News Dump

H.Res.755 - Impeaching Donald John Trump, President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-resolution/755/text

Per the United Nations, 9 countries have a lower GDP than Gerrit Cole's new contract.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)

Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) on Tuesday blocked an attempt by Democrats to pass legislation meant to prevent Russia and other countries from interfering in elections.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/473994-gop-senator-blocks-bill-aimed-at-preventing-russia-election-meddling

Horowitz did not find evidence Obama asked for probe of Trump
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/474098-horowitz-did-not-find-evidence-obama-asked-for-probe-of-trump

MLB released its study looking into whether the baseballs were juiced in 2019, and the professors running it believe a record number of HR were hit due in part to inconsistent seams on the ball -- and perhaps players embracing launch angle.
https://twitter.com/JeffPassan/status/1204778527284965376?s=09

Mike Bloomberg to donate $10 million to House Democrats targeted by GOP
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mike-bloomberg-to-donate-10-million-to-house-democrats-targeted-by-gop/2019/12/10/68a80f52-1b7c-11ea-8d58-5ac3600967a1_story.html

Boris Johnson hides in fridge to avoid questions as aide swears at GMB reporter
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/breaking-boris-johnson-hides-fridge-21070803

The Vatican is using majority of donations for the poor to fight its budget deficit with as little as 10% going to charities for the poor, report says
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/11/vatican-uses-donations-for-poor-to-fight-budget-deficit-report-says.html

Ruling from the bench, a federal judge just rejected the Trump admin's attempt to shut down our case with @WeAreOversight that would force Pompeo to follow the law and recover the Putin meeting notes that Trump illegally seized.
https://twitter.com/DemocracyFwd/status/1204826398076129281
https://democracyforward.org/lawsuits/american-oversight-democracy-forward-v-pompeo-putin-notes/

25 people quarantined at Aurora ICE detention facility due to scabies outbreak
https://www.denverpost.com/2019/12/09/ice-aurora-detention-scabies-outbreak/

Suspects in shooting at Jewish market in Jersey City identified as 47-year-old David Anderson and 50-year-old Francine Graham, believed to be followers of Black Israelites - WABC
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/jersey-city-shootout-developing-details-3-2/2239660/
https://abc7ny.com/nj-shooting-suspects-idd-case-could-be-domestic-terrorism/5746979/

The Black Israelites are same racist, Jew hating, gay hating group that Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar celebrates...

Internal memos obtained by NPR show career staff at the Education Department recommended full debt relief for student borrowers who were defrauded by some for-profit colleges. Then Secretary Betsy DeVos stepped in.
https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/786367598/betsy-devos-overruled-education-dept-findings-on-defrauded-student-borrowers

The World Wide Fund for Nature has suspended support for field patrols at a national park in the Democratic Republic of Congo as authorities probe a suspicious death, the charity announced Wednesday. An ongoing BuzzFeed News investigation has found that the beloved global mega-charity funded, equipped, and worked directly with anti-poaching forces that have been accused of torturing, sexually assaulting, and murdering scores of people at parks across Asia and Africa. At Salonga National Park, which WWF has comanaged with the Congolese government since 2015, the charity kept evidence of brutal crimes by forest rangers — including the gang rape and torture of pregnant women — under wraps.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tomwarren/wwf-has-suspended-support-for-rangers-at-africas-largest
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tomwarren/wwf-world-wide-fund-nature-parks-torture-death
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tomwarren/leaked-report-wwf-backed-guards-raped-pregnant-women

Trump went on a Twitter tear and posted more than 60 times in 3 hours to rage about impeachment and the FBI
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-twitter-tear-impeachment-doj-ig-report-2019-12

Reminder: Donald "Tough On Crime" Trump Called FBI Scum At Rally, "The Party Of Law And Order" Republican Rally Attendees Cheered
https://www.msnbc.com/hardball/watch/trump-calls-fbi-scum-at-rally-74878021538

Mongolian government retroactively granted Trump Jr. rare permit after he killed endangered sheep
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/474046-mongolian-government-retroactively-granted-trump-jr-rare-permit
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-donald-trump-jr-went-to-mongolia-got-special-treatment-from-the-government-and-killed-an-endangered-sheep

