The Muscovite Candidate

[rubato]

When a group invites someone to speak in a public venue they are endorsing the idea that the person has something to say which is of value and worth hearing. Not necessarily that they agree with it. When I was an undergraduate a man was invited to promote the idea of charter schools and school choice as the panacea for everything wrong with education. (ca. 1980) No one supposed that the person who made the invitation agreed with him.


This fact would have been obvious to you if you were not made stupid by hatred.


And yes, it shows. You will never get over it because you love hatred more than the truth.


yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

When a group invites someone to speak in a public venue they are endorsing the idea that the person has something to say which is of value and worth hearing. Not necessarily that they agree with it.

Okay...

So now you're admitting that they did not "endorse" what the speaker was saying (as you dishonestly claimed previously) but merely supported the idea that a point of view that they did not "necessarily agree with" should be heard...

(I want to make sure I've got that right before you move the goal posts again... )

[RayThom]

This communication between Flynn and Kislyak is Lord Dampnut's Sword of Damocles -- the very reason he's constantly tonguing Putin's anal cavity. If Drumpf would ever grow a pair and betray his Russian benefactor, within days the transcript of this phone call will show up on WikiLeaks. The impeachment process would commence almost immediately.

Call Out the Border Guard, the Kingdom is Crumbling!

[Scooter]

[RayThom]

Vlad & Donnie -- everybody sing:

Hey! Hey! Hey, hey, hey!
Macho, macho man
I've got to be, a macho man
Macho, macho man
I've got to be a macho! All Right!

[rubato]

Don't the GOP vet their own candidates?


http://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/2 ... ssia-flynn

Evelyn Farkas was the Pentagon’s top Russia expert. Now she wants Trump independently investigated.
“The fundamental question is: Are you susceptible to blackmail from a foreign entity or individual?”

From 2012 to 2015, Evelyn Farkas served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia. Since leaving office, she’s been raising the alarm that there was more to the strange relationship between Trumpland and Russia than the public knew. Maybe even much more. This week, she was proven right.

We spoke Wednesday, and the relief was evident in her voice. Far from being concerned over the new revelations, she’s comforted that the ties are finally being made public and broad pressure is finally being applied for more investigations. “I didn’t think it would happen this fast,” she says.

The investigation we need, Farkas continues, is the equivalent of running “a security clearance on the president.” The core question is, “Are you susceptible to blackmail from a foreign entity or individual?”

Related
The 3 Trump-Russia scandals, explained

Farkas, who served as the executive director of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, thinks Congress needs to create an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate Russia’s ties to the Trump administration and role in the election. In this interview, which is edited for length and clarity, she explains why.
Ezra Klein

What’s your level of alarm after the resignation of Michael Flynn?
Evelyn Farkas

It’s lower than it’s been since the summer, when I was first made aware of all this stuff. I’m like, finally, everybody else sees it! Seriously.

The reason I was so upset last summer was that I was getting winks and hints from inside that there was something really wrong here. I was agitated because I knew the Clinton campaign and the world didn’t know. But I didn’t think it would happen this fast. I didn’t think Flynn would survive a year, but I thought it would be most of the year.

The fact that Flynn is gone is constructive from the perspective of US foreign policy. He was getting it wrong on combating terrorism and Russia. So I feel relieved that he will not be whispering his policy prescriptions in the president’s ear.

On the bigger issue, the intelligence community, the bureaucracy, patriotic Americans, and some members of Congress are making it impossible for the White House to sweep whatever they are trying to hide under the rug. And the White House is clearly trying to hide something, or the president would have said, on day one, that he would support the investigations that began under his predecessor.
Ezra Klein

The piece of this I keep coming back to is Trump’s own actions. He’s a guy with very few consistent and clear policy positions, particularly on foreign policy. But he has always had very specific, very hard-line pro-Russian policies — questioning NATO, altering the GOP platform to be friendlier to Russia on Ukraine. And he has surrounded himself with staffers like Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn, who are unusually closely tied to Russia. That behavior is what, to me, creates a context that makes these contacts between his associates and Russian intelligence really unnerving.
Evelyn Farkas

It is unusual. His personnel choices line up with his words on Russia. This is the only place where we haven’t seen Trump contradict himself, but we still don’t know exactly what his policy will be. We know he’s inclined to be friendly to Putin, to cooperate with Putin, but he hasn’t articulated specifics.
Ezra Klein

Where does an investigation like this go? What do you think the investigators are looking for?
Evelyn Farkas

From the perspective of the intelligence community, the fundamental question is: Are you susceptible to blackmail from a foreign entity or individual? There’s the possibility of blackmail based on giving money or lending money or guaranteeing something. There could be some hanky-panky that opens the president up to blackmail.

