factfinder_77
factfinder_77's JournalCNN. Flynn will turn over some docs to sentalte intel cmte
hopefully we will get some more info soon
Hillary Clinton Is Furious. And Resigned. And Funny. And Worried
Source: NYMAG
The surreal post-election life of the woman who would have been president
Piecing together what happened, with six months of perspective, Clinton says she thinks she underestimated WikiLeaks and the impact that had, because I thought it was so silly. Those hacked emails, dripped out over weeks, says Clinton, were innocuous, boring, inconsequential. And each one was played like it was some breathless flash. And so you got Trump, in the last month of the campaign, talking about WikiLeaks something like 164 times; youve got all his minions out there, youve got the right-wing media just blowing it up. Youve got Google searches off the charts.
Read more: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/05/hillary-clinton-life-after-election.html
Russia Duped Bernie Fans via Facebook, San Diego Dems Told
Source: TIMES of SAN DIEGO
Oliver Mitov was dispatched by the Kremlin to get Bernie Sanders fans to vote third-party in the November election, write in the Democratic primary loser for president or not vote at all.
But investigative journalist John Mattes, describing how fake stories on Facebook helped defeat Hillary Clinton, isnt sure who Mitov is. Mattes said 8.7 million shares, reactions and comments on Sanders-backing Facebook pages were spawned by bogus anti-Clinton attacks. That compares with just under 7.4 million shares, reactions and comments connected to legitimate news sources.
He may be a bot. He may be a person [or four]. He may be living in Macedonia, laughing, Mattes told a rapt audience of 90 Thursday night in Hillcrest.
But Mitovs thousands of posts and similar ones from Albania and elsewhere duped just enough of the 13 million Sanders supporters to hand the election to Donald Trump and prove Russia could hack American democracy, said the 66-year-old resident of Pacific Beach.
A major Sanders organizer in Southern California himself, Mattes admitted that we were played.
Grass-roots advocates of the Vermont senator did the best they could to identify fake postings that depicted Clinton in negative and shocking ways, Mattes said, but it wasnt enough.
Two days after being cited on MSNBCs The Rachel Maddow Show, Mattes gave San Diego Democrats for Equality a briefing on how Russia continues to exploit Facebook
Read more: http://timesofsandiego.com/politics/2017/03/23/russia-duped-bernie-fans-via-facebook-san-diego-dems-told/
Donald Trump shoved Montenegro's prime minister at NATO meeting
Source: USATODAY
During his first joint meeting with North Atlantic Treaty Organization leaders, President Trump on Thursday appeared to push aside the prime minister of Montenegro.
In a video of the interaction, the president comes up from behind and then shoves Montenegro's Dusko Markovic to get to the front of the group of world leaders. Trump then adjusts his jacket
Markovic appears to be taken aback at first, but after seeing that it was Trump, he smiles and pats Trump on the back.
When asked about the incident, Trump spokesman Sean Spicer said, "I have not seen the video."
He also noted that the standing order for the photo op was pre-determined, as usual.
Twitter, as always, had some thoughts
https://twitter.com/frugieblog/status/867764394528301057
https://twitter.com/JesseKellyDC/status/867764634241073156
Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/05/25/president-trump-shoved-montenegro-prime-minister-nato/102144808/
Mitch McConnell linked super PAC took $2.5 million from a pro-Putin Ukrainian businessman
https://twitter.com/funder/status/866428069275480065
Priebus to make early return to Washington, job status in question
Source: Fox News
Reince Priebus is making an early return to the White House after traveling with President Trump on his first overseas trip, fueling speculation that the administration is in a crisis and that his position as chief of staff could be in peril.
The White House confirmed to FOX Business that Priebus would be heading back to Washington D.C. after the stop in Saudi Arabia, part of the presidents visit to the Middle East, and insisted this was always part of the administrations plan.
Natalie Strom, assistant press secretary at the White House, told FOX Business, It has always been planned for Reince to return to Washington following the Saudi Arabia portion of the trip. It's a big week in D.C. for the president's agenda with our budget release coming soon and discussions continuing on tax reform, so he's needed back at home for that.