Don't invest in Brazilian meat, warn deforestation campaigners - An international group of 30 non-profit groups published an open letter on Wednesday warning investors considering buying shares in two Brazilian meat giants of their exposure to deforestation.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/11/dont-invest-in-brazilian-meat-warn-deforestation-campaigners

As Jewish bodies were still laying in cold blood after being murdered by terrorists in Jersey City, a rep of @AmericansAA captured spontaneous antisemitic tirades blaming Jews for their own murder & ppl cheering it on! Antisemitism, a bigger problem than appears.
https://twitter.com/HikindDov/status/1204806510762741760

What’s particularly painful is that they targeted a store whose Hasidic owner can be seen in this video handing out candy to black children on Halloween although it’s not his holiday. The terrorists killed his wife, and people outside shamelessly blamed him for her death!
https://twitter.com/HikindDov/status/1204853084209504256

Pakistani court to hear final arguments tomorrow in blasphemy case of Junaid Hafeez, a former lecturer who studied at Jackson State University in 2009. Hafeez has been in solitary confinement since his 2013 arrest for allegedly blasphemous online posts.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pakistan-blasphemy/pakistan-scholars-blasphemy-trial-enters-final-stages-as-u-s-raises-alarm-idUSKBN1YF1KE

I’ve read a draft of the White House executive order on the IHRA definition. I’ve been clear that the government should adopt this useful tool. I’m glad that the Admin. has taken this important step.
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-us-should-adopt-the-ihra-definition-of-anti-semitism/

Under Presidents Bush and Obama, the Dept of Education issued directives to protect Jewish students under Title VI. President Obama's State Department published a definition of anti-Semitism to its website as a guide for identifying and combating anti-Semitism abroad.
https://twitter.com/RepTedDeutch/status/1204837454483804167

President Obama's Asst. Attorney General Tom Perez said, "...discrimination against Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and members of other religious groups violates Title VI when that discrimination is based on the group's actual or perceived shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics..."
https://twitter.com/RepTedDeutch/status/1204837455427444736

It is important to continue this policy to protect students. Our gov’t effort would be strengthened by using the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, widely accepted as a strong and fair definition of what amounts to hatred against Jews.
https://twitter.com/RepTedDeutch/status/1204837456337657856

Dozens of countries have adopted/endorsed the IHRA definition, incl. the European Parliament & OAS Sec. Gen. The IHRA definition can be a robust guide for law enforcement, education officials, and gov. agencies to identify, prevent, & combat all forms of anti-Semitism
https://twitter.com/RepTedDeutch/status/1204837457247850496

Whether it comes in the form of physical threats to Jewish students on college campuses for supporting Israel, deadly attacks on Jewish institutions, or perpetuating anti-Semitic tropes, anti-Semitism must be universally and consistently condemned.
https://twitter.com/RepTedDeutch/status/1204837458241867779

Trump abandons his administration’s faltering effort to dissolve a key federal agency, a major setback in his effort to make government leaner and more efficient.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/after-bipartisan-pushback-trump-ditches-effort-to-kill-major-federal-agency/2019/12/11/bbce1c10-16d8-11ea-a659-7d69641c6ff7_story.html

Bernie Sanders sets a new record with 4 million donations
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bernie-sanders-campaign-says-it-has-received-a-record-4-million-donations/

James Littlefair, an advance staffer who worked for Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, has resigned from the department after his mother pleaded guilty to illegally helping him graduate from Georgetown University as part of the nationwide “Varsity Blues” college admissions scandal, according to two people familiar with the matter. | Prosecutors from the Department of Justice said that she paid college admissions consultant William “Rick” Singer $9,000 so that an employee of his would take four online classes for her son at Georgetown and Arizona State University in 2017 through April 2018.
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/11/treasury-staffer-college-admissions-scandal-082461

FBI Agents Showed Bias Against Hillary Clinton, Not Against Trump, DOJ Says
https://truthout.org/articles/fbi-agents-showed-bias-against-hillary-clinton-not-against-trump-doj-says/

Exchange in Nevada today:
REPORTER: "You ever talk to any aides about a one-term pledge?"
BIDEN: "No. I never have. I don't have plans on one term. I'm not even there yet."
https://twitter.com/mikememoli/status/1204841815628746757

The Knesset, Israel's parliament, dissolved itself tonight, and the third election in under a year was set for March. Israel is officially going to a third election in less than a year. The Knesset is still working on the bill to move the election date to March 2 instead of the automatic date, March 10, which is Purim.

