yeah but, 2 other things: ( don't shoot me these seem to be factual)

1. the FBI dropped the ball, went after HRC instead of DT when other nations were trying to alert them. This to me is the bigger malfeasance
2. who was president at this time and when did he find out about the dossier? ( It has been reported in Dec.'16. Hell, it has been reported that McCain was concerned and went and got it first). What did he do about it? This, to me, is the bigger nonfeasance

The GOP Congress (and the media at large) would have excoriated him for trying to sabotage the president-elect. They would say that he resented Trump for beating Clinton, and the dossier would be dismissed as a parting shot from a failed and disgrunted administration.

The GOP would have done nothing with it, and they probably wouldn't have allowed a special prosecutor to be appointed; they would dismiss such efforts as partisan maneuvering by elements sympathetic to the defeated Clinton regime.


Should Obama still have done something? Maybe, but what? To what end? What could he reasonably have expected to accomplish in his remaining time at that late date?

Of course President Obama did what he could:

1) He disclosed the existence of the whole Russian tampering to the Republicans.
2) He disclosed the existence of the whole Russian tampering to the public.
3) He had it investigated until his very last days in office.

What more exactly could he have done?

Don't blame Obama! Blame Russia, Trump, and the Repubs (in no particular order).

Indeed, an investigation that has now become criminal? Also, intelligence sources could have been compromised.

The very fact that this was raised BEFORE the election in general terms was enough. It is not President Obama's fault that the MSM was obsessed with other stuff like putting Trump on the air as often as possible or going after HRC for her "emails".

"Fusion GPS demonstrated that the government right here in the United States is equally corrupt" ... but I would add that this is a reference to Republicans who are propping up Trump or who enabled Trump's rise their Grand Wizard.

With respects to disclosure:

When did the president of our country find out about Russians purchasing facebook ads? What, exactly, did he do about it?

When did everyone else in our country find out about Russians ads on facebook?

McConnells response? Do it I dare you, we'll accuse you of playing politics and trying to interfere with the election.
McConnell has been in on this fix from the beginning.

The rest of us would see right through it. Don't forget , many republicans at the time hated Trump whereas now they mostly kow-tow to him. Obama dropped the ball, just like he did on appointing USAs and federal judges. He should have installed a SC J if the senate refused to do their job. If republicans in the senate had not been able to filibuster Obama's entire agenda we would not have a republican majority now as the entire nation would be running so smoothly. Pelosi got so much done in the house but all blocked in the senate by filibuster. But then she also ignored the base by refusing go after Bush/Cheney for war crimes etc. and the dems paid a big price for that one. They lost the House and Senate. I love Obama but this is one area in which he could have taken more action.

Which provision of the Constitution allows that?

Also, how also did he drop the ball on appointments of US Atty's and judges? He appointed a ton?

I fail to see how President Obama could have done any more than he did on the Russian election meddling issue. He disclosed it to Americans and the world, told Putin to back off, and did as much investigating as could be done during the lame duck portion of his Administration.

No one is to blame except Russia, the Repubs, and Trump.

The 4/4 Supreme Court would Alamos certainly agree or the threat mght have moved McTurtle to consider the nomination. And Obama could have speechified mightily on the unconstitutional breech of office. At worst, the Rs would have voted down the nomination, which could be played against them as the nominee was eminently qualified. Most voters have no freaking idea how the Republicans used partisan hardball to prevent popular bills from passing. Even Obamacare could have e a easily been fixed if Obama had constantly railed about it.

I love President O but he could have played politics much better without ever going low.

"but the political ramifications" what did PBO have to lose? It was far less than what was at stake for our nation.

I'm sorry bit that's bullshit. The sovereignty of our nation and democracy are far more important than politics. Protection against enemies foreign and domestic is the oath.

As far as the GOP. It was John fucking McCain who followed thru and collected the dossier. He knew how important it was.

I will say it again: other countries were setting off alarm bells. I think PBO should have started there.

Frankly, I have trouble believing that anything would have come of it. It would have been dismissed as a sour grapes parting shot, and then Trump would roll into office bullet-proof.

I know that it's more satisfying to complain that Obama didn't solve this problem for us, but I'd like to see someone spell out exactly what he would have accomplished with the revelation, and what exactly would have happened in the wake of it.

LBJ 1968, had evidence of Nixon Interfering with the election regarding the bombing campaign in VietNam. He gave that rat bastard a pass too

How'd that turn out?

Funny how history has a way of repeating itself

Edit: as I said in my post he had nothing to lose. We got stuck with the shit

As stated:

I am going to posit something alternate here with respect to the FBI. Traditionally, the FBI handled domestic investigations and the CIA handled foreign investigations. Since we are talking "Russia" (foreign), it would not surprise me that in this case, the FBI "stayed in their lane" and let the other agencies (like NSA, CIA, etc) take the lead while they focused on the "domestic" (Hillary), which was low-hanging fruit.

investigations.

Again, this probably points out a lack of good communications between the 20 3-letter organizations that are supposed to coordinate information and action. Perhaps that lack of communications was programmed in?

which is what I noted - FBI = "domestic". However, IMHO, the situation most likely needed to be delved into more on the international side before the domestic side could move forward with the domestic actors (which were apparently Flynn & Manafort & probably Page and others). I.e., this is where the FISA warrants came into play.

