James Comey

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dailycaller.com/2018/05/01/paul-manfort-mueller-leak-investigation/

The special counsel’s office has said it does not have evidence of any contacts between Paul Manafort and Russian government and intelligence officials
Manafort is a longtime political consultant who has been indicted on money laundering and bank fraud charges
The former Trump campaign chairman laundered millions of dollars and failed to properly register as a foreign agent, prosecutors say
The special counsel’s office has told lawyers for Paul Manafort that it does not have evidence of any contacts between the former Trump campaign chairman and Russian government and intelligence officials.

That’s at least according to Manafort’s attorneys, who disclosed details of the interactions in court papers filed on Monday night.

The lawyers say they want a hearing to look government officials’ leaks to the media regarding Manafort, a longtime political consultant who has been indicted on money laundering and bank fraud charges.

“By their actions, it is self-evident that the objective of these government sources was to create unfair prejudice against Mr. Manafort and thereby deprive him of his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights,” wrote Manafort lawyers Kevin M. Downing and Thomas E. Zehnle.

www.scribd.com/document/377903619/Paul-Manafort-filing

The court filing, submitted in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, lists seven news articles about the Manafort investigation that rely on U.S. government sources.

“The government-sourced leaks concerning surveillance of Mr. Manafort with foreign individuals is particularly troubling,” the attorneys wrote.

Downing and Zehnle say that they have filed “multiple” requests for discovery with the special counsel’s office for any evidence of Manafort’s contacts with Russian government or intelligence officials.

They wrote that the special counsel’s office, which is being led by Robert Mueller, “has not produced any materials to the defense — no tapes, notes, transcripts or other material evidencing surveillance or intercepts of communications between Mr. Manafort and Russian intelligence officials, Russian government officials (or any other foreign officials.)”

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I guess Rosenstein forgot, but, the DOJ/FBI answers to Congress & not the other way around.

dailycaller.com/2018/05/01/rod-rosenstein-impeachment/

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein hit back hard Tuesday at House Republicans who have threatened to file articles of impeachment against the Trump appointee over his handling of requests for documents related to various Department of Justice investigations.

“The Department of Justice is not going to be extorted,” Rosenstein said during an event hosted by the Freedom Forum Institute in Washington, D.C.

Rosenstein was asked about reports that the House Freedom Caucus has drafted articles of impeachment against him over his alleged failure to produce documents related to the Hillary Clinton email and Trump-Russia investigations.

Several congressional committees have battled with Rosenstein over the documents, going as far as issuing subpoenas for them.

North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, told The Washington Post that impeachment is a “last resort option” that will be filed if the Justice Department fails to respond to pending document requests.

“My frustrations about their inability to respond to simple requests could warrant further action,” said Meadows, a confidant of President Donald Trump.

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thehill.com/regulation/administration/385740-mueller-requests-flynns-sentencing-be-delayed-at-least-two-more

Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Tuesday requested that sentencing for former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn be delayed by at least two months.

Mueller’s team and attorneys for Flynn submitted that Flynn is not ready for sentencing “due to the status of the special counsel’s investigation,” according to a court filing in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

Flynn pleaded guilty in December to lying to the FBI as part of Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

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If Mueller pulls this stunt, I’d simply plead the fifth/State I’m only present so I’m not in contempt of court on everything he asks of me.

Don’t help his fishing expedition.

www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mueller-raised-possibility-of-presidential-subpoena-in-meeting-with-trumps-legal-team/2018/05/01/2bdec08e-4d51-11e8-af46-b1d6dc0d9bfe_story.html?utm_term=.4e29fc2897d3

In a tense meeting in early March with the special counsel, President Trump’s lawyers insisted he had no obligation to talk with federal investigators probing Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.

But special counsel Robert S. Mueller III responded that he had another option if Trump declined: He could issue a subpoena for the president to appear before a grand jury, according to four people familiar with the encounter.
Mueller’s warning — the first time he is known to have mentioned a possible subpoena to Trump’s legal team — spurred a sharp retort from John Dowd, then the president’s lead lawyer.
“This isn’t some game,” Dowd said, according to two people with knowledge of his comments. “You are screwing with the work of the president of the United States.”
The flare-up set in motion weeks of turmoil among Trump’s attorneys as they debated how to deal with the special counsel’s request for an interview, a dispute that ultimately led to Dowd’s resignation.

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www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/robert-mueller-questions-trump-decline-interview/

Mueller’s Questions for Trump Show the Folly of Special-Counsel Appointments
By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
May 2, 2018 1:05 PM


The Justice Department should not permit the president to be interrogated on so paltry and presumptuous a showing.

