In Shocker, FBI and NSA Testify That Trump Is Full of Shit

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Today’s big event is the testimony before Congress of FBI director James Comey and NSA chief Mike Rogers. Everyone seems very excited about this except me. Let’s listen in:

“The F.B.I., as part of our counterintelligence effort, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 president election,” [Comey] continued, adding that the investigation included looking at whether associates of Mr. Trump were in contact with Russian officials, and colluded with them.

….Mr. Comey told the House intelligence committee, “We have no information to support” President Trump’s assertion on Twitter that President Barack Obama tapped Trump Tower.

….The N.S.A. chief, Admiral Rogers, weighed in as well, saying that he had no knowledge of anyone asking the British or any other ally to wiretap Mr. Trump. That refuted another claim made by the White House….He then explicitly denied having any indication that Mr. Trump was wiretapped by British intelligence at the request of Mr. Obama.

So the FBI is investigating possible ties between Russia and some of Trump’s campaign aides, but Obama didn’t order any kind of wiretap or surveillance of Trump Tower. We already knew this, right?

Now, none of this means there was any Trump-Russia collusion, nor that there was no surveillance of Trump. The first is still under review, and the second could have been ordered as part of a criminal investigation that Obama had nothing to do with. But it does mean, essentially, that Trump’s March 4 tweets were just made-up rubbish based on a Breitbart story that someone stuffed into his pile of reading material. Of course, we already knew that too, didn’t we?

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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