Tag: media
Tulsi Gabbard's 'Russiagate' Conspiracy Crumbles In Fox Interview

Tulsi Gabbard's 'Russiagate' Conspiracy Crumbles In Fox Interview

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s claim that former President Barack Obama directed a “treasonous conspiracy” against President Donald Trump took a hit on Tuesday night when she was asked the most straightforward question possible about her allegations during a Fox News interview. Her response demonstrates how painfully little she’s actually found — and how far over their skis the MAGAverse and Trump administration have gotten in response to her absurd charges.

In mid-July, as Trump sought to defuse a right-wing revolt over his administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case, Gabbard claimed to have uncovered and referred to the Justice Department documents which she said showed that at the end of Obama’s second term, his administration attempted “to subvert the will of the American people and enact what was essentially a years-long coup.” Her ridiculous and revisionist claims were widely touted by Fox stars and other MAGA propagandists eager to help Trump change the story from his former friend, the deceased sex offender Epstein.

Attorney General Pam Bondi has reportedly ordered federal prosecutors to launch a grand jury probe in response to Gabbard’s referral. Responding to that news on Monday night, Fox host Sean Hannity suggested that the probe’s targets could include Obama, former FBI Director James Comey, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, and former special counsel Jack Smith. Fox legal analyst Gregg Jarrett replied that “those are appropriate names,” adding that “dozens, I think, could be charged as co-conspirators,” including former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

But a “telling exchange” on Tuesday night between Gabbard and Fox’s Laura Ingraham, first flagged by CNN’s Aaron Blake, shows that what Gabbard considers the most damning revelations of Obama’s malfeasance were actually reviewed years ago by the GOP-led Senate Select Intelligence Committee, whose membership at the time included current Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Ingraham asked Gabbard: “Now, director, you said there was irrefutable evidence that Obama was the mastermind of this intelligence manipulation and the perpetuation of the Russia hoax. What is that irrefutable evidence for our viewers tonight?”

Gabbard replied that the documents she had uncovered showed “how President Obama directed that a National Security Council meeting be called to talk about Russia, that the report that came out of that meeting was filled with tasks that were delivered by James Clapper's assistant to John Brennan and to other elements of the intelligence community — John Brennan was the head of the CIA at the time — all saying per the president's direction, per the president's order.”

She continued:

TULSI GABBARD: And very specifically, they were tasked to create an intelligence assessment that detailed how Moscow tried to influence the election. Not “if,” but “how.” And this was the beginning of this manufactured intelligence assessment where they knowingly wrote things in this assessment that were false, and they knew they were false. They knew that they were basing it on discredited intelligence or documents like the Steele dossier that was politically motivated and that they knew was false, and this was how they came up with — with the Russia hoax that was then weaponized and used to try to delegitimize the president, President Trump, and to try to ultimately enact this years-long coup throughout his entire four years of his first administration.

But Gabbard’s discoveries aren’t sinister — they aren’t even new.

The 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment that Obama ordered is the subject of the fourth volume of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s bipartisan Russia investigation, a 158-page document published in April 2020.

That report states that at a December 6, 2016, meeting of the National Security Council, “President Obama instructed Director Clapper to have the Intelligence Community prepare a comprehensive report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.” This was apparently such a banal request that it drew no commentary from the report’s authors.

The committee also reviewed the assessment itself and concluded that, far from some sort of malicious attack on Trump, it was “coherent and well-constructed,” featuring “proper analytic tradecraft,” and its authors experienced “no politically motivated pressure to reach specific conclusions.” From the report:

From a report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, "Russian active Measures and Interference in the 2016 U.S. Election, Volume 4: Review of the Intelligence Community Assessment"

Then-committee Chair Richard Burr (R-NC) issued a statement alongside the report in which he said, “The ICA reflects strong tradecraft, sound analytical reasoning, and proper justification of disagreement in the one analytical line where it occurred,” adding, “The Committee found no reason to dispute the Intelligence Community’s conclusions.”

Gabbard’s position appears to be that asking for and receiving intelligence showing that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election on Trump’s behalf is an attack on Trump by definition — one that Bondi now seeks to criminalize. But the Justice Department and the Senate Select Intelligence Committee under Rubio’s leadership came to the same conclusion.

We’ve seen all this before. Fox — and Hannity in particular — spent years promising viewers that investigations into the Russia probe were about to finally send all their political enemies to prison, only for those efforts to come up short or fall apart.

Unfortunately, Trump’s second-term appointees to top law enforcement and intelligence leadership are people like Gabbard — conspiracy theorists who are in positions of power because they’ve demonstrated to the president, through myriad Fox News appearances, their willingness to put his desires above all else.

So here we are, doing it all over again.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

migrants

Report Reveals Heinous Conditions Inside Migrant Detention Camps

From vomiting blood to losing a pregnancy, immigrants being held in detention centers across the United States are reporting traumatic conditions.

A monthslong investigation led by Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia found “510 credible reports of human rights abuses.”

According to the report, a young girl held in custody with her undocumented mother was hospitalized multiple times. And at one point, the girl, who is a U.S. citizen, was allegedly vomiting blood.

