The Clinton Scandals

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Central Command said its assessment "seeks to determine if there were any still-undetected civilian casualties in the ferocious firefight." US military officials told Reuters that Trump approved his first covert counterterrorism operation without sufficient intelligence, ground support, or adequate backup preparations. As a result, three officials said, the attacking SEAL team found itself dropping onto a reinforced Al Qaeda base defended by landmines, snipers, and a larger-than-expected contingent of heavily armed Islamist extremists.

US officials: Trump approved Yemen raid 'without sufficient intelligence' - Business Insider

One US marine dead, and a host of civilians, among which children.

Now, Do you think the Democrats are going to Benghazify this, that is exploit this to the hilt, convening 8 tax payer funded independent inquiries to drag it for as long as possible?

Hahahaha

And then to think that these 8 independent inquiries came up with nothing (not that this stopped the rightwingers from pretending otherwise), while an inquiry here might very well come up with something...

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If this was a Clinton scandal, it wouldn't be out of the headlines for a second. Amazing stuff..

The biggest election-related scandal since Watergate occurred last year, and it has largely disappeared from the political-media landscape of Washington.

According to the consensus assessment of US intelligence agencies, Russian intelligence, under the orders of Vladimir Putin, mounted an extensive operation to influence the 2016 campaign to benefit Donald Trump. This was a widespread covert campaign that included hacking Democratic targets and publishing swiped emails via WikiLeaks.

And it achieved its objectives. But the nation's capital remains under-outraged by this subversion. The congressional intelligence committees announced last month that they will investigate the Russian hacking and also examine whether there were any improper contacts between the Trump camp and Russia during the campaign. (A series of memos attributed to a former British counterintelligence officer included allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.)

Yet these behind-closed-doors inquiries have generated minimum media notice, and, overall, there has not been much outcry.

The Mysterious Disappearance of the Biggest Scandal in Washington | Mother Jones

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The Benghazi “scandal” and the ensuing investigations (all seven of them) were unspeakably ghoulish. From literally the moment Republicans realized Americans were under fire, they smelled a partisan attack (then–GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney made a political statement about it as the attacks were ongoing). When President Barack Obama won re-election anyhow, the political value of the Benghazi attacks migrated to Clinton, whom they rightly expected would be the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.
For four years, Republicans masked the naked political motivation for their Benghazi obsession with the blood of the dead. “Four Americans died” was a right-wing rallying cry until November 9.

A week after President Donald Trump took office, a U.S. Navy SEAL was killed in a botched raid of an Al Qaeda compound in Yemen, along with many civilians. It is perfectly reasonable to argue that Trump ought not be blamed for any particular aspect of the failure, apart from his decision to continue bad policy in Yemen. In dangerous parts of the world, people die. But by Republican standards, this should be a major, impeachment-worthy scandal. Unless there’s some arbitrary minimum number of U.S. casualties (greater than one but less than four) above which administrative heads should roll, there’s no standard by which Benghazi should have become the subject of a vast, conspiratorial inquest, but the botched raid in Yemen should not.

And yet, we are hearing no pieties about American lives from Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, no sense that the cause of the failure should be investigated, let alone that Trump’s role in it should be a major investigative focal point.

Never Believe the Republicans’ B.S. Ever Again | New Republic

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Of course you don't hear anything about this on talk radio or Breitbart or Fox, from The New Republic:

The real pay-to-play scandal of the 2016 race was in Trump’s campaign.
Apparently under pressure from the Justice Department, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has officially registered as a foreign agent for the Turkish government. According to the Associated Press, Flynn’s company Flynn Intel received $530,000 from Turkey last year for his lobbying efforts, which included trying to stir up opposition in Washington to Fethullah Gulen, the exiled nemesis of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. As the AP reports:

Flynn Intel arranged the meeting to discuss a technology developed by another Flynn Intel client. But after discussing the technology, the firm changed the subject to Gulen, pressuring the committee to hold congressional hearings to investigate the cleric, said a U.S. official with direct knowledge of Flynn Intel’s work. That request was rebuffed. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The official said Flynn Intel never revealed whom it was representing during the meeting. The October meeting came as Flynn was working on an op-ed promoting Turkey’s political and business affairs that was later published in The Hill, a Washington-based political newspaper. Flynn wrote that Turkey needed support and echoed Erdogan’s warnings about Gulen, whom he called a “shady” Turkish Muslim cleric living in Pennsylvania. Flynn argued that Gulen should not be given safe harbor in the U.S.

All these activities occurred while Flynn was working as an adviser to Trump, either as a presidential candidate or president-elect. During the election, Trump criticized his rival Hillary Clinton for alleged pay-to-play deals with foreign governments, citing her ties to the Clinton Foundation. But the Flynn case shows that a far more straightforward pay-to-play scandal was occurring closer to home.

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Sigh..

Perhaps Comey’s most surprising revelation was that Huma Abedin — Weiner’s wife and a top Clinton deputy — had made “a regular practice” of forwarding “hundreds and thousands” of Clinton messages to her husband, “some of which contain classified information.” Comey testified that Abedin had done this so that the disgraced former congressman could print them out for her boss. (Weiner’s laptop was seized after he came under criminal investigation for sex crimes, following a media report about his online relationship with a teenager.)

The New York Post plastered its story on the front page with a photo of an underwear-clad Weiner and the headline: “HARD COPY: Huma sent Weiner classified Hillary emails to print out.” The Daily News went with a similar front-page screamer: “HUMA ERROR: Sent classified emails to sext maniac Weiner.”

The problem: Much of what Comey said about this was inaccurate. Now the FBI is trying to figure out what to do about it. FBI officials have privately acknowledged that Comey misstated what Abedin did and what the FBI investigators found. On Monday, the FBI was said to be preparing to correct the record by sending a letter to Congress later this week. But that plan now appears on hold, with the bureau undecided about what to do.

