Corsi sues Mueller over alleged grand jury leaks, seeks $350M in damages: report

Jerome Corsi, the conservative author accused of lying under oath to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators, filed a federal lawsuit late Sunday accusing Mueller of leaking grand jury items and various constitutional violations, including illegal surveillance, reports said.
Politico reported that the newly filed suit claims that Mueller tried to get Corsi to give testimony that Corsi said is false. He is reportedly seeking $100 million in actual damages and $250 million in damages due to injury to his reputation.  The CIA, FBI, and the National Security Agency were also named in the suit.
The author has theorized that investigators hoped that he would admit to a connection with WikiLeaks' Julian Assange. The connection would bolster their Russian collusion investigation, he said. A link between Corsi and Assange would make it easy to tie in President Trump's former adviser Roger Stone, he said.
American intelligence agencies have assessed that Russia was the source of hacked material released by WikiLeaks during the 2016 election that damaged Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Mueller’s office is trying to determine whether Stone and other associates of President Trump had advance knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans.
Corsi, the former Washington bureau chief of the conspiracy theory outlet InfoWars, rejected a deal with investigators that would have required him to plead guilty to perjury. He said he could not lie to something he knew to be false, even if it meant living out his life in prison.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to Fox News for comment.
The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington and named Mueller as the defendant. The suit claims that Mueller and his team “demanded” that Corsi falsely testify that he acted as a liaison between Stone and Assange. Politico reported that the suit accuses Mueller of unconstitutional surveillance through the NSA program that was exposed by Edward Snowden, PRISM.
"Defendants Mueller, DOJ, NSA, CIA, and FBI have engaged in ongoing illegal, unconstitutional surveillance on Plaintiff Corsi, in violation of the Fourth Amendment and the USA FREEDOM Act as well targeted ‘PRISM’ collection under Section 702 of the Foreign Sovereignties Immunity Act at the direction of Defendant Mueller," the suit said, according to Politico.
National security lawyer Bradley P. Moss has pointed the lawsuit's apparent misciting of "the Foreign Sovereignties Immunity Act" rather than "the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act."
"Larry Klayman (Corsi's lawyer) is alleging 4A violations by Mueller against Jerome Corsi in reliance upon section 702 of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act," Moss tweeted. "He meant the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He wrote FSIA."

California Democrat Cartoons

What The Rise Of Kamala Harris Tells Us About The Democratic Party Jul. 24, 2018, at 6:00 AM

Kamala Harris

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In the days after Hillary Clinton’s defeat, the two people who seemed like the Democratic Party’s most obvious 2020 candidates, then-Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, hinted that Clinton had gone too far in talking about issues of identity. “It is not good enough for somebody to say, ‘I’m a woman; vote for me,’” Sanders said. Other liberals lamented that the party had lost white voters in such states as Ohio and Iowa who had supported Barack Obama, and they said Democrats needed to dial back the identity talk to win them back.
But that view never took hold among party activists. Liberal-leaning women were emboldened to talk about gender more, not less, after the 2016 election. We’ve had women’s marches and women running for office in greater numbers than ever — all while emphasizing their gender. President Trump’s moves kept identity issues at the forefront, too, and gave Democrats an opportunity both to defend groups they view as disadvantaged and to attack the policies of a president they hate.
The Democratic Party hasn’t simply maintained its liberalism on identity; the party is perhaps further to the left on those issues than it was even one or two years ago. Biden and Sanders are still viable presidential contenders. But in this environment, so is a woman who is the daughter of two immigrants (one from Jamaica and the other from India); who grew up in Oakland, graduated from Howard and rose through the political ranks of the most liberal of liberal bastions, San Francisco; who was just elected to the Senate in 2016 and, in that job, declared that “California represents the future” and pushed Democrats toward a government shutdown last year to defend undocumented immigrants; and who regularly invokes slavery in her stump speech. (“We are a nation of immigrants. Unless you are Native American or your people were kidnapped and placed on a slave ship, your people are immigrants.”)
Sen. Kamala Harris has not officially said she is running in 2020, but she hasn’t denied it, either, and she’s showing many of the signs of someone who is preparing for a run, including campaigning for her Democratic colleagues in key races and signing a deal to write a book. The Californian ranks low in polls of the potential Democratic 2020 field, and she doesn’t have the name recognition of other contenders. (Her first name is still widely mispronounced — it’s COM-ma-la.) But betting markets have her near the top, reflecting the view among political insiders that Harris could win the Democratic nomination with a coalition of well-educated whites and blacks, the way Obama did in 2008.
Whatever happens later, the rise of Harris and her viability for 2020 tell us something about American politics right now: We are in the midst of an intense partisan and ideological battle over culture and identity; the Democrats aren’t backing down or moving to the center on these issues; and politicians who want to lead in either party will probably have to take strong, clear stances on matters of gender and race.

