The strange case of a follow-up Memo
On January 20th 2017 (Inauguration Day) The outgoing president's National Security advisor, Susan Rice, sent a memo to herself. The memo memorialized a meeting between then president Obama and what has become a rogue's gallery of disreputable Intelligence agency chiefs, fifteen days earlier, on January 5 2017.
The memo has recently become declassified via the courageous acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell. The memo itself is highly suspicious on many levels. First it was written as an afterthought 15 days after the meeting took place. Second, it goes to great pains to repeatedly claim that president Obama wanted his intelligence agencies to do everything "by the book". Why would Rice keep mentioning that? Most important is the lasting impression that Rice is implying that it was Comey who provided reasons for spying on and lying to the incoming administration. Believe it or not this memo from Susan Rice to Susan Rice was classified as "Top Secret"!
Here is the portion that was already known:
"On January 5, following a briefing by IC [intelligence community] leadership on Russian hacking during the 2016 presidential election, President Obama had a brief follow-on conversation with FBI Director Jim Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates in the Oval Office. Vice President Biden and I were also present.
President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities “by the book”. The President stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book.
From a national security perspective, however, President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia.
Here is the recently declassified portion:
"Director Comey affirmed that he is processing “by the book” as it relates to law enforcement. From a national security perspective, Comey said he does have some concerns that incoming NSA Flynn is speaking frequently with Russian ambassador Kislyak. Comey said that could be an issue as it relates to sharing sensitive information. President Obama asked if Comey was saying that the NSC should not pass sensitive information related to Russia to Flynn. Comey replied “potentially.” He added that he has no indication that Flynn has passed classified information to Kislyak, but he noted that “the level of communication is unusual.”
If anything from Susan Rice can be believed (she was as many recall the Benghazi liar), then one must wonder about the things that Comey is supposedly saying to then president Obama. Comey claims that Flynn “is speaking frequently with Russian Ambassador Kislyak”, yet he admits that Flynn hadn’t said anything treasonous to the Ambassador. Everything in this part of the memo is highlighting Comey's advice for the president.
We now know that the day before the infamous meeting took place the FBI was about to close their secret investigation of Flynn, yet it was at the last minute kept open.
I don't know how close to the truth the Rice memo is, but I believe it was written out of concern that one day the truth of the "Russia investigation" would see the light of day.
As of last night Susan Rice was calling for the declassification of "all" the Flynn/Kislyak conversations.
How about we also declassify Obama's Jan 5th meeting?
You, the reader, get to decide why Rice wrote this memo.
History will record that the Intelligence agencies of the United States of America spied on a political campaign and violated the rights of American citizens.
Guilty Conscience. Have you ever noticed how a guilty conscience can cause some people to start making excuses and rationalizations before they're even accused. She knew what was done was wrong and this is her rationalized excuse, it's not the real truth it's just what she wanted everyone including herself to believe.
It is interesting that Comey has yet to comment on the declassified part of the memo
She knew what was going on was wrong, yet participated in it anyway.
She's like the "Driver" in a Robbery", hoping to get leniency when the "Shit hits the Fan" for just …. "Being the Driver" !
In no way does any of that memo exonerate anyone.
"Wishful Thoughts" on her part.
“The other day I got out my can opener and was opening a can of worms when I thought, "What am I doing?!”
-- Jack Handey
Ya, it hit the Benghazi girl on Inauguration Day. She then realized the world was changing!
As for the fall guy in all this - James Comey, Fox News asked if he would like to comment..........He is suddenly silent or should I say dumbfounded!
The secret part of the memo is starting to register - It can't be Obama, thus Comey acted alone
Funny how "Quick" his book was able to come out after he was fired.
Not Funny.....but more "Disturbing" !
it's like he was writing it all along.
Authoring such a book was probably easy. From that momentous day in November 2016 the wheels were turning. It takes a worried man you see - with Comey constantly thinking of why he did this and why he did that!
The Comey memos on initial Trump meetings after Inauguaration and before Firing...… Gotta keep 'em safe, so slow mailed it to his bestest bud Like EVER..... Daniel Richman.
Comey was another who liked to write memos to himself. As with Rice, it's kind of obvious they were written as a defense should the truth ever come out.
There's only 3 reasons to write memos to ones self in political world:
1. You're already planning to write a scathing book about the "Outsider" you've never met before.
or
2. You're gonna help any way you can per "Der past Leaders order", to help get rid of the "Outsider" invading your "Safe Political Space", and you know it's just …… WRONG !
or
3. You know an "Impeachment trail" is already in the works !
In the case of Rice it was the first part of #2. She wanted to save Obama, whom she worships. For Comey it was first to destroy Trump, then to save his own rotten ass!
