So apparently Lord Dampnut is more concerned about leaks when it may simply have been the VP actually paying attention to the intel briefings and knowing that the intel agencies have not wanted to be left holding the bawbag. Ultimately, being stupid about the proclivities of spooks will bring this WH to a close quicker. Even Dan Rather sees how serious this has become in the context of Watergate history.
Lord Damnut’s fate does now hinge not only on prior knowledge of improprieties potentially illegal, but now the erosion of plausible deniability, looming cover-up, and that for the Oval Office, hyperbole and facts are neither truthful nor alternate.
“It’s not like these people wear badges that say, ‘I’m a Russian intelligence officer.’” — Paul Manafort
If the leaks that doomed Michael Flynn were a signal from the intelligence community, perhaps the message they intended to carry was: You ain’t seen nothing yet.
The Times says the NSA began intercepting conversations because they involved Russian intelligence operatives...
The newspaper reports that four current and former intelligence officers say that Trump political and business associates “had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election.” The contacts came in the context of Trump repeatedly praising Russian President Vladimir Putin on the trail, as well as what intelligence officials and the Obama administration say were Russian efforts to boost Trump’s presidential hopes with hacks targeting Hillary Clinton and her political allies...
If the leaks continue at this pace, despite provoking Trump’s fury, the picture should grow clearer over the coming days.
There are factions contesting in the WH that divide simply between true believer nutlogs like Bannon/Miller and those committed to the usual RW GOP minarchist greed like Pence/Priebus.
Flynn resigned, according to the Trump administration, not because he was caught talking to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about sanctions imposed by President Barack Obama in December but because he lied to Vice President Mike Pence about it.
Late Monday night, he admitted to giving Pence “incomplete information” about his conversations with Kislyak, which supposedly led Pence to repeat lies about those talks to the press. That was the first story, anyway.
Late Tuesday afternoon, the White House claimed Trump asked for Flynn’s resignation.
But the real question is the age-old puzzle about corruption in the White House: “What did the president know and when did he know it?”
We have just learned that Trump actually knew about his national-security adviser’s sanctions discussions with Kislyak at least by late January. That’s when, according to The Washington Post, acting Attorney Attorney General Sally Yates brought transcripts of Kislyak’s intercepted calls to the White House, and warned that Flynn could be subject to Russian blackmail for lying to Pence.
Trump fired not Flynn but Yates shortly afterward, when she refused to enforce his travel ban.
It took him until now, though, to acknowledge that he’d been warned about Flynn’s talks with Russian leaders, and that’s mainly because of intelligence-community leaks to reporters about the Flynn transcripts.
Congressional crickets abound, especially ones that could lead to tax investigations and the now seemingly daily ethics violations.
The acting attorney general informed the Trump White House late last month that she believed Michael Flynn had misled senior administration officials about the nature of his communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States, and warned that the national security adviser was potentially vulnerable to Russian blackmail, current and former U.S. officials said.
The message, delivered by Sally Q. Yates and a senior career national security official to the White House counsel, was prompted by concerns that Flynn, when asked about his calls and texts with the Russian diplomat, had told Vice President-elect Mike Pence and others that he had not discussed the Obama administration sanctions on Russia for its interference in the 2016 election, the officials said. It is unclear what the White House counsel, Donald McGahn, did with the information.
There may be Obstruction of Justice in terms of the real reasons for Lord Dampnut’s firing of Yates
This now provides multiple angles for why this just became Donald Trump’s Russian Watergate.
He appears to have fired Sally Yates in order to prevent her from taking down Michael Flynn over Russia.
In turn, Michael Flynn appears to view the Yates news as a reason to get away from Trump before the whole thing explodes.
“Kate & Leopold”
Hugh Jackman falls through a temporal portal from 1876 to 2017, and is weirded out by how socially regressive modern America is. He goes home, and Meg Ryan continues her promising career as a government-funded scientist debunking the myth of global warming.
“Annie Hall”
Woody Allen is killed in a hate crime whose perpetrator is not charged because Jews are no longer technically protected by law. Diane Keaton sings really bad sad lounge music about it.
“How many times does she go out and say things that are not true?” Brzezinski asked of Conway, as Scarborough chimed in with, “blatantly false.” Brzezinski continued, “I will not interview her, it's giving people dishonesty,” adding, “It’s not worth the interview.”