An opportunity

Harris, who went from district attorney of San Francisco to attorney general of California, was a heavy favorite in her 2016 Senate race. But once elected, she was expected to become a virtually powerless freshman senator in Hillary Clinton’s Washington. In fact, she might have been only the second most important person in Washington from her family, since her younger sister, Maya, was a top Clinton policy adviser on the campaign and in line for a senior White House job.
But Clinton’s loss created an opportunity for Harris. The Democrats had the normal leadership vacuum of a party without control of the White House but also a specific void of people who were well-versed in immigration issues and were willing to take the leftward stances on them that the party base wanted as Trump tried to push U.S. immigration policy right. Meanwhile, Biden and Sanders were not natural figures to defend Planned Parenthood when, as part of the repeal of Obamacare, the GOP sought to bar patients from using federal funds at the nonprofit’s clinics. African-American activists went from being deeply connected to the White House to basically shut out of it, as Trump had few blacks in his Cabinet or in top administration posts. And, electorally, while Sanders or Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren were obvious potential presidential candidates for the populist wing of the party that backed the Vermont senator in the 2016 Democratic primaries, the coalition of minorities and more establishment-oriented Democrats¹ who had backed Clinton didn’t necessarily have an obvious standard-bearer, particularly with the uncertainty over Biden’s status as a candidate in 2020.
While veteran party leaders like Biden may have wanted the party to move to the center on identity issues, Democratic voters had moved decidedly to the left, a process that was happening under Obama but may be accelerating under Trump. For example, a rising number of Democrats say that racial discrimination is the main factor holding blacks back in American society, that immigration is good for America and that the country would be better off if more women were in office.

“The Democrats are the party of racial diversity, of gender equality — and there’s no going back from that,” said Lee Drutman, a political scientist at the think tank New America, who has written extensively about the growing cultural divide between the parties.
Harris has seized the opportunity. From attending the annual civil rights march in Selma to pushing legislation that would get rid of bail systems that rely on people putting up cash to be released from jail, she has seemed to try to lead on issues that disproportionately affect black Americans and to position herself as their potential presidential candidate. She was one of the earliest critics on Capitol Hill of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration policies, and her push for a government shutdown over the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program delighted party activists (even if the strategy ultimately failed). Harris was among the first Senate Democrats to call for Minnesota’s Al Franken to resign amid allegations that he groped several women, and she has been a strong defender of Planned Parenthood.

A different moment

You might be thinking, “Didn’t we just have a biracial person (who was often described as and embraced being a ‘black’ politician) who was fairly liberal on cultural issues as a major national political figure? Wasn’t he president of the United States?”
Well, yes. But here’s the big difference: Obama didn’t emerge as a presidential candidate by highlighting his strong stands on these divisive, complicated cultural issues, as Harris is attempting to do. In fact, his rise was in large part because he implied that America was not as divided on those issues as it seemed — and that those divides were diminishing. The 2004 Democratic National Convention speech that launched him to the national stage seems, now that we are in the Trump era, almost crazily optimistic. (“There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America,” he said back then. “There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.”)
Whatever the reality of such statements, the political strategy behind them made sense: It’s hard to imagine that America a decade ago would have embraced a nonwhite politician who wasn’t downplaying cultural divides and emphasizing unity. Back then, someone regularly talking about his or her ancestors being kidnapped and enslaved probably had no chance at being elected president.
But 2018 is much different than 2004 or 2008 in terms of the national debate on identity issues. For example, compared with a decade ago, a much higher percentage of Americans, particularly Democrats, see racism as a major problem. Over the past decade, Americans went through the birther movement, shootings of African-Americans by police captured on video, Black Lives Matter protests, Trump’s racial and at times racist rhetoric and Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” remark. And it’s not just race — think about #MeToo, the legalization of gay marriage and new debates on the rights of people who are transgender.
Harris can’t take the Obama “Kumbaya” route to the White House — I’m not sure at this point that a white Democrat could, either. By the end of his term, Obama didn’t sound particularly hopeful about America getting beyond its cultural divides. Clinton spoke more directly about race and racism in 2016 compared with Obama in 2004 and 2008. Sanders and other white Democrats are already talking taking fairly liberal stances on these issues, and I expect that to continue into next year.
I’m not sure Harris had much choice anyway. She is a Democratic senator from heavily Latino California with Trump as president, so it’s a virtual job requirement for to her to take leftward stances on immigration issues. She is a minority woman at a time when minorities and women are trying to gain more power in national politics, particularly within the Democratic Party — and she is the only black female senator. In other words, Kamala Harris and Barack Obama are, of course, different people. But they also arrived on the national scene at much different political moments.
“When you speak truth, it can make people quite uncomfortable,” Harris told a group of Democratic activists earlier this year in a speech in Henderson, Nevada. “And for people like us who would like to leave the room with everyone feeling lovely, there’s sometimes a disincentive to speak truth.
“But this is a moment in time in which we must speak truth.”

