ANGELA RYE OWNS MCENANY

CNN discussions last night over the FBI’s sudden decision to release old files on Bill Clinton, just days before voters go to the polls turned into a shouting match as boosters of Donald Trump ridiculed the idea that there was something suspicious about the document dump.

Trump mouthpieces Kayleigh McEnany and Corey Lewandowski attempted to make the case that there was nothing odd about the release of information about the Clintons so close to the election.

VIDEO COURTESY OF CNN




Commentator Angela Rye was quick to point out that the FBI suddenly activated a dormant Twitter account to disseminate information — mostly to the detriment of the Clintons.

‘This is from an account that has not been used since October 2015, before Sunday,” Rye explained. “On Sunday they released the I.G report about Hillary Clinton’s e-mails. On Sunday they released surveillance requests about the Baltimore protests having to do with Freddie Gray. The only thing on the Trump side was an investigation about Donald Trump and his father donating to city council members at the time.”

“It hasn’t been used since October and it just so happens that the Friday after Director Comey sends this letter out to the Republican chairmen on the House and Senate side,” she continued. “All of a sudden this account needs to be used?”

“Questioning the integrity of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is not going to win you a single voter –” McEnany began before Democratic consultant Keith Boykin jumped in.

“The election is rigged is an OK thing for you to do?” he exclaimed. “You guys are the kings and queens of the conspiracy theories!”

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Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West

COMEY DOESN"T WANT THE SYSTEM TO "LOOKED RIGGED"

Pete Williams reported on Sunday that Donald Trump’s baseless claim of a “rigged” election influenced FBI Director James Comey to break with the Justice Department’s policy against taking actions that could influence elections.

Although longstanding Department of Justice guidelines have cautioned against disclosing investigative steps within 60 days of an election, Comey recently informed Congress that he had directed the FBI to investigate newly found emails that may or may not be relevant in the probe of Hillary Clinton’s private email server.

Williams explained on Sunday that Comey, in part, broke with tradition — just 11 days before the election — because of Trump’s bogus warnings about a “rigged” system.


VIDEO COURTESY OF NBC

“They believe that they did the right thing by telling Congress about this development,” Williams said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “And their logic goes something like this, that the fact that the discovery of these emails was going to leak, that if it leaked it would come out in all sorts of different ways and be interpreted in all sorts of different ways and that the best way to handle it was just to get out in front of it.”

“And secondly,” he continued, “they thought that if they waited until after election and then it was discovered that they had found these emails, that would play into this whole scenario about how the system is rigged.”

Williams also pointed out that Comey and the FBI still did not know what was in the emails.

“They don’t know whether they are significant to the question of the email investigation,” he explained

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STAFF WRITER

IN UNPRECEDENTED ACTION, JAMES COMEY BREAKS PROTOCOL TO MEDDLE IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION PROCESS

FBI Director James Comey acted against the directives of U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) officials when he sent a letter to members of Congress on Friday about new emails that may or may not relate to the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, according to three media outlets.

The New Yorker, Washington Post, and ABC News all report that DOJ officials, who oversee the FBI, made it clear to Comey that the letter would go against long established protocol.

An anonymous DOJ official who spoke to the Post told Comey that the letter would go against the position that the agency doesn’t comment on ongoing investigations, nor that it takes any actions that could be seen as influencing an election. “It was conveyed to the FBI, and Comey made an independent decision to alert the Hill. He is operating independently of the Justice Department. And he knows it,” the source said.

The New Yorker even reports that the issue went as high as Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who, according to an anonymous administration official, told Comey that her preference would be not to send the letter for the same reasons.

“You don’t do this,” a former senior Justice Department official told the magazine. “It’s aberrational. It violates decades of practice.”

That practice was codified even further in 2012, when then-Attorney General Eric Holder sent a memo to all DOJ employees about “election year sensitivities.” It reads, “As Department employees…we must be particularly sensitive to safeguarding the Department’s reputation for fairness, neutrality, and nonpartisanship.” It instructs anyone with questions “regarding the timing of charges or overt investigative steps near the time of a primary or general election” to contact the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division.

A DOJ spokesperson declined to comment to the New Yorker as to whether Comey contacted that division.

According to the New Yorker’s source, Comey told Lynch that he had to break with the agency’s protocols because he had told Congress he would inform lawmakers of any developments in his investigation into whether Clinton mishandled classified information by using a private server. He also “felt that the impending election created a compelling need to inform the public,” New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer writes.

