The FBI Has Established a “Payback Squad” to Target Trump Foes — Report

Composed of agents who are deeply loyal to Trump

By Chris Walker

This article was originally published by Truthout

The FBI has reportedly established a team of agents, informally known as a “payback squad,” that is tasked with pursuing investigations (and eventually charges) against individuals perceived to be the political enemies of President Donald Trump. 

NOTUS reported on the details of the so-called payback squad, citing four individuals with knowledge of its existence, including two current government officials, a former official, and another person with an understanding of how it operates. 

According to the report, the agents who are part of the squad are deeply loyal, as they “know what they’re signing up for,” the publication stated. 

The payback squad was formed about a year ago. The squad was assembled to pursue Trump’s political foes, similar to the way the FBI has targeted former FBI Director James Comey, who was indicted last month over accusations that he had made a threat to the president’s life.

Comey — who was fired by Trump in 2017 in what was widely perceived as political retribution — faces criminal charges based on his posting a supposedly “threatening” picture of seashells on social media last year. The shells were arranged in the numbers “86” and “47.”

86 is a commonly used restaurant term that means to “throw out” or “get rid of,” while 47 refers to Trump, the 47th U.S. president. Trump has claimed the number is used to express a desire to see another person killed.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) alleges that Comey “knowingly and willfully made a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States,” even though Comey immediately removed the post when people made that inference, and issued a public apology, too.

A senior FBI official denied that the group uses the “payback squad” name, but confirmed that an advisory team for FBI Director Kash Patel was formed last year to target and discredit federal officials who took part in investigations against Trump.

Disgraced former Rhode Island general Mike Flynn just ripped you off for $1.25 million

DOJ payout to Mike Flynn has J6-ers lining up at the trough

Liz Dye

The Department of Justice announced that it was “settling” a malicious prosecution case with Michael Flynn for $1.25 million.

Flynn’s claims were entirely without merit, and a federal judge had already dismissed them once. But the Justice Department decided to pay him anyway, calling it a righteous vindication of Trump’s constant whining that he was illegally targeted by the FBI and Robert Mueller.

"Those who instigated the Russia Collusion Hoax and Crossfire Hurricane abused their power to mislead the American people and tarnish the reputations of President Trump and his supporters,” a DOJ spokesperson told ABC. “Today’s settlement, secured by this Justice Department, is an important step in redressing that historic injustice."

Encouraged by this blatant corruption, Trump’s most ardent supporters are demanding their own cut. This week, a group of January 6 rioters filed a class action lawsuit demanding recompense for the injuries they suffered when they attempted to overturn the election.

The stage is set for the wholesale looting of the federal coffers by Trump and his MAGA allies.

Read his own words: Trump's brain is gone

The guy with the nuclear launch codes

Stephen Robinson

Donald Trump’s recent interviews with Time and The Atlantic revealed a president who is completely unhinged and incoherent. Sadly, that’s not news. 

But what stood out is that Trump is consistently confused and disconnected from reality even on issues that are supposedly in his wheelhouse.

Trump has always been an ignoramus who masks his intellectual shortcomings with bombast and declarations of his own brilliance, but his rambling nonsensical responses in these latest interviews should set off alarms — especially in light of all the media attention and scrutiny Joe Biden received after his disastrous debate performance or when Special Counsel Robert Hur described him as “a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”

Trump, who turns 79 in June, is the oldest person ever elected president. His repetitive speech patterns, frequent use of empty phrases, and overall rambling discourse are too often graded on a curve.

White House officials and pandering Republicans might boast about Trump’s boundless energy in a manner that would shame North Korean state media, but the Time and Atlantic interviews tell a very different story.

5 years after the Mueller report into Russian meddling in the 2016 US election on behalf of Trump

Mueller did a poor job of putting the facts about Russia's election interference before the public

Howard Manly, The Conversation

In the long list of Donald Trump’s legal woes, the Mueller report – which was released in redacted form on April 18, 2019 – appears all but forgotten.

But the nearly two-year investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election dominated headlines – and revealed what has become Trump’s trademark denial of any wrongdoing. For Trump, the Russia investigation was the first “ridiculous hoax” and “witch hunt.”

Mueller didn’t help matters. “While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” the special counsel stated.

62 Things Trump Did That You Forgot About To Preserve Your Sanity

Donald Trump's running for president again, so you can look forward to more of his "fun" ideas — like the time he tried to buy Greenland.

By Ryan Grenoble, HuffPost

Donald Trump has returned to the news cycle amid a deluge of stories about a dinner meeting he hosted with a white supremacist and Ye, the rapper previously known as Kanye West.

