90 Miles From Tyranny

Tuesday, December 3, 2019

The Double Standards Are Never Ending...

Secret Mueller FBI notes feature cast of characters from Trump inner circle

The Justice Department released hundreds of pages of FBI interview notes on Monday featuring a cast of characters from President Trump’s inner circle in the latest batch of documents from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

The 295 pages of heavily redacted records, focusing on topics spanning from Trump’s frustrations with the Russia investigation and Attorney General Jeff Session’s recusal to the firing of FBI Director James Comey and national security adviser Michael Flynn, are the second such tranche released through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by BuzzFeed.

Mueller’s report concluded the Kremlin interfered during the 2016 election but didn't establish any criminal conspiracy between Russia and Trump's campaign.

Rick Gates, the former business partner of Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, spoke with the FBI on April 18, 2018, about Flynn’s firing and Trump’s anger over Sessions. Gates said he overheard conversations that current Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani wouldn’t have recused, and the agents noted, “Gates knew Giuliani had been the first choice for Attorney General, but turned it down because he wanted to be Secretary of State instead.”

Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer currently serving a prison sentence related to lying to Congress about the timing of the proposed Trump Tower Moscow, spoke with investigators about the guidance given to him by Trump legal team member Jay Sekulow about how to respond to congressional inquiries. Cohen also responded to claims made about him in Christopher Steele’s dossier, with agents writing that “Cohen did not have any concern about the dossier allegations” and “Cohen had never been to Prague,” despite the British ex-spy’s claims.

John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, told the bureau on Aug. 2, 2018, about Trump’s anger with a New York Times story that claimed Trump told then-White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller, which McGahn declined to do. Kelly recounted Trump’s denials about giving such an order to McGahn and his request that McGahn “correct the record,” but Kelly told investigators McGahn told him that he and Trump “did have that conversation.”

Hope Hicks, the former White House communications director, told agents about Trump’s annoyance with Flynn during a Dec. 8, 2017, interview. Investigators noted, “Trump told Hicks that Obama told him to watch out for Flynn” and “Hicks thought the comment sat with Trump more then she expected.” Trump “thought Flynn had bad judgment” and “it bothered Trump that both Flynn and his son sent bad tweets,” according to investigators. An FBI interview on March 13, 2018, included Hicks discussing the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting involving Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., Trump son-in law Jared Kushner, and Russians that included Natalia Veselnitskaya. The agents said Hicks thought the emails setting up the meeting “looked really bad.”

Rod Rosenstein, Trump’s former deputy attorney general, spoke with investigators on May 23, 2017, one week after appointing Mueller special counsel. Rosenstein detailed the May 8, 2017, Oval Office meeting involving himself, Trump, McGahn, Sessions, Sessions’s chief of staff Jody Hunt, and White House chief of staff Reince Priebus centered around Comey, telling investigators, “I knew when I left, Director Comey would be fired.” Rosenstein was tasked with writing a memo detailing his concerns with the bureau’s leader. When Comey was fired on May 9, 2017, Rosenstein told investigators he was “angry, ashamed, horrified, and...

Senator Cruz calls out YouTube for taking down over 300 Trump ads

Google YouTube has taken down more than 300 Trump ads supporting his reelection this year and did it without explanation. Ted Cruz says it’s exactly why conservatives don’t trust Big Tech:

CBS News reported:

In response to concerns raised after the 2016 election cycle, Google and YouTube, like Facebook, keep a searchable archive of political ads that have run on the site.

60 Minutes reviewed the archive to learn more about President Trump’s problematic political ads. We found that over 300 video ads were taken down by Google and YouTube, mostly over the summer, for violating company policy. But the archive doesn’t detail what policy was violated. Was it copyright violation? A lie or extreme inaccuracy? Faulty grammar? Bad punctuation? It’s unclear. The ads determined to be offending are not available to be screened. We found very little transparency in the transparency report.

They also claim they don’t censor conservatives. That we know personally is a lie.

Google YouTube also likes to claim that ads telling the truth are lies. For example, an ad about Joe Biden bragging he extorted Ukraine was against their policy and the media claimed it was false. Obviously, it was true.

Look at how they censor Christians, Prager U, and anyone who isn’t in line with their policies. With us, they just keep us hidden.

Google supports the Socialist Democrat candidates and the censorship will only get worse as the election nears. Facebook’s Zuckerberg is holding fast and not censoring or removing ads.

Twitter has banned ads altogether which helps Democrats since they can rely on the media to promote them and their leftist...

Attorney General William Barr reportedly disagrees with a finding by the forthcoming Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General (IG) report that the FBI had sufficient reason to monitor the Trump campaign in 2016.

The FBI conducted surveillance on Trump campaign associates, including foreign policy aide Carter Page, on the basis of suspicions that the campaign might have been colluding with Russia to interfere with the 2016 election.

No evidence of collusion was ever found, though the surveillance continued well after the election, and the fact that the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign over Russia was leaked to Democrats and to the mainstream media.

The IG report is expected to criticize the FBI for the way in which it approached the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court to obtain a warrant for that surveillance. The FBI partly relied upon the so-called “dossier” prepared by former British spy Christopher Steele for Fusion GPS, an opposition research company being paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Republicans have claimed that the FBI failed to corroborate the unproven allegations in the dossier, and hid its political origins from the FISA court.

But there have been conflicting leaks about what the report, which is set to be released next Monday, will say about misconduct at the FBI. Several individuals have already seen drafts of the report, as they are mentioned in it.

The Washington Post reported Monday evening that IG Michael Horowitz, an Obama administration appointee, had concluded that there was, in fact, sufficient evidence to justify what Barr earlier called “spying” on the campaign.

Barr reportedly disagreed, though a spokesperson for the DOJ dismissed reports of a dispute between Barr and Horowitz: “Rather than speculating, people should read the...