Political Roundtable Part XX

[dckingsfan]

I thought serial lying was okay during this administration? Confused

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[nate33]

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[closg00]

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I understand that this the alternate narrative that is being spun but.

1. The Trump campaign was rightfully being investigated, not “spied” on, because Papadopolous had advance knowledge of an active attack against his country.
2. The Clinton campaign paid for opposition research, BFD. Parts of said research turned-out to be true, perhaps much more so it was worth the money.
3. Don JR knowingly took a meeting to receive stolen materials from a foreign government

In summarizing, Tweets like this in-support of Republican efforts to deflect and distract via Alternative Facts, have no relation to reality or what anyone in Trumps own DOJ are actually investigating.

[stilldropin20]

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Well, what do you know. The Federal Bureau of Investigation really did task an “informant” to insinuate himself with Trump campaign advisers in 2016. Our Kimberley Strassel reported this two weeks ago without disclosing a name.

We now have all but official confirmation thanks to “current and former government officials” who contributed to apologias last week in the New York Times and Washington Post. And please don’t call the informant a “spy.”<-- A headline on one of the Times’ stories says the “F.B.I. Used Informant to Investigate Russia Ties to Campaign, Not to Spy, as Trump Claims.”

We’ll let readers parse that casuistic distinction, which is part of a campaign by the FBI and Justice Department to justify their refusal to turn over to the House Intelligence Committee documents related to the informant. Justice and the FBI claim this Capitol Hill oversight would blow the cover of this non-spy and even endanger his life. Yet these same stories have disclosed so many specific details about the informant whom we dare not call a spy that you can discover the name of the likeliest suspect in a single Google.

We now know, for example, that the informant is “an American academic who teaches in Britain” who “served in previous Republican administrations.” He has worked as a “longtime U.S. intelligence source” for the FBI and the CIA.

The stories provide the names of the three Trump campaign officials who the informant sought to court— Carter Page, Sam Clovis and George Papadopoulos —as well as specific dates and details of the encounters. He met with Mr. Page at a symposium at a “British university” in “mid-July,” and stayed in touch with him for more than year. He met with Mr. Clovis at a “hotel café in Crystal City,” Virginia, on “either Aug. 31 or Sept. 1.”

The informant didn’t previously know the three men but offered to help with the campaign. He also threw money at Mr. Papadopoulos, and the stories even report the exact language of the message the informant sent to Mr. Papadopoulos offering him a $3,000 honorarium to write a research paper and a paid trip to London. (same trip in london where papadopoulos gets drunks and overstates his knowledge and proximity to trump??) Media accounts differ about whether the informant asked the three men what they knew about Russia. But this sure sounds like a classic attempt to make friends for intelligence-gathering purposes.(<--AKA spying??)

This ought to disturb anyone who wants law enforcement and U.S. intelligence services to stay out of partisan politics. We can’t recall a similar case, even in the J. Edgar Hoover days, when the FBI decided it needed to snoop on a presidential campaign. Devin Nunes, the House Intelligence Chairman, is seeking documents to learn exactly what happened, what triggered this FBI action, and how it was justified. This is precisely the kind of oversight that Congress should provide to assure Americans that their government isn’t spying illegally.

[popper]

Wow. I’ve been withholding judgement for more than a year now waiting for the IG report to come out. I think SD and Nate have done a great service to this thread for digging deep and keeping us aprised of the latest developments. As much as I try, I can’t think of an innocent explanation for what took place during and after the election. It’s almost undeniable now that the highest echelons of the Justice dept, FBI and Intelligence Community were commandeered for partisan political purposes to serve the interests of the Obama/Clinton cabal. Those who defend them on this thread might want to pause and reconsider their position given the latest developments.

[JWizmentality]

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So concerned about your convoluted grievances and being the victim, but not man enough to ask the question why? Why was all this done? But you know the answer, don't you?


This is where you blank out and scream Deep State.