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This is a bit longer than our normal Secret Identity column, so let’s skip “What else you should read.” But please contact me at perry.bacon@fivethirtyeight.com for your thoughts on this piece or ideas for upcoming ones.

Mazie Hirono ‘Justice’ By Rod Dreher • September 23, 2018, 1:24 PM

US Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii)

True:

Solzhenitsyn wrote that in the Soviet Union, trials were never to be treated as a matter of the guilt or innocence of the accused, but of furthering the class struggle. https://t.co/VZC6FlkDYM

— Patrick Ruffini (@PatrickRuffini) September 23, 2018

You have to watch that clip. Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono says point blank that facts don’t matter. Kavanaugh is guilty of attempted rape decades ago because he is a conservative judge.
This is infuriating. Since all this came up with Christine Blasey Ford, I have tried to be open-minded about it. I said at first that even if the accusation was true, I don’t understand what the actions of a drunk 17 year old tell us about the character of a 53 year old. Some of you explained that to me, such that even though I still don’t agree 100 percent with you, you made me significantly more sympathetic to your point of view. I benefited from listening to you.
This Hirono statement, though, is bone-chilling. Truth, due process — none of it matters to her. Last week, she said that American men should “shut up and step up” — that is, stop defending Kavanaugh, or due process, or anything else, and simply accept that he’s guilty on the basis of a single accusation.
This kind of remark from a senior Democratic politician is why many of us vote Republican even though the GOP doesn’t deserve it: entirely out of self-protection. Unless something unexpected comes out of this week’s Ford testimony, I hope that the Senate Judiciary committee will move Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Senate floor, and that he will be confirmed to the Supreme Court.
Here’s one reason why that’s important to conservatives. A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll indicates that the GOP is going to be wiped out this November. Excerpt:

The survey, six weeks before Americans head to the polls, shows Democrats leading Republicans by 52 percent to 40 percent for control of Congress. If it holds, that 12 percentage point margin would suggest a “blue wave” large enough to switch control of not just the House but also the Senate.
“The results could not be clearer about making a change in direction from Trump’s policies,” explained Bill McInturff, the Republican pollster who helps conduct the NBC/WSJ survey. “Once again, Americans are hitting the brakes in a mid-term.”
In each of the last three off-year elections — 2006, 2010 and 2014 — voters have flipped control of one or both houses of Congress away from the incumbent president’s party. This year, the provocative behavior some voters accepted from Candidate Trump in 2016 has overshadowed everything else, including falling unemployment, surging growth and rising stock values.

The story goes on to say that this is entirely about the majority’s disgust with Trump. I understand that. I genuinely do. I like some of what he has done, but on the whole, Trump has been a bad president. The drama is exhausting.
However, let’s be realistic: when the Democrats take power again — first in Congress (as is most likely), then, eventually, in the White House (whether in 2020 or 2024), they are going to come down like a ton of bricks on social and religious conservatives. The best hope we have in the long term is in the judiciary. Again, barring new evidence emerging this week against Kavanaugh, I hope he is confirmed, and that the GOP-controlled Senate works overtime to confirm as many judges as it can. If the Senate flips to the Dems this November, Donald Trump is not going to get another federal judge confirmed in this term. And Congress will be in the hands of the party of Mazie Hirono, who believes that if you hold the wrong philosophy, you are not entitled to a presumption of innocence.

Did Senator Richard Blumenthal Misrepresent His Military Service?

Senator Richard Blumenthal misrepresented his record of military service during the Vietnam War.

What's True

Blumenthal made a handful of false and misleading statements about having served in Vietnam during the period of American involvement in the war there.

What's False

Blumenthal insisted that those misrepresentations were "totally unintentional," as he has also more accurately and modestly represented his military service at other times.

