Donald Fires FBI Director who's investigating Russian Election Hacking
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/20/politics/trump-forbes-400-list-cnntv/index.html
You've got to watch the video to hear Trump pretend to be one of his executives.
Trump is a liar and a con man.
You've got to watch the video to hear Trump pretend to be one of his executives.
Trump is a liar and a con man.
He's a history of inflated self worth.
http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-trump-organization-net-worth-715546
http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-trump-organization-net-worth-715546
He's also been sensitive since well before presidential duties, say, his comedy central roast in 2011:
http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-roast-on-comedy-central-what-he-banned-2016-8
How anyone believes he's anything more than a blowhard is beyond me.
This isn't the first time something like this has surfaced. For those who have forgotten, or perhaps have their heads in the sand:
https://www.cnn.com/2016/05/13/politics/donald-trump-recording-john-miller-barron-fake-press/ (Apologies if I mangled anything with the copy & paste; the formatting made it so a lot of editing was required)
Donald Trump on recording: Not me
By Tal Kopan and Jeremy Diamond, CNN
Updated 4:06 PM ET, Sat May 14, 2016
Washington (CNN)Donald Trump said Friday that a newly resurfaced recording of a man who sounds like Trump posing as his spokesman isn't him — even though he has admitted in the past to posing as his own publicist under a pseudonym.
"It was not me on the phone," Trump told NBC's "Today" show when the recording was played for him during a live interview. "And it doesn't sound like me on the phone, I'll tell you that, and it was not me on the phone."
NBC was asking Trump about a Washington Post report published earlier Friday that claims Trump routinely made calls to reporters in the 1970s, '80s and '90s posing as a publicist named John Miller or John Barron, advocating for himself and answering questions about his personal life and business dealings.
The man in the 14-minute recording sounds much like Trump, and the Post pointed to Trump's long appreciation of the name Barron, including the name of his youngest son.
The Post also cited 1990 court case testimony in which Trump testified, "I believe on occasion I used that name" when asked about Barron. CNN has obtained a copy of Trump's testimony during that case.
On "Today" Friday morning, Trump at first said he didn't "think" it was him on the recording.
"This sounds like one of the scams, one of the many scams, doesn't sound like me," Trump said. "I don't think it was me, it doesn't sound like me."
When pressed by the anchors, Trump explicitly said it wasn't him.
And then he testily told the journalists to move on.
"You're going so low to talk about something that took place 25 years ago whether or not I made a phone call?" Trump said. "Let's get on to more current subjects."
Thomas Owen, a New Jersey-based forensic audio specialist, told CNN Friday that based on several criteria -- including pitch, tone and cadence -- Miller's voice in the audio obtained by the Post is consistent with Trump's in the early 1990s.
"I can conclude with a fair degree of scientific certainty that it is Donald Trump's voice," Owen said, though he noted that due to the recording's quality, he wasn't able to use biometric analysis that would make him absolutely certain.
Friday afternoon, Washington Post reporter James Hohmann tweeted that Trump's telephone line "went silent, then dead, this afternoon when WaPo asked: 'Did you ever employ someone named John Miller as a spokesperson?'"
"WaPo reporters were 44 mins into a phone interview w Trump abt his finances when asked about John Miller. The phone went silent, then dead," Hohmann added.
Sue Carswell, a former People magazine reporter whose 1991 interview with Miller was highlighted in the Post article, told CNN's Michael Smerconish on Saturday that she was convinced it was Trump on the tape. She said Trump apologized for posing as a publicist shortly after the article ran, calling it a "joke."
She speculated that Trump himself leaked the tape to the Post. The paper said it obtained the recording from a source with whom Carswell had shared the microcassette of the call shortly after the interview.
A message left with the Trump campaign seeking a response to Carswell's claim was not immediately returned.
"Two people had the tape: I had a tape and Trump had a tape," said Carswell, who is now a reporter for Vanity Fair. "And I don't have the tape. Well, it didn't get to The Washington Post through me."
"It says a lot about Trump," Carswell added. "I think we should be concerned about his judgment and the fact that he could pull things like this in the future."
Trump's history of impersonating his own spokesman has long been an open secret at the Trump Organization and among New York media circles.
At least one former Trump Organization executive has confirmed to CNN that Trump at times responded to media requests personally under the guise of a spokesman.
Trump's apparent alter ego was quoted repeatedly and prominently in newspapers, magazines and especially in the gossip pages of New York tabloids.
