Quote:The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence said Monday it found “no evidence of collusion, coordination or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians,” as the Russia investigation starts to come to a close.

Quote:“We have found no evidence of collusion, coordination, or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians.”
– House Intelligence Committee, Majority Staff

Over 300,000 documents and 70+ people have been analyzed and ZERO evidence has been found. This marks the beginning of the end for the Democrats witch hunt into President Trump and his campaign.
The political implications from this announcement are astronomical as the Democrats key campaign issue, Russian collusion, is gone.
Stay tuned for more updates.

Quote:“Fox & Friends” slammed other media outlets on Tuesday for devoting little time to the news that the House GOP investigation found no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

On Monday, the House Intelligence Committee announced that it would be ending its investigation into Russian election meddling after finding no evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.

But apparently, the nightly news didn't want to talk about it, at least according to the hosts of the Fox News show.
“It’s just sad,” said Steve Doocy. “It’s called a news channel, do the news!”

As Brian Kilmeade tallied up the time devoted to the breaking news, the hosts weren't too happy about the results. From the nightly programs of ABC, CBS and NBC combined, Kilmeade said that less than a minute of airtime was focused on the House investigation's findings.

“How many times have you tuned in to one of the big nightly newscasts and they've talked about Russia, Russia, Russia,” Doocy asked. “Trump was in bed with the Russians about this and that. Many, many times. And, yet, when the news breaks that the Republicans on the House Intel committee have found there was no collusion, less than one minute on the big three. Which is extraordinary.”

The hosts discussed the findings of the House investigation, which found that Russian groups did interfere in the 2016 presidential election but said that the meddling wasn't designed to benefit Trump and that no collusion was found in either the Trump or Clinton campaigns.

Kilmeade acknowledged that the news was discussed on MSNBC during Rachel Maddow's interview with Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, but Doocy wasn't satisfied.

The Fox hosts spent the rest of the segment slamming the networks over what they chose to cover instead of the Russia investigation news, including lottery winners and March Madness.

(03-13-2018, 11:41 PM)Mystic Wanderer Wrote: ...It will be interesting to see if CNN and others EVER mention this.  

Quote:The New York Times.
Republicans on House Intelligence Panel Absolve Trump Campaign in Russian Meddling.

'Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee declared in a 250-page report on Friday that their yearlong
investigation uncovered no evidence that the Trump campaign had aided Russia’s election meddling, only
ill-advised contacts between campaign aides and Russian officials or their intermediaries.

The Republicans took aim at what they called the misjudgments of Democrats and others even as they sought
to play down the seriousness of mistakes by or suspicions about Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign.

They faulted aides to Hillary Clinton for secretly paying for opposition research that included information from
Russian sources, and castigated federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies for failing to counter Russian
interference as well as for purported investigative abuses and allegedly damaging national security leaks.

In a nearly 100-page dissenting document, Democrats on the Intelligence Committee described the Republicans’
report as little more than a whitewash.

The eagerness of Trump campaign aides to accept offers of Russian assistance, they said, suggests “a consciousness
of wrongfulness, if not illegality.” The Democrats complained that the committee failed to pursue obvious leads, interview
important witnesses or investigate crucial lines of inquiry.

The opposing conclusions closed a tumultuous chapter for a congressional committee that is charged with oversight of
American spy agencies, but fractured into warring camps whose primary mission often seemed to be advancing their
own political agendas.

The results diminished hopes that Congress, which has mounted two similar investigations, is likely to get to the bottom
of Russia’s attempts to influence the election.

In the charged political climate that has engulfed Washington, Mr. Trump and his allies immediately seized on the Republicans’
report -the first by a government body -as a useful political tool against continuing investigations, including that of the special
counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

The president extolled the Republicans’ conclusions on Twitter, saying the entire investigative effort, involving interviews with
dozens of witnesses and the review of hundreds of pages of documents, had been nothing but “a total Witch Hunt!”
“MUST END NOW!” he added. He later told reporters in the Oval Office he was “honored” by the report.