It’s a reminder of the chaotic years of his presidency, as well as a foreboding ― though hopefully instructive ― warning about how he would wield power if elected again.

If past is prologue, let’s take a moment to remember just how unsettling things got during the Trump administration, with this not-even-remotely-exhaustive list of weird and bad stuff he attempted while in office:

Unsealed court documents show the FBI was looking for evidence Trump violated the Espionage Act and other laws

Here’s how the documents seized show possible wrongdoing

Clark D. Cunningham, Georgia State University

A police officer drives by Mar-a-Lago on August 9, 2022. 
Giorgio Viera/AFP via Getty Images

The FBI recovered confidential and top-secret items from Mar-a-Lago during its Aug. 8, 2022, search of the estate – pointing to former President Donald Trump’s potential violation of several federal laws.

A Florida federal judge – the same one who issued the warrant to search Trump’s estate – ordered on Aug. 12, 2022, that the document be made public – along with an inventory of items seized during the FBI’s raid.

The unsealed documents seem to indicate that the U.S. Department of Justice believes Trump may have violated the Espionage Act, as well as other criminal laws relating to the handling of public records.

Clark Cunningham, Georgia State University legal scholar and an expert on search warrants, explains how this new information connects to possible criminal wrongdoing by the former president.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland discussed the FBI’s search
on Aug. 11, 2022. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

These laws were potentially violated

The released warrant authorized the FBI to search for evidence that Trump has violated three key laws.

First, there is the Espionage Act, which applies to possession of information related to the national defense that could be used to harm the U.S. or aid a foreign adversary. 

This law applies to someone who, like Trump, initially had lawful possession of such information but who, after their time in office ended, refuses to return it to the government.

Then, there is obstruction of justice, which includes concealing documents to obstruct a federal investigation.

Finally, there is the Public Records statute, which prohibits someone entrusted with a public record from “concealing” that document.

Get Ready For Trump’s Next Act— ’Vindication And Attack’

And you thought be was bad BEFORE impeachment

By Terry H. Schwadron, DCReport Opinion Editor

To watch Donald Trump disrepect the National Anthem just before his acquittal, CLICK HERE.

Even as the Republican Senate majority was acquitting Donald Trump of impeachment charges, one could sense the country bracing for the impending retaliating boomerang.

Trump is never gracious. Even in would-be victory, he is sure to be boastful about beating the so-called witch hunt.

The next step, naturally, will be vindication and attack.

The vote was almost without drama since almost all senators had declared their intentions. The exception, of course, was the emotional decision by Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) to convict. He was the sole senator to break with the GOP. After closing speeches filled with self-serving hyperbole, the Senate finally got to the predicted vote. Democrats held together in a minority.

Susan Collins (R-Maine) insisted Trump has learned from the flawed scheme in shaking down Ukrainian officials for personal political gain that gave rise to the removal vote. She trusted Trump would refrain from other such actions again. Trump apparently dismissed Collins’ suggestion and told news anchors he had done nothing wrong.

Congress Must Weigh Trump’s Poisonous Narcissism As Well As His Corruption

Psychological factors need to be considered as well as legal considerations in this impeachment

By Bandy X. Lee

Leading psychiatrists and I, along with more than 650 other mental health professionals, submitted a “Petition to the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives,” to include our statement on the psychological dangers of the president. 

It reads: “We are speaking out at this time because … as the time of possible impeachment approaches, Donald Trump has the real potential to become ever more dangerous, a threat to the safety of our nation.” 

We believe we have an ethical obligation to warn of the danger that Mr. Trump poses as the impeachment process proceeds and have offered ourselves for consultation.

The World Mental Health Coalition was formed to step in where we believe our own professional associations have failed in leadership. 

The American Psychiatric Association’s own ethics guideline states: “Psychiatrists are encouraged to serve society by advising and consulting with the executive, legislative, and judiciary branches of the government.”

We are deeply concerned about the president’s mental instability, which continues to go unmanaged alongside his unchecked proximity to nuclear weapons and other war-making powers

Trump is getting nuttier

Trump’s 53-minute Fox rant is another dangerous sign of his worsening mental state: Yale psychiatrist

By Bandy X. Lee, DC Report @Raw Story

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the White House doctor said of Donald Trump’s recent, sudden visit to Walter Reed Hospital: “Despite some speculation, the President … did not undergo any specialized cardiac or neurologic evaluations.”

You don’t have to be a medical professional to recognize that the patterns of the unscheduled visit, interrupting the weekend on a Saturday evening, conform more closely to a medical emergency than a routine check-up.

Just as the reality of Mr. Trump’s corruption and criminality is catching up with him through the impeachment hearings, the reality of his mental and physical condition cannot help but catch up with him.

