Reports about Flynn raise more concerns about Russia

[CPUd]

Reports about Flynn raise more concerns about Russia


With each new day that dawns on the Trump administration, a little more light is shed on possible coordination between the president, his family, his businesses or his campaign and the Russian government before and after November’s election.

And as leaders in Congress, we owe it to our constituents and our country to follow that evidence and hold to account anyone who broke the law or has undisclosed relationships with Russia.

Recent reports indicate National Security Adviser Michael Flynn may have broken the law by privately discussing U.S. sanctions against Russia with that country’s ambassador in the month before Trump took office — perhaps signaling that the incoming Trump administration would roll back those new sanctions.

This is objectionable unto itself, but in context, it’s absolutely intolerable.

The sanctions Flynn apparently discussed with the Russian ambassador were imposed by President Obama after our nation’s 17 intelligence agencies concluded that Russia interfered with our election in order to benefit the Trump campaign.

The potential quid pro quo is as clear as day. It looks as if Flynn without legal authority conspired with a regime that had just attacked our democracy’s foundation to benefit Flynn’s boss, and did so to help that regime deal with the punishment for that attack. Flynn’s efforts to walk back what previously had been blanket denials of such contacts merely deepen suspicion about his actions and motives.

Such a scenario would make it far less surprising that Russian President Vladimir Putin chose not to retaliate in late December after the Obama administration expelled suspected Russian spies and shut down Russian-owned compounds in New York and Maryland. Perhaps Putin already had been promised that penalties would be short-lived and that help would be on the way come Jan. 20.

It’s stunning that President Trump has not yet suspended Flynn and halted his access to classified information until a full investigation can be mounted. Yet all we hear from the White House are the lilting strains of “Stand By Your Man” as the fox continues to guard the henhouse.

Sadly, this is only the latest instance in which President Trump and most of his team seem pathologically unable or diabolically unwilling to utter a cross word about Putin’s Russia.

It surely sounded pleasing when Nikki Haley, Trump’s U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, recently condemned Russian aggression in Ukraine. But the administration’s actions belie her tough talk — all we’ve seen so far is disdain for NATO; pooh-poohing of the fact that Putin hacked our election to help Trump; denials or soft-pedalling of Flynn’s and other Trump aides’ contacts with Russia during and after the campaign; the President himself likening our own nation’s moral bottom line to that of a murderous Russian dictator; and a “technical fix” that was promptly praised in Moscow as an easing of sanctions.

To protect the future of this great democracy, we must dig down to the root of this discomfiting Trump-Russia connection. We must create an independent, bipartisan commission to fully investigate and make public Russia’s interference in our election through its illegal theft and selective release of private emails, its dissemination of fake news, or by other means.

Only an independent, bipartisan commission can dedicate itself and its staff to this crucial investigation full-time, without distraction. And only an independent, bipartisan commission can rise above the jurisdictional squabbles and perceptions of partisan bias that inevitably attach to congressional committees’ probes.

The bill I introduced with Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) to accomplish this — H.R. 356, the Protecting Our Democracy Act — is co-sponsored by every member of the House Democratic Caucus. It’s our fervent hope that ever-mounting evidence of collusion between the Trump team and Russia will convince Republican members to sign on as well.

Don’t be fooled: Russia’s geopolitical aims are at odds with our own. It’s lovely to imagine a close alliance in which our nations could collaborate on defeating ISIS, but Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, its saber-rattling in the Baltics and its coddling of Syria’s brutal Assad regime amount to a massive destabilization of the world. And Putin’s ruthless record of imprisoning or even dispatching his rivals and critics are anathema to our most basic values.

It looks as if Michael Flynn might have lain down with dogs and got up with fleas; we must not let him and his boss drag our nation into doing likewise. Any violation of law in Flynn’s secret chats with Russia’s emissary must be pursued and punished to the fullest, lest we allow the impression that American foreign policy can be easily manipulated to other nations’ ends.