When asked which other officials would be coming home, Strom said, Only a few senior administration officials are staying on for the whole trip, which is typical for these kinds of trips. They're attending the stops that most pertain to their responsibilities. Off the top of my head I know that Secretary [of State] Tillerson and General McMaster won't be on for the entirety."
Still, the timing of Priebuss departure is questionable due to the speculation surrounding the job security of his own post, as well as other White House officials including Press Secretary Sean Spicer.
As FOX Business reported Friday, Priebuss position in the White House is once again in jeopardy as National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney are a few of the candidates under consideration to replace him if the president decides to go that route, according to sources close to the situation.
On Friday, the White House did not deny the possibility that Priebus could be replaced
The rumor has been going on for months and it hasnt happened yet, Strom told FOX Business.
While the administration may believe its typical for some officials to stay and others to head home, according to experts outside the White House, its unusual for a chief of staff to head home early on such an important trip.
Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/2017/05/21/priebus-to-make-early-return-to-washington-job-status-in-question.html
Louise Mensch is among a number of bloggers offering a mix of true and inaccurate stories
Louise Mensch is among a number of bloggers offering a mix of true and inaccurate stories, forcing readers to discern truth for themselves
anti-Trump blogger Louise Mensch, who scooped mainstream reporters earlier this year, excited her followers over the weekend with a nonsensical 92-word post claiming that a sealed indictment intended by the justice department to form the basis of Mr Trumps impeachment had already been granted against the president over his links to Russia.
Skeptics noted that criminal indictments are not granted; that impeachment is initiated by Congress, not an executive agency; and that Mensch appeared to have misunderstood the supremacy clause of the US constitution, which she incorrectly said meant Trump must be impeached before he could be prosecuted.
This new reality, in which purveyors of fake news occasionally report verified information, reminds us, once again, of how difficult it is to be news literate in our information ecosystem, said Jonathan Anzalone, a lecturer in journalism at New Yorks Stony Brook University.
Undeterred, Mensch bullishly said on Twitter on Monday that mainstream reporters know they are being scooped on the story of the century.
In a series of messages to the Guardian, Mensch denied that she had posted inaccurate stories. I believe in a free press. People both can and should write whatever they want, said Mensch.
The situation mirrors one, noted by BuzzFeed News, that now surrounds far-right bloggers supporting Trump, such as Mike Cernovich. Having consistently published false stories and championed ludicrous conspiracy theories such as the Pizzagate paedophilia myth, Cernovich was apparently rewarded by sources close to Trump with real disclosures.
Cernovich was first to report that Susan Rice, Barack Obamas national security adviser, was involved in unmasking the names of Americans in transcripts of foreign communications intercepted by US intelligence. The report was later matched by Bloomberg News and has become a source of intense controversy among conservatives.
Asked for comment, Cernovich sent a link to a post he published in December that aimed to distance himself from Pizzagate despite his prominent role in promoting the debunked conspiracy theory.
The primary challenge that Mensch and Cernovich pose is that they take strong political positions and have drawn a number of likeminded followers who want to believe the information that they share, regardless of its veracity, said Anzalone. Confirmation bias and motivated reasoning divert them from the search for facts.
The latest errors by Mensch, a former Conservative member of the UK parliament, were in keeping with past falsehoods she has posted online, including that the 2014 riots in Ferguson, Missouri, were funded by Russia, that the rightwing blogger Andrew Breitbart was assassinated at the order of Vladimir Putin, and that dozens of public figures are currently Russian agents.
Still, her weekend post caused a sensation among online readers desperately seeking signs of Trumps imminent downfall. It was shared thousands of times on Twitter and Facebook, including by users with strong followings, such as the media professor Jeff Jarvis and the Blink-182 singer Tom DeLonge. Mensch was previously praised for her work on the topic by Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor who taught both Obama and the US supreme courts chief justice, John Roberts.
I do not expect to hit 100% in terms of accuracy but I do hope, when all is said and done, to be over 80%
Claude Taylor
And Menschs post was difficult to dismiss outright because she and her co-author, Claude Taylor, had earlier reported a pair of details from the investigations into Trumps alleged links with Russia that were later confirmed by major mainstream news outlets.
