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Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani responds to the latest news on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigationVideo
Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani responds to the latest news on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation
Rudi Giuliani weighs in on the future of the Mueller probe.
In a wide-ranging interview Sunday on “Fox & Friends,” President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani suggested that key evidence of anti-Trump bias has been deleted in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, and charged that Democrats rejected legislation that would have “absolutely prevented” the murder of California police officer Ronil Singh by an alleged illegal immigrant early Wednesday.
The suspect in the slaying, Gustavo Perez Arriaga, had known gang affiliations as well as two past DUI arrests. Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson this weekend argued that the murder “could’ve been preventable,” saying that California law had prevented authorities from sharing information about Arriaga’s DUI arrests with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“This could’ve been prevented by just a reasonably sensible policy,” Giuliani said. “Democrats … voted against legislation that would have absolutely prevented this by focusing on gang members. He should’ve been taken in for being a drunk driver. … There was special legislation to focus on gang members. Most of the Democrats voted against it. Almost every Republican voted for it. Had that legislation been in place, this murder may very well not have happened.”
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In September 2017, the Criminal Alien Gang Member Removal Act, which would have given authorities the ability to take immigration enforcement action against suspected gang members even if they have not been convicted of a crime, passed the House along party lines but did not receive further Senate consideration.
Giuliani added that “this is going to keep happening,” and pointed to Democrats’ previous support for enhancing border wall funding.
Illegal immigrant arrested in the murder of California police officer Ronil Singh had been previously arrested for DUIVideo
“This thing about a wall is totally crazy – they all voted for it,” Giuliani said. “She [House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi] was in favor of it; now she says it’s immoral. So I hope she went to confession. I mean, she’s a Catholic.”
Fox News has learned that behind the scenes this weekend, several senators are discussing a new potential compromise to end the ongoing partial federal government shutdown. One bipartisan proposal is to provide $5.7 billion in funding for the border wall, as well as a congressional reauthorization of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program for those brought to the U.S. illegally as children, along with some other immigration provisions.
There has also been talk about a special allowance for some classes of Central American refugees to be granted a more robust asylum status.
Separately, Giuliani openly cast doubt on Mueller’s official explanation for why the phones belonging to two of his former top deputies were completely wiped just days after they were fired for their anti-Trump bias. Giuliani also reiterated his previous assertions that Trump would not sit down for a one-on-one interview with Mueller, citing what he called the “unethical or grossly negligent behavior” of special counsel prosecutors.
MUELLER RECORDS OFFICER TOTALLY WIPES ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT’S PHONE, CAN’T REMEMBER IF IT HAD TEXTS ON IT
In a comprehensive report issued earlier this month, the Department of Justice’s internal watchdog blamed a technical glitch for a swath of missing text messages between anti-Trump ex-FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page – and revealed that government phones issued by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office to Strzok and Page had been wiped completely clean after Strzok was fired from the Russia probe.
Strzok – who in August 2016 texted Page about an “insurance policy” in the event Trump won the election and who secretly discussed a “media leak strategy” concerning the Russia probe – was removed from Mueller’s team in late July 2017 after the FBI discovered he had been sending anti-Trump text messages. He sent many of those messages to Page, with whom he was engaged in an extramarital affair.
“All those texts from Strzok and Page – deleted?” Giulani asked. “After they find out that Strzok is texting that he hates Trump, that he’s going to get him and stop him – and that if he can’t stop him, he has an ‘insurance policy’ to get him out of office. I believe Mueller is the insurance policy to get him out of office. I’m not just saying that – Strzok was his first investigator.”
The DOJ’s Inspector General (IG) said that, with help from the Department of Defense, it was able to uncover thousands of missing text messages written by Strzok and Page and sent using their FBI-issued Samsung phones from December 15, 2016, through May 17, 2017, “as well as hundreds of other text messages outside the gap time period that had not been produced by the FBI due to technical problems with its text message collection tool.”
Special Counsel Robert Mueller may submit Russia investigation report to attorney general as early as February 2019Video
But when the IG went looking for the iPhones separately issued to Strzok and Page by the Mueller team, investigators were told that “[Strzok’s] iPhone had been reset to factory settings and was reconfigured for the new user to whom the device was issued.”
The records officer at the special counsel told the IG that “as part of the office’s records retention procedure, the officer reviewed Strzok’s DOJ issued iPhone” on September 6, 2017, and “determined it contained no substantive text messages” before it was wiped completely – just weeks after Strzok was fired from Mueller’s team for anti-Trump bias and sending anti-Trump text messages.