“Just give the girl a cracker,” the Customs and Border Patrol agent reportedly said to the mother begging for care.

In another case, men being held in a Miami facility were shot at with “what appeared to be pellets or rubber bullets” when they flooded a toilet to protest being denied food, water, and medical attention.

Claims like these fill the pages of Ossoff’s report, including pregnant women being forced to sleep on the floor because of overcrowding.

“She was left in a room, alone, to miscarry without water or medical assistance for over 24 hours,” the report said of one woman.

Daily Kos contacted ICE officials for comment regarding Ossoff’s report. While they acknowledged our request, we did not receive a response to the claims.

President Donald Trump has pushed for mass deportations and immigrant raids since the start of his second term, and while his administration has partnered with detention center giants such as Geo Group and CoreCivic in an attempt to quickly build more detention facilities, the efforts can only go so far.

And with Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” bolstering a shiny new budget for ICE, $45 billion was also allocated toward building even more facilities.

Similarly, immigrants deported to prisons abroad are sharing their own abusive situations, including hundreds of Venezuelan men who were deported to El Salvador’s CECOT prison.

But despite the reports, the Trump administration maintains that the only people being deported are dangerous criminals—and therefore are deserving of these abuses.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Who Is Paying For Trump's Gold-Encrusted White House Ballroom?

Who Is Paying For Trump's Gold-Encrusted White House Ballroom?

President Donald Trump garnered a wave of social media shaming after video emerged of him walking along the roof of the West Wing and examining the White House grounds from above as he plans construction on a new $200 million ballroom off the East Wing.

CBS News Reporter Jennifer Jacobs was among reporters catching Trump as he toured the grounds from above, accompanied by architect James McCrery.

"Extremely rare sight: a president taking questions from reporters from the roof of the West Wing," Jacobs reported. "Trump was up there to assess the White House grounds as he plans new construction"

"'Taking a little walk,' he told reporters," she continued. "He was making plans for something that he said 'goes with the ballroom which is on the other side.' He jokingly answered one question about what he wants to build: 'Nuclear missiles.'"

“‘Just another way to spend my money for the country,' he told us,” Jacobs wrote on X, describing the president's shouted answers to the press as a "gaggle."

The Hill reports the president is claiming the construction of the ballroom “will be covered by Trump and other donors,” but critics said on X that Trump has provided no proof that he is using his personal money to finance the construction.

“… there is no evidence the President is using personal funds to pay for this project,” said one commenter.

Trump also told reporters: "Anything I do is financed by me so it's contributed — just like my salary is contributed, but nobody ever talks about that."

But other critics questioned the purpose of the construction. “Trump’s not building for the country; he’s building for the cameras,” said one. “Ballrooms don’t solve inflation. Chandeliers don’t lower healthcare bills.”

Common Dreams writer Jessee MacKinnon called the plan a “spectacle, financed by national rot.”

“The timing is not subtle. It arrives alongside his ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill,’ a federal budget that slashes Medicaid, food stamps, public housing, and climate programs, all while inflating the national deficit past $40 trillion,” wrote MacKinnon. “… We are not witnessing innovation. We are watching reruns of Versailles.”

Last week, ‘Table for Five’ host Abby Phillip called the project inconsistent with the Trump administration’s alleged position on government inefficiency.

“They're currently … cutting [the budget] in the big, beautiful bill and Medicaid … and then they're saying, on the other hand, ‘let's renovate the Oval Office, let's renovate the East Room, let's renovate the Rose Garden.' I mean, it's hard to understand,” Phillip said.

Online critics remained skeptical that taxpayers aren’t somehow footing the bill.

“This man’s wealth has doubled since taking office in 2017. The self-dealing is ceaseless,” one critic wrote.

"Me describing a snowman in a game of charades," posted CNN reporter Andrew Kaczynski alongside a video of Trump gesticulating with his hands.

Watch the videos here or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

The Epstein Diversion: Trump's Grand Jury Head Fake

The Epstein Diversion: Trump's Grand Jury Head Fake

Faced with a firestorm over his administration's broken promise to provide “full transparency” on all the materials related to Jeffrey Epstein—compounded by the Wall Street Journal’s revelation of a vulgar letter he contributed to a notebook compiled for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003—Donald Trump has now agreed to make public the entirety of the Epstein file.

Just kidding.

Trump, in fact, is attempting a cynical and hollow gambit that shouldn’t fool even the most credulous of his supporters.

He directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to seek the release of “all pertinent grand jury testimony” from the Ghislaine Maxwell prosecution, tried in 2021 after Epstein committed suicide while awaiting trial. He is attempting to position himself as a pro-transparency advocate but is content to leave the decision to the court.

The Justice Department motion—which the deputy attorney general signed last week and which Bondi then championed on Fox News—promises the faithful that Trump is “demanding full transparency.” In reality, it’s a ham-handed diversion tactic, carefully designed to reveal nothing at all.

There are two independent and fatal defects in the DOJ motion that ensure it’s a head fake.