President Donald Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court prompted a fierce, largely partisan battle that reached a fever pitch in September 2018 when two women accused the U.S. Court of Appeals judge of having engaged in sexual assault and misconduct while he was in high school and university.
Kavanaugh denied the allegations, but the controversy dominated political debate in the U.S. for weeks and threatened to derail the U.S. Senate’s confirmation of Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court justice.
Some supporters of President Trump and his nomination of Kavanaugh have attempted to discredit the women and their associates, and the intense scrutiny associated with the saga meant that some who expressed opposition to Kavanaugh’s nomination faced a backlash of their own.
That was the case for Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who told MSNBC on 17 September that proceeding with Kavanaugh’s nomination would “forever stain the Supreme Court”:

Going forward with this nomination will cast a shadow and stain on an institution that depends, for its power, on credibility and trust … This nomination would forever stain the Supreme Court in a way that I think may well be irreparable.
<span data-mce-type="bookmark" style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span>

In response, a viral Facebook post termed Blumenthal himself a “stain on the Senate” and maintained that he “lied about serving in Vietnam”:
During his successful 2010 U.S. Senate campaign, Blumenthal said that he had “misspoken” about his military service during the Vietnam War after the New York Times obtained his Selective Service Record, which showed he received five separate draft deferments while a college student and then, when those deferments ran out, secured a spot in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves (serving stateside, not in Vietnam).
In a May 2010 investigation, the Times reported that Blumenthal, then Connecticut’s attorney general, had on a handful of occasions given a misleading or inaccurate picture of his military service during the Vietnam War, including stating that “I served in Vietnam”:

At a ceremony honoring veterans and senior citizens who sent presents to soldiers overseas, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut rose and spoke of an earlier time in his life. “We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Mr. Blumenthal said to the group gathered in Norwalk in March 2008. “And you exemplify it. Whatever we think about the war, whatever we call it — Afghanistan or Iraq — we owe our military men and women unconditional support.”
There was one problem: Mr. Blumenthal, a Democrat now running for the United States Senate, never served in Vietnam. He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records.
The deferments allowed Mr. Blumenthal to complete his studies at Harvard; pursue a graduate fellowship in England; serve as a special assistant to The Washington Post’s publisher, Katharine Graham; and ultimately take a job in the Nixon White House. In 1970, with his last deferment in jeopardy, he landed a coveted spot in the Marine Reserve, which virtually guaranteed that he would not be sent to Vietnam. He joined a unit in Washington that conducted drills and other exercises and focused on local projects, like fixing a campground and organizing a Toys for Tots drive.

After checking an archive of Connecticut newspapers, we confirmed two separate statements in which Blumenthal either claimed or strongly implied that he had played a role in combat operations in Vietnam.
In May 2003, the Bridgeport News reported on a rally in support of American troops in Iraq which had been organized by a local veterans council. During his speech at that rally, Blumenthal contrasted the support shown for troops in 2003 with that shown to American military personnel returning from Vietnam. “When we returned, we saw nothing like this,” Blumenthal said, suggesting that he had personally been among those troops who served in the country of Vietnam, which he was not:

Blumenthal said what he was observing at City Hall moved him. “I can’t match the elegance of this picture,” he told the crowd. “I’m so proud to see the American flag, veterans, families, people whose hearts are with those fighting overseas.” Blumenthal served in the Marines during the Vietnam era. “When we returned, we saw nothing like this,” he said. “Let us do better by this generation of men and women.”

In May 2007, the Milford Mirror reported on that year’s Memorial Day parade in the city. Blumenthal again suggested that he was among those troops subjected to abuse and harassment upon their return to the United States from Vietnam:

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said Milford was possibly the most beautiful spot in the state Sunday afternoon as people stood around the bandstand to salute fallen veterans. “In Vietnam,” Blumenthal said, “we had to endure taunts and insults, and no one said ‘Welcome home’. I say welcome home.” Blumenthal said the country has learned a lesson since Vietnam, realizing that despite opinions about the ongoing war in the Middle East, military personnel there deserve respect and support.

As reported by the New York Times, in March 2008 Blumenthal told a group of veterans in Norwalk, Connecticut, that “We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam.”
However, Blumenthal has also at times described his military service in more accurate and modest terms. As shown in the MSNBC video above, in March 2010 (two months before the New York Times article) the then-Senate candidate directly contradicted his 2008 statement, saying that “Serving in the United States military gave me a perspective as well, even in the reserves, although I did not serve in Vietnam.”
In response to the 18 May Times article, Blumenthal arranged a press conference for the following day, during which he admitted that he had “misspoken” in the past when describing his military service:

On a few occasions, I have misspoken about my service, and I regret that and I take full responsibility. But I will not allow anyone to take a few misplaced words and impugn my record of service to our country. I served in the United States Marine Corps Reserve and I am proud of it.

In response to a question about allegations that he had misrepresented his military record, Blumenthal added:

I may have misspoken — I did misspeak — on a few occasions out of hundreds that I have attended, whether events or ceremonies, and I will not allow anyone to take a few of those misplaced words and impugn my record of service. I regret that I misspoke on those occasions. I take full responsibility for it.