Trump ended rules that keep toxic chemicals out of our air and water - now he falsely claims credit for keeping them clean. That's like going bankrupt six times and calling yourself a successful businessman.
https://twitter.com/MikeBloomberg/status/1204879768581226498

The anti-Clinton supervising special agent who told the IG he "didn't want a criminal to be in the White House" said, because the informant was also pro-Trump, that he was "not worried about [the source] trying to provide information or getting dirty information on Trump."
https://twitter.com/ryanjreilly/status/1204838682139746309

We need to know both the source and the agents involved. The damage they wrought upon their own agency, which helped throw the election to a Russian asset, cannot be undone. They are as toxic to national security as Trump is.
https://twitter.com/istolethekishka/status/1204878073130180609

A CHS was voluntarily giving information "of interest to the U.S. government" to pro-Trump agents, and the agents just… sat on it: Context: Three pro-Trump FBI employees were dealing with a Trump-supporting confidential human source. The Crossfire Hurricane team/FBI leadership didn't know about the informant during campaign. A top FBI counterintelligence official said he "absolutely" should have been told. https://twitter.com/igorbobic/status/1204826597985046528
https://twitter.com/ryanjreilly/status/1204835430555947008
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ELhvbkMWsAMwMEF.png

I remember there being a rumor, or more than a rumor that Comey felt pressure to release his letter about the "reopening" of the email case because of pro-Trump FBI agents in the NY field office threatening to leak and he thought it was better coming from him
https://twitter.com/DogHerny/status/1204837825583222784

Jim @Acosta to @wolfblitzer on @realDonaldTrump: "Busy in his social-media bunker, more than 70 tweets & retweets in the last 24 hours ... We're hearing he's growing increasingly aggravated over the likelihood he'll be #impeached. One advisor says 'The coverage bugs him.'"
https://twitter.com/Porter_Anderson/status/1204887196286750721

Trump's redefinition of Jewish identity that wasn't. How bad reporting and ahem Democratic antisemitism and a Twitter meltdown turned an Obama-era doctrine protecting Jews into an attempt to render them un-American, and how we can avoid such mistakes in the future. | Because as it turns out, the executive order does not redefine Judaism as a nationality. The full text, which was released today, simply echoes Obama era doctrine for protecting Jews under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Because Title VI does not mention discrimination based on religion, it could be interpreted to exclude protection for religious groups like Sikhs, Muslims, Jews, and others. To close this loophole, the Obama administration’s assistant attorney general for civil rights Tom Perez—now the head of the Democratic National Committee—crafted a policy based on prior precedent that stated that these religious groups were nonetheless covered under Title VI’s provisions, despite the language of the act. Basically, the idea was that although these groups might not define themselves as a “nation” or “race,” because racists define them that way and attack them as such, they are protected. A loophole of sorts to get around a loophole. Slate legal writer Mark Joseph Stern has an excellent detailed breakdown of this policy and its history. You can read Perez’s 2010 letter on this here, embedded below courtesy of Media Matters’ estimable Matt Gertz, who got this right from the start: | The Trump executive order on anti-Semitism simply echoes this language, as you can read below | And lest you think that the Trump administration changed the text of the order after the public criticism, Anti-Defamation League head Jonathan Greenblatt confirmed that he’d seen this language in the draft from the beginning, which is why ADL supported it. Simply put, the New York Times blew the story, and Twitter and ahem antisemitic Democrats had a meltdown over its bad reporting. | The target of this order is university campuses, which has raised concerns over whether it will be used to quell criticism of Israel on campus. The order itself, however, states that “agencies shall not diminish or infringe upon any right protected under Federal law or under the First Amendment.” Moreover, the internationally-recognized definition of anti-Semitism that the order cites explicitly states, “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.” Finally, as Stern notes in Slate, any claims of anti-Semitism involving Israel can only be registered after claims of other ethnic or religiously-based anti-Semitism are established. This doesn’t mean someone won’t try to misuse the order to go after non-bigoted activists on campus, but it does make it unlikely. As Stern puts it, “Is this order red meat for Republicans who believe colleges are increasingly hostile to Jews? Probably. Will it quash the pro-Palestine movement on campuses or impose an unwanted classification on American Jews? Absolutely not.”
https://yair.substack.com/p/trumps-redefinition-of-jewish-identity
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/12/trump-antisemitism-executive-order-israel-judaism.html
https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2011/05/04/090810_AAG_Perez_Letter_to_Ed_OCR_Title%20VI_and_Religiously_Identifiable_Groups.pdf
https://twitter.com/JGreenblattADL/status/1204792600139616258

