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| Porn Users Forum » WHY DOESN'T POTUS ARREST BILL CLINTON, HILARY CLINTON, AND OBAMA? |
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| 05-24-18 09:57pm - 2361 days | #751 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User  Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump and his advisors seem to have an allergic reaction to the truth. That might be why they are caught telling lies all the time. ---------- ---------- The email Roger Stone didn’t want anyone to see "Please ask Assange for any State or HRC e-mail from August 10 to August 30." Aaron Rupar May 24, 2018, 5:22 pm Emails obtained by the Wall Street Journal indicate that longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone withheld key documents from the House Intelligence Committee — documents indicating he lied about his communications with a radio host he hoped would serve as a backchannel to WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign. According to the Journal, in a message sent on September 18, 2016, Stone wrote to Randy Credico, a New York radio personality who interviewed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange several weeks earlier, and asked him to “Please ask Assange for any State or HRC e-mail from August 10 to August 30–particularly on August 20, 2011.” That email, which indicates Stone sought help colluding with a website that the U.S. intelligence community has accused of laundering emails stolen by Russian hackers, contradicts Stone’s September 2017 testimony to the House Intelligence Committee that he “merely wanted confirmation” from Credico that Assange had information about Clinton. It also contradicts statements Stone has made on his Facebook page and website about how his communications with Credico about Wikileaks merely “asked Randy to confirm that the Australian journalist had credible information on Hillary Clinton’s campaign.” The Journal details Credico’s response, which suggests that he had asked Assange for favors on Stone’s behalf on previous occasions (emphasis added — typos in the original): Mr. Credico initially responded to Mr. Stone that what he was requesting would be on WikiLeaks’ website if it existed, according to an email reviewed by the Journal. Mr. Stone, the emails show, replied: “Why do we assume WikiLeaks has released everything they have ???” In another email, Mr. Credico then asked Mr. Stone to give him a “little bit of time,” saying he thought Mr. Assange might appear on his radio show the next day. A few hours later, Mr. Credico wrote: “That batch probably coming out in the next drop…I can’t ask them favors every other day .I asked one of his lawyers…they have major legal headaches riggt now..relax.” About two weeks after Stone reached out to Credico, Stone posted a cryptic tweet suggesting he had foreknowledge that WikiLeaks was about to publish stolen emails that would be damaging to Clinton. The first tranche of emails stolen from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta were published by WikiLeaks less than a week later. Stone has provided implausible explanations of that tweet, along with others he posted in 2016 indicating he had foreknowledge of documents WikiLeaks would later publish. During the presidential campaign, Stone bragged about being in contact with WikiLeaks. He has since tried to walk that back, recently telling CNN he “is not involved in any collusion, coordination, or conspiracy with the Russians, or anyone else, and there’s no evidence to the contrary.” But his emails to Credico indicate that at the very least, Stone was eager to collude with a website Trump’s own intelligence officials have publicly accused of serving as a Russian cutout. CIA Director Pompeo denounces Wikileaks, forgets he used them to attack Hillary Clinton In an interview with the Journal, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), ranking member of the House Intelligence Community, said of the Stone-Credico emails, “If there is such a document, then it would mean that [Stone’s] testimony was either deliberately incomplete or deliberately false.” A lawyer for Stone, Grant Smith, lamely told the Journal that the emails weren’t turned over to Schiff’s committee because they were “not encompassed within the scope of the committee’s request.” But the committee’s investigation, which was recently ended by a pro-Trump faction led by chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA), was about Russia’s efforts to meddle in the election — precisely what Stone was discussing with Credico in the email. The most damning thing in Roger Stone’s newly released email about Assange The Journal’s report represents the second time in less than two months that emails Stone wrote in 2016 have come back to haunt him. In April, Trey Yingst of One America News published an August 4, 2016 email exchange between Roger Stone and then-Trump campaign adviser Sam Nunberg suggesting the Trump campaign was aware Assange was in possession of information that could help them overcome the commanding lead Clinton then enjoyed over Trump in the polls. The subject line of the email is “McClatchty/Marist Poll : Clinton Up By 15 | Daily Wire.” “enjoy it while u can. I dined with my new pal Julian Assange last nite,” Stone wrote. That email indicates that one of Trump’s most longtime advisers viewed Assange and WikiLeaks as central to their effort to overcome a big deficit and win the election. Stone later denied actually dining with Assange, saying that his comment to Nunberg was just a joke. by Taboola | |