'History will record that the Intelligence agencies of the United States of America spied on a political campaign and violated the rights of American citizens.'
NEVER HAPPENED.
Iv'e got a little bulletin for you, the left's own Matt Taibbi say's it's kind of obvious:
"Horowitz describes at great length an FBI whose “serious” procedural problems and omissions of “significant information” in pursuit of surveillance authority all fell in the direction of expanding the unprecedented investigation of a presidential candidate (later, a president)...Officials on the “Crossfire Hurricane” Trump-Russia investigators went to extraordinary, almost comical lengths to seek surveillance authority of figures like Trump aide Carter Page...Likewise, the use of reports by ex-spy/campaign researcher Christopher Steele in pursuit of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) authority had far-reaching ramifications. Not only did obtaining a FISA warrant allow authorities a window into other Trump figures with whom Page communicated, they led to a slew of leaked “bombshell” news stories that advanced many public misconceptions , including that a court had ruled there was “probable cause” that a Trump figure was an “agent of a foreign power.” There are too many to list in one column, but the Horowitz report show years of breathless headlines were wrong."
Press figures have derided the idea that Steele was crucial to the FISA application, with some insisting it was only a “small part” of the application. Horowitz is clear: ' We determined that the Crossfire Hurrican e team’s r ece ipt of Steele’s election reporting on September 19, 2016 played a centra l and essent i al role in the FBI’ s and Department’s decision to seek the FISA order. ' ... The Steele report reads like a pile of rumors surrounded by public information pulled off the Internet, and the Horowitz report does nothing to dispel this notion. At the time the FBI submitted its first FISA application, Horowitz writes, it had “corroborated limited information in Steele’s election reporting, and most of that was publicly available information.” Horowitz says of Steele’s reports: “The CIA viewed it as ‘internet rumor.’” Worse (and this part of the story should be tattooed on the heads of Russia truthers), the FBI’s interviews of Steele’s sources revealed Steele embellished the most explosive parts of his report.
The “pee tape” story, which inspired countless grave headlines...and plunged the Trump presidency into crisis before it began, was, this source said, based a “conversation that [he/she] had over beers,” with the sexual allegations made… in “jest”! ...In fact, charged by Steele to find corroboration, the source could not: corroboration was “zero,” writes Horowitz ...The impact was greater than just securing a warrant to monitor Page. More significant were the years of headlines that grew out of this process, beginning with the leaking of the meeting with Trump about Steele’s blackmail allegations, the insertion of Steele’s conclusions in the Intelligence Assessment about Russian interference, and the leak of news about the approval of the Page FISA warrant. As a result, a “well-developed conspiracy” theory based on a report that Comey described as “salacious and unverified material that a responsible journalist wouldn’t report without corroborating,” became the driving news story in a superpower nation for two years . "
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At least Taibbi maintains a modicum of principle. It's truly amazing how the left has moved from supporting civil liberties and individual rights in the 70s to shilling for whatever abuses of rights they think gives them partisan advantage. How the leaders of the Church Committee must be hanging their heads in shame at what their party has become, simple shills for authoritarianism.
The whole Taibbi article is worth reading..
I agree. There are people who may have believed what we were all being fed in the beginning, but they had enough integrity to recognize the truth, whether they liked it or not.
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"One had to search far and wide to find a non-conservative legal analyst willing to say the obvious, i.e. that Sullivan’s decision was the kind of thing one would expect from a judge in Belarus."
Sums up the Judge Sullivan debacle nicely.
The truth simply hurts too much for people who deny reality.
Anyone with an even a partially open mind knows what a setup and scam the whole thing was.
That's the key - how many open minded people are reading this and thinking about it?
Comey noted that, "the level of communication is unusual".
Gee, how'd he know that?
I wonder what is normal for the incoming National Security Advisor?
Most people believe what they do is normal so any deviation is unusual. Since the Obama administration was doing everything they could to restart the Cold War it doesn't surprise me that they'd see anyone on friendly terms with a Russian Ambassador as an adversary. To them any communication would be unusual or unwanted.
“Foreign governments are always interested in feeling out the incoming administration and it’s certainly not uncommon for representatives of the president-elect to have discussions with representatives of foreign powers just as an informational exercise to allow each side to get to know each other,” says David Clinton, chair of the political science department at Baylor University and co-author of Presidential Transitions and American Foreign Policy. “Such exchanges are part of modern day transitions.”
slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/01/michael-flynn-called-the-russians-is-this-normal.html
Looks like a CYA memo.