While the bulk of the Republican document covered familiar ground, it contained intriguing new details about interactions
between Russian officials or intermediaries and Trump associates, including Michael T. Flynn, who served briefly as Mr. Trump’s
national security adviser. It disclosed, for example, that before traveling to Moscow in December 2015, Mr. Flynn and his son met
privately with Sergey I. Kislyak, then the Russian ambassador to the United States, at his Washington residence. Mr. Flynn’s son
later emailed the Russian Embassy that the meeting had been “very productive.”

In a newly disclosed June 2016 email, Mr. Flynn also seemed to give a Trump campaign aide a preview of the release of stolen
emails that would prove highly damaging to the Clinton campaign. “There are a number of things happening (and will happen) this
election via cyber operations (by both hacktivists, nation states and the DNC),” he wrote to an unnamed communications adviser.

Mr. Flynn sent that email after disclosures that the Democratic National Committee had been hacked by Russian operatives
but before WikiLeaks began releasing the stolen emails.

But the committee never interviewed Mr. Flynn, who has pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about conversations he had with the
Russian ambassador during the transition and is now cooperating with Mr. Mueller’s team. For the most part, the Republicans
cast communications between Trump associates and Russian officials or intermediaries as simply misguided.

“While the committee found that several of the contacts between Trump associates and Russians -or their proxies, including WikiLeaks
-were ill advised, the committee did not determine that Trump or anyone associated with him assisted Russia’s active-measures
campaign,” the Republicans wrote.

In one finding — mocked by the Democrats as particularly convoluted -the Republicans asserted that “possible Russian efforts to set up
a ‘back channel’ with Trump associates after the election” indicated campaign officials did not collude with Russians because otherwise
a back channel would have already existed.

The Republicans criticized the Obama administration for a “slow and inconsistent” response to Russia’s covert interference.
They faulted the F.B.I. for failing to properly notify victims of Russian hacking and for obtaining a warrant to eavesdrop on a former Trump
campaign adviser, Carter Page. They also said that American officials should have warned the Trump campaign about Mr. Page’s ties to
Russia, even though Mr. Page was under investigation by the F.B.I. at the time and such a disclosure would have been highly unusual.

Even the Republicans, however, raised questions about Mr. Page’s Russia trip in July 2016. Although Mr. Page did not represent the
campaign on that trip, the lawmakers said, “the committee is concerned about his seemingly incomplete accounts of his activity in Moscow.”

The Republicans accused the intelligence agencies of failing to use “proper analytic tradecraft” as they crafted a key conclusion of a January
2017 assessment of the Russian campaign. In the portion in question, intelligence officials had concluded that President Vladimir V. Putin of
Russia wanted to harm Mrs. Clinton and aid Mr. Trump. The Republican report does not explicitly ontest that conclusion but implies that the
Russians’ primary intention was to sow discord, not to help Mr. Trump.

And they admonished Mrs. Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee for hiring Fusion GPS, a research firm, to investigate
ties between Trump associates and Russia. The firm in turn hired Christopher Steele, a former British spy, who produced a salacious dossier
outlining a conspiracy between the campaign and the Russians based, in part, on Russian sources.

“They were very forceful in saying that the Clinton campaign actually did contribute to Russia, so maybe somebody ought to look at that,”
Mr. Trump said at the White House, underscoring the political opportunity the report handed him. “But what we really should do is get on with
our lives.”

Democrats accused the Republicans of “often risible attempts to explain away inconvenient truths” while turning a blind eye to obvious leads.

For example, the Democrats were eager to determine whether in June 2016, Donald Trump Jr. had called his father to discuss his coming
meeting at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer who was supposed to deliver dirt on Mrs. Clinton. But they said that Republicans stymied their
efforts to obtain the phone records for the president while he was a candidate, so a call from Donald Trump Jr. to a blocked number remained
a mystery.

“The pattern of deception surrounding these meetings — first denying they took place; then, when discovered, denying their content; and then
denying their significance — suggests a consciousness of wrongfulness, if not illegality,” the Democrats wrote of the Trump campaign.

They complained that the Republicans refused to expand the investigation to look at whether the president or his aides had obstructed justice
or abused their power, despite “important evidence” before the committee.