I am assuming the authenticity of the questions that Special Counsel Robert Mueller reportedly wants to ask President Trump. The questions indicate that, after a year of his own investigation and two years of FBI investigation, the prosecutor lacks evidence of a crime. Yet he seeks to probe the chief executive’s motives and thought processes regarding exercises of presidential power that were lawful, regardless of one’s view of their wisdom.

If Bob Mueller wants that kind of control over the executive branch, he should run for president. Otherwise, he is an inferior executive official who has been given a limited license — ultimately, by the chief executive — to investigate crime. If he doesn’t have an obvious crime, he has no business inventing one, much less probing his superior’s judgment. He should stand down.

The questions, reported by the New York Times, underscore that the special counsel is a pernicious institution. Trump should decline the interview. More to the point, the Justice Department should not permit Mueller to seek to interrogate the president on so paltry and presumptuous a showing.

When should a president be subject to criminal investigation?
It is a bedrock principle that no one is above the law. The Framers made clear that this includes the president. But, like everything else, bedrock principles do not exist in a vacuum. They vie with other principles.

Two competing considerations are especially significant here. First, our law-enforcement system is based on prosecutorial discretion. Under this principle, the desirability of prosecuting even a palpable violation of law must be balanced against other societal needs and desires. We trust prosecutors to perform this cost-benefit analysis with modesty about their mission and sensitivity to the disruption their investigations cause.


–– ADVERTISEMENT ––



Second, the president is the most essential official in the world’s most consequential government. That government’s effectiveness is necessarily compromised if the president is under the cloud of an investigation. Not only are the president’s personal credibility and capability diminished; such an investigation discourages talented people from serving in an administration, further undermining good governance. The country is inexorably harmed because a suspect administration’s capacity to execute the laws and pursue the interests of the United States is undermined. Naturally, this is of little moment to rabid partisans who opposed the president’s election and object to his policy preferences. By and large, however, Americans are not rabid partisans; they want the elected president to be able to govern, regardless of which party is in charge.

Still, the president cannot be above the law. Executive powers are too awesome to abide presidential immunity from the laws and the limits on those powers. So how do we police the president while minimizing the damage that an investigation of the president can do to the country? We acknowledge that we are willing to endure this damage, but only if there is strong evidence that the president is guilty of a serious crime or abuse of power.

A president should not be subjected to prosecutorial scrutiny over poor judgment, venality, bad taste, or policy disputes. Absent concrete evidence that the president has committed a serious crime, the checks on the president should be Congress and the ballot box — and the civil courts, to the extent that individuals are harmed by abusive executive action. Otherwise, a special-counsel investigation — especially one staffed by the president’s political opponents — is apt to become a thinly veiled political scheme, enabling the losers to relitigate the election and obstruct the president from pursuing the agenda on which he ran.

That is what we are now witnessing.

Pretextual appointment of the special counsel
Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel for two reasons: (1) ostensibly to take over a counterintelligence probe; (2) in reality, as a cave-in to (mostly) Democratic caviling over Trump’s firing of FBI director James Comey — which was lawful but incompetently executed. Democrats contended that Comey’s dismissal, in conjunction with Comey’s leak of Trump’s alleged pressure to drop the FBI’s investigation of Michael Flynn, warranted a criminal-obstruction probe. That is, the pretext of obstruction was added to “Russia-gate,” the already-existing pretext for carping about the purported need for a special counsel.

Neither of these reasons was a valid basis for a special-counsel investigation.

Russia’s effort plainly warranted a counterintelligence investigation. But reliance on that necessity as a rationale to appoint a special counsel was a subterfuge.
As we have repeatedly noted, a counterintelligence investigation is not a criminal investigation. To the extent it has a “subject,” it is a foreign power that threatens the United States, not an American believed to have violated the law. A counterintelligence investigation aims to gather information about America’s adversaries, not build a courtroom prosecution. For these (and other reasons), such investigations are classified and the Justice Department does not assign prosecutors to them, as it does to criminal cases. Counterintelligence is not lawyer work; it is the work of trained intelligence officers and analysts. It is not enough to say that Justice Department regulations do not authorize the appointment of a special counsel for a counterintelligence probe. The point is that counterintelligence is not prosecution and is therefore not a mission for a prosecutor.

Foreign efforts to meddle in our elections are nothing new, but they are not to be taken lightly. Russia’s effort plainly warranted a counterintelligence investigation. But reliance on that necessity as a rationale to appoint a special counsel — a lawyer independent of the executive branch, who uses the president’s executive power to investigate the president — was a subterfuge. (Because of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s passivity, Mueller is de facto independent, even though he is technically Rosenstein’s subordinate.)