Michael Horowitz just shot down a bunch of Trump conspiracy theories
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/12/11/michael-horowitz-just-shot-down-bunch-trump-conspiracy-theories/

Canada, the UK and Israel (x3) will all call and hold national general elections in the time it takes the US to get halfway through one nominating cycle

The Department of Justice inspector general's office is still investigating alleged leaks from the FBI's New York field office regarding the Hillary Clinton email investigation to Rudy Giuliani in the final days of the 2016 campaign, the IG testified.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/doj-watchdog-says-he-s-investigating-alleged-fbi-leaks-giuliani-n1100006

You can tell from the very first second the surrogate starts talking that she has absolutely no idea how to answer the question, and that she knows that everyone else there knows that too.
https://twitter.com/charlescwcooke/status/1204889701825560577

Translation: "Senator Warren has an undisclosed agenda that would make her unelectable. Therefore she must parse her message so that it will appeal to enough her base while simultaneously adhering to the Progressive agenda."
https://twitter.com/toughlovechild/status/1204893749349715968

"What's amazing -- at least to me -- is that so many Republicans have turned into unquestioning supporters of Trump to the point where 4 in 10 go on record to say he is a better president than George Washington," writes @CillizzaCNN
https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1204855885652267009
https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/11/politics/george-washington-donald-trump-poll/index.html

10 years ago, around a half-billion people lived under populist governments. Now, that number is closer to 3 billion | Start with a working model of the ism under question. Jordan Kyle and Limor Gultchin, in a very useful survey at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, synthesize the political science literature into two fundamental assertions underlying every governing populist movement: 1) "A country's 'true people' are locked into conflict with outsiders, including establishment elites," and 2) "Nothing should constrain the will of the true people." Leaders then govern in an atmosphere of near-constant existential urgency. | By the end of the 2009, the Institute reckoned, there were 19 populist governments in the world, led in size by Vladimir Putin's Russia and Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Turkey (both "culturally" populist), then Italy, South Africa, Argentina, and Venezuela (the latter three from the socio-economic category). Together, those 19 countries currently account for around 577 million people and $7 trillion in annual gross domestic product. What about the state of populist governments today? The Blair Institute study only runs through 2018, and events move fast. But we still have the arrival to the list of India, the United States, Joko Widodo's Indonesia, Jair Bolsonaro's Brazil, Rodrigo Duterte's Philippines, and more. Factoring in one's own characterizations about global developments this year (I would re-add Argentina and Bolivia, for example), you arrive at a similar-to-2009 total of around 21 populist countries. But oh, what a size difference: 2.8 billion people generating an annual $34.4 trillion of economic activity. The populists are no longer coming, they are here. | In a parallel study a year ago for the Tony Blair Institute, also written up at The Atlantic, Jordan Kyle and Yascha Mounk conclude that "populist governments are about four times more likely than non-populist ones to harm democratic institutions," that more than half of them "amend or rewrite their countries' constitutions," often to "extend term limits or weaken checks on executive power," and that 40 percent have been "indicted on corruption charges," with their countries experiencing "significant drops in international corruption rankings." Individual rights and civil society institutions disproportionately come under attack. Conclusion: "Populist rule—whether from the right or the left—has a highly negative effect on political systems and leads to a significant risk of democratic erosion." | A newer index introduced by the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project at the University of Gothenburg finds that "the number of liberal democracies has declined from 44 in 2008 to 39 in 2018," and that "almost one-third of the world's population lives in countries undergoing autocratization, surging from 415 million in 2016 to 2.3 billion in 2018." These include India, Brazil, and the United States.
https://reason.com/2019/12/11/the-decade-populism-went-mainstream/
https://institute.global/insight/renewing-centre/populists-power-around-world
https://institute.global/insight/renewing-centre/populist-harm-democracy
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/hard-data-populism-bolsonaro-trump/578878/
https://www.v-dem.net/media/filer_public/f9/08/f908eb53-c0e2-40f0-9294-e067537d8f0b/v-dem_policybrief_5_2016.pdf
https://www.v-dem.net/media/filer_public/99/de/99dedd73-f8bc-484c-8b91-44ba601b6e6b/v-dem_democracy_report_2019.pdf

