POTUS gives foes the ammo they now need to, um, impeach

1 Comment

Am I allowed to change my mind, to suggest that the evidence now has reached a form of critical mass that qualifies as an “impeachable offense”?

Of course I am!

I believe it has arrived in the form of an interview that Donald Trump granted ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos in which the president said he would accept negative information on a political foe from a foreign government.

Bingo, bango! There you have it. The president then said the “FBI director is wrong” when he said just a month ago that anyone who gets that kind of “opposition research” should report it to the FBI. How does it feel, Christopher Wray, to take a shiv straight in the back?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been fervent in our belief that impeachment is not in the cards, at least not until there is compelling evidence of wrongdoing. Well, it might that the president has provided it that evidence with his reckless pie hole spouting off how he would do precisely what has been alleged that he did during the 2016 election: that he would use information on a foe provided by a hostile foreign power.

I had stood with the speaker in her resisting calls for impeachment.

Today, after digesting what I have heard from POTUS, I am having second thoughts.

This is a dangerous man serving as our head of state.

national news, national security

Stand firm, FBI director Wray

I want to declare right here and right now my strong desire for FBI director Christopher Wray to stay where he is, in charge of the world’s premier law enforcement/investigative agency.

You see, Wray has just been undermined by the man who appointed him to his office, the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

Trump told ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos that he would accept information about a political foe presented to him by a foreign power, even a hostile foreign power, such as, oh, Russia.

Director Wray, though, has said specifically and categorically that any political candidate whose campaign receives such information must turn it over the FBI.

Trump said when reminded of Wray’s view by Stephanopoulos that “The FBI director is wrong.”

There you have it. The president once again is refusing directly to back the wisdom cited by the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Do not go anywhere, Christopher Wray.

Yes, it likely will be a trying time for Wray as the 2020 presidential election gets into full swing. The Russians attacked our electoral system in 2016. Wray’s predecessor as FBI director, James Comey, began looking deeply into “The Russia Thing” and got fired by the president.

The FBI needs a strong leader. Christopher Wray appears to be a grownup and a law enforcement and legal pro. I realize that an ethical professional would find it trying, indeed, to work in a government administration led by someone without an scintilla of ethical understanding.

I just want to beseech Christopher Wray. The nation needs this man. Badly.