Warner, Mark Sen

dem ntncw john apostate

NO MERRI

see trump tower mtg

SEE XO EMERG DECLAR 2026

warner chair

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_Select_Committee_on_Intelligence

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VANITY FAIR

...:{:{Ticktin isn’t the only person trying to encourage Trump to seize control of the elections. Micheal Flynn, the former lieutenant general and first-term Trump national security adviser, has promoted the idea, as has the right-wing activist and author Jerome Corsi. Flynn convened a meeting in Washington last month billed as “a critical roundtable to address election integrity.”}:

According to ProPublica, the event attracted current administration officials Kurt Olsen, a White House lawyer who is reinvestigating the 2020 election, and Heather Honey, who is in charge of election integrity at the Department of Homeland Security, as well as conservative activists including Cleta Mitchell, who has pushed false claims about noncitizen voting and now runs the Election Integrity Network.}:

:{:{Senator Mark Warner is trying to sound the alarm, even as potential election mischief is being overshadowed by life-and-death events like the war on Iran. “This is of critical importance,” the Virginia Democrat tells me. “One thing we should have learned about Trump is he doesn’t hide his intentions, including the notion to call for federal elections.”}:

Warner is particularly concerned that Trump officials could create a pretext for Trump to take over the voting. “Tulsi Gabbard is a disaster, and she’s chasing debunked theories about the 2020 election,” Warner says, referring to the director of national intelligence’s recent presence at the raid of an election office in Fulton County, Georgia. “She could be the perpetrator of this—putting out a raw piece of intelligence that purports to show foreign interference,” as an excuse for Trump’s intervention.}:

A Gabbard spokeswoman, Olivia Coleman, said she “would especially encourage you to focus on the very real vulnerabilities uncovered in the electronic voting machines.” Coleman also pointed me to a February letter from Gabbard to Warner and others in Congress saying the director’s office “will not irresponsibly share incomplete intelligence assessments concerning foreign or other malign interference in US elections.”

Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, is hardly reassured. He is assembling a “prebunking” team of former intelligence officials who could knock down attempts at disinformation. “I have a sense of urgency on this,” Warner says. “When we’re talking about Laura Loomer being able to call the shots on who does and doesn’t get jobs in the administration, and bragging about her ability to fire a four-star general, we’ve passed into the realm of the absurd.”

Loomer has gone from incendiary far-right provocateur to informal Trump adviser and loyalty enforcer, digging through the backgrounds of political officials in search of insufficient fealty to the MAGA cause and using social media to scorch her targets. Last year Loomer’s accusations appeared to trigger the dismissal of General Timothy Haugh, the head of the National Security Agency.

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4 6? 26 TRMS INTEL COMM DEM

TRUMP WILL STEal mark warner fabricate emergency

Rachel Maddow Show

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an 3 26 vid

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, where she was asked about her recent report on threats against the U.S. But one Democrat couldn't help but notice what Gabbard left out.

New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush posted on X, "Gabbard is refusing to explain why she omitted any threat assessment of foreign interference in US elections."

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) probed Gabbard on the specifics of her threat document, noting that the ODNI's 2026 annual threat assessment was the first since 2017 to not even mention foreign interference in U.S. elections.

"Last year, when you were already confirmed, it mentioned that at a high level," said Warner. "Are you saying there is no foreign threat to our elections in the midterms of this year?"

Gabbard said that her threat assessment only references the "prioritization of threats."

Warner interrupted. "Please answer yes or no. Is there a foreign threat of interference in our elections this year?"

Gabbard spoke over him, ultimately saying, "Please allow me to answer the question, sir." She then discussed ongoing data collection.

"Ma'am, you," Warner tried to cut in. "Excuse me, ma'am. If you wanted to ask the questions, you should have stayed in Congress. Please answer the question."

"I didn't ask you a question. I'm trying to answer your question," Gabbard said.

She never answered his question.