Hey guys, don't share information with the incoming team.
That's right! We are the almighty Obama team and we leave all decent transition protocol by the wayside!
What else did we learn?
We learned that Sally Yates was shocked to discover that Obama knew all about the Flynn conversation.
After the meeting, Obama kept the two people who would remain in office after the administration would be gone.
Why would the President need to remind heads of intelligence and investigative agencies to proceed "by the book"? That's supposed to be standard operating procedure and the agency heads shouldn't need reminding.
Either the agencies weren't following standard operating procedures or there were concerns about political motivations influencing the agencies' activities. The claim that President Obama reminded agency heads to proceed "by the book" is circumstantial evidence that the agencies weren't following standard procedures.
And after 8 years, he's reminding them!
The claim that President Obama reminded agency heads to proceed "by the book" is circumstantial evidence that the agencies weren't following standard procedures.
And it didn't take long for them to prove it.
"Handwritten notes from the FBI obtained by The Federalist reveal that the agents investigating Flynn under Comey’s direction sought “to get him to lie so we can prosecute him or get him fired.”
As Comey admitted, Flynn was questioned by federal prosecutors in 2017 without being told what he was being interrogated for and without an attorney present about conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak."
The answer to that is too easy. He needed to remind them because he knew what they were doing was illegal. It's a CYA statement plain and simple.
Remember this is a POTUS who told Putin that he would have more flexibility after he takes office. And used the IRS to target opponents. Proper procedure were unheard of for his 8 years in office.
BUSTED: Footage Surfaces from 2017, Rice Says ‘I Know Nothing About’ Surveillance of Trump Campaign
Just in and to be filed under 2020 elections:
Michigan sends absentee ballot applications to 7.7 million people ahead of Primaries and the General Election. This was done illegally and without authorization by a rogue Secretary of State. I will ask to hold up funding to Michigan if they want to go down this Voter Fraud path! .....Donald Trump
Is it illegal? I don't know Michigan law so I don't know. I'm unsure how much President Trump can really prevent it from happening, isn't managing elections all state business? I know some states have laws that tightly define who is allowed to vote by mail and other states are more relaxed. As an aside I've been voting by mail for about 14 years now without issue, my state allows it on request. And from what you posted, Michigan only sent out applications, not actual ballots. I mean, so long as state law allows for this I don't see the issue. Let the states manage themselves.
It's not so much a matter of what's legal. Everything could be fine provided that applications for absentee ballots are what is being sent out and there is some mechanism to confirm the identity of the voter. There is one other danger that comes with it - it's called "ballot harvesting." That's when some partisan hack grads a bundle of ballots he/she claims will be brought to voters and then brought back. That is a huge fraud scam.
yeah, I do hate the ballot harvesting. I don't have issue with a member of the same household bringing the ballot in to a voting location due to the person who the ballot was for was unable to get it to the mail. But I do not agree with allowing political activists to collect ballots and bring them in by the hundreds. I believe that's what caused a few Republican sets in California to go Democrat the last election. I seem to remember articles about Republicans being in the lead on election night with the polls closing and the next morning finding out that hundreds of "new" ballots showed up brought in by partisan activists and counted.
It seems you are correct:
The dirt just keeps coming out.
Love the lefts comments on this scandal. Hillaryious.
It all began with Grenell taking over DNI and on another front, Michael Flynn getting a new lawyer.
The truth can no longer be called "a conspiracy theory" or a "diversion!" Now the media has to talk about it!
So a whole lot of nothing. It's sad to see so many half witted morons inventing conspiracy theories and injecting their own fantasy motives into this. History will not be kind to Trump or his corrupt court of conservative jesters. Just like with the Nixon white house, everything will eventually come out in the wash and it won't be Obama with shit on his sheets, just the current occupant who was proven to have used his office for personal political gain and was impeached for it. Once all his little brown nosing sycophants pull their heads out of dirty Donald's voluminous backside he will deflate like a cheap punctured pool float. There is no deep state, there is no Obama conspiracy, there are just a bunch of fucked in the head right wing conspiracy theorists who desperately want to tarnish the first black President so they spend their time flinging their own poo hoping anything sticks.
Is that kinda like the brain dead left wingers who put there hopes and dreams into the Russian collusion story? The triggered snowflakes can't accept a duly elected President that soundly beat their chosen one Hillaryious Hillary so they put their hopes and dreams into a folk story sold to them by their PoS Obama. Now that the facts are coming out they want to bury the truth.