Some of this was on full display in his highly concerning, 53-minute breathless outpour of grievances that his interview with Fox and Friends on Friday morning became.

He reverted to conspiracy theories—as he often does under stress—of Barack Obama’s wire surveillance of him, a coup in the works from the beginning, and the claim that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 election and had a secret DNC server.

These are the very self-defeating, blatantly abnormal signs that have raised alarms for psychiatrists and neurologists for years.

Reveal Trump’s moral loathsomeness

Most Devastating of All: Mueller’s Indictment of Trump’s Character

By Robert Reich

Democrats in Congress and talking heads on television will be consumed in the coming weeks by whether the evidence in the Mueller report, especially of obstruction of justice, merits impeachment.  

In addition, the question of “wink-wink” cooperation with Russia still looms. Mueller’s quote of Trump, when first learning a special counsel had been appointed – “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked” – has already become a national tagline. 

Why, Americans wonder, would Trump be “fucked” if he hadn’t done something so awful as to cause its revelation to “fuck” him?

We’ll also have Mueller’s own testimony before Congress, and Congress’s own investigations of Trump.

But let’s be real. Trump will not be removed by impeachment. No president has been. With a Republican Senate controlled by the most irresponsible political hack ever to be majority leader, the chances are nil.

Which means Trump will have to be removed the old-fashioned way – by voters in an election 19 months away.

Here’s a list of specific, documented reasons to believe Trump is a witting or unwitting Russian agent

If Trump isn’t a Russian agent, ‘he is doing a pretty good imitation of one’

By Matthew Chapman

On Friday, The New York Times revealed that the FBI probe now run by special counsel Robert Mueller investigated President Donald Trump as a Russian asset, starting in the aftermath of the president’s decision to fire FBI director James Comey.

But this is not a surprise to Max Boot, a conservative opponent of Trump. 

In an editorial for the Washington Post in Sunday, Boot outlined examples of how Trump’s history and behavior makes him look like he prioritizes Russian interests over American ones.

Among the reasons Boot cites:

•  $109 billion in all-cash purchases of Trump real estate properties by people in the former Soviet Union;
• Trump’s alleged attempts to build in Moscow during the campaign;
• Trump’s urging of Russians to hack Hillary Clinton’s e-mails on the campaign trail on the same day that Russia-linked hackers tried to do exactly that; 
• Dozens of contacts between the campaign and Russian operatives including the infamous Trump Tower meeting;
• His campaign manager Paul Manafort sharing poll data with a Russian intelligence operative while in debt to a Russian oligarch;
• His adviser Roger Stone’s alleged advance noticeof the Russia-linked WikiLeaks dump of the Podesta emails;
• Trump bragging to the Russian ambassador about how the Comey firing took pressure off of him in the Russia investigation;
• Trump’s refusal to consistently acknowledge Russian interference in the election and attacks on U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials who offer evidence they did;
• Trump’s praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin and the right-wing puppet dictators he supports;
• Trump’s attacks on institutions like the European Union and NATO that challenge Putin’s power;
• Trump’s total servility to Putin at the Helsinki meeting;
• Trump’s support for Russian military aggression both past and present; and
• Trump’s pro-Russia foreign policy decisions like withdrawing from Syria.

FBI concerned Trump is a traitor for the Russians

This is WAY more serious than collusion

Jen Hayden  Daily Kos Staff

Move over Tea Pot Dome scandal and move over Watergate, there’s a newer, bigger, more dangerous political scandal coming to light—the FBI initiated an investigation into whether Donald Trump, President of the United States, is working on behalf of the Russian government, against American interests.

Repeat: the FBI opened a counterintelligence operation because they had reason to believe the president was not acting in the interests of the United States. 

If true, it amounts to nothing short of treason. To gauge just how big this scandal truly is, let’s look at reactions from legal experts, former U.S. Intelligence officers and journalists. 

First up, Frank Figliuzzi, former Assistant Director for Counterintelligence at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

He’s somebody who understands precisely what it would take for the FBI to take the drastic step of opening a criminal investigation into the sitting President of the United States.

Figliuzzi says the FBI would never open such an investigation based purely on Trump’s behavior, that they would have other hard evidence, such as damning audio intercepts.

Through the Looking Glass with Trump

He Unloads a Barrage of Tweets Out of Fantasy Land

By Terry H. Schwadron, DCReport New York Editor

Trump has ended a newsy week with a barrage of what by even his own standards are pretty down-is-up and untrue statements.

For a president increasingly isolated and facing a growing number of challenges from the world, politics and incoming investigations, there is a distinct reflection of self-delusion and an air of desperate flailing strong enough for all to sense. It’s a sign that we all should strap in for more as these investigations come closer to him.

