FLORIDA SCHOOL SHOOTING AND THE OTHERS

The only way to stop this is to have a speedy trial and bring back public executions, hang them on the courthouse square. When others see this bastard kicking, pissing and shitting himself  it will bring this to a stop!

Trey Gowdy: FBI concealed Clinton role in Steele dossier

GOP investigator hopes memo is ‘one-off,’ doesn’t taint Russia probe

Who is the biggest winner in the memo detailing FBI surveillance abuses?

“They could have easily said it was the DNC and Hillary Clinton. That would have been really easy,” said Rep. Trey Gowdy, South Carolina Republican. (Associated Press/File) more >

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By Tom Howell Jr. - The Washington Times - Sunday, February 4, 2018

The House’s top investigator on Sunday said the FBI failed to notify a surveillance court that it was relying on material backed by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign when it asked to snoop on a former adviser to the Trump campaign.
Rep. Trey Gowdy, South Carolina Republican, also said judges wouldn’t have authorized and repeatedly renewed a warrant to spy on the former campaign aide, Carter Page, if it hadn’t been for the material in that very dossier, compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele.
The revelations shouldn’t upend investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the congressman said, but he thinks the FBI erred by failing to disclose their sources’ anti-Trump agenda in a footnote on their evidence.

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“They could have easily said it was the DNC and Hillary Clinton. That would have been really easy,” Mr. Gowdy told CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “It took longer to explain it the way they did than if they just came right out and said, ‘Hillary Clinton for America and DNC paid for it.’ But they didn’t do that.”
Mr. Gowdy was involved in drafting a bombshell memo that details the FBI’s decision to use the Clinton-backed material to try to spy on Mr. Page in October 2016. It also explores the role of top FBI and Justice Department officials in seeking and renewing those snooping powers.
President Trump said the memo “totally vindicates” him as he is dogged by claims that his 2016 campaign colluded with Russia.

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SEE ALSO: Memo on FBI surveillance of Trump campaign turns up heat on Deputy A.G. Rod Rosenstein