[JWizmentality]

Wow. I’ve been withholding judgement for more than a year now waiting for the IG report to come out. I think SD and Nate have done a great service to this thread for digging deep and keeping us aprised of the latest developments. As much as I try, I can’t think of an innocent explanation for what took place during and after the election. It’s almost undeniable now that the highest echelons of the Justice dept, FBI and Intelligence Community were commandeered for partisan political purposes to serve the interests of the Obama/Clinton cabal. Those who defend them on this thread might want to pause and reconsider their position given the latest developments.

You guys have twisted every single piece of garbage that comes from conservative media into the biggest thing ever. Nate swore people were going to jail over the Nunes Memo.

[nate33]

Wow. I’ve been withholding judgement for more than a year now waiting for the IG report to come out. I think SD and Nate have done a great service to this thread for digging deep and keeping us aprised of the latest developments. As much as I try, I can’t think of an innocent explanation for what took place during and after the election. It’s almost undeniable now that the highest echelons of the Justice dept, FBI and Intelligence Community were commandeered for partisan political purposes to serve the interests of the Obama/Clinton cabal. Those who defend them on this thread might want to pause and reconsider their position given the latest developments.

You guys have twisted every single piece of garbage that comes from conservative media into the biggest thing ever. Nate swore people were going to jail over the Nunes Memo.

It is coming.

The Nunes Memo is looking like it was right by the way. The FBI was lying when they said the investigation was triggered by Alexander Downer's disclosure of the Papadopolous bar room conversation. The spying began before that. We still don't have a reasonable justification for the initial FISA warrant against Carter Page.

And all the hyperventilating from the Democrats about how the Nunes Memo would violate national security was wrong.

[popper]

This from Hillary's chief strategist and pollster in 2008.

Stopping Robert Mueller to protect us all
BY MARK PENN, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 05/20/18 07:00 PM EDT

The “deep state” is in a deep state of desperation. With little time left before the Justice Department inspector general’s report becomes public, and with special counsel Robert Mueller having failed to bring down Donald Trump after a year of trying, they know a reckoning is coming.

At this point, there is little doubt that the highest echelons of the FBI and the Justice Department broke their own rules to end the Hillary Clinton“matter,” but we can expect the inspector general to document what was done or, more pointedly, not done. It is hard to see how a year-long investigation of this won’t come down hard on former FBI Director James Comey and perhaps even former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who definitely wasn’t playing mahjong in a secret “no aides allowed” meeting with former President Clinton on a Phoenix airport tarmac.

With this report on the way and congressional investigators beginning to zero in on the lack of hard, verified evidence for starting the Trump probe, current and former intelligence and Justice Department officials are dumping everything they can think of to save their reputations.

But it is backfiring. They started by telling the story of Alexander Downer, an Australian diplomat, as having remembered a bar conversation with George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. But how did the FBI know they should talk to him? That’s left out of their narrative. Downer’s signature appears on a $25 million contribution to the Clinton Foundation. You don’t need much imagination to figure that he was close with Clinton Foundation operatives who relayed information to the State Department, which then called the FBI to complete the loop. This wasn’t intelligence. It was likely opposition research from the start.

In no way would a fourth-hand report from a Maltese professor justify wholesale targeting of four or five members of the Trump campaign. It took Christopher Steele, with his funding concealed through false campaign filings, to be incredibly successful at creating a vast echo chamber around his unverified, fanciful dossier, bouncing it back and forth between the press and the FBI so it appeared that there were multiple sources all coming to the same conclusion.

Time and time again, investigators came up empty. Even several sting operations with an FBI spy we just learned about failed to produce a Delorean-like video with cash on the table. But rather than close the probe, the deep state just expanded it. All they had were a few isolated contacts with Russians and absolutely nothing related to Trump himself, yet they pressed forward. Egged on by Steele, they simply believed Trump and his team must be dirty. They just needed to dig deep enough.

Perhaps the murkiest event in the timeline is Rod Rosenstein’s appointment of a special counsel after he personally recommended Comey’s firing in blistering terms. With Attorney General Jeff Sessionsshoved out of the way, Rosenstein and Mueller then ignored their own conflicts and took charge anyway. Rosenstein is a fact witness, and Mueller is a friend of Comey, disqualifying them both.
Flush with 16 prosecutors, including a former lawyer for the Clinton Foundation, and an undisclosed budget, the Mueller investigation has been a scorched-earth effort to investigate the entirety of the Trump campaign, Trump business dealings, the entire administration and now, if it was not Russia, maybe it’s some other country.