Indeed, “The White House is adopting what one official termed a ‘shrugged shoulders’ strategy for adverse news, calculating that most GOP base voters will believe whatever the president tells them to believe,” according to one Washington Post report.

Trump shows no respect

The Rule of Law

By Robert Reich

Democracies depend on what’s known as the “rule of law.” It’s based on three fundamental principles. Trump is violating every one of them.

The first is that no person is above the law, not even a president. Which means a president cannot stop an investigation into his alleged illegal acts.

Yet in recent weeks Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who at least had possessed enough integrity to recuse himself from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump’s possible collusion with Russia in the 2016 election, and replaced him with an inexperienced loyalist hack, Matthew G. Whitaker – whose only distinction to date has been loud and public condemnation of the investigation.

As a conservative legal commentator on CNN, Whitaker even suggested that a clever attorney general could secretly starve the investigation of funds.

There’s no question why Trump appointed Whitaker. When asked by the Daily Caller, Trump made it clear: “As far as I’m concerned this is an investigation that should have never been brought. It should have never been had…. It’s an illegal investigation.”

Why Republicans are worried about the midterm elections

A Democratic majority would mean actual oversight of Trump

By Jake Johnson, staff writer for Common Dreams

Horrified by the very real possibility that Democrats will retake control of the House of Representatives in November, Republican lawmakers are reportedly circulating a private spreadsheet that has been dubbed the "hell list," which consists of investigations the GOP fears Democrats will launch if they are successful in the upcoming midterms.

According to Axios, which obtained a copy of the spreadsheet, the document "catalogs more than 100 formal requests from House Democrats this Congress, spanning nearly every committee."

"The spreadsheet includes requests for administration officials to be grilled by committee staff, requests for hearings to obtain sworn testimony, efforts to seize communications about controversial policies and personnel decisions, and subpoena threats," Axios reported on Sunday. "These demands would turn the Trump White House into a 24/7 legal defense operation."

While the GOP's control of the House has allowed them to shut down the minority party's investigative requests—which have touched a wide range of topics, from President Donald Trump's tax returns to the federal government's wholly inadequate response to Hurricane Maria—the prospect of Democrats winning back the House has "churned Republican stomachs," as it would give Democrats the subpoena power they currently lack.

Here are just some of the items on the GOP's spreadsheet, as reported by Axios:

When Truth Isn't Truth

That would be every time Trump speaks or tweets

By Gleb Tsipursky for Common Dreams

“Truth isn’t truth” according to Rudy Giuliani, a statement he made on August 19th on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

The phrase was immediately condemned widely as embodying the Trump administration’s complete disregard for the facts.

Yet a closer look at Giuliani’s underlying message shows an underlying and deeply strategic approach to undermining the truth. 

Namely, he deployed tactics similar to those used by “scientists” producing industry-sponsored studies rejecting human-caused climate change and links between tobacco and cancer.

The transcript of the exchange reveals that Giuliani made his verbal blunder in the context of defending Donald Trump’s unwillingness to testify in front of a grand jury for Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.

According to Giuliani, “I am not going to be rushed into having him testify so that he gets trapped into perjury. And when you tell me that, you know, he should testify because he’s going to tell the truth and he shouldn’t worry, well that’s so silly because it’s somebody’s version of the truth. Not the truth.”

The moderator, Chuck Todd, responded: "Truth is truth."

Then, Giuliani said: "No, it isn’t truth. Truth isn’t truth." 

Trump is relentlessly attacking American institutions

The Constitutional Crisis is NOW

By Robert Reich

I keep hearing that if Trump fires Mueller we’ll face a constitutional crisis.

Or if Mueller subpoenas Trump to testify and Trump defies the subpoena, it’s a constitutional crisis.

Or if Mueller comes up with substantial evidence that Trump is guilty of colluding with Russia or of obstructing justice but the House doesn’t move to impeach him, we’ll have a constitutional crisis.

I have news for you. We’re already in a constitutional crisis. For a year and a half the president of the United States has been carrying out a systemic attack on the institutions of our democracy.

A constitutional crisis does not occur suddenly like a coup that causes a government to collapse. It occurs gradually, as a system of government is slowly weakened.

The current crisis has been unfolding since the waning days of the 2016 campaign when Trump refused to say whether he’d be bound by the election results if Hillary won.

It continued through March 4, 2017 when Trump claimed, without evidence, that Obama had wiretapped his phones in the Trump Tower during the campaign.

Rudy explains the Constitution

For more cartoons by Tom Tomorrow, CLICK HERE.

Unbelievable

For more cartoons by Tom Tomorrow, CLICK HERE.

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