Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of forty-one. Sunrise is 6:35 AM and sunset 5:40 PM, for 11h 04m 51s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 75.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred seventy-second day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 1793, Pres. Washington holds the first recorded American cabinet meeting, at Mount Vernon, with Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of War Henry Knox and Attorney General Edmund Randolph. On this day in 1862, James Loom demonstrates a new cannon at Camp Randall: “a new breech-loading cannon at Camp Randall in Madison, Wisconsin The cannon was said to be effectively discharged 50 times in four minutes.”
Recommended for reading in full —
➤ Intel Committee Ranking Member Schiff Releases Democratic Response Memo:
“After reviewing the memorandum drafted by committee Republicans that was made public at the beginning of this month, the FBI rightly expressed its ‘grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.’
“Here are some of the material facts the Majority deliberately omitted:
· The FBI supplied information to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that Russia might be colluding with Trump campaign associates. DOJ provided the Court with a comprehensive explanation of Russia’s election interference including evidence that Russia courted another Trump foreign policy advisor, George Papadopoulos, and that Russian agents previewed their dissemination of information damaging to Hillary Clinton. Russian assistance would, as we would learn in the Papadopoulos plea, take the form of the anonymous disclosure of thousands of Hillary Clinton and DNC emails.
· The FBI had ample reason to believe that Carter Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power based on his history, including the fact that he had previously been a target of Russian recruitment, his travel to Russia, and other information. The renewals of the FISA were also appropriate and based on new information obtained by law enforcement.
· The FBI did disclose that those who employed Christopher Steele were likely motivated to discredit Trump’s presidential campaign. The Bureau used proper masking procedures so as not to reveal the identities of U.S. persons not subject to the FISA, but made clear that the likely purpose was opposition research.
· Contrary to the Majority’s assertions, the FBI and DOJ did not use a Yahoo News article to corroborate Steele; it was referenced alongside another article and a letter Page wrote to then FBI Director James Comey to inform the court of Page’s public denials.
“The Democratic response memo released today should put to rest any concerns that the American people might have as to the conduct of the FBI, the Justice Department and the FISC. Our extensive review of the initial FISA application and three subsequent renewals failed to uncover any evidence of illegal, unethical, or unprofessional behavior by law enforcement and instead revealed that both the FBI and DOJ made extensive showings to justify all four requests.
“The document that we are releasing today is the product of a good faith negotiation between the Minority and the FBI and DOJ. But it is unfortunate that the weekend release of the Democratic memo by the White House was delayed beyond what was necessary and to the advantage of those seeking to mislead the American public. From the beginning, the HPSCI Minority expressed its support for any limited redactions to protect sources and methods, as well as sensitive ongoing investigative equities, and these redactions were agreed to at the expert level over a week ago.
“Now that the public has a clearer understanding of the early phases of the investigation, it is time for our committee to return to the core investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, the role U.S. persons played in that interference and what we need to do to protect the country going forward.”
The memo is available here and here. A fact sheet from HPSCI Minority is here. The accompanying letter sent by the Department of Justice is here.
➤ Quinta Jurecic, Benjamin Wittes consider Takeaways From the House Intelligence Democrats’ Memo:
President Trump lost no time dismissing the memo released Saturday by the House intelligence committee Democrats in response to the earlier memo prepared by Rep. Devin Nunes on the origins of the Carter Page surveillance:
Trump is quite wrong that the Democratic memo is a bust. While the “Demo,” as we’ll call it for short, certainly contains its share of political rhetoric, the facts it alleges are worth serious consideration. If they are true even in substantial measure, let alone in all of their particulars, they rather lay waste to the original Nunes document. This despite a number of redactions in the Demo that apparently were the condition of its declassification and that make it hard to parse in some places.
The document is devastating because the core claim of ranking Democrat Adam Schiff and his colleagues is that the House intelligence committee majority left out key facts from its analysis in such fashion as to effectively lie about the FBI’s FISA application against former Trump adviser Carter Page in the fall of 2016. The supposedly left-out facts constitute the body of the Demo. And if the Democrats are being even generally accurate as to the material that the majority omitted from the original memo, then there is little left of the original document. Entitled “Correcting the Record—the Russia Investigations,” the document thus raises serious questions, certainly not for the first time, about whether Chairman Nunes and his colleagues are acting in good faith.
➤Ellen Nakashima reports Russian spies hacked the Olympics and tried to make it look like North Korea did it, U.S. officials say:
Russian military spies hacked several hundred computers used by authorities at the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in South Korea, according to U.S. intelligence.
They did so while trying to make it appear as though the intrusion was conducted by North Korea, what is known as a “false-flag” operation, said two U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
Officials in PyeongChang acknowledged that the Games were hit by a cyberattack during the Feb. 9 Opening Ceremonies but had refused to confirm whether Russia was responsible. That evening there were disruptions to the Internet, broadcast systems and the Olympics website. Many attendees were unable to print their tickets for the ceremony, resulting in empty seats.
Analysts surmise the disruption was retaliation against the International Olympic Committee for banning the Russian team from the Winter Games due to doping violations. No officials from Russia’s Olympic federation were allowed to attend, and while some athletes were permitted to compete under the designation “Olympic Athletes from Russia,” they were unable to display the Russian flag on their uniforms and, if they won medals, their country’s anthem was not played.
As of early February, the Russian military agency GRU had access to as many as 300 Olympic-related computers, according to an intelligence report this month.
➤ Marc Fisher reports Inside the Manafort money machine: A decade of influence-peddling, lavish spending and alleged fraud:
As Donald Trump crisscrossed the nation promising to drain the swamp, two of his top advisers were busy illegally building a colossal fortress of riches deep inside that swamp, according to federal prosecutors.
For a decade prior and on through Trump’s populist crusade, Paul Manafort and Rick Gates used offshore accounts, hidden income, falsified documents and laundered cash to maintain Manafort’s lush life of multiple homes, fine art, exquisite clothes and exotic travel, the government says.
In a richly detailed expanded indictment filed Thursday, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III parted the curtain shielding how two longtime Washington influence merchants worked the system. The government contends that Manafort, who was Trump’s campaign chairman for five months before being fired, used people all around him, from his buddy Gates to banks, clients and the IRS, to build a life of conspicuous consumption.
Gates, who was Manafort’s deputy in their lobbying firm and on the Trump campaign, pleaded guilty Friday to conspiracy and lying to the FBI, cutting a deal with prosecutors to give them information that could help Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
➤ Building the World’s Biggest Stage Out of Lego blocks:
After being bullied in school, Alexandro Kröger Degerfeldt decided to build a world of his own. Using Lego, Degerfeldt found refuge in replicating and filming the performances of his favorite reality show, the Eurovision talent competition. Fourteen years later, he has accumulated thousands of views on his videos and has even worked with the show itself. What started off as an escape from bullying has now become Degerfeldt’s biggest dream come true. Now, he’s showing the bullies who’s boss.