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House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, and Mr. Gowdy say that wasn’t the point of the memo. Yet it has kicked up a political firestorm, with Democrats chastising its lead author — Rep. Devin Nunes, California Republican and chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence — for pulling back the curtain on the secretive U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and its sensitive processes.
They say the four-page memo amounts to an incomplete “hit job” designed to sow doubt about investigations into the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russians.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, told Mr. Trump on Sunday to support the release of a paper by Rep. Adam B. Schiff of California that serves as a Democratic rebuttal to Mr. Nunes’ memo, which was released Friday with White House approval.
Republicans on the House intelligence committee voted to reject Mr. Schiff’s memo, even as they green-lighted their own.
“I believe it is a matter of fundamental fairness that the American people be allowed to see both sides of the argument and make their own judgments,” Mr. Schumer said.
He said the Schiff memo sheds new light on why the FBI felt it needed to watch Mr. Page and his interactions with Russians.
Mr. Gowdy said Democrats are the ones being one-sided.
“I get that Adam Schiff and others are worried about what’s not in my memo. I wish that they were equally concerned about what’s not in the FISA application, which is a lot of really important information about the source, and its subsources, and the fact that he was hired by the DNC and the Clinton campaign, and the fact that he was biased against President Trump,” said Mr. Gowdy, who last week said he will return to the legal field instead of seeking re-election.
“I would argue it’s also somewhat unprecedented to rely on political opposition research to instruct and inform an application. And it’s really bad precedent and unprecedented to not tell a court that a source has this level of bias,” he said.
Mr. Gowdy said he hopes the revealing memo is a “one-off,” but he also thinks it’s important to detail how the FBI sought its snooping powers because FISA judges don’t perform independent research.
He is among the top Republicans preaching caution, even as Mr. Trump’s conservative allies say heads should roll at the FBI and Justice Department.
After the memo was released Friday, Mr. Trump told reporters that the FBI’s conduct was a disgrace. He refused to say whether he had confidence in Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who signed at least one of the surveillance applications and later appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate the Russia accusations.
Senate Democrats say any move to upend the Russia investigations would cross a red line akin the 1973 “Saturday Night Massacre,” in which President Nixon’s attorney general and his deputy opted to resign rather than carry out the president’s order to fire Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox.
“To say that that’s the end of the investigation, that this is all that Donald Trump needs to fire Rosenstein or to fire Bob Mueller, I’ll just tell you, this could precipitate a constitutional crisis,” Senate Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
The New York Times recently reported that Mr. Trump ordered Mr. Mueller’s firing in June, only to back off when the White House counsel threatened to resign.
Former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, who was ousted in July, said he never got the sense that Mr. Trump wanted to or tried to get rid of Mr. Mueller.
“I never heard the idea or the concept that this person needed to be fired. I never felt that it was relayed to me that way either,” Mr. Priebus told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “And I would know the difference between a level-10 situation, as reported in that story, and what was reality. And it just, to me, it wasn’t reality.”
Mr. Gowdy took pains to divorce his work on the Nunes memo from the Mueller investigation, which he said goes far beyond the Steele dossier.
“There is a Russia investigation without a dossier,” he said, rattling off a list of other events, such as a mysterious meeting between a Russian lawyer and Trump officials at Trump Tower.
The Republican memo says the FBI dug into the Trump campaign after another one of its aides, George Papadopoulos, reportedly boasted in mid-2016 that Russia had dirt on Mrs. Clinton.
Furthermore, Mr. Gowdy said the Republican memo “doesn’t have anything to do with obstruction of justice,” something Mr. Mueller is reportedly exploring after Mr. Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey last year.
Democrats have warned Mr. Trump not to use the memo to terminate Mr. Rosenstein, too, saying it would cross a red line.
Richard Painter, the chief ethics attorney for President George W. Bush, said the public outcry over Mr. Rosenstein’s firing might be enough to stop the president from pulling the trigger.
“If he wants to fire Rosenstein, it will get ugly,” Mr. Painter said. “He’ll just dig himself into a bigger hole with obstruction accusations because it will seem like he’s firing Rosenstein to get at Mueller. The advice I would give him is to leave it alone. If the president just stops, that could minimize his exposure to possible obstruction of justice.”
The Nunes memo largely focuses on Mr. Steele’s role and conflicts of interest that pointed to a pattern of bias against Mr. Trump.
Mr. Steele said he obtained information about Mr. Trump from unidentified officials at the Kremlin in Moscow. His dossier was eventually given to Fusion GPS, a liberal research firm funded by the Clinton campaign and DNC.
Then-deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe told the House intelligence committee in December that a surveillance warrant for Mr. Page would not have been sought without the information from Mr. Steele.
Mr. McCabe retired earlier than expected on Jan. 29, one day after FBI Director Christopher Wray saw the memo.
The document also details a partisan conflict of then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, who was in contact with Mr. Steele while Mr. Ohr’s wife was employed by Fusion GPS “to assist in the cultivation of opposition research on Trump” for Mrs. Clinton.
“Ohr later provided the FBI with all of his wife’s opposition research, paid for by the DNC and Clinton campaign via Fusion GPS,” the memo stated. “The Ohrs’ relationship with Steele and Fusion GPS was inexplicably concealed from the [court].”
In September 2016, Mr. Steele acknowledged to Mr. Ohr his dislike for then-candidate Trump, saying he was “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president,” the memo said.
“This clear evidence of Steele’s bias was recorded by Ohr at the time and subsequently in official FBI files but not reflected in any of the Page FISA applications,” the Nunes memo said.
Mr. Ohr was demoted at Justice late last year.