"So you're saying that the failure to provide any reports or the failure to have any mention of a foreign threat assessment, I would draw the conclusion that must be no foreign threat to our elections in 2026," Warner said. "So, that brings the question I have about you and [FBI] Director [Kash] Patel. There are reports that in 2020, the president was preparing an executive order potentially to seize ballots — bring in federal forces. There is a published report that there is a similar [executive order] being drafted right now about 2026, citing China. Director Patel, do you have any knowledge of that draft EO?"

Warner previously alleged that Gabbard is “not interested in protecting American democracy.”

“Both Kent and Gabbard have had less and less influence,” one House Republican told Politico, referring the recently resigned aide Joe Kent, who worked under Gabbard. “They’ve been sidelined.”

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An 2 26

President Donald Trump's administration seems very confused as to why Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was in Georgia for the FBI's raid on the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center late last month. The story has now changed four times, and twice in the past 24 hours.

The first to comment on Gabbard was Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who claimed that Gabbard just happened to be in Atlanta when the raid happened. Gabbard then said that Trump asked her personally to go to Atlanta for the raid.

In a letter she sent to Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), Gabbard wrote, "My presence was requested by the President and executed under my broad statutory authority to coordinate, integrate and analyze intelligence related to election security, including counter-intelligence, foreign and other malign influence and cybersecurity."

By Wednesday, Trump appeared to forget about it.

In a conversation with "NBC Nightly News" anchor Tom Llamas, Trump spoke about his conspiracy theory that he lost the 2020 election. Llamas asked Trump point-blank, “Why is Tulsi Gabbard there?”

“I don’t know,” Trump answered. “But a lot of the cheating comes from, it’s international cheating.”

Less than 24 hours later, Trump's story changed again.

While he was speaking to the National Prayer Breakfast, Trump gushed over Gabbard for attending the raid.

“She took a lot of heat two days ago because she went in at Pam’s insistence,” the president said, referring to Attorney General Pam Bondi.

“They say, ‘why is she doing it’… because Pam wanted her to do it. And you know why? Because she’s smart," Trump added, relayed The Guardian.

Georgia lawmakers are concerned about Trump's spreading of conspiracy theories and the purpose of the Fulton County raid. Georgia’s Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to Bondi on Thursday morning, asking for specifics.

“We are deeply concerned that President Trump’s consistent spreading of misinformation and dangerous conspiracy theories about the 2020 election fundamentally undermines the electoral process, endangers election workers, and erodes public trust in our democracy,” the lawmakers wrote. “This unprecedented seizure only heightens those concerns.”

If "the Trump administration is investigating a legitimate foreign intelligence nexus," it would legally require "an immediate congressional briefing," said Sen. Raphael Warnock and Reps. Lucy McBath and Nikema Williams all Democrats from Georgia.

The search warrant that demanded "copies" of the necessary documents didn't come from a local judge. According to the lawmakers, “unusually, the warrant was filed by the U.S. attorney for the eastern district of Missouri and follows the reported firing of the Atlanta FBI special agent in charge Paul Brown after expressing concern about this search."

The Associated Press reported that Brown was ousted the week before the raid. He was overseeing the Atlanta office. MS NOW confirmed in the days that followed that the Brown was pushed out because he refused to cooperate.

The group requested a briefing from the Department of Justice “concerning this activity and its related investigation by February 13, 2026."

The statute of limitations on the case has long expired. So, the only way the administration would be able to do anything about it is if there was some kind of ongoing conspiracy, said Georgia lawyer Michael J. Moore when speaking to CNN.

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an 8 25

The minimally redacted classified report on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released late last month contains information so sensitive that it could allow America’s enemies to detect top-secret spying techniques and human sources, and could result in America’s allies reconsidering the trust they place in the U.S. Intelligence Community, one top Democrat is warning.

The CIA and other intelligence agencies opposed the release of the 46-page report, according to The Washington Post, but Director Gabbard released it “with the blessing of President Donald Trump.”

