The Trump Presidency | Biden Inaugurated

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Expect this to be a big tweet week for him. He's going to need all the topic changing to deflect from Thursday's Comey hearings.
 
‘I know what Paul Ryan stands for’: Eighth-grader defends refusal to pose with House speaker




By Samantha Schmidt June 6 at 3:43 AM



It was a small act of defiance: Dozens of eighth-grade students from South Orange Middle School in New Jersey declining to pose for photographs with House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) during a trip to Washington.

But by opting out of the photo session in front of the Capitol last month, the students made national headlines. Many commended them for standing their ground and politely asserting their political viewpoints.

Others denounced the students’ behavior, saying they disrespected Ryan by refusing to do something as simple as appear in a photo with him. Several people commenting on news stories and social media posts called the students “disgraceful” while others argued they were “indoctrinated” by their parents.

Some used stronger words, taking to Ryan’s Instagram post to call the students “losers” and “sniveling little brats.” (Ryan had posted a picture on Instagram giving a fist-bump to one of the students who appeared in the photo).

“It’s a shame our country is coming to this,” one person commented on the Instagram post. “8th graders can’t even respect our elected officials.”

Another individual wrote: “Few of these kids are actively engaged enough to name one piece of legislation they have specific disagreements with and instead parrot their parents’ and teachers’ talking points.”

“How did those 8th graders get so brainwashed to understand the politics of today and decide who is villain,” said another. “I suggest this is the work of the teachers … useful idiots that they are.”

Many of the students fired back on social media, defending themselves and making clear to the critics they are more than capable of forming their own ideas.

One eighth-grade girl, Jordan McCray-Robinson, went as far as reaching out to her local suburb’s news website, the Village Green. She asked whether it would publish a story interviewing the students to “show that they were well-informed,” Village Green co-founder Mary Barr Mann told The Washington Post.

“We suggested that it would be more powerful if she wrote it,” Mann said.

So Jordan did just that. In her detailed opinion article published Monday in the Village Green, Jordan addressed those who criticized her and her fellow classmates for opting out of the photo.

“I am here to tell the nation that although we’re only in the 8th grade, we have our own thoughts and opinions,” Jordan wrote. “My teachers did not influence my decision not to take a picture with Mr. Ryan. I decided I didn’t want to take a picture with someone who doesn’t have my best interests in mind. Mr. Ryan and the administration want to cut health care for 23 million people. Am I one of those U.S. citizens that will be affected?”

Jordan wrote that she chose not to take the photo because “I wasn’t going to be used as a publicity stunt.”

As the criticism poured in on Instagram, Jordan stood up for her classmates, writing in the comments that “even though we’re 13-14 year olds we decided by ourselves” to step out of the picture.

“I know what Paul Ryan stands for and I’m not going to take a picture with him,” Jordan said. “Kids know a lot and you should stop being close minded and see that too.”

And in her opinion article, she went beyond simply explaining her reasoning. Jordan cited interviews she conducted with a teacher, who weighed in on the criticism, saying, “In my classroom alone, I have seen students provide different, conflicting opinions when it comes to debates and discussions.” She included testimonies from a member of the “LGBTQ+ community,” as well as an African American male student who chose to pose with Ryan, “not necessarily because of his views but because of the power of his job.”

“Students couldn’t escape criticism on the Internet whether they decided to take the picture or not,” Jordan wrote, adding that many people “mistakenly assumed that everyone in the picture supported Paul Ryan and the administration.”

Jordan said she thought it was “ridiculous,” “rude” and “ignorant” for an adult to tell 14-year-old students they should not express an opinion because they have not experienced “the real world.”

“Excuse me?! If I’m not in the ‘real world,’ where am I?” Jordan wrote. “I have the same right to express myself as everyone else in this country. Why shouldn’t I be able to show how I feel about what the current administration has been doing?”

She said she refuses to support a politician who stands behind a president who “wants to ban Muslims from the country because they worship differently.”