I was and still am concerned about illicit Russian influence in our elections, no collusion necessary. We know they helped Trump win in 2016, that's an absolute fact born out by the evidence, every intelligence agency in the U.S. and Putin's own words. I'm just a little shocked by how many sycophants of this monumental moron in the oval office who benefited from Russia's illegal aid don't seem to care and keep calling what we know happened a "hoax".
Have any evidence suggesting how many voters they influenced enough to change their votes to Trump?
I would like to take a look at that data.
The "hoax" is that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.
Unless you still think they did?
You ask for the impossible. We know that propaganda can and does have an effect on those who view it. We know the Russians reached at least 122 million Americans with their illicit ads and rhetoric machine, and they reached virtually every American with the dump to wiki leaks of the stolen DNC emails which obviously was meant to hurt the Democrat nominee. But we don't have the ability to go inside American voters minds to see what changed their minds. We do know the vast majority of Americans voted for the other candidate and the vile self admitted sexual predator accused by more than 25 women of sexual assault was only saved by the skin of his teeth with just 107,000 votes in three swing States.
I think anyone with more than half a brain can see that the millions spent by the Russians on propaganda targeting specific groups based on the 22 States voter databases they hacked and the stolen emails being released to embarrass Democrats was enough to at least seed doubt in 107,000 voters minds. It likely had far more impact as I still see their bullshit and lies being spouted by conservatives to this day, they bought it hook line and sinker. Some even wore shirts proclaiming they'd rather be Russian than Democrat. I'd like to see that T-shirt fly back in the 1980's. They would rather side with a vile murdering authoritarian scum bag like Putin than with their own fellow American citizens, now that's fucked up and to me outright treasonous. That's how deeply Russia fucked some people in the head, and there is no doubt the white nationalists and white supremacists we saw marching in the streets of Charlottesville and that we see holding up swastikas and confederate flags while wearing their MAGA hats revere Putin and his sick white nationalist regime.
I really have to wonder about those who haven't asked themselves "Why would a vile piece of shit dictator who has assassinated journalists, dissenters and defectors, has forcibly taken over his countries media, has jailed and disappeared political opponents and illegally invaded on of our European allies, would want some low IQ reality TV show host to be President?". I think the answer is self evident, but I still wonder why more Americans haven't asked themselves that simple question. No collusion necessary, it was a cyber attack on our sovereignty by a murderous despot who wants nothing more than to destroy western democracy and ruin Americans reputation and standing around the world, and some dumb fuck Americans bought the lies and helped him do it.
If Democratic Party emails coming to the light of day hurt Democrats, so what?
The vast majority clearly did not vote for Hillary, it was around 3 million votes.
And you can focus on winning margins as some sort of excuse for a horrific political loss, but a win is a win.
There was nothing illegal in the emails, it was just internal party politics which was embarrassing and ruffled some Democrats feathers and was used as a cudgel to beat up on Democrats. What was illegal was the stealing of private Americans citizen emails and using them as a weapon during a national election. It was the same crime Nixon committed except in this case it was the Russian government doing on behalf of an American Presidential candidate. I'm sure if it were the RNC emails being stolen and exposed to embarrass the Republican party all these Trump fans would be screaming to high heaven, but hey, I guess their blatant hypocrisy is just par for the course now.
It was 65,853,514 votes and was clearly the vast majority of Americans, a full 3 million more votes than dirty Donald received. I'm not saying dishonest Donald didn't win, I fully understand the electoral college, it's simply not the will of the majority of American people, it is the will of the minority.
The slime ball Donald did indeed win the 2016 election, it's just all the sane and rational Americans who lost that day, they and every American who likely wouldn't have died from the Corona virus had our government taken it seriously from the start.
For those who don't care, the efforts to undermine Donald Trump's candidacy and later his presidency combined with criminalizing differences were a direct attack on our nation and the American people.
What’s not in the rice memo to rice.
“susan”
“yes mr. president”
”we are doing some sketchy, illegal, stuff here, write a memo to yourself stating that we are to do things by the book. Stress that point. Make that point over and over. Just in case we’re ever found out we can bring out this memo showing that we are doing things by the book.”
“Great idea mr. president, i’ll get right on it.”
Yeah well, the GOOPERS got their e-mail. They got the 'proper truth' with egg on face. Back to Biden now. Hell, they ought to go after Chelsea too seeing as how they just got a new house.
The GOOPERS are more inane than "The Big Bang Theory" gang.