Category: Parrots the News

Trump tries to spin Justice Department documents outlining Carter Page’s Russia contacts

President Donald Trump took to Twitter Sunday morning to try and hit back against the Justice Department’s release of documents outlining Carter Page’s contacts with Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign.

On Saturday, the Justice Department released a warrant application the FBI had made to get permission to conduct surveillance on Page, a former Trump campaign adviser. The application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, made in October 2016, alleged that Page “has been collaborating and conspiring with the Russian government.”

The non-redacted portions of the 400-page FISA document make serious claims about Page’s ties to the Russian government. The Justice Department alleges in the documents that the former adviser “has established relationships with Russian government officials, including Russian intelligence officers” and that the “FBI believes the Russian government’s efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election were being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated with [Trump’s] campaign.”

“The FBI believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government,” the warrant says. After a redacted line, the document then continues, “undermine and influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election in violation of U.S. criminal law. Mr. Page is a former foreign policy adviser to a candidate for U.S. president.”

Trump responded to the documents Sunday morning, relying on his claim of “witch hunt” to describe the investigation into his campaign.

“As usual they are ridiculously heavily redacted but confirm with little doubt that the Department of ‘Justice’ and FBI misled the courts,” Trump tweeted about the FISA documents Sunday. “Witch Hunt Rigged, a Scam!”

In a subsequent tweet, Trump hit back against the Steele dossier, which alleges the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia and that the Russians have compromising information on the now-president. Trump quoted Fox News as saying, “Source #1 [for the FISA warrant] was the (Fake) Dossier. Yes, the Dirty Dossier, paid for by Democrats as a hit piece against Trump, and looking for information that could discredit Candidate #1 Trump. Carter Page was just the foot to surveil the Trump campaign …”

The president then tied the FISA warrant to the outcry sparked by his recent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, claiming he “had a GREAT meeting with Putin and the Fake News used every bit of their energy to try and disparage it. So bad for our country!”

Page himself has denied the allegations, describing the FISA application as “spin” and a “complete joke” in an interview Sunday on CNN.

“I’ve never been an agent of a foreign power by any stretch of the imagination,” Page alleged Sunday.

The heavily redacted FISA documents, which enabled the government to surveil Page, were released Saturday after news organizations including the New York Times and USA Today filed lawsuits to obtain them through the Freedom of Information Act. Its release marks the first time a FISA application for surveillance has been released, the Washington Post noted, and such documents are considered to be highly classified.

The application previously made waves in February, as Republicans alleged in a memo that the FBI improperly relied on the dossier compiled by Christopher Steele to obtain the FISA warrant — which Democrats then rebutted in a separate report.

Republicans have previously pointed to the warrant’s reliance on the Steele dossier — which was initially commissioned by a firm that had been contracted by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign — as evidence that the warrant was improperly granted, due to the dossier’s alleged bias. An initial Republican memo about the FISA warrant also claimed that the dossier’s origins were not mentioned in the warrant.

The now-released document, however, does disclose that the “U.S. person” who hired Steele “was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit [Trump’s] campaign,” and added that the FBI believes Steele’s reporting “to be credible.” Some details of the Steele dossier have been corroborated, although the document’s most salacious claims remain unverified.

David Kris, a former assistant attorney general for national security and associate deputy attorney general, wrote in a post for the Lawfare Institute that the page-long footnote dedicated to the potential bias behind the Steele dossier means “there is literally no way the FISA court could have missed it.”

“The FBI gave the court enough information to evaluate Steele’s credibility,” Kris wrote, also noting that the judges who signed off on the FISA applications were all appointed by Republican presidents.

Democrats are pointing to the now-released application as evidence that the FBI’s investigation into Page and the Trump campaign was legitimate. Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement quoted by the Washington Post that the FISA documents “underscore the legitimate concern [the] FBI had about Page’s activities as it was investigating Russia’s interference.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement: “Despite President Trump’s repeated claims, these documents provide clear evidence of ‘Russia’s coordination with Carter Page,’ a high-ranking Trump campaign official, ‘to undermine and improperly and illegally influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.’

“The GOP must cease their attacks on our law enforcement and intelligence communities, and finally decide where their loyalty lies,” Pelosi added.

[Mic]

Dubious Fox News article appears to have sparked Trump attack on Obama

President Donald Trump appeared to rely on a dubious Fox News report Tuesday morning to unleash an attack on his predecessor, accusing President Barack Obama, without any real evidence, of granting citizenship to 2,500 Iranians as part of nuclear deal negotiations.