“I respect views and opinions that differ from mine and I expect the same when it comes to my opinion,” Jordan wrote, closing her piece. “I will not tolerate my peers and I being shamed for voicing our opinions. My generation is the future. I will be working and living in a society created by today’s decisions. So why shouldn’t I be able to speak my truth?”
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senorgregster said:
I'm so torn on these resignations. On one hand you want people to stand up for what they believe in. On the other, you want strong opposing voices present.
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It's a difficult situation, but you have to make a statement against Trump and these resignations are good.
 
Silva said:
No, he's just the dumbest man in the world. Anyone with half a brain would be in damage control mode not adding fuel to the fire.
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He knows it won't matter. Barring a midterm miracle he's basically untouchable.

The GOP are pathetic.
 
We cant just blame Trump for how bad this dinner looks. Cotton and Rubio definitely know this would raise eyebrows and they dont care.

Rubio is definitely going to run for the GOP nomination again, so not sure why he can't see this dinner will harm him in the long run.
 
Fergies Gum said:
We cant just blame Trump for how bad this dinner looks. Cotton and Rubio definitely know this would raise eyebrows and they dont care.

Rubio is definitely going to run for the GOP nomination again, so not sure why he can't see this dinner will harm him in the long run.
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Marco still holds a grudge imo. He'll have dinner with him with the knowledge that everyone knows it, then go out and do the opposite.
 
Raoul said:
Marco still holds a grudge imo. He'll have dinner with him with the knowledge that everyone knows it, then go out and do the opposite.
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Lets see what his priorities are by the type of questions he asks Comey and what his reaction afterwards is if Comey's testimonial lives up to the hype.
 
Qatar terrorist appeasers?

They never appeared on POTUS' travel ban.
 
Kate Bolduan saying what I'm thinking. Trump is trying to throw the travel ban.
 
Wow.

TOP-SECRET NSA REPORT DETAILS RUSSIAN HACKING EFFORT DAYS BEFORE 2016 ELECTION
RUSSIAN MILITARY INTELLIGENCE executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before last November’s presidential election, according to a highly classified intelligence report obtained by The Intercept.

The top-secret National Security Agency document, which was provided anonymously to The Intercept and independently authenticated, analyzes intelligence very recently acquired by the agency about a months-long Russian intelligence cyber effort against elements of the U.S. election and voting infrastructure. The report, dated May 5, 2017, is the most detailed U.S. government account of Russian interference in the election that has yet come to light.

While the document provides a rare window into the NSA’s understanding of the mechanics of Russian hacking, it does not show the underlying “raw” intelligence on which the analysis is based. A U.S. intelligence officer who declined to be identified cautioned against drawing too big a conclusion from the document because a single analysis is not necessarily definitive.

The report indicates that Russian hacking may have penetrated further into U.S. voting systems than was previously understood. It states unequivocally in its summary statement that it was Russian military intelligence, specifically the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, that conducted the cyber attacks described in the document:

Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate actors … executed cyber espionage operations against a named U.S. company in August 2016, evidently to obtain information on elections-related software and hardware solutions. … The actors likely used data obtained from that operation to … launch a voter registration-themed spear-phishing campaign targeting U.S. local government organizations.
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The NSA analysis does not draw conclusions about whether the interference had any effect on the election’s outcome and concedes that much remains unknown about the extent of the hackers’ accomplishments. However, the report raises the possibility that Russian hacking may have breached at least some elements of the voting system, with disconcertingly uncertain results.
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That review did not attempt to assess what effect the Russian efforts had on the election, despite the fact that “Russian intelligence obtained and maintained access to elements of multiple US state or local electoral boards.” According to the Department of Homeland Security, the assessment reported reassuringly, “the types of systems we observed Russian actors targeting or compromising are not involved in vote tallying.”

The NSA has now learned, however, that Russian government hackers, part of a team with a “cyber espionage mandate specifically directed at U.S. and foreign elections,” focused on parts of the system directly connected to the voter registration process, including a private sector manufacturer of devices that maintain and verify the voter rolls. Some of the company’s devices are advertised as having wireless internet and Bluetooth connectivity, which could have provided an ideal staging point for further malicious actions.
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As described by the classified NSA report, the Russian plan was simple: pose as an e-voting vendor and trick local government employees into opening Microsoft Word documents invisibly tainted with potent malware that could give hackers full control over the infected computers.

