Tag: Fox News

Trump tries to spin Justice Department documents outlining Carter Page’s Russia contacts

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President Donald Trump took to Twitter Sunday morning to try and hit back against the Justice Department’s release of documents outlining Carter Page’s contacts with Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign.

On Saturday, the Justice Department released a warrant application the FBI had made to get permission to conduct surveillance on Page, a former Trump campaign adviser. The application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, made in October 2016, alleged that Page “has been collaborating and conspiring with the Russian government.”

The non-redacted portions of the 400-page FISA document make serious claims about Page’s ties to the Russian government. The Justice Department alleges in the documents that the former adviser “has established relationships with Russian government officials, including Russian intelligence officers” and that the “FBI believes the Russian government’s efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election were being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated with [Trump’s] campaign.”

“The FBI believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government,” the warrant says. After a redacted line, the document then continues, “undermine and influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election in violation of U.S. criminal law. Mr. Page is a former foreign policy adviser to a candidate for U.S. president.”

Trump responded to the documents Sunday morning, relying on his claim of “witch hunt” to describe the investigation into his campaign.

“As usual they are ridiculously heavily redacted but confirm with little doubt that the Department of ‘Justice’ and FBI misled the courts,” Trump tweeted about the FISA documents Sunday. “Witch Hunt Rigged, a Scam!”

In a subsequent tweet, Trump hit back against the Steele dossier, which alleges the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia and that the Russians have compromising information on the now-president. Trump quoted Fox News as saying, “Source #1 [for the FISA warrant] was the (Fake) Dossier. Yes, the Dirty Dossier, paid for by Democrats as a hit piece against Trump, and looking for information that could discredit Candidate #1 Trump. Carter Page was just the foot to surveil the Trump campaign …”

The president then tied the FISA warrant to the outcry sparked by his recent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, claiming he “had a GREAT meeting with Putin and the Fake News used every bit of their energy to try and disparage it. So bad for our country!”

Page himself has denied the allegations, describing the FISA application as “spin” and a “complete joke” in an interview Sunday on CNN.

“I’ve never been an agent of a foreign power by any stretch of the imagination,” Page alleged Sunday.

The heavily redacted FISA documents, which enabled the government to surveil Page, were released Saturday after news organizations including the New York Times and USA Today filed lawsuits to obtain them through the Freedom of Information Act. Its release marks the first time a FISA application for surveillance has been released, the Washington Post noted, and such documents are considered to be highly classified.

The application previously made waves in February, as Republicans alleged in a memo that the FBI improperly relied on the dossier compiled by Christopher Steele to obtain the FISA warrant — which Democrats then rebutted in a separate report.

Republicans have previously pointed to the warrant’s reliance on the Steele dossier — which was initially commissioned by a firm that had been contracted by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign — as evidence that the warrant was improperly granted, due to the dossier’s alleged bias. An initial Republican memo about the FISA warrant also claimed that the dossier’s origins were not mentioned in the warrant.

The now-released document, however, does disclose that the “U.S. person” who hired Steele “was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit [Trump’s] campaign,” and added that the FBI believes Steele’s reporting “to be credible.” Some details of the Steele dossier have been corroborated, although the document’s most salacious claims remain unverified.

David Kris, a former assistant attorney general for national security and associate deputy attorney general, wrote in a post for the Lawfare Institute that the page-long footnote dedicated to the potential bias behind the Steele dossier means “there is literally no way the FISA court could have missed it.”

“The FBI gave the court enough information to evaluate Steele’s credibility,” Kris wrote, also noting that the judges who signed off on the FISA applications were all appointed by Republican presidents.

Democrats are pointing to the now-released application as evidence that the FBI’s investigation into Page and the Trump campaign was legitimate. Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement quoted by the Washington Post that the FISA documents “underscore the legitimate concern [the] FBI had about Page’s activities as it was investigating Russia’s interference.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement: “Despite President Trump’s repeated claims, these documents provide clear evidence of ‘Russia’s coordination with Carter Page,’ a high-ranking Trump campaign official, ‘to undermine and improperly and illegally influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.’