In 1984 and 1985, several New York Times articles attributed quotes about Trump's business dealings to "John Barron, a vice president of the Trump Organization."
And Trump's unofficial biographers also pulled the thin veil off Trump's cover identity.
Michael D'Antonio wrote in "Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success" that "John Barron was a way for Trump to talk himself up."
"He'd be able to express things that he wanted expressed about himself by someone that wasn't him," D'Antonio wrote.
And the audio recording reveals more than just a remarkable likeness to Trump's own voice, but also in the spokesman's cadence, word choice and the billionaire's trademark bravado.
Discussing Trump's divorce and his prospects with women, "John Miller" said Trump is "somebody that has a lot of options, and, frankly, he gets called by everybody. He gets called by everybody in the book, in terms of women," according to the audio recording obtained by The Washington Post.
Miller also describes a past encounter between Trump and Madonna in great detail.
"Madonna was in the room, and so somebody from Madonna's entourage -- because she comes in with an entourage of dancers and everything else -- and somebody from Madonna's entourage came over and said, 'Would you go over and say hello to Madonna?' And so he went over and said hello to Madonna and he gave his autograph to the dancers. She said, 'These are fans' and all this. 'Will you give them the autograph?' So he said, 'Best wishes' or something," Miller said, according to the recording. "And then all of a sudden -- and that was the end. And then he said goodbye to her and that was literally the end. He's got zero interest in Madonna. It was literally the end."
The spokesman then goes on to purport that Madonna "wanted to go out" with Trump.
Amid regaling the reporter with tales of Trump's encounters with models, actresses and the pop queen, the spokesman added in an aside: "By the way, I'm sort of new here."
CNN's Sara Murray, Drew Griffin, Sophie Tatum and Noah Gray contributed to this report.
Attachments
Joe Bagadonuts
Well-Known Member
Does anyone think that Comey is doing the investigation, the FBI or himself any favors with this book tour? From my perspective his interviews (in concert with his recently released memos) seem to confirm that he has always been strongly anti-Trump, was certain that Trump wouldn't win and felt like he had some sort of a moral duty to de-legitimize the election once the unthinkable happened. I'd be interested in reading the memos that Comey wrote after his meetings with Obama for comparison.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/20/politics/democrats-lawsuit-russia/index.html
DNC officially files a lawsuit.
Feels kinda trivial, and I'm not sure the evidence stacks up, but there it is.
DNC officially files a lawsuit.
Feels kinda trivial, and I'm not sure the evidence stacks up, but there it is.
Dude bro. Solid. Long... but damn solid.
Red
Well-Known Member
How a conversation Comey had with Reince Priebus underpins the likelihood of obstruction of justice by Trump.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blog...on-in-the-comey-memos/?utm_term=.5ad0bc282aa6
Once again, House Republicans have carefully laid a rake on the ground, dramatically brought their foot down on it and smashed themselves in the face. I speak, of course, about the release of the memos that then-FBI director James B. Comey wrote in early 2017 describing his meetings with President Trump and other administration officials.
Those memos have raised a whole new set of very uncomfortable questions for the president. I want to focus on one of those questions, a new twist involving former chief of staff Reince Priebus and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
First, let’s look at Comey’s account of a meeting he had on Feb. 8, 2017 with Priebus:
"He then asked me if this was a “private conversation.” I replied that it was. He then said he wanted to ask me a question and I could decide whether it was appropriate to answer. He then asked, “Do you have a FISA order on Mike Flynn?” I paused for a few seconds and then said that I would answer here, but that this illustrated the kind of question that had to be asked and answered through established channels. I said the answer [redacted]”
To this point, we have never heard that there might have been a FISA warrant issued to surveil Flynn. We don’t know whether the answer is yes or no, due to the redaction, but we now know it’s possible. What ultimately led to Flynn’s firing was that he was picked up on surveillance of Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the transition period,
reportedly urging Russia not to respond to sanctions the Obama administration was imposing, in violation of the principle that the country is only supposed to have one administration and one foreign policy at a time.
To see why Priebus asking Comey about Flynn is important, you have to understand the chronology. The underlying question is whether Trump’s firing of Comey constituted obstruction of justice, which has a great deal to do with Flynn. Let’s lay this out:
Jan. 15, 2017: Vice president-elect Mike Pence goes on “Face the Nation” and denies that Flynn discussed sanctions with the Russians; two days before, spokesperson Sean Spicer issued a similar denial.
