❝ The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, asked the Justice Department this weekend to publicly reject President Trump’s assertion that President Barack Obama ordered the tapping of Mr. Trump’s phones, senior American officials said on Sunday. Mr. Comey has argued that the highly charged claim is false and must be corrected, they said, but the department has not released any such statement.
Mr. Comey, who made the request on Saturday after Mr. Trump leveled his allegation on Twitter, has been working to get the Justice Department to knock down the claim because it falsely insinuates that the F.B.I. broke the law, the officials said…
❝ Mr. Comey’s request is a remarkable rebuke of a sitting president, putting the nation’s top law enforcement official in the position of questioning Mr. Trump’s truthfulness. The confrontation between the two is the most serious consequence of Mr. Trump’s weekend Twitter outburst, and it underscores the dangers of what the president and his aides have unleashed by accusing the former president of a conspiracy to undermine Mr. Trump’s young administration…
❝ In addition to being concerned about potential attacks on the bureau’s credibility, senior F.B.I. officials are said to be worried that the notion of a court-approved wiretap will raise the public’s expectations that the federal authorities have significant evidence implicating the Trump campaign in colluding with Russia’s efforts to disrupt the presidential election.
RTFA if you haven’t been keeping up with this from the middle-of-the-road heart of American journalism. Yes, the Trump base will believe he walks on water while carrying blessed dollar$ from heaven to his True Believers. That’s their problem – not the nation’s.
The primo example of a career intelligence operative, Malcolm Nance put it best – Monday evening on the 11th Hour news show – saying, “Donald Trump is a pathological liar.”
“How can you be a conspiracy theorist when you are the president? You are the person with access to all the information. People make conspiracy theories because they don’t know the truth. The president is supposed to know the truth. Like, pretty soon Trump is going to be covered in tinfoil going, ‘The government is spying on me, they’re spying on me!’ But you are the government! ‘I know, it goes all the way to the top!’” (Trevor Noah)
“Wikileaks: The CIA is using popular TVs, smartphones and cars to spy on their owners” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/03/07/why-the-cia-is-using-your-tvs-smartphones-and-cars-for-spying/
Coincidence..? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ssnw2GA657s
ЦРУ использует телевизоры, смартфоны и автомобили, чтобы шпионить за их владельцами https://www.rt.com/news/379757-your-whole-life-is-hacked/
“Want to Know Julian Assange’s Endgame? He Told You A Decade Ago” https://www.wired.com/2016/10/want-know-julian-assanges-endgame-told-decade-ago/ Essays on conspiracies by Julian Assange @ http://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf
“The vast left-wing conspiracy against me” (Garrison Keillor) https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-vast-left-wing-conspiracy-against-me/2017/03/07/23938358-034f-11e7-ad5b-d22680e18d10_story.html
“On the Viability of Conspiratorial Beliefs” by David Robert Grimes published online by PLOS ONE: @ http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0147905
See also “Connecting the Trump-Russia Dots” https://swalwell.house.gov/issues/protect-our-democracy Congressman Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) launched a new webpage yesterday to illustrate the known ties between the Russian government and the Trump administration. In January, Swalwell a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, introduced the Protecting Our Democracy Act to set up an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election.
‘Protect Us From This Dangerous President,’ 2 Psychiatrists Say https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/08/opinion/protect-us-from-this-dangerous-president-2-psychiatrists-say.html “We are in no way offering a psychiatric diagnosis, which would be unwise to attempt from a distance. Nevertheless, as psychiatrists we feel obliged to express our alarm. We fear that when faced with a crisis, President Trump will lack the judgment to respond rationally.
The military powers entrusted to him endanger us all. We urge our elected representatives to take the necessary steps to protect us from this dangerous president.” Dr. Herman, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Dr. Lifton, a lecturer in psychiatry at Columbia University and professor emeritus at CUNY.
“What Happens When You Fight a ‘Deep State’ That Doesn’t Exist” (NYT) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/world/americas/what-happens-when-you-fight-a-deep-state-that-doesnt-exist.html “…the longer this conflict continues, the closer it will bring the government to what Stephen K. Bannon, a senior White House adviser, called a primary administration goal: the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/us/politics/stephen-bannon-cpac-speech.html)
“GOP congressman offers strange Obama conspiracy theory — and even stranger explanations” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/03/11/gop-congressman-offers-strange-obama-conspiracy-theory-and-even-stranger-explanations/
President Trump repeatedly ignored reporters’ questions about his claim that former president Barack Obama ordered a wiretap during the 2016 presidential campaign, on March 10 at the White House. (includes video) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/03/10/a-reporter-asked-donald-trump-repeatedly-for-evidence-of-wiretapping-he-didnt-answer/
“McCain to Trump: Retract wiretapping claim or prove it” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/03/12/mccain-to-trump-retract-wiretapping-claim-or-prove-it/