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Veteran reporter Tom Brokaw said in an interview with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC that he has not seen anybody who thinks former FBI Director James Comey was doing a good job. Brokaw, who covered the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, suggested that much of the media response to Comey's Tuesday firing and Russia's possible connection to President Donald Trump's campaign team was "speculation." "One of the things that I learned during Watergate … is that we dealt with it every day on a factual basis. There was not a lot of speculation. Now, of course, the media landscape has changed...

A former top FBI lawyer acknowledged he was personally involved in the warrant application to surveil then-Trump campaign aide Carter Page and confirmed other "unusual" steps taken in the FBI’s Russia probe in 2016, during a closed-door congressional interview. “I was aware of the [Russia] investigation,” James Baker told House investigators in October. Fox News has confirmed details of the transcript which is still under government review before its public release. Baker said he was briefed on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant “as time went by” and recalled how he got involved early in the process. The warrant...

New tensions are flaring on the Senate Judiciary Committee over plans by newly minted Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to dig into Obama-era scandals. Graham, a close ally of President Trump’s, has outlined several areas he wants to probe now that he has the Judiciary Committee gavel. They include the FBI’s handling of its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant applications targeting former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), asked about Graham’s plans, started laughing and compared them to the “thrilling days of yesteryear.” “This is going to be...

President Trump did not speak with Michael Cohen before he testified falsely before Congress about plans to develop a skyscraper in Moscow during the 2016 campaign, Rudy Giuliani said Monday, backing off previous assertions that such talks may have taken place. The former New York mayor, who serves as Trump’s top lawyer in Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, said he had confirmed the matter with previous members of the President’s legal team, including ex-lead counsel John Dowd. “The President never spoke with Cohen about the congressional testimony,” Giuliani told the Daily News. However, Giuliani acknowledged Trump’s legal team conversed with Cohen’s...

Don't be distracted by the gossip and tittle-tattle being spread about Michael Cohen. Forget taxi medallions and porn stars. They're meant to distract. As REX explains, the true DOJ investigations are likely focussed on Cohen's connections to illegal lobbying by Clinton proxies, on behalf of Ukraine. Here's an extract of Bloomberg's misleading opening paragraph yesterday, about the Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP agreement to pay $4.6 million, as part of a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department. The settlement was: "over unregistered work it did with Paul Manafort to benefit the government of Ukraine in 2012 and 2013."...

Anticipation is building for special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, bringing to boil a debate over whether it will also be made public. The report took center stage at Attorney General nominee Bill Barr’s confirmation hearing last week, where Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee pressed him to commit to releasing it publicly. It’s far from clear how close Mueller is to ending his investigation; the former FBI director has shown no signs of concluding his investigation. At the same time, there is a growing sense in Washington that a probe that has captivated the political world for most of the...

Senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr has provided a point-by-point narrative of his actions promoting the 2016 Democratic Party-financed dossier that conflicts with Rep. Adam B. Schiff’s official version, according to a comparison of the two. Mr. Schiff, a California Democrat who has promised a wide investigation of President Trump as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, issued a memo last year on the FBI’s early-on investigation into the Republican’s campaign. It was a counter to a report issued Feb. 2 by Rep. Devin Nunes, a California Republican who was chairing the committee. Mr. Nunes won White...

Senate Judiciary Chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham signaled Friday he plans to look into a new report that Justice Department official Bruce Ohr warned federal investigators information from the salacious “Steele dossier” was from a biased source. The South Carolina Republican, in a series of tweets, called the revelation “stunning.” Mr. Ohr, in closed-door testimony reported by Fox News Thursday, told lawmakers he warned the FBI about the potential taint of Christopher Steele’s dossier, since the author disliked Mr. Trump. Mr. Steele’s information would be used as part of the FBI’s justification for obtaining a secret wiretap order on a Trump...

What Was Donna Brazile Implying? Archived Link to Tweet

Keep Hope Alive! Back when The Wall Stree Journal's James Taranto wrote the paper's 'Best of the Web' column, one of his rubrics was 'Diagram this Sentence,' in which readers were challenged to deconstruct a long and confusing line from a [usually] liberal author. On Saturday's AM Joy, MSNBC legal analyst Maya Wiley offered a prime example of the genre. Responding to the refutation by the Mueller team of Buzzfeed's report that President Trump had ordered Michael Cohen to lie about Russia collusion, Wiley said: "In this case, it doesn't mean, what we are hearing in this, does not mean...