Texts Reportedly Show Former Mueller Team Members Knew Charges Wouldn't Be Filed Against Clinton

JENNI FINK | JAN 21, 2018 | 3:59 PM

Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images

After text messages between senior FBI lawyer Lisa Page and agent Peter Strzok revealed a heavy bias against President Donald Trump, Strzok was reassigned to the FBI's human resources department.
However, before he was reassigned, he worked on the investigation into whether former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton mishandled classified information on her private email account.
According to Fox News, the U.S. Department of Justice supplied congressional committees with 384 pages of text messages.
Lawmakers told Fox News that some of the newly discovered ones indicate that Page and Strzok knew Clinton wouldn't be charged before she was even interviewed.
Fox News reported one of the exchanges between the two parties referenced then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch's decision to accept the FBI's conclusion after an impromptu meeting with former President Bill Clinton.
“Timing looks like hell,” Strzok reportedly texted Page.
“Yeah, that is awful timing,” Page wrote back and added later, “It's a real profile in couragw (sic), since she knows no charges will be brought.”
Clinton met with the FBI for a three-hour interview on July 2, 2016. Fox News reported the exchange is dated July 1, 2016.
A recent report by The Daily Caller also revealed that the FBI “failed to preserve” text messages between Page and Strzok from Dec. 14, 2016, to May 17, 2017.
Stephen Boyd, the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs at the Justice Department, said “misconfiguration issues” caused the data to not be “automatically collected and retained for long-term storage and retrieval.”

FBI officials worried about being too tough on Hillary Clinton during email investigation

FBI officials worried about being too tough on Hillary Clinton during email investigation, texts show

Strzok-Page text messages recovered for key dates

The political rhetoric over the FISA abuse memo took a new turn with the ranking Democrat drafting his own version; Catherine Herridge goes in-depth for 'Special Report.'

FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were concerned about being too tough on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during the bureau’s investigation into her email practices because she might hold it against them as president, text messages released on Thursday indicated.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley released new messages between bureau officials Page and Strzok, who were having an affair and exchanged more than 50,000 texts with each other during the election.

“One more thing: she might be our next president,” Page texted Strzok on Feb. 25, 2016, in the midst of the presidential campaign, in reference to Clinton.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley released new messages between bureau officials Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, who were having an affair and exchanged more than 50,000 texts with each other.  (Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

“The last thing you need [is] going in there loaded for bear,” she continued. “You think she’s going to remember or care that it was more [DOJ] than [FBI]?”
Strzok replied that he “agreed” and he had relayed their discussion with someone named “Bill.”
Strzok not only worked on the Clinton case, but was assigned to the special counsel’s probe into Russia and the Trump campaign after a number of anti-Trump texts were discovered on his phone. Page also briefly worked on the special counsel investigation.
DOJ RECOVERS MISSING TEXT MESSAGES BETWEEN ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENTS STRZOK AND PAGE
Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said Thursday in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray that the exchange, among others, concerned him.
“The text messages that were provided raise serious concerns about the impartiality of senior leadership running both the Clinton and Trump investigations,” Grassley said.

FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were concerned about being too tough on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during the bureau’s investigation into her email practices because she might hold it against them as president, newly released text messages indicate.

During the campaign, the FBI investigated Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. Then-FBI Director James Comey decided against recommending prosecution, but faulted Clinton and her associates for being “extremely careless” with classified information.
Republicans, arguing some top officials at the FBI are politically biased against Trump, have seized on the texts, including one where Strzok and Page spoke of a “secret society” within the Department of Justice and the FBI and Strzok spoke of an “insurance policy” against a Trump win.
New texts released by Grassley on Thursday also indicated that FBI officials believed FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe should be recused from the Clinton investigation because of his family’s ties to Virginia Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who is close with the Clintons.
In an October 28, 2016 text exchange, Page told Strzok that then- FBI Chief of Staff James Rybicki thought McCabe should not have participated in the probe.
“Rybicki just called to check in,” she wrote. “He very clearly 100% believes that Andy should be recused because of the ‘perception.’”
“God,” Strzok replied.
Asked by Page why McCabe should be recused now, if not before, Strzok said: “I assume McAuliffe picked up.”
McCabe eventually recused himself from the Clinton probe one week before the election.