The president’s earlier legal team was naive in believing that, when Mueller found nothing, he would just end it. Instead, the less investigators found, the more determined and expansive they became. This president and his team now are on a better road to put appropriate limits on all this.

This process must now be stopped, preferably long before a vote in the Senate. Rather than a fair, limited and impartial investigation, the Mueller investigation became a partisan, open-ended inquisition that, by its precedent, is a threat to all those who ever want to participate in a national campaign or an administration again…….

http://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/388549-stopping-robert-mueller-to-protect-us-all

[stilldropin20]

so which of you are going down on this obamagate ship? Who's going to fight the well established truth to their last breath?

I got GTN, and Zonker for sure. I think DCkings, monte, and possibly a few more jump off and save themselves the embarrassment.

we'll see!! stay tuned!

Come on, STD, you couldn't win a debate with a blind, dying pigeon. Quit pulling legs and go back to pulling teeth

wait. lemme get this straight. You guys...actually think...that you...are winning the debate?

[gtn130]

Wow. I’ve been withholding judgement for more than a year now waiting for the IG report to come out. I think SD and Nate have done a great service to this thread for digging deep and keeping us aprised of the latest developments. As much as I try, I can’t think of an innocent explanation for what took place during and after the election. It’s almost undeniable now that the highest echelons of the Justice dept, FBI and Intelligence Community were commandeered for partisan political purposes to serve the interests of the Obama/Clinton cabal. Those who defend them on this thread might want to pause and reconsider their position given the latest developments.

LOL

[zero2hero]

I love this thread

[gtn130]

Wow. I’ve been withholding judgement for more than a year now waiting for the IG report to come out. I think SD and Nate have done a great service to this thread for digging deep and keeping us aprised of the latest developments. As much as I try, I can’t think of an innocent explanation for what took place during and after the election. It’s almost undeniable now that the highest echelons of the Justice dept, FBI and Intelligence Community were commandeered for partisan political purposes to serve the interests of the Obama/Clinton cabal. Those who defend them on this thread might want to pause and reconsider their position given the latest developments.

You guys have twisted every single piece of garbage that comes from conservative media into the biggest thing ever. Nate swore people were going to jail over the Nunes Memo.

It is coming.

The Nunes Memo is looking like it was right by the way. The FBI was lying when they said the investigation was triggered by Alexander Downer's disclosure of the Papadopolous bar room conversation. The spying began before that. We still don't have a reasonable justification for the initial FISA warrant against Carter Page.

And all the hyperventilating from the Democrats about how the Nunes Memo would violate national security was wrong.

This is nonsense. The Nunes memo was a total farce and if it had any impact whatsoever in changing public perception of the Mueller probe, Mueller would have been fired. The single reason Nunes and Trump created the memo was to invent a reason to fire Mueller. It didn’t work.

Regarding Carter Page:

Three years before Page became an adviser to the Trump campaign, he came to the attention of FBI counterintelligence agents, who learned that Russian spy suspects had sought to use Page as a source for information.

In that case, one of the Russian suspects, Victor Podobnyy — who was posing as a diplomat and was later charged by federal prosecutors with acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government — was captured on tape in 2013 discussing an effort to get information and documents from Page. … In one secretly recorded conversation, detailed in the complaint, Podobnyy said Page “wrote that he is sorry, he went to Moscow and forgot to check his inbox, but he wants to meet when he gets back. I think he is an idiot and forgot who I am. Plus he writes to me in Russian [to] practice the language. He flies to Moscow more often than I do. He got hooked on Gazprom thinking that if they have a project, he could rise up. Maybe he can. I don’t know, but it’s obvious that he wants to earn lots of money.’’

The FBI interviewed Page in June 2013, and he admitted to providing documents to Podobnyy, though only “basic immaterial information and publicly available research documents.”

We know of other interactions between Page and Russian actors as well.