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www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice-department-shoots-down-house-gops-request-to-see-robert-mueller-memo


“Although we are working to accommodate the requests of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in a number of oversight matters, we cannot provide the requested information pertaining to the Special Counsel’s ongoing investigation consistent with longstanding principles of investigatory independence.”

Turning over the unredacted memo would “threaten the integrity” of Mueller’s investigation, the letter reads.

It would also violate Justice Department policy of “against confirming or denying information about active investigations,” wrote Boyd.

....

It would be hilarious if Trump did that with his executive powers.

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www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/05/02/giuliani-calls-for-comey-to-be-prosecuted-end-to-mueller-probe-in-interest-justice.html

In a wide-ranging interview, Giuliani called for former FBI Director James Comey to be prosecuted for leaking classified information, at one point calling him “a disgraceful liar.”

“I have never, ever… leaked a damn thing,” said Giuliani, referring to his time as a U.S. Attorney. “I would have considered resigning if I ever did that.”

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Joe diGenova taunted Mueller, “Go ahead. Please issue the subpoena because it will be an unconstitutional subpoena and an illegal subpoena.”

“There is no authority under federal law to issue a subpoena to a president of the United States to get testimony from him so it can be used at an impeachment proceeding,” diGenova continued.

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dailycaller.com/2018/05/02/rudy-giuliani-mueller-interview-ivanka-trump/

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani sent a warning to special counsel Robert Mueller on Wednesday: stay away from Ivanka Trump.

Giuliani, one of the lawyers helping President Donald Trump navigate the Russia investigation, told Fox News’ Sean Hannity the “whole country” will turn on Mueller if he targets the president’s oldest daughter.

Giuliani was responding to a report in Politico that suggested Mueller could use Ivanka to get to her father. Hannity brought up that report and noted former White House communications director Hope Hicks, a longtime Trump aide, “paid more in lawyers and she was ever paid” as a result of the Mueller investigation.

“I wish the American people could get to know [Hicks]; she’s one of the nicest human beings you’re ever going to meet. And she is very loyal to Donald Trump, but I think the president would say this: she would stand up to him when she had to,” Giuliani said. “What they did to her is absolutely outrageous.”


“Ivanka Trump? I think I would get on my charger and go ride into their offices with a lance, if they go after Ivanka,” the former mayor continued. “Now if they do do Ivanka, which I don’t think they will, the whole country will turn on them. If they go after her, the whole country will turn on them. They’re going after his daughter?”
.....

Politico article mentioned:

www.politico.com/story/2018/05/01/ivanka-trump-mueller-russia-probe-563169

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Hey look, more tapped phone lines.

www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/feds-tapped-trump-lawyer-michael-cohen-s-phones-n871011

Federal investigators have wiretapped the phone lines of Michael Cohen, the longtime personal lawyer for President Donald Trump who is under investigation for a payment he made to an adult film star who alleged she had an affair with Trump, according to two people with knowledge of the legal proceedings involving Cohen.

It is not clear how long the wiretap has been authorized, but NBC News has learned it was in place in the weeks leading up to the raids on Cohen’s offices, hotel room, and home in early April, according to one person with direct knowledge.

At least one phone call between a phone line associated with Cohen and the White House was intercepted, the person said.
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And this,(if true, one has to begin pondering possible entrapment scenarios) :

www.cnbc.com/2018/05/03/feds-tapped-phones-of-trump-lawyer-michael-cohen-and-caught-one-call-with-white-house-nbc-news.html

Among the items seized from Cohen last month were files related to a $130,000 payment he made to porn star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 presidential election. Daniels has said the money was in exchange for her promise to keep quiet about an affair she says she had with Trump in 2006. The White House has denied the affair happened.
Daniels lawyer Michael Avenatti, during an appearance on MSNBC said he knew that Michael Cohen’s text messages were also tapped by investigators.
“It’s a fact,” Avenatti said.
It has been previously known that federal prosecutors were monitoring Cohen’s email accounts for some time before the April 9 raid.

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It would be highly entertaining if/when Trump cites Executive Privilege on his call/text messages,(similar to what Obama did for Holder), to watch the MSM & left meltdown over that.

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dailycaller.com/2018/05/03/mueller-lawyer-hillary-clinton/

The latest addition to special counsel Robert Mueller’s team of prosecutors contributed to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, according to federal campaign records.

Uzo Asonye, an assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, is joining Mueller’s stable of prosecutors to work as local counsel on the case against Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman who has been indicted on money laundering and bank fraud charges.