“Just out that Obama Administration granted citizenship, during the terrible Iran Deal negotiation, to 2,500 Iranians – including to government officials,” Trump tweeted. “How big (and bad) is that?”

Jeff Prescott, the former senior director on Obama’s National Security Council, called Trump’s allegation “absurd and entirely false.”

Prescott shared with CNN immigration data from the Department of Homeland Security which showed that the number of Iranians naturalized in the United States over the course of the Obama and Bush administrations was relatively consistent.

“There was no connection between the Iran nuclear deal and immigration policy,” Prescott added.

The unsubstantiated claim first gained attention with a Monday story on Fox News’ website that relied on the word of an Iranian cleric who is also a member of the country’s parliament.

The article, written by Chris Irvine, a Fox News senior editor, cited an Iranian news agency that cited an Iranian newspaper that quoted the single Iranian cleric, who said the Obama administration provided citizenship to 2,500 unidentified Iranians during nuclear deal negotiations.

The article itself quoted, toward the end of the story, the network’s own commentator, former Obama State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, saying, “This sounds like totally made up BS.” The story said the Department of Homeland Security and State Department declined to comment, and that a representative for former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson could not be reached.

Prior to the Fox News article, the claim had not received any noticeable attention from the US media.

But after Fox News published its story, other outlets, primarily in the conservative media space, published similar stories. Those outlets included The Daily Mail, The Gateway Pundit, and TownHall.

The claims were also shared on Twitter by Fox News host Sean Hannity and frequent Fox guests David Clarke and Charlie Kirk.

On Tuesday morning, just hours before Trump’s tweet, the story made its way to Fox News’ airwaves on “Fox & Friends First,” the network’s early morning show. It also later aired on “America’s Newsroom,” a late-morning news program on Fox News.

“It shouldn’t be lost on anyone that this is a case of Donald Trump parroting Fox News, which is peddling the claims of an Iranian hardliner,” Prescott told CNN.

Jake Sullivan, a former Obama official who was involved at the start of the Iran nuclear negotiations, also skewered Trump for relying on Fox News’ thin report to make what he called a “completely false” claim.

“What is interesting about this is that what happened is a hardline crank in Iran just randomly made this comment, Fox News writes a story on it, and then Trump tweets it,” Sullivan said on “The Situation Room.”

[CNN]

Trump Touts Mueller Poll Numbers ‘Plummeting’ While Watching Fox & Friends: ‘Rigged’ Witch Hunt!

President Trump this morning touted dropping poll numbers for special counsel Robert Mueller after watching Fox & Friends cover it.

Yes, the morning show today covered Mueller’s poll numbers, and the President subsequently tweeted about it:

[Mediaite]

Trump Goes On Another ‘Witch Hunt’ Tweetstorm While Watching Lou Dobbs

President Trump is on another “witch hunt” tweetstorm, this time in response to watching a segment on Lou Dobbs‘ Fox Business Network program.

Dobbs hosted Judicial Watch director Chris Farrell and the President loved what he said so much that he tweeted it out, before concluding again there’s a “witch hunt” going on:

[Mediaite]

Media

 

‘Stormtrooper tactics’: Trump compares his own Justice Dept. to Nazi assault troops

President Donald Trump on Sunday suggested that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation team was similar to Nazi “stormtroopers.”

In a tweet Sunday afternoon, Trump quoted Mark Penn, a former Democratic strategist.

“Why are there people from the Clinton Foundation on the Mueller Staff? Why is there an Independent Counsel? To go after people and their families for unrelated offenses…Constitution was set up to prevent this…Stormtrooper tactics almost,” the tweet quoting Penn said.

Trump added: “Disgrace!”

Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani also compared FBI agents to “stormtroopers” last month after they raided the office of former Trump attorney Michael Cohen.

“I know the New York FBI,” former FBI Director James Comey tweeted in response to Giuliani. “There are no ‘stormtroopers’ there; just a group of people devoted to the rule of law and the truth. Our country would be better off if our leaders tried to be like them, rather than comparing them to Nazis.”

[Raw Story]

Reality

Trump is referring to Jeannie Rhee, who did in-fact represent Hillary Clinton in a 2015 lawsuit that sought access to her private emails. She also represented the Clinton Foundation in a 2015 racketeering lawsuit, that was quickly thrown out for being frivolous and “did not allege any facts.”

What escapes Trump’s criticism is Rhee also has the experience and credentials to be a part of this investigation, having once served as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General under former Attorney General Eric Holder.