Page lived in Moscow from 2004 to 2007 while working for Merrill Lynch. In early July 2016, Page traveled back to the city to give a lecture, having been invited shortly after being named to the Trump team in March. Page informed campaign officials of his plans to travel the week before, though he at first denied having done so.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/01/31/what-we-know-about-the-warrant-to-surveil-carter-page/?utm_term=.cd4a650bdbd0

“We still don't have a reasonable justification for the initial FISA warrant against Carter Page” is a ridiculous statement.

[stilldropin20]

This from Hillary's chief strategist and pollster in 2008.

Stopping Robert Mueller to protect us all
BY MARK PENN, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 05/20/18 07:00 PM EDT

The “deep state” is in a deep state of desperation. With little time left before the Justice Department inspector general’s report becomes public, and with special counsel Robert Mueller having failed to bring down Donald Trump after a year of trying, they know a reckoning is coming.

At this point, there is little doubt that the highest echelons of the FBI and the Justice Department broke their own rules to end the Hillary Clinton“matter,” but we can expect the inspector general to document what was done or, more pointedly, not done. It is hard to see how a year-long investigation of this won’t come down hard on former FBI Director James Comey and perhaps even former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who definitely wasn’t playing mahjong in a secret “no aides allowed” meeting with former President Clinton on a Phoenix airport tarmac.

With this report on the way and congressional investigators beginning to zero in on the lack of hard, verified evidence for starting the Trump probe, current and former intelligence and Justice Department officials are dumping everything they can think of to save their reputations.

But it is backfiring. They started by telling the story of Alexander Downer, an Australian diplomat, as having remembered a bar conversation with George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. But how did the FBI know they should talk to him? That’s left out of their narrative. Downer’s signature appears on a $25 million contribution to the Clinton Foundation. You don’t need much imagination to figure that he was close with Clinton Foundation operatives who relayed information to the State Department, which then called the FBI to complete the loop. This wasn’t intelligence. It was likely opposition research from the start.

In no way would a fourth-hand report from a Maltese professor justify wholesale targeting of four or five members of the Trump campaign. It took Christopher Steele, with his funding concealed through false campaign filings, to be incredibly successful at creating a vast echo chamber around his unverified, fanciful dossier, bouncing it back and forth between the press and the FBI so it appeared that there were multiple sources all coming to the same conclusion.

Time and time again, investigators came up empty. Even several sting operations with an FBI spy we just learned about failed to produce a Delorean-like video with cash on the table. But rather than close the probe, the deep state just expanded it. All they had were a few isolated contacts with Russians and absolutely nothing related to Trump himself, yet they pressed forward. Egged on by Steele, they simply believed Trump and his team must be dirty. They just needed to dig deep enough.

Perhaps the murkiest event in the timeline is Rod Rosenstein’s appointment of a special counsel after he personally recommended Comey’s firing in blistering terms. With Attorney General Jeff Sessionsshoved out of the way, Rosenstein and Mueller then ignored their own conflicts and took charge anyway. Rosenstein is a fact witness, and Mueller is a friend of Comey, disqualifying them both.
Flush with 16 prosecutors, including a former lawyer for the Clinton Foundation, and an undisclosed budget, the Mueller investigation has been a scorched-earth effort to investigate the entirety of the Trump campaign, Trump business dealings, the entire administration and now, if it was not Russia, maybe it’s some other country.

The president’s earlier legal team was naive in believing that, when Mueller found nothing, he would just end it. Instead, the less investigators found, the more determined and expansive they became. This president and his team now are on a better road to put appropriate limits on all this.

This process must now be stopped, preferably long before a vote in the Senate. Rather than a fair, limited and impartial investigation, the Mueller investigation became a partisan, open-ended inquisition that, by its precedent, is a threat to all those who ever want to participate in a national campaign or an administration again…….

http://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/388549-stopping-robert-mueller-to-protect-us-all

"Rather than a fair, limited and impartial investigation, the Mueller investigation became a partisan, open-ended inquisition that, by its precedent, is a threat to all those who ever want to participate in a national campaign or an administration again……."

i just wanted to emphasize this part. Because this is the real issue. This is what Nate and I have been laying out for over a year. This is the real issue and this is the REAL goal of the wealth accumulators that own and control OUR media alson own our largest corporations. And their money also controls MOST of our politicians and the "deep state." the deep state is not "do gooders.' they ar epeople like mccabe and comey who clearly have made decisions to enrich themselves based on their government positions. they are solely self-serving no matter the lies, spin, and conjecture...and worse they are easily bought off.