Rep. Eric Swalwell represents California’s 15th District and is ranking member of the CIA Subcommittee of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/319340-reports-about-flynn-raise-more-concerns-about-russia

[timosman]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztXmzMvSXZ0

[CPUd]

831214581909446656
https://twitter.com/NancyPelosi/status/831214581909446656

[Zippyjuan]

http://www.wpxi.com/news/politics/questions-swirl-over-future-of-trumps-national-security-adviser/493550499


Questions swirl over future of Trump’s National Security Adviser

The White House on Sunday refused to publicly defend the President’s National Security Adviser while questions swirled over whether Michael Flynn told the truth about his post-election telephone contacts with a top Russian official, as Democrats in the Congress stepped up their demands for Flynn’s ouster.

Asked if the President still had confidence in Flynn, White House Senior Policy Advisor Stephen Miller had no direct answer on the Sunday talk shows.

“That’s the question that I think you should ask the President,” Miller said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“So the White House did not give you anything to say?” asked host.

“They did not give me anything to say,” Miller said.

Over on ABC’s “This Week,” Miller also sidestepped the Flynn matter.

“I don’t have any news to make you today on this point,” Miller said.

It wasn’t immediately apparent if Flynn’s job was truly in danger.

At issue were telephone discussions between Flynn, a former head of the National Security Agency, and the Russian Ambassador to the United States, which took place in between President Trump’s election victory and his Inauguration.

On Friday, the Washington Post reported – in a story backed up with nine different intelligence sources – that Flynn had spoken with the Russian Ambassador about U.S. economic sanctions against Russia, and whether those might be eased after the departure of President Obama.

Flynn initially denied to the Post that such a conversation took place, but the next day, a spokesman allowed that it might have happened.

[vita3]

Neo cons HATE Flynn.. & he was outspoken about the major problems of arming jihads in Syria back in 2012.

Makes me think he's alright

[CPUd]

Neo cons HATE Flynn.. & he was outspoken about the major problems of arming jihads in Syria back in 2012.

Makes me think he's alright

He's a major Iran hawk, someone named "Mad Dog" had to tell him to chill the fuck out about it.

[agitator]

831214581909446656
https://twitter.com/NancyPelosi/status/831214581909446656

I stand by Nancy. A genuine hero and truth warrior. C-Pud beat The Count, Zippy, Ender, etc. this Time.

[CPUd]

830085997362835456
https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/830085997362835456

[UWDude]

Way better analysis on the situation from Luke Radowski, who has been leery of Trump from the start:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPWuPT6rKgI

[CPUd]

831314917709996032
https://twitter.com/RepMikeCoffman/status/831314917709996032

[CPUd]

831351011046522880
https://twitter.com/cnnadam/status/831351011046522880

[CPUd]

Next man up could be Petraeus...

[UWDude]

I stand by Nancy. A genuine hero and truth warrior. C-Pud beat The Count, Zippy, Ender, etc. this Time.

they don't care about truth, they believes lies and deception are essential in the battle to spread liberty.

[UWDude]

Way better analysis on the situation from Luke Radowski, who has been leery of Trump from the start:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPWuPT6rKgI

No need to post three posts in a row to post slide and bury.

[CPUd]

Flynn resigns amid controversy over Russia contacts




Source: WH knew Flynn misled officials on Russia 01:43

Washington (CNN)Embattled White House national security adviser Michael Flynn resigned Monday night, two sources tell CNN.

His departure came just after reports surfaced the Justice Department warned the Trump administration last month that Flynn misled administration officials regarding his communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States and was potentially vulnerable to blackmail by the Russians.

The move comes less than a month into the job, making him one of the shortest-serving senior presidential advisers in modern history.

The sudden exit marks the most public display yet of disarray at the highest levels of the new administration, which has faced repeated questions over a slew of controversies and reports of infighting among senior aides during its first three weeks.

The shakeup now leaves Trump without one of his closest and longest-serving advisers. Flynn had counseled Trump on foreign policy and national security matters since early in the 2016 presidential race.

Flynn was not able to definitively refute a Washington Post story late last week that his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak included communication about the sanctions. It is illegal for unauthorized private citizens to negotiate with foreign governments on behalf of the US.

The controversy intensified after the report put Pence and several senior White House advisers in an uncomfortable position, as they had denied in TV interviews weeks earlier that Flynn discussed sanctions with the ambassador. Some administration officials said Flynn must have misled Pence and others.

"The knives are out," a White House official told CNN on Friday, noting that "there's a lot of unhappiness about this."