Asonye worked at the firm O’Melveny & Myers before joining the U.S. attorney’s office in 2010. Asonye donated $900 to Clinton’s presidential campaign from January to April 2008, according to Federal Election Commission records. He has not donated to any other national political campaigns since then.

Asonye is just the latest Democrat to join Mueller’s team.


As The Daily Caller News Foundation has reported, none of Mueller’s prosecutors, which number nearly 20 in all, are registered Republicans. As of February, 13 Mueller lawyers were registered Democrats. A public records search shows Asonye has registered to vote as a Democrat.

At least 12 Mueller attorneys have donated to Democratic political candidates.

Trump supporters have criticized the Mueller investigation because of its Democratic tilt. Defenders of the investigation point out Mueller himself is a registered Republican. President George W. Bush appointed him as FBI director in 2001.

Mueller has removed at least one of his investigators over documented political bias. Peter Strzok, a former deputy chief for the FBI’s counterintelligence division, was kicked off of Mueller’s team after he was found to have exchanged anti-Trump text messages with FBI lawyer Lisa Page. Strzok oversaw the Russia investigation after the FBI opened it on July 31, 2016.

Andrew Weissmann, a Justice Department lawyer handling the Manafort case for Mueller’s team, reportedly attended Hillary Clinton’s election night party. Weissmann has donated $6,600 to the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton and Obama campaigns.

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www.dailywire.com/news/30228/breaking-new-details-revealed-about-comeys-law-ryan-saavedra

Fox News' Catherine Herridge revealed on Thursday that former FBI Director James Comey's law professor friend, whom Comey used to leak information about his memos to the press, worked for the FBI over a year and a half and repeatedly defended Comey in media interviews during the criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server.

Records reviewed by Fox News showed that Daniel Richman was hired as a "special government employee," and answered directly to Comey. Fox News reports:

During this time, a review of media reports between July 2015 and February 2017 shows Richman gave multiple interviews defending Comey's handling of the Clinton email case, including the controversial decision to reopen the probe shortly before the presidential election. He was typically identified as a law professor, and sometimes as a policy adviser to Comey.

In a TV segment on Fox News, Herridge said in Richman's media interviews, in which he defended Comey, he was never identified as an FBI employee.

"Government transcripts also indicate Richman was sent talking points about the FBI's handling of the Clinton email investigation and why the case was different from other prosecutions for the mishandling of classified information," Herridge said.

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Alan Dershowitz: I think we are moving closer and closer to the surveillance state where phone calls are tapped, where emails are secured without a real basis. Seeking wiretaps on lawyers’ offices and search warrants and subpoenas for lawyers, email files, unless they have very serious evidence of very serious crimes. Campaign contributions don’t qualify for the kind of crime that should justify the wiretapping of a lawyer.

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amp.dailycaller.com/2018/05/03/msnbc-correct-michael-cohen-wiretap/

MSNBC issued a massive on-air correction Thursday to an NBC News report the U.S. government has wiretapped Michael Cohen, the personal lawyer to President Donald Trump.

“Feds tapped Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s phones,” read the headline of the initial NBC News story.

At least one phone call Cohen had with someone at the White House was intercepted, according to the report. It was not clear when investigators began wiretapping Cohen, but NBC News reported it was in place in the weeks before FBI agents raided Cohen’s home, office and hotel room in connection with an investigation into payments he made to Stormy Daniels, the adult film star who claimed to have had an affair with Trump.

But later Thursday, MSNBC ran a correction to the story.

“Correction: Feds are monitoring, not listening to Cohen’s calls,” read a chyron correcting the report.

Instead of a wiretap, investigators obtained what’s known as a pen register warrant, reporter Tom Winter said. That allows investigators to obtain information about calls placed to and from a particular phone such as phone numbers and phone-call length.

Three U.S. law enforcement officials provided the correct details of the warrant against Cohen, Winter said. Winter’s initial sources were described as “two people with knowledge of the legal proceedings involving Cohen.”

Hours before MSNBC’s correction, Michael Avenatti, a lawyer for Daniels, claimed it was “a fact” investigators had a wiretap on Cohen.

“I don’t think we’re going to find out that this was confined just to email or voice wiretaps. My understanding is that they were also wiretapping text message communications for the weeks leading up to the FBI raids,” Avenatti said on MSNBC, where he appears frequently.

“I’m not speculating; that’s a fact,” he added.

Avenattai believed investigators obtained information from the wiretap suggesting Cohen planned to destroy evidence relevant to the case, Daniels’ lawyer told MSNBC. And because of that, he said investigators decided to carry out a raid of his properties.

