When the Republican chairman of the committee (Nunes) investigating the President receives new evidence that might be useful to Trump in making his bugging claims credible, does Nunes go to the committee and deliver this evidence? No, he goes straight to the President and gives THE MAN HE IS INVESTIGATING a first look at it. This is why, as Lindsay Graham and John McCain have remarked, we must have an independent prosecutor look into this matter, not a Tparty kangaroo court.

In hearings up to now, the Republicans in the investigating committee have been pretty much ignoring the charges being leveled at the President and spending an inordinate amount of time grilling the witnesses about the leaks that have implicated the President instead. Now the chairman of that committee, LEAKS new evidence to the press and to Mr Trump. And to think we once accused Conservatives of lacking a sense of irony.

It is pretty clear that the primary goal and priority of the Republican leadership is to protect Trump from embarrassment, or prosecution. Nothing else seems to matter, not the Law, not justice, not patriotismm not legislative procedure, not their own personal reputation, not even national security. What we are seeing in progress here is a putsch. A slow motion coup d’etat.

That must be a pretty big tax cut they’re working on for themselves. They’re not even making an effort to cover their tracks any more.

Weeks before President Trump’s inauguration, his national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, discussed American sanctions against Russia, as well as areas of possible cooperation, with that country’s ambassador to the United States, according to current and former American officials.

Throughout the discussions, the message Mr. Flynn conveyed to the ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak — that the Obama administration was Moscow’s adversary and that relations with Russia would change under Mr. Trump — was unambiguous and highly inappropriate, the officials said.

The accounts of the conversations raise the prospect that Mr. Flynn violated a law against private citizens’ engaging in diplomacy, and directly contradict statements made by Trump advisers. They have said that Mr. Flynn spoke to Mr. Kislyak a few days after Christmas merely to arrange a phone call between President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Mr. Trump after the inauguration.

But current and former American officials said that conversation — which took place the day before the Obama administration imposed sanctions on Russia over accusations that it used cyberattacks to help sway the election in Mr. Trump’s favor — ranged far beyond the logistics of a post-inauguration phone call. And they said it was only one in a series of contacts between the two men that began before the election and also included talk of cooperating in the fight against the Islamic State, along with other issues.

I predict that soon we are going to be seeing rapidly escalating retaliation; first of witnesses, then journalists and writers, then prosecutors and judges, then hostile businessmen and community leaders and eventually officials and politicians.

Then they’ll start coming after the rest of us. Resistance may not exactly become futile, but it will soon be very dangerous.

Man Tasked With Investigating Trump’s Ties To Russia Makes Friendly Visit To White House

It is so far beyond the pale for the person who is conducting an investigation to both brief the subject of that investigation and potentially jeopardize an ongoing criminal investigation being conducted by the FBI.
-Matthew Miller, former Department of Justice spokesman

The FBI has information that indicates associates of President Donald Trump communicated with suspected Russian operatives to possibly coordinate the release of information damaging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, US officials told CNN.

This is partly what FBI Director James Comey was referring to when he made a bombshell announcement Monday before Congress that the FBI is investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, according to one source.
The FBI is now reviewing that information, which includes human intelligence, travel, business and phone records and accounts of in-person meetings, according to those U.S. officials. The information is raising the suspicions of FBI counterintelligence investigators that the coordination may have taken place, though officials cautioned that the information was not conclusive and that the investigation is ongoing.

You are right about the subtly of their art o’ war. I believe their goal is to destabilize our system of government – always has been. They want to pit friend against friend to weaken the response to their actions. Confusion is their goal.

If a sex tape is released, or financial improprieties revealed, it will not be seen as coming from them directly. And probably not though Wikileaks. That pipeline is too well known now. They’ll allow someone else to “find” it, the Anonymous group or someone else will find and disclose, and while we are busy trying to discern the veracity of the material, arguing over if videos are photoshopped, discussing what fonts were used by what typewriters and when, chasing our tails in yet another scandalous imbroglio, they move another chess piece, incrementally enacting long term plans.

And while they really hate the uppity Lithuanians, their eye is on Estonia, because it has a decent Baltic Sea port. And Estonia is scared enough to be training their citizens in resistance tactics. (I was in Tallinn during the Russian invasion of Georgia and they were really concerned they were next.)

The day they cross, guns blazing, some border we have committed to defend, it will probably be too late to use the blackmail. Either our response will be already programmed, like a tripwire deterrent, or our commander will be pressured to act in spite of his being compromised. His hand will be forced regardless of what he’d rather do, or wished he could do. And besides, if the President refuses to do the obvious simply because he is afraid of the consequences, it will only raise more questions down the line. They can always overplay their hand, forcing him to lock and load in the heat of the moment, even if it isn’t the appropriate thing to do. After all, he does give the impression he is that kind of guy, impulsive and instinctive. In a crisis moment, you try to avoid introducing an element of uncertainty for yourself, but do your best to present one to your opponent.

The way they will use their shakedown is in a more gradual, or finessed way. They will use it to dissuade the CIC from making the appropriate preparations before the event, or to make him select a response option more to their liking, or even to induce a note of caution or hesitation or confusion. It will be designed and executed in a way that will make the response more difficult. For example,
rather than threatening to reveal their blackmail in order to stop a military response, they may use it if we are contemplating signing a mutual defense treaty with Lithuania or sending a brigade of infantry there, in a hope to dissuade us from doing so.

Russia knows that force is not the only, or even the best, way to get your way. Sometimes the threat of aggression works just as well in achieving long-term geopolitical goals. This is why they react so violently to moves on our part (like opening a base, or installing purely defensive systems) that present no direct threat to them. They understand that defensive moves strengthen offensive capability, something we somehow refuse to acknowledge.

They understand the use of bluff and bluster, swagger and tough talk. It gives them a way to get something for nothing, or at least with no risk. And if it doesn’t work, they can easily back down and save face or military loss. In other words, they act just like Trump, but they are much better at it because they think rationally and strategically, not emotionally and tactically. And they also understand that in our irrational desire to make a profitable deal we will invariably give away the farm. We are greedy, they know that about us and they use it against us.

In my opinion (after all, I only have access to the same fake news and alternative facts you do), whatever the Russians have on Trump is really no big deal, it is the result of some perfectly legit and reasonable business or political deal that would have been quickly forgiven and forgotten if it had been made public–like Tillerson’s past Arctic and Gulf of Mexico oil drilling negotiations, or Manafort’s consulting for the pro-Russian former President of Ukraine, or Sessions’ repeated meetings with Russian diplomats. But the Trump administration’s effort to sweep these items under the rug and to distract Americans from their existence has signaled the Russians that this is something Trump wants to hide and they can use that against the Trump White House. The Trump gang is simply too dumb to realize it, and Putin is too smart to let it slip past him.

What concerns me:

If the Russians have kompromat on our president, they will use it at a strategic moment, like the day before they roll into Lithuania.