Rex Tillerson told Fox News in Bogota, Columbia yesterday that there’s virtually nothing the U.S. can do to stop Russia if they decide to meddle in our 20148 elections. This is the kind of leadership Trump has brought to our State Department and the country. Since Trump has cozied up to Putin as if he’s his… Continue reading “Tillerson says we can’t stop 2018 Russia election meddling”
In a sign of increasing partisan hostilities, Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee plan to construct a wall – a physical partition – separating Republican and Democratic staff members in the committee’s secure spaces, according to multiple committee sources. It’s expected to happen this spring.
For now, some Republican committee members deny knowing anything about it, while strongly suggesting the division is the brainchild of the committee’s chairman, Devin Nunes, R-California.
“I’m not part of that decision,” said Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas. “You’ve got to talk to Devin. I don’t know what they’re trying to do one way or the other.”
“I swear to God I didn’t know that,” said Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Florida, when asked about the plan. While acknowledging a wall might not be constructive for the committee’s work, he said, “The level of trust and the level of everything down there is – it’s poison. It’s absolute poison down there.”
Rooney said one reason for the tension is an erosion of trust, exacerbated by an ongoing ethics investigation into the “entire Republican staff,” including “the woman up front that answers the phone” for alleged leaks. He later added that the matter was being handled by the Office of Congressional Ethics.
Bipartisanship, he said, “is gone. It’s gone from that committee.”
“We have heard reports that the chairman may seek to erect a ‘wall’ to divide the staff of the intelligence committee on a partisan basis — this would be a terrible mistake,” the committee’s ranking member, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-California, told CBS News. “While we have more than our share of difficulties, the important oversight work of the committee continues with our staff working together irrespective of party. This would be a very destructive decision.”
Via NBC News. Of course they did. And deleting names from registration rolls won’t leave a trace, because the names cease to exist and states don’t use audit trails:
The U.S. official in charge of protecting American elections from hacking says the Russians successfully penetrated the voter registration rolls of several U.S. states prior to the 2016 presidential election.
In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Jeanette Manfra, the head of cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security, said she couldn’t talk about classified information publicly, but in 2016, “We saw a targeting of 21 states and an exceptionally small number of them were actually successfully penetrated.”
Jeh Johnson, who was DHS secretary during the Russian intrusions, said, “2016 was a wake-up call and now it’s incumbent upon states and the Feds to do something about it before our democracy is attacked again.”
Watch Cynthia McFadden on Nightly News tonight for more
“We were able to determine that the scanning and probing of voter registration databases was coming from the Russian government.”
NBC News reported in Sept. 2016 that more than 20 states had been targeted by the Russians.
There is no evidence that any of the registration rolls were altered in any fashion, according to U.S. officials.
In a new NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll, 79 percent of the respondents said they were somewhat or very concerned that the country’s voting system might be vulnerable to computer hackers.
I was really worried they were going to ram this through, but I’m pleasantly surprised!
WASHINGTON — The United States Supreme Court on Monday refused to stop Pennsylvania’s highest court from requiring lawmakers there to redraw the state’s congressional map, which the state court had found to be marred by partisan gerrymandering.
The Supreme Court’s order was expected, as the Pennsylvania court had based its decision solely on the state constitution. On matters of state law, the judgments of state supreme courts are typically final.
The order, which gave no reasons, came from Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who acted without referring the case to the full court.
The Supreme Court has been busy lately addressing cases on partisan gerrymandering, in which the party in power draws voting districts to give its candidates lopsided advantages. It is considering two such cases, from Wisconsin and Maryland, and has intervened in a third one, from North Carolina. But all of those cases were decided by federal courts.
The latest decision, from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, struck down the state’s congressional map, saying it “clearly, plainly and palpably” violated the state’s Constitution. The court told state lawmakers to redraw the state’s 18 House districts, which currently favor Republicans, and it left open the possibility that it would impose its own map.
Donald Trump tells reporters that he is eager to chat with Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating his campaign’s suspected collusion with the Kremlin and his attempts to obstruct that investigation, but his sincerity is in doubt. Continue reading “Yes, Trump must testify — just like Bill Clinton did”
Media reports this week have focused fresh attention on how the Federal Bureau of Investigation managed the dramatic discovery — five weeks before the 2016 presidential election — of what seemed to be a fresh trove of Hillary Clinton emails and the delay in investigating them that ensued. Continue reading “FBI’s delay on Clinton emails not nefarious”
John Heilemann has had an epiphany, and it’s about time. He’s been raising the alarm for more than a week, saying that Republicans are compromised and working as agents of Russia.
Last night on MSNBC, he said it again.
“I’ve said this now multiple times this week and I’ll say it again,” he told Nicolle Wallace about the administration’s determination to release the Nunes memo.
“It has clarified the extent to which Paul Ryan is now no longer on Team USA, or on even Team Old Republican Party. He is on Team Nunes, which means he’s on Team Trump, which means to some extent they’re all — they’re advancing, in some sense, Russia. This is — this is what Russia wants here.
“And I continue to be baffled by Ryan’s behavior. But we now have a clear signal that Ryan is utterly supine and he’s backed Nunes, he’s saying to the extent that Nunes is saying we don’t care about Russian meddling in the 2016 election, what we’re going to do is investigate the FBI, which is what Nunes is saying. Ryan has come out and endorsed that view. And I find that utterly stunning,” he said.
“Paul Ryan has behaved poorly over the course of the last year, but this — I did not think he would end up in this position. He is and he is there. It has huge implications for the future, too.”
So, so close, and yet not quite there. Remember this story, John?
And these:
How Putin’s Proxies Helped Funnel Millions Into GOP Campaigns
Manafort Notes From Russian Meet Refer to Political Contributions
The Kremlin Defense Fund: Russian money might have gone to Trump’s legal fees
After the shite hits the fan and the dust finally settles, we may very well find that top Republicans went along because a combination of Russian hacking and Cambridge Analytica didn’t just deliver the White House to the Republicans — they gave them control of both houses.
Connect those dots, John.
On CNN, Kate Bolduan interviewed Rep. Mike Quigley, member of the House Intelligence Committee, about why he believes Devin Nunes coordinated with the White House on the controversial FBI memo. “There’s new questions this morning about Nunes and whether there has been any coordination with the White House on this. You’ll recall that he was on… Continue reading “Rep. Mike Quigley: ‘Nunes was coordinating with the White House all along’ on bogus memo”
Mark Corallo is set to tell Mueller about a conversation in which Hope Hicks assured Trump that Don Jr's emails about the Trump Tower meeting "will never get out," the NYT is reporting:https://t.co/68SLcIiclc pic.twitter.com/RTMKxb2jdZ
— Greg Sargent (@GregTSargent) February 1, 2018
According to Republican Congressman Patrick Meehan, the reason he “lashed out” at an aide upon learning that she was in a relationship (a move that many characterized as sexual harassment and he paid a huge settlement to the aide) was because of the stress he was facing from his constituents over Obamacare. Continue reading “Thanks, Obama!”