Many expressed concern at the idea that Flynn, a retired lieutenant general who headed the Defense Intelligence Agency, would discuss sanctions with a foreign official whose calls are regularly monitored by US intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

A US official confirmed to CNN on Friday that Flynn and Kislyak did speak about sanctions, among other matters, during a December call.

But after the call was made public, Pence told CBS News on January 15 that Flynn did not talk with Kislyak about the sanctions, which the Obama administration recently levied due to Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 elections.

"They did not discuss anything having to do with the United States' decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia," Pence told CBS News.

On Friday, an aide close to the national security adviser told CNN that Flynn could not rule out that he spoke about sanctions on the call.

The White House official blamed much of the outcry against Flynn on a Washington culture always in search of a scalp, but people within Trump's orbit did little to defend Flynn during appearances on Sunday news shows.

Stephen Miller, White House policy director, was asked directly about Flynn's future on a number of Sunday talk shows. Miller responded by saying he was not the appropriate official to ask.

"I don't have any answers today," Miller said in response to questions about whether Flynn misled the vice president. "I don't have any information one way or another to add anything to the conversation."
http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/13/politics/michael-flynn-white-house-national-security-adviser/index.html

[UWDude]

If true, luke is right, and the deep state won. The diplomatic changes were already starting to show their face. No matter what, they always win. We shall see.

[CPUd]

https://i.imgur.com/WmQWwBe.png

[UWDude]

Next up, some frothing neocon, I am sure, who wants war with russia and the full destruction of Syria. then CPUd and Zip and the MSM will sing his praises; the first good cabinet pick in Trumps administration.

[CPUd]

Justice Department warned White House that Flynn could be vulnerable to Russian blackmail, officials say


The acting attorney general informed the Trump White House late last month that she believed Michael Flynn had misled senior administration officials about the nature of his communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States, and warned that the national security adviser was potentially vulnerable to Russian blackmail, current and former U.S. officials said.

The message, delivered by Sally Q. Yates and a senior career national security official to the White House counsel, was prompted by concerns that *Flynn, when asked about his calls and texts with the Russian diplomat, had told Vice *President-elect Mike Pence and others that he had not discussed the Obama administration sanctions on Russia for its interference in the 2016 election, the officials said. It is unclear what the White House counsel, Donald McGahn, did with the information.

In the waning days of the Obama administration, James R. Clapper Jr., who was the director of national intelligence, and John Brennan, the CIA director at the time, shared Yates’s concerns and concurred with her recommendation to inform the Trump White House. They feared that “Flynn had put himself in a compromising position” and thought that Pence had a right to know that he had been misled, according to one of the officials, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justice-department-warned-white-house-that-flynn-could-be-vulnerable-to-russian-blackmail-officials-say/2017/02/13/fc5dab88-f228-11e6-8d72-263470bf0401_story.html

[AngryCanadian]

Does the MSM want a war with Russia as their scapegoat for Hillary's loss?

[enhanced_deficit]

Does the MSM want a war with Russia as their scapegoat for Hillary's loss?

This seems like a small win for pro-ISIS, anti-Russia camp.

There is some serious anger among many Dems/left wing neocons towards Russia due to Russia attacks on ISIS, Russian role in Syria/Ukraine, Russian UN vote against Israeli settlements resolution and Putin-Trump tag teams attacks on Obama.


That said, some of the depictions of situation from pro-Putin camp seem to cross the line and appear inappropriate.


https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/c0/7e/7e/c07e7e1295be74e612a5b77b2d108069.jpghttps://img.ifcdn.com/images/d6d344f570a411c665c4060124c817f8b11d18e9f5e8bf9571 525f6df63eb608_1.jpg

[AngryCanadian]

This seems like a small win for pro-ISIS, anti-Russia camp.

There is some serious anger among many Dems/left wing neocons towards Russia due to Russia attacks on ISIS, Russian role in Syria/Ukraine, Russian UN vote against Israeli settlements resolution and Putin-Trump tag teams attacks on Obama.


