Impeachment proceedings against Trump

Can we get back to the issues please, that is what this forum is for, not discussing each other. Thank you!

Trump keep contradicting himself, calling it a phony witch hunt, then saying they are and they are trying to help the Democrats this election, then attacking our intelligence communities and Special Counsel, then blaming Obama for not doing anything about it. He was informed by the FBI that Russians were trying to infiltrate his campaign before he was elected, he's been briefed on classified intelligence with evidence of the attacks, and yet he claims it's fake news. If that behavior alone does not raise your suspicions, please ask yourself how you'd feel if this was President Obama in Trump's place and how you'd react. The m

Here’s How the FBI Investigation Into Russia and Trump Campaign Actually Started
By John R. Schindler • 05/28/18 9:50am

Of late, the president has taken to Twitter even more manically than usual, hurling invective at the FBI for its alleged illegalities toward him and his entourage. Over the weekend, “executive time” has birthed batches of presidential rage-tweets about the alleged “Spygate,” complete with Trump’s trademark unusual capitalizations and quotations. “With Spies, or ‘Informants’ as the Democrats like to call them because it sounds less sinister (but it’s not), all over my campaign, even from a very early date, why didn’t the crooked highest levels of the FBI or ‘Justice’ contact me to tell me of the phony Russia problem?” the president asked on Saturday, adding that “This whole Russia Probe is Rigged.” Trump piled on three more angry tweets on Sunday, including the bizarre question, “Who’s going to give back the young and beautiful lives (and others) that have been devastated and destroyed by the phony Russia Collusion Witch Hunt?”

Although it’s now evident that in mid-2016 the FBI used one or more informants to sniff around the Trump campaign, inquiring discreetly about connections to the Kremlin—a major concern for the Bureau when people with documented and troubling ties to Russia and its spy agencies like Carter Page and Michael Flynn appeared in Trump’s orbit—there was nothing untoward or disturbing about this. This is the FBI’s standard operating procedure in counterintelligence cases. Although Trump and his defenders have frequently stated that employing informants was illegal and scandalously inappropriate, that’s just one more Trumpian falsehood.

That particular lie was blown apart this weekend by Democratic Representative Adam Schiff, who has led the minority on the House Intelligence Committee in its doomed investigative efforts over the last year to get to the bottom of Trump’s Kremlin ties. These have been systematically stymied by that committee’s obstructionist and highly partisan Republican majority. “There is no evidence to support that spy theory,” Schiff stated, adding, “This is just … a piece of propaganda the president wants to put out and repeat.”

Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican, was equally blunt in his weekend comments on “Spygate,” explaining in an acid-etched interview that he has seen “no evidence” that the FBI spied on the Trump campaign. Since Rubio sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is less plagued by partisanship than its House counterpart, his comments deserve an airing.

Let me put my cards on the table: The counterintelligence investigation of Donald Trump was kicked off by not one, not two, but multiple SIGINT reports which set off alarm bells inside our Intelligence Community.

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence oversees and analyzes intelligence-related government activities, proposes legislation, and makes sure the United States’ intelligence activities are in accordance with the nation’s laws and the Constitution. The Committee’s 15 Senators (Eight Republicans, Six Democrats, and one Independent who caucuses with the Democrats) have the highest-level access to classified information, and the President, by law, must keep them fully informed. On the rare occasion the President chooses to restrict access to certain covert actions, he still must share information with the Intelligence Committee’s Chairman and Vice Chairman.

NOTABLE DEVELOPMENTS
July 3, 2018: The committee releases its Unclassified Summary of findings regarding the validity of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) of 2016 Russian election meddling. "The Committee finds that the overall judgments issued in the ICA were well-supported and the tradecraft was strong."

No, the FBI did NOT use the Steele Dossier as the basis for their concerns about the Trump campaign members. They had signals intelligence from foreign allies and their own legal surveillance prior to that which led to this being enough of a concern that they met with his campaign and have continued to investigate since. That Observer article I cited goes into all that.

Also, the Steele Dossier was initially paid for by Republicans trying to dig up dirt on fellow candidates. When Trump was chosen as the nominee, that's when Clinton and the DNC picked it up. It does not lessen the validity of the report in any way, shape or form, as significant portions of the report have since been validated by Congressional committees and charges brought by the Special Counsel.