VIDEO Once again, the DUmmies (and much of the mainstream media) were in a state of Freudenschade victory celebrations over the BuzzFeed article that was sure to bring down the Big Bad Orange Man. The problem was that the entire credibility of that BuzzFeed story depended upon one Jason Leopold...And we knew how that would go. The same way Fitzmas I went when Leopold guaranteed that Karl Rove would be indicted on May 12, 2006. In this video we can see the DUmmie Freudenschade celebrations yesterday as well as the exact moment when they stopped at 6:09 P.M.. Nothing else...

BuzzFeed News’ latest disputed report about former Trump attorney Michael Cohen is just the latest in a long line of Russia “bombshells” that turned out to be anything but. We’ve compiled a list of some of the worst media screwups when it comes to Russia. 1. CNN Accuses Don Jr. Of Wikileaks Collusion Last December, CNN’s Manu Raju reported that Wikileaks emailed Donald Trump Jr. to give him access to stolen documents a full ten days before they were released to the public. Unfortunately for CNN, it turns out their sources gave them the wrong date. Don Jr. actually received...

Friday night, the Special Counsel’s office released an extremely rare statement that took a buzz saw to BuzzFeed News’s Thursday night bombshell that alleged President Trump directed former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about possible construction of a Trump Tower in Moscow. In the statement, a Mueller spokesman called it “not accurate.” Despite the fact that the BuzzFeed News story was not confirmed by — well — any news outlet from when it was first published to the statement from Mueller’s team, the broadcast networks devoted 27 minutes and 33 second on their Friday morning and...

The Special Counsel’s office has issued a statement debunking the BuzzFeed “bombshell scoop” that President Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress. The story was widely regurgitated by the mainstream media, with the smallest of caveats, and then they marched full on pointing out that suborning perjury is an impeachable offense. They were excited, gleeful almost but here are five reasons they should never have reported the story in the first place. They are five red flags about Jason Leopold, one of the journalists behind the story, that meant they should not run a story on the report without...

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin fretted Friday that many Americans would dismiss the news media as a "bunch of leftist liars" in the wake of the BuzzFeed News story called "not accurate" by special counsel Robert Mueller's office. BuzzFeed set off a Washington firestorm on Thursday with its report that President Donald Trump had directed longtime lawyer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. However, on Friday night, a spokesman for Mueller's office said the report was "not accurate." "BuzzFeed's description of specific statements to the Special Counsel's Office, and characterization of...

**SNIP** Rosie O’Donnell responded, “he is f***** happyDAY #mpeachTheMFTraitor” “Holy F***balls! Lock him up!” Kathy Griffin exclaimed, adding, “IMPEACH AND CONVICT THE MOTHERF*****.” Celebrity activist Alyssa Milano simply said, “He’s toast.” **SNIP** Star Trek actor George Takei chimed in, “Anyone else notice that the allegations and evidence against Trump keep getting more serious and rock solid? This is no doubt by design; the nation needs to understand that we’re dealing with a criminal who has something to hide before Mueller reveals what it is Trump is hiding.”

President Trump blasted BuzzFeed News late Friday night on Twitter — saying it was a “very sad day for journalism” — after the special counsel disputed the media outlet’s report on his alleged real estate deal with the Russians. “Remember it was Buzzfeed that released the totally discredited ‘Dossier,’ paid for by Crooked Hillary Clinton and the Democrats (as opposition research), on which the entire Russian probe is based!” Trump tweeted. “A very sad day for journalism, but a great day for our Country!” The president went on to say that “fake news is truly the ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”...

Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s office on Friday denied an explosive report by BuzzFeed News that his investigators had gathered evidence showing President Trump directed his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress about a prospective business deal in Moscow. “BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the special counsel’s office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s congressional testimony are not accurate,” said Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller. The statement was remarkable on several levels — first, the special counsel’s office speaks exceedingly rarely, and second, the statement seemed to drive...

UPDATE: It’s all trash. Special Counsel’s office makes a rare comment to the press to say BuzzFeed story was not accurate. BuzzFeed is busted UPDATE: The special counsel's office has taken the rare step of issuing a statement in response to our report on Michael Cohen being directed by Trump to lie to Congress:https://t.co/WA2fZcdK9u pic.twitter.com/PY1r9LxDid— Jason Leopold (@JasonLeopold) January 19, 2019 “BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate.” Peter CarrSpokesmanSpecial Counsel’s Office— Jake Gibson (@JakeBGibson) January 19, 2019 ***Oh,...