Tuesday Open Thread | Paul Manafort wiretapped under secret court orders before & after the election

Posted on September 19, 2017 by SouthernGirl2

Washington (CNN)US investigators wiretapped former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort under secret court orders before and after the election, sources tell CNN, an extraordinary step involving a high-ranking campaign official now at the center of the Russia meddling probe.

The government snooping continued into early this year, including a period when Manafort was known to talk to President Donald Trump.

Some of the intelligence collected includes communications that sparked concerns among investigators that Manafort had encouraged the Russians to help with the campaign, according to three sources familiar with the investigation. Two of these sources, however, cautioned that the evidence is not conclusive.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, which is leading the investigation into Russia’s involvement in the election, has been provided details of these communications.

A secret order authorized by the court that handles the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) began after Manafort became the subject of an FBI investigation that began in 2014. It centered on work done by a group of Washington consulting firms for Ukraine’s former ruling party, the sources told CNN.

The surveillance was discontinued at some point last year for lack of evidence, according to one of the sources.

The FBI then restarted the surveillance after obtaining a new FISA warrant that extended at least into early this year.

Sources say the second warrant was part of the FBI’s efforts to investigate ties between Trump campaign associates and suspected Russian operatives. Such warrants require the approval of top Justice Department and FBI officials, and the FBI must provide the court with information showing suspicion that the subject of the warrant may be acting as an agent of a foreign power.

About SouthernGirl2

A Native Texan who adores baby kittens, loves horses, rodeos, pomegranates, & collect Eagles. Enjoys politics, games shows, & dancing to all types of music. Loves discussing and learning about different cultures. A Phi Theta Kappa lifetime member with a passion for Social & Civil Justice.
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51 Responses to Tuesday Open Thread | Paul Manafort wiretapped under secret court orders before & after the election

  1. SouthernGirl2 says:
    September 19, 2017 at 8:44 pm

    Breaking News….

    WSJ: Mueller’s office interviewed Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein about Comey Firing

    Reply
  11. rikyrah says:
    September 19, 2017 at 3:25 pm

    From Adam Silverman, who writes about foreign affairs at Balloon Juice:

    Adam L Silverman says:
    September 19, 2017 at 4:13 pm
    I just got in and was going to do my own post on this, but BettyC beat me to it. So I’ll put my thoughts here in a comment.

    This is a Stephen Miller authored speech. With the exception of the Rocket Man quip. It is Miller channeling all of his own naive, arrested development sense of entitlement, paranoia, pettiness, grievances, anger, rage, and woeful ignorance of foreign and national security policy and strategy, the global system and how it works, and any state and society other than the US. It is also Miller channeling the President’s naive sense of entitlement, paranoia, pettiness, grievances, anger, rage, and woeful ignorance of foreign and national security policy and strategy, the global system and how it works, and any state and society other than the US. The ego fluffing bits about how great things are in the US under the President are Miller making sure his boss’s ego is stroked.

    This would have been bad enough and inappropriate at a campaign rally, it is even worse at the UN General Assembly. Threatening to abrogate the P5+1 agreement with Iran is only going to make dealing with the DPRK worse. What Kim really wants is an assurance that the US will 1) not remove him and 2) will negotiate with him in good faith. The threat to abrogate the agreement with Iran makes that virtually impossible. Moreover, it makes it almost virtually impossible to negotiate anything with any other state or supranational entity as no one will now believe that the US will live up to its commitments under the current administration and president. The President’s mistaken belief that every agreement the US has entered into that he has not negotiated are bad for the US; should never have been entered into; and as a result should be abrogated; which is every single one as he and his administration haven’t negotiated any agreements since taking office in January; demonstrates how little he and Miller understand how any of this works. If I was the governors of Alaska, Louisiana, and Arkansas I would be very worried that their states are going to be handed back to Russia and France respectively. Governor Abbot should also begin learning how to ask President Nieto for things once we give Texas back to Mexico as well.