“The GOP must cease their attacks on our law enforcement and intelligence communities, and finally decide where their loyalty lies,” Pelosi added.

[Mic]

Fox News claims entire US defense budget goes to NATO minutes before Trump lies and says US funds 90 percent of NATO

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Fox News on Thursday falsely suggested that the entire U.S. defense budget is paid to NATO.

In an on-screen graphic titled “U.S. Contributions To NATO in 2018,” Fox News claimed that $706.1 billion was paid to the military alliance.

In fact, $706.1 billion represents the entire defense budget, which is the largest in U.S. history.

Minutes after Fox News made the erroneous claim, President Donald Trump held a news conference where he wrongly asserted that the U.S. has been funding “probably 90 percent of the costs of NATO.”

According to NPR, the U.S. actually pays about 22 percent of the $2.8 billion in annual NATO expenses.

[Raw Story]

White House announces hiring of former Fox News exec Bill Shine

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Veteran Fox News executive Bill Shine is President Trump’s new right-hand-man for White House communications.
The appointment was announced on Thursday afternoon, shortly before Shine joined Trump on a trip to Montana. Shine’s title is Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications
His move from Fox to the White House further solidifies the backscratching relationship between TV network and Trump’s orbit. But it’s especially eyebrow-raising because Shine resigned last year amid a flurry of sexual harassment allegations within the network.

Shine was a key deputy of powerful Fox News chairman Roger Ailes. When Ailes was accused of sexual harassment by numerous women in 2016, Shine was accused of covering up the alleged misdeeds.

Some of the accounts portrayed Shine as Ailes’ protector and fixer. Shine was named in at least four lawsuits or allegations related to alleged sexual harassment or racial discrimination at the network. He has denied all wrongdoing. And he has never been accused of harassment himself.

The liberal group UltraViolet issued a statement calling Shine’s hiring “disturbing” but “unsurprising.” The group said the “Trump White House has been a revolving door of sexual abusers and their enablers.”

The National Women’s Law Center, another group staunchly critical of Trump, said “the President’s choice runs counter to widespread efforts to address and prevent sexual harassment at this moment of reckoning. This country deserves better.”

When Ailes was forced out of Fox News in July 2016, Shine was initially promoted to co-president. But this turned out to be just a transition period. He resigned in May 2017, in part due to his reputation being tainted from the Ailes scandals.

Shine also had powerful supporters. Shine and Sean Hannity rose up the ranks at Fox News together, and the two men remain close friends. Hannity is now Fox’s biggest star and the president’s biggest booster. CNN previously reported that Hannity pushed the idea of Shine joining the White House behind the scenes.

Shine’s imminent hiring was reported last week. And he was seen at the White House earlier this week. The reports prompted two of Shine’s critics in the right-wing media world to resurface the Ailes-era allegations against Shine.

Newsmax, run by Trump friend Chris Ruddy, published several critical stories. And conservative activist Larry Klayman, founder of Judicial Watch, told The Daily Beast, “I don’t want so see the ghost of Roger Ailes running the White House communications operation.”

Klayman said Shine’s handling of harassment claims needed to be investigated.
Reaction to Shine’s hiring included some negative responses from those who used to work for him or Fox News.

“I say this as someone who was on Fox for a decade and had no beef (though little interaction) with Bill Shine: It’s a disgrace that a man who, it turns out, enabled and covered up truly repulsive behavior by Roger Ailes, would get a senior White House job,” said Bill Kristol, editor at large of The Weekly Standard in a tweet.

And two years to the day former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against the network, quoted a story on Twitter and talked about the impact of “giving women a voice, letting them know you can be believed … and say enough is enough.”

One of the president’s sons, Donald Trump, Jr., predicted the criticism in a tweet on Thursday afternoon.

“On your marks, get set…. how long till the liberal media and snowflakes start taking shots at the great Bill Shine? Competent, hard working and a believer in making America great again!” Trump Jr. wrote.

Thursday’s White House statement about the appointment highlighted Shine’s past experience with Fox News.