Trump Quotes NRA TV Pundit to Bash Ex-CIA Chief as a ‘Liar’ After Brutal Op-Ed

Thrice failed congressional candidate Dan Bongino has made a name for himself in recent months using a common formula: appear on Fox & Friends to hawk the battiest Deep-State-Spy-Gate conspiracy theories you can muster, and President Donald Trump might just notice you.

Bongino snagged yet another one of the coveted Trump shoutouts on Saturday morning, after he trashed former CIA director John Brennanon the Fox News morning show.

“John Brennan, no single figure in American history has done more to discredit the intelligence community than this liar,” Trump quoted Bongino. “Not only is he a liar, he’s a liar about being a liar.”

Meanwhile, the Washington Post tally of Trump’s false or misleading claims in office ticks on: it now stands at 3,251.

Bongino’s outrage came in response to Brennan’s scathing op-ed in which he compared Trump to the “corrupt, incompetent and narcissistic foreign officials” he encountered while serving at the CIA. Brennan wrote that he “will continue to speak out loudly and critically until integrity, decency, wisdom — and maybe even some humility — return to the White House.”

Trump also quoted the NRA TV pundit’s bashing of the “scam” Mueller investigation:

[Mediaite]

Media

Trump live tweets Fox News to push claims of campaign surveillance

President Trump on Monday tweeted quotes from George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley’s appearance on “Fox & Friends” to bolster his claims of surveillance on his presidential campaign.

Trump also quoted Turley, a constitutional law professor and contributor to The Hill, to slam former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, whom Trump fired last year.

“I think the president has raised a legitimate issue. I don’t agree with how he did it but to say that we shouldn’t investigate this matter is rather bizarre,” Turley said on the Fox News show prior to the president’s tweets.

“We now find out that the Obama administration put the opposing campaign’s presidential candidate, or his campaign, under investigation,” he continued. “That raises legitimate questions.”

Turley also criticized Yates for her decision to not defend the first iteration of Trump’s travel ban on refugees from several majority-Muslim countries. The president fired her over the decision when she was serving as acting attorney general.

The law professor was responding to Yates saying that Trump has “taken the assault on the rule of law to a new level.”

“I’m afraid that it’s a rather ironic statement because she is part of the concerns people have raised about bias in the Justice Department,” Turley said.

“She told an entire department to stand down and not to defend the president’s first immigration order,” he said. “I said at the time that she was fired for good cause, I still believe that. I find her actions to be really quite unbelievable.”

Trump has repeatedly claimed that the FBI spied on his campaign during the 2016 election.

[The Hill]

Trump Rails Against ‘SPYGATE’ In Wild Tweetstorm After Watching Evidence-Free Fox & Friends Segment

President Donald Trump has ramped up his attacks on the Russia investigation — floating out baseless accusations that an FBI “spy” was dispatched for political purposes to sabotage his campaign and elect Hillary Clinton — and Fox & Friends is eagerly cheering him on.

Fox & Friends opened the show Wednesday morning with a laughably uncritical reading of Trump’s latest tweets, which apparently set off the president on another wild tweetstorm in which he declared the investigation into his campaign, “SPYGATE.”

On Fox News, Brian Kilmeade started by noting that the FBI sent informants to Trump’s campaign in 2016 “to maybe go in there and find out, probe around and see where the Russians had gained access to.”

“And now we know exactly why,” Steve Doocydeclared. “The president sent out a couple tweets, probably why you were sleeping. The reason why the federal government put the spies in there, was so Crooked Hillary would win.”

The hosts of Fox & Friends continued to speculate wildly about the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign’s Russia ties, with Doocy and Kilmeade agreeing that the whole thing looks like a “set up.”

The cycle continued later in the morning, when Trump responded to his favorite morning show in another tweet — which blasted “worlds dumbest former Intelligence Head” James Clapper:

“Look how things have turned around on the Criminal Deep State,” Trump continued in his next tweet. “They go after Phony Collusion with Russia, a made up Scam, and end up getting caught in a major SPY scandal the likes of which this country may never have seen before!”

Trump also cited Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano, who appeared on Fox & Friends First and Fox Business Network Wednesday morning.

And, finally, we have a new word for this fresh shitshow… SPYGATE!

UPDATE: Matthew Gertz has the goods one where Trump’s quote came from… a Fox & Friends First chyron that — again, without a dash of evidence — boldly declared “NEW BOMBSHELL IN THE OBAMA SPYING SCANDAL”.