“The document contains multiple references to CIA human sources reporting on Putin’s plans. Such sources are among the agency’s most closely guarded secrets,” the Post reported.

IFrame Content

“Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Attorney General Pam Bondi have released a slew of intelligence and law enforcement reports over the last month that they claim — without evidence — prove that spy agencies’ finding that Moscow intervened in the 2016 presidential contest to help Trump is a ‘hoax’ concocted by the Obama administration,” according to the Post.

Indeed, the report Gabbard released, stemming from a 2017 Republican majority House Intelligence Committee review, disputes U.S. intelligence agencies’ findings that Russian President Vladimir Putin preferred the Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump in 2016, over Democrat Hillary Clinton, and made efforts to help him get elected.

A Republican majority U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee report confirmed that Russian President Putin endeavored to help get now-President Donald Trump elected in 2016:

“The Committee found that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian effort to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Hillary Clinton and her campaign for president. Moscow’s intent was to harm the Clinton Campaign, tarnish an expected Clinton presidential administration, help the Trump Campaign after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, and undermine the U.S. democratic process.”

U.S. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), the Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, blasted Gabbard’s release of the 46-page House report.

“The desperate and irresponsible release of the partisan House Intelligence report puts at risk some of the most sensitive sources and methods our Intelligence Community uses to spy on Russia and keep Americans safe,” Senator Warner said in a statement, according to the Post. “And in doing so, Director Gabbard is sending a chilling message to our allies and assets around the world: the United States can no longer be trusted to protect the intelligence you share with us.”

Separately, on Tuesday, Senator Warner wrote on social media, “Tulsi Gabbard is a threat to our national security and should be fired.”

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https://www.alternet.org/:{2020/08/:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:senate-panel-referred-trump-family-members-to-doj-over-suspicions-of-misleading-russia-testimony-report/

wapo

Bipartisan leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee last year notified the Department of Justice that members of President Donald Trump’s family and close circle “might have presented misleading testimony” to the panel during its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, the Washington Post reports.

According to the Post, then-Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) and Vice Chairman Mark R. Warner (D-VA) referred a list of individuals,including Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner to federal prosecutors after their accounts of a pre-election meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya “were contradicted by the president’s former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates” during former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

In a separate section, the congressional panel said it had reason to believe Steve Bannon, Erik Prince and former campaign co-chair Sam Clovis “had lied to congressional investigators — a potential felony,” the Post reports.

According to the Los Angeles Times, which first reported on the referrals and viewed a copy of the panel’s letter, the committee believes Bannon may have lied about his knowledge of a meeting Prince held in the Seychelles with a Russian official tied to the Kremlin. Per the Post, “Prince had told Mueller’s team that he briefed Bannon on the meeting, which occurred before Trump’s inauguration in early 2017; Bannon denied the conversation took place.”

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https://popular.info/archive

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12 22

over the last few weeks, I've been talking about how Elon Musk's control of Twitter posed a severe threat

to independent media outlets like Popular Information. Last Thursday morning,

I wrote, "How much longer will Popular Information survive on Twitter?"

Afterward, I thought to myself: Am I being overly dramatic?

On Thursday evening, Musk banned the accounts of several prominent journalists. The group of journalists who had their access revoked included reporters from the New York Times, the Washington Post, and independent journalists like myself — including Aaron Rupar, the author of the newsletter Public Notice.

The reality is that one of the most powerful communication platforms in the world — a platform where half of Popular Information's readers found out about this newsletter — is now subject to the arbitrary decisions of a right-wing billionaire.

The chaos of the last few days underscores that Popular Information can no longer rely on the audience we've built on Twitter to drive its growth. If we want more people to read our groundbreaking accountability journalism, we need to invest in alternative growth strategies. You can make sure Popular Information survives and thrives in this brave new world by upgrading to a paid subscription:

Musk falsely claimed that the banned journalists had revealed his real-time location, endangering his safety. In truth, several of the banned journalists covered Musk's decision to ban accounts that were using public information to track the location of his private jet. Last month, Musk said his decision to allow the account to remain on Twitter was an example of his commitment to free speech.