“I also think that it will ultimately be disclosed that during these wiretaps, the FBI learned of means by which Michael Cohen and others were going to potentially destroy or spoliate evidence or documentation,” Avenatti continued.

“That’s what served as the predicate or the basis for them to be able to go in and get the warrant to search the home, the office and the hotel room of Michael Cohen.”

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youtu.be/5OJCVpWPcxc

Mark Penn: Remember Tucker I worked for a year working with President Clinton against Ken Starr and that effort. And I just find that that was child’s play to what’s going on here. Well Mueller has some questions about what the president was thinking when he fired Comey. Well I certainly have some questions about what he was thinking when first he went to apply for the FBI job, with Rosenstein. And then turns around the next day, he didn’t already have a plan. Boy when he put that team together and there wasn’t a single Trump donor. What was he thinking then? And when you look at these dossiers and discovered that there was no foundation here how did he deal with that? And how does he justify these really storm-trooper tactics. Which is really not an exaggeration when you go guns drawn to political consultants, wiretaps all over the place.

......

He also authored this piece in The Hill:

thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/385646-how-about-a-few-questions-for-robert-mueller


How about a few questions for Robert Mueller?

Robert Mueller has plenty of questions for President Trump, and maybe he will get to ask them. Most of them seemed like perjury traps rather than real questions for the president and, surprisingly, they contain very little that wasn’t in the public domain though prior leaks. In other words, the president is not a target because they have nothing implicating him, and so they want to use the interview to create such material.

But the conduct of the investigation by the special counsel and his team has raised a lot of questions as to its foundation, conflicts of interest, fairness and methods. Most of the public, based on the last Harvard Caps-Harris Poll, supports Robert Mueller going forward with his investigation, but I wonder whether that would still be the case if he were required to answer a few questions himself.

When you interviewed for FBI director with President Trump, had you had any conversations with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, FBI Director James Comey or any other current or former officials of the U.S. government about serving as a special counsel? Didn’t you consider going forward with the interview or being rejected as FBI director to create the appearance of conflict?

When you picked your team, what was going through your mind when you picked zero donors to the Trump campaign and hired many Democratic donors, supporters of the defiant actions of Sally Yates, who at the time was deputy attorney general, and prosecutors who had been overturned for misconduct? What were you thinking in building a team with documented biases?

When you were shown the text messages of FBI officials Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, why did you reassign them and not fire them for compromising the investigation with obvious animus and multiple violations of procedure and policy? Why did you conceal from Congress the reasons for their firing for five months and did you discard any of their work as required by the “fruits of a poisonous tree” doctrine?

What were your personal contacts with Rod Rosenstein and James Comey during the investigation as special counsel and before that as a private attorney? Would you be considered a friend of James Comey? Would that personal relationship not disqualify you as a prosecutor on the case under Justice Department guidelines?

Doesn’t the fact that Rod Rosenstein wrote a memo urging the firing of James Comey and, therefore, is a witness to key events you are reviewing, disqualify him as your supervisor under Justice Department guidelines?

Did you see in advance any of the text of the book by James Comey or have any conversations related to its contents? Are you reviewing the contradictory statements made by James Comey on key issues for possible perjury or referral for perjury?

Did you or members of your team participate directly or indirectly in any leaks to the press about elements of the investigation, and what steps have you taken, if any, to investigate such leaks? Have members of your team been questioned under oath about leaks?

When you raided former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s home at gunpoint, was the scope of your investigation expanded in writing before or only days after you carried out the raid?

Would you be willing to undergo a lie detector test about your potential involvement, as alleged by constitutional law professor Alan Dershowitz, in protecting Boston crime boss Whitey Bulger and the jailing of four people whose convictions were later overturned amid prosecutorial abuse? What were you thinking as the local U.S. attorney while this unfolded and you took no action to stop it?

During the course of the current investigation, many questions have been raised about the Steele dossier and its Russian sources, the leaking of its contents, the covering up through illegal cutouts of the source of funding from the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee. Did you follow up and investigate any of those questions?

When you secretly obtained all of the emails of the transition including possible privileged material, did you have it first reviewed by a “taint team” and did you believe you could evade legal process, while the government official in charge was on vacation, to obtain everything instead of selections of those emails relevant to the investigation?
......

Click link above to read the rest.

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dailycaller.com/2018/05/03/media-failure-russia-trump-story/

The major correction issued by NBC Thursday on a story about wiretaps and Michael Cohen was just another reminder of the many media mistakes on the Russian collusion story.