But in order to dupe the local officials, the hackers needed access to an election software vendor’s internal systems to put together a convincing disguise. So on August 24, 2016, the Russian hackers sent spoofed emails purporting to be from Google to employees of an unnamed U.S. election software company, according to the NSA report. Although the document does not directly identify the company in question, it contains references to a product made by VR Systems, a Florida-based vendor of electronic voting services and equipment whose products are used in eight states.

The spear-phishing email contained a link directing the employees to a malicious, faux-Google website that would request their login credentials and then hand them over to the hackers. The NSA identified seven “potential victims” at the company. While malicious emails targeting three of the potential victims were rejected by an email server, at least one of the employee accounts was likely compromised, the agency concluded. The NSA notes in its report that it is “unknown whether the aforementioned spear-phishing deployment successfully compromised all the intended victims, and what potential data from the victim could have been exfiltrated.”
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Although the NSA report indicates that VR Systems was targeted only with login-stealing trickery, rather than computer-controlling malware, this isn’t necessarily a reassuring sign. Jake Williams, founder of computer security firm Rendition Infosec and formerly of the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations hacking team, said stolen logins can be even more dangerous than an infected computer. “I’ll take credentials most days over malware,” he said, since an employee’s login information can be used to penetrate “corporate VPNs, email, or cloud services,” allowing access to internal corporate data. The risk is particularly heightened given how common it is to use the same password for multiple services. Phishing, as the name implies, doesn’t require everyone to take the bait in order to be a success — though Williams stressed that hackers “never want just one” set of stolen credentials.
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In any event, the hackers apparently got what they needed. Two months later, on October 27, they set up an “operational” Gmail account designed to appear as if it belonged to an employee at VR Systems, and used documents obtained from the previous operation to launch a second spear-phishing operation “targeting U.S. local government organizations.” These emails contained a Microsoft Word document that had been “trojanized” so that when it was opened it would send out a beacon to the “malicious infrastructure” set up by the hackers.

The NSA assessed that this phase of the spear-fishing operation was likely launched on either October 31 or November 1 and sent spear-fishing emails to 122 email addresses “associated with named local government organizations,” probably to officials “involved in the management of voter registration systems.” The emails contained Microsoft Word attachments purporting to be benign documentation for VR Systems’ EViD voter database product line, but which were in reality maliciously embedded with automated software commands that are triggered instantly and invisibly when the user opens the document. These particular weaponized files used PowerShell, a Microsoft scripting language designed for system administrators and installed by default on Windows computers, allowing vast control over a system’s settings and functions. If opened, the files “very likely” would have instructed the infected computer to begin downloading in the background a second package of malware from a remote server also controlled by the hackers, which the secret report says could have provided attackers with “persistent access” to the computer or the ability to “survey the victims for items of interest.” Essentially, the weaponized Word document quietly unlocks and opens a target’s back door, allowing virtually any cocktail of malware to be subsequently delivered automatically.
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The NSA, however, is uncertain about the results of the attack, according to the report. “It is unknown,” the NSA notes, “whether the aforementioned spear-phishing deployment successfully compromised the intended victims, and what potential data could have been accessed by the cyber actor.”

The FBI would not comment about whether it is pursuing a criminal investigation into the cyber attack on VR Systems.

At a December press conference, President Obama said that he told Russian President Vladimir Putin in September not to hack the U.S. election infrastructure. “What I was concerned about in particular was making sure [the DNC hack] wasn’t compounded by potential hacking that could hamper vote counting, affect the actual election process itself,” Obama said. “So in early September, when I saw President Putin in China, I felt that the most effective way to ensure that that didn’t happen was to talk to him directly and tell him to cut it out and there were going to be serious consequences if he didn’t. And in fact we did not see further tampering of the election process.”