Other banned journalists, including Business Insider's Linette Lopez and the Washington Post's Taylor Lorenz, do not have any apparent connection to the jet accounts. They appear to be banned because Musk doesn't like them.

Some of these accounts have had their accounts restored. And some of the accounts that were restored were then banned again. The arbitrary nature of the bans appears calculated to have a chilling effect on journalists. The message being sent is that if you anger Musk your privileges will be revoked. Popular Information will not be cowed by this kind of bullying.

To make sense of all this, today's edition features an interview with Joan Donovan, the Research Director at Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. Donovan is one of the world's foremost experts on these issues. I hope you find our discussion as illuminating as I did.

— Judd

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The Twitter dumpster fire, explained

JUDD LEGUM (https://substack.com/redirect/f3cd2b04-6795-4284-b981-adeef5db6e79?j=eyJ1IjoiN3ltancifQ.i0HJl3aVWG8sHp566T-pebMssFGKcgvxVOFLuZyEDpw)

DEC 19

This interview with Joan Donovan, Research Director at Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, has been edited and condensed for clarity.

LEGUM: Many readers of Popular Information are Twitter users. How should intelligent news consumers think about the chaos on Twitter since Musk took over?

DONOVAN: In a Twitter Spaces a few weeks ago, when asked why he purchased Twitter, [Musk] said first that he was tired of seeing Jack Dorsey have all the power. In a follow-up question, he said simply that he wanted that power. So, as an average news consumer, I think it's important to remember that the context in which you get your news — the ownership model, the business model — matters.

The quality is going to either increase or decrease based on the leadership at Twitter or another social media corporation. It's going to affect their decisions about what news is and it is going to affect distribution of that content. And so for everyday folks that are using platforms and are trying to make assessments about what news is reputable, it's going to become more and more difficult on Twitter to discern that.

If Musk is at the helm and is deciding on content moderation personally, what does that mean for the news consumer? They are now going to have to sort through lots of rumor and gossip and misinformation in order to find accurate accounts. And so it's gonna be a really difficult thing going forward.

LEGUM: As a producer of news, I'm struggling with my own relationship with Twitter. On the one hand, I don't want my continued presence on Twitter to be seen as validation or minimization of Musk's actions. On the other hand, it's hard to abandon my largest platform to publicize our work, which I've been building since 2008. How would you balance these issues?

DONOVAN: It's difficult. Twitter is an important communication infrastructure because of exactly what you describe — the legacy networks that are built into Twitter. I got on Twitter in 2010. It was fascinating to me how quickly Twitter was adopted by activists. I watched as Occupy Wall Street and other protest movements learned how to use this technology.

Journalists were late to the party. They were one of the next set of users, after techies and activists. They joined not just to share their articles, but to talk to one another and to do news gathering. And so if we think about the last decade of Twitter, it took a lot of years to build camaraderie and affiliation. And so the idea that you would just walk away, I think, for many of us, just doesn't feel right.

One of the things that I've learned studying the media ecosystem of new media startups or media organizations that primarily run newsletters or have smaller audiences, is that Twitter is integral for driving traffic for the recruitment of new audiences. The older, more legacy news organizations, their traffic is mostly driven by Facebook. So certain news organizations are going to be able to abandon Twitter at their leisure, without suffering the same kind of repercussions as smaller or newer media organizations.

People don't just go on Twitter and are uncritical news consumers, they're thinking quite a bit about what it is that they value about news organizations and who they're going to follow and who they're going to share. Twitter is integral for new media organizations that are looking to reach new audiences.

LEGUM: Given the current level of chaos, can Twitter survive over the long term?