It’s like you’re trying to do a security clearance on the president. The intelligence agencies want to make sure there’s no undue foreign influence on him.
Ezra Klein

The question that concerns me is whether these investigations can be sustained. What we’re seeing emerge right now is largely information that has already been gathered. But the heads of the CIA, FBI, and Department of Justice are now people Trump has either appointed or kept on. Republicans in Congress have been reluctant to really investigate. So how does this inquiry maintain momentum?
Evelyn Farkas

Congress is so politicized. For them to be in charge of an investigation is hard. So I think that what you’re going to see happen — unless the Republicans really have a come-to-Jesus moment where they decide they’ll lose in 2018 unless they pull themselves together and really investigate this in a bipartisan fashion — is Democrats and the American people will force it out of Congress and into a bipartisan, independent commission.
Ezra Klein

What would that look like?
Evelyn Farkas

It should be made up of former members of Congress, éminence grises. It could be a Brent Scowcroft, an Eric Cantor. I was the executive director of the Graham-Talent WMD commission. The thing with these commissions is you begin by establishing a baseline of facts, and only then do you proceed with the investigation.
Ezra Klein

But Congress would have to vote to form a commission like that, right? And I doubt Trump would sign that bill.
Evelyn Farkas

It would have to be veto-proof. It would have to be the result of huge outside political pressure. The upside of farming it out, for Republicans, is that the commission allocates the blame. The president can’t say, Paul Ryan, you set me up. Paul Ryan can just say, we were under huge pressure to create the commission, but I didn’t know it would lead to this!

yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

What’s your level of alarm after the resignation of Michael Flynn?
Evelyn Farkas

It’s lower than it’s been since the summer, when I was first made aware of all this stuff. I’m like, finally, everybody else sees it! Seriously.

The Muscovite Candidate

Posted: Sun Jul 24, 2016 7:42 am

This is the first of three fairly long posts:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16148

Of course anyone reading my posts last summer would have been very aware of the issues regarding this...

[Lord Jim]

Drip, drip, drip...

U.S. inquiries into Russian election hacking include three FBI probes

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is pursuing at least three separate probes relating to alleged Russian hacking of the U.S. presidential elections, according to five current and former government officials with direct knowledge of the situation.

While the fact that the FBI is investigating had been reported previously by the New York Times and other media, these officials shed new light on both the precise number of inquires and their focus.

The FBI's Pittsburgh field office, which runs many cyber security investigations, is trying to identify the people behind breaches of the Democratic National Committee's computer systems, the officials said. Those breaches, in 2015 and the first half of 2016, exposed the internal communications of party officials as the Democratic nominating convention got underway and helped undermine support for Hillary Clinton.

The Pittsburgh case has progressed furthest, but Justice Department officials in Washington believe there is not enough clear evidence yet for an indictment, two of the sources said.

Meanwhile the bureau’s San Francisco office is trying to identify the people who called themselves “Guccifer 2” and posted emails stolen from Clinton campaign manager John Podesta’s account, the sources said. Those emails contained details about fundraising by the Clinton Foundation and other topics.

Beyond the two FBI field offices, FBI counterintelligence agents based in Washington are pursuing leads from informants and foreign communications intercepts, two of the people said.

This counterintelligence inquiry includes but is not limited to examination of financial transactions by Russian individuals and companies who are believed to have links to Trump associates. The transactions under scrutiny involve investments by Russians in overseas entities that appear to have been undertaken through middlemen and front companies, two people briefed on the probe said.

Reuters could not confirm which entities and individuals were under scrutiny.

Scott Smith, the FBI's new assistant director for cyber crime, declined to comment this week on which FBI offices were doing what or how far they had progressed.

The White House had no comment on Friday on the Russian hacking investigations. A spokesman pointed to a comment Trump made during the campaign, in which he said: "As far as hacking, I think it was Russia, but I think we also get hacked by other countries and other people."