The wealth accumulators never want another Trump in office again. because they cant buy him. and cant own him. they therefore cant control him. And he is NOT established wealth either, like the Bush family. that can been part of the globalization of american corporations for over 100 years.

make no mistake, this entire collusion gate narrative was nothing more than an attempt to get rid of trump. If they didn't get rid of him then they wanted enough dirt on him so as to control him. Most politicians are too worried about getting muddied up because it works against them in the polls and they dont want to embarrass themselves or their families. They never thought a guy like Trump could come along and wear their (mostly phony) dirt like a badge of honor and still win. Because the media has you idiots convinced that only choir boys are worthy of office. they do this so as to control those "choir boys" by threatening to expose whatever little dirt that they have on them. And if this mess of corruption to destroy trump fully fails at both removing and/or controlling trump then its goal will be about compelling future billionaires to NEVER run for office and fix things. because no billionaire will ever want to endure this. and everyone should at some point come to understand only a very wealthy man can take on this kind Herculean task to begin to repair our country.

The wealth accumulators dont want things "fixed." because the (wealth accumulators) will all lose money. They dont want us eating healthy. exercising. living clean. minimal meds. minimal TV. healthy active life styles. they dont want us informed. But mostly They dont want us to have any kind of education that does NOT actively support the wealth accumulators station in life. They want us to blindly accept their accumulation of wealth. And most importantly, they dont want us to get along and get united. Because the dont want the american people to get a singular focus to fix our nation. Namely out debt. Our cost drivers. And our lack of rewards for policing the world. the american tax payer carries and unfair burden. and they dont want all of us focused on that. Instead they want us to relive the 1900's as if that ground had not been covered. it has. We can unite. Black brown, and white people can easily unite and focus on the unfair trade imbalances which will put all of our people back to work that want to work. Unfair wage growth due to globalization of manufacturing. Unfair burdens on the american tax payer due unfair cost drivers in health coverage and en entitlements. These are all intertwined: trade imbalances, manufacturing stagnation, immigration reform, wage stagnation, leading to increase costs in healthcare and entitlements for the under/unemployed. These all must be "fixed" together. address comprehensively. Slowly. over time. we must stay on course.And we must be properly rewarded for policing the world.

now some of you may think..."but...but trump is a billionaire! he's a wealth accumulator!" Yes. he is part of the problem." and on the surface, you may be right. But it will take a billionaire and only a billionaire or at least a guy worth 300 million or more to fix things. any one poorer wont have enough to properly fight for political survival.

1. They MUST have their own money so as to fight off the deep state who will smear them or worse. Recall, The Trumps already have over $40 million just in legal fees. Who can afford that?
2. they must have their own money so as NOT be tempted to be "bought off." I'm too old and seen too much to fool myself into thinking some altruistic good guy or gal is going to show up and "save us."
3. They must understand the complete and entire global financial world. Both trade, manufacturing, and banking.
4. They must be willing to make the "tough decisions."
5. Most importantly, they must understand that our debt can and will bury us.

Only a very wealthy person with many strong allies that he can trust will ever have a chance to fix our debt and trade issues. Because a unwealthy person will simply be bought off to not address it. and the bought and paid for media will let them off the hook.


Once our country is "fixed." once our debt is paid down and we have healthy trade balances where our unemployment levels are very low and wages high...and entitlement payouts at healthy and sustainable levels. Once that occurs. Then we will be healthy enough to attack the wealth accumulators. Close their loopholes in the trusts and foundations and tax their wealth as they die at at least 70% death tax rates (including foundations..so called "non profits"). then and only then will this world begin to be "fair and just" for all.

i believe in capitalism. its a great system. But we cant keep allowing the wealthy to accumulate more and more and pass it down virtually untaxed or at low tax rates. make as much as you want or can while alive. but you dont get to keep it (in the family) when you die.