DONOVAN: I think one of the things that brings people back to platforms, particularly YouTube, Twitter, or Facebook, is their stability — they're going to work the same way every time. We see this anytime there's a [user interface] update, and people revile the fact that the buttons aren't where they used to be, and that the font has changed. So, people don't like change, users don't like change. They like things to work the way they work.

Integrating changes into a platform is usually a very, very thoughtful, and deeply deliberated process. One of the unintended consequences of doing so much disruption at once essentially leaves room open for competitors to give into the mix and offer up a different product that people may adopt. So, you see a lot of people not leaving Twitter, but trying out other platforms like Post or Mastodon, or going back to Reddit or Tumblr.

People leave platforms because they don't feel as if they can trust the management of the platform. And by and large, people leave platforms because some other technology comes along that just does the work better. And so that's why over years people left MySpace for Friendster [and] left Friendster for Facebook.

People want less bullshit when it comes to talking about political issues. I think there could be a successful rival to Twitter, which wouldn't necessarily replace Twitter, but would be a place where people could get their news and journalism in a way that feels much more satisfying and effective.

LEGUM: Another thing Musk has done since taking over Twitter is selectively release some of the company's internal communications. He says this is an effort to bring transparency and calls this information the "Twitter Files." What do you make of that?

DONOVAN: I don't think Musk really understands the full extent of the unintended consequences of what he's doing. Everyday users now realize that anything that is said across the platform is potentially fodder for some kind of leak. Now, most people aren't DMing trade secrets or newsworthy information, but some people are.

It's hard to tell what's going on here, other than Musk has picked a couple of ideologically friendly content creators to selectively leak internal communications and shape the media narrative around them in such a way as to make it seem like former Twitter executives were ignoring child exploitation material in an effort to root out political speech that they didn't like.

And that kind of pedo-baiting behavior that we've seen in the past be so successful with QAnon as well as Musk’s allegations against the man who was trying to save those children in the cave. This kind of pedo-baiting is really, really dangerous because it does lead to swarming behavior online as well as face-to-face confrontations.

LEGUM: I think people are understanding there are a lot of problems with the current structure of social media. You've talked about "data portability" and "interoperability" as potential solutions. Can you explain what those terms mean and how they might make social media better.

DONOVAN: There is a simple way to understand these very jargonistic words like interoperability and data portability. If you are old enough, you remember what it was like to switch your phone company. It used to be that if you switched your phone company, you lost your phone number. That was so onerous and so confusing and required so much effort, that many people didn't switch companies. They experienced this kind of lock, because of the failure of our phone numbers to be interoperable. And so there was legislation passed that said your phone number can move from one company to another. That really opened things up, created a lot of new businesses, and fostered innovation.

And so there are bills by Senator Mark Warner [D-VA] and others that would try to bring the same principles to social media. What would you need to be able to take your network from one platform to another platform? And how should that be structured so that it's very easy to move your data from one place to another, to move your posts from one place to another? And what is it going to take in terms of regulation, so that we can innovate on these platforms, and that you can have many different apps that connect you to the same people in different places?

These are not new ideas at all. These are really fundamental ideas from the heyday before social media. Internet activists were obsessed with this other really jargony word called decentralization, which is to say that the idea of the early web was that anyone, anywhere at anytime, as long as they had a web connection, could start up a website. They could have a little place online where they put their ideas, their e-commerce, or their blog.

Social media really centralized a lot of the ways in which we discover and connect with one another. And in the same instant social media centralized advertising, which makes it so that 90% of the rest of the web doesn't get advertising revenue, because most advertisers are focused on the conduit through which people discover content, like Google, Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube.