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| 05-24-18 10:12pm - 2361 days | #752 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump awards Medal of Honor to Navy SEAL accused of war crimes. The Navy SEAL was also accused of leaving a man behind in enemy lines. And for making bad decisions which cost the lives of Americans under his command. But this is Trump's kind of hero: a man who was accused of illegally ordering the executions of male Afghans, and mutilating the bodies of fallen enemy fighters. Trump is hard on his enemies. And the Navy SEAL seems to have been hard on the men under his command, and on his enemies as well. ---------- ---------- News Trump awards Medal of Honor to Navy SEAL accused of war crimes By Chris Perez May 24, 2018 | 10:29pm | Updated President Trump on Thursday awarded the Medal of Honor to a retired Navy SEAL who has been accused of committing war crimes — and leaving a man behind in enemy territory. Former Master Chief Special Warefare Operator Britt Slabinski received the award during a public ceremony at the White House. In 2002, he spearheaded a controversial SEAL Team Six mission in Afghanistan — which led to the deaths of seven Americans. He was a Senior Chief Petty Officer at the time, in charge of leading a seven-member unit into eastern Afghanistan to set up an observation post on the mountain of Takur Ghar. It was just six months after 9/11, and US forces had been waging war with Al Qaeda in the valley below as part of Operation Anaconda. “Britt and his teammates were preparing to exit the aircraft on the mountain peak when their helicopter was struck by machine gun fire, and machine gun fire like they’ve never seen before,” explained Trump, who recounted the events on Thursday. “Not a good feeling,” he said. As the chopper “lurched away from the assault,” one of the SEAL Team Six members — later identified as Petty Officer 1st Class Neil Roberts — got tossed from the aircraft but was thought to have survived. “At this point, Britt received information suggesting [Roberts] was probably still alive,” Trump said. “The team faced a choice: to wait for reinforcements and pretty much safety, or to return immediately to the enemy stronghold in the hope of saving Neil’s life.” Despite being “out-manned, out-gunned and fighting uphill on a steep, icy mountain,” Trump said Slabinski and his squad made the choice to turn back. “For them, it was an easy one,” the president added. “They went back to that mountain.” While Trump hailed Slabinski for his actions, many in the military community feel that he made several bad decisions that day in 2002, which wound up costing the lives of seven Americans, including Roberts. First, he chose to take a much more dangerous route than the one they had planned after experiencing maintenance delays and pressure from senior officers. Slabinski told the New York Times in 2016 that when they landed on Takur Ghar, Qaeda forces were already waiting. Next, he reportedly made the decision to land his team directly on the observation post — rather than hiking up to it from a safer position. Military officials later determined that this was a major error, which “violated a basic tenet of reconnaissance.” Slabinski then chose to turn back after losing Roberts — recruiting Air Force Technical Sgt. John Chapman in the process, according to accounts. Unbeknownst to him, Roberts had already been captured by enemy fighters and killed. “Britt continued to engage the enemy, repeatedly exposing himself to horrendous fire,” Trump said Thursday, calling the assault the “Battle of Roberts Ridge.” “When they could go no further, Britt tended to the wounded and coordinated their escape until his team was finally evacuated,” the president added. Members of the Army’s Delta Force and 75th Ranger Regiment teams, which were involved in the battle, believe Slabinski left Chapman behind that day after retreating with the rest of his unit. Footage obtained by the Times appears to show the airman battling Qaeda forces on the mountain for another hour — even resorting to hand-to-hand combat at one point. Chapman wound up dying in an attempt to protect arriving reinforcements from gunfire, according to the Times. He will be posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, though it’s unclear when. Slabinski has repeatedly denied leaving him on Takur Ghar that day, while also defending the rest of his actions. “I can tell you, we left no one behind. No one,” he told Fox News, just three days before receiving the Medal of Honor. “What I saw, what I experienced, I know that clearly that we didn’t leave anyone behind up there,” Slabinski said. “I wasn’t more than 20 to 30 feet away from where John was and that was my experience. But what I want people to focus on is that it’s called Roberts Ridge now because we lost six other people up there. A total of seven.” Asked if