Bipartisan Group Launches Committee To Investigate Russia, Led By Rob Reiner & Morgan Freeman

Bipartisan Group Launches Committee To Investigate Russia, Led By Rob Reiner & Morgan Freeman

Hollywood types like Rob Reiner and Morgan Freeman are the faces of the new Committee To Investigate Russia website. But the group does go 'off script', says Think Progress, with an advisory board that includes  conservative commentator Charles Sykes and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.  Max Boot, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, are also advising. Apparently, no women are qualified to advise on such a critical issue for our country.

In an interview, Reiner said that they are hoping to be a “one-stop shop where people can come and be made aware pop what the breaking news stories are today, the various investigations, what stages they are in, but also to the understand the history, and what the Soviet Union and now Russia has been trying to do for many, many years.," writes Variety. Reiner also said that a goal is to understand “what cyberwarfare is all about.”

The Daily Beast: Russia-Backed Pro-Trump FB Groups Organized Rallies In Florida & PA

The Daily Beast: Russia-Backed Pro-Trump FB Groups Organized Rallies In Florida & PA

The Daily Beast just broke an exclusive story confirming that suspected propagandists used Facebook to organize at least a dozen pro-Trump rallies in Florida during the presidential election. 

The Aug. 20, 2016, events were collectively called “Florida Goes Trump!” and they were billed as a “patriotic state-wide flash mob,” unfolding simultaneously in 17 different cities and towns in the battleground state. It’s difficult to determine how many of those locations actually witnessed any turnout, in part because Facebook’s recent deletion of hundreds of Russian accounts hid much of the evidence. But videos and photos from two of the locations—Fort Lauderdale and Coral Springs—were reposted to a Facebook page run by the local Trump campaign chair, where they remain to this day.

Pregnant Russians Flock To Trump's Russian Enclave In Florida To Birth US Citizens, Says Daily Beast

How interesting that as Trump rails against babies born as US citizens of undocumented immigrants, his Florida properties owned as condos, rent apartments to pregnant Russian families wanting to give birth in the US. 

The Trump Organization doesn't directly profit from the subleases but the nearby Trump International Beach Resort plays constant host to these pregnant Russian families and their friends, writes The Daily Beast. 

Many of the companies that cater to Russian birth tourists advertise their services openly and warn no one will get in trouble as long as they don’t lie on immigration paperwork.

Once again, Trump seems to say "do as I say, not as I do."

London's Evening Standard drills down even further on Russians being born as US citizens by renting condos at The Trump International Beach Resort. 

Trump's Business Worked With Felix Slater On Trump Tower During Campaign Writes WaPo

Trump's Business Worked With Felix Slater On Trump Tower During Campaign Writes WaPo

Building one of the tallest buildings in the world was on Donald Trump's mind when he decided to run for president in 2015. The vision of his Trump Tower Moscow loomed large as Trump's company pursued the massive Trump Tower project. With perfect timing and seeming deception, Donald Trump told the American public that he owned nothing in Russia, that he had no interests in Russia, that the Hillary supporters were obsessed with Russia. The confirmation to the Washington Post about Trump's plans for the Moscow Tower was voiced by several people familiar with the proposal and new records reviewed by Trump Organization lawyers.

Slater wrote to Trump Organization Executive Vice President Michael Cohen “something to the effect of, ‘Can you believe two guys from Brooklyn are going to elect a president?’ ” said one person familiar the email exchange. Sater emigrated from what was then the Soviet Union when he was 6 and grew up in Brooklyn.

DHS Issues Statement Debunking Trump Claim That Former AG Loretta Lynch Let Natalia Veselnitskaya Into US

DHS Issues Statement Debunking Trump Claim That Former AG Loretta Lynch Let Natalia Veselnitskaya Into US

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Thursday evening issued a statement contradicting President Trump’s claim that Loretta Lynch,President Obama’s attorney general, allowed the Russian lawyer who met with three Trump associates, including his son, into the United States. “In Sept. 2015, DHS paroled Natalia Veselnitskaya into the U.S. in concurrence with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York, allowing her to participate in a client’s legal proceedings,” the DHS statement to BuzzFeed News read. “Ms. Veselnitskaya was subsequently paroled into the U.S. several times between 2015 and 2016, ending in February 2016. In June 2016, she was issued a B1/B2 nonimmigrant visa (a standard tourist visa) by the U.S. Department of State.”

Donna Brazile's Book 'Hacks' On Digital Breakins & Breakdowns Debuts On Anniversary Of Trump's Election

Donna Brazile's Book 'Hacks' On Digital Breakins & Breakdowns Debuts On Anniversary Of Trump's Election

Former interim head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) will celebrate (NOT!!!) the one-year anniversary of the Trump victory with publication of her book "Hacks:  The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House.”

