Sunday is his 50th birthday. If he is terminated before then, he is ineligible for early retirement.
But how it is legal, he’s done all he’s supposed to do. I’m pretty sure it can’t be done here in Europe ( then again we’re all Socialists here, so… )
John Dowd, personal attorney for President Trump, reacted to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ firing of former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe by calling for the firing of special counsel Robert Mueller.
“I pray that Acting Attorney General Rosenstein will follow the brilliant and courageous example of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and bring an end to alleged Russia Collusion investigation manufactured by McCabe’s boss James Comey based upon a fraudulent and corrupt Dossier,” Dowd said.
It’s fucking obstruction of justice, and you can’t get any more obvious.
IOW, I “hope” that Rosenstein and Sessions don’t do what these other guys did that got fired.
True, but there’s one problem: Trump decides what “justice” is - until someone takes that power away from him.
I heard Illinois congressman Luis Gutierrez, who is on the House Judiciary committee, say on NPR today that he’d be happy to hire McCabe for a few days to do some work for him.
In a month.
I think that all the uproar about McCabe is missing the big news of today.
The revelations about Cambridge Analytica are chilling - The Guardian has a new article in a series about the firm. Recently, an interview with the guy who enabled it all.
I created Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare tool’: meet the data war whistleblower
Wylie has left Cambridge Analytica but has a stash of documents about his work for them.
AND an established need-to-know status.
Umm, unless the memos aren’t Classified material, in which case McCabe can show them to anyone he wants.*
I’m not prepared to comment on whether doing so benefits the America-hating fuckstick, by tipping him off.
*(generally)
Then my assessments are 1000% correct.
The Mueller investigation isn’t just about investigating a matter of oblique concerns like “collusion” between Russian interests and the Trump campaign. It’s far more extensive and sophisticated than that, and this means that the Republican party - not just Trump but members of the conservative party and its financial interests (including, but not limited to, Cambridge Analytica) are invested in working with outside actors, like Putin’s Russia.
A company like Cambridge Analytica isn’t just invested in the Trump campaign of 2016 - they see something on the horizon. They envision a plutocracy in which they can create an imperfect democracy like that which existed in the late 19th Century.
Mueller’s investigation represents public power and the public interest. He’s fighting private power and private interests, including corrupt companies like CA, and their proxies in the Republican party. Putin and the GOP (and American conservatives) have shared interests. They all want Republicans to remain in power and for the US to exist as a corrupt state so that a) Americans will be fighting with other Americans, and b) we will pay less attention to Russian aggression.
nm …
Public information helps those under investigation to come up with a shared story that exonerates themselves, while not conflicting with the facts that are available to the investigators.
By all means, the information should be made public, but there’s a process for that.
Facebook has suspended Cambridge Analytics.
A readable piece from Slate on Cambridge Analytica and election cheating.
I’ve long thought Cambridge Analytica was going to figure into Mueller’s investigation in a substantive way. Not hard to work out a likely connection between the Kremlin, via cutouts, with their targeted Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/Instagram troll farms and the targeted voter information courtesy of Steve Bannon and the Mercers’ Cambridge Analytica.
Good pieces all that you posted links to, jasg. I posted a link to Reuters’ first story about Facebook’s suspension of Cambridge Analytica in the Clusterfuck thread and it was basically deemed inconsequential. But I think this is about to become a very big story, with ramifications for both Mueller’s investigation and the 2018, 2020 elections.
I saw an interview with Wylie earlier today. Bright kid. Pity about the pink hair. Teh Alt-Right will have a field day with that, I’m afraid.
Am i the only one troubled by the terminology here? Is it really correct to call this “election cheating”?
Now, if any of the parties involved here allowed foreign entities to become part of this story, in violation of American laws governing foreign interference in the election process, that’s one thing. But whatever type of data was collected by Aleksandr Kogan through his Facebook app, and however that data was used by Cambridge Analytica to target advertisements and social media campaigns, the only thing really going on here is influencing people’s opinions.
No-one is alleging that people were bribed to vote for one party or the other. No-one is alleging that electronic voting machines were hacked in order to inaccurately count the votes of each candidate. No-one is suggesting that this process purged anyone from the voter roles, or added people who should not have been allowed to vote.
All that went on here was essentially a marketing campaign that made use of sophisticated data analytics in order to appeal to people’s biases and emotions and predispositions and political preferences. If that’s “election cheating,” then so is every damn campaign ad run by the political parties, and every billboard or leaflet or commercial sponsored by a Political Action Committee.
The people of America went to the polls, and they voted for the candidates that they wanted to vote for. I fucking hate the result, and i firmly believe that a lot of those people are idiots, but isn’t that one of the messy consequences of democracy?
No. Because all of those ads clearly state who they are from, as is required by law. These Russian ads did not reveal they were from Russia. Thus they were cheating–violating the rules for election advertisements.
I am not sure if the rules for truth in advertising also applies to political ads, but I would hope they would. If so, then they violate this as well, since they were predominantly made up of fake news.
If people knew these statements were false and put out by Russia, it is highly likely they would have voted differently. Hence Russia put their thumbs on the scales. They cheated.
I posted about Cambridge Analytica a year ago.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=819549
Maybe FB’s action will finally wake up the media and the public about what’s been going on.
They used software that analyzed individual’s FB accounts and then individually targeted ads based on each person’s beliefs, political leanings, and fears.
People with xenophobic tendencies were fed lies about immigrants and the need for deportations and a wall. Gun supporters were fed NRA type propaganda. Bernie supporters were encouraged not to vote in the general, or to vote for Stein. Etc.
The software allowed them to prey on each individual’s weaknesses on a person by person basis, rather than targeting large demographics.
“I would like that order in writing, sir!”
True. Meuller plays his cards carefully. As long as only he has all the information, he can use it to fact check and charge the various liars and thieves - and get them on perjury and conspiracy. If he makes everything public, he loses his best weapon. He can’t let them know everything he knows. Not yet.