he thought Chapman was still alive when they retreated, Slabinski replied: “That wasn’t what I experienced. It wasn’t what I saw.” In addition to the 2002 incident, Slabinski has been accused of multiple war crimes. They include illegally ordering the executions of male Afghans and mutilating the bodies of fallen enemy fighters. “[Slabinski] certainly has been accused of some very bad things,” retired SEAL officer Dick Couch told Politico. He pointed out, however, how the award is based on “one specific action” — and not the recipient’s character. “I’ve read excerpts of what he did in that battle and it certainly seems Medal of Honor-worthy,” Couch said. Dana White, a spokesperson for Defense Secretary James Mattis, told Politico that Mattis “was well aware of the news reporting around Master Chief Slabinski” and recommended him for the Medal of Honor anyway. | |
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| 05-24-18 10:33pm - 2361 days | #753 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
This U.S. Border Patrol agent should be the next guy to get a Presidential Medal of Honor (or whatever is the highest award given to a civilian law enforcement officer) for protecting our borders against illegal aliens. This agent shot dead an undocumented immigrant in Texas. Almost certainly an illegal alien. Turns out she was a woman, probably between 16 to 24-years-old. But remember, women can breed kids, who grow up to be illegal aliens. So, Trump can now hold a ceremony, honoring a brave U.S. Border Patrol agent, who risked his life defending our border. Side note: A recent analysis found that the U.S. government has had to pay out more than $60 million in settlements between 2005 and 2017 over deaths, injuries and wrongful detentions involving Border Patrol agents. --------- --------- U.S. U.S. Border Patrol Agent Shoots Dead Undocumented Immigrant in Texas Newsweek Chantal Da Silva,Newsweek 18 hours ago A U.S. Border Patrol agent shot and killed an undocumented immigrant in Texas on Wednesday after the agent was allegedly attacked by a group of people, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency has said. The Border Patrol told the Los Angeles Times that the person fatally shot was a woman, while local activists claimed she was around 16 to 24-years-old. The Laredo Sector Border Patrol said in a statement that the border patrol agent, who has yet to be identified, responded to a "report of illegal activity" in Rio Bravo, on his own at around 12:22 p.m. Trending: Chicxulub Asteroid: Dinosaur-Killing Impact Caused 100,000 Years of Climate Change The agent "discovered a group of illegal aliens" when he arrived at the scene, the agency sector said. It said "initial reports" indicated that the agent was attacked by a number of people armed with "blunt objects." That's when the agent "fired at least one round from his service-issued firearm, fatally wounding one of the assailants," the Laredo Sector said. At some point, a number of other Border Patrol agents arrived at the scene. They called for EMS and administered first aid until the Rio Bravo Fire Department arrived. They also apprehended three undocumented immigrants believed to be connected to the incident, which is now under investigation by the FBI and Texas Rangers. Laredo activist Priscilla "Lagordiloca" Villarreal posted video of the scene to Facebook, showing FBI agents speaking with local law enforcement officer. Villarreal said she believed the woman shot was between the ages of 16 and 24 and said she was shot "in the head with a single gunshot." CBP has not responded to a request for more information on the incident. A recent analysis found that the U.S. government has had to pay out more than $60 million in settlements between 2005 and 2017 over deaths, injuries and wrongful detentions involving Border Patrol agents. The analysis, published by the Guardian newspaper said CBP agents were involved in 97 "fatal encounters" since 2003. Since then, the government has had to settle at least 20 wrongful death claims from families of people killed in interactions with Border Patrol agents. While most of the government's settlements were found to be related to reckless driving, the majority of fatal encounters involving CBP agents were caused by bullet wounds. This article was first written by Newsweek | |
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| 05-25-18 10:47am - 2360 days | #754 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Fake news: (Meanderings of a conflicted mind): Trump confesses. "The guilt is too much. I admit I am a mole for Putin, my master. That is why my tweets are full of lies and contradictions: my mind is breaking down, since I can no longer visit my master in person: the security is too tight, now that I am President. Will my confession cleanse my soul, and allow me to worship Putin, the god-like master of Russia and the entire universe? Bow down before Putin, and bow down before me, because I am the voice and left hand of Putin!" "So even though I am claiming there was a "spy" in the Trump campaign, the spy was me. The joke is on the FBI, the CIA, and the American public. Who were gullible enough to elect me President of the United States. God bless Russia, the