    This speech is a good example of the limits of the abilities of the adults to constrain and contain the President, his worst impulses, and the worst impulses of his advisors such as Miller. It is highly likely that the draft speech prepared and vetted through the Interagency with inputs from Secretaries Mattis and Tillerson, LTG McMaster, Ambassador Haley, and Gary Cohn was handed to Stephen Miller by the President with instructions to MAGA it up. And MAGA it up he did. Once the bad reviews filter up to the President’s attention when he’s back in the residence this evening, on his own, watching cable TV and looking at twitter, expect a complete twitter breakdown.

    Reply
  12. rikyrah says:
    September 19, 2017 at 3:22 pm

    Trump’s Dog Whistle to White Supremacists in His UN Speech
    by Nancy LeTourneau
    September 19, 2017

    There are many things that are cause for concern in Trump’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly today. But it is important to keep in mind that it was primarily written by white nationalist Stephen Miller, who included major dog whistles to white supremacists.

    The primary vehicle Miller used to do that is through the words “sovereign” or “sovereignty,” which Trump used at least 25 times. For example:

    The success of the United Nations depends upon the independent strength of its members. To overcome the perils of the present, and to achieve the promise of the future, we must begin with the wisdom of the past. Our success depends on a coalition of strong and independent nations that embrace their sovereignty, to promote security, prosperity, and peace, for themselves and for the world. We do not expect diverse countries to share the same cultures, traditions, or even systems of government, but we do expect all nations to uphold these two core sovereign duties, to respect the interests of their own people and the rights of every other sovereign nation.

    There is nothing inherently nefarious about the word sovereign, but it’s use in this country has been particularly tied to white supremacy for decades.

    Reply
  13. rikyrah says:
    September 19, 2017 at 1:57 pm

    😲A university president held a dinner for black students — and set the table with cotton stalks and collard greens https://t.co/hC77x0Qm2o
    — Donna NoShock (@NoShock) September 19, 2017

    Reply
  14. rikyrah says:
    September 19, 2017 at 1:55 pm

    The purpose of the Republican health care plan remains elusive
    09/19/17 02:11 PM
    By Steve Benen

    When Democrats originally tackled health care reform in 2009, there was no great mystery surrounding their motivations. As we discussed several months ago, Dems in Congress and the White House identified some key systemic problems – too many Americans lacked basic health coverage, and even those with insurance faced costly risks – and then worked on a solution.

    Maybe you liked what they came up, maybe you didn’t, but either way, there’s no question as to why Democrats created the Affordable Care Act. They had specific goals, and by and large, they’ve achieved them.

    Eight years later, Republicans are obviously determined to overhaul the nation’s health care system, but the purpose of their crusade is far less clear.

    At the surface, we know GOP lawmakers are scrambling to pass their latest proposal because they hate “Obamacare,” and because they made a public commitment to destroy it. But putting aside displays of raw partisan power, we can circle back to a point Peter Suderman raised in March and ask a more fundamental question: what is the substantive purpose of this endeavor? What is the policy problem Republicans are attempting to solve?

    It certainly doesn’t have anything to do with their criticisms of “Obamacare.” Going into the debate, the ACA’s Republican critics said the current system didn’t cover enough people and imposed costs on consumers that were too high. Their “solution,” such as it is, will cover far fewer people and likely force premiums higher.

    Reply
  21. SouthernGirl2 says:
    September 19, 2017 at 10:13 am

    Liza, what’s up with this? What is he up to? Ready to flee the country?

    https://twitter.com/thehill/status/909938599520546821

    Reply
    • rikyrah says:
      September 19, 2017 at 10:48 am

      no lie told

      Reply
    • Liza says:
      September 19, 2017 at 12:06 pm

      Yeah, we’re eight months into this debacle and the painful, irrefutable truth is that Trump is incompetent beyond words to describe his level of incompetence. He literally does not know squat about anything, nor is he interested in learning. He was a loud mouth buffoon who blathered nonsense to stupid white people at rallies.

      So, what does Trump know about international order and stability? His comments and his speeches are as inane as the dumbest comments you’ve ever read on Facebook. Except he is the “president”, so we have to be concerned that he really could do something to endanger the us and perhaps the entire world.