The "coordination" was supposed to be handled by Clapper who was Dir. of National Intelligence and who himself, had issues prior to announcing his retirement just after the election.

Because half the battle was determining which citizens and areas of the country the Russians needed to target with their propaganda and when to do so. Trump operatives most likely would be the ones that could provide such information.

I think if Mueller and co can somehow access such info it will go a long ways toward proving the treasonous conspiracy as opposed to just money laundering etc..

I think once a FISA warrant was issued and during the monitoring of the foreigners (by I'm guessing the NSA), it was discovered that Americans (domestic) were involved on the "other end", then they (FBI) could pick up the baton and take a look at those Americans.

This "listening" was what blew up in December 2016 & January 2017 where Drumpf freaked out and claimed Obama "tapp"ed his phones. In reality, they tapped some Russian's and/or Ukrainian's and/or Turk's communications and discovered those folks were talking to people in the U.S.

But on their own (although I have been hearing more and more how they have gotten involved in more foreign stuff), the FBI is supposed to keep within the borders and the CIA really would have needed to be the lead until they confirmed people in the U.S. were caught up in this.

I have to admit I don't know the information flow from the intelligence gathering groups to the investigatory/operational ones but I thought the DCI was to have facilitated that.

Even in the best of times, which never existed, there was probably never a frictionless cooperation. And with this purposefully hobbled government it has got to be hard to try to do the right thing. Sort of makes an ethical person want to talk outside of the channels.

way before the election yet Comey only revealed in his infamous Oct. letter that only Clinton was being investigated.

He changed history and let the country down tremendously as his letter, which he of course knew would be leaked, swung the election to trump.

e.g., Wikileaks and the hacked DNC servers (and Drumpf's "entreaties" for Russia to find "missing emails" ), so we're talking about different things.

I'm not saying they weren't doing anything or only focusing on one thing. I am actually arguing that Hillary was the low-hanging fruit "for domestic consumption" while they probably had to wait to get some confirmations of foreign involvement for the other stuff - thus the FISA warrant that went out "over the summer" of 2016.

I expect the "reopening of the investigation" letter was thrown out there as a Hail Mary "October Surprise" that they didn't expect to make any difference but now we know how much it did when coupled with everything else that was going on.

Just as he, being head of the FBI, the top law enforcement arm in the country, had no naivete in knowing it was a violation of the Hatch Act.

And if he was going to take the stepl to violate the Hatch Act, he at least should've revealed the existence of investigations of both campaigns if the wanted to be fair, which of course, being a repug, partisan hack, he had no intention of doing.

Of course he should've done neither.

In reality he should've fired the rogue, insubordinate FBI agents in the NY office working with Giuliani to pressuring him into revealing an investigation of "new" emails on Weiner's laptop (which they knew were nothing but duplicates), or at least vow to go down with the ship with them if they threatened to release compromising info on him (an alleged looking the other way on shady help in a mob bust) if he continued to try to stop their attempted scuttling of Clinton's campaign.

Low hanging fruit or not, Comey fucked up and he soon came to know it, thus his subsequent and Javert-like investigation of trump, only to be hoisted on his own petard by being fired by the very same orange pustule he helped install into the WH.

He was no Washington rookie. He was the Director of the FBI and shouldn't have allowed himself to be directed by Giuliani and his henchmen.

IMO, karma came to him quickly and justly.

THAT is a key and I agree with you 100% about that and regarding Comey.

But again, I am not arguing his agenda, personal issues, and apparent vendetta that lead to what became major fuck ups around election time, but about the "traditional" roles of agencies in general (as a retired fed) when it comes to "coordination".

As a sidenote, Mueller continued as FBI Director under Obama initially, via a special (Congressionally-authorized) 2-year extension of his term past the initial 10 years. So if that term limit hadn't been there, it would have been interesting to see what might have transpired with him at the helm vs Comey.

Comey started as decent man. Guess his partisanship and not reining in the NY office got the best of him.

Mueller has shown much strength of leadership as there have been no leaks at all from his investigation.

I grew up in Chicago, and once asked a mobster if he was worried the FBI was going to catch him. He replied, "the FBI couldn't find an Asian in Tokyo".

It seems he's right.

They appear to be totally aligned with the GOP. Comey should have been fired after he "decided" to reopen the HRC investigation ten days before the election (the 'October surprise'). And for all the GOP complaining about partisan politics among a few FBI agents, how is it that Wray could give $39k to the GOP when he's on a GS15ish salary?

There *is* corruption in the USHey, and it's name is GOP.

t-rump's attorney has filed a defamation suit, investigation charges against Steele who appeared to be more concerned about the USA's national security than the GOPs. This treachery needs to be address and stopped for the sake of the USA's democracy.

They feel justified.

they do not care who gets harmed in the process.

Deprive Americans of health care and medication if it feathers their nest.

Total sociopaths.

Which is the definition of sociopathic; i.e., not caring if one is totally amoral.

mean they will also now report, with shock, on this mass corruption of truth by Republicans...for sure...I hope...maybe?