Motherland." "One more thing: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s is my ally in the Senate. He is also a paid informant for the Russian secret police. His rank is General of the Soviet Army. Do not attempt to arrest him, unless you have a platoon of SEAL soldiers. McConnell is a trained assassin, who will never be taken alive." ---------- ---------- 'That’s ridiculous': Key Obama adviser dismisses Trump's 'Spygate' claim Michael Isikoff 5 hours ago The woman who oversaw the Obama White House’s response to the Russian election attack said she was never briefed on the FBI’s use of an informant to investigate the Trump campaign and that it was “ridiculous” for President Trump to claim that the matter amounted to “one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history.” Avril Haines, who served as deputy national security adviser in the Obama administration, made the comments during an exclusive interview with the Yahoo News podcast “Skullduggery.” In her first first full-length interview since leaving government, Haines also said she had been “very concerned” in 2016 about the degree to which Russians might have gained “influence” within the Trump campaign — concerns that were fueled by Trump’s public comments about Putin that she found “wildly disconnected from reality.” “No, absolutely not,” Haines said when asked if she was ever told about the confidential FBI informant who made contact with three members of the Trump campaign. “We didn’t even know at the time there was an [FBI] investigation as such,” she said. Haines said the FBI briefed the National Security Council “on a regular basis” about what she termed “counterintelligence issues” but that it had not told the council that any formal probe of the Trump campaign had been initiated. Over the past week, Trump and his allies have repeatedly claimed that the “Obama administration” had planted a “spy” inside the Trump campaign for political purposes, prompting them to demand that the Justice Department and FBI turn over documents about a confidential informant – a former University of Cambridge professor — who had contacted three campaign advisers. Law enforcement officials have countered that using such informants amid counterintelligence investigations — which the FBI had launched in late July 2016 into Russian efforts to penetrate the Trump campaign — is standard procedure. Asked about one of Trump’s tweets referring to the use of the informant as “Spygate” and claiming that it may be “one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history,” Haines said: “Surely, you realize that I think that’s ridiculous. … It’s very unfortunate that the current president of the United States goes after the institutions that he is responsible for in a way that is not at least apparently the product of deliberation and thoughtfulness.” Haines, who had previously served as deputy CIA director under John Brennan, was charged by the White House in the summer of 2016 with overseeing the U.S. response to the Russian election attack. The response was a highly secretive process that she said was further complicated by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s refusal to go along with a bipartisan warning about the Russian efforts. In a highly controversial decision, the White House chose not to respond to those efforts, fearing that it might disrupt the election. Instead, Obama warned Putin privately during a summit in China — a move that officials thought was productive because the White House detected no further Russian attempts to tamper with state election databases, which was their chief worry at the time. Still, Haines acknowledged that there were aspects of the Russian attack — especially the exploitation of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter — the White House and the U.S. intelligence community did not fully understand at the time and that continued after Obama’s warning. “The picture you have now we didn’t have then,” she said. “Honestly, we could have done better from the policy perspective,” Haines said. “In thinking that through, I think we all have a piece of that to live with. I do think, though, even knowing that, I’m not sure our reactions would have been any different.” | |
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| 05-25-18 11:36am - 2360 days | #755 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
All The Biggest Scandals of the Trump Administration, the New Gold Standard for Corruption Eric Schaal May 23, 2018 Do you feel like the stories of corruption in the Donald Trump White House are too numerous to count? You’re not alone: Unless you can juggle 20-30 stories at a time, there’s no way you could possibly keep tabs on this group. You might think people like Betsy DeVos and Ben Carson are unqualified to do the job they went to Washington to do, but nearly all members of the Trump Cabinet have shown expertise in burning through taxpayer money. In some cases, it almost seems like they have contempt for the job and the people they were meant to serve. Here are the 15 most corrupt acts we’ve seen from the Trump White House, ranked. 