Activists Prank CPAC Attendees Into Waving Russian Flags At Trump

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Activists Prank CPAC Attendees Into Waving Russian Flags At Trump

NATIONAL HARBOR, MARYLAND—When President Donald Trump took the stage Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, he was greeted with cheers, chants of "USA," and dozens of Russian flags.

Two young, progressive activists from DC, Jason Charter and Ryan Clayton with the group Americans Take Action, purchased tickets to the conference, and handed out nearly 1,000 flags to attendees as a prank. After they were thrown out of the conference, they told TPM they wanted to "shed light on an important issue"—namely, the drip of revelations of backchannel communications between the Russian government and the Trump campaign—and allow people to "get a laugh out of their day."

Charter, 22, told TPM by phone that he and Clayton organized the prank in order to "honor Trump's relationship with Putin." He said almost no one at CPAC seemed to realize the flag he handed them bore the horizontal red, white, and blue stripes of the Russian Federation underneath Trump's name.

"I asked people if they wanted a Trump flag and they took it," Charter said. "Many Trump supporters were proudly waving their Russian Trump flag."

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It's really a shame the CPAC attendees didn't realize what they were waving. Supposed conservatives who have always fought against the kind of marxism that Putin represents are willing to overlook it in their adulation of Trump, which shows that they're willing to the let the ends justify the means to GOP power. It also underscores Trump's Russia problem, and now those photos are out, and they're symbolic. This prank was well done.
 
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A House Republican now wants a special prosecutor on the Trump-Russia scandals

Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican who bedeviled the Obama administration with inquiries into Benghazi and the IRS, thinks the alleged ties between President Trump’s campaign and Russia are worth investigating — and wants a special prosecutor to do it.

His remarks on HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher Friday broke with the party line from the House GOP, which has been reluctant to call for aggressive investigations into Trump.

“We’re going to ask the intelligence committees of the House and Senate to investigate within the special areas they oversee,” Issa said. Maher interjected that that wasn’t enough — Attorney General Jeff Sessions should recuse himself and appoint an independent prosecutor.

Then Issa agreed: “You’re right,” he said. “You cannot have somebody, a friend of mine, Jeff Sessions, who was on the campaign and who was an appointee. You’re going to need to use the special prosecutor’s statute and office.”​
 
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Sessions met with Russian envoy twice last year, encounters he later did not disclose

Then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) spoke twice last year with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Justice Department officials said, encounters he did not disclose when asked about possible contacts between members of President Trump’s campaign and representatives of Moscow during Sessions’s confirmation hearing to become attorney general.

One of the meetings was a private conversation between Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that took place in September in the senator’s office, at the height of what U.S. intelligence officials say was a Russian cyber campaign to upend the U.S. presidential race.
The previously undisclosed discussions could fuel new congressional calls for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russia’s alleged role in the 2016 presidential election. As attorney general, Sessions oversees the Justice Department and the FBI, which have been leading investigations into Russian meddling and any links to Trump’s associates. He has so far resisted calls to recuse himself.




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Bush's ethics lawyer on Sessions talks with Russia ambassador: 'Good way to go to jail'

Richard Painter, the former White House ethics lawyer to President George W. Bush from 2005 to 2007, blasted Attorney General Jeff Sessions after it was reported that he spoke with the Russian ambassador while Trump was on the campaign trail.

"Misleading the Senate in sworn testimony about one own contacts with the Russians is a good way to go to jail"​
 
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Flynn, Kushner, Sessions... who's next?

WH Now Says Flynn Had Meeting With Russian Ambassador At Trump Tower

The phone calls with the Russian ambassador that led to Michael Flynn's ouster as national security adviser were an afterthought Thursday as Attorney General Jeff Sessions stepped in front of TV cameras and addressed revelations that he had met twice with that envoy during the campaign.
So it was a good moment for the White House to confirm to the New York Times that, in addition to those calls, Flynn met with ambassador Sergey Kislyak for about 20 minutes at Trump Tower in December.

Spokeswoman Hope Hicks told the Times that Flynn, in addition to President Trump's advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner, met with Kislyak to build a relationship and "establish a line of communication."
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Obama Administration Rushed to Preserve Intelligence of Russian Election Hacking


On Jan. 2, administration officials learned that Mr. Kislyak — after leaving the State Department meeting — called Mr. Flynn, and that the two talked multiple times in the 36 hours that followed. American intelligence agencies routinely wiretap the phones of Russian diplomats, and transcripts of the calls showed that Mr. Flynn urged the Russians not to respond, saying relations would improve once Mr. Trump was in office, according to multiple current and former officials.



But what was going on in the meetings was unclear to the officials, and the intercepted communications did little to clarify matters — the Russians, it appeared, were arguing about how far to go in interfering in the presidential election. What intensified the alarm at the Obama White House was a campaign of cyberattacks on state electoral systems in September, which led the administration to deliver a public accusation against the Russians in October.​
 
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Forget Comey. The Real Story Is Russia’s War on America

Why are we focusing on who leaked what to whom, when our democracy is under siege?

The starkest aspect of Comey’s prepared statement was the president's lack of curiosity about the long-running, deep-reaching, well-executed and terrifyingly effective Russian attack on American democracy. This was raised more than once in the hearing — that after Trump was briefed in January on the intelligence community’s report, which emphasized ongoing activity directed by the Kremlin against the United States, he has not subsequently evinced any interest in what can be done to protect us from another Russian assault. The president is interested in his own innocence, or the potential guilt of others around him — but not at all in the culpability of a foreign adversary, or what it meant. This is utterly astonishing.

Since the January intelligence report, the public’s understanding of the threat has not expanded. OK, Russia meddled in the election — but so what? Increasingly, responsibility for this is born by the White House, which in seeking to minimize the political damage of “Trump/Russia” is failing to craft a response to the greatest threat the United States and its allies have ever faced.

Even if the president and his team were correct, and the Comey testimony definitively cleared the president of potential obstruction of justice or collusion charges — even if that were true, that does not also exonerate Russia. Nonetheless, this is a line the president seems to want drawn.
So here are the real issues — about Russia; about the brutal facts we have yet to face; and about some hard questions we need to ask ourselves, and our political leaders, and our president.

1. No matter what is true or not, we have moved toward the fractured, inward-looking, weakened America that President Putin wants to see.

2. Russia has altered American policies, our relationships with our allies and our view of our place in the world.

3. It will happen again; it is still happening now.
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See link for analysis of the three above points. It's well worth your time.
 
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CNN Exclusive: US suspects Russian hackers planted fake news behind Qatar crisis


US investigators believe Russian hackers breached Qatar's state news agency and planted a fake news report that contributed to a crisis among the US' closest Gulf allies, according to US officials briefed on the investigation.

The FBI recently sent a team of investigators to Doha to help the Qatari government investigate the alleged hacking incident, Qatari and US government officials say.

Intelligence gathered by the US security agencies indicates that Russian hackers were behind the intrusion first reported by the Qatari government two weeks ago, US officials say. Qatar hosts one of the largest US military bases in the region.

The alleged involvement of Russian hackers intensifies concerns by US intelligence and law enforcement agencies that Russia continues to try some of the same cyber-hacking measures on US allies that intelligence agencies believe it used to meddle in the 2016 elections.
US officials say the Russian goal appears to be to cause rifts among the US and its allies. In recent months, suspected Russian cyber activities, including the use of fake news stories, have turned up amid elections in France, Germany and other countries.
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