monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

There IS A LOT of distraction. YOU and the Dems are doing it.

Democrats: Let's whip up charges of sexism against Trump!

World: Holy ****! Look at all these Democrats who are sex predators!!

Democrats: Hey! Don't look at that! It's a distraction! Look over here!! Over here!!

Democrats: Hey! Let's use the FBI and some Russians and...hell, throw British intelligence in there... to gather oppo research on Trump!

Also Democrats: Hey! Maybe we can get Trump impeached by saying he tried to gather oppo research from Russians!!

World: Holy ****, the Dems are MORE guilty of collusion than Trump is!

DNC: So, we're going to tell our 'journalist' minions to elevate Trump to pied piper status and skew the very limited Bernie narrative to crazy socialist Jew
Bernie who can't possibly win.

World: Holy ****! Look at these DNC emails, proving collusion, cheating, and the smoking gun proving the DNC is responsible for Trump's election.

You're becoming a master distractor, but I'm looking at what's actually happening.

The survey found that while a majority of Republicans and Democrats agree that a Democratic Congressman accused of sexual harassment should resign (71% and 74% respectively), when the accused offender was in the GOP, only 54% of Republicans would demand a resignation (compared to 82% of Democrats).

5. Should Democrats hold themselves to a higher standard in cases of sexual abuse of women, or does that make them chumps?

While most people in both parties profess to deplore sexual harassment, abuse, or assaults, it’s no secret that the Democratic Party is the political home of most feminists.

Indeed, hostility to feminism — and hostility to “politically correct” standards of behavior — is a hallmark of Donald Trump’s Republican Party, punctuated by his own dismissal of his own crude boasts about sexual assault as “locker-room talk.”

So should Democrats explicitly police themselves more vigorously than Trump’s party does in such cases? Some Democrats think that places their party at a disastrous disadvantage:

Quote:

Elliott Lusztig
@ezlusztig
I am sitting here shaking with rage and frustration on the point of tears wondering why Democrats will call for Franken's resignation but won't call for Trump to step down for much greater crimes. Why won't our side fight? What is wrong with you?
1:09 PM - Dec 6, 2017
3,388 3,388 Replies 15,302 15,302 Retweets 37,061 37,061 likes

The obvious answer is that Democrats have significantly less leverage over Trump than over one of their own.

But clearly some people think Democrats shouldn’t unilaterally disarm by disciplining a grabby senator when a grabber of a different order is allowed to run the country.

That’s an argument Democrats must squarely confront.

as it stands the reality and facts are that the Democrats are purging their ranks of those accused of misconduct and Republicans are actively campaigning and voting for a child molester.

You're a conspiracy theorist. You don't care about facts or anything other than that which forwards your narrative. It's essentially the same as you've acted since the Bush era, in which you SLAVISHLY defended him and other Republicans. Anything that seems to confirm your hate of the Dem party and the Clintons, you're 100% on board with it; true or not. Isn't that correct?

I can't take this level of effort seriously

Cycloptichorn

The way I read this rather unclear piece, he's saying that many US "liberals" have turned a deaf ear to some valid people's concerns, and that perhaps they may want to be less orthodox/dogmatic about a range of stuff and become better listeners. And also reconsider a few naive impracticle or dangerous ideas, e.g. that freedom is always a good thing in the absolute and should never be limited.

World: Holy ****! Look at all these Democrats who are sex predators!!

World: Holy ****, the Dems are MORE guilty of collusion than Trump is!

World: Holy ****! Look at these DNC emails, proving collusion, cheating, and the smoking gun proving the DNC is responsible for Trump's election.

This piece and its headline has been updated to reflect more reporting about the nature of the subpoena.

Report: Mueller Subpoenas Deutsche Bank Records Relating to Trump

Bloomberg reported on Tuesday morning that Special Counsel Robert Mueller issued a subpoena to Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest lender, several weeks ago. The bank agreed to submit documents “on its relationship with [President] Trump and his family,” which go back almost 20 years, according to an anonymous source.


Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s personal lawyers, denied anything of the sort. “We have confirmed that the news reports that the Special Counsel had subpoenaed financial records relating to the president are false,” he told Reuters in a statement. “No subpoena has been issued or received. We have confirmed this with the bank and other sources.”

On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal provided more context on the request, reporting that the subpoena concerned “people or entities affiliated with” the president, not Trump himself.


The move could nevertheless be significant on multiple levels. For one thing, it shows that Mueller has succeeded where Democratic lawmakers have failed: getting Deutsche to cough up details about the roughly $300 million Trump owed the bank for real-estate dealings before he ran for president. Democrats like Congresswoman Maxine Waters had questioned whether those loans had any connection to Russia, but the bank had rebuffed all requests until now, citing confidentiality laws.

The $300 million includes a $170 million loan Trump took out to complete a hotel in Washington, two mortgages against his Trump National Doral Miami resort, and a loan against his tower in Chicago.

Deutsche also issued a huge loan to Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, to help refinance a Manhattan property a month before the 2016 election

Deutsche’s connections to Russia aren’t merely hypothetical: The bank has previously paid $670 million to U.S. and U.K. regulators over its role in a Russian money-laundering scheme, but a Department of Justice inquiry into a $10 billion scheme has stalled for unclear reasons.