15. Scott Pruitt’s $43K privacy box Scott Pruitt Many people were outraged upon learning that EPA head Scott Pruitt spent $25,000 on a soundproof box inside his office. It sounded paranoid, wasteful, and stupid all at once. However, it turned out that $25,000 was a low estimate — it actually cost $43,000 once the final bill was processed. It makes you wonder why he needs to communicate in secret when no one else in the history of the office had that need. 14. Ben Carson’ $31K dining set Speaking of things Trump Cabinet officials don’t need, there was a $31,000 dining table set HUD Secretary Ben Carson had installed in his department offices. When confronted with the amount in February, Carson said he had no knowledge of it and claimed “surprise” at the amount. Later, when CNN obtained emails proving Carson was lying, it was another black eye for the Trump administration. Meanwhile, Carson’s claim that journalists “will continue to probe and make further accusations even without evidence or substantiation” sounded like utter nonsense. 13. Kellyanne Conway’s pitch for Ivanka products Does it get more corrupt than using the White House to advertise products sold by the president’s daughter — when the president’s unqualified daughter actually works in the White House? It’s a funhouse mirror of abusing power and unethical behavior. This bit of corruption was followed by two violations of the Hatch Act by Kellyanne Conway in 2017, but that’s only if you’re keeping score at home. The White House isn’t. 12. The VA Secretary’s European vacation US Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin Nothing says “I’m doing my Veterans’ Affairs job” like accepting tickets to Wimbledon as a gift and flying your wife to Europe on the taxpayers’ dime. VA Secretary David Shulkin did all that and more, running up a bill exceeding $120,000 in summer 2017. When confronted by a Senate Committee on Capitol Hill, Shulkin said he agreed “the optics” weren’t good. The takeaway would be “unethical behavior is fine as long as the optics are good.” 11. Ryan Zinke’s $139K office doors At Western Values Project, you can read up on all the inside deals Ryan Zinke made in his first year as Secretary of the Interior. Out favorite is Zinke’s first financial supporter landing a National Parks Services contract a short time after the secretary took office and met with his donor. (Quid, meet quo.) But the story only begins there. Zinke’s lust for helicopter travel and private planes make him one of the more expensive members of Trump’s pricey Cabinet. Plus, he is spending $139,000 on three sets of doors at Interior. 10. The $130K payoff to a porn star Would news of an extramarital affair with a porn star bring down the Trump campaign? America will never know, because Trump paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about the affair right before the election. When porn star payoffs barely crack the top 10, you get an idea of the state of this administration in 2018. 9. Tom Price’s $1 million in travel expenses For those who thought a few hundred thousand dollars extra in plane travel was peanuts, we present Tom Price. Trump’s pick for Secretary of Health and Human Services once bought stock in a company before writing a bill to benefit the same company. (He tripled his money.) Later, when he took his corrupt ways inside the White House, he focused on luxury private travel, costing taxpayers over $1 million in six months before his resignation. 8. Foreign visitors and GOP fundraising at Trump hotels What if every visitor from every foreign government had the chance to put money in the president’s pocket every night? That’s what happens when people stay at Trump’s D.C. hotel, which before 2017 was off-limits for anyone holding office in the U.S. government. It’s also what happens when U.S. politicians and candidates hold fundraisers in Mar-a-Lago. Later, when asking for a favor or endorsement, all Trump has to do is ask whether the person went to his hotels and how much they spent. 7. Pruitt’s $833K on security and ‘side jobs’ for EPA aides When you spend most of your professional life suing the EPA, it must be strange to find yourself in charge of the same agency. To rationalize the shift, Pruitt has continued trying to undermine the agency at every chance. For example, he spent $833,000 on security in his first three months on the job — about double what his predecessors did. Meanwhile, two of Pruitt’s lieutenants recently got cleared to work for public companies while holding their day job at the EPA. Unfortunately, the public won’t know which companies get that privilege, but why would a “GOP political consultant” working for Pruitt do anything unethical? 6. Trump’s 2,400 lies — and counting Trump said he would be the “jobs president,” and there’s no question he’s giving the fact-checking industry a major bump. Between the start of his presidency (January 2017) and March 2018, Trump had already told 2,436 lies. We don’t feel any need to elaborate here. When the president abandons the truth to gain whatever advantage he can (about firing the FBI Director, the FBI Deputy Director, Special Counsel Mueller, etc.), it sinks the country to the level of a banana republic. 