Senate Republicans reportedly plan not to hear from a single witness at an impeachment trial. It looks like they don’t care about the facts.

Kyiv officials were hoping for a statement of support from Trump in advance of Ukraine’s big summit with Russia. Instead, the president hosted Putin’s main man. Ukrainian officials spent last weekend glued to Trump’s Twitter feed.  People working closely with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have been in contact with Trump administration officials over the past several weeks discussing the relationship between the two presidents, according to four people with knowledge of the talks. Based on those conversations, Ukrainian officials came to expect that Trump would make a statement of support before Zelensky met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in France for peace talks. A statement might even come via Twitter, they said they were told. “Through all the signals we got, we firmly believed there would be a statement,” a senior Zelensky administration official told The Daily Beast. But as Saturday and Sunday ticked by, there was only silence from the White House. Even as Ukrainian officials have publicly been loath to criticize Trump’s pressure campaign on their country, frustrations with Washington have quietly percolated. And last weekend, they were especially acute. On Monday, Zelensky and Putin met in Normandy, France for face-to-face negotiations on the war in eastern Ukraine. Russia had seized Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014, and has ever since backed separatists in the eastern part of the country. French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were on hand for the talks. Putin and Zelensky agreed to exchange “all known prisoners,” according to The Washington Post. Another round of talks is expected in several months. Words of support from the United States in the lead-up to the Normandy talks could have given the Ukrainian president more leverage with Putin, according to the Zelensky administration official and two additional people close to his administration. Instead, Trump spent the weekend on Twitter tweeting about Fox News pundits, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and CNN. It was a particularly busy weekend of social media for him, with more than 100 tweets and retweets by Politico’s count. But no word on Normandy. And the next week put salt in the wound. On Tuesday, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held a joint press conference with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and made an appearance at the White House. One of the people close to the Zelensky administration said the silence from White House—combined with Lavrov’s photo-friendly visit to Washington—sent “a terrible signal” and was “most unfortunate.” According to a read-out of Trump’s meeting with Lavrov, the president “urged Russia to resolve the conflict with Ukraine.” The Ukrainian official called the episode “frustrating.” Ukrainians say they view the coupling of Trump’s pre-Normandy silence and the administration’s decision to welcome Lavrov as a signal in an of itself—and not a good one. Zelensky administration officials are now reconsidering their strategy on communication with and about the Trump administration, the official said. Thus far, Zelensky administration officials have stayed in line with the Trump administration’s narrative on Giuliani’s Ukraine activity and the focuses of the impeachment inquiry. But they say they have little to show for it, and may take a different public relations strategy in the future.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/ukrainians-trump-just-sent-us-a-terrible-signal
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-letter-promised-zelensky-unwavering-support-invited-him-to-white-house
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/putin-zelensky-merkel-join-macron-in-paris-for-talks-to-end-ukraines-war/2019/12/09/285cc8b0-17ae-11ea-80d6-d0ca7007273f_story.html
https://twitter.com/search?lang=en&q=(from%3Arealdonaldtrump)%20until%3A2019-12-08%20since%3A2019-12-07&src=typed_query
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/08/epic-sunday-trump-heavy-tweets-078562

Prosecutors have asked a judge to return Giuliani associate Lev Parnas to jail for lying about his income and concealing a $1 million payment he got from Russia in September, a month before he was charged. "Parnas poses an extreme risk of flight."
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-11/giuliani-associate-parnas-got-1-million-from-russia-u-s-says