On the eve of Novembers election, Mensch was first to report US officials had been granted a warrant by the secret foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court to look into connections between Trumps campaign and Russia. Over the following months, her reporting was followed by outlets such as the Guardian, the BBC and the Washington Post.
Mensch told the Guardian that her reporting has been proven accurate in advance over and over again, not merely on the Fisa warrant story.
Taylor, a former official in Bill Clintons White House, reported on Twitter on 29 April that grand jurors were considering the FBIs findings on possible Trump-Russia links, and went on to specify that one grand jury was sitting in the eastern district of Virginia. CNN later reported that grand jury subpoenas from that jurisdiction had indeed been issued to associates of Michael Flynn, Trumps disgraced former national security adviser.
Yet Mensch promptly undermined this reporting with a totally inaccurate follow-up. On 6 May, Mensch told readers she had verified independently that two mysterious-seeming federal court cases one in New York City, the other in eastern Virginia were nascent prosecutions related to Trump. Taylor promoted the post on his Twitter account, which has gained a cult following among some anti-Trump readers.
When informed by readers that publicly available dockets showed there was nothing mysterious about the cases, and they had nothing to do with Trump the Virginia case concerned guns seized by federal agents from a woman in Fairfax, while the New York case was an unrelated $10m lawsuit Mensch appeared unfazed. A tweet linking to the discredited post remained pinned at the top of her Twitter account.
Taylor said in an email that independent or citizen journalists should be held accountable for how accurate their reporting turned out to be. Speaking only for myself, I do not expect to hit 100% in terms of accuracy but I do hope, when all is said and done, to be over 80% roughly stated, he said.
Paula Poindexter, an associate professor in journalism at the University of Texas, said: This is a reminder that theres a critical need for news literacy and critical thinking skills, so people of all ages have the tools to distinguish between legitimate news and fake news and we can begin to restore the publics trust in the press again.
Such was impact of Menschs 6 May post that Senator Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, used it as the basis of an incendiary claim during a CNN interview on 10 May that a second grand jury looking into Trump-Russia links was separately under way in New York.
When asked whether Markey had confirmed this to be true, an aide to the senator told the Guardian that he was simply referring though not by name to Menschs post and two related articles published by Palmer Report, a leftwing site whose record for accuracy has also come under fire.
A spokeswoman later emailed to say that Markeys remarks had been erroneous and that he apologized for causing confusion. Senator Markey believes it is of the utmost importance that solid facts and unimpeachable information are the foundation for all investigations into this matter, said the spokeswoman.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/may/16/fake-news-sites-reports-facts-louise-mensch
NYT: Trump told russians that firing nut job comey eased great pressure from probe
Source: NYT
WASHINGTON President Trump told Russian officials in the Oval Office this month that firing the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, had relieved great pressure on him, according to a document summarizing the meeting.
I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job, Mr. Trump said, according to the document, which was read to The New York Times by an American official. I faced great pressure because of Russia. Thats taken off.
Mr. Trump added, Im not under investigation.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/us/politics/trump-russia-comey.html?_r=0
Trump is doubling down on Comey attacks and saying DAG Rosenstein is a big reason he fired Comey.
https://twitter.com/yashar/status/865303557733572609US spies heard Russian intelligence agent vowing to target Clinton: report
Source: The Hill
U.S. spies reportedly heard a Russian military intelligence officer bragging about his organization planning to target Hillary Clinton in May 2016.The officer told a colleague that GRU would cause havoc in America's presidential election, Time reported Thursday.
The officer reportedly described the intelligence agency's effort as retribution for what Russian President Vladimir Putin considered Clinton's influence campaign against him while serving as secretary of State. Senior U.S. intelligence officials told Time that American spies transcribed the conversation and sent it to headquarters for analysis.
Time reported that an official document based on the raw intelligence was then circulated."We didn't really understand the context of it until much later," a senior U.S. intelligence official said
Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/news/334041-us-spies-heard-russian-intel-vowing-to-hit-clinton-report?amp
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