An internal review conducted by Deutsche Bank showed no connection between those transactions and Trump, but now Mueller’s squad of investigators will make their own judgment.

Perhaps more significantly, though, Mueller’s pivot into Trump’s financial background has the potential to make the special counsel’s job security even more precarious. The president’s line on Mueller’s investigation has long been clear: Stick to looking into election meddling, clear me of personal wrongdoing, then go away. In an interview with the New York Times in July, Trump, asked if Mueller’s investigation would cross a “red line” if it expanded to look at his family’s finances beyond any relationship to Russia, Mr. Trump said, “I would say yes. I think that’s a violation. Look, this is about Russia.”

Mueller, of course, is looking for a Russia connection with this subpoena, but Trump and his lawyers are unlikely to be sympathetic to that interpretation, and will likely cast it as an unreasonable intrusion into the president’s personal life — part of the “witch hunt” the president keeps decrying.

Ty Cobb, one of Trump’s lawyers, has (foolishly) assured him that Mueller’s investigation was on the verge of wrapping up any day now. But with the indictment of Michael Flynn last Friday — which signals more trouble on the way – and now the Deutsche Bank subpoena, those assurances are probably wearing thin. Mueller isn’t going anywhere unless Trump takes drastic action, so it may be time to start thinking again about how, exactly, that drastic action might work.

An internal review conducted by Deutsche Bank showed no connection between those transactions and Trump, but now Mueller’s squad of investigators will make their own judgment.

Top DOJ official demoted amid probe of contacts with Trump dossier firm

Until Wednesday morning, Bruce G. Ohr held a title at DOJ: associate deputy attorney general, a post that placed him four doors down from his boss, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein...but he has been stripped of his higher post and ousted from his office on the fourth floor of “Main Justice.”

... evidence collected by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), chaired by Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., indicates that Ohr met during the 2016 campaign with Christopher Steele, the former British spy who authored the “dossier.”

Additionally, House investigators have determined that Ohr met shortly after the election with Glenn Simpson, the founder of Fusion GPS – the opposition research firm that hired Steele to compile the dossier with funds supplied by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. By that point, according to published reports, the dossier had been in the hands of the FBI, which exists under the aegis of DOJ, for some five months, and the surveillance on Carter Page, an adviser to the Trump campaign, had started more than two months prior.

The Nunes panel has spent much of this year investigating whether DOJ, under then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, used the dossier to justify a foreign surveillance warrant against Page.

The contacts between Ohr and Steele, and between Ohr and Simpson, have not been publicly disclosed nor shared with HPSCI staff.

The panel has issued numerous subpoenas for documents and witnesses related to the dossier but claims DOJ and FBI have “stonewalled,” an assertion that House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., seconded in a rare public statement in October.

According to congressional sources, Simpson and Ohr met sometime around Thanksgiving last year, when President-elect Trump was in the process of selecting his cabinet, and discussed over coffee the anti-Trump dossier, the Russia investigation and what Simpson considered the distressing development of Trump’s victory.

How exactly Simpson and Ohr came to know each other is still being investigated, but initial evidence collected by the House intelligence committee suggests that the two were placed in touch by Steele, a former FBI informant whose contacts with Ohr are said by senior DOJ officials to date back to 2006.

The demotion of Ohr thus marked the second time within a matter of months that the Justice Department and the FBI have disciplined for misconduct a senior official connected in some form or fashion to the Trump-Russia case.

The list of compromised FBI "investigators" (aka rabid partisan hacks) just keeps growing, eh?

layman wrote:

The list of compromised FBI "investigators" (aka rabid partisan hacks) just keeps growing, eh?

You mean that's the reason why the Trump administration has decided that (the National Security Agency and) the F.B.I. can lawfully keep operating their warrantless surveillance program even if Congress fails to extend the law authorising it?

All wiretapping of American citizens by the National Security Agency requires a warrant from a three-judge court set up under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

FISA makes it illegal to intentionally engage in electronic surveillance under appearance of an official act or to disclose or use information obtained by electronic surveillance under appearance of an official act knowing that it was not authorized by statute; this is punishable with a fine of up to $10,000 or up to five years in prison, or both.[9] In addition, the Wiretap Act prohibits any person from illegally intercepting, disclosing, using or divulging phone calls or electronic communications; this is punishable with a fine or up to five years in prison, or both.

FISA provides two documents for the authorization of surveillance. First, FISA allows the Justice Department to obtain warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) before or up to 72 hours after the beginning of the surveillance. FISA authorizes a FISC judge to issue a warrant for the electronic cameras if "there is probable cause to believe that… the target of the electronic surveillance is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power." 50 U.S.C. § 1805(a)(3). Second, FISA permits the President or his delegate to authorize warrantless surveillance for the collection of foreign intelligence if "there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party".

During the Obama Administration, the NSA has allegedly continued operating under the new FISA guidelines despite campaign promises to end warrantless wiretapping.[3] However, in April 2009 officials at the United States Department of Justice acknowledged that the NSA had engaged in "overcollection" of domestic communications in excess of the FISA court's authority, but claimed that the acts were unintentional and had since been rectified.

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What "warrantless surveillance program" are you talking about?

You might want to read this article, Walt:

layman wrote:

What "warrantless surveillance program" are you talking about?

Section 702 of FISA, which allows the US government to spy on the internet and telephone communications of people both in the United States and abroad without a warrant.