Comey’s testimony on Huma Abedin was inaccurate - Business Insider

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Russians here as well..

FBI Director James Comey knew that a document crucial to the investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server was fake and created by Russian intelligence, but it played a large role in how he approached the Clinton email investigation, CNN reported Friday.
The purportedly fake document, first disclosed by The New York Times in late April and described in more detail by the Washington Post on Wednesday, described an email that was sent by Debbie Wasserman Schultz — then the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee — to an official at billionaire George Soros' Open Society Foundations (OSF).

The memo contained a summary of the email, in which Wasserman Schultz supposedly described to the OSF official how Lynch had privately assured a Clinton staffer during the campaign that the DOJ wouldn't take the email probe too far. Comey, whom President Donald Trump fired earlier this month amid the FBI's probe into Russia's election interference, apparently doubted the veracity of the memo early. But he told lawmakers about the document in his later briefings with them and did not imply that it could be fake, according to CNN.


Instead, he told them that he feared the document could leak and cast doubt on the credibility and independence of the FBI's email server probe — part of why he decided to bypass the DOJ and announce the findings of the investigation in an impromptu press conference last July.

James Comey acted on Russian intelligence he knew was fake: CNN - Business Insider

Soo:

• The Russians produce a fake document
  
• The FBI director is nevertheless worried that it will undermine the credibility of the FBI
  
• Why would that be? Because no doubt the right wing press would run away with it
  

Are there still people thinking that the Russians didn't influence the election outcome?

And that's simply because the rightwingers are too gullible and most of the right-wing press too unscrupulous, the end justifies the means, whatever it takes. See for instance how Sean Hannity still runs with the story that it was a democratic staffer who had leaked the Hillary emails, not the Russians, despite all evidence to the contrary..

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National security adviser H.R. McMaster has reportedly determined that Susan Rice, who served in his role during the Obama administration, did not do anything wrong amid accusations of “unmasking” the identities of Trump associates. Republican lawmakers are trying to conclude whether or not Rice “unmasked” the identities of Trump transition team members that were redacted in intelligence reports. Bloomberg on Thursday cited two intelligence officials saying that McMaster had found no evidence of wrong-doing.

McMaster thinks Susan Rice did nothing wrong: report | TheHill

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Remember Hillary's emails? By now they should know better, right?

Ivanka Trump used a personal email account to communicate with a member of President Trump’s administration, a watchdog group said Monday. American Oversight obtained documents through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that show Ivanka Trump, a senior White House adviser to her father, used a personal email account to contact Small Business Administration (SBA) Administrator Linda McMahon in February.

Watchdog: Ivanka Trump used personal email account for government business | TheHill

At least six White House advisers made use of private email accounts for government business, according to a New York Times report on Monday. The Times said that former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, former chief strategist Steve Bannon, and current advisers Gary Cohn and Stephen Miller all sent or received work-related emails from personal accounts, citing current and former White House officials. The news comes one day after Politico reported that adviser Jared Kushner sent or received about 100 emails from a private account from January through August. And a report from Newsweek on Monday stated that Trump's eldest daughter Ivanka Trump, a White House adviser since March, also used a private email address.

Six White House advisers reportedly used private email government business - Business Insider

Will the Republicans scream for an investigation, hound the perpetrators? Hahaha

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An old scandal resurfaces, Hillary sold 20% of the US Uranium to Russia in exchange for donations to her Foundation. A few facts:

• That deal involved a Canadian company holding the US uranium resources.
  
• That company doesn't actually have a license to export.
  
• The campaign donations were made years before this deal established.
  
• It had to be approved by 9 different US agencies, Hillary wasn't involved and had delegated it.
  

I'm sure there is more to come.

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From Vox, these right-wing claims have already been debunked back in February, but here we are again..

But the claim that Clinton gave 20 percent of America’s uranium to Russia is incorrect and clearly misleading. Trump is referring to Russia’s nuclear power agency purchasing a majority stake in a Toronto-based energy company between 2009 and 2013. The company had mines and land in a number of US states with huge uranium production capacity — a move the US State Department signed off on. But PolitiFact did a thorough fact-check of the claim last year when Trump first made it on the campaign trail, and found the following faults with it:

1. The mines, mills, and land the company holds in the US account for 20 percent of the US’s uranium production capacity, not actual produced uranium.
   
2. The State Department was one of nine federal agencies and a number of additional independent federal and state regulators that signed off on the deal.
   
3. President Obama, not Secretary Clinton, was the only person who could’ve vetoed the deal.
   
4. Since Russia doesn’t have the legal right to export uranium out of the US, its main goal was likely to gain access to the company’s uranium assets in Kazakhstan.
   
5. Crucially, the main national security concern was not about nuclear weapons proliferation, as Trump suggests, but actually ensuring the US doesn’t have to depend too much on uranium sources from abroad, as the US only makes about 20 percent of the uranium it needs. An advantage in making nuclear weapons wasn’t the main issue because, as PolitiFact notes, “the United States and Russia had for years cooperated on that front, with Russia sending enriched fuel from decommissioned warheads to be used in American nuclear power plants in return for raw uranium.”
   

No, Hillary Clinton did not "give Russia 20 percent of the uranium” in the US - Vox

It is really a baloney story, as is the idea that because a former shareholder (billionaire Frank Giustra) of the Canadian company who was a big donor to the Clinton Foundation (which, unlike Trump's foundation, is actually a real foundation funding numerous causes worldwide) it was somehow pay to play:

• These donations of Giustra preceded this deal by years
  
• Giustra was no longer a shareholder when the Canadian company was bought by the Russians
  
• There is a crucial difference between Clinton and here foundation.