New texts released by Grassley on Thursday also indicate FBI officials believed FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe should be recused from the Clinton investigation because of his family’s ties to Virginia Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who is close with the Clintons.

“If McCabe eventually recused himself one week before the election, why did he not do so sooner?” Grassley asked Wray in the letter.
Grassley also told Wray he was concerned that Page and Strzok were transmitting government records on personal systems inappropriately. In a June 2017 message, Strzok wrote of typing a document on a “home computer.”
The senator said Page and Strzok also referenced other conversations “via iMessage, presumably on their personal Apple devices.”
“It appears that Strzok and Page transmitted federal records pertaining to the Clinton investigation on private, non-government services,” Grassley said. “It is important to determine whether their own similar conduct was a factor in not focusing on and developing evidence of similar violations by Secretary Clinton and her aides.”
The new messages surfaced the same day the Justice Department’s inspector general said he recovered a number of missing text messages between Strzok and Page.
Fox News has learned from U.S. government officials that the inspector general recovered the texts by taking possession of "at least four" phones belonging to Strzok and Page

Colin Kaepernick donates $10K to leading Soros-backed resistance group

FILE - In this Dec. 24, 2016, file photo San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick talks during a news conference after an NFL football game against the Los Angeles Rams. The free agent quarterback was named GQ magazine’s “Citizen of ... more >

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By Valerie Richardson - The Washington Times - Sunday, January 21, 2018

Colin Kaepernick entered the home stretch of his Million Dollar Pledge last week with a donation to one of Democratic moneyman George Soros’s favorite left-wing resistance groups.
The former San Francisco 49ers quarterback announced Thursday that his foundation would give $10,000 to the Advancement Project as part of his commitment to donate $1 million to organizations “working in oppressed communities.”
Advancement Project has another prominent funder: Mr. Soros, whose major philanthropies have given more than $9.5 million to the group since 1999, according to the conservative Capital Research Center.
With offices in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., Advancement Project describes itself as a “multi-racial civil rights organization,” but the group is best known for promoting “voting rights” by opposing initiatives such as photo ID requirements, voter-fraud investigations, and removing inactive voters from the rolls.
“They are the leading opponents of voter integrity,” said Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center (CRC).
The billionaire Soros has made grants to thousands of individuals and organizations through his Open Society

North Korea's nuclear development can't be blamed on Trump, says former Clinton advisor

• The rogue state's rapid nuclear advancement is the result of three administrations' successive failures, former foreign policy director says
• Clinton, Bush and Obama all pursued various agreements, negotiations and sanctions over the course of two decades
• Trump has gotten some credit for spurring current North-South talks after issuing fiery threats to the North

North Korea a 20 year failure of US foreign policy: James Rubin   3 Hours Ago | 02:11

North Korea's rapidly advancing nuclear capability is not the fault of President Donald Trump, but rather of successive U.S. administrations who've failed to reign in the rogue state, according to a former White House foreign policy director.
"Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump: this is a 20-year failure of American foreign policy," James Rubin, former assistant secretary of state for public affairs under the Bill Clinton administration, told CNBC Friday.
Rubin tempered his criticism, however, stressing it was important to remember that "there are limits to what you can do in a country like that if you aren't prepared to go to war."
The comments come on the tail of the first government-level talks between North and South Korea in more than two years, as both countries prepare for the Winter Olympics in South Korea. North Korea has been a constant presence in international headlines, developing nuclear weapons and testing missiles at a faster rate than at any point in its history.

KCNA | Reuters

A view of the newly developed intercontinental ballistic rocket Hwasong-15's test that was successfully launched is seen in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang November 30, 2017.