Legislation is going to be required to change this so that we can have more innovation. We haven't really innovated in the social media space in quite a while. There hasn't really been a lot of new things out there. And so part of this has to do with the fact that people can't move their network. One of the things that we need to do is to incentivize more innovation. The way to do that, though, is to give people more control over their data.

https://www.motherjones.com/coronavirus-updates/2020/04/jared-kushner-surveillance/

as Jared Kushner has set himself a prominent role in the administration’s coronavirus response, there’s been a growing chorus of questions about what, exactly, he’s up to and how much the public will ever find out about it. Today, a trio of lawmakers are demanding answers from Jared Kushner about work his public-private taskforce has reportedly been doing with a “range of technology firms” to “establish a far-reaching public health surveillance system” in response to the pandemic.

Democratic senators Mark Warner of Virginia and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, along with Rep. Anna Eshoo of California, wrote a letter to Kushner on Friday asking about the issue three days after *Politico*reported that Kushner’s shadow task force had “reached out to a range of health technology companies about creating a national coronavirus surveillance system” that would give government “a near real-time view” of patients seeking treatment. Even though Politicocited interviews with “seven tech executives, government officials and other people familiar with its contours,” a White House spokesperson denied to the news outlet that Kushner had any knowledge of such plans.

“Your office’s denial of the existence of this effort, despite ample corroborating reporting, only compounds concerns we have with lack of transparency,” the lawmakers wrote in the April 10 letter, which expressed fears that such a system “could undermine the confidentiality and security of our health information and become the new status quo.”

The lawmakers’ concerns about transparency echo previous worries that Kushner’s taskforce is operating outside of normal government procedure, perhaps to the point of breaking the law. (Kushner has said that President Trump instructed him to “knock down every barrier needed” and “make sure that the government is doing things that the government doesn’t normally do, where we’re stretching, where [we] are acting very quickly.”)

On March 27, Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, wrote a letter to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone asking him to ensure that Kushner’s working group “fully comply with all laws,” specifically citing provisions of the Presidential Records Act and and Federal Advisory Committee Act that bar or limit the use of private email accounts for government business.

On Friday, Anne Weismann, CREW’s chief FOIA counsel, told Mother Jones that the organization was still working to get its arms around the full scope of Kushner’s activities and had yet to receive a response to its letter. But with the federal government spending trillions in response to the coronavirus , she says Kushner’s secret work with a range of often unnamed private officials was especially troubling, especially if they are conducting business in a way that evades oversight.

“Given the amount of money at stake, there is significant possibility that these people are also trying to leverage their position for their own personal profit, or profit for their companies,” she said. “We should have assurances that people who are given such enormous power and responsibility are acting in the interest of the nation.”

russia nra sen intel comm chair?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/senate-intelligence-wants-documents-on-nras-russia-trip

betsy woodruff

Senate intelligence committee has asked the National Rifle Association to provide documents on its connections to Russia—including documents related to a 2015 trip some of its top leaders made to Moscow. That’s according to two sources briefed on the committee’s activities.

The NRA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Spokespersons for Sen. Richard Burr, the intelligence committee chair, and Sen. Mark Warner, the panel’s ranking member, declined to comment on the record.

The NRA’s Russia connections have drawn growing public scrutiny after a key figure in Russian outreach to the powerful gun lobby, Maria Butina, was indicted in July on charges of being an undeclared Russian operative connected to the country’s intelligence apparatus. Butina sought to use guns as a lever to tilt the Republican Party in a pro-Kremlin direction, creating a political firestorm for the NRA in the wake of her arrest. The intelligence committee’s document request is just one part of the aftermath.

Butina, whose Russian political patron Alexander Torshin is a senior figure in the country’s powerful central bank, ran a Russian gun-rights organization called the Right to Bear Arms. In December 2015, the group sponsored an NRA delegation to come to Moscow for a week. NRA dignitaries also met with another influential Russian, the former deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin. Torshin subsequently came under U.S. sanctions; Rogozin had been under sanctions since 2014.

Товарищ

Kremlin & GOP Bigwigs Have a New Friend

Tim Mak

Former NRA President David Keene and soon-to-be president Peter Brownell were both on the trip. Accompanying them were Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke, NRA donors Jim Gregory and Arnold and Hilary Goldschlager, and Jim Liberatore, the president and CEO of the Outdoor Channel.