In his own explanations of his actions to FBI employees in a letter he sent to them on Friday obtained by the Washington Post, he wrote, “Of course, we don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed. I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record.”

The Clinton campaign has already accused Comey’s letter of being “long on innuendo and short on facts,” as campaign Chairman John Podesta put it in a call with the press, and called on him to give more information to the public. “His first duty is to the American people,” Podesta said. “We hope that he will take the occasion to explain why he decided to take this extraordinary step.”

[cross-posted from thinkprogress]

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STAFF WRITER

MAHER CONFRONTS MSNBC WITH ITS INCESSANT NON-STOP COVERAGE OF DONALD TRUMP LOVING DONALD TRUMP

Bill Maher made an appearance last night on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, and when the topic of Trump being given so much coverage came up, Maher let them have it: On MSNBC, Bill Maher Calls Out MSNBC’s Coverage of Trump’s ‘Rambling Brainfarts’:




Maher also blasted Matthews for their continual scandal mongering over Hillary Clinton's emails and said she can't win for losing when it comes to yielding to the demands of the Republicans, and the media for that matter.

NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE SHOE IS ON THE OTHER FOOT

The revelation that the Internal Revenue Service lost two years of Lois Lerner's emails has Republicans and their right-wing echo chamber dredging up Watergate comparisons. Peggy Noonan, James Poulos and Paul Mirengoff are just some of the conservatives "paging Rosemary Woods" and gleefully making comparisons to Richard Nixon's 18 minutes of erased tape.

But the GOP's flying monkeys hoping to put the former IRS official at the center of a massive Obama administration plot to target right-wing "social welfare" organizations need not go back in time to 1973 to decry the lost data. After all, in 2008 current House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa explained how the Bush White House conveniently lost 22 million emails during the Plamegate investigation that led to the conviction of Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby.

As you'll recall, millions of Bush White House emails conveniently went missing between 2003 and 2005, including those in the critical days during which the administration formulated its response to Ambassador Joe Wilson and his covert CIA operative wife, Valerie Plame. In July 2007, Darrell Issa accused Plame of perjury. Then, in February 2008, Issa turned IT expert and brushed off the email imbroglio as merely a software problem. As Mother Jones reported that March:

During a House Oversight Committee hearing last month on the preservation of White House records, an indignant Rep. Darrell Issa, a frequent critic of Chairman Henry Waxman's investigations, did his best to play down the extent of the Bush administration's now well-documented email archiving problems. Defending the White House's decision to switch from the Lotus Notes-based archiving system used by the Clinton administration, Issa compared the software to "using wooden wagon wheels" and Sony Betamax tapes. To observers of the missing emails controversy, Issa's comments seemed little more than an attempt to deflect blame from the White House for replacing a working system for archiving presidential records with an ad hoc substitute. But to IT professionals who use Lotus at their companies, Issa's remarks seemed controversial, if not downright slanderous. Now, according to an executive at IBM, the software's manufacturer, the California congressman has apologized for his characterization of Lotus and offered to correct the congressional record.

Complicating matters, some 50 Bush White House staffers had used email accounts provided by the Republican National Committee to sidestep federal laws regarding the preservation of digital records. But as CNET reported at the time, Congressman Issa wasn't concerned about potential crimes, but only the cost of investigating them:

"Are we simply going on a fishing expedition at $40,000 to $50,000 a month?" Rep. Darrell Issa asked National Archives and White House officials at the hearing. "Do any of you know of a single document, because this committee doesn't, that should've been in the archives but in fact was done at the RNC?"

Thanks to a now-settled lawsuit filed by the National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington [CREW], Americans learned in 2009 that "the Bush White House, which initially denied that any e-mails had gone missing, announced in January it had located more than 22 million messages that had been mislabeled after a search by computer technicians, according to court records filed by the government on the day after Bush left office."

Alas, that was then and this is now. And now a Democrat is sitting in the Oval Office. And with IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testimony before two House committees regarding what even Democrats like Sandy Levin agree constitute "gross mismanagement" by IRS information technology personnel, Chairman Issa is singing a different tune. With his probe having already cost the IRS a quarter of a million man hours and some $10 million, Issa has done a 180 degree turn from his days pretending to be the Bush administration's IT expert. As he wrote to Koskinen this week:

"I will not tolerate your continued obstruction and game-playing."

NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

TIN FOIL HAT SOCIETY IN WISCONSIN AIDING AND ABETTING SCOTT "KOCH WHORE" WALKER

Photo from Crooks and Liars

Scott Walker is barely maintaining his governorship - between the John Doe investigation and a strong Democratic challenger - now enters the Wisconsin tea baggers, who are working to ease the pains of the reckless Governor.

Troubled Scott Walker - After last month's massive email dump revealed the depth of his staff's probable illegal on-the-job campaign activity and their awful attitudes, he's barely holding on against challenger Mary Burke.

But not to worry, Scottie! Your Senate cronies are on it for you. PRWatch:

SB 654, quietly introduced earlier this month by Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, who is reportedly under investigation in the John Doe probe, would reverse judicial precedent and declare that "issue ads" cannot be considered a candidate contribution. Those changes, if enacted, would conform Wisconsin statutes to Wisconsin Club for Growth's arguments in the John Doe case, and legalize the conduct under investigation in time for statewide elections later this year.

No worries says Walker, when in trouble, have your fellow society members change the law for you - if you fail to follow the law, change it, especially if it means you could coordinate with outside groups.

If enacted, the legislation would not necessarily stop the John Doe probe. It would, however, legalize the conduct under investigation in the John Doe for state elections later this year -- including Scott Walker's hotly-contested reelection campaign. 

This means that the Walker campaign could work hand-in-glove with an "issue ad" group like Wisconsin Club for Growth, which can accept secret, unlimited donations. 

"The proposed policy change is a horrible one," the Campaign Legal Center's Ryan told CMD. "It would pose a serious threat of corruption in Wisconsin politics, and open the door wide to unlimited and undisclosed political expenditures." 

As CMD has previously pointed out, allowing coordinated issue ads could undermine campaign finance and disclosure laws, since a multi-million-dollar donation to Wisconsin Club for Growth would have almost the same value as a donation directly to Walker -- with the same opportunity for corruption, and the same problems with the press and the public not knowing about the true source of the donations. Because a donation to a candidate-aligned issue ad group would not be publicly disclosed, the public would be unable to track whether the donation resulted in favorable treatment.

Its time to amp up the pressure on this Koch Whore!

NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

THE KOCH WHORES EMAILS SUGGEST KNOWLEDGE

THE ORIGINAL KOCH WHORE SCOTT WALKER

Newly released emails and records from a former deputy Chief of Staff to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker [Koch Whore] suggest that the governor may have been involved in — or at least aware of — illegal coordination between his 2010 gubernatorial campaign and his Milwaukee County Executive office. The release comes as a second probe continues, examining Wisconsin’s 2012 recall elections.

A now-closed probe by Milwaukee District Attorney John Chisholm resulted in a 2012 felony conviction of Kelly Rindfleisch, who served as deputy chief of staff to then-County Executive Walker, as well as convictions against several other former Walker staffers. Rindfleisch pled guilty to a charge of misconduct for doing campaign work for a lieutenant governor candidate while at her government job, but is now appealing the conviction on the grounds that thousands of pages of emails from her computer should not have been admitted as evidence in her prosecution. As part of her appeal, a judge released thousands of pages of evidence Wednesday, including those emails.

Investigators in the probe found that Thomas Nardelli, Walker’s chief of staff in the County Executive Office and later his administrator of Wisconsin’s Division of Environmental and Regulatory Services, emailed Rindfleisch and other Walker county and campaign staffers in 2010 from his private Yahoo address. The email said that Walker asked that they conduct a daily 8:00 AM conference call to coordinate efforts and and responses to “events of the day,” as good coordination would help resolve issues before they blew out of proportion.

Walker’s 2010 campaign manager, Keith Gilkes, wrote back with a call-in number for the daily call. Wisconsin law prohibits public employees from political activity while on the job.

Rindfleisch and other top aides to the governor also allegedly brought personal laptops, not connected to the county computer network, into the Walker’s county executive’s office and used a secret wireless router for campaign communications. Darlene Wink, Walker’s constituent services director, resigned in May 2010 when she was caught anonymously posting political comments online while on the clock for Milwaukee County — and she later pled guilty two misdemeanor charges for that misconduct.

When the story broke, Walker himself emailed Tim Russell, another former deputy chief of staff who had become city housing director, noting that Wink felt terrible and instructing him, “We cannot afford another story like this one. No one can give them any reason to do another story. That means no laptops, no websites, no time away during the work day, etc.”

