"Smart-Ass"

Roger Stone Says He Visited the Ecuadorian Embassy in London Where Julian Assange Is In Hiding

The former Trump campaign advisor told The Daily Beast that he had dropped by the embassy and left his business card for the WikiLeaks founder.

Nico Hines
01.31.18 6:29 PM ET

LONDON—Former Trump presidential campaign advisor Roger Stone paid a visit to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on Wednesday where Julian Assange has been holed up for the last five years.

Stone is in Britain for a short speaking tour that will include addresses at the Oxford and Cambridge Unions. He told the Daily Beast that he had taken time out to drop by the embassy where Assange has been in hiding from an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct.

The connection between Stone and Assange has become a focal point in the investigation of links between Russia and the Trump campaign after it emerged that Stone had a communications backchannel with WikiLeaks, an organization described by the CIA as a “hostile intelligence service” “abetted by Russia.”

Stone said he had traveled to the embassy in Central London. He said he had not seen Assange in person but left his contact details for the controversial founder of WikiLeaks.

“I didn’t go and see him, I dropped off a card to be a smart ass,” he told The Daily Beast.

More: https://www.thedailybeast.com/roger-stone-says-he-visited-the-ecuadorian-embassy-in-london-where-julian-assange-is-in-hiding/

Huh. Rep. Quigley says the Russians “hacked into 36 States’ boards of elections successfully.” Number we’ve seen previously is 21 states, unless I’ve missed something.

https://twitter.com/LoopEmma/status/958812486190424066

Exclusive: Trump asked Rosenstein if he was 'on my team'

By Pamela Brown, Evan Perez and Laura Jarrett, CNN

Washington (CNN)Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein visited the White House in December seeking President Donald Trump's help. The top Justice Department official in the Russia investigation wanted Trump's support in fighting off document demands from House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes.

But the President had other priorities ahead of a key appearance by Rosenstein on the Hill, according to sources familiar with the meeting. Trump wanted to know where the special counsel's Russia investigation was heading. And he wanted to know whether Rosenstein was "on my team."

The episode is the latest to come to light portraying a President whose inquiries sometimes cross a line that presidents traditionally have tried to avoid when dealing with the Justice Department, for which a measure of independence is key. The exchange could raise further questions about whether Trump was seeking to interfere in the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is looking into potential collusion by the Trump campaign with Russia and obstruction of justice by the White House.

At the December meeting, the deputy attorney general appeared surprised by the President's questions, the sources said. He demurred on the direction of the Russia investigation, which Rosenstein has ultimate authority over now that his boss, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, has recused himself. And he responded awkwardly to the President's "team" request, the sources said.

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/31/politics/donald-trump-rod-rosenstein-december-meeting/index.html

.@DevinNunes wont deny he had his staff work w/ White House on "attack the FBI" memo. Congrats, dude: U just waived Congressional immunity. To be indicted for conspiracy, u dont need to know what the other hand is doing. This guy is risking jail to stop Mueller. What's he hiding?

https://twitter.com/kurteichenwald/status/958777914698366977

There is a time to come and a time to go. This is the right time, for me, to leave politics and return to the justice system. Full statement here ?

https://twitter.com/TGowdySC/status/958750202206318592

House Republican committee chairs who aren't seeking reelection. (A ninth, Rob Bishop, plans to serve one more term if reelected this year.)

https://twitter.com/lachlan/status/958752384905334784

Team Trump Just Blew Its Cover

By John R. Schindler • 01/30/18

In a recent column I noted how President Donald Trump seemingly can bend time in a near-supernatural fashion. Our commander-in-chief’s “fine-honed ability to make days seem like weeks and weeks seem like months, even years,” I observed, has the remarkable effect of nullifying even grave mistakes by jam-packing them into short periods of time so “they blur into each other inside the news cycle and soon melt into the morass of Trumpism.”