The intelligence committee isn’t the only Senate panel interested in the trip. The Senate Finance Committee has for months sought NRA documents about the controversial excursion.

Earlier this year, the NRA faced persistent questioning from the Finance Committee over the trip and whether it received money from Russia. The NRA, in a series of letters to the committee, initially denied receiving money from Russia. But in an April 10 letter to Sen. Ron Wyden, its general counsel John Frazer acknowledged receiving “a total of approximately $2512.85 from people associated Russian addresses” and “about $525” from two Russian nationals living in the United States. It also acknowledged “membership dues” from Torshin, a non-voting life member of the NRA since 2012.

“[G]iven the extraordinarily time-consuming and burdensome nature of your requests, we must respectfully decline to engage in this beyond the clear answers we have already provided,” Frazer wrote in April, three months before Butina’s arrest.

The heightened congressional scrutiny of the NRA comes as one of its former top attorneys, William Brewer III, has faced legal challenges of his own.

In September, federal Judge Liam O’Grady chastised the Texas attorney for failing to disclose that a judge in Texas had sanctioned him for more than $133,000 for using an unethical polling practice to influence a jury pool. Brewer challenged that judge’s move, and an appellate court upheld the penalty. The appellate court’s ruling noted that the judge who first sanctioned Brewer found his attitude in that process to be “dismissive and uncaring.”

When Brewer appeared before a Virginia federal court to represent the NRA—in litigation over its “Carry Guard” insurance program for gun owners who shoot people—he asserted that he had not “been reprimanded in any court.” When the judge learned about his prior sanction, he yanked him off the case, as *Texas Lawyer* detailed.

Brewer has said he didn’t commission the poll, according to Texas Lawyer, and that he neglected to reveal the sanction to O’Grady because he was appealing it to Texas’s highest state court. His firm still represents the NRA.

By a straight party-line vote of 54-42, the U.S. Senate failed to pass a constitutional amendment that would have overruled the awful Citizens Uniteddecision.

But our work had an impact. All five Senate Democrats whose support was unknown—Mary Landrieu, Mary Pryor, Joe Donnelly, Tim Kaine & Mark Warner—ended up voting “yes.”

https://www.alternet.org/senate-intel-committee-splits-nunes-led-house-panel-agrees-putin-interfered-2016-help-trump

Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday split from their colleagues on the House Intelligence Committee, agreeing with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help then-candidate Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton.

The announcement of the completed review of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russian activities in the 2016 U.S. elections was announced in a press release from committee chairman Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) on Wednesday.

“We so no reason to dispute the [IC] conclusions,” Burr said. “There is no doubt that Russia undertook an unprecedented effort to interfere with out 2016 elections.

Committee vice chairman Mark Warner (D-CA) agreed the ICA conclusions “were accurate and on point,”adding Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the interference himself “for the purpose of helping Donald Trump and hurting Hillary Clinton.”

The Senate intel committee’s conclusions are markedly different than those reached by the House Intelligence Committee, led by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA). In a 250-page report, House Republicans said they came to "concurrence with the Intelligence Community Assessment's judgments, except with respect to Putin's supposed preference for candidate Trump.”

Senate Intel Cmte Chair @SenatorBurr: “Committee staff have spent 14 months reviewing the sources, tradecraft, and analytic work (of the ICA findings on Russian meddling in #2016), and we see no reason to dispute the conclusions.”

"Both senators from eight states of the 'Toxic 20' states -- Kentucky, Indiana, Georgia, Texas, Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi -- supported a resolution by Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., to repeal the health-protective mercury and air toxics standard."

Mark R. Warner a Democrat, has represented the state of Virginia in the Senate since 2009. He served as Governor of Virginia from January 12, 2002 – January 14, 2006.