Confirming the authenticity of the 2008 remarks attributed to him by the New York Times, Blumenthal asserted that he had intended to say “since the days that I served during Vietnam,” rather than “since the days that I served in Vietnam”:

A few misplaced words — “in” instead of “during” — totally unintentional.

Blumenthal did not apologize for what he presented as his misstatements about his record. When invited to do so at the press conference, he merely repeated, “I regret that I misspoke and I take full responsibility.”
Blumenthal’s remarks at the May 2010 press conference can be viewed below:
It is true that Blumenthal has made a handful of recorded statements that were false or misleading about his own military service during the Vietnam War and admitted as much after the publication of the New York Times‘ investigation in 2010. However, Blumenthal insisted that these falsehoods were “totally unintentional” and claimed that he had “misspoken” rather than being deliberately or knowingly untruthful.
Blumenthal did not always describe his military service in false or misleading terms. At times he spoke more accurately and modestly about his time in the Marine Reserves, and in a 2010 campaign speech (given before the New York Times report was published), he stipulated that “I did not serve in Vietnam.”

• Farrow, Ronan amd Jane Mayer.   “Senate Democrats Investigate a New Allegation of of Sexual Misconduct, From Brett Kavanaugh’s College Years.”
      The New Yorker.   23 September 2018.
  
• Hernandez, Raymond.   “Richard Blumenthal’s Words on Vietnam Service Differ from History.”
      The New York Times.   17 May 2010.
  
• Durrell, Brad.   “Bridgeport Shows Support for Troops.”
      The Bridgeport News.   1 May 2003.
  
• Dion, Jill Kaiser.   “Parade Turnout Is Double Past Years’ Attendance.”
      The Milford Mirror.   31 May 2007.
  

Published 24 September 2018

Cory Booker is not your friend. Blast from the past written 2 years ago.

Sarah Jones

2 years ago

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

 Fresh off a rousing speech against Jeff Sessions’s nomination to become attorney general, Booker voted against an affordable drug proposal from Senators Amy Klobuchar and Bernie Sanders on Wednesday evening. Had it passed, the bill would have created a reserve fund to allow Americans to import inexpensive prescription drugs from Canada. Booker was one of 13 Democrats to reject it, a boon to Big Pharma.

Booker had earned liberal acclaim earlier on Wednesday for his testimony against Sessions’s nomination:

“Senator Sessions has not demonstrated a commitment to a central requirement of the job—to aggressively pursue the congressional mandate of justice for all,” he said. “At numerous times in his career, he has demonstrated a hostility toward these convictions, and has worked to frustrate attempts to advance these ideals.”

Booker is exactly right about Sessions’s record, and his decision to violate Senate norms is admirable. But his rejection of the Sanders-Klobuchar proposal is the latest entry in a legislative record that should worry progressives.
As Newark mayor, he accepted a $100 million donation from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to implement a series of drastic reforms in city schools. According to investigative reporter Dale Russakoff, the people of Newark found out about it from Oprah: Zuckerberg and Booker appeared on the show to announce the grant. Most of the funds later went to charter schools. He’s long been a proponent of school vouchers, despite evidence that voucher programs don’t actually create better educational outcomes for students.
He also has close ties to Silicon Valley and Wall Street. In 2013, this magazine reported that Booker had been late to disclose the extent of his stake in Waywire, a tech startup he helped found during his tenure as mayor. There were other troubles; Waywire also employed Booker’s associates, and CNN’s Jeff Zucker’s then-14 year old child sat on its board. (Booker eventually stepped down from the startup.)
And he handed Mitt Romney an unexpected favor in 2012. On Meet the Press, he called attacks on Romney’s ties to Bain Capital and private equity “nauseating.” It apparently paid off: In 2014, WNYC reported that Booker received more Wall Street funding than any other U.S. senator that election cycle.
Booker clearly has national ambitions. His connections and public image could translate to a viable run for the presidency in 2020. But unless he drastically rethinks his politics, he isn’t the progressive candidate America will need after four years of Donald Trump.

Comey says Trump wasn't among 'four Americans' targeted in FBI probe

Former FBI Director James Comey, with his attorney, David Kelley, right, speaks to reporters after a day of testimony before the House Judiciary and Oversight committees, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Dec. 7, 2018. (Associated Press)