First, the motion has no chance of producing what everyone is waiting to see. At Trump’s behest, Blanche and company submitted a short filing to the Southern District of New York court overseeing Maxwell’s case, requesting the release of all “pertinent” grand jury materials. (“Pertinent” is itself a tell—the motion is hedged and lawyered; that word is not part of Trump’s normal working vocabulary.)

Crucially, the Maxwell prosecution had nothing to do with Epstein’s sleazy friends or alleged clients. That’s not how the indictment was structured. The SDNY team, led by Maurene Comey (Jim Comey’s daughter, whom Bondi fired last week), brought the case more than a decade after the Wall Street Journal reported the DOJ had reviewed the Epstein materials. Their clear focus was Maxwell and Epstein himself.

The supporting players in the indictment were Epstein’s associates, led by Maxwell, who helped him locate, groom, and abuse young girls—along with the victims themselves. The charge required only that some commercial sex act was contemplated or intended. The sex acts referenced in the indictment involved Epstein alone.

What Comey successfully moved to keep under seal were the grand jury materials that might be needed if the government were to bring a new case against Maxwell—either the one count on which she wasn’t convicted or in the (highly unlikely) event her convictions are reversed on appeal.

That’s why the grand jury materials Trump now says he wants disclosed are completely unrelated to the information about Epstein’s circle that MAGA is clamoring for—starting with the infamous 50th birthday notebook and Trump’s own ribald contribution.

Ah yes, the notebook—the term that has become shorthand for the real object of public fascination. According to the Wall Street Journal, DOJ officials reviewed a small, handwritten book allegedly recovered during the FBI’s 2006 investigation into Epstein—three years before his sweetheart plea deal in Florida.

That probe, which ran from 2003 to 2006, generated a reported 300 gigabytes of material—equivalent to approximately 150 million pages.

There is likely additional material related to Trump in that vast trove. We know, for example, that he flew on Epstein’s private plane at least seven times.

That’s not to say there is any information tying him to the actual sex trafficking.

Which is exactly what makes it so strange—and so ill-advised—that Trump has opted to go all in on a claim that is near certain to collapse: that the Wall Street Journal fabricated the story about the birthday letter. (My Substack from yesterday deals at length with the misguidedness of that suit.)

The material MAGA is clamoring for—names, logs, financial records, and whatever “wonderful secrets” (as Trump put it in the sign-off to his letter) Epstein’s trove might contain—is not part of the Maxwell grand jury file.

The motion poses no prospect of giving the chunk of Trump’s base deeply concerned about Epstein’s conduct what it is demanding.

More cynically still, Trump has structured things so he can claim he did his best—but that the court simply wouldn’t let him satisfy the MAGA faithful. His stance of leaving it all up to the court’s decision is a bad joke, given that he has treated the judiciary with more contempt and defiance than any president in history.

In fact, this is part of a broader strategy: appear to want the court to grant the motion while actually expecting—and being perfectly content with—the opposite. If the court rejects the request, Trump can throw up his hands and tell the base, “See? I tried.”

That leads to the second obvious problem with the Trump/Bondi gambit.

Even if the SDNY court were inclined to entertain the motion—which it almost certainly is not—Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure presents an imposing barrier.

Rule 6(e) governs the secrecy of grand jury materials. It strongly disfavors unsealing and provides six narrow exceptions for when disclosure is allowed. None of them includes “public interest,” “public outcry,” or “political meltdown.” You can’t pierce grand jury secrecy just because the public is in a frenzy or a president is under fire.

In its filing, DOJ cites a single case in which a court hinted the six exceptions might not be exhaustive. But that case involved a matter of keen historical interest—and the court expressly distinguished that from political or public interest of the sort DOJ now appeals to. Even then, the court declined to unseal the materials based on the extra-statutory argument.

In sum, DOJ’s precedent provides scant basis for unsealing the grand jury record—and the rules themselves provide none.

And that, of course, is the point. Trump and his team know the motion is a loser. They know it won’t result in disclosures. They’re counting on that.

The goal isn’t to win—it’s to pretend to try. Trump wants to tell his base he pulled every lever to get to the bottom of the Epstein affair, only to be thwarted by the Deep State, the Swamp, the corrupt judiciary, or whichever villain suits this week’s narrative.

The problem? MAGA isn’t demanding transparency in the Maxwell prosecution. They want names. They want proof of the global pedophilia ring they believe was run by Epstein and his powerful friends. They want the notebook. None of that is in the SDNY grand jury file.

This is Trump’s gambit in a nutshell: pretend DOJ is declassifying the “good stuff,” knowing it isn’t; wait for judicial rejection; and reframe himself as the truth-teller blocked by the forces of darkness.

Then, when the well-intended gesture fails, Trump can pivot: “I tried. Enough is enough. Now let’s move on.”

It’s a flimsy con from a lifelong con artist. And given the intensity of MAGA’s obsession with Epstein’s secrets, it’s unlikely to do anything to stem the escalating furor.

Harry Litman is a former United States Attorney and the executive producer and host of the Talking Feds podcast. He has taught law at UCLA, Berkeley, and Georgetown and served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Clinton Administration. Please consider subscribing to Talking Feds on Substack.

Reprinted with permission from Substack.

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