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The Robert Mueller Investigation


Hugo Stiglitz

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Just now, Huckleberry said:
1 hour ago, ScottishHorn said:
 I think Russian attempts to influence the people in this country worked on you well.  The simple minded.  The people that dont see the hypocrisy and turn a blind eye to the corruption in government because it's their team

I don't think one ever seen someone often themselves so badly before. This is an impressive post.

Well said

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20 minutes ago, ScottishHorn said:

Then indict him and get over with it.  Complex finance investigations dont take this long with all the pieces in place.

It’s not just a finance investigation but you knew that. And even so this isn’t even remotely a long time considering the length of other special counsel investigations 

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Mueller's been on the job for ~423 days

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The longest a special counsel has maintained an investigation was the look into President Bill Clinton's Whitewater real-estate deals. That investigation eventually morphed with the Monica Lewinsky scandal. It went on for 2,978 days.

The investigation into the arms deals around the Iran-Contra affair under President Ronald Reagan went on for 2,420 days.

It has been 365 days since Mueller was appointed.

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Edited by retread
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How the information was obtained is important - it was stolen. 
If the information was then being made available for an interested party who knew it was about to be presented, whether it's made accessible on a public platform or on a secret thumb drive is kind of irrelevant.  What matters is if the information was collaboratively provided and obtained, and was then used for corrupt actions. 
Roger Stone corresponded with Russian military intelligence around this very matter.  It appears certain US persons coordinated with a foreign power who levied war on our electoral democracy.

Again, GOLL said it well: it’s like Nixon, but if instead of retired CIA guys, he used the KGB.
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On 7/13/2018 at 10:58 AM, Brisketexan said:

The indictment isn't an end.  It's a means.  It lets American folks know what Mueller knows....well, SOME of what he knows.  Mueller has pumped some smoke into the structure.  The play is not to get the folks he indicted.  The play is to watch and see what the rats in the building do.  Do they run?  Do they call each other in a panic?  Do they come to him, looking to make a deal?  The indictment isn't a scoring play.  It's a set-up play.

Worth reposting.  It's all that.

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1 minute ago, AnonymousInternetPoster said:

Right.  Because we don't have anything today like computers to speed things up.  You know like the ones that were apparently used to review the hundreds of thousands of HRC emails that were found on Pedo Weiner's laptop.

Computers finished their role a long time ago.  Timing now is about peoples' behavior.

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2 hours ago, pyrohornIII said:

So if wikileaks was perpetrated by the GRU, then how does that affect Q and all that nonsense?   Wasn't a lot of that based on wikileaks?    How much credibility can be granted all that stuff now if it's proven to be Russian generated?    If they can hack stuff to reveal, can't they plant stuff as well?   Seems to really take the steam out of Q and the whole deep state argument. 

I'm going to try and avoid mentioning anything specific so we don't bring in more of the bots/spammers/fanboys from those sites/subs - if Surly blocks a 500+ bots a day, I would not be surprised at all.

In the past, I was interesting in conspiracy stuff (JFK, military, etc.). I've been doing web development/online stuff going back almost 15 years, and have watched social sites/media evolve from GeoCities to reddit, twitter, etc.

I look at the stuff you mention as well as other stuff (I have an in-law that is into this shit and also sends me this stuff from reddit, etc.).  Without any special training, there is nothing I've seen that I couldn't go and do as far as building out the online following with a few dozen social media accounts that reference each other, creating various sites/blogs with various documents/photos that link to one another, as long as I have access to something like Wikileaks (and/or whoever was behind the leaks).       So much of it is very simple with today's software - it's just a matter of hitting the right audiences and knowing how to play the search engine game, and hiding your IP through VPNS, etc.

That's not even touching the kind of automation in social media that exists.  All you have to do is make it look a little legit, and hit the right hashtags on twitter, etc., and get a social media boost from some established folks within that community and the bots will do the rest.