During a news conference Thursday, President Donald Trump said he had no business connections to Russia.

The people who spoke to Reuters also corroborated a Tuesday New York Times report that Americans with ties to Trump or his campaign had repeated contacts with current and former Russian intelligence officers before the November election. Those alleged contacts are among the topics of the FBI counterintelligence investigation.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-t ... SKBN15X0OE

Senate intel committee orders agencies to preserve all records related to Russian meddling in 2016 election

The Senate Intelligence Committee has ordered more than a dozen individuals and agencies to preserve records related to Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections.

According to the Associated Press, a congressional aide confirmed that the committee had sent formal requests that all materials related to Russian meddling be preserved.

The AP notes that the letters were a bi-partisan affair with both the panel’s chairmen, Richard Burr (R-N.C.), and vice chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) signing on.

The Friday letters come on the heels of a closed door meeting with FBI Director James Comey who spent nearly three hours answering questions Friday afternoon in a secure room in the Senate basement used for classified briefings.

Pres. Donald Trump is coming under increasing scrutiny for his administration’s ties to Russia and reports that his campaign staff were repeatedly in contact with Russian intelligence officials during the 2016 campaign.

There are currently three active FBI investigations involving Russia and its attempts to sway the 2016 election in Trump’s favor.

https://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/senate ... -election/

[rubato]

Now we see that the Russians have meddled in elections in the Netherlands and France. And who know where else.. Always for the least fit and most racist candidates. The candidates who would leave their countries weaker and sicker.


They are using the same tactics Putin uses to corrupt his own 'democracy'. The same kinds of nationalist, simplistic, racist, fear-mongering tactics which seduced 90% of the Republican party.

Will the western democracies learn how to deal with this? Will the Republican party forgo lying as a political tactic as a result?


yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

The problem is not Trump. The problem is a GOP that abandoned any respect for truth in favor of party loyalty. The goal of getting power is so important they have have no morals in how they achieve it.


http://economistsview.typepad.com/econo ... hacks.html

Paul Krugman: The Silence of the Hacks

The truth is out there:

The Silence of the Hacks, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: The story so far: A foreign dictator intervened on behalf of a U.S. presidential candidate — and that candidate won. Close associates of the new president were in contact with the dictator’s espionage officials during the campaign, and his national security adviser was forced out over improper calls to that country’s ambassador...

Meanwhile, the president seems oddly solicitous of the dictator’s interests, and rumors swirl about his personal financial connections to the country in question. ...

Maybe ... it’s all perfectly innocent. But if it’s not innocent, it’s very bad indeed. So what do Republicans in Congress, who have the power to investigate the situation, believe should be done?

Nothing.

Paul Ryan ... says that Michael Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador were “entirely appropriate.”

Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, angrily dismissed calls for a select committee to investigate contacts during the campaign: “There is absolutely not going to be one.”

Jason Chaffetz, the chairman of the House oversight committee — who hounded Hillary Clinton endlessly over Benghazi — declared that the “situation has taken care of itself.”

Just the other day Republicans were hot in pursuit of potential scandal, and posed as ultrapatriots. Now they’re indifferent to actual subversion and the real possibility that we are being governed by people who take their cues from Moscow. ...

The point is that you can’t understand the mess we’re in without appreciating not just the potential corruption of the president, but the unmistakable corruption of his party — a party so intent on cutting taxes for the wealthy, deregulating banks and polluters and dismantling social programs that accepting foreign subversion is, apparently, a small price to pay. ...

So how does this crisis end? It’s not a constitutional crisis — yet. But Donald Trump is facing a clear crisis of legitimacy. ... And nothing he has done since the inauguration allays fears that he is in effect a Putin puppet.

How can a leader under such a cloud send American soldiers to die? How can he be granted the right to shape the Supreme Court for a generation? ...

The thing is, this nightmare could be ended by a handful of Republican legislators willing to make common cause with Democrats to demand the truth. And maybe there are enough people of conscience left in the G.O.P.

But there probably aren’t. And that’s a problem that’s even scarier than the Trump-Putin axis.

yrs,
rubato

[Big RR]

The thing is, this nightmare could be ended by a handful of Republican legislators willing to make common cause with Democrats to demand the truth. And maybe there are enough people of conscience left in the G.O.P.