Yet the NSA has now found that the tampering continued. “The fact that this is occurring in October is troubling,” said one senior law enforcement official with significant cyber expertise. “In August 2016 warnings went out from the FBI and DHS to those agencies. This was not a surprise. This was not hard to defend against. But you needed a commitment of budget and attention.”

The NSA document briefly describes two other election-related Russian hacking operations. In one, Russian military hackers created an email account pretending to be another U.S. election company, referred to in the document as U.S. company 2, from which they sent fake test emails offering “election-related products and services.” The agency was unable to determine whether there was any targeting using this account.

In a third Russian operation, the same group of hackers sent test emails to addresses at the American Samoa Election Office, presumably to determine whether those accounts existed before launching another phishing attack. It is unclear what the effort achieved, but the NSA assessed that the Russians appeared intent on “mimicking a legitimate absentee ballot-related service provider.” The report does not indicate why the Russians targeted the tiny Pacific islands, a U.S. territory with no electoral votes to contribute to the election.
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Looks like Comey's testimony wont match the expectations of a lot of people.

Sources now saying Comey will not accuse Trump of interfering in the investigation and obstructing justice.
 
Fergies Gum said:
Looks like Comey's testimony wont match the expectations of a lot of people.

Sources now saying Comey will not accuse Trump of interfering in the investigation and obstructing justice.
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He was never going to use that word and anyone who expected it was being unrealistic.

There will be much in former FBI Director James Comey’s upcoming congressional testimony that will make the White House uncomfortable, but he will stop short of saying the president interfered with the agency's probe into former national security adviser Michael Flynn, a source familiar with Comey's thinking told ABC News.

Although Comey has told associates he will not accuse the President of obstructing justice, he will dispute the president’s contention that Comey told him three times he is not under investigation.

The president allegedly said he hoped Comey would drop the Flynn investigation, a request that concerned Comey enough that he documented the conversation in a memo shortly after speaking with the president. In the memo, according to sources close to Comey who reviewed it, Trump said: "I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go," during a February meeting.
The request made Comey uncomfortable, but the source tells ABC News that Comey has told associates he will not accuse the President of obstructing justice.

“He is not going to Congress to make accusations about the President’s intent, instead he’s there to share his concerns,” the source said, and tell the committee “what made him uneasy” and why he felt a need to write the memo documenting the conversation.

Some legal experts told ABC News that Trump's requests as detailed in the memo, which ABC News has not seen, could meet the legal definition of obstruction.

Comey told associates he plans to testify that despite the unusual request from the president he believed strongly that if he did his job properly he could conduct the investigation in an honest way.

DOJ never told Comey of concerns before axing him and now he's 'angry,' sources say
However, Comey has told associates he will not corroborate Trump's claim that on three separate occasions Comey told the president he was not under investigation as part of the probe into Russian meddling in the U.S. election, a source familiar the former director’s thinking told ABC News.

When the President fired Comey early last month he wrote him a letter saying, “While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau.”

Comey's associates have insisted in recent weeks that Comey would never have offered such assurances, even to the president, as a matter of principle. The FBI has confirmed publicly that it is conducting an investigation into Russian meddling and possible collusion with the Trump campaign, but it has not named names.

The New York Times first reported last month that Trump asked Comey to shut down the Flynn investigation. “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Trump allegedly told Comey. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

Comey is scheduled to testify publicly for the first time since he was fired at a hearing in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee at 10 a.m. on Thursday.
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Fergies Gum said:
Looks like Comey's testimony wont match the expectations of a lot of people.

Sources now saying Comey will not accuse Trump of interfering in the investigation and obstructing justice.
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He's not supposed to accuse him of anything. He's just supposed to give an account of the events that transpired.
 
Fergies Gum said:
Looks like Comey's testimony wont match the expectations of a lot of people.

Sources now saying Comey will not accuse Trump of interfering in the investigation and obstructing justice.
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His not in a position to do it. That's the job of the Special Counsel.
He can only imply it.
 
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