If you want to create a group of people who will voluntarily go out and cloud issues, bury certain stories in the search engines by creating a lot of noise, it's not hard at all.  Certain people are prone (mentally) to latch onto these kinds of things.

If you wanted to help Trump, you need a group like that, that will respond to his dog whistles, that will rush to defend him against his detractors in near real-time, etc.  They try and intimidate his detractors, they try and bury negative responses to his tweets, etc.

Totally believable that Russians are feeding that machine some how.

 

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7 hours ago, AnonymousInternetPoster said:

Right.  Because we don't have anything today like computers to speed things up.  You know like the ones that were apparently used to review the hundreds of thousands of HRC emails that were found on Pedo Weiner's laptop.

So your point is that back in the day we didn't have computers to evaluate hundreds of thousands of emails?  Is that where you're going with this argument?

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On 7/9/2018 at 3:56 PM, udaydanceparty said:

I agree that the graphic is stupid.  I mean, why do they have 2 degrees of separation between Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka?  (insert joke here)

Two condoms? Just kidding. Everyone already knows via other testimony by his mistresses he would never use them.

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Most of the Freedom Caucus are in safe districts and don’t need to put points on the scoreboard. This smells like coverup.  And I think they will make a run at this.  Won’t succeed, but I think they will try.

At the very least, they can force some fellow Republicans to go on the record over this.  Maybe even try and use it as leverage for the Speaker’s chair. 

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8 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

I'm going to try and avoid mentioning anything specific so we don't bring in more of the bots/spammers/fanboys from those sites/subs - if Surly blocks a 500+ bots a day, I would not be surprised at all.

In the past, I was interesting in conspiracy stuff (JFK, military, etc.). I've been doing web development/online stuff going back almost 15 years, and have watched social sites/media evolve from GeoCities to reddit, twitter, etc.

I look at the stuff you mention as well as other stuff (I have an in-law that is into this shit and also sends me this stuff from reddit, etc.).  Without any special training, there is nothing I've seen that I couldn't go and do as far as building out the online following with a few dozen social media accounts that reference each other, creating various sites/blogs with various documents/photos that link to one another, as long as I have access to something like Wikileaks (and/or whoever was behind the leaks).       So much of it is very simple with today's software - it's just a matter of hitting the right audiences and knowing how to play the search engine game, and hiding your IP through VPNS, etc.

That's not even touching the kind of automation in social media that exists.  All you have to do is make it look a little legit, and hit the right hashtags on twitter, etc., and get a social media boost from some established folks within that community and the bots will do the rest.

If you want to create a group of people who will voluntarily go out and cloud issues, bury certain stories in the search engines by creating a lot of noise, it's not hard at all.  Certain people are prone (mentally) to latch onto these kinds of things.

If you wanted to help Trump, you need a group like that, that will respond to his dog whistles, that will rush to defend him against his detractors in near real-time, etc.  They try and intimidate his detractors, they try and bury negative responses to his tweets, etc.

Totally believable that Russians are feeding that machine some how.

 

 Qanon is a Russian operation according to propornot and I have little reason not to believe them.  They can’t say how they know because of sources and methods but they know.

The bottom line is it doesn’t really matter if Qanon is a Kremlin operation because it looks, feels, and operates exactly like one.  

It never takes an antagonistic stance against Russia and goes after their top enemies in the United States while protecting their biggest asset (Trump). 

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17 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Most of the Freedom Caucus are in safe districts and don’t need to put points on the scoreboard. This smells like coverup.  And I think they will make a run at this.  Won’t succeed, but I think they will try.

At the very least, they can force some fellow Republicans to go on the record over this.  Maybe even try and use it as leverage for the Speaker’s chair. 

 Trump will tweet about how these are true Americans and taking a stand, yada, yada, yada. Other republicans will remain silent and refuse to go against him, even if they don't vote for it. Most constituents have no idea how their reps vote so they'll assume they stood by Trump and some other rep was responsible for defeating it. And the beat goes on. 

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Not only protecting Trump, but venerating him. 