The Democrats also disputed the Republicans’ claims about the January 2017 intelligence assessment.
They said that the Republicans cited no evidence to support their claim of improper tradecraft and that Democrats’ own review showed that the
analysis met standards. Information that has become public since has only clarified Mr. Putin’s intention to help Mr. Trump, they said.

They also dismissed an assertion by Republicans that Mr. Trump’s business dealings with Russia before the 2016 campaign provided no basis
for collusion. The Republicans would have no way of reaching such a conclusion, they Democrats said, because they never studied Mr. Trump’s
pre-campaign business dealings.

The lawmakers split deeply over whether James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence under President Barack Obama, had leaked
sensitive information to the news media. Republicans said Mr. Clapper gave “inconsistent testimony” about his contacts with a reporter about
Mr. Steele’s dossier; Democrats accused Republicans of trying to “smear” Mr. Clapper without a shred of evidence.

Republicans had released key findings from the report in March. The full report, heavily redacted by the intelligence agencies, includes
recommendations on issues as diverse as cyber and election security, as well as a call for the executive branch to consider administering
mandatory polygraph tests to political appointees with top-secret security clearances unless they are confirmed by the Senate.

Though they absolved the Trump campaign, the Republicans warned that Mr. Putin’s government would be back unless the United States
mounted significant efforts to deter his agents.
“Unless the cost-benefit equation of such operations changes significantly, the Putin regime and other hostile governments will continue to
pursue these attacks against the United States and its allies,” they wrote. On that point, the Democrats agreed...'

(04-28-2018, 01:05 PM)BIAD Wrote:

(03-13-2018, 11:41 PM)Mystic Wanderer Wrote: ...It will be interesting to see if CNN and others EVER mention this.  

They have and so did The New York Times... and it took another month from your posting!
Except CNN titled it: "House Republicans release redacted Russia report"
Also, I bet this hurt...

Quote:The New York Times.
Republicans on House Intelligence Panel Absolve Trump Campaign in Russian Meddling.

'Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee declared in a 250-page report on Friday that their yearlong
investigation uncovered no evidence that the Trump campaign had aided Russia’s election meddling, only
ill-advised contacts between campaign aides and Russian officials or their intermediaries.

Quote:Twelve Russians charged over hacking offences during 2016 US election.

The agents allegedly hacked into computer networks of the Democratic National Committee
(DNC) and Hillary Clinton's campaign.

'A dozen Russians have been charged with hacking Democratic Party emails during the 2016
US presidential election.

Rod Rosenstein, deputy US attorney general, announced the indictment against the intelligence
officers as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into alleged collusion between
Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Russia to help him secure a victory.

The 12 Russian officers are accused of hacking into the computer networks of the Democratic
National Committee (DNC) as well as Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.
Mr Rosenstein said the accused agents had stolen information on 500,000 American voters after
hacking a state US election board.

The indictment also revealed that a candidate for US Congress asked for information and documents
on their campaign opponent during the 2016 election.

"Between in or around June 2016 and October 2016, the conspirators used Guccifer 2.0 to release
documents through WordPress that they had stolen from the DCCC [Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee] and DNC," it read.
"The conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, also shared stolen documents with certain individuals.

"On or about August 15, 2016, the conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, received a request for stolen
documents from a candidate for the US Congress. "The Conspirators responded using the Guccifer
2.0 persona and sent the candidate stolen documents related to the candidate's opponent."

The investigation has already seen 20 people and three companies charged in relation to the allegations.
They include four former aides to President Trump's campaign and the White House, and 13 Russians
who allegedly participated in a hidden social media campaign to sway public opinion during the election.

"The internet allows foreign adversaries to attack Americans in new and unexpected ways," said Mr
Rosenstein, who added that he had briefed Mr Trump on the indictment.

"Free and fair elections are hard-fought and contentious and there will always be adversaries who work
to exacerbate domestic differences and try to confuse, divide and conquer us."...'

Quote:'...However, he also said there was no allegation that any hacking had changed the vote count or that
any Americans were knowingly in communication with the Russian agents. A Kremlin aide has since aired
concerns about the charges and the confiscation of Russian diplomatic property in the US.

