US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7764

On June 06 2017 05:48 Zambrah wrote:


I'm not sure thats ever going to get out, but I think you can get an alright idea of the kind of stuff they were posting if the hanging mexican child thing was posted. It probably wasn't all horrible and racist, but you have to imagine that some of it was probably pretty nasty

RUSSIAN MILITARY INTELLIGENCE executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before last November’s presidential election, according to a highly classified intelligence report obtained by The Intercept.

The top-secret National Security Agency document, which was provided anonymously to The Intercept and independently authenticated, analyzes intelligence very recently acquired by the agency about a months-long Russian intelligence cyber effort against elements of the U.S. election and voting infrastructure. The report, dated May 5, 2017, is the most detailed U.S. government account of Russian interference in the election that has yet come to light.

While the document provides a rare window into the NSA’s understanding of the mechanics of Russian hacking, it does not show the underlying “raw” intelligence on which the analysis is based. A U.S. intelligence officer who declined to be identified cautioned against drawing too big a conclusion from the document because a single analysis is not necessarily definitive.

The report indicates that Russian hacking may have penetrated further into U.S. voting systems than was previously understood. It states unequivocally in its summary statement that it was Russian military intelligence, specifically the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, that conducted the cyber attacks described in the document:

Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate actors … executed cyber espionage operations against a named U.S. company in August 2016, evidently to obtain information on elections-related software and hardware solutions. … The actors likely used data obtained from that operation to … launch a voter registration-themed spear-phishing campaign targeting U.S. local government organizations.
(Article continues)

On June 06 2017 07:45 NewSunshine wrote:

But at least the Saudis are condemning Qatar. /s

On June 06 2017 07:47 Plansix wrote:

But will they donate it to the government as promised? Or were they only going to do that if they got caught?

On June 06 2017 08:11 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote:
in the least surprising move ever Carter Page continuing to do interviews. Someone needs to do an intervention.

On June 06 2017 08:13 biology]major wrote:


Can we interview him about why he is doing interviews?

George Conway, the husband of White House adviser Kellyanne Conway who was under consideration for multiple positions in President Donald Trump’s administration, mocked the president on Monday for targeting his own Justice Department.

In a series of tweets, Trump rebuffed his top aides and other administration officials, who had insisted that the administration’s executive order suspending visa issuance from six majority-Muslim countries was not a travel ban.

“People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!” Trump tweeted Monday morning.

“The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.” the president added. “The Justice Dept. should ask for an expedited hearing of the watered down Travel Ban before the Supreme Court - & seek much tougher version!”

Conway derided Trump’s tweets, criticizing the president in a post that concluded with his trademark “Sad.”

“These tweets may make some ppl feel better, but they certainly won't help OSG get 5 votes in SCOTUS, which is what actually matters. Sad,” Conway wrote, referring to the Office of the Solicitor General, which argues before the Supreme Court on behalf of the Trump administration.

Conway, a partner at the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, was a candidate for the solicitor general post and the front-runner to head DOJ’s Civil Division until he withdrew his name from consideration last week.

Asked if the tweet from the unverified account was his — Monday was the first time the account had tweeted since 2015 — Conway told POLITICO: “Yes. My tweet.”

In a statement announcing his withdrawal last week, Conway had said the time wasn’t right for him to leave the private sector but maintained that he continues to support the Trump administration.

In subsequent tweets Monday, Conway made clear: “I still VERY, VERY STRONGLY support POTUS, his Admin, policies, the executive order and of course, my wonderful wife.”

That’s why, he continued, “I said what I said this morning. Every sensible lawyer in WHCO and every political appointee at DOJ wd agree with me (as some have already told me). The pt cannot be stressed enough that tweets on legal matters seriously undermine Admin agenda and POTUS--and those who support him, as I do, need to reinforce that pt and not be shy about it.”

Kellyanne Conway earlier Monday had blasted the media for what she called their “obsession with covering everything [Trump] says on Twitter and very little of what he does as president.”

Prominent Republican attorneys are staging what amounts to an unprecedented public intervention against President Donald Trump, warning that his tweeting habit was doing serious harm to his bid to preserve his travel ban policy at the Supreme Court—and could be inflicting more widespread damage on his administration’s ability to carry out his agenda.

The outpouring of criticism was triggered by a flurry of tweets Trump sent early Monday, attacking the Justice Department’s legal strategy, dismissing his own revised travel ban order as a “watered down, politically correct” version of what he originally set out to do, and blasting as “political” the court rulings against him on the subject.

The most attention-grabbing pushback came from George Conway, who was under consideration until recently for a top post overseeing Justice Department civil litigation in the Trump administration. Conway, who is married to top White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, even seemed to mock one of Trump’s favorite Twitter formulations.

“These tweets may make some ppl feel better, but they certainly won’t help OSG [Justice’s Office of Solicitor General] get 5 votes in SCOTUS, which is what actually matters. Sad,” Conway wrote.

Conway later clarified that he remains a Trump backer, but is not backing down from his criticism. In fact, he insisted that lawyers currently in the administration concur.

“I still VERY, VERY STRONGLY support POTUS, his Admin, policies, the executive order...and of course, my wonderful wife. Which is why I said what I said this morning,” Conway added. “Every sensible lawyer in [the White House Counsel’s Office and every political appointee at DOJ wd agree with him (as some have already told me). The pt cannot be stressed enough that tweets on legal matters...seriously undermine Admin agenda and POTUS...those who support him, as I do, need to reinforce that point and not be shy about it.”

A top Justice Department official under President George W. Bush, Jack Goldsmith, unleashed a 17-entry Tweetstorm arguing that Trump’s ongoing attacks on his own lawyers and his apparent effort to disclaim responsibility for reissuing his “watered down” order are further eroding judicial deference for the executive branch.

“Given POTUS’s instability, it is not just courts that have reason to relax the presumption of regularity for this Prez,” wrote Goldsmith, now a professor at Harvard Law School. “We all have reason to do so about everything the Executive branch does that touches, however lightly, the President....One thing DT behavior entails...is many losses in court and not just on the immigration EOs....Everything else Executive would normally win—reversing Clean Power Plan, terminating treaty, new regs, etc.—will be much, much harder.”

Lawyers challenging Trump’s travel ban in court seemed gleeful at the utterances from the chief executive.

“Its kind of odd to have the defendant in Hawaii v Trump acting as our co-counsel. We don’t need the help but will take it,” wrote Neal Katyal, a lawyer behind the state of Hawaii-led case that resulted in the broadest injunction against Trump’s revised travel ban.

Supreme Court litigators said Trump’s tweets were particularly damaging because the Justice Department has argued that the revised order Trump issued in March should be treated as distinct from his first effort and from his campaign trail rhetoric calling for a ban on all Muslims entering the U.S.

Government lawyers have also insisted that the second order was backed by a policy process involving Cabinet officials such as Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly.

However, Trump’s reference to political correctness seemed to fuel arguments that the alleged policy process was window dressing and the entire effort may have simply been intended to follow through on his calls for a Muslim ban.

“They’re trying to draw a sharp line between this order and his campaign statements that all Muslims should be barred,” said Walter Dellinger, who was an acting solicitor general under President Bill Clinton. “Trump has rendered moot the debate in the litigation over whether campaign statements should be inadmissible by incorporating by reference all those statements and turning them into presidential proclamations.”

On June 06 2017 07:56 NewSunshine wrote:

I mean, with all the money Trump collects by making Mar a Lago his White House, would it really surprise?

In other news, charges are apparently being pressed against the NSA leaker, who has an interesting name.
https://twitter.com/CaitJGibson/status/871840440412254212