The history books will document this treasonist time in our history, Republicans will not escape this.

I know Steele is British but he cares more about our Republic than Republicans.

It's no understatement that Republicans have become a never-ending stream of crimes in progress as they dismantle our democracy, piece by piece. Instead of governance, they are an overgrown crime family

Instead, they go about mealy mouthing it, cause you know, it would just not be acceptable to say anything that might ruffle the feathers of their fellow congressmen/senators - who spend every waking moment throwing verbal hand grenades at them.

J ... H ... C.

Dems OWN the high ground here, and they won't even bother to stand on it.

And that also is part of President Obama's failure in that regard. Yes he brought it up, but it came off as a minor threat. Instead of holding a very serious press conference, with the heads of all 13(?) intelligence agencies standing behind him, and spoken gravely about the threat to the nation on a scale perhaps greater than 911.

I think it would have been tough for him because his own party brass, and the DNC and Hillary's campaign would be screaming at him that he better not. But today, he would have been proven right and Republicans could never use the excuse that Democrats didn't seem to care much about it either. It would have been the right thing to do a year before the election.

IMO and it's only conjecture, but human guilt probably factored into that decision not to piss off Hillary. That he had already swept in and pulled the Presidency out from under her once already, and thinking that she would most likely win it if he didn't raise too much of a stink, and the threat could be dealt with after the election anyways. It was a gamble that he should not have made.

Poor babies .... .... and you can bet the farm that all the other closed door meetings are all of the exact same modus operandi.

They used every moment of their time to find something Fusion had done wrong, or that Steele had done wrong ....

Since August, based on the transcript, the GOP Judiciary knew that a "Trump mole" started the Trump/Russia FBI investigation, not the Dossier, yet they let Trump and his GOP minions Congress continue to blame the Democrats and Dossier for instigating the investigation. And they would refer Steele to DOJ for something criminal to protect this fact? How far will the GOP go to protect Trump (and probably themselves)?

This is criminal, imho.

That is what motivates the gop. McConnell claimed that tRump would sign anything they put before him. He does not read, or even care about the bills, he just loves to be on TV. The office if the president has been demeaned like never before. No longer is it a position of respect and dignity. Might as well turn the WH into another failing tRump casino. The gop has shown its true colors, and do not come out looking good.

I know there are lots of reasons that include "We've had our run - empires come and go", "The people get complacent and don't care about participating", "the dumbing down of citizens", etc.

But it would be nice to pick the top 2-3 root causes that made the slow rot into this pustulent president and non-representative legislature.

In no order -
- Corporatism and capitalism run rampant
- Subversion by foreign interests
- Greed by a group of people/organizations
- Takeover of media (social, MSM, etc) by vested interests
- more...

Look at what happened when Steve Bannon went counter to what the Mercer's wanted. He's gone. Blackmail works every time.

I'm only one-third of the way through the testimony and my eyes hurt.

Does anybody know of a source of the transcript that is rendered in normal reading mode (instead of the legal double-spacing, weird paragraphs, etc.) It would be really nice to have a table-of-contents also....

page in the word processing program I use all the time. Saved it and can read it at my leisure.

My TTY-35 running on TSO doesn't do those things. Altho I think I can feed in the PPT to be punched and then reread into the next file.

Why can't I just stare at a document and WILL it to be in the right format? Maybe replace all mention of /trump/ig with /idjiot/? I'm sure mr-do-no-evil google is reading my comments and preparing for the latest/greatest way to influence its "users".

Those features are on the top of a browser.

all remaining doubts, if there were any, of the mind boggling threats our democracy faces. We are staring into the darkest corridors of a geopolitical and economic grab nightmare orchestrated by a formidable foreign power assisted by currently the most powerful political party here. And collectively we are the patsies. The only solution is to take control of Congress this year by kicking out the traitors and then prosecuting them to the fullest allowed by law. Then we have to get rid of their puppet. It will be a message that will resonate.

Both by the US against its foes and friends, and naturally against the US. Never have the perpetrators been able to so take control of the executive and legislative branches. Judicial - still up in the air. Actual governmental apparatus - not sure. Military - not yet.

May the RICO net be cast far and wide

He never got to explain anything about Trump and Florida, after he had already linked shady money laundering to Trump Soho and described business ties between Trump and Felix Sater and other Russians. Undoubtedly if questioners had allowed him to comtinue he would have mentioned Russians buying Florida properties at much higher than retail value.

:thumbs up:

we lost the Cold War.

Sickening.

And I include Pres. Turd in the category of "Russian Mobster."

development may very well have been a smoke screen.

"But the Fusion GPS transcripts are an indictment of the Republican Party, as an entity that has lost any concern for the nation, fairness, or the facts—an entity addicted to power by any means, and willing to use that power to close the mouths of those they view as threats."

..The traitorous gop need a punishment to fit the crime.

And his corrupt administration and enabling legislators be run out of town after being publicly tarred and feathered. And to think AL Franken was railroaded out of service, as an extremely important force against these crooks for ALLEGEDLY having inappropriately touched a woman. WTF!!!!!!!