That said, some of the depictions of situation from pro-Putin camp seem to cross the line and appear inappropriate.


https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/c0/7e/7e/c07e7e1295be74e612a5b77b2d108069.jpghttps://img.ifcdn.com/images/d6d344f570a411c665c4060124c817f8b11d18e9f5e8bf9571 525f6df63eb608_1.jpg

Even with that, these globalists and regime change hacks cant do anything about Ukraine nor Syria. Its game over for ISIS and Rebel Jihadists soon.

[CPUd]

831280643841654785
https://twitter.com/KeithOlbermann/status/831280643841654785

[nikcers]

Does the MSM want a war with Russia as their scapegoat for Hillary's loss?
Well what has the MSM sold us in the past? 9/11, the Iraq war, ect ect. The MSM later blamed the intelligence community after leaks came out that it was all a lie. They said that was the information that was given to them, that's the best source for information 9/10 times. We have to use it, its the cheapest source for the best information ect ect.

So the question I ask you is, does the intelligence community want a war with Russia? I think that its likely that they want two things. They want their globalist establishment to have zero culpability for the entire destruction of Russia or their forces. They want the public not to blame their intellectual leaders for their sins. They also want revenge against Russia for embarrassing them by sheltering Snowden. They want to make an example out of him.

[Dark_Horse_Rider]

This seems like a small win for pro-ISIS, anti-Russia camp.

There is some serious anger among many Dems/left wing neocons towards Russia due to Russia attacks on ISIS, Russian role in Syria/Ukraine, Russian UN vote against Israeli settlements resolution and Putin-Trump tag teams attacks on Obama.


That said, some of the depictions of situation from pro-Putin camp seem to cross the line and appear inappropriate.


https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/c0/7e/7e/c07e7e1295be74e612a5b77b2d108069.jpghttps://img.ifcdn.com/images/d6d344f570a411c665c4060124c817f8b11d18e9f5e8bf9571 525f6df63eb608_1.jpg

yeah, pretty much

[CPUd]

http://i.imgur.com/iAHvpan.jpg

[enhanced_deficit]

CPUd, based on your investigative reporting, are same neocons concerned about Tulsi also or only about Flynn?
She visited Syria as an opponent of ISIS.

Would neocons go after Tulsi Gabbard next? (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?507528-Would-neocons-go-after-Tulsi-Gabbard-next&)

[CPUd]

The Daily 202: 10 unanswered questions after Michael Flynn’s resignation

THE BIG IDEA: President Trump should thank his lucky stars that Republicans control both chambers of Congress, because Democrats would be announcing a Benghazi-style inquest today if they could.

Michael Flynn lost his job as national security adviser after just 24 days — less because he offered potentially illegal secret assurances to Russia’s ambassador, an adversary of the United States, than because he gave a false accounting of those conversations to his colleagues in the White House, particularly Vice President Pence.

This imbroglio will make it politically untenable for Trump to scale back sanctions on Moscow now. The blowback from hawkish Republicans in the Senate would be too intense, hobbling the rest of the president’s agenda. The episode will probably give added momentum to Sen. John McCain’s effort to codify existing sanctions into law so that the administration cannot unilaterally unwind them.

1. What, if anything, did Trump authorize Flynn to tell the Russians before his inauguration?

2. Why was Trump planning to stand by Flynn? “One senior White House official said that Trump did not fire Flynn; rather, Flynn made the decision to resign on his own late Monday evening because of what this official said was ‘the cumulative effect’ of damaging news coverage about his conversations with the Russian envoy,” Greg Miller and Philip Rucker report. “This official, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the situation, said Trump does not relish firing people — despite his television persona on ‘The Apprentice’ — and had intended to wait several more days before deciding whether to seek Flynn’s resignation. ‘There obviously were a lot of issues, but the president was hanging in there,’ this official said.”
Don McGahn leaves the Four Seasons Hotel. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

3. What did White House counsel Donald McGahn do after the then-acting attorney general notified him last month that Flynn was potentially vulnerable to Russian blackmail? “In the waning days of the Obama administration, James R. Clapper Jr., who was the director of national intelligence, and John Brennan, the CIA director at the time, shared [Sally] Yates’s concerns and concurred with her recommendation to inform the Trump White House,” Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima and Philip Rucker report. “They feared that ‘Flynn had put himself in a compromising position’ and thought that Pence had a right to know that he had been misled. … Yates, then the deputy attorney general, considered Flynn’s comments in the intercepted call to be ‘highly significant’ and ‘potentially illegal,’ according to an official familiar with her thinking. … A senior Trump administration official said before Flynn’s resignation that the White House was aware of the matter, adding that ‘we’ve been working on this for weeks.’”