The people I know who are wrapped up in this are pretty intelligent.  But they have an insecurity that drives them to latch on to every conspiracy that comes along, so they can prove how smart they are by seeing beyond the curve in the road.

They see themselves as an invisible army that can wreak havoc through the internet, flashmobs and so forth.  They are the super intelligents who will march cyber-ly and carry on the fight if the "deep state" brings down trump.   Q is like a cult and has brainwashed them.

I don't see them being able to do much harm in the long run, but they keep threatening that "the grid" is going to be shut down.    I'll get a text every once in a while warning me such a shutdown is coming, so i can have extra supplies put aside.  

A lot of these people tend to see themselves as Guy Fawkes.  And they are the basement geeks who can spin off some pretty good crackers.  So I could see little blips here and there but nothing all encompassing enough to really threaten too much for too long. 

But yeah, as you know, even back on the old site, I figured Russia was behind it, another way to work a wedge into the US. 

I'd just like something solid to tell these friends "wake up, you are wrong, quit falling for this traitorous stuff."    They'd just "but hillary" me anyway. 

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Just a coincidence I'm sure

White House Eliminates Cybersecurity Coordinator Role

From May 2018...

The White House eliminated the position of cybersecurity coordinator on the National Security Council on Tuesday, doing away with a post central to developing policy to defend against increasingly sophisticated digital attacks and the use of offensive cyber weapons.

A memorandum circulated by an aide to the new national security adviser, John R. Bolton, said the post was no longer considered necessary because lower-level officials had already made cybersecurity issues a “core function” of the president’s national security team.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/technology/white-house-cybersecurity.html

US intelligence chief: 'The warning lights are blinking red again' on cyberattacks

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats raised the alarm on growing cyberattack threats against the United States, saying the situation is at a "critical point" and coming out forcefully against Russia.

"The warning signs are there. The system is blinking. It is why I believe we are at a critical point," Coats said, addressing the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC, on Friday.

"Today, the digital infrastructure that serves this country is literally under attack," he said.

Coats compared the "warning signs" to those the United States faced ahead of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/14/politics/director-of-national-intelligence-dan-coats-cyberattacks-russia/index.html

Edited by Mapache
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Ok, so I've actually sat down and read the entire 29 page Mueller indictment against the 12 Russian intelligence officers, and it is totally insane. I literally can't believe the scope of this thing. I'm making this status public (i.e., shareable), because people need to know about this shit. There is no way you can read the actual indictment and not conclude that 1) there WAS a RUSSIAN conspiracy, 2) that the scope of that conspiracy was GARGANTUAN, 3) that it was organized BY THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT [i.e., there's no way Putin didn't know about this], 4) That people connected to the Trump campaign [and, shockingly, other U.S. Gov't officials] WERE INVOLVED, and 5) this is just the beginning. If Mueller has already uncovered this amount of information with such specificity regarding the goings-on in far-away Russia, there's NO WAY some serious shit isn't going to hit the fan going forward right here in the U.S.

So, without further ado, here are the highlights:

Article 1 of the indictment states that the Russian government actively set up multiple intelligence units (known as the GRU) with the sole aim of interfering with the 2016 election. Two of these units, 26165, and 74455, were specifically tasked with acquiring and releasing stolen documents via hacking.

Article 2 specifically calls this a "conspiracy" and states that the 12 indicted Russians had contacts with "persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury."

Article 3: The aforementioned Russian intelligence units deliberately targeted the Clinton campaign.

Article 4: They deliberately targeted the DNC as a whole.

Article 6: In June of 2016, they released TENS OF THOUSANDS of hacked documents using fictitious online personas.

Article 10: One of the intelligence officers, Boris Antonov, oversaw a department within 26165 tasked with hacking the U.S. military, governmental (i.e., political) and non-governmental organizations. [i.e., they were spying on every level of our gov't].