And if they do, then what? Even if the russians meddled in the electoral process, Trump was still elected by a majority of the elec5toral votes. Absent any showing of hacking the results and changing them, we still have to come to grips wit the idea that a large portion of US voters chose, or were manipulated to, vote for Trump. nothing the republicans and dems do can change that.

[Lord Jim]

The hacking is just a part of this...

The larger question is just what is the relationship between Trump and the Putin regime, and whether or not we have a Russian agent of influence in the White House...

[Crackpot]

The pot calling the kettle hack?!

[Big RR]

Indeed Jim, but I ma unsure even a dedicated congressional investigation could expose this sort of relationship. At best I would think they could show he may have benefitted from the Russian interference, but establishing what you are suggesting takes much, much more. personally, I would think their time would be better spent monitoring what he does and blocking his most egregious actions.

[Burning Petard]

"unsure even a dedicated congressional investigation could expose this sort of relationship"

Maybe, but a good start would be 'follow the money' and get his (and his son-in-law) tax returns for the last five years.

snailgate

[Lord Jim]

Trump administration sought to enlist intelligence officials, key lawmakers to counter Russia stories

By Greg Miller and Adam Entous February 24 at 8:47 PM

The Trump administration has enlisted senior members of the intelligence community and Congress in efforts to counter news stories about Trump associates’ ties to Russia, a politically charged issue that has been under investigation by the FBI as well as lawmakers now defending the White House.

Acting at the behest of the White House, the officials made calls to news organizations last week in attempts to challenge stories about alleged contacts between members of President Trump’s campaign team and Russian intelligence operatives, U.S. officials said.

The calls were orchestrated by the White House after unsuccessful attempts by the administration to get senior FBI officials to speak with news organizations and dispute the accuracy of stories on the alleged contacts with Russia.

The White House on Friday acknowledged those interactions with the FBI but did not disclose that it then turned to other officials who agreed to do what the FBI would not — participate in White House-arranged calls with news organizations, including The Washington Post.

Two of those officials spoke on the condition of anonymity — a practice President Trump has condemned.

The officials broadly dismissed Trump associates’ contacts with Russia as infrequent and inconsequential. But the officials would not answer substantive questions about the issue, and their comments were not published by The Post and do not appear to have been reported elsewhere.[I guess they didn't want to spread fake news...]
White House spokesman Sean Spicer confirmed that the White House communicated with officials with the aim of contesting reporting on Russia, but maintained that the administration did nothing improper. “When informed by the FBI that [the Russia-related reporting] was false we told reporters who else they should contact to corroborate the FBI’s version of the story.”

The decision to involve those officials could be perceived as threatening the independence of U.S. spy agencies that are supposed to remain insulated from partisan issues, as well as undercutting the credibility of ongoing congressional probes. [Ya think?] Those officials saw their involvement as an attempt to correct coverage they believed to be erroneous.

The effort also involved senior lawmakers with access to classified intelligence about Russia, including Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence committees. A spokesman for Nunes said that he had already begun speaking to reporters to challenge the story and then “at the request of a White House communications aide, Chairman Nunes then spoke to an additional reporter and delivered the same message.”

Unlike the others, Nunes spoke on the record and was subsequently quoted in the Wall Street Journal.

In an interview, Burr acknowledged that he “had conversations about” Russia-related news reports with the White House and engaged with news organizations to dispute articles by the New York Times and CNN that alleged “repeated” or “constant” contact between Trump campaign members and Russian intelligence operatives.

“I’ve had those conversations,” Burr said, adding that he regarded the contacts as appropriate provided that “I felt I had something to share that didn’t breach my responsibilities to the committee in an ongoing investigation.”

The administration’s push against the Russia coverage intensified Sunday when White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said in television interviews that he had been authorized “by the top levels of the intelligence community” to denounce reports on Trump campaign contacts with Russia as false.

Priebus’s denunciations ranged from calling the articles “overstated” to saying they were “complete garbage.”

Administration officials said that Priebus’s comments had been cleared by FBI Director James B. Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. In doing so, the FBI’s leadership would appear to have been drawing a distinction between authorizing comments by a White House official and addressing the matter themselves.

Former intelligence officials expressed concern over the blurring of lines between intelligence and politics, with some recalling Republican accusations that the Obama administration had twisted intelligence in its accounts of the 2012 attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya.