Soon after, the campaign router was removed from the office. An instant message conversation between Russell and Rindfleisch noted that “Dorothy,” apparently Walker’s executive assistant Dorothy Moore, had moved back to the regular wireless network.

If, as the chief investigator believed, Walker knew about the secret wireless network, it could mean trouble for Walker, who has previously denied any knowledge of his aides’ wrongdoing. Walker will face Wisconsin voters again this November, as he seeks a second term as governor, and has been held up as a possible 2016 presidential candidate.

A special prosecutor was appointed last year in a second investigation, probing into possible illegal activity in the 2012 Wisconsin recall campaigns. Rindfleisch is reportedly also a subject in that still-secret investigation.

This all comes at a rough time for prominent tea bagging governors who were once considered rising stars and possible White House contenders. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s administration is currently under investigation for the Bridgegate scandal and former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife were indicted on 14 felony counts last month relating to their gifts scandal.

Synopsis - give a GOPer enough rope and they will indeed hang themselves.

NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

Mittens And Coterie Chuck Mail To Avoid Scrutiny

Romney admits he destroyed government records to keep them from political opponents.

Last week, a Boston Globe investigation uncovered that former Gov. Mitt Romney’s administration destroyed emails, purchased hard drives, and otherwise obliterated all digital records of his time as governor of Massachusetts. This happened as Romney was leaving the state to campaign for president (the first time), and observers immediately speculated that the systematic destruction was politically motivated to hide embarrassing data.

Romney and his campaign have so far denied this, with the candidate saying this weekend in New Hampshire that his staff took the highly unusual step of purchasing their work hard drives because they might contain “confidential and private” information. Meanwhile, he’s made calls for greater White House transparency a part of his campaign message.

But in a fairly stunning admission during an interview with the editorial board of the Nashua Telegraph in New Hampshire, Romney suggested that his administration deleted emails because they didn’t want “opposition research teams” to have access to them:

ROMNEY: Well, I think in government we should follow the law. And there has never been an administration that has provided to the opposition research team, or to the public, electronic communications. So ours would have been the first.

While Romney’s claim that no previous administration had kept emails may be true, that’s hardly a strong precedent given that emailing was not commonplace for very many years before Romney took office.

Meanwhile, Romney clearly broke precedent with the hard drive buybacks, as staffers for previous administration called the purchases “unheard of.” Terry Dolan, who worked in six previous administrations in the state, told the Globe, “That had not happened prior to the end of the Romney administration.” “I don’t remember anybody buying their hard drives. I don’t remember anybody buying anything,’’ said Stephen Crosby, who worked for Romney’s two predecessors.


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Emails Show.......

Scott Walker Misrepresented Voters’ Support For His Union Busting

Yesterday, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) appeared on Fox Business to defend his union-busting crusade, claiming that a majority of his state’s residents were behind him. As evidence, he cited a new analysis from the Associated Press of emails to the governor’s office.

WALKER: And again today, the Associated Press went through the more than 150,000 emails that we have, and found the majority of them, as I’ve said, are people who support our reforms. Who support our reasonable measures.

Watch it here at NFTOS:



Walker has repeatedly made the claim that emails coming to his office were overwhelmingly supportive. Most egregiously, at a February 18 press conference, Walker said, “The more than 8,000 emails we got today, the majority are telling us to stay firm.” But in doing so yesterday, he completely distorted what the AP actually found.

The AP analysis reported that, “for several preceding days, the emails of support Walker received had been vastly outnumbered by those opposed to his plan.” For example, on February 11, the day Walker formally outlined his “budget-repair bill,” emails sent to his office “ran more than 5-to-1 against his plan.” Eventually, the emails turned in his favor, but Walker ignores the nuance in his appearance yesterday. 

The AP only obtained the emails through a legal settlement in which Walker was forced to pay $7,000 in legal fees. Under the state’s open record laws, the AP and a local newspaper had requested the emails Walker referenced in his press conference, but he refused to disclose them for sometime, before finally agreeing to the settlement.

                            NFTOS TRUTH-O-METER

Walker fails truth-o-meter


 And beyond the emails, numerous polls have shown that Wisconsin voters increasingly turned against Walker. In fact, polls show that Walker would lose if he were up for re-election now.

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