INSIDE STRZOK AND PAGE’S ‘MEDIA LEAK STRATEGY’ AT THE FBI
“The person who determined what to eliminate was Mueller’s records officer, who says there was nothing of interest there,” Giulani said. “It’s hard to believe Strzok and Page suddenly decided, ‘We’re not going to text anymore about Donald Trump.’ They seemed to be obsessively and compulsively texting about him. I don’t know what kind of lovers they were if they were texting about that all the time. It’s ridiculous.”
Still, while he questioned why Strzok and Page’s Mueller-issued phones were wiped, Giuliani did not dispute the FBI’s contention that a technical glitch had affected Strzok and Page’s separate FBI-issued Samsung phones.
“Texts only last… for a little while… not like emails,” Giuliani said. "I do this work, cybersecurity work. Texts are hard to get. That’s legitimate.”
How press botched Flynn hearing
How press botched Flynn hearing
Media expected no jail time for ex-aide.
Giuliani added that it was likely that Strzok, in fact, had been using his Mueller-issued phone to discuss topics like the FBI’s tactics in the investigation of former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Explosive court documents released earlier this month revealed that, in January 2017, then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe pushed Flynn not to have an attorney present during the questioning that ultimately led to his guilty plea on a single charge of lying to federal authorities.
“Just maybe, it would be very embarrassing if he was saying the same things while working for the holier-than-thou special counsel – ‘we’re framing Flynn, we’re not gonna tell him he has the right to counsel,’” Giuliani said.
Asked whether he expects Mueller’s final investigative report to be issued in February, Giulani suggested he isn’t holding his breath.
HOW THE FBI INCORRECTLY SUGGESTED TO FISA COURT IT HAD MORE EVIDENCE THAN IT REALLY DID TO SURVEIL TRUMP AIDE
Journalists watch as Russian President Vladimir Putin gives his annual state of the nation address in Manezh in Moscow, Russia, on March 1, 2018. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
Journalists watch as Russian President Vladimir Putin gives his annual state of the nation address in Manezh in Moscow, Russia, on March 1, 2018. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
“Oh gosh, almighty – first he was coming out in March, then in May – we’re now in fourth degree of separation from the non-crime of collusion,” Giulani said. “We went to the non-crime of obstrution of justice, that didn’t work out for them. Then he moved on to campaign contributions, which by the way are not violative of the campaign finance law. And then they’re looking at now the Russia tower. They should go to Moscow. There is no tower. It didn’t get built. It didn’t get beyond a nonbinding letter of intent, which is like a wish.”
Giuliani maintained that Trump was “as surprised as I was” about the WikiLeaks disclosures of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) during the 2016 presidential campaign, and emphasized that the underlying emails were not doctored.
What hurt the Hillary Clinton campaign, Giuliani said, was that the emails revealed that her campaign had received illicit inside information from the DNC to help her secure the nomination.
“The thing that really got Hillary, is not that it was revealed, but that it was true – she really was cheating on the debates, she really was getting the questions from Donna Brazile beforehand, she really did screw Bernie Sanders – every bit of that was true.”
He added a personal message to Mueller: “My ultimatum is ‘put up or shut up, Bob.’ I mean, what do you have? There are those who believe you don’t have anything on collusion. And, by the way, even if you did it’s not a crime – so what the heck are you doing? Do you have anything that shows the President of the United States was involved in a conspiracy to hack the DNC with Russia? Of course you don’t. If you do, put out a report, or give it to the Justice Department, let them review it, make sure it’s not classified or whatever, put out a report. We’re ready to rebut it. I’ve had the report ready for two months.”
Fox News’ Chad Pergram contributed to this report.
Joseph Goebbels would turn green with envy over the propaganda machine that the Republican right wing has built. FOX, Sinclair, Limbaugh, right-wing radio, Social Media, Preachers on TV, Republicans in Congress, talking points of the day, fake think tanks, conspiracy theories… the list goes on and on. They take their cues from each other and run with the same lies to reach as many people as possible in the shortest time possible.
The Republican party CAN NOT exist without lies, fear, and hate. When was the last time you saw a Republican run for office without, caravans coming toward the border, children with Ebola mixed with ISIS members coming, Democrats are going to take away your Medicare, Socialized medicine, Flashing red terrorist warning lights from Homeland Security…? The last time I can remember a Republican trying to run a half honest campaign was John McCain. He will be remembered for the time he pulled the microphone from that propagandized lady who called Obama a Muslim and said “No Ma’am”, and won the respect of many Americans, and lost the minds of most Republicans.
Greg Sargent has a series of tweets today that are aimed at Trump’s lies, but I think this can be applied to the propaganda the Republican party has been using for decades to build the real mindless cult of followers that allows them to attack our democracy with such ferocity.
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As Trump ends the year with a flood of lies about his wall, we need to recapture a core truth about this presidency. Trump isn’t “twisting the truth” or “stubbornly refusing to admit error.”Trump is engaged in *disinformation.*This is a different thing entirely.