“I doubt that there was any enthusiasm from the intelligence leadership to get involved in this in the first place,” former CIA director Michael Hayden said, noting that it seemed unlikely that Priebus’s bluntly worded denials were consistent with the “precise language” favored by intelligence analysts.

“Think Benghazi here,” Hayden said in an interview by email. “This is what happens when the intel guys are leaned on for the narrative of the political speakers. The latter have different rules, words, purposes. Getting intel into that mix always ends unhappily, [and] it looks like we just did.”

The Trump administration’s actions reflect its level of concern about coverage of its relationship with Russia. Trump has continued to praise Russian President Vladimir Putin, even after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia had interfered in the U.S. presidential race to help Trump win.

Trump has also repeatedly disparaged the intelligence agencies that his administration last week turned to for support. Shortly before taking office, Trump accused U.S. spy agencies of a Nazi-style leaks campaign to smear him.

The White House statements on the issue Friday came after CNN reported that the FBI had refused administration requests to publicly “knock down” media reports about ties between Trump associates and Russian intelligence.

More:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/na ... d4185d1b88

[Lord Jim]

Issa: Trump-Russia probe requires a special prosecutor

A Republican congressman who aligned with President Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign called Friday for a special prosecutor to oversee the investigation into Trump associates' contacts with Russia.

Rep. Darrell Issa said on HBO's "Real Time" that Attorney General Jeff Sessions — who Trump appointed as the nation's top law enforcement officer — should not handle the problem.

"You cannot have somebody, a friend of mine Jeff Sessions, who was on the campaign and who is an appointee," the California Republican said in response to a question from host Bill Maher. "You're going to need to use the special prosecutor's statute and office to take — not just to recuse. You can't just give it to your deputy. That's another political appointee."

Issa emphasized that "there may or may not be fault" with Trump's associates but said Russian President Vladimir Putin's brutality toward political enemies highlighted the need for such a probe.

Issa supported Trump during the 2016 election, a fact that Democrats exploited in an attempt to topple Issa in his bid for a ninth term in the House. Issa prevailed by less than a percentage point, and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton beat Trump in the district by a wide margin. That result immediately left Issa as a top Democratic target for 2018.

Trump personally vouched for Issa during his reelection bid, tweeting on Nov. 1 "@DarrellIssa is a very good man. Help him win his congressional seat in California."

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/i ... tor-235387

Political heat can have a real effect...

[Burning Petard]

The head of the FBI really needs a probe for political bias. But on the other hand, never ascribe to malice what can be explained by simple human incompetence.

Now he tells the White House the story in the NY Times about the FBI probe is false, but he cannot make a public statement because the stuff is still under investigation.

Funny, he had no trouble releasing a public statement about FBI investigation of Hillary just before the election with a cover letter that made Hillary look very bad, but the actual substance, for those who read beyond the cover letter, said 'we ain't got nothing beyond what we already told you.'

So the WH says the recent story about the staffers and Russian contacts is false. Without any indication of just what about it is false. Could be like the story about our President wandering the halls of the White House late at night in his bathrobe. That story was false because he does not own a bathrobe.

President Trump demands the NY Times stop publishing stories from anonymous sources. They must name names. Sounds good to me. When President Trump was queried in his news conference for a source for the declaration that his electoral college victory was bigger than anybody since Ronny Raygun,he justified the information with "somebody told me." Thus the NY Times could justifiably satisfy the President by just including 'somebody' told us.

snailgate

[Lord Jim]

I generally don't like to post stuff from Vox, (I have found numerous factual errors in articles coming from that liberal POV site; I don't consider it at all a reliable source. Even The Huffington Post has a better record for accuracy.) but this particular article has a pretty good breakdown of the various investigatory options available.

Republicans in Congress took several steps this week toward investigating President Trump’s campaign and administrative ties to Russia. Those steps still fall short of the most aggressive probes Congress can launch, but they have helped satisfy at least some of the Democrats who for months have accused GOP lawmakers of shielding Trump from scrutiny on a widening controversy.

Congressional Democrats are continuing to call for Republicans to do more — a reflection of both the politics at play and the complicated degrees of investigative power that Congress can deploy on a given issue.

Understanding those powers — the different steps congressional committees can take to investigate a president — is critical to understanding the political fight around them.