Jan. 24: Flynn is interviewed by the FBI, and falsely tells them that he and Kislyak only exchanged pleasantries and did not discuss substantive matters. The FBI knows this is false, because they are monitoring Kislyak’s communications and heard the two men’s conversation.
Jan. 26: Acting Attorney General Sally Yates informs White House Counsel Don McGahn that Flynn has told a lie to administration officials, a lie the vice president repeated in public. She is concerned because, since the Russians know Flynn has lied, they could use that information to blackmail him. She informs McGahn that Flynn has been interviewed by the FBI, but says that she didn’t share the contents of the interview, leaving open the question of whether Flynn lied to the investigators. A CNN report will later say that McGahn concluded Flynn lied to the FBI and informed the president, but the White House denies this.
Jan. 30: Trump fires Yates.
Feb. 8: According to Comey’s memos, Priebus asks him whether Flynn is under a FISA warrant, i.e. is under surveillance.
Feb. 13: Flynn resigns under pressure.
Feb. 14: According to Comey’s memos, at the end of an Oval Office meeting, Trump orders everyone except Comey out of the room. Trump asks Comey to go easy on Michael Flynn. “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go,” the president says to him.
Feb. 14: The New York Times publishes a storyreporting that multiple Trump campaign officials had contacts with Russians during the 2016 campaign.
Feb. 15: Priebus reaches out to Comey and his then-deputy Andrew McCabe and asks them to say publicly that the Times story is false. Comey refuses.
March 22: Trump asks Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Natioanl Security Agency director Mike Rogers to intervene with Comey and urge him to lay off Flynn. As far as we know, they take no action.
May 9: Trump fires Comey.
If we accept Comey’s account of the Feb. 14 meeting, then Trump asked Comey to drop the investigation of Flynn after members of his staff knew he had lied to the vice president about it, and might even have had reason to believe he had lied to the FBI as well. Trump claims that all he knew when he fired Flynn was that Flynn had lied to Pence. But on Dec. 2, Trump tweeted, “I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI.”
After everyone realized that the tweet meant Trump asked Comey to drop the Flynn investigation knowing that Flynn had committed a crime — which could be obstruction of justice — Trump’s lawyer, John Dowd, came forward and claimed that he had authored Trump’s tweet. This was utterly ludicrous.
What’s new here is Priebus’s involvement. The fact that he asked Comey on Feb. 8 about whether Flynn was under surveillance suggests he may have had reason to believe that Flynn’s transgressions were more serious than just lying to Pence.
If that’s true, then the chances that Trump didn’t know that Flynn had done something extremely serious are shrinking. The White House counsel reportedly knew that Flynn lied to the FBI. The White House chief of staff saw fit to ask the FBI director whether Flynn was under surveillance, from which he very well might have concluded something similar. And after all that, Trump asked Comey to let Flynn go.
Robert S. Mueller III’s team interviewed Priebus in October, and you can bet they were extremely interested to find out what Priebus knew and what he told the president. And Flynn has flipped and is cooperating with Mueller. One way or another, the truth is going to come out.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blog...on-in-the-comey-memos/?utm_term=.5ad0bc282aa6
Once again, House Republicans have carefully laid a rake on the ground, dramatically brought their foot down on it and smashed themselves in the face. I speak, of course, about the release of the memos that then-FBI director James B. Comey wrote in early 2017 describing his meetings with President Trump and other administration officials.
Those memos have raised a whole new set of very uncomfortable questions for the president. I want to focus on one of those questions, a new twist involving former chief of staff Reince Priebus and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
First, let’s look at Comey’s account of a meeting he had on Feb. 8, 2017 with Priebus:
"He then asked me if this was a “private conversation.” I replied that it was. He then said he wanted to ask me a question and I could decide whether it was appropriate to answer. He then asked, “Do you have a FISA order on Mike Flynn?” I paused for a few seconds and then said that I would answer here, but that this illustrated the kind of question that had to be asked and answered through established channels. I said the answer [redacted]”
To this point, we have never heard that there might have been a FISA warrant issued to surveil Flynn. We don’t know whether the answer is yes or no, due to the redaction, but we now know it’s possible. What ultimately led to Flynn’s firing was that he was picked up on surveillance of Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the transition period,
reportedly urging Russia not to respond to sanctions the Obama administration was imposing, in violation of the principle that the country is only supposed to have one administration and one foreign policy at a time.