An FBI counterintelligence probe into Russia meddling in the 2016 presidential election initially targeted "four Americans," but not Republican nominee Donald Trump nor his campaign, according to former FBI Director James Comey.
The news was revealed Saturday in a 235-page transcript published by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., after hours of closed-door testimony by Comey on Friday.
Comey said "at least some" of the people targeted were affiliated with the Trump campaign in some form, but Trump himself was not under investigation into whether the four individuals colluded with Russia to tip the election in Trump's favor.
“We opened investigations on four Americans to see if there was any connection between those four Americans and the Russian interference effort,” Comey told Gowdy. “And those four Americans did not include the candidate. At least some of them were. The FBI and the Department of Justice have not confirmed the names of those folks publicly, which is why I'm not going into the specifics.”
Comey told Rep. John Ratcliffe, a Texas Republican, that the FBI suspected the four individuals may have helped Russia interfere in the election.
“[A]t the time a defensive briefing was done for candidate Trump, do you know if the FBI had any evidence that anyone associated with the Trump campaign had colluded or conspired or coordinated with Russia in any way?” Ratcliffe asked.
“I don't know the dates. ... I don't know whether it was before late July when we opened the four counterintelligence files, or not,” Comey replied. “And so, if it was after July 29th, then the answer would be, yes, we had some reason to suspect that there were Americans who might have assisted the Russians.”
LAWYERS STOPPING COMEY FROM ANSWERING QUESTIONS IN HILL TESTIMONY, ISSA SAYS
Though the four individuals have not been named publically, ex-Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos was prosecuted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and was released from prison Friday after serving 12 days. Papadopoulos had pleaded guilty to making false statements to FBI agents.
Other Trump associates, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, have pleaded guilty to lying about their interactions with Russians during the campaign and presidential transition period.
During questioning, Comey also defended Peter Strzok, the former FBI agent who helped lead the bureau’s investigation. He revealed that Strzok edited a letter sent to Congress days before the election disclosing that an investigation into Hillary Clinton had been reopened.
Clinton and many Democrats have blamed the letter for her election loss to Trump.
Comey said he never saw any bias from Strzok after questioning from U.S. Rep. Steven Cohen, D-Tenn. Strzok was fired after anti-Trump texts sent by him had surfaced. Trump has seized on the messages as evidence of a conspiracy to dismantle his presidency.
“So it's hard for me to see how he was on Team Clinton secretly at that point in time,” Comey said. “If you're going to have a conspiracy theory, you've got to explain all the facts. And it's hard to reconcile his not leaking that Trump associates were under investigation and his drafting of a letter to Congress on October 28th that Secretary Clinton believed hurt her chances of being elected.”
When asked if former President Barack Obama obstructed justice when he commented that Clinton's use of a private email server lacked criminal intent, Comey said he didn’t see it that way, but it did concern him.
“So, if it doesn't rise to the level of obstruction, how would you characterize the Chief Executive saying that the target of an investigation that was ongoing simply made a mistake and lacked the requisite criminal intent?” Gowdy asked.
“It concerns me whenever the Chief Executive comments on pending criminal investigations, something we see a lot today, which is why it concerned me when President Obama did it," Comey replied.
TRUMP TAKES AIM AT MUELLER TEAM’S ‘CONFLICTS OF INTEREST’ AS MAJOR FILINGS LOOM 
Asked if the FBI had any evidence that anyone in the Trump campaign conspired to hack the DNC server, Comey referred to Mueller’s investigation as to why he couldn’t answer.
“Did we have evidence in July of (2016) that anyone in the Trump campaign conspired to hack the DNC server?” Comey asked rhetorically. “I don't think that the FBI and special counsel want me answering questions that may relate to their investigation of Russian interference during 2016. And I worry that that would cross that line.”
He noted that anything related to Mueller’s investigation was “off-limits,” because it is an ongoing investigation.
When asked how confident was he that Mueller would conduct his investigation thoroughly, Comey replied, “There are not many things I would bet my life on. I would bet my life that Bob Mueller will do things the right way, the way we would all want, whether we're Republicans or Democrats, the way Americans should want.”

Crooked Untouchable Democrat Cartoons

Hillary Clinton’s use of private email server among ‘gravest’ offenses to transparency, judge says

Federal Judge Royce Lamberth says Judicial Watch should be allowed to demand documents and additional testimony into whether Hillary Clinton's use of a private email system was a deliberate effort to thwart the Freedom of Information Act; reaction from Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton.

A conservative group won a court victory this week when a federal judge ordered more fact-finding in the Hillary Clinton email investigation.
In his ruling Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth assailed Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state as “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.”
Conservative group Judicial Watch had filed a Freedom of information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the State and Justice departments, alleging that Clinton’s email practices represented a deliberate effort to violate the FOIA, Politico reported.
On Friday, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton praised Lamberth’s ruling, telling Fox News it showed the court was “not terribly convinced” that former FBI Director James Comey adequately investigated Clinton’s use of the private server while secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.
As a result of the judge’s ruling, “Some people like Mrs. Clinton potentially will have to answer further questions,” Fitton said.
On Thursday, Lamberth ordered the State and Justice departments to work with Judicial Watch on a discovery plan to determine whether Clinton used the server to circumvent FOIA requirements, the Hill reported.
President Trump and Republicans have repeatedly slammed Clinton’s use of the private email server, arguing in part that the practice potentially placed classified government information at risk.
Clinton was found to have deleted emails that she said were personal and not related to her State Department work. Comey announced during the 2016 presidential campaign that Clinton’s handling of emails was “extremely careless” but did not warrant criminal charges.