5. Steve Mnuchin’s $1 million on travel Though he tried to get a military jet for his honeymoon, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was denied use of the plane. However, that was one of the few times. A Politico report from March 2018 revealed Mnuchin’s private jet travel (eight trips) cost $1 million in taxpayer funds. The best part about Mnuchin’s travel is the shamelessness of it. After arguing with reporters about the costs, Treasury staff said he would be taking another military jet to Argentina in the third week of March. Based on military flight estimates of $25,000 per hour, that trip will exceed $300,000 each way. 4. Trump’s golf trips to his own resorts There are thousands of beautiful golf clubs in America. Isn’t it strange that Trump only goes to the ones he owns? When you think about it, it’s normal for someone who spends every day of his presidency profiting off his position. For example, when Trump visits his own resorts, Secret Service agents have to pay his company thousands to rent golf carts in order to protect him. If Trump picked another golf course, they’d still have to pay for golf carts — the only difference is, he wouldn’t personally profit off the rentals. Meanwhile, taxpayers have to foot the bill — currently near $60 million over 14 months — to take Trump and his family from the White House to Florida. 3. Jared Kushner’s failed background check and massive debts Most of America didn’t have any idea who Jared Kushner was before he ended up in the White House. There’s a good reason for that: Kushner is neither an elected official nor a talented businessman. His only qualification was marrying Trump’s daughter Ivanka. But this blatant act of nepotism is only the start. Kushner’s massive real estate debt, which resulted from a bad building purchase, clearly has implications for foreign policy. That would explain why Kushner couldn’t get a top security clearance after a full year in the White House. However, it doesn’t explain why he has access to sensitive materials in the presidential daily briefing, which he often read to Trump. 2. Michael Flynn, Trump’s NSA, getting paid by Russia and Turkey While many have been corrupt, a select few of Trump’s team pushed it into treasonous territory. That’s where Michael Flynn, who was on the payroll of both Russia and Turkey while dealing with Trump, went in late 2016. Flynn may have betrayed his country of birth (i.e., America) by telling the Russian ambassador he’d work on getting sanctions lightened or dropped. Hey, when you take Putin’s money, you have to fulfill your end of the bargain, or you might end up among the many who died from poisoning. 1. The GOP tax plan Follow the money paying for the GOP tax plan and you’ll find lots of layoffs, Congress member kickbacks, lost health care coverage, and record deficits. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images For a while, Wall Street bankers like Jamie Dimon and Gary Cohn held their noses and pretended things in the White House were normal. It was all about the GOP tax plan, which is becoming known as the biggest looting in Washington D.C. history. Once they got their money, the Wall St. gang couldn’t run away fast enough. Whether you count the billions corporations and the world’s richest men got — or just the tens of millions going to Trump, Senator Bob Corker, and others — this corrupt act will haunt America for generations. (The layoffs have already begun.) How did every U.S. corporation get a fat 40% tax cut while millions of Americans saw their taxes go up? Lobbyists went wild all across D.C. in 2017, and their money spread from Paul Ryan’s office through the Trump Cabinet. | |
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| 05-25-18 11:44am - 2360 days | #756 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Pruitt spent $3.5 million on security during first year as EPA head By Miranda Green and Justin Wise - 05/25/18 12:51 PM EDT Pruitt spent $3.5 million on security during first year as EPA head  Greg NashScott Pruitt spent nearly $3.5 million on security during his first year as the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), according to an agency breakdown released Friday. Pruitt's round the clock security detail racked up the high costs through both travel and payroll expenses — costing taxpayers more than $760,000 in travel and more than $2.7 million in pay during the administrator's first year. The costs for his detail, which have accompanied Pruitt on both international trips like Morocco and Italy and to Disneyland and the Rose Bowl, are significantly higher than the amounts previous administrators spent, the data shows. In comparison, EPA spent just $1.6 million on security for former EPA head Gina McCarthy during her last year in the post. The EPA maintains that Pruitt's increased security is necessary due to higher threats against the administrator. “Administrator Pruitt has faced an unprecedented amount of death threats against him and to provide transparency EPA will post the costs of his security detail and pro-actively release these numbers on a quarterly basis," EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox said in a statement. "Americans should all agree that members of the President’s cabinet should be kept safe from violent threats.” However, Pruitt has recently been challenged for his