But it all starts with a frugal patriotic nationalist billionaire. Only a frugal patriotic nationalist agenda with a billion or more behind him has any kind of chance to win and then stay in office. the first fix is on international issues like trade and manufacturing imbalances and addressing our the debt as the sickness it is. Gotta start there first.

[stilldropin20]

here you go GTN, this guy agrees with you!! "trump bad. just trust him!" but dont release the documents to prove it!!! lol

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the good news is that meadows and other members of congress are determined to support the president and release ALL THE DATE AND INFO on hopefully the entire investigation.

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and here is your true american hero. sara carter. she is the journalist that is doing the work along with judicial watch. She is by extension and Sean Hannity investigation team member. hannity got her the sources. She did the work. They are your true american heros that have uncovered this entire mess with members of the house who have also investigated and exposed the Obama DOJ/CIA corruption. And she says it plainly, Mr benner, what are you afraid of?

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[stilldropin20]

so for how long will the corrupt media continue to cover up for the obama administration?

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[stilldropin20]

the smartest kid at parkland high is pro 2nd amendment. sounds about right.

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[montestewart]

so which of you are going down on this obamagate ship? Who's going to fight the well established truth to their last breath?

I got GTN, and Zonker for sure. I think DCkings, monte, and possibly a few more jump off and save themselves the embarrassment.

we'll see!! stay tuned!

Come on, STD, you couldn't win a debate with a blind, dying pigeon. Quit pulling legs and go back to pulling teeth

wait. lemme get this straight. You guys...actually think...that you...are winning the debate?

You cut and pasted those ellipses. It shows in the metadata.

[nate33]

Regarding Carter Page:

Three years before Page became an adviser to the Trump campaign, he came to the attention of FBI counterintelligence agents, who learned that Russian spy suspects had sought to use Page as a source for information.

In that case, one of the Russian suspects, Victor Podobnyy — who was posing as a diplomat and was later charged by federal prosecutors with acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government — was captured on tape in 2013 discussing an effort to get information and documents from Page. … In one secretly recorded conversation, detailed in the complaint, Podobnyy said Page “wrote that he is sorry, he went to Moscow and forgot to check his inbox, but he wants to meet when he gets back. I think he is an idiot and forgot who I am. Plus he writes to me in Russian [to] practice the language. He flies to Moscow more often than I do. He got hooked on Gazprom thinking that if they have a project, he could rise up. Maybe he can. I don’t know, but it’s obvious that he wants to earn lots of money.’’

The FBI interviewed Page in June 2013, and he admitted to providing documents to Podobnyy, though only “basic immaterial information and publicly available research documents.”

We know of other interactions between Page and Russian actors as well.

Page lived in Moscow from 2004 to 2007 while working for Merrill Lynch. In early July 2016, Page traveled back to the city to give a lecture, having been invited shortly after being named to the Trump team in March. Page informed campaign officials of his plans to travel the week before, though he at first denied having done so.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/01/31/what-we-know-about-the-warrant-to-surveil-carter-page/?utm_term=.cd4a650bdbd0

“We still don't have a reasonable justification for the initial FISA warrant against Carter Page” is a ridiculous statement.

In March 2016 Carter Page Was an FBI Employee – In October 2016 FBI Told FISA Court He’s a Spy…

If Carter Page was working as a UCE (FBI undercover employee), responsible for the bust of a high level Russian agent in 2013 -and remained a UCE- throughout the court case UP TO May of 2016, how is it possible that on October 21st 2016 Carter Page is put under a FISA Title 1 surveillance warrant as an alleged Russian agent?

Conclusion: He wasn’t. The DOJ National Security Division and the FBI Counterintelligence Division, knew he wasn’t. The DOJ-NSD and FBI flat-out LIED.

[TGW]

lol this is a funny conversation. partisan hack vs. partisan hack. Who will come out on top?

Spoiler:

nobody. everyone loses