Trump condemns 'disgraceful' 9th Circuit, dubbing it rubber-stamp for his foes

In lengthy and fiery comments to reporters outside the White House on Tuesday, President Trump excoriated the liberal-leaning Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals as a "disgrace" hours after an Obama-appointed federal judge there issued a nationwide injunction against his newly announced emergency restrictions on asylum claims.
The president vowed immediate action and said he was "going to put in a major complaint" about the appellate court, based in San Francisco, without elaborating.
He also broadly criticized the increasingly common practice of individual federal judges bringing unilateral halts to executive branch policy, which has already happened more than two dozen times under the Trump administration. The president specifically cited the Ninth Circuit's injunction against his ban on travel from several Muslim-majority nations, which was ultimately ruled a constitutional exercise of presidential authority this year by the Supreme Court.
"You go to Ninth Circuit and it's a disgrace, and I'm going to put in a major complaint. Because you cannot win, if you're us, a case in the Ninth Circuit," Trump said. "Every case gets filed in the Ninth Circuit. ... We get beaten, and then we end up having to go to the Supreme Court -- like the travel ban -- and we won. We're gonna have to look at that."
He added: "That's not law. That's not what this country stands for."
When pardoning the National Thanksgiving Turkey earlier in the day, Trump joked, "Unfortunately, I cannot guarantee your pardon will not be enjoined by the Ninth Circuit. Always happens."
U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar, who was nominated by President Obama in 2012 to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, issued a temporary restraining order late Monday against Trump's plan to refuse asylum to immigrants who cross the southern border illegally if they do not arrive at a port of entry.
TRUMP SNUBS HARRIS, FEINSTEIN AND APPOINTS SEVERAL REPUBLICAN JUDGES TO NINTH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS
"Whatever the scope of the President's authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden," Tigar wrote.
Trump took aim at Tigar in his comments on Tuesday and predicted he would win an appeal in the case at the Supreme Court, where conservatives command a narrow majority. Republicans have argued that presidents have plenary authority over immigration, and can close the southern border with Mexico for national security reasons if they wanted.

"You cannot win, if you're us, a case in the Ninth Circuit."
— President Trump

"This was an Obama judge, and I'll tell you what, it's not going to happen like this anymore," Trump said. "Everybody that wants to sue the U.S. -- almost -- they file their case in the Ninth Circuit, and it means an automatic loss. No matter what you do, no matter how good your case is. And the Ninth Circuit is really something we have to take a look at, because it's not fair."
He added: "People should not be allowed to immediately run to this very friendly circuit and file their case. It's a disgrace, in my opinion, what happens with the Ninth Circuit. We will win that case in the Supreme Court of the United States."

Demonstrators with signs that read in Spanish: "No more Caravans", and "Let's save Tijuana, no more caravans," stand under an statue of indigenous Aztec ruler Cuauhtemoc to protest the presence of thousands of Central American migrants in Tijuana, Mexico, on Sunday. (AP)

During his confirmation hearings earlier this year, Associate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was asked by Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy about the constitutionality of individual federal judges issuing nationwide injunctions against presidential action -- a phenomenon that has attracted scrutiny after district court judges unilaterally brought temporary halts to Trump's travel ban and other initiatives. Kavanaugh demurred, saying he could not discuss potential pending issues before the Supreme Court. (Justice Clarence Thomas had suggested taking action against the injunctions in a dissent this year.)
Separately, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in October that the 28 nationwide federal injunctions issued by individual judges during the Trump administration so far constitute an unprecedented "judicial encroachment."
WATCH: MIGRANT CARAVAN CLASHES WITH RESIDENTS OF TIJUANA
"It is emphatically not the duty of the courts to manage the government or to pass judgment on every policy action the Executive branch takes," Sessions said. "In the first 175 years of this Republic, not a single judge issued one of these orders."
Trump's new asylum policy was designed to prevent many members of the Central American migrant caravans -- many of whom have arrived at the U.S. border and clashed with locals in Mexican border towns -- from illegally flooding into the U.S., and was intended to instead direct them to legal crossings for expedited and orderly asylum reviews.