Articles 12-18: The Russian hackers often used various online aliases, both male and female, such as (but not limited to) "Kate Milton," "James McMorgans," and "Karen Millen." Sergey Morgachev, another Russian hacker, was a Lt. Colonel in the Russian military. He created the hacking malware used by dept. 26165, known as "X-Agent." Another hacker named in the indictment, Nikolay Kozachek, was a Lt. Captain in the Russian military. Artem Malyshev (also named in the indictment) was a Second Lieutenant in the Russian military. Aleksandr Osadchuk (also named in the indictment) is a Colonel in the Russian Military. He oversaw the creation and dissemination of anti-Clinton material online.

Article 19: Russian Military Officer Aleksey Potemkin, assigned to 74455, supervised the creation of fake social media accounts used (among other things) in the release of DNC documents.

Article 21: Over 300 individuals affiliated with the DNC were SUCCESSFULLY targeted. (Article 21 is lengthy, and includes a detailed, play-by-play account of how 26165 and 74455 achieved their aims. Spoiler alert: It's crazy).

Article 24, subsection B: The Russian's hacking of the DNC was so advanced that they were able to monitor individual computers in real time. Subsection C states that their malware sent actual screenshots of DNC computer activity to a server in Arizona that the Russians had access to. They were also able to capture keystrokes entered by DCCC employees.

Article 24, subsection 😧 They monitored individual DNC / DCCC employees for hours on end, and obtained information about DNC fundraising plans and even banking information (as well as other personal information).

Article 26 subsection A: By June 2016 the Russians had complete access to 33 DNC computers, totally and completely.

Article 27: The GRU gained access to information regarding DNC opposition research, field operation plans, and the Benghazi operation.

Article 28, subsection B: Aside from the server in Arizona, the GRU also stored data to a server in Illinois, to which they filtered large gigabytes of stolen information via a program they developed known as "X-Tunnel."

Article 32: The DNC became aware of Russian attempts to hack their servers and hired a security firm to identify the extent of the intrusions. The security firm (identified in the indictment only as "company 1") also put in place measures to halt GRU access to DNC computers, but, despite this, the GRU was so efficient that they continued to maintain access via "X-Agent" well through October of 2016.

Article 33: The GRU immediately became aware of "company 1's" (referring here to the security firm that the DNC hired) efforts, and took countermeasures in response. This included investigating / hacking "company 1" itself, and later, apparently as a retaliatory measure against the DNC, setting up a wesbsite that redirected from a DNC online political donations website, to another website set up by the GRU (in other words, the GRU took funds from DNC donors, using the pretext of a false DNC donations website).

Articles 35-36: The GRU set up another website, the sole purpose of which was to release stolen DNC documents. They created fake social media accounts that falsely attributed this website's creation to a group of "American hacktivists." It received over 1 million hits.

Article 37: The GRU has also released stolen documents dating back to 2015 (i.e., they've been up to this for quite a while).

Article 40: The notion of a "lone Romanian hacker" being responsible for the DNC leaks was a fiction deliberately created by the GRU and disseminated via fake social media accounts.

Article 42: Using a popular blogging site, the GRU set up a blog that used the most "searched for" keywords by conspiracy theorists, (e.g., "Illuminati," "Worldwide," "Conspiracy," et. al.), -and used this website to further disseminate the "lone Romanian hacker" conspiracy theory. (Article 46 of the indictment further states that later entries on this blog site posted articles positing that the released, stolen documents had "nothing to do with Russia.")

Article 43, Subsection A: An individual the indictment identifies only as "a known member of congress" contacted an online GRU dummy persona, ("Guccifer 2.0") and requested stolen documents related to their political opponent, and the GRU / "Guccifer" responded by giving said member of congress access to the stolen data they were requesting.

Article 43, Subsection B: The GRU released stolen documents to what the indictment identifies as "a lobbyist and online source of political news."

Subsection 😄 "Guccifer" / The GRU sent stolen documents pertaining to the "Black Lives Matter" movement to a reporter (unidentified in the indictment), to which the reporter not only responded, but offered to write an article using said information.