Contents[hide]

Positions, record and controversies

Energy

Crackdown on oil speculators who are manipulating the market. ^[1]
Apply pressure to OPEC nations to produce more, while empowering the Justice Department to crackdown on price gouging. ^[1]
Promote telecommuting and optional, flexible work schedules ^[1]
Expanding a tax credit for hybrid and battery technology vehicles ^[1]
Dramatically increase our research and development, to encourage innovative new technologies and alternative sources ^[1]
Off-shore exploration in search of natural gas ^[1]
Working with auto makers to raise fuel efficiency standards ^[1]
Upgrade and expand domestic refining capacity ^[1]
Implement cap-and-trade proposals to responsibly limit carbon emissions ^[1]

Health Care

Warner supports bringing down the price of prescription drugs and supports affordable, universal health care coverage for Americans. ^[1]

Iraq War

Warner supports bringing troops home but not under artificial time lines. Warner believes in properly supporting returning troops by providing the money and resources to care for wounded veterans. ^[1]

Bio

"A native of Indianapolis, Indiana, Governor Warner graduated from George Washington University in 1977 and from Harvard Law School in 1980. His subsequent business career included helping create more than 70 telecommunications and information technology companies and serving as a founding partner of Columbia Capital Corporation, a Virginia technology venture capital fund. Active in technology and education issues, he started the Virginia High-Tech Partnership in 1997 and has chaired the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges and the Virginia Math and Science Coalition. He was also the founding chair of the Virginia Health Care Foundation. Warner served as chair of the Democratic Party of Virginia from 1993 to 1995, and in 2002 he was inaugurated as Virginia's governor. He was the Appalachian Regional Commission's 2004 states' co-chair." [1]

2008 elections

Possible candidacy in the U.S. presidential election, 2008

Warner formed a political action committee (PAC) "to begin raising money for a possible run at the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 while he finishes his term in Virginia." The PAC "will be a 'federal leadership committee,' a precursor to a formal exploratory committee, which would be needed to officially campaign for office." --*Washington Post*, June 10, 2005.

Warner hired Monica Dixon, Al Gore's former deputy chief of staff "to be the federal PAC's first part-time consultant." Dixon "will help set up meetings between Warner and Democrats across the country as he makes the transition from governor to private citizen." --*Washington Post*, June 10, 2005.

"The budding presidential ambitions of" Governor Warner "were nourished last night with the commodity all national political aspirants need -- a large dose of cash." --*Richmond Times-Dispatch*, December 7, 2005.

Warner's Forward Together PAC "collected more than $2.5 million during its first fundraiser, setting a record for Virginia politics." --*Richmond Times-Dispatch*, December 7, 2005.

Senate election

On September 13, Mark Warner confirmed early rumors that he would run for Senate. He stated, "I’ve decided the way I can contribute most to getting our country back on the right track is to serve in the United States Senate." Mark Warner's announcement was a major pick up for the Democrats, as he offered a strong possibility of taking a seat that would have been safely Republican had Sen. John Warner sought reelection. Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) praised Warner, saying "I have come to know Mark in the last six months and have seen he is an outstanding American leader who will run a great campaign and be a tremendous asset to his state and his country. We’re excited about his campaign and even more excited about him joining us in the Senate."^[2]

While it appeared unlikely that Mark Warner would be up against a challenger in the Democratic primary, Republican Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) and former Gov. Jim Gilmore (R) both appeared to be eying the Republican nomination.^[3]

Warner won the Democratic nomination to run for the Senate seat that will be left vacant after Sen. John Warner's retirement.^[4]. Warner defeated Republican challenger Jim Gilmore in November 2008 general elections. ^[5]

Money in politics

This section contains links to – and feeds from – money in politics databases.

Campaign contributions

The following is drawn from government records of campaign contributions to Mark R. Warner. Campaign contributions are one of the most direct conduits for influencing members of Congress. How to use this information. cid=N00002097&cycle=2008