Explaining the first Tweeted interview featuring Eliot Engel with Kate Boulduan: ‘Fixated on collusion, Dems seeking (again) to subpoena interpreter present at Trump-Putin meeting’, 14 January, 2019, RT
Stir in as well:
‘F.B.I. Opened [counterintelligence] Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia’, nytimes.com, Jan.9, 2019
“The criminal and counterintelligence elements were coupled together into one investigation, former law enforcement officials said in interviews in recent weeks, because if Mr. Trump had ousted the head of the F.B.I. to impede or even end the Russia investigation, that was both a possible crime and a national security concern. The F.B.I.’s counterintelligence division handles national security matters.
If the president had fired Mr. Comey to stop the Russia investigation, the action would have been a national security issue because it naturally would have hurt the bureau’s effort to learn how Moscow interfered in the 2016 election…”
Because it’s now been reified as fact for Democrats that Russians hacked the DNC emails, gave them to WikiLeaks, as a favor to Trump and to make sure he was elected rather than the female Clinton.
The Mueller investigation has its own reasons for being, but not for nothin’, it was also the D Team that shrieked the loudest over Trump’s June 2018 meeting attempting nuclear rapprochement with Kim Jong Un of the DPRK, wasn’t it?
And from July 19, 2018, ‘Who Heard What Trump Said to Putin? Only One Other American’, NYTimes as well, although with a bit different focus.
‘Absolutely not’: GOP says questioning Trump’s translator would end presidential diplomacy’, 19 July, 2018, RT
Heard on CNN & MSNDC:
‘Are you now or have you ever worked for the Russians, Mister President?’
“That’s the most insulting thing I’ve ever been asked”.
“But he didn’t say ‘NO’, did he?”
“We haven’t heard from Moscow yet about this issue, but hoom, hoom, we will!”
My guess is that Lavrov and Vlad would chuckle while their eyes twinkled.
“The Russian foreign minister offered an unexpected response to a reporter’s question about Moscow’s alleged attempts to “lure” farmers from South Africa to come to Russia.
Speaking to reporters at a press conference on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Friday, Lavrov was asked a question by a journalist from South Africa about Moscow’s plans vis-à-vis the minority white South African farmers amid fears of land expropriation without compensation.
“At this time, we are busy with meddling with Catalonia’s elections,” Lavrov replied, keeping a straight face, leading to an outburst of laughter in the room.”
As to ‘why again?’ for all of this, your guesses might be better than mine, but I reckon that if the Mueller investigations were indeed winding down, these items will surely crank them up again.
#TreasonSummit on Twitter, and yes, it’s still booming, ‘Putin’s Puppet and more. How many reasons are there to loathe the man, and yet: this rubbish?
(cross-posted at caucus99percent.com)
davidly
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café babylon 
ha. b at moon of alabama wrote this story up today as well, but had a lotta fun w/it in his: ‘Putin Asks And Trump Delivers – Here Is A List Of All The Good Things Trump Did For Russia’
“The Washington Post’s Greg Miller reported Sunday that President Donald Trump’s confiscation of the translator’s notes from a one-on-one conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2017 was “unusual.” This is incorrect. It was unprecedented. There is nothing like it in the annals of presidential history.
Not really. Other U.S. leaders held long private meetings with their counterparts without notes being taken. (and several examples)
Nixon’s White House office was bugged. There are probably tape recordings of the talks. There might also be recordings of the Trump-Putin talks.
Only that Trump is controlled by Putin can explain why the FBI opened a counter-intelligence investigation against Trump (see section three).
That the FBI agents involved in the decision were avid haters of Russia and of Trump has surely nothing to do with it. That the opening of a counter-intelligence investigation gave them the legal ability under Obama’s EO12333 to use NSA signal intelligence against Trump is surely irrelevant.”
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/01/putin-asks-and-trump-delivers-here-is-a-list-of-all-the-good-things-trump-did-for-russia.html
#TreasonSummit helsinki
morning edit: finnian cunningham at RT assesses that it’s worse than i’d thought, but then he’s brought more from the new york times & waPo (including editorials) times than i’d known about earlier. a couple bits:
““Over the past couple of weeks, the supposed media bastions have been full of it against Trump. An op-ed in the New York Times on January 5 by David Leonhardt could not have made more plain the absolute disdain. “He is demonstrably unfit for office. What are we waiting for?”
“The Times reported on January 14 about deep “concerns” among Pentagon officials over Trump’s repeated threats to withdraw the US from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). ”
““When the Washington Post editorial board urges a state of emergency to be invoked because of “Russian meddling in US elections”, then the national mood is being fomented to accept a coup against Trump. The media’s fawning over the Pentagon and state intelligence agencies as some kind of virtuous bastion of democracy is a sinister signal for a military-police state.”