Article 44: The GRU, posing as "Guccifer 2.0" wrote to a person who was in regular contact with SENIOR MEMBERS OF THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN. (The indictment includes direct quotes of their online conversation, and this is CLEARLY referring to Roger Stone).

Article 45, subsection B: The GRU, using an alias, contacted a U.S. reporter (unnamed in the indictment) and ultimately gave them access to stolen DNC data.

Articles 47-49: Here the indictment refers to an organization, identified only as "Organization 1," [I'm thinking, Wikileaks] -which actually reached out to the GRU aliases seeking the stolen emails / data. "Organization 1" is directly quoted by the indictment as having communicated to "Guccifer," that they should "send [Organization 1] any new material [i.e., stolen data] here for us to review and it will have a much higher impact than what you are doing." Organization 1 was given, and later released, said data, approximately 3 days before the Democratic National Convention. In total, between October and November of 2016, over 50,000 stolen documents were released.

Articles 50-79 : Lists the counts against the 11 Russian Military Personnel, which include charges of 1) Conspiracy to Commit Offenses Against The United States, 2) Aggravated Identity Theft, 3) Conspiracy to Launder Money [according to the indictment, over 95,000 USD$ was laundered], i.e. using cryptocurrency, that was then use to register domain names, set up websites, create server infrastructure, et. al.,3) The Use of Transferred Money To Commit Crimes Against The United States, 4) General Unlawful Conspiracy [It should be noted that many of these counts have sub-crimes attached to them, such as unlawful hacking, etc.].

So, there it is folks. This WAS A RUSSIAN CONSPIRACY, massive in scope, directly linked to the Trump campaign, the sole aim of which was to subvert Democracy. There is no way around it.

Long analysis of a longer indictment. Kinda viral on FB now...Shaggy Law Brigade: is this a fair assessment?

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The trump campaign colluded with a foreign enemy to win an election. The only remaining question is did trump himself know. 

Since i wasn’t born yesterday and my intelligence is slight higher than a potted plant, I’m gonna conclude that he did. 

Unless of course you subscribe to the theory that trump is just too darn ethical to have done such a thing 

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7 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

The trump campaign colluded with a foreign enemy to win an election. The only remaining question is did trump himself know. 

Since i wasn’t born yesterday and my intelligence is slight higher than a potted plant, I’m gonna conclude that he did. 

Unless of course you subscribe to the theory that trump is just too darn ethical to have done such a thing 

Better selling point for Republicans is not that he was too ethical but too stupid.  He's just a figure head who spews over the top talking points, not someone capable of micro targeting stolen computer data and freely given Facebook data to help him win an election. 

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Given his sliminess up to this point, it seems to get more unlikely by the day that Mueller will get him. He knows how to keep the decision and the action (e.g. child prison camps) separate.

I hope I'm wrong about Mueller.

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17 minutes ago, retread said:

Given his sliminess up to this point, it seems to get more unlikely by the day that Mueller will get him. He knows how to keep the decision and the action (e.g. child prison camps) separate.

I hope I'm wrong about Mueller.

No, I think Mueller will present some extremely damning evidence, but the GOP won't do anything because then the evil libs would be right all along.

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1 hour ago, seven said:

I don't know how anyone can have any confidence in the senate (or current house) to do the right thing even if Mueller has video and audio evidence of trump trading favors for Hillary dirt. 

If Mueller has said audio and video of Congressmen in the House and Senate knowingly accepting stolen data for use in their campaign, they are in line for a criminal charge. 

Mueller's indictment of the 12 Russian military intelligence does just that as it depicts the interaction of an unnamed US Congressperson contacting and requesting such information from a member of Russian military intelligence.

Now imagine a couple dozen or more in Congress were similarly in on the action.

The biggest under-recognized factor is if a significant number of soon to be unsealed indictments target Congress.  House members can't sit while under indictment.  Mueller has just shown all those cupable in Congress, in excruciating detail, that he's got the goods.  I don't expect things to linger on much more now that we know the Russian military intelligence works on a first name basis with some in Congress.