“[Shine] brings over two decades of television programming, communications, and management experience to the role. Previously, Mr. Shine served as Co-President of Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network,” it read.

[CNN]

Dubious Fox News article appears to have sparked Trump attack on Obama

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President Donald Trump appeared to rely on a dubious Fox News report Tuesday morning to unleash an attack on his predecessor, accusing President Barack Obama, without any real evidence, of granting citizenship to 2,500 Iranians as part of nuclear deal negotiations.

“Just out that Obama Administration granted citizenship, during the terrible Iran Deal negotiation, to 2,500 Iranians – including to government officials,” Trump tweeted. “How big (and bad) is that?”

Jeff Prescott, the former senior director on Obama’s National Security Council, called Trump’s allegation “absurd and entirely false.”

Prescott shared with CNN immigration data from the Department of Homeland Security which showed that the number of Iranians naturalized in the United States over the course of the Obama and Bush administrations was relatively consistent.

“There was no connection between the Iran nuclear deal and immigration policy,” Prescott added.

The unsubstantiated claim first gained attention with a Monday story on Fox News’ website that relied on the word of an Iranian cleric who is also a member of the country’s parliament.

The article, written by Chris Irvine, a Fox News senior editor, cited an Iranian news agency that cited an Iranian newspaper that quoted the single Iranian cleric, who said the Obama administration provided citizenship to 2,500 unidentified Iranians during nuclear deal negotiations.

The article itself quoted, toward the end of the story, the network’s own commentator, former Obama State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, saying, “This sounds like totally made up BS.” The story said the Department of Homeland Security and State Department declined to comment, and that a representative for former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson could not be reached.

Prior to the Fox News article, the claim had not received any noticeable attention from the US media.

But after Fox News published its story, other outlets, primarily in the conservative media space, published similar stories. Those outlets included The Daily Mail, The Gateway Pundit, and TownHall.

The claims were also shared on Twitter by Fox News host Sean Hannity and frequent Fox guests David Clarke and Charlie Kirk.

On Tuesday morning, just hours before Trump’s tweet, the story made its way to Fox News’ airwaves on “Fox & Friends First,” the network’s early morning show. It also later aired on “America’s Newsroom,” a late-morning news program on Fox News.

“It shouldn’t be lost on anyone that this is a case of Donald Trump parroting Fox News, which is peddling the claims of an Iranian hardliner,” Prescott told CNN.

Jake Sullivan, a former Obama official who was involved at the start of the Iran nuclear negotiations, also skewered Trump for relying on Fox News’ thin report to make what he called a “completely false” claim.

“What is interesting about this is that what happened is a hardline crank in Iran just randomly made this comment, Fox News writes a story on it, and then Trump tweets it,” Sullivan said on “The Situation Room.”

[CNN]

‘We don’t even talk about the uranium’: Trump wildly attacks FBI when asked if he will confront Putin on meddling

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President Donald Trump on Sunday deflected blame for Russia’s interference in the 2016 election to the FBI.

While speaking to Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, Trump was asked if he was going to “mention the meddling” when he meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin next month.

Trump immediately changed the subject: “I would like to see some answers as to why we didn’t take the server, why the FBI didn’t take the server from the DNC.”

“Why didn’t the FBI take it? Look what they did to other people,” the president continued. “Why didn’t they take it? How can the DNC say get out of here. They threw them out of the office.”

Trump went on to complain about special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, saying it would find “nothing wrong.” And then he invoked the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails.

“[Y]ou go back, how about the e-mails — deleting 33,000 e-mails?” he asked. “We don’t even have to talk about the uranium and all the different — just tell me, you get a subpoena. And after getting the subpoena from the United States Congress, right? People go to jail for doing it on a civil case. They delete 33,000 e-mails.”

“Before the FBI even walked in, they are walking in and say you have — by the way, keep your laptops and then they even say destroy your laptops or something? In a week or something you can destroy your laptops?” he said.

[Raw Story]

Trump Touts Mueller Poll Numbers ‘Plummeting’ While Watching Fox & Friends: ‘Rigged’ Witch Hunt!