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The WaPo and NYT fact-checkers have now posted their year-end pieces. They are notable.
Via @glennkesslerwp, Trump has now passed the 7,500 mark in falsehoods and distortions as president:
- Meanwhile, @YLindaQiu points to a pattern in which Trump regularly converts his falsehoods into “alternative facts” through “sheer force of repetition.”
This is the essence of the matter.
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Why does Trump lie all the time about everything, even the most trivial, easily disprovable matters? The frequency and the audacity of Trump’s disinformation is the whole point of it — to wear you down. More and more of the lies slip past, undetected and uncorrected.
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Others have pointed this out to great effect. See @sarahkendzior or @jayrosen_nyu or @brianbeutler or @drvox. I tried to give this topic the ambitious treatment it deserves in my book, “An Uncivil War.” I don’t know if I succeeded, but I tried.
Greg Sargent
@ThePlumLineGS
· 11h
Replying to @ThePlumLineGS and 6 others
6) Once Trump’s lying is understood as concerted and deliberate disinformation, it becomes clear that the frequency and audacity of it is the whole point.
Those are features of the lying. They are central to declaring the power to say what reality is:https://www.amazon.com/Uncivil-War-Democracy-Disinformation-Thunderdome/dp/0062698451/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1546170708&sr=8-1&keywords=an+uncivil+war …
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Greg Sargent
@ThePlumLineGS
7) The other crucial half of this is to destroy the credibility of the institutional press.
Previous presidents have tangled with the media. But Trump’s ongoing casting of the press as the “enemy of the people” is in important respects something new:https://www.amazon.com/Uncivil-War-Democracy-Disinformation-Thunderdome/dp/0062698451/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1546170708&sr=8-1&keywords=an+uncivil+war … pic.twitter.com/qX2dHIFnBF
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4:15 AM - Dec 30, 2018
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When people dig up old Trump tweets contradicting current claims and say “LOL there’s always a tweet,” this misses the point.
Trump is openly and unapologetically declaring that norms of consistency and standards of interplay with the institutional press do not bind him.
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I don’t know how conscious this is for Trump. But his background conditioned him for it. His Reality TV past (reality is created via force of personality) fused with Steve Bannon’s love of totalitarian propaganda to create what we’re seeing now:
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There’s a reason Bannon immediately recognized in Trump a kindred spirit.
Both are authoritarian populists and as such share devotion to the awesome possibilities of disinformation.
Greg Sargent
@ThePlumLineGS
· 11h
Replying to @ThePlumLineGS and 7 others
11) All these things led @jayrosen_nyu to declare early that the media is embroiled in a “public battle," the “fight of its life.”
We’ve struggled for the right footing.
But we’ve endured situations like this before. Historically, the media has adapted: amazon.com/Uncivil-War-Demo … ncivil+war …
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Greg Sargent
@ThePlumLineGS
12) I believe the press is undergoing a generational institutional adjustment, and that Trump’s corruption of our politics w/disinformation is failing.
My book tries to tell this story with history/scholarship in an effort to reckon w/it seriously. FINhttps://www.amazon.com/Uncivil-War-D … ncivil+war …
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In An Uncivil War, the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent sounds an urgent alarm about the deeper roots of our democratic backsliding—and how we can begin to turn things around between now and 2020…
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George Orwell tried to warn future generations of the danger of propaganda.
In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
Ronald Reagan referred to nuclear-tipped missiles as “Peacekeepers”. Dick Chaney said we can’t wait until we see the mushroom clouds, exposed the identity of a CIA agent, and planted false stories in the NYT… Deception, misinformation, fear…, these have been but a few of the tools of propaganda that the Republicans have been using for decades.
During the disastrous presidency of GWB, we Democrats were screaming BUSH! BUSH! BUSH!, when I think we should have been screaming REPUBLICANS! REPUBLICANS! REPUBLICANS!. Even Republicans blamed Bush for his disaster, knowing full well he did exactly what they wanted him to do but the right wing propaganda machine could convince enough Americans that he was the exception to conservatism rather than the rule.
There are thousands of Trumps, McConnells, and Ryans rising up to manipulate the propagandized cult base and use the propaganda machine in order to gain the power that they seek to change the rules so their power can never be challenged. This is who the manipulators of the Republican party are and have been for many decades.
The members of our 4th estate, who have the biggest microphones, are failing us. The “both side-ism” and the fear of being part of the “liberal media” has made them cower in submission and become an additional tool for the propagandists to spread their lies to the masses.
We will need to walk a fine line between supporting the freedom of speech that is part of the concrete foundation of democracy and crushing the right wing propaganda machine that is replacing that foundation with the sands of authoritarianism. The path to restoring truth in America is uncertain, but the understanding of the founding fathers that, democracy can not exist without an informed public.