Speaking ahead of Mr Trump meeting with Vladimir Putin on Monday, the aide said Russia was ready
to look at the facts "if there are any".

Prominent Democrat Nancy Pelosi has called for the US president to demand a "comprehensive" agreement
with Mr Putin that Russia will "cease their ongoing attacks on our democracy".
"Failure to stand up to Putin would constitute a profound betrayal of the constitution and our democracy," she
added as other Democrats, including Senator Chuck Schumer, called for talks with Mr Putin to be cancelled.

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said Russia had been "the most aggressive" foreign actor targeting
the US, adding that the "warning signs" were there.
Speaking earlier on Friday during his visit to the UK, Mr Trump said he would "absolutely" ask Mr Putin about
the allegations of Russian election meddling...'

Quote:Donald J. Trump‏
Verified account @realDonaldTrump

The stories you heard about the 12 Russians yesterday took place during the Obama Administration, not the Trump Administration. Why didn’t they do something about it, especially when it was reported that President Obama was informed by the FBI in September, before the Election?

6:08 AM - 14 Jul 2018

Quote:BREAKING: DNI Declassifies Handwritten Notes From John Brennan,
2016 CIA Referral On Clinton Campaign’s Collusion Operation


On Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe declassified and released to Congress
handwritten notes from former CIA Director John Brennan as well as a CIA investigative referral to
James Comey and Peter Strzok requesting that they investigate Russian knowledge of Hillary
Clinton's anti-Trump collusion smear operation.

'Top U.S. intelligence officials were so concerned heading into the 2016 election that the Russians were
aware of and potentially manipulating Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s plans to smear
Donald Trump as a Russian agent that they personally briefed President Barack Obama on the matter,
newly declassified Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents show. CIA officials also requested that
the FBI investigate Russian knowledge of the Clinton campaign’s collusion smear operation.

Newly declassified handwritten notes from former CIA Director John Brennan show that the U.S. intelligence
community knew in 2016 that Russian intelligence was actively monitoring, and potentially injecting
disinformation into, Clinton’s anti-Trump collusion narrative.

The intelligence concerning Russia’s knowledge of Clinton’s campaign plans was so concerning to
Brennan and other national security officials that they personally informed Obama of the matter in
the Oval Office in the summer of 2016.

The handwritten notes from Brennan were declassified by Director of National Intelligence (DNI)
John Ratcliffe and provided to Congress on Tuesday afternoon.

According to the declassified notes, Brennan and the U.S. intelligence community knew months prior
to the 2016 election that the collusion smear was the result of a campaign operation hatched by the
campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

“We’re getting additional insight into Russian activites from [REDACTED],” Brennan’s handwritten notes
state.
“Cite alleged approval by Hillary Clinton–on 26 July–of a proposal from one of her
foreign policy advisers to villify [sic] Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming
interference by the Russian security services.”



The notes appear to have been prepared by Brennan to memorialize a meeting held at the White House
with the president and his top national security advisers. Included in Brennan’s notes are the responses
of other participants in the briefing — including those of former White House National Security Adviser
Susan Rice, former White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, and former DNI James Clapper,
but those responses are redacted.

At one point, Obama asked whether there was any evidence of collaboration between the Trump
campaign and Russia, but any response that may have been recorded in Brennan’s notes is redacted.

Moreover, the CIA and other intelligence agencies also suspected early on that many of the key claims
underpinning the collusion narrative could themselves be the product of deliberate Russian disinformation.

Last week, Ratcliffe released a declassified memo, based in part on Brennan’s notes, noting that Russian
intelligence was aware of the Clinton campaign’s plan, increasing the likelihood that it would be tainted by
Russian disinformation.

While the Clinton campaign hired Christopher Steele, a foreign agent in the pocket of a sanctioned Russian
oligarch, to concoct a dossier of allegations against Trump, the primary source of the most salacious and
damning allegations of treasonous collusion came from a suspected Russian spy named Igor Danchenko.



Last month, Attorney General William Barr informed Congress that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
was so concerned about Danchenko, who had been dubbed the “Primary Sub-Source” used by Clinton
campaign sub-contractor Christopher Steele in his thoroughly debunked Steele dossier, that it had previously
deemed him a national security threat and investigated him to determine if he was a Russian spy.