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President Trump this morning touted dropping poll numbers for special counsel Robert Mueller after watching Fox & Friends cover it.

Yes, the morning show today covered Mueller’s poll numbers, and the President subsequently tweeted about it:

[Mediaite]

Corey Lewandowski Mocks Disabled Migrant Girl Who Was Separated From Parents: ‘Womp Womp’

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Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski mocked a story about a migrant child with down syndrome who was taken from her mother by mimicking sad trombone noises and saying “womp womp.”

Democratic strategist Zac Petkanas, who was debating Lewandowski on the issue of undocumented migrant families being split apart by border officials, fiercely responded: “How dare you. How absolutely dare you, sir.”

When Lewandowski responded by falsely claiming the policy existed under the Obama administration, Petkanas fact checked him.

“This policy was not done during the administration,” the strategist said. “You are now lying about this policy, in addition to just saying, ‘womp, womp.’”

Petkanas continued:

“The difference now is they are accompanied minors, but the Trump Administration is forcibly making them unaccompanied minors when they take them from their parents and put them in cages. And we have members of the Trump team who are going wah wah when you learn about the stories — the horror that is going on down at the border.”

Lewandowski replied by arguing that “coming across the border illegally is a crime,” and criminals get separated from their children when they go to jail, therefore migrant kids should be taken from their parents too.

[Mediaite]

White House Spox: Claim That Families Are Being Separated at Border Is ‘Completely False’

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In a truly stunning show of outright lying Monday morning, White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley told Fox & Friends that the claim the Trump administration is separating children from their families at the border is “completely false.”

“Do you think that the message from the media is correct, that your administration is separating parents, moms and kids?” Fox & Friendshost Brian Kilmeade asked.

“It is completely false,” Gidley replied.

“This is all the Democrats’ doing,” he continued. “Democrats are saying ‘you can’t deport them, you can’t detain them, you can’t prosecute them,’” Gidley said. “The only thing you can do, per a Democrat, is release them into the Interior without any ramification for what they’ve done by breaking our laws.”

“There are only one of two things that can happen when [immigrants] come here [illegally],” Gidley claimed. “You either have to release them into the Interior of the United States as a family unit, or you have to separate the families. That’s what the law says.”

“The Democrats’ policies put drug cartels in business… and also the child smuggling industry,” he later added. “International child smuggling is up because Democrats create incentives by not closing these loopholes.”

Um, holy crap, that’s a glaring lie. There is clear evidence from the DHS that nearly 2000 children have been separated from their families at the border in six weeks’ time as a direct result of the “zero tolerance” policy instated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Despite Trump’s attempts to blame the other party for the policy in an effort to draw out immigration concessions, separating families at the border has nothing to do with Democrats.

[Mediaite]

White House aide rages at ‘disgraceful’ Democrats for being upset about ripping apart families

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The White House director of strategic communications went on Fox News on Monday to lash out at Democrats for criticizing the administration’s policy of separating families at the southern border and detaining children.

Mercedes Schlapp repeatedly claimed the administration’s “hands are tied” despite the fact the policy was voluntarily adopted and could end with a single phone call from President Donald Trump.

“What does the president want us to know this morning as this debate rages on and seems to be putting a lot of pressure on Republicans?” host Sandra Smith asked.

“Clearly, the president is fully committed to enforcing the law,” Schlapp replied. “This comes also with ensuring that the Democrats come to the negotiating table with immigration.”

“It is because the Democrats want to play politics with this issue, using children as political pawns, that we are not able to solve this problem,” Schlapp claimed.

Despite the fact that Trump started the family separation policy and could end it today, Schlapp admitted that the children were being used as leverage to try and get United States taxpayers to pay for Trump’s border wall, that he repeatedly promised would be paid for by Mexico.

“The president has made it very clear he wants to see full funding for the wall,” Schlapp admitted.

“Does the president feel like Democrats are controlling the message right now?” Smith asked the senior White House communications advisor.