Republican Senators spent Wednesday "outraged" over how the FBI surveilled a Trump campaign advisor that came less than 24 hours after grilling Facebook and Apple for their encrypted messaging apps, supporting AG Barr's requests for a "backdoor"
https://www.wsj.com/articles/republicans-condemn-fbis-use-of-surveillance-powers-they-long-supported-11576105389

In 2 days, the Beto O’Rourke backed challenger to Rep. Dan Crenshaw raised $200,000 in #TX02
https://twitter.com/kirk_bado/status/1204903860768301058

So overwhelmed by your support and encouragement. Just 48 hours after filing, we crossed $200,000 in the door. Let’s win this 💪 #simafortx
https://twitter.com/SimaforTX/status/1204891801385160704

Source confirms: #Dodgers in agreement with Blake Treinen on a one-year, $10M contract. First: @JeffPassan.
https://twitter.com/Ken_Rosenthal/status/1204905698875723776

Having Republican Doug Collins call his colleague a cancer on the country and the house of representatives. He should be fucking censored. He's a lying asshole if there ever was one. The man has no honor and its a shame he sits in Congress. I apologize for his behavior. Utterly Shameful. And as to Trump: Impeach the f--------. Have a good day.

Yet another @GOP member just spoke without defending Trump’s actions. When the facts are unfriendly, argue process!
https://twitter.com/davidaxelrod/status/1204927901004640267

If smoking bath salts became a person it would be Louie Gohmert
https://twitter.com/TVietor08/status/1204926916471353344

How poisonous? Compare the speeches by Chairman Nadler and Ranking Member Collins. Nadler ends his speech with an olive branch. In his speech, Collins repeatedly invoked the Hitler propaganda concept of the "Big Lie."
https://twitter.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1204931905596116993
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ELjHLd7X0AAKWOv.png

A judge upheld the South Carolina Republican Party's decision not to hold a 2020 presidential primary, a move taken by several states in erecting hurdles for the long-shot candidates challenging Trump.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/trump-wins-south-carolina-gop-can-cancel-its-2020-primary-n1100206?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_np

The best Republican argument they came up with is: Why are you only charging the President for two of his countless crimes?

Tonight is only opening statements from Committee members. All 41 members.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee passes comprehensive legislation on NATO ally Turkey, which includes sanctions and restrictions of arms sales for Syria incursion and purchase of Russian weapons system
https://twitter.com/RobbieGramer/status/1204873416764997632

“As long as the S-400s are in Turkey under Turkish control, there will be no F-35s delivered to Turkey. This is Erdogan’s choice, and he is well aware of the consequences” SFRC Chairman Jim Risch says in statement
https://twitter.com/RobbieGramer/status/1204873511438815242


_______________


Blumenthal: Did you find any evidence that the FBI tapped the phones are Trump Tower? Horowitz: No.

- "I'm not going to try to get into the mind of Donald Trump because I don't think there's a whole lot of space there. I think he's a kook. I think he's crazy. I think he's unfit for office." - Lindsey Graham, Feb 17 2016  -Lindsay Graham (pre-Kompromat)
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tomnamako/kook
- "You know, what concerns me about the American press is this endless, endless attempt to label this guy as some kind of kook, not fit to be president." -Linsay Graham (post-Kompromat)

I peeked at Trumps Twitter this morning and it's full of conspiracy theories and lies already , I assume in anticipation of this

William Barr said people who criticize law enforcement should do without it...does this mean Barr is going to abandon Trump?

Notice how at the very start of this hearing, all the democrats interjected with "Point of order!", "Mr. Chairman!", and the occasional "THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!"? Me neither.

Isolated audio of Lindsay Graham reading a text calling Trump an enormous douche, boy do I have a treat for you.
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1204782833119748106

I think everyone should be concerned about the usage of FISA warrants for surveillance of U.S. citizens.  The F.B.I. warned the Trump campaign that the Russians were trying to infiltrate their campaign. With that warning, they (Team Trump) willingly sought out the help from the Russians and it's all in the Mueller report.  Therefor any surveillance was 100% warranted and there is no deep state.

Please allow me to point out...and make sure you pay attention during the hearings for this...Republicans are not denying what Trump did nor coming to his defense for it.