Yates was accompanied by a senior career national security official when she alerted McGahn. What we don’t know is who McGahn subsequently shared that information with and what he did after the meeting. He didn’t respond to a request for comment last night from my colleagues.

“It’s unimaginable that the White House general counsel would sit on it [and] not tell anybody else in the White House,” said David Gergen, who worked in the Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton administrations. “In every White House I’ve ever been in, this would go to the president like that,” he added during an interview on CNN, snapping his fingers.

If McGahn did indeed tell others, especially the president, how come Flynn kept his job until last night?

...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/02/14/daily-202-10-unanswered-questions-after-michael-flynn-s-resignation/58a25127e9b69b1406c75cb0/

[enhanced_deficit]

Even with that, these globalists and regime change hacks cant do anything about Ukraine nor Syria. Its game over for ISIS and Rebel Jihadists soon.

That seems tobe the cae.
If ISIS terrorists are defeated, who else neocons could use for regime change. It's probably game over for them.

[timosman]

That seems tobe the cae.
If ISIS terrorists are defeated, who else neocons could use for regime change. It's probably game over for them.

They need to invent gay jihadis for us to save them. I am surprised this idea never came up.:rolleyes:

[enhanced_deficit]

Maybe US can learn some recruitment tactics from Israel on this front:

Israel surveils and blackmails gay Palestinians to make them informants
http://mondoweiss.net/2014/09/blackmails-palestinian-informants/ (http://mondoweiss.net/2014/09/blackmails-palestinian-informants/#sthash.QCVCdCb4.dpuf)

[CPUd]

Who Told Flynn to Call Russia?

Let’s stop focusing on the resignation, and start focusing on the real issue here: The mystery of Trump’s Russia ties.

Hours after national security adviser Michael Flynn resigned amid reports that he misled top officials about his pre-inauguration talks with the Russian ambassador, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to encourage everyone to move on. “The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington?” he tweeted out Tuesday morning.

In a sense, Trump is right: The real story is not Flynn. But it isn’t government leaks, either. No, the “real story here” is Trump himself—and the continuing mystery of his ties to Russia.

As official Washington and the press home in on the permanent disarray in the White House, whether the disgraced Flynn broke the law and who will succeed him after his three-week tenure, the key question is getting lost in the shuffle: Who told Flynn to call Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States? Because I’m convinced Flynn didn’t do it of his own accord. Flynn is a bit player in a much larger story regarding the president’s relationship with the Kremlin, and it’s this story the press needs to focus on.

There is little doubt that Trump elevated Flynn because of his loyalty and the optics of having a recently retired three-star general parroting his views, which few other generals of that rank would consider doing. But Flynn was no grand strategist. He would not have been capable of running a complex political realignment with Russia, and he was woefully ill-cast for the role of national security adviser. An army intelligence officer who had spent most of his career in the Middle East and Afghanistan, Flynn had no background in diplomacy, not to mention Asian or European affairs. And it strains credulity that someone with such limited experience was acting on his own initiative when he spoke with Kislyak on December 29, the day of the sanctions announcement. If, as reported, he called five times in a single day, then he was on a mission, and probably not of his own devising.

My view is informed by several years of knowing and following Flynn. After being fired as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency—where he was already behaving erratically—Flynn slid into ever stranger behavior.

During a weeklong visit that I arranged for Flynn here at Dartmouth College in April 2015, he repeatedly made oddball remarks. I had known Flynn as a capable and genial colleague from my time in government, and I was surprised by the change I saw. He was warm and engaging, especially with students, but his views on Islam and the terrorist threat seemed increasingly extreme—a line about Islam not being a religion but a political ideology, which he would use frequently in later months, struck me as a sign that he had moved beyond mainstream U.S. government thinking. But what stuck out most was his fixation on Iran. His visit coincided with the sprint to the end of the framework negotiations for the nuclear deal, and Flynn declared repeatedly in public events and private discussions that Iran’s perfidy was so diabolical, it “didn’t deserve a place at the negotiating table.” When asked who should negotiate on behalf of Iran, he had no answer but insisted it shouldn’t be Iran. (Full disclosure: Despite the troubling remarks, which left faculty and students bemused, Flynn was a fine guest, meeting with everyone and, remarkably, declining the negotiated honorarium for his weeklong stay.)

