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As the F.B.I.’s Russia investigation draws closer to him, President Trump on Sunday unleashed an extraordinary assault on the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, calling it a biased institution whose reputation for fairness was “in tatters.”

In a series of early-morning tweets, Mr. Trump said the F.B.I.’s standing was now the “worst in history.” The attack was one of the harshest in a generation on an independent agency that two days earlier had helped secure a guilty plea and a pledge of cooperation from the president’s first national security adviser.

Current and former F.B.I. officials, historians and lawmakers rebuked the president over his efforts to undermine the F.B.I.’s credibility as it investigates whether his campaign colluded with Russian officials to sway the 2016 election. A president who has positioned himself as devoted to law and order is now in a public dispute with the country’s top law enforcement agents.

The United States Intelligence Community concluded, with high confidence, that the Russian government engaged in electoral interference during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.[1][2] A January 2017 assessment by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) stated that Russian leadership preferred presidential candidate Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, and that Russian president Vladimir Putin personally ordered an "influence campaign" to harm Clinton's electoral chances and "undermine public faith in the US democratic process."[2]:7

Lash said:

Quote:

Russian interference into the 2016 has not been proven.

Yeah. Sanders followers say this all the time. But your never hear it from rightwing voices. So Lash is off the hook here. She's legit.

...Friday was also the day Senate Republican leaders brought forth a tax bill heralding the death of anything resembling a populist form of conservatism within the Republican Party. Plutocracy will now be the GOP’s calling card. Facing one of the most scandalous special-interest tax bills in a long history of such measures, even supposedly moderate members of the party caved in before the power of big money when the votes were counted early Saturday morning.

Republicans proved one other thing: What they say when they are out of power should never be believed again.

We do know Hillary Clinton claimed something like 26 agencies agreed Russia had interfered with the election...

Back in October 2016, we rated this statement by then-candidate Hillary Clinton as True: "We have 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin, and they are designed to influence our election."

Many readers have asked us about this rating since the New York Times and Associated Press issued their corrections.

Our article referred to an Oct. 7, 2016, joint statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security that presented a preliminary conclusion about Russia’s involvement in the election.

We noted then that the 17 separate agencies did not independently declare Russia the perpetrator behind the hacks; however, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence speaks on behalf of the group.

We asked experts again this week if Clinton’s claim was correct or not.

"In the context of a national debate, her answer was a reasonable inference from the DNI statement," Cordero said, emphasizing that the statement said, "The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident" in its assessment.

Aftergood said it’s fair to say the Director of National Intelligence speaks for the intelligence community, but that doesn’t always mean there is unamity across the community, and it’s possible that some organizations disagree.

But in the case of the Russia investigation, there is no evidence of disagreement among members of the intelligence community

Trump lawyer claims the "President cannot obstruct justice"
John Dowd, President Trump's outside lawyer, outlined to me a new and highly controversial defense/theory in the Russia probe: A president cannot be guilty of obstruction of justice.

The "President cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitution's Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case," Dowd claims.

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@lhfang
The Koch brothers spent hundreds of millions of dollars on think tanks & TV ads warning about the deficit during the Obama admin. This year they sent a memo to strategists telling GOP to ignore the deficit to pass tax cuts.

Actual proof that someone authorized by the Russian government actually performed some type of action that directly altered the outcome of the election.

Alabama Voters Will Be Able to Vote “Republican” Rather than “Moore” and It Will Count as a Vote for Roy Moore

There was no Russian intereference.

The real revelation is this: Russian online interference was a god-awful mess, a cacophony.

In my alternate universe, you have to have raw proof to legitimize an allegation.

There was no Russian intereference.