Quick context: Last week, the Washington Post revealed that Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn had spoken with the Russian ambassador about sanctions during President Obama’s time in office. Flynn later resigned after it became clear he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about his dealings with the Russian envoy.

The ensuring uproar has spurred Senate Republicans — who had seemed to be dithering on a Russia probe — to concrete action. Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), the chair of the Intelligence Committee, said Wednesday that he will “very likely” invite Flynn to testify. Democratic staffers on that committee privately say that the Intelligence Committee is now proceeding on a bipartisan basis, according to BuzzFeed.

On Thursday, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) joined Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) in a bipartisan letter demanding the FBI deliver a briefing on “the circumstances that led to the recent resignation” of Flynn, as well as copies of the transcripts of his conversations with Russian officials.

“It so obvious to the public that something’s happening here that they do have to start taking steps,” says Michele Swers, a congressional expert at Georgetown University, about Senate Republicans. “Earlier, Burr was not interested, and you didn’t see any urgency to investigate Russian election hacking. But when you have Flynn stepping down and people from intelligence committees leaking evidence, he’s moving in the direction of, ‘Okay, this really is worth investigating.’”

Still, many Democrats are demanding even more aggressive investigations. House Democrats in particular, as well as some national security experts, have called for a bipartisan, independent “select committee” investigation, which Republicans have thus far resisted.

The multiple kinds of investigations

Before we get to the politics of this debate, it’s useful to lay out the different kinds of potential investigations into Trump and Russia.

First, there are what are known as standing committee investigations. The Senate and House have dozens of committees with their own separate policy fiefdoms — part of their mandates involve looking into problems in the executive branch related to their areas of expertise.

When news of Russian election hacking first began gathering steam last summer, a whole bunch of standing committees — including the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — held hearings, citing their jurisdiction to investigate. But, gradually, the Intelligence Committee has taken the lead on the Russia probe. That’s because that committee has the widest authority to look into all of the executive branch’s intelligence agencies over this particular probe, according to Swers.

Dozens of congressional Democrats have called for the formation of what would almost certainly be a more aggressive investigative vehicle: a bipartisan select committee. The standing committees give Republicans full control over all subpoenas that get issued, which witnesses (if any) are compelled to testify, and which records have to be preserved during the investigation. (Though the Intelligence Committee rules does allow the Vice Chairman and other members to issue subpoenas.) By contrast, the bipartisan select committee would evenly distribute those powers to members of both parties.

Moreover, unlike the standing committees, the select committee would be exclusively devoted to investigating this one issue — freeing up manpower and personnel that the standing committees don’t have. And the select committee would be much more likely to hold hearings in public and be more transparent about the results of its findings than the Intelligence Committee, which is known for its secrecy, according to Swers.

“This is an important enough committee to solely focus on this one issue,” said Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) in an interview this fall. “If it’s just led by the Armed Services Committee, they have a lot of other things going on — the day to day where they’ll be dealing with Syria and Aleppo and Turkey. [The select committee] would move it out of that atmosphere.”

Confusingly, there’s another kind of bipartisan investigation that some have called for: the independent commission. This would be like the select committee in that its members would be exclusively charged with investigating one question, and in that it would be controlled in a bipartisan fashion.

But unlike the select committee, the independent commission would operate on a much longer time horizon and be tasked with producing a formal report that would offer solutions for how to prevent foreign hacking in future elections. (Think the 9/11 commission.)

The last kind of investigation some Democrats are calling for would be led by the executive branch: a special prosecutor. There’s no word on what he’ll do yet, but Attorney General Jeff Sessions — a close Trump ally — is viewed by Democrats as too political a figure to lead a Justice Department investigation into Trump. (Among the most famous examples of special prosecutors are Archibald Cox, who was appointed by President Richard Nixon’s attorney general to investigate Watergate, and Robert Fiske, who was chosen to probe Bill Clinton’s Whitewater scandal in the 1990s.)

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/ ... utin-trump

There is one mistake in this article, but I really can't blame Vox for it because both the press and pretty much everyone else (including Issa in his call for the appointment of one) continuously makes this mistake...