The bureau called off the investigation once Danchenko left the United States and was no longer within the
purview of the FBI’s domestic counterintelligence mission.

Although Democratic lawmakers have claimed, without evidence, that the latest declassifications are
themselves the product of Russian disinformation, multiple senior intelligence officials told The Federalist
that the CIA remains convinced that Russian intelligence sincerely believed as early as summer of 2016
that the Clinton campaign launched its anti-Trump collusion smear operation to distract from Clinton’s
e-mail scandal.

In October of 2017, the top lawyer for the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee finally
confessed publicly that he had personally hired the Democrat opposition research firm Fusion GPS,
which paid Steele to peddle allegations that Trump was a secret Russian agent working on behalf of
Vladimir Putin.

Ratcliffe also declassified on Tuesday portions of a formal CIA investigative referral sent on Sept. 7, 2016,
to fired former FBI Director James Comey and fired former counterintelligence official Peter Strzok asking
them to investigate the Clinton campaign’s anti-Trump collusion smear operation in light of Russia’s
knowledge of the plan and the likelihood it could be tainted by deliberate Russian disinformation.

Rather than act on the CIA investigative referral in the same manner they had launched a full-blown
counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign, Strzok and Comey refused to initiate an investigation.

“Per FBI verbal request, CIA provides the below examples of information the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE fusion
cell has gleaned to date,” the memo states.

“An exchange [REDACTED] discussing US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval
of a plan concerning US presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering
US elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of private e-mail server.”

The cover note of the memorandum stated that the information within was provided to the FBI “for the exclusive
use of your Bureau for background, investigative action, or lead purposes, as appropriate.”
There is no evidence the FBI ever took any action to ensure that Russian knowledge of Clinton’s plans did
not lead to infiltration of that campaign’s operation by Russian intelligence agents.

The CIA referral, specifically its reference to a “CROSSFIRE HURRICANE fusion cell,” suggests that the
Obama administration’s anti-Trump investigation may not have been limited to the FBI, but may have
included the use of CIA assets and surveillance capabilities, raising troubling questions about whether
the nation’s top spy service was weaponized against a U.S. political campaign.

The CIA referral declassified and released by Ratcliffe shows that it was personally addressed to both Comey
and Strzok. Because the CIA does not have legal authority to police domestic matters, it informed the FBI of
the agency’s concerns about potential Russian knowledge of Clinton campaign’s plan to smear Trump as a
Russian asset, especially given the FBI’s ongoing counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign.

Not only did the FBI refuse to investigate whether the Russians were using the Clinton campaign to interfere
in the 2016 national election, but Comey also claimed last week that he knew nothing whatsoever about the
CIA investigative referral.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the matter last week, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)
asked Comey point blank whether he remembered receiving a referral from the CIA personally addressed
to him. Comey claimed that he had zero recollection of the CIA asking him to investigate whether the Clinton
campaign was potentially compromised by Russian disinformation artists.

“That doesn’t ring any bells with me,” Comey claimed under oath.

“You don’t recall this inquiry I just read about September 2016?” Graham followed up, referring to the CIA
referral sent to Comey on Sept. 7, 2016.
“No, as I said it doesn’t…It doesn’t sound familiar,” Comey again claimed.

Following a lengthy investigation of FBI abuses of power under Comey’s watch, the Deparment of Justice
(DOJ) Office of Inspector General (OIG) concluded in its summary report that Comey had repeatedly violated
FBI policies and cast a cloud over the entire bureau, damaging its reputation and that of its 35,000 employees.

“Comey set a dangerous example,” the reported stated. Although the OIG referred Comey to DOJ for criminal
investigation and potential prosecution, DOJ ultimately refused to hold Comey accountable.

Comey’s deputy, Andrew McCabe, was similarly referred for criminal investigation after he repeatedly lied to
DOJ officials under oath, but DOJ also refused to prosecute McCabe for lying under oath.

One of Comey’s attorneys at the FBI and a member of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s legal team
recently pleaded guilty to charges of fabricating evidence in an application to spy on former Trump campaign
affiliate Carter Page...'