Over the next year and a half, his behavior became even stranger—reckless Islamophobia, chanting “lock her up” at Trump rallies (referring to Hillary Clinton)—all bizarre for a military officer, let alone a three-star general. Recent reporting suggests he was lost in his West Wing office, too, unaware, for example, that the State Department and Congress play central roles in arms sales and clueless about how to call up the National Guard in an emergency. Phoning Kislyak—inexplicably oblivious to the likelihood that his call would be heard by U.S. intelligence—is another indication that Flynn wasn’t operating at a level one would have expected for an incoming national security adviser.

Aside from his inexperience, there is another reason to doubt that Flynn was carrying on an unauthorized dialogue with the Russians: Unlike Trump, he has no longtime, demonstrated affection for Putin. While he was at DIA from 2013 to 2014, he had tried to build a better relationship with Russian intelligence, but that by itself tells us little. Out of uniform, he accepted a paid speaking gig in Moscow and wound up at an RT dinner seated next to Putin in December 2015, raising more than a few eyebrows. (How far along he was in his courtship with candidate Trump at that point is unclear.)
...
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/who-told-flynn-to-call-russia-214782

[timosman]

I finally figured it out. CPUd has been captured by Russians who force him to post lame anti-Russian propaganda in order to drive up a pro-Russian sentiment. We should petition POTUS to exchange him for a few low level Russian spies.

[CPUd]

831501012443729921
https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/831501012443729921

[timosman]

I think this post is a confirmation. Hang on tight. We are all rooting for you. They will never break you. :cool:

[enhanced_deficit]

Looks like Trump would be inviting Putin for a visit to the White House... that got to raise lots and lots of concerns...

[CPUd]

Mook: Trump campaign contact with Russia 'extremely strange'


Robby Mook, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, says reports that associates of President Donald Trump were in contact with the Russian government over the campaign now raises a “real question” of whether they coordinated with the country’s attempt to influence the election.

“We’ve got to understand what these communications were between Donald Trump's aides on the campaign and Russian intelligence officials,” Mook said Wednesday on CNN. “You know, we've been saying from the beginning that the Russians were the ones who stole the information from the DNC, put it out to WikiLeaks. There’s a real question now, were members of Donald Trump's campaign aiding, abetting or encouraging this to take place?”

Intelligence officials say that Russian hackers were behind cyberattacks last year on the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, whose private emails were published on the website WikiLeaks, resulting in Clinton’s embarrassment. Officials say the hacks were meant to help Trump’s standing in the election.

Trump’s campaign has repeatedly denied that it had any contact with Russia or that it had any inside knowledge of the cyberattacks.

Following Monday’s ouster of Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, in the wake of reports about his contact with Russia’s ambassador, there has been renewed scrutiny into Trump’s friendly posturing toward the country. Reports that Trump’s campaign was in contact with Russia despite its previous claims to the contrary have especially alarmed the president’s critics, as well as some Republicans, like Sen. John McCain.

McConnell: We won't ignore Russia's election meddling

On CNN on Wednesday, Mook said the new reports warrant a commission made up of people including outside experts to investigate Russia’s role in the election. He described the situation as “extremely strange” and said it has “eerie” parallels to the Watergate scandal.

“It is extremely strange to me that a member of any American presidential campaign would be speaking to Russian intelligence officials,” Mook said. “And it's particularly bizarre given the fact that we know that Russian intelligence officials broke into the DNC, stole documents, and handed them to WikiLeaks for the purpose of hurting Hillary Clinton and helping Donald Trump. The parallels to Watergate here are eerie, I have to say.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/robby-mook-trump-michael-flynn-resign-235051

[Athan]

I finally figured it out. CPUd has been captured by Russians who force him to post lame anti-Russian propaganda in order to drive up a pro-Russian sentiment. We should petition POTUS to exchange him for a few low level Russian spies.

https://cdn.meme.am/instances/72064978.jpg