FRIDAY UPDATE: This story has now been confirmed by multiple news outlets, from CNN to…FOX News:
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Absolutely YUGE news early this evening from the New York Times:
President Trump ordered the firing last June of Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel overseeing the Russia investigation, according to four people told of the matter, but ultimately backed down after the White House counsel threatened to resign rather than carry out the directive.
The West Wing confrontation marks the first time Mr. Trump is known to have tried to fire the special counsel. Mr. Mueller learned about the episode in recent months as his investigators interviewed current and former senior White House officials in his inquiry into whether the president obstructed justice.
Amid the first wave of news media reports that Mr. Mueller was examining a possible obstruction case, the president began to argue that Mr. Mueller had three conflicts of interest that disqualified him from overseeing the investigation, two of the people said…
…After receiving the president’s order to fire Mr. Mueller, the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, refused to ask the Justice Department to dismiss the special counsel, saying he would quit instead, the people said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing a continuing investigation.
Needless to say, this is the kind of story that should be career-ending, much like the Saturday Night Massacre that kicked off the Watergate scandal and ultimately led to the resignation of President Nixon.
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I'm shocked. The buffoon-child threw a tantrum. SSDD.
“Should be a career ending story” pretty sums up the how not-normal the times are that we are living through. If I had a quarter for every time that Trump's petulant behavior should have ended his political career.
More breaking news: the Dutch apparently had full access to Russian hacking groups, down to monitoring the video feed of the door camera; their information is now in Mueller's hands.
https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2213767-dutch-intelligence-first-to-alert-u-s-about-russian-hack-of-democratic-party.html
Story read. The information on Russian hacking was turned over to the US State Department and intelligence sources in the fall of 2014. The story says the State Department and the White House were also hacked in addition to the DNC.
Alarming enough that the DNC was hacked, but even more so the State Department and the White House. The ball was dropped here, and that ball rests at the feet of the Obama administration who had the responsibility to protect the national security of the United States and institutions integral to the democratic process, a major political party.
True enough on the lack of good cyber-security defenses – though this has been true since before Obama, and Republicans in Congress have been shorting gov't IT budgets for ages. But the article does mention that DNC was notified and failed to do much for a long period of time.
It is said that Obama wanted to make a public statement about the Russia issue prior to the election, but that he wanted bi-partisan leadership support to remove the politics of the problem. Mitch McConnell refused to support such a statement, and the public was kept wondering…
I have heard allegations that Obama wanted to publicize the issue but held back due to partisan concerns. If McConnell indeed refused, he should be held accountable. That politics tainted the lack of response to an egregious breach of national security and an attack on our democratic process by hacking the DNC is a sad state of affairs.
Not so fast. There are a bunch of problems with this story.
https://boingboing.net/2018/01/26/aivd.html
Trump's having only the best of weeks…