      Reply
  26. rikyrah says:
    September 19, 2017 at 9:59 am

    This is the Trump Inaugural of UN addresses: aimed at his own base, scandalous and frightening to others.— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) 19 September 2017

    Reply
  27. rikyrah says:
    September 19, 2017 at 9:58 am

    Sandy Belknap‏ SandyBelknapNH
    Hearing UN leaders audibly laugh during 45’s speech this morning is alarming and embarassing for our nation.

    Reply
  30. rikyrah says:
    September 19, 2017 at 9:17 am

    Mueller did a SEARCH WARRANT on Facebook.

    Reply
  31. rikyrah says:
    September 19, 2017 at 9:16 am

    UH HUH

    UH HUH

    Republican propaganda efforts reach a new, alarming level
    09/19/17 10:00 AM—UPDATED 09/19/17 10:01 AM
    By Steve Benen
    Americans who pay attention to political news can probably think of plenty of conservative outlets that seem like extensions of the Republican Party. But what if there were a far-right news source that was literally an extension of the Republican Party?

    The Associated Press today introduced the public to The Free Telegraph, which isn’t a news outlet, but does its very best to pretend to be.

    Republican governors are getting into the “news” business.

    The Republican Governors Association has quietly launched an online publication that looks like a media outlet and is branded as such on social media. The Free Telegraph blares headlines about the virtues of GOP governors, while framing Democrats negatively. It asks readers to sign up for breaking news alerts. It launched in the summer bearing no acknowledgement that it was a product of an official party committee whose sole purpose is to get more Republicans elected.

    If you swing by The Free Telegraph’s site right now, there is a disclosure notice at the very bottom that notes the outlet is “paid for by [the] Republican Governors Association.” But before anyone finds that impressive, it’s worth remembering that (a) the disclosure is in a small, gray font, against a gray background; and (b) that disclosure was only added to the site after the Associated Press started asking about it.

    The Free Telegraph – not be confused with the Daily Telegraph, which is an actual newspaper published in the U.K. – has a Twitter feed that tells readers it’s “bringing you the political news that matters outside of Washington,” without mentioning its Republican ownership. The same is true of its Facebook account, which labels The Free Telegraph a “Media/News Company.”

    Reply
  32. yahtzeebutterfly says:
    September 19, 2017 at 8:45 am

    “Democracy is a process, not a static condition. It is becoming rather than being. It can easily be lost, but never is fully won. Its essence is eternal struggle.”
    ~ William H. Hastie, the nation’s first black federal judge

    Much wisdom and longing have appeared on signs carried by marchers at rallies this year:

    https://www.democracynow.org/images/headlines/93/37993/quarter_hd/H1_march.jpg

    http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/health_and_science/Science/2017/02/170206_SCI_vetting-research.jpg.CROP.promo-xlarge2.jpg

    Reply
  33. rikyrah says:
    September 19, 2017 at 8:44 am

    By Harassing Nancy Pelosi, Immigration ‘Activists’ are Making it Easier for Trump to Deport Children

    Earlier today, Leftist immigration “activists” decided that their time would be best spent in San Francisco by harassing House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi at her Dream Act rally. Activists chanted “No border, no nation, stop deportation!”, and held up signs demanding things ranging from open borders to protecting all 11 million undocumented immigrants.

    Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer last week won a surrender from Donald Trump on the issue of protecting Dreamers, and they extracted the agreement without Trump’s border wall as being part of the deal. They did, however, agree that border security and enforcement would be enhanced. While there is no legislation to consider yet, the activists are evidently irate that enforcement was allowed to be included as part of the deal, and their demands… to the extent they had any positive demands at all, were as disparate as their signs.

    During one prolonged tirade, people claiming to be ‘undocumented youth’ (looking at the chanters, I find it hard to believe that they were all undocumented), demanded that they not be “a bargaining chip”, and that a ‘clean’ Dream Act pass without enforcement. Interrupting Pelosi at another point, they chanted “All 11 million!” in reference to the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US, whom one assumes they wanted to be legalized immediately.

