Think the repubs are going to attack her for releasing the transcript?

Feinstein putting her country first. This is what it looks like, folks.

That's a classic.

She knows this is gonna make the Republicans on the committee look bad, esp. Grassley, and she knows the timing of this is perfect, cause the Republicans are being so obvious in their cover up.

reading the transcript now.....

But this is just another straw on the camels back.

so the GOP can't claim this was a leak of classified information.

Now there's this.

Poor Joy!

One thing leads to another. I wonder if Rachel's newscast on Gravel last night had anything to do with DiFi deciding today would be a good day to do this?

Is she going to face censure for this? What are the rules? Could she be thrown off the committee? If it was allowed, why didn't someone do it before? So many questions. This is huge!

but refused to release the full materials. The operative word is selectively. Boom, releasing all of it will undermine their weak sauce spin.

Last edited Tue Jan 9, 2018, 07:53 PM - Edit history (1)

"Feinstein's move came days after Grassley and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) referred Steele to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation. Feinstein said Grassley and Graham did not consult committee Democrats beforehand."

The senate has so many quirky rules I'm sure she found one that let her enter it into the congressional record.

But really, what is grassley or mcconnel going to do? By this time next year she could very well be the majority leader again, and payback can be a bitch.

....some interesting shows in store for us tonight on CNN and MSNBC.

Rachel, you get pages 1-100; Chris H, you get 101-200...

That is frightening. One of Steele's Russian sources was probably bumped off by Putin.

I hope Grassley blows a gasket.

He's been achin' for a takin' for quite awhile. He's just being ol' country boy ornery and enjoying every minute. It is good to see him run over by a steel plow.

This is how the Democrats should be acting. Hook your hineys up to a steel plow and let's get this Republican mess cleaned up! Too bad it took a woman to show you how!

So FBI has info from multiple sources.

The British ex-spy who authored a dossier of allegations against then-presidential candidate Donald Trump was told the FBI had someone inside Trump’s network providing agents with information, according to a newly released transcript of a congressional interview.

Glenn R. Simpson, founder of the research firm Fusion GPS, spoke to investigators with the Senate Judiciary Committee for 10 hours in August. As the partisan fight over Russian interference in the 2016 election has intensified, Simpson has urged that his testimony be released, and a copy of the transcript was made public Tuesday.

It was released by the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California. That decision marks the most serious break yet in the cooperative relationship she has had with the Republican chairman of the committee, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa).

Fusion GPS was hired in mid-2016 by a lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee to dig into Trump’s background. Earlier that year, the firm had been probing Trump for a conservative website funded by a GOP donor, but that client stopped paying for the work after it became clear Trump would win the GOP nomination, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Russia probe got its start with a drunken conversation, an ex-spy, WikiLeaks and a distracted FBI. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)

After Democrats began paying for the research, Fusion GPS hired Christopher Steele, a former senior officer with Britain’s intelligence service, MI6, to gather intelligence about any ties between the Kremlin and Trump and his associates. Steele’s reports were eventually compiled into a dossier alleging the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin — a claim the president has repeatedly denied.

Steele first reached out to the FBI with his concerns in early July 2016, according to people familiar with the matter. When they re-interviewed him in early October, agents made it clear, according to Simpson’s testimony released Tuesday, that they believed some of what Steele had told them.

“My understanding was that they believed Chris at this point — that they believed Chris might be credible because they had other intelligence that indicated the same thing and one of those pieces of intelligence was a human source from inside the Trump organization,” Simpson said. Using the parlance of spies and law enforcement officials, Simpson said the FBI had a “walk-in’’ whistleblower from someone in Trump’s organization.

In recent weeks, as the political fights about the Russia investigation and the dossier have intensified, Simpson has urged the committee to release the full transcript of his interview, arguing that Republicans are trying to obscure, rather than reveal, what happened in 2016.

Through much of 2017, Feinstein and Grassley made joint requests for information about Russia and the FBI’s investigation of election interference. In the fall, however, tensions between Grassley and Feinstein spilled out into the open as Grassley requested information from the FBI and other sources without Feinstein’s support.

Increasingly, the Democrats and Republicans on the committee are going in different directions — with Grassley moving to investigate matters involving Clinton when she was secretary of state and Feinstein concentrating on Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Simpson has accused conservative lawmakers of acting in bad faith, Republicans have accused Steele, while working for Fusion GPS, of misleading the FBI. Last week, Grassley made a criminal referral to the Justice Department, suggesting Steele may have lied to the FBI. While details of the referral are classified, it appears to be related to Mr. Steele’s contacts with reporters during the election campaign.

Republicans have attacked the credibility of Steele’s dossier. Democrats say such attacks are an effort to discredit the ongoing probe by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into whether any Trump associates coordinated with Russian agents to interfere in the presidential election.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/feinstein-releases-testimony-of-glenn-simpson-whose-research-firm-fusion-gps-was-behind-trump-dossier/2018/01/09/15da150a-f562-11e7-beb6-c8d48830c54d_story.html?utm_term=.7ecfa95b33ec

That said, I support her over the Republicans. There’s no partisan primary in my state.

I posted this on another thread:


Call DiFi's office. Either via the usual Congressional (202) numbers OR the TOLL FREE Capitol Hill switchboard numbers in my sig line.

Or look her up online and call one of her regional offices.

TELL HER "THANK YOU!!!" THANK her! Thank her for her courage and willingness to GO BOLD! Tell whatever staffer picks up that this is great and how much you love it and appreciate it and how grateful you are that she showed TRUE guts.

As a parent, I learned that you don't reward or reinforce bad behavior, BUT, you ENCOURAGE more good behavior by rewarding and reinforcing that. We certainly are able to call and complain when they do things of which we don't approve, right? Therefore, when they do something right, they need to hear the "attagirls" and "attaboys" that they've earned. If they get a lot of those, it will encourage them to do more of the same.

Add calcium supplements to their backbones!!! It MATTERS. And it makes a difference, sometimes a BIG difference.

Please never forget this "Golden Rule" of representative democracy: If they think YOU don't care, they won't, EITHER!

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=10079162

I’ll continue to try calling, but I did send her an email thanking her.

That’s a great idea of yours!

I seem to remember Feinstein's expression caught on camera as she and other dems left a meeting after being briefed by Comey about Russian interference.

https://shareblue.com/watch-lawmakers-appear-shaken-after-comey-briefing-on-russia/

Nixon's white house, when the Watergate thing exploded.

Thank you Sen. Feinstein.

I have had issues off and on with DIFI over the years - but she earned my vote solidly on this one.

It was a stone cold badass move. It was also patriotic and could possibly be the most important thing to leading to the truth coming out and exposing the Republican traitors and the conspiracy with Russia to steal an election.

Thank you Senator Feinstein.

Simpson says in the transcript says that as a result of the publication of the Steele dossier, someone has already been killed. Clearly, he referred to a Russian source for Steel, but I'm seeing on twitter lots of trolls coming out and saying that this explains Seth Rich's murder. (And of course Hillary is behind it!)

If you see that misinformation pop up, point out that Seth Rich was killed in July 2016 -- six months BEFORE the dossier was published in Jan 2017.

I saw her at that odd Trump conference today and was not impressed. But this act totally redeems her in my eyes.

Now this should stop, or at least slow down, the runaway GOP train trying to deflect from the Steele memos.