Brazile’s publisher Hachette promises a book that is “equal parts campaign thriller, memoir, and roadmap for the future.” The publisher did not say how much the book deal was worth.

Until Trump Fired FBI Director James Comey, Sally Yates Was The Heroine Headline In Tuesday News

Until Trump Fired FBI Director James Comey, Sally Yates Was The Heroine Headline In Tuesday News

Yesterday, America's brief interim Attorney General Sally Yates, who was fired by the Trump Administration for refusing to defend his Muslim ban, became what The Daily Beast calls "the early hero of the Trump era."

Until two hours ago when President Trump fired James Comey, America's FBI Director, Sally Yates was the person of the hour, after her professionally dazzling testimony on Monday before a Senate Panel investigating the Russian meddling in America's presidential election. 

Politics Daily: Trump & Treason | Did Silicon Valley Create Donald Trump?

Silicon Valley Meets Its Biggest Creation: Donald Trump Vanity Fair

For years, Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park featured a rectangular sign that reflected the ambition and spirit of Mark Zuckerberg and his legions of dedicated employees. It read, in bold, red lettering, “Move Fast and Break Things.” Twitter had a similar poster that hung in its San Francisco office, noting “Let’s Make Better Mistakes Tomorrow.” These mantras aren’t an anomaly in Silicon Valley’s playground-like campuses. Cubicles, hallways, cafeterias, and meeting rooms are festooned with Rockne-esque white-board-style slogans such as “Done Is Better Than Perfect” or “Fortune Favors the Bold,” or “Don’t Bury Your Failures, Let Them Inspire You.”

These maxims have their value, and they have helped inspire a wealth-generation machine unlike any other in human history. But moving too fast can come with consequences, especially when the mantra is heeded by young people who are often still in their 20s and 30s. In fact, the tech industry’s adherence to an ideology of rapid acceleration helps explain why America finds itself in its current predicament, with hackers reportedly involved in swaying our election and a growing acceptance of xenophobia spreading across the nation. Perhaps many of the people who convened at Trump Tower were so focused on those mottos that they did not realize an outcome they might create.

Donald Trump raises specter of treason The Boston Globe

In a damning op-ed John Shattuck lays out the particulars of a treasonous act against the American government and Trump's refusal to buy into the conclusions of America's intelligence agencies that Russia interfered with the American election.

The federal crime of treason is committed by a person “owing allegiance to the United States who . . . adheres to their enemies, giving them aid or comfort,” and misprision of treason is committed by a person “having knowledge of the commission of any treason [who] conceals and does not disclose” the crime. By denigrating or seeking to prevent an investigation of the Russian cyberattack Trump is giving aid or comfort to an enemy of the United States, a crime that is enhanced if the fourth explanation applies — that he is in fact seeking to cover up his staff’s or his own involvement in or prior knowledge of the attack.

ExxonMobil helped defeat Russia sanctions bill Politico

ExxonMobil successfully lobbied against the STAND for Ukraine Act, a bill that would have converted into law for five years President Obama's punishing measures against Russia for annexing Crimea. With the Senate refusing to act on the bill, proposed Secy of State Rex Tillerson is posed to roll back sanctions and relaunch a deal he made with Russia that is worth a staggering amount of money to ExxonMobile and Putin himself.

More reading:

Donald Trump and the Rise of Alt-Reality Media Politico Magazine

The Donald Trump Appointment Tracker Marie Claire

Trump Calls On Russia To Hack And Share Hillary's 33,000 Deleted Personal Emails

Trump Calls On Russia To Hack And Share Hillary's 33,000 Deleted Personal Emails

On Wednesday, Donald Trump felt compelled to make big news: He called on a foreign power -- in this case Russia -- to launch an espionage operation against his chief political opponent, "hacking into Hillary Clinton’s email server to find 30,000 emails she allegedly deleted."

"Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," Trump said. "I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press."'

Donald Trump's Most Chilling Comment on the DNC Has Nothing to do with Russia VOX

Vox's Timothy B. Lee gets it right. I listened to the Donald Trump press conference and was so dumbfounded, that I missed this statement. ~ Anne

"Everyone is talking about Donald Trump’s call for the Russian government to release emails it may have stolen from Hillary Clinton’s private email server. But that wasn’t the most chilling thing Trump said in his rambling answer to a question about who hacked the email server of the Democratic National Committee.

"Honestly, I wish I had that power," Trump responded. "I’d love to have that power."