Central American migrants, part of the Central American caravan trying to reach the United States, continue their journey as they prepare to leave Mexicali, Mexico, Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2018. Tensions have built as nearly 3,000 migrants from the caravan poured into Tijuana in recent days after more than a month on the road, and with many more months likely ahead of them while they seek asylum in the U.S. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

A joint statement by Homeland Security and the Justice Department said the Supreme Court had already shown the president had the legal right to restrict asylum.
"Our asylum system is broken, and it is being abused by tens of thousands of meritless claims every year," the departments said. "We look forward to continuing to defend the Executive Branch's legitimate and well-reasoned exercise of its authority to address the crisis at our southern border."
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, speaking Tuesday at the border, vowed to appeal the Ninth Circuit's ruling immediately.  "Let me be clear: this court from a chamber in San Francisco has replaced the president’s judgment with regard to the fully delegated authority to determine what is a true national security threat to our nation’s sovereignty," Nielsen said, arguing that the ruling will "unequivocally make the United States less secure."
"We will follow all laws and judicial rulings, but we will also be appealing it as quickly as possible," she added. "I have no doubt we will be successful."
Nielsen added that DHS has confirmed that there are at least 500 criminals and known gang members in the caravan, and that "most of the caravan members" plan to make "frivolous" claims of asylum in the hopes of disappearing while their claims are pending.
"Wanting a job is not a basis for asylum under U.S. law," Nielsen said. "Wanting to be united with your family is not a basis for asylum under U.S. law."
WATCH: TUCKER CARLSON DISCUSSES WHY MIGRANT CARAVAN IS RECEIVING A HOSTILE RECEPTION IN TIJUANA
The legal standard for obtaining asylum in the U.S. is strict, and ordinarily requires that people from foreign countries demonstrate they face serious, legitimate risks of persecution by their government if they remain in their homeland.
Not all forms of persecution are relevant for asylum consideration. Under federal law, applicants must demonstrate that their risk for persecution is based on their national origin, race, religion, political views or membership in a particularly vulnerable social class -- a category that was expanded in 2014, when the Board of Immigration Appeals ruled that domestic abuse could form the basis for an asylum claim. The Trump administration reversed that expansion this year.
Around 3,000 people from the first of the caravans have arrived in Tijuana, Mexico, across the border from San Diego, California. U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Monday that it closed off northbound traffic for several hours at the San Ysidro crossing to install movable, wire-topped barriers after reports that some migrants were planning to rush through the lanes.

Central American migrants, part of the Central American caravan trying to reach the United States, continue their journey as they leave Mexicali, Mexico, Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2018. Tensions have built as nearly 3,000 migrants from the caravan poured into Tijuana in recent days after more than a month on the road, and with many more months likely ahead of them while they seek asylum in the U.S. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

As of Monday, the Department of Homeland Security said it had referred 107 people to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — people who had sought asylum between official crossings since Trump's order went into effect. Officials didn't say whether those people's cases were still progressing through other, more difficult avenues left to them after the proclamation.
MIGRANT CARAVAN JUST OUTSIDE U.S. IS HARBORING AT LEAST 500 CRIMINALS, DHS SAYS, AS CARAVAN CLASHES WITH MEXICAN LOCALS
More than 500 criminals are traveling with the migrant caravan that’s massed on the other side of a San Diego border crossing, homeland security officials said Monday afternoon.
The asylum clause of the Immigration and Nationality Act says that anyone who arrives to the U.S. may apply for asylum based on a well-founded fear of persecution, regardless of where they arrive. Tigar said Trump's policy flatly contradicted that law passed by Congress.

Central American migrants look through the border structure expecting top make an illegal crossing into the U.S., seen from the Mexican side where the border meets the Pacific Ocean, Friday, Nov. 16, 2018. As thousands of migrants of asylum-seekers converge on the doorstep of the United States, what they won't find are armed American soldiers standing guard, that's because U.S. military troops are prohibited from carrying out law enforcement duties. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

But the Executive Branch has considerable authority in determining the scope of potential asylum claims. Earlier this year, Sessions used his authority as head of asylum courts to rule that domestic violence and gang-related attacks no longer necessarily can form the basis of an asylum claim.
TRUMP DOJ SHARPLY LIMITS ASYLUM CLAIMS, SAYING SYSTEM IS OVERWHELMED WITH FRAUD
Declaring that his decision "restores sound principles of asylum and long-standing principles of immigration law," Sessions indicated that the move would help reduce the backlog of asylum claims that has risen sharply in recent years -- with many of the claims illegitimate.
"The vast majority of the current asylum claims are not valid," Sessions said in remarks this summer. "For the last five years, only 20 percent of claims have been found to be meritorious after a hearing before an immigration judge."
Sessions added that the system is simply overwhelmed with claims, and that bogus applications are crowding out legitimate ones.