Pyongyang has fired 23 missiles during 16 tests since the start of 2017, conducting its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in July, and claims it is now capable of striking the U.S. mainland.
Some observers blame Trump's bellicose words and tweets toward North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for the current spike in tensions. The U.S. president has threatened to "totally destroy" the country and has mocked Kim in tweets, calling him "Little Rocket Man" and deriding attempts at diplomacy. He recently expressed support for the talks with the South, however, which took place Tuesday in the border town of Panmunjom.

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Asked whether the tough talk might be having a positive effect on spurring talks, Rubin replied: "Possibly, but I think more (than) that is that the North Koreans now have something they never had before, which is the ability, probably, to take a nuclear weapon from Pyongyang to any city in the United States. That's the new part of this, and that hasn't changed yet."

Previous administrations' dealings with the North

Under Bill Clinton, an agreement called the Agreed Framework was passed whereby an international coalition would replace North Korea's plutonium reactor with two light-water reactors in exchange for 500,000 tons of heavy fuel each year from the U.S. The deal was not popular in Congress, and was scrapped shortly after George W. Bush came to power. In response, the North kicked out its U.N. inspectors and relaunched its nuclear development.
The Bush administration focused on multilateral negotiations, launching the Six-Party Talks in 2003 with China's help, which also included Russia, Japan and South Korea. But the talks were impeded by numerous lengthy boycotts by the North. By early 2005, North Korea declared it was in possession of nuclear weapons and would not attend future talks.
Finally, Barack Obama stuck with the diplomatic route, first employing a conciliatory approach and later implementing sanctions, but similarly to no avail. Pyongyang would oversee four underground nuclear tests by the time Obama left office.

DigitalGlobe | 38 North | Getty Images

On December 28, 2017, large numbers of personnel are observed at the Southern Support Area, located south of the Command Center Area.

"We've squeezed them, we've sanctioned them, we've tried diplomacy, we've tried agreements, they broke agreements," Rubin said. "Yes, everybody's failed, but it's a pretty tough problem."
In late December, the UN Security Council (UNSC) adopted a set of stringent sanctions drafted by the U.S. which cut exports of diesel, gasoline and other oil products by nearly 90 percent. This is the tenth major sanctions resolution imposed by the UNSC on North Korea since 2006. North Korea has called it "an act of war."

Ex-Soros financier accused of raping 4th woman in penthouse sex dungeon

A fourth woman has filed a lawsuit accusing Howard Rubin (left), a former portfolio manager of George Soros (right), of brutalizing her in his Manhattan penthouse sex dungeon. (Facebook/Reuters)

A fourth woman has filed a lawsuit accusing former Soros Fund portfolio manager Howard Rubin of brutalizing her in his Manhattan penthouse sex dungeon, saying he ignored her repeated use of their agreed-upon safe word, “pineapples,” during an S&M session.
The woman, who has requested anonymity in her $7 million Manhattan Supreme Court suit as a rape victim, met Rubin through a friend in November 2015.
The pal set up a date between the then-60-year-old Rubin and the 20-year-old woman at the Russian Tea Room in Manhattan, the suit says. The woman was told she’d be paid $2,000 for dinner and drinks, but that she would not be required to have sex.
Rubin plied the young escort with pricey glasses of Don Julio 1942 Anejo tequila and then presented her with a nondisclosure agreement that said she could be sued for up to $1 million if she disclosed their relationship, according to court papers.
Rubin — whose high-stakes investing for billionaire George Soros was featured in the best-selling books “Liar’s Poker” and “The Big Short” — then invited the woman to his apartment at the luxury Metropolitan Tower.
At the penthouse pad, the married Rubin allegedly served his mistress a drugged drink and ushered her into his “dungeon-like ‘toy room,'” a 300-square-foot space with “ropes and toys to tie people up with, and electrocuting devices, and other devices,” the suit says.
She allowed Rubin to tie her wrists after he “explained that he would go easy on her, and that she had a safe word: pineapples,” the suit says.