    Even the demands of a ‘clean’ Dream Act and comprehensive immigration reform (“all 11 million!) are not the same, not to mention that comprehensive immigration reform has always included beefed up border enforcement, which the assembled mob could not be more against.

    Put it all together, and the chants and the demands amount to nothing more than incoherent emotional blobbery, with no productive organization or positive agenda.

    Reply
  34. rikyrah says:
    September 19, 2017 at 8:42 am

    Hurricane Maria is a Cat 5. Prayers for all in her path :(

    Reply
  35. rikyrah says:
    September 19, 2017 at 8:30 am

    What Whiteness Looks Like From a Black Perspective
    by Nancy LeTourneau
    September 19, 2017

    Anyone who is interested in wresting with how race and politics intermingle in this country should definitely watch these two segments from Chris Hayes’s interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates.

    Overall, these two had a fascinating conversation. But I’d like to highlight two things that stood out to me.

    First of all, Coates did an even better job of describing what his intentions were in writing the article in which he defined Trump as the first white president. Here’s the money quote from the article:

    Replacing Obama is not enough—Trump has made the negation of Obama’s legacy the foundation of his own. And this too is whiteness. “Race is an idea, not a fact,” the historian Nell Irvin Painter has written, and essential to the construct of a “white race” is the idea of not being a nigger.

    A study of the history of race demonstrates that Coates is right. The whole concept was “invented as a folk idea, not the product of scientific research or discovery.” Race was mainly used to differentiate what we now call “white people” from everyone else. In that way, being white primarily means, as Coates suggests, “not being a n****er.” Here is how he explained it to Hayes:

    Whiteness has to come from a certain place, and throughout American history what it’s come from is the negation of blackness—the idea of not being a n****r…We’ve had white presidents before, but we’ve never had a president who so much defined himself by the president before him, who just so happens to be our first black president. My argument in the piece is, in fact, that you can’t have the idea of a white president without having a black president before him, much as you can’t have a white American in this country without a black America.

    The other part of the conversation I’d like to highlight comes towards the end when Hayes asks Coates to respond to the reality that things are pretty bleak right now for white working class Americans. Here is his response:

    Even within our language, when we say something like “white working class people are suffering x,y, and z, implicit in that is that white people shouldn’t be going through that—something about being white should somehow make you immune to that…There are a number of writers who get something out of that fact. It gives them a kind of moral high ground—a relationship to a victim that they don’t have with black people…I don’t ever want to allow my insistence that folks focus on the force of white supremacy to elide the fact of any group anywhere suffering. But I also don’t want to endorse the notion that whiteness should somehow give you immunity to the kind of suffering that black people have been enduring since we got here in 1619.

    Reply
  36. rikyrah says:
    September 19, 2017 at 8:25 am

    What Makes Trump So Dangerous?
    by Nancy LeTourneau September 18, 2017

    A lot of questions have been raised about Donald Trump’s mental health. I have said that we need to talk about it not only because he is dangerous, but because the topic has been shrouded in secrecy, which only reinforces the stigma.

    On October 3rd, a book “The Dangerous Case for Donald Trump” will be published. In it, 27 psychiatrists, psychologists and mental health experts assess President Trump’s mental health. Bill Moyers recently interviewed Robert Jay Lifton, the psychohistorian who wrote the forward. Before getting to what he said about Trump, here is how Lifton describes the intent of the authors:

    We have a duty to warn on an individual basis if we are treating someone who may be dangerous to herself or to others — a duty to warn people who are in danger from that person. We feel it’s our duty to warn the country about the danger of this president. If we think we have learned something about Donald Trump and his psychology that is dangerous to the country, yes, we have an obligation to say so.