[Mediaite]

Trump Quotes ‘Fox & Friends’ in Claim Ex-CIA Director Could Go to Jail for Starting Russia Investigation

President Donald Trump quoted a conservative radio host who appeared on Fox & FriendsMonday morning for an attack on former CIA director John Brennan. The slamming of Brennan appeared to be in response to him challenging Republican leadership Sunday following Trump’s “demand” for the Justice Department to investigate whether his campaign was “infiltrated or surveilled” for “political purposes” or if any Obama administration officials had directed such an inquiry.

The president, who often cites information he’s viewed on Fox News’ morning program, took three tweets to sum up the accusations made by Dan Bongino about Brennan, who the former Secret Service agent called “disgraced” and “largely responsible for the destruction of Americans faith in the intelligence community…”

“John Brennan is panicking. He has disgraced himself, he has disgraced the Country, he has disgraced the entire Intelligence Community,” Trump tweeted citing Bongino. “He is the one man who is largely responsible for the destruction of American’s faith in the Intelligence Community and in some people at the top of the FBI. Brennan started this entire debacle about President Trump.”

Trump continued, quoting Bongino: “We now know that Brennan had detailed knowledge of the (phony) Dossier…he knows about the Dossier, he denies knowledge of the Dossier, he briefs the Gang of 8 on the Hill about the Dossier, which they then used to start an investigation about Trump. It is that simple. This guy is the genesis of this whole Debacle. This was a Political hit job, this was not an Intelligence Investigation. Brennan has disgraced himself, he’s worried about staying out of Jail.”

The president has in recent days increased his attacks on the special counsel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, exactly what one of his personal attorneys, Rudy Giuliani, said would happen at the one-year anniversary of Robert Mueller’s appointment.

Over the weekend, Trump referenced a New York Times report that detailed how his eldest child, Donald Trump Jr., had met with a representative for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in August 2016. Like a Russian lawyer who met with Trump Jr. and other campaign representatives two months prior, they too were offering to help the Trump campaign.

“The Witch Hunt finds no Collusion with Russia – so now they’re looking at the rest of the World. Oh’ great!” Trump tweeted Sunday.

[Yahoo News]

Trump Accuses FBI of Spying on His Campaign on Mueller Anniversary: ‘If So, This is Bigger Than Watergate!’

It has been 365 days since Robert Mueller was appointed to head up the special counsel investigation into Russia’s 2016 election-meddling campaign.

Trump took to Twitter to ring in the first year, by suggesting the FBI spied on his campaign. He referenced a story by Andrew McCarthy — who appeared on Fox & Friends earlier — in the National Review saying Barack Obamaopened an FBI investigation in 2016 that targeted the Trump campaign for suspicion of working with Russian cyber-espionage efforts. This comes after New York Times released a separate report detailing how the FBI was looking into Trump’s campaign ever since George Papadopoulos rambled about Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton during a chat with an Australian diplomat.

Trump’s tweet also comes after Rudy Giuliani appeared on Fox & Friends Thursday morning to speculate about the FBI placing a spy in the Trump campaign — which the lawyer said “would be the biggest scandal in the history of this town.”

Oh course, the since the investigation has prompted lingering questions about national security and the nature of Trump’s relationship with Russia, the president also took a moment to mark the anniversary:

[Mediaite]

Reality

The tweet refers to the claim, increasingly popular among Trump’s most ardent defenders, that the FBI had a spy in his campaign. The theory was given more fuel Wednesday by a line in a New York Times story, which said “at least one government informant met several times with Mr. Page and Mr. Papadopoulos,” referring to Trump campaign aides Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.

After the Times piece was posted, Breitbart News ran a headline that said “Leakers to NYT Confirm FBI Ran Spy Operation Against Trump Campaign.” On Wednesday night, Trump’s newest lawyer Rudy Giuliani was talking about it on Fox News, telling Laura Ingraham that the FBI “possibly plac[ed] a spy in the Trump campaign.”

Then on Thursday morning former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy appeared on Fox & Friends to talk about the informant, which he’d previously written about for The National Review.

“What happened here is that they did not have a criminal predicate to open an investigation on Trump,” McCarthy said. “And what they did was use their counterintelligence powers covertly to investigate the Trump campaign, during the stretch run of the campaign, under circumstance where they did not have evidence that anyone had actually committed a crime.”

Giuliani also appeared on Fox & Friends Thursday morning to stoke the flames, saying that if the FBI had spied on the Trump campaign, “That would be the biggest scandal in the history of this town, at least involving law enforcement.” This morning’s Trump tweet confirms that the intended audience for that statement was watching.

1 … 8 9 10 11 12 … 14