There' is no longer a position called "Special Prosecutor" and there hasn't been since 1983:

On January 3, 1983, the United States federal government substituted the term independent counsel for special prosecutor.[3] Archibald Cox was one of the most notable special prosecutors. However, special prosecutor Archibald Cox today would be called independent counsel Archibald Cox in the United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_prosecutor

(This change was made because it was thought that the term "Special Prosecutor" gave the impression that there was automatically something to "prosecute", but I suspect that the term is still used by the media because it sounds more "dramatic" than the more neutral sounding "Independent Counsel"...)

My personal preference at this juncture is for a Select Committee...

There are two problems with just leaving this to the intelligence committees...

The first is, that by their very nature, the vast majority of intelligence committee hearings are closed to the public. While this is generally understandable, it's not acceptable in this case. If there was ever a text book example of a situation where the public has an over-riding "right to know" it would be questions regarding the involvement of a POTUS and his senior staff with a hostile regime.

The second problem is the leadership of these committees. While I have seen Democrats involved in the process (not just in this article but in other places as well) saying they are thus far satisfied with the bipartisan nature of how the inquiries are proceeding, when you have Nunes and Burr (the chairmen of the House and Senate intel committees respectively) pre-judging the investigation and shilling for the Trump Administration by making "nothing to see here" calls to journalists, it casts a big question mark over just how thorough an investigation they will conduct.

I'm also not in favor of the Independent Commission route for a couple reasons. First, as the article points out commissions of that sort operate on a very long time-line, and when the central questions involve whether we have a President and/or other senior officials who are being improperly influenced by a hostile foreign power, there is obviously a great need for urgency in getting to the bottom of it. This isn't like the 9/11 situation, where the commission was investigating an historical event; this is potentially an ongoing and current threat to the US.

Second, any such commission would include members appointed by Trump, who could no doubt be counted on to drag the proceedings out as long as possible, and keep them as closed as possible, to try and get the inquiry removed from public attention.

An Independent Counsel makes sense in theory but at this juncture, I have zero confidence that a political lackey like Jeff Sessions could be counted on to appoint an IC worthy of the name who would actually conduct a complete and thorough inquiry. (That could change at some point, if the public political pressure becomes strong enough.)

That leaves the Select Committee approach...

A select committee would be made up of members appointed by the Congressional leadership of the two parties. (It would most likely be the Senate that would take the lead on this because that is the body where you have the most Republican support to form such a committee. )

A select committee would have subpoena power, the ability to take testimony under oath, and (most importantly) hold public hearings. A select committee also, because it would be made up of currently serving elected officials, would be under pressure to conduct a thorough inquiry regardless of what the personal inclinations of the members of the committee might be. (This would be especially true of a Senate committee, where you wouldn't have committee members coming from districts where Trump got 70% of the vote)

Putingate is a complex matter with an enormous number of deeply troubling aspects that all need to be investigated; including Russian efforts to influence the election, the connections between Trump and Putin and his oligarch allies, allegations that the Putin regime has been "grooming" Trump to influence him for years, Trump's financial ties to Russia, (At his press conference he claimed categorically yet again that there aren't any, but just eight years ago Don Jr. publicly said "“We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” What if anything changed in those eight years? Subpoenaing Trumps tax returns, both personal and for his business should help to shed light on this discrepancy) the relationship and contacts between top Trump aides and agents of the Putin regime, (both during the campaign and after the election)...

And now we can add to all of this, the apparent efforts by Trump administration officials to improperly influence the FBI investigations...

The seriousness of the implications of all of this demands a wide-ranging, thorough and honest investigation. (An investigation that focuses only on the Russian hacking or Flynn's pre-inauguration calls with the Russian Ambassador won't come close to dealing with it properly. The larger question of why things like that happened is what really needs to be the focus of the investigation.)

[Lord Jim]

WASHINGTON — In the Obama administration’s last days, some White House officials scrambled to spread information about Russian efforts to undermine the presidential election — and about possible contacts between associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump and Russians — across the government. Former American officials say they had two aims: to ensure that such meddling isn’t duplicated in future American or European elections, and to leave a clear trail of intelligence for government investigators.

American allies, including the British and the Dutch, had provided information describing meetings in European cities between Russian officials — and others close to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin — and associates of President-elect Trump, according to three former American officials who requested anonymity in discussing classified intelligence.

Separately, American intelligence agencies had intercepted communications of Russian officials, some of them within the Kremlin, discussing contacts with Trump associates.

Much more here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/us/p ... cking.html