    Reply
  37. yahtzeebutterfly says:
    September 19, 2017 at 8:21 am

    Video:“Rev. James Lawson: Our Country is Based on Plantation Capitalism”
    https://youtu.be/AdTGlD-nu2E&rel=0

    Video: “James Lawson – Gandhi and Nonviolence”
    https://youtu.be/Q8K4HLM03dw&rel=0

    Reply
  38. rikyrah says:
    September 19, 2017 at 8:18 am

    THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 9/18/17
    Mueller uses search warrant to get more on Russia from Facebook
    Jim Rutenberg, media columnist for The New York Times, talks with Rachel Maddow about Special Counsel Robert Mueller using a search warrant to get more information from Facebook about how Russia used its platform to interfere in the U.S. democratic process.

    Reply
  39. rikyrah says:
    September 19, 2017 at 8:17 am

    THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 9/18/17
    Manafort given ‘shock-and-awe’ treatment by Mueller team: NYT
    Matt Apuzzo, reporter for The New York Times, talks with Rachel Maddow about the aggressive way Special Counsel Robert Mueller is pursuing his investigation of former Donald Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.

    Reply
  40. rikyrah says:
    September 19, 2017 at 8:16 am

    THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 9/18/17
    Paul Manafort wiretapped and threatened with indictment: reports
    Rachel Maddow reports breaking news from the New York Times about the aggressive nature of Special Counsel Mueller’s raid of former Donald Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s home, and news from CNN about communications intercepts of Manafort.

    Reply
  41. rikyrah says:
    September 19, 2017 at 8:10 am

    Rand Paul is a phucking fraud.

    …………………

    Rand Paul creates a problem for Senate GOP on health care
    09/19/17 08:41 AM
    By Steve Benen
    The arithmetic for health care advocates is pretty simple: sometime over the next 12 days, Senate Republicans are going to try to pass yet another overhaul of the American health care system. If three or more GOP senators break ranks, the bill will fail. If not, it’ll pass and probably become law.

    Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) keeps insisting he’s one of the three “no” votes, but no one’s sure whether to believe him.

    The Kentucky senator first announced his opposition to the plan eight days ago, though many assumed he was just posturing. The Republican started putting his position in writing, and still, few believed he was sincere. Rand Paul went on Fox News to explain that he really does oppose the Graham-Cassidy plan, and again, much of the political world thought he didn’t mean it.

    So yesterday afternoon, the Kentucky Republican hosted a press briefing of sorts in order to say he’s quite serious about his rejection of the legislation. Vox explained:

    On Monday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) voiced clear and staunch opposition to the Cassidy-Graham-Heller-Johnson proposal – the last remaining Obamacare repeal plan that would block-grant Obamacare funding, cap federal health care spending, and send the money to the states to come up with their own health care programs.

    “It keeps 90 percent of Obamacare and redistributes the proceeds,” Paul said in a meeting with reporters in his office Monday. He continued: “I don’t think anybody has realized the enormity of this. Obamacare took a long time to get in place. It took them a year to get their website. Can you imagine now every state has got to go through this? Start completely over with all the subsidies. Some states might want subsidies, some won’t, some states might go to single-payer. I think it will be a chaotic nature for two years. It’s not repeal. It’s another incarnation of Republican replace. But not repeal.”

    Reply
  42. yahtzeebutterfly says:
    September 19, 2017 at 7:41 am

    “The SPLC joined other civil-rights organizations and members of the clergy today in telling the U.S. Supreme Court that President Donald Trump’s Muslim ban is an unconstitutional violation of religious freedom”

    https://www.splcenter.org/news/2017/09/18/splc-tells-supreme-court-president-trumps-muslim-ban-unconstitutional-violation-religious
    https://pbs.twimg.com/card_img/909332305960931328/Sojfm3Dv?format=jpg&name=600×314

    “BU to Supreme Court: Kill Trump Travel Ban
    Joins 30 other academic institutions in friends of the court brief”
    http://www.bu.edu/today/2017/bu-to-supreme-court/

    Reply
  43. rikyrah says:
    September 19, 2017 at 6:13 am

    Good Morning, Everyone 😐😐😐

    Reply
  44. nedhamson says:
    September 19, 2017 at 5:38 am

    Just too strange to discern if true and if true why/how did it become known now to to serve what purposes. All starting to sound like a convoluted fairy tale.

    Reply

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