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U.K. Spy Steele Claims John McCain Aide Leaked ‘Pee’ Dossier to BuzzFeed

Via Breitbart News

Anti-Trump dossier author Christopher Steele testified that he was “absolutely flabbergasted” when BuzzFeed published the dossier after an advisor to late Senator John McCain shared the controversial document with the media outlet purportedly against Steele’s wishes.

That tidbit was buried in a footnote on page 176 of the Justice Department’s recently released 476-page Inspector General (IG) report on the FBI’s Russia collusion investigation. Steele made the remarks about Buzzfeed and the McCain staff member during an interview with the IG.

The relevant footnote relates:

Steele testified in foreign litigation that he did not provide his reports to journalists or media organizations and did not authorize anyone to share them. According to the McCain Institute staff member’s testimony in the same litigation, Steele requested that the staff member meet with BuzzFeed, and that Steele neither requested nor prohibited the staff member from sharing the reports with BuzzFeed. Additionally, the staff member testified that Steele was aware that the staff member was furnishing Steele’s reports to The Washington Post.

Steele told the OIG that he trusted the staff member to handle his reports discretely and that the staff member betrayed that trust. Steele explained that the staff member had spent his career handling sensitive intelligence. Steele also said he understood from a former Ambassador that Senator McCain requested that Steele trust the staff member. Steele said he was “absolutely flabbergasted” when BuzzFeed published his election reports.

The unnamed McCain staff member is known to be David J. Kramer.

Kramer revealed in previous testimony that he held a meeting about the dossier with a reporter from BuzzFeed News, who he says snapped photos of the controversial document without Kramer’s permission when he left the room to go to the bathroom. That meeting was held at the McCain Institute office in Washington, Kramer stated.

BuzzFeed published the Christopher Steele dossier on January 10, 2017, setting off a firestorm of news media coverage about the document.

The Washington Post reported last February that Kramer received the dossier directly from Fusion GPS after McCain expressed interest in it.

Read the entire article HERE.

The Insider: National Security Mandarins Groomed Pete Buttigieg & Managed His Future

Via Consortium News

In his quest for front-runner status in the 2020 presidential campaign, Pete Buttigieg has crafted an image for himself as a maverick running against a broken establishment.

On the trail, he has invoked his distinction as the openly gay mayor of a de-industrialized Rust Belt town, as well as his experience as a Naval reserve intelligence officer who now claims to oppose “endless wars”. He insists that “there’s energy for an outsider like me,” promoting himself as “an unconventional candidate.”

When former Secretary of State John Kerry endorsed Joe Biden this December, Buttigieg went full maverick. “I have never been part of the Washington establishment,” he proclaimed, “and I recognize that there are relationships among senators who have been together on Capitol Hill as long as I’ve been alive and that is what it is.”

But a testy exchange between the South Bend mayor and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard during a Nov. 20 Democratic primary debate had already complicated Buttigieg’s branding campaign.

Like Buttigieg, Gabbard was a military veteran of the 9/11 generation. But she had taken an entirely different set of lessons from her grueling stint in Iraq than “Mayor Pete.” Her campaign had become an anti-war crusade, with opposition to destructive regime change wars serving as her leitmotif.

After ticking off her foreign policy credentials, Gabbard turned to Buttigieg and lit into him for stating his willingness to send U.S. troops to Mexico to crack down on drug cartels.

A visibly angry Buttigieg responded by accusing Gabbard of distorting his record, then quickly deflected to Syria, where he has argued for an indefinite deployment of occupying U.S. troops.

Rehashing well-worn criticism of Gabbard for meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during a diplomatic visit she took — her trip was devoted to de-escalating the U.S.-backed proxy war that had ravaged the country’s population — Buttigieg attacked the congresswoman for engaging with a “murderous dictator.”

Throughout the exchange, Buttigieg appeared shaken, as though his sense of inviolability had been punctured. Gabbard had clearly struck a vulnerable point by painting the self-styled outsider as a conventional D.C.-style politician unconsciously spouting interventionist bromides.

How could someone who served in the catastrophically wasteful U.S. wars in the Middle East, and who had seen their human toll, be reckless enough to propose sending U.S. troops to fight and possibly die in Mexico? “But Assad!” was the best response he could muster.