“The Democrats are using this as an emotional issue, as a political issue into the midterm election,” Schlapp claimed. “That is disgraceful.”

[Raw Story]

Media

Trump told 4 lies about the inspector general report in one short Fox News hit

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President Donald Trump went on Fox & Friends to talk about the inspector general report on the FBI’s handling of the 2016 election on Friday. His comments contained at least four significant and demonstrable lies.

Let’s go through them.

Lie 1: the FBI was working against him during the campaign

“They were plotting against my election,” Trump said, in perhaps the biggest of the four lies.

This is not true. Inspector General Michael Horowitz was quite clear on this point in the report, which reviewed the FBI’s handling of both the Clinton email investigation and the early stages of the Trump-Russia probe. “We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative decisions we reviewed,” Horowitz concluded.

Trump did eventually confront this uncomfortable fact during the interview. He claimed the no bias conclusion was irresponsible, a throwaway line at the end of the report.

Lie 2: The IG “blew it” by concluding the FBI wasn’t biased

“It was a pretty good report, and then I say the IG blew it at the end,” Trump told Fox’s Steve Doocy. The IG report was a horror show. I thought that one sentence of conclusion was ridiculous.”

The conclusion said that the FBI wasn’t biased was not a throwaway conclusion at the end of the report, but a conclusion that’s examined in-depth and repeated with some frequency throughout the report. Chapters five and 12 of the more than 500-page report, for example, look at anti-Trump text messages sent by Peter Strzok, the FBI’s deputy director for counterintelligence, to see if Strzok had allowed his anti-Trump sentiments to affect the investigation.

Investigators took a deep look at Strzok’s conduct after they came across the texts that seemingly threatened the Trump campaign and examined internal FBI records of the meetings concerning Trump that Strzok was involved in. According to Horowitz, they found that “Strzok was not the sole decisionmaker for any of the specific investigative decisions examined,” nor was there any evidence that he exercised inappropriate influence over any investigative decisions.

The conclusion that there was no bias, in short, wasn’t “one line” — it was a conclusion they arrived at after examining a tremendous amount of evidence, and a major focus of the report.

Lie 3: Trump says the IG report says he did nothing wrong

The third Trump lie is that the IG report somehow exonerated him on the question of collusion with Russia during the campaign. “I did nothing wrong, there was no collusion, there was no obstruction. The IG report yesterday went a long way to show that,” Trump said. “I think that the Mueller investigation has been totally discredited.”

This is actually a number of different lies packed into three short sentences; a Russian nesting doll of lies, if you’ll pardon the metaphor.

The IG report did not come to any conclusions about the true nature of Trump-Russia ties. It only covered the appropriateness of the FBI’s conduct in 2016. It couldn’t come to any conclusions about obstruction of justice because Trump didn’t become president until 2017. Likewise, it couldn’t discredit the Mueller investigation because Mueller didn’t take over the investigation until President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey last May.

Lie 4: James Comey is a criminal

And that brings us to our final lie. Fox’s Doocy asked Trump a leading question — “Should James Comey be locked up?” — and the president responded as expected:

Certainly, they just seem like very criminal acts to me. What he did was criminal. What he did was so bad in terms of our Constitution, in terms of the well-being of our country.

Once again, Horowitz’s report closely examined questions raised by Comey’s conduct. He was harshly critical of the former FBI director — “In key moments, then Director Comey chose to deviate from the FBI’s and the Department’s established procedures and norms and instead engaged in his own subjective, ad hoc decisionmaking” — but there’s no evidence in the report that Comey violated any kind of criminal statute, let alone acted unconstitutionally.

In fact, the report concludes, Comey’s decisions during the Clinton email investigation, while questionable, came from his professional judgment and were not the result of any malign intent.

“Comey’s decision was the result of his consideration of the evidence that the FBI had collected during the course of the investigation and his understanding of the proof required to pursue a prosecution under the relevant statutes,” as Horowitz puts it when discussing his closing of the Clinton email case.

Trump’s characterization of the IG report is thus basically wrong in every way.

[Vox]

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