To see why Priebus asking Comey about Flynn is important, you have to understand the chronology. The underlying question is whether Trump’s firing of Comey constituted obstruction of justice, which has a great deal to do with Flynn. Let’s lay this out:
Jan. 15, 2017: Vice president-elect Mike Pence goes on “Face the Nation” and denies that Flynn discussed sanctions with the Russians; two days before, spokesperson Sean Spicer issued a similar denial.
Jan. 24: Flynn is interviewed by the FBI, and falsely tells them that he and Kislyak only exchanged pleasantries and did not discuss substantive matters. The FBI knows this is false, because they are monitoring Kislyak’s communications and heard the two men’s conversation.
Jan. 26: Acting Attorney General Sally Yates informs White House Counsel Don McGahn that Flynn has told a lie to administration officials, a lie the vice president repeated in public. She is concerned because, since the Russians know Flynn has lied, they could use that information to blackmail him. She informs McGahn that Flynn has been interviewed by the FBI, but says that she didn’t share the contents of the interview, leaving open the question of whether Flynn lied to the investigators. A CNN report will later say that McGahn concluded Flynn lied to the FBI and informed the president, but the White House denies this.
Jan. 30: Trump fires Yates.
Feb. 8: According to Comey’s memos, Priebus asks him whether Flynn is under a FISA warrant, i.e. is under surveillance.
Feb. 13: Flynn resigns under pressure.
Feb. 14: According to Comey’s memos, at the end of an Oval Office meeting, Trump orders everyone except Comey out of the room. Trump asks Comey to go easy on Michael Flynn. “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go,” the president says to him.
Feb. 14: The New York Times publishes a storyreporting that multiple Trump campaign officials had contacts with Russians during the 2016 campaign.
Feb. 15: Priebus reaches out to Comey and his then-deputy Andrew McCabe and asks them to say publicly that the Times story is false. Comey refuses.
March 22: Trump asks Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Natioanl Security Agency director Mike Rogers to intervene with Comey and urge him to lay off Flynn. As far as we know, they take no action.
May 9: Trump fires Comey.
If we accept Comey’s account of the Feb. 14 meeting, then Trump asked Comey to drop the investigation of Flynn after members of his staff knew he had lied to the vice president about it, and might even have had reason to believe he had lied to the FBI as well. Trump claims that all he knew when he fired Flynn was that Flynn had lied to Pence. But on Dec. 2, Trump tweeted, “I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI.”
After everyone realized that the tweet meant Trump asked Comey to drop the Flynn investigation knowing that Flynn had committed a crime — which could be obstruction of justice — Trump’s lawyer, John Dowd, came forward and claimed that he had authored Trump’s tweet. This was utterly ludicrous.
What’s new here is Priebus’s involvement. The fact that he asked Comey on Feb. 8 about whether Flynn was under surveillance suggests he may have had reason to believe that Flynn’s transgressions were more serious than just lying to Pence.
If that’s true, then the chances that Trump didn’t know that Flynn had done something extremely serious are shrinking. The White House counsel reportedly knew that Flynn lied to the FBI. The White House chief of staff saw fit to ask the FBI director whether Flynn was under surveillance, from which he very well might have concluded something similar. And after all that, Trump asked Comey to let Flynn go.
Robert S. Mueller III’s team interviewed Priebus in October, and you can bet they were extremely interested to find out what Priebus knew and what he told the president. And Flynn has flipped and is cooperating with Mueller. One way or another, the truth is going to come out.
Robbie M: "Hai, donni... i wanna axe u a few kwestyuns"
Donnie T: "i m not kowludin"
RM: "can u chat w/ me?"
DT: "no"
RM: "kfine"
Robert Mueller releases these questions to the public through the NYT, knowing that donnie can't help himself.
Donnie uses misdirection... it's ineffective
.
Donnie T: "i m not kowludin"
RM: "can u chat w/ me?"
DT: "no"
RM: "kfine"
Robert Mueller releases these questions to the public through the NYT, knowing that donnie can't help himself.
Donnie uses misdirection... it's ineffective
.
Why do you think Mueller released this list?
He wanted to expand his residence by a few hundred square feet. That is, the residence in donnie's head. That first and foremost.
Donnie thinks himself invincible, amazing, and the greatest ever. I'm fairly certain Mueller expects him to bite in the next month. Donnie will be prepared by his staff, and his lawyers. But donnie will be donnie, and go off script. Mueller imagines this likely happen without him present, donnie cherry picking the questions he answers, and then answering them either through his spokeswoman, or preferrably on Fox n Friends.
No, I meant, why do you think Mueller was the source?