Can we get a Venn diagram of all the Republicans questioning him about FISA abuses who also repeatedly voted to enact/renew the FISA laws unchanged despite red flags from the ACLU and other groups about abuse potential?

As a party, we are better to risk losing without Donald Trump than trying to win with him. Enough already with Mister Trump -Lindsey Graham 2015

From the IG report:     We concluded that the FBI's decision to open Crossfire Hurricane and the four related individual investigations was, under Department and FBI policy, a discretionary judgment call and that the FBI's exercise of discretion was in compliance with those policies.    For the reasons described below, we found that each investigation was opened for an authorized purpose and, in light of the low threshold established by Department and FBI predication policy, with adequate factual predication.    We also found that the FBI satisfied the DIOG's notification and approval requirements for designating Crossfire Hurricane and the four related individual investigations as SIMs.
https://justice.gov/storage/120919-examination.pdf

The FBI applied for the FISA warrant against Carter Page four times. It was appropriately approved FOUR TIMES.

Daily reminder on who ran Trumps campaign: Cambridge Analytica Execs Caught Discussing Extortion and Fake News:     In a series of undercover videos filmed over the last year, Britain's Channel 4 News caught executives at Cambridge Analytica appear to say they could extort politicians, send women to entrap them, and help proliferate propaganda to help their clients.
https://www.wired.com/story/cambridge-analytica-execs-caught-discussing-extortion-and-fake-news/

"I ask unanimous consent to submit this shot of bourbon to the record" -Lindsey Graham

Senator Patrick Leahy brought up the most important FBI malfeasance that happened during the 2016 election campaign at the Inspector General's hearing today. Pro-Trump and anti-Hillary agents in the NY office of the FBI released information to Giulani that he bragged about on TV about Hillary's server and emails. This prompted FBI Director to announce the reopening of the Hillary email investigation just before the election. Her poll numbers dropped 5 percentage points as a result and cost her the election. The FISA abuse over Carter Page, as wrong as it was, did not effect anything beyond his civil liberties. So contrary to the President's attacks about liberal bias against his campaign, the real damage to the election was from conservative FBI agents' leaks.

Fusion GPS co-founders (Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch) just released a new book, and The New Yorker reports:     As the authors tell it, they became obsessed with Trump almost accidentally. Their involvement in his campaign began as a business proposition. In the past, they had worked mostly for corporate clients, but in 2012 they had also done some political-opposition research on the Republican Presidential nominee, Mitt Romney. (They declined to disclose their client.) So, in 2015, as Trump gained momentum, but before he clinched the nomination, Simpson and Fritsch again decided to look for political work. After firing off a quick e-mail to a big conservative donor they knew who disliked Trump, they were hired. They don’t identify that donor but note, helpfully, that he arranged for them to contract their opposition-research assignment through the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative Web site known to be funded by Paul Singer, a New York hedge-fund magnate. Once Trump secured the nomination, however, the G.O.P. donor fled.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-inside-story-of-christopher-steeles-trump-dossier

Fusion GPS (where the Steele Dossier originated from) had originally secured a contract with a Conservative donor to do opposition research on Donald Trump. So after the donor fled: At that point, Fusion switched clients and political parties, pitching its services to Marc Elias, the lawyer for the D.N.C. and Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign. Clinton’s identity, too, was kept hidden, in this case behind the screen of Elias’s law firm, Perkins Coie. In the beginning, Clinton’s identity was also hidden from Steele, who knew only that Fusion was hiring him in the late spring of 2016, as a contractor, to investigate the tangled web of Trump’s ties to Russia for an unknown patron. Contrary to the conspiracy theories that the right later spread, Simpson and Fritsch write that they never met or spoke with Clinton.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-inside-story-of-christopher-steeles-trump-dossier

So eventually the Clinton campaign became involved, but Steele had no knowledge who the new client was. Only after Steele realized how serious his intel on Donald Trump was, that he decided to provide it to American authorities, as this went beyond just simple campaign dirt and was becoming something much more sinister.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Free_Beacon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Singer_(businessman)

Horowitz repeatedly seems to indicate he would be interested in exploring questions about AG Barr's conduct were it not for a statutory prohibition on him doing so