The remarkable dust-up highlighted a side of the 37-year-old political upstart that has been scarcely explored in mainstream U.S. media accounts of his rise to prominence. It revealed the real Buttigieg as a neoliberal cadre whose future was carefully managed by the mandarins of the national security state since almost the moment that he graduated from Harvard University.

After college, the Democratic presidential hopeful took a gig with a strategic communications firm founded by a former secretary of defense who raked in contracts with the arms industry. He moved on to a fellowship at an influential D.C. think tank described by its founder as “a counterpart to the neoconservatives of the 1970s.” Today, Buttigieg sits on that think tank’s board of advisors alongside some of the country’s most accomplished military interventionists.

Read the entire article HERE.

Communist China: ‘Private Ownership Of Guns’ In U.S. ‘Serious Problem,’ Must ‘Change’

Via The Daily Wire

Communist China, which currently has millions of people locked away in concentration camps, said in state-controlled media this week that the Second Amendment is a “serious problem” and that there needs to be “change” in how the American public views “private ownership of guns.”

The Global Times, which is Chinese state-run media, published the op-ed after a good guy with a gun in Texas stopped a shooting in a church.

China mocked the United States, saying that “shootings are shocking in a US allegedly governed by law”:

Private gun ownership is a tradition from the early days at the founding of the US. In a modern society, the problems created by this tradition have already exceeded the benefits. …

American society has already seen serious problems caused by the private ownership of guns, but their massive number has contributed to an enormous inertia. Many interest groups have benefited from it and some ordinary people have truly gained a sense of safety. To change this habit which has lasted hundreds of years, tremendous political courage and a rearrangement of interests is required.

Facts have proved that the US system is unable to handle the intricacies of countless issues around guns including politics, economics, law and order and public psychology. The country can neither manage the safe storage and use of so many guns owned by ordinary people, nor can it establish a new national system that bans or strictly restricts guns. It cannot even form an overwhelming opinion regarding gun issues.

China’s attack on the Second Amendment comes after Hong Kong protesters have requested to have their own Second Amendment so they can defend themselves from the oppressive communist Chinese government.

Read the entire article HERE.

Read the entire article HERE.

Cocks, Shots And A Drag Queen Mermaid: Here’s How CNN Rang In The New Year

Via The Daily Caller

CNN rang in the new year with its co-hosts taking tequila shots and talking about “the biggest cock in Hollywood” while a correspondent jumped into a rum bath with a drag queen mermaid.

Co-hosts Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen got ready for 2020 by downing shots of tequila during CNN’s live coverage of New Year’s Eve in Times Square on December 31. At one point, the two recalled when Cooper’s mom Gloria Vanderbilt asked at Cohen’s “‘Watch What Happens Live” Bravo program if he planned to ask her “who has the biggest cock in Hollywood.”

After debating about whether they were allowed to use the word “cock” on live television, Cooper went ahead and used the full phrase while explaining the story.

“She turns to me out of the blue and goes, ‘he’s [Cohen] not gonna ask me who has the biggest cock in Hollywood, is he?’” Cooper said. Vanderbilt died in June.

Cooper later apologized for saying “cock” on live television.

As the live program continued, the co-hosts went to CNN correspondent Randi Kaye, who was reporting from a party at a Key West, Florida bar. Kaye began interviewing a drag queen dressed as a mermaid laying in a bathtub full of rum.

She was pulled into the bathtub by the drag queen mermaid and began to shake up a bottle before taking a swig directly from it. Kaye then began to pour the alcohol over the drag queen.

Read the entire article HERE.

Hillary Clinton Slams Trump For Not Taking A More ‘Hands-Off’ Approach To Embassy Attack

Via The Babylon Bee (Satire)

WASHINGTON, D.C—Hillary Clinton has slammed President Trump on Twitter for not taking a more “hands-off” approach to the protests in Iraq that threatened American lives at the embassy there.

After Trump quickly sent Marines to defend Americans trapped at the embassy, Clinton immediately blasted him for taking such “rash, uncalled-for” action when he could have just “waited around a while to see what happens.”

“If I were president, I definitely would have let things play out,” she said. “Sending American troops to protect American lives seems a little hasty. What if you need to get a little shut-eye or recharge in your lizard person spawning chamber for a few hours?”

“I would have slept on it first.”

She later admitted her criticisms might not matter, because, “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

Meanwhile, Americans under siege at the embassy took a few moments to thank God that Hillary Clinton is not the president of the United States.

Check out all of the Bee’s takes on politics and culture HERE.

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