Even by Trumpian standards, yesterday was one for the record books. “Cover” is an espionage term that means a spy is pretending to be something he’s not to do his job: most often a diplomat, but there are many covers. This features prominently in spy novels and films yet in practice is frequently mundane and far from exciting. At root, cover exists because you will quickly be unmasked and probably arrested if you let everyone know you’re not the insurance salesman you pretend to be, rather a spy. Cover exists because it must.

Yesterday, after months of slippage, Team Trump finally blew its cover, exposing that it possesses a strange and unsettling fealty to the Kremlin for which there is no longer any benign explanation. Any one of yesterday’s bombshell developments would overtake the news cycle for weeks in any normal White House, yet this administration is anything but normal.

First, it was reported in the Swiss media, then picked up by The Daily Beast, that President Trump’s inner circle can be firmly linked to Russian intelligence. For months, speculation has swirled about the June 9, 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan between top members of Team Trump and a Russian delegation led by Natalya Veselnitskaya, a Moscow attorney with high-level Kremlin connections. Donald Trump, Jr. and Paul Manafort (who is currently under indictment) attended the meeting, which they implausibly insisted was about Russian adoptions.

More: http://observer.com/2018/01/sanctions-nunes-memo-reveal-donald-trump-sean-hannity-ties-to-russia/

CIA director Pompeo met top Russian spies

Washington (CNN)CIA Director Mike Pompeo recently met with his Russian counterparts when they traveled to the US, according to US ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman.

Russian media is reporting those who met with Pompeo may have included the country's sanctioned spy chief, Sergey Naryshkin.

Talks between top US and Russian intelligence officials occurred just days before Pompeo once again warned that Russia will attempt to meddle in the 2018 US midterm elections and the Trump administration released a sweeping list of prominent Russian political and business figures in defiance of Moscow.

While neither US nor Russian officials explicitly said that Pompeo and Naryshkin met, both sides confirmed that talks occurred between intelligence counterparts and Antonov said that Naryshkin made a trip to the US for discussions.

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/30/politics/cia-director-pompeo-russia-spies/index.html

EXCLUSIVE: Julian Assange really thought he was messaging Sean Hannity when he offered up “news” on the leading Democrat investigating Trump-Russia.
https://twitter.com/thedailybeast/status/958147143939903489

Julian Assange Thought He Was Messaging Sean Hannity When He Offered ‘News’ on Democrat Investigating Trump-Russia

The head of Wikileaks told @SeanHannity__ to seek ‘other channels’ for information on Sen. Mark Warner. Turns out ‘@SeanHannity__’ was a woman in Texas.

At about 4 a.m. on Saturday morning, a couple hours after she started pretending to be Sean Hannity, Dell Gilliam says she got a direct message back from the head of Wikileaks, Julian Assange. That’s when she said she “kind of panicked.”

“I felt bad. He really thought he was talking to Sean Hannity,” said Gilliam.

Gilliam, a technical writer from Texas, was bored with the flu when she created @SeanHannity__ early Saturday morning. The Fox News real account was temporarily deleted after cryptically tweeting the phrase “Form Submission 1649 | #Hannity” on Friday night. Twitter said the account had been “briefly compromised,” according to a statement provided to The Daily Beast, and was back up on Sunday morning.

When Gilliam made the account, she did not expect to be setting up a meeting over “other channels” for Assange to send “some news about Warner,” an apparent reference to Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.

More and worth the read: https://www.thedailybeast.com/julian-assange-thought-he-was-messaging-sean-hannity-when-he-offered-news-on-democrat-investigating-trump-russia?ref=home

Breaking: "It is a sad day.. today this committee voted to put the President's personal interest, perhaps their own political interest above the national interest" - Rep. Adam Schiff on House decision to release Nunes memo:
https://twitter.com/TheBeatWithAri/status/958118719154245632

Breaking: GOP have "opened an investigation of the FBI and the Department of Justice" - Rep. Adam Schiff, "we learned about that for the first time today"
https://twitter.com/TheBeatWithAri/status/958119658426720256

This is "a charade" designed to "circle the wagons around the White House and distract from the Russia probe" - Rep. Adam Schiff:
https://twitter.com/TheBeatWithAri/status/958120976058896385