NBC initially claimed that federal investigators were listening in on Cohen’s phone calls, but it turns out they had what’s called a “pen register warrant,” which means they could see who Cohen spoke to on the phone but could not hear what was said. (RELATED: MSNBC Issues HUGE Correction To Michael Cohen ‘Wiretap’ Story)

Unfortunately for the press, the obsession to prove collusion has dampened their journalistic abilities, leading to a seemingly endless list of corrections, retraction, and apologies.

We’ve compiled a list of some of the worst media screwups when it comes to Russia.

1. CNN Accuses Don Jr. Of Wikileaks Collusion

Last December, CNN’s Manu Raju reported that Wikileaks emailed Donald Trump Jr. to give him access to stolen documents a full ten days before they were released to the public.

Unfortunately for CNN, it turns out their sources gave them the wrong date. Don Jr. actually received an email with access to the stolen docs on Sept. 14, 2016, after they had already been released publicly.

2. ABC Tanks Stock Market With Fake Flynn News

ABC was forced to suspend Brian Ross after he falsely reported that former national security adviser Michael Flynn was prepared to testify that then-candidate Donald Trump ordered him to make contact with the Russians.

The stock market dropped a few hundred points at the news — but it turned out to be fake.

ABC clarified that Flynn was actually prepared to testify that Trump asked him to contact Russia while the administration was transitioning into office. Pretty standard preparation for an incoming president.

3. The Mooch Is NOT Under Investigation

CNN earns another spot on this list for their shoddy reporting about former Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci. In June, CNN relied on a single unnamed source to claim that Scaramucci was under investigation for a meeting he took with a Russian banker prior to Trump’s inauguration.

The Mooch denied the story and CNN later gave him a much-deserved apology. Oh… and three CNN employees resigned over the botched piece.

4. Bloomberg’s Dirty Deutsche Bank Scoop

Bloomberg initially reported in December that special counsel Robert Mueller had “zeroed in” on Trump by subpoenaing Deutsche Bank records for the incoming-president and his family.

Bloomberg later admitted that Mueller was looking for records relating to “people affiliated” with Trump.

5. Sessions Exonerated

Last May, CNN was sure that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had botched protocol when he didn’t list meetings he had with the Russian ambassador on his security clearance forms. To CNN and other establishment media outlets, this was proof that Sessions was hiding something related to Russia.

A little over six months later, CNN quietly walked back the scandal, explaining the FBI sent emails informing Sessions’ aide that he did not need to disclose the meetings on his forms because they were carried out in the course of his duties as a senator.

6. Russians Aren’t Just Hacking The Election — They’re Hacking Our Power Grid

The Washington Post claimed in January 2017 that Russians were hacking the U.S. power grid through a company in Vermont, only to change the story to say that only one laptop was infiltrated. It turns out that one laptop was never even connected to the power grid.

7. Republicans Funded The Dossier!

A number of news outlets have consistently claimed that Republicans initially paid for the anti-Trump Steele dossier, failing to note that Steele wasn’t even contracted by Fusion GPS until after the GOP donors pulled funding. The Republican donors say they paid Fusion for standard opposition research and that they have zero connection to the controversial dossier.

The media has perpetuated this falsehood so consistently that even former FBI director James Comey was confused, repeating the lie in an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier.

8. CNN’s Gets Comey Prediction Wildly Wrong

Prior to former FBI director James Comey’s congressional testimony last June, CNN asserted that Comey was prepared to contradict a key claim by President Trump — that Comey told him he was not under investigation.

Sadly for them, Comey’s prepared testimony was released with the line, “During our one-on-one meeting at Trump Tower…I offered that assurance [that he was not under investigation].”

9. The ’17 Intel Agencies’ Lie

The media perpetuated a false claim from presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for months, insisting that all 17 intelligence agencies agree that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. The New York Times, for example, rated that claim as true only to later say the exact opposite.

Only four intelligence agencies ultimately deemed Russia responsible for meddling because the other 13 have no business making judgments on the claim. As NYT succinctly explained, “the rest were doing other work.”

10. Manafort Notes Are A Nothing Burger

NBC botched its big scoop claiming that Paul Manafort’s notes from a meeting with a Russian lawyer included the word “donations” near a reference to the Republican National Committee.

Turns out that not only did the word “donations” not appear in Manafort’s notes, but the word “donor” didn’t either. POLITICO had to correct the NBC report, leaving the legacy network looking awfully embarrassed.
......

