The Goat Pen

Trump’s victory seemed to be a great coup for Putin. Kremlin loyalists celebrated Trump’s inauguration in Moscow, including at a live watch party with free-flowing champagne. And it conferred on Russia prestige of a sort. When I asked Victor Minin, the former Russian-government cybersecurity specialist who runs hackathons across Russia, about the effect of American media coverage of Russian hackers, he said, “It’s the brand of the year. It’s a good thing when, aside from oil, we have cutting-edge specialists and the whole world is talking about them.”

But this victory has burned out even faster than the others. The fingerprints that the Russians left behind, once discovered, raised an uproar in Washington. Congress, in a rare near-unanimous vote, stripped Trump of the ability to unilaterally lift American sanctions on Russia. They will very likely remain in place indefinitely, a prospect Medvedev bemoaned in a Facebook post the day Trump reluctantly signed the bill into law. Unable to get back the two diplomatic compounds in the U.S. that had been seized during the last days of the Obama administration, the Russians plunged headfirst into a destructive tit for tat—which resulted in the seizure of three more Russian diplomatic posts.

Even yesterday Trump made noises that Ukraine, not Russia, meddled in the 2016 election. It's pretty much a useless exercise - nobody is buying it - and people are still aghast wrt to that Helsinki shitshow. But Donnie has to make the effort, because he's been tasked with getting those sanctions lifted. Or else.

BLITZER: So FBI agents under investigation. Clearly, this is going to reverberate and provide ammunition to the president and his allies that this whole Russia investigation was criminally wrong.

PEREZ: Exactly. I mean, look, this is exactly what people close to the president have been saying, that the FBI committed wrongdoing in starting this investigation. And so the question now obviously is what are the details are going to be part of the Horowitz report that’s going to be released on December 9th and how much political hay the president’s allies are going to make about it.

BLITZER: Let me bring Preet Bharara, the former U.S. attorney at the Southern District of New York. What’s your reaction, Preet?

BHARARA: Well, that’s kind of an alarming bit of news. Obviously, based on what Evan is saying, there’s a lot we don’t know. But the given — the description he has provided, if there was an FBI agent sworn to uphold the Constitution who can be proven to have altered a document in connection with illegal proceeding, including the obtaining of a FISA warrant, that’s really serious. It doesn’t get a lot more serious than that.

And I’d like to know the details of what the nature of the change was, if there was a mistake in some way. Based on that reporting it doesn’t sound like it was. I want to keep an open mind about it. But that’s not a good thing. It’s a terrible thing.

The law enforcement agents and prosecutors who work with them are sworn to uphold the Constitution, sure, but actually even exceed the protection of the Constitution. They have to be of the utmost integrity and the utmost candor and especially making a representation to the court, which is what a FISA application is. It’s got be on the up and up.

Professor Tiger wrote: ↑Fri Nov 22, 2019 8:47 pm

Plus the IG report is coming out.

I'm not getting my hopes up on Horowitz.

If prof isn't on board...

He's going down. Gonna be fun to watch.

"So FBI agents under investigation."

Hey, if there are a couple of rogue FBI agents out there falsifying evidence, bring em in and punish them. I'm all for that, as everyone should be. Still, it doesn't mean that Trump isn't the most corrupt president ever and a moron on top...

Crotch cracks me up. Poor old dude.

hedge wrote: ↑Fri Nov 22, 2019 7:18 am Fiona Hill's IQ is at a minimum 50 points higher than Trump's. She's forgotten more about geopolitical strategy and negotiation than Trump could possibly even comprehend. That's not hyperbole, it's the truth...

She also said in her testimony that Russia interference did not favor Trump, but was for the purpose of doubting whoever became President.

“The goal of the Russians was really to put whoever became the president, by trying to tip their hands on one side of the scale, under a cloud,”

“They seed misinformation, they seed doubt, they have everybody questioning the legitimacy of a presidential candidate, be it President Trump or potentially President [Hillary] Clinton, that they would pit one side of our electorate against the other, that they would pit one party against the other,”

Looks like they succeeded. But she also said that they (the Russians) are also the ones who conceived and perpetrated the lie that it was really Ukraine that did all that. Another "seed of doubt," if you will. And clearly they were successful in that endeavor, at least within Trump's inner circle, which therefor includes all the yahoos that attend his rallies and believe every lie that spews out of his flabby cunt-like mouth. Man, the Russians must be getting tired of all this winning...

Also, it's funny how you'll mine thru 8 hours of Fiona Hill's testimony and cite the one item that kinda sorta doesn't crucify Trump (as the other 7.99 hours of her testimony did) and latch onto it as gospel truth, but not one word about anything else she said. It's almost as if you believe that everything she said that was positively damning of Trump was a lie, but somehow the two sentences that kinda sorta didn't crucify him were gospel truth. What are the chances??

Those “two sentences” and the Mueller Report repudiated the continuing insistence by the left that Trump is an agent of Putin which would have been serious. Strong arming another country is not serious or a crime, which all the witnesses agree.

Democrat corruption: Numerous facts you'll never hear by watching Fake News CNN or MSNBC. John Solomon needs 2 bodyguards with him at all times with all the dirt that he's uncovered on Hillary, Biden and Obummer.

"Strong arming another country is not serious or a crime"

If you're strong arming them for the national interest, of course not. But if you're using the power of the US government and taxpayers for personal gain, which Trump clearly was, then yeah, it is a crime...

Uncovering the crookedness and lies of the Democrats is starting to become interesting. Stay tuned Hedge.

Another rabbit hole Crotch is going down, on the order of his masters at Fox News, LOL...

Hunter Biden and his bff Devon Archer, were both hopeless ne'er do wells from two top Democrat families. Even though they both had zero experience in either energy or Ukraine (or any other real business for that matter), yet they somehow wound up on the board of the Ukainian energy company making $50K per month.

Here's film footage of when Daddy Joe Biden got home to deal with the mess these two feckless young bro's caused for his 2020 presidential campaign:



The Bidens and Devon Archer in happier times:

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-mete ... playing-g/

BREAKING
U.S. THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Federal Subpoenas Seek Information on Giuliani’s Consulting Business
Subpoenas are issued for information on Giuliani’s associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman

By Rebecca Davis O’Brien, Rebecca Ballhaus and Shelby Holliday
Nov. 25, 2019 3:12 pm ET
Subpoenas issued to people with ties to President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and his associates indicate a broad federal investigation into possible money laundering, obstruction of justice and campaign-finance violations, and suggest that prosecutors are looking closely at the work of Mr. Giuliani himself, according to people familiar with the matter.

ruh rho, Rudy

This is it! Blockbuster! Explosive! Tipping point! Game changer! The beginning of the end of the Trump Presidency! The Walls are closing in on Trump! They've got a story to tell and they are going to tell it! Trump will is going down - DOWN I tell you!

Just queue up all your Wile E. Coyote posts and the ones like the one above and look at them very carefully every time you hear something about Hunter Biden or some mid-level FBI employee or any of the other people Fox has told you are going to be convicted of anything...

so satisfying to watch

"The tactic of protestors (sic), specially those tied to Antifa and the climate change movement"

Top notch writers and editors at that site. Specially...