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3 hours ago, JimmyJames said:

The trump campaign colluded with a foreign enemy to win an election. The only remaining question is did trump himself know. 

Since i wasn’t born yesterday and my intelligence is slight higher than a potted plant, I’m gonna conclude that he did. 

Unless of course you subscribe to the theory that trump is just too darn ethical to have done such a thing 

The US colliding parties knew they were conspiring with someone but it’s not known the knew who, as the indictments charge so far.  

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47 minutes ago, triplehorn said:

If Mueller has said audio and video of Congressmen in the House and Senate knowingly accepting stolen data for use in their campaign, they are in line for a criminal charge. 

Mueller's indictment of the 12 Russian military intelligence does just that as it depicts the interaction of an unnamed US Congressperson contacting and requesting such information from a member of Russian military intelligence.

Now imagine a couple dozen or more in Congress were similarly in on the action.

It doesn't actually say this, but feel free to let your imagination run wild. It says "On or about August 15, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, received a request for stolen documents from a candidate for the U.S. Congress. The Conspirators responded using the Guccifer 2.0 persona and sent the candidate stolen documents related to the candidate’s opponent." The most likely suspect is Joe Garcia, a Democrat candidate who was in a tight race and had a debate scheduled for the same evening, where he deployed the DCCC material against his Democrat opponent. But do your thing triple. 

Edited by Anastasis
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If the Congressman knew the requested information was stolen, it doesn't matter who was giving to him for use in his campaign, it's a crime.  We don't know what he or anyone else knew about who they were directed to contact or if they knew it was stolen.  We also don't know what was provided as compensation for the valuable stolen information.

If was Dems too, I expect the same legal accountability.  

Edited by triplehorn
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1 hour ago, Anastasis said:

It doesn't actually say this, but feel free to let your imagination run wild. It says "On or about August 15, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, received a request for stolen documents from a candidate for the U.S. Congress. The Conspirators responded using the Guccifer 2.0 persona and sent the candidate stolen documents related to the candidate’s opponent." The most likely suspect is Joe Garcia, a Democrat candidate who was in a tight race and had a debate scheduled for the same evening, where he deployed the DCCC material against his Democrat opponent. But do your thing triple. 

While I believe both sides will have people go down for this kind of stuff, at the end of the day, a Republican President is actually doing everything he can on social media to discredit the investigation, and Republican members of Congress are trying to discredit it through hearings over FBI personnel who were fired for fucking around. 

Oh, and Republican members of Congress are threatening impeachment of DOJ officials in order to shut down the investigation. 

There maybe Democrats who are guilty of it, but it’s the GOP who is openly acting like they are guilty.

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Not to mention the HPSIC's "report"

Quote

The House intelligence committee concluded its Russia investigation on Friday by releasing a heavily redacted copy of its full report clearing Donald Trump's campaign of any wrongdoing.

The 243-page report calls contacts between Trump campaign aides and Russians "ill-advised" and acknowledges that at least one person in the case may have given "incomplete" answers. But overall, it found, there was no conspiracy to work with the foreign operatives attacking the election.

President Trump touted the report on Twitter and said the "total Witch Hunt! MUST END NOW!"

 

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Gowdy rules out Rosenstein impeachment:

 

"Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) on Sunday ruled out the possibility of impeaching Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, saying there is not enough support for his ouster. 

"I'm not convinced there is a movement," Gowdy said on CBS's "Face the Nation," citing Politico's recent report that a group of GOP lawmakers are preparing to impeach Rosenstein. 

Conservatives frustrated with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 election have long targeted Rosenstein. Some lawmakers claim he has delayed their investigation into FBI agents involved in Mueller's investigation who they feel are biased against President Trump. "

 

If Gowdy is legally clean from illicit cash and stolen data, he sure as hell isn't going to stick his neck out for potential obstruction.

Edited by triplehorn
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