Links to above:

dailycaller.com/2017/12/08/cnn-botches-major-bombshell-alleging-contacts-between-don-jr-and-wikileaks/

dailycaller.com/2017/12/02/abc-news-suspends-brian-ross-after-fake-bombshell-story/

dailycaller.com/2017/06/26/three-cnn-employees-resign-over-botched-trump-russia-story/

dailycaller.com/2017/12/06/bloomberg-corrects-bombshell-trump-bank-records-story/

dailycaller.com/2017/12/11/cnn-walks-back-jeff-sessions-russia-bombshell/

dailycaller.com/2017/01/03/the-washington-posts-incredibly-botched-story-on-russian-hacking/

dailycaller.com/2017/10/26/another-journo-claims-gop-paid-steele-for-dossier/

dailycaller.com/2018/04/26/comey-republicans-steele-dossier/

www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2017/06/07/cnn-corrects-comey-testimony-prediction-story/?utm_term=.a280d548a17f

dailycaller.com/2017/07/09/the-media-perpetuated-a-clinton-lie-for-9-months-what-it-means-for-the-russia-narrative/

dailycaller.com/2017/09/07/yet-another-anonymously-sourced-trump-russia-story-falls-apart/

[soonernvolved]

I like this. Put up or Shut up.

thehill.com/homenews/house/386085-gop-lawmaker-introduces-resolution-to-end-mueller-probe

Rep. Todd Rokita (R-Ind.), who is currently running for Senate, introduced a resolution in the House on Thursday calling for an end to special counsel Robert Mueller‘s Russia investigation unless evidence of collusion is produced within the next 30 days.

Rokita argued the investigation needs to be resolved quickly to “preserve the integrity of our democratic institutions.” Rokita added he believes it’s fiscally irresponsible to drag out the probe, estimating it has cost taxpayers upward of $17 million.

“The Mueller investigation has dragged on for nearly a year at a cost of tens of millions of dollars without producing a shred of evidence of collusion—the matter it was tasked with investigating in the first place,” he said in a statement. “I expect a valid progress report within the next 30 days or the investigation should be terminated.”

[soonernvolved]

[soonernvolved]

time.com/5264153/the-fbi-is-in-crisis-and-america-is-paying-the-price/

The Justice Department’s Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, will soon release a much-anticipated assessment of Democratic and Republican charges that officials at the FBI interfered in the 2016 presidential campaign. That year-long probe, sources familiar with it tell TIME, is expected to come down particularly hard on former FBI director James Comey, who is currently on a high-profile book tour. It will likely find that Comey breached Justice Department protocols in a July 5, 2016, press conference when he criticized Hillary Clinton for using a private email server as Secretary of State even as he cleared her of any crimes, the sources say. The report is expected to also hit Comey for the way he reopened the Clinton email probe less than two weeks before the election, the sources say.[/i][/u]

[soonernvolved]

This is a damning blow to the left:

www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/05/04/federal-judge-accuses-muellers-team-lying-trying-to-target-trump-cmon-man.html

RUSSIA INVESTIGATION 1 hour ago
Federal judge accuses Mueller's team of 'lying,' trying to target Trump: 'C'mon man!'
.......

A federal judge on Friday harshly rebuked Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team during a hearing for ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort – suggesting they lied about the scope of the investigation, are seeking “unfettered power” and are more interested in bringing down the president.

"You don't really care about Mr. Manafort,” U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III told Mueller’s team. “You really care about what information Mr. Manafort can give you to lead you to Mr. Trump and an impeachment, or whatever."

Further, Ellis demanded to see the unredacted “scope memo,” a document outlining the scope of the special counsel’s Russia probe that congressional Republicans have also sought.[/i]

The hearing, where Manafort’s team fought to dismiss an 18-count indictment on tax and bank fraud-related charges, took a confrontational turn as it was revealed that at least some of the information in the investigation derived from an earlier Justice Department probe – in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Judge TS Ellis
Judge T.S. Ellis III told Mueller's team they "care" about information Manafort could give them to lead them to "mr. Trump and an impeachment, or whatever."
Manafort’s attorneys argue the special counsel does not have the power to indict him on the charges they have brought – and seemed to find a sympathetic ear with Ellis.

The Reagan-appointed judge asked Mueller’s team where they got the authority to indict Manafort on alleged crimes dating as far back as 2005.

The special counsel argues that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein granted them broad authority in his May 2, 2017 letter appointing Mueller to this investigation. But after the revelation that the team is using information from the earlier DOJ probe, Ellis said that information did not “arise” out of the special counsel probe – and therefore may not be within the scope of that investigation.

“We don’t want anyone with unfettered power,” he said.

Paul Manafort leaves Federal District Court in Washington, Monday, Oct. 30, 2017. Manafort, President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, and Manafort's business associate Rick Gates have pleaded not guilty to felony charges of conspiracy against the United States and other counts. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Attorneys for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort argue that the special counsel does not have the power to indict their client on the charges they brought. (AP)
Mueller’s team says its authorities are laid out in documents including the August 2017 scope memo – and that some powers are actually secret because they involve ongoing investigations and national security matters that cannot be publicly disclosed.

Ellis seemed amused and not persuaded.

He summed up the argument of the Special Counsel’s Office as, "We said this was what [the] investigation was about, but we are not bound by it and we were lying."

He referenced the common exclamation from NFL announcers, saying: "C'mon man!"

The judge also gave the government two weeks to hand over the unredacted “scope memo” or provide an explanation why not -- after prosecutors were reluctant to do so, claiming it has material that doesn’t pertain to Manafort.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Ellis said.

House Republicans have also sought the full document, though the Justice Department previously released a redacted version, which includes information related to Manafort but not much else.

The charges in federal court in Virginia were on top of another round of charges in October. Manafort has pleaded not guilty to both rounds. The charges filed earlier this year include conspiring against the United States, conspiring to launder money, failing to register as an agent of a foreign principal and providing false statements.

Earlier this year, Ellis suggested that Manafort could face life in prison, and “poses a substantial flight risk” because of his “financial means and international connections to flee and remain at large.”

Fox News’ Brooke Singman and Judson Berger contributed to this report.

Jake Gibson is a producer working at the Fox News Washington bureau who covers politics, law enforcement and intelligence issues.


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[soonernvolved]

www.cnn.com/2018/05/04/politics/paul-manafort-hearing/index.html


A federal judge expressed deep skepticism Friday in the bank fraud case brought by special counsel Robert Mueller’s office against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, at one point saying he believes that Mueller’s motivation is to oust President Donald Trump from office.

“You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort’s bank fraud,” District Judge T.S. Ellis said to prosecutor Michael Dreeben, at times losing his temper. Ellis said prosecutors were interested in Manafort because of his potential to provide material that would lead to Trump’s “prosecution or impeachment,” Ellis said.
“That’s what you’re really interested in,” said Ellis, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan.

[soonernvolved]

www.dailywire.com/news/30264/breaking-federal-judge-accuses-muellers-team-lying-ryan-saavedra

On Friday, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III blasted Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team during a hearing on former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, saying that they are only concerned with trying to take down President Donald Trump.

"You don't really care about Mr. Manafort,” Ellis told Mueller’s team of Democratic prosecutors. “You really care about what information Mr. Manafort can give you to lead you to Mr. Trump and an impeachment, or whatever."

Fox News reports:

www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/05/04/federal-judge-accuses-muellers-team-lying-trying-to-target-trump-cmon-man.html

Further, Ellis demanded to see the unredacted “scope memo,” a document outlining the scope of the special counsel’s Russia probe that congressional Republicans have also sought.

The hearing, where Manafort’s team fought to dismiss an 18-count indictment on tax and bank fraud-related charges, took a confrontational turn as it was revealed that at least some of the information in the investigation derived from an earlier Justice Department probe – in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Ellis, who was appointed by former President Ronald Reagan, also asked Mueller's team where they got the constitutional authority to indict Manafort for alleged crimes that took place well over a decade ago. Fox News notes:

The special counsel argues that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein granted them broad authority in his May 2, 2017 letter appointing Mueller to this investigation. But after the revelation that the team is using information from the earlier DOJ probe, Ellis said that information did not “arise” out of the special counsel probe – and therefore may not be within the scope of that investigation.

“We don’t want anyone with unfettered power,” Ellis told Mueller's team.

Mueller's team claimed that their authority comes from an August 2017 "scope memo" and that some of their powers are "secret" because "they involve ongoing investigations and national security matters that cannot be publicly disclosed."

Ellis found the comments from Mueller's team about having secret powers to be comical and he was not persuaded.

"We said this was what [the] investigation was about, but we are not bound by it and we were lying," Ellis mocked Mueller's team. Fox News added:

The judge also gave the government two weeks to hand over the unredacted “scope memo” or provide an explanation why not -- after prosecutors were reluctant to do so, claiming it has material that doesn’t pertain to Manafort.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Ellis responded.

[politicalmexininja]

Finally a judge with common sense....

[soonernvolved]

May 4, 2018 11:54:07 GMT -6 politicalmexininja said:

Finally a judge with common sense....

Also, there’s no liberal spinning of what the judge said & ordered. That is going to leave a serious mark. However, I am now curious as to whether or not Rosenstein will accuse the judge of extortion like he did his bosses,(i.e. the House Representatives), for demanding the memo?