claims that the security detail is a response to security risks following reports that he received 24/7 security starting his first day in office. Internal emails obtained by The Hill showed that the Trump transition team set up security due to fears that Pruitt's anticipated iron fist against EPA regulations could generate public ire. The revelation about Pruitt’s security spending is the latest in a string of expenditures that have been made public this year. On Wednesday, The Hill reported that an internal document showed Pruitt spent at least $9,600 on office furnishing that included Smithsonian artwork, a refurbished desk and other framed items. Pruitt’s travel spending has also been the subject of intense criticism. In March, Politico reported that he spent $105,000 on first-class airline travel during his first year. Pruitt in testimony to Congress dismissed the controversies swirling around him as "fiction" pushed by opponents of his agenda. | |
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| 05-25-18 11:50am - 2360 days | #757 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
World Russia Just Fired a Missile Further Than Anyone Before and No One Noticed Newsweek Brendan Cole,Newsweek 8 hours ago Russia has test-fired a surface-to-air missile 50 miles further than anyone has before, U.S. intelligence sources have revealed. With little fanfare, Russia successfully used the S-500 surface-to-air missile system to hit a target 299 miles away, which is 50 miles further than any known test, CNBC reported. Moscow says that the system can intercept hypersonic missiles, drones and stealth warplanes like the F-22 and the F-35 and would allow it to destroy targets at near space range. The test used a modified version of the missile used in the S-300V4 surface-to-air system. Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier in May that he wanted to prepare the S-500 systems for mass production, giving Moscow the ability to engage multiple targets, state news agency TASS reported. RTX3GSU2 Vladimir Putin watches the Zapad-2017 war games, held by Russian and Belarussian servicemen, with Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu (L) and Chief of the General Staff of Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov (2nd R) . Russia has reportedly successfully test fired the S-500 surface-to-air missile. Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin via REUTERS He also announced Moscow would modernize its strategic nuclear forces and rearm 14 regiments with the Yars intercontinental ballistic missile systems by the end of the year. The military display comes after U.S. intelligence experts said last week that Moscow will have the hypersonic glide vehicle called Avangard ready by 2020. Able to carry a nuclear warhead and glide at the top of the atmosphere, it is believed that no country can defend against it. CNBC reported that it had been successfully tested twice in 2016. Also this week, Russia’s ballistic missile submarine Yuri Dolgoruky tested four Bulava nuclear-capable missiles, unleashing them within 20 seconds. Russia’s Defence Ministry said that the test salvo on May 22 targeted the Kura shooting range on the Kamchatka Peninsula. Most popular: ‘Dangerous’ MS-13 Gang Member Accused of Violent Texas Murder Caught in South Carolina The Bulava missiles can carry multiple nuclear warheads and can reach a range of around 5,700 miles. Information about Russia’s missile capabilities emerged after it was reported that a Russian-owned surface-to-air missile downed the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014 over eastern Ukraine. Moscow has denied responsibility. This article was first written by Newsweek | |
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| 05-25-18 12:14pm - 2360 days | #758 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Can you say graft? Days after China signed an agreement to spend $500 million on a Trump project, with another $500 million from China banks possible, Trump tells Congress there is a deal to save ZTE, a China phone company that was sanctioned by the US last month. The sanctions would have put ZTE out of business. How much will Trump make from the Trump project? He's not telling. That's his private business, which he still owns, while acting as President of the US. No other US president in modern history has made as much in office as Donald Trump. -------- -------- Business Trump administration tells Congress it has deal to save ZTE Engadget Jon Fingas,Engadget 33 minutes ago The US government should soon act on its promise to give ZTE another chance following its revived export ban. The New York Times has learned that the Trump administration has informed Congress of a Commerce Department deal that would let ZTE take American exports as long as it accepted new penalties. It would have to pay a "substantial" fine, shake up its management team and hire American compliance officers to keep it on the straight and narrow. The deal could be as public as soon as May 25th (today if you're reading in time), but it's otherwise expected "soon." If a deal like this goes forward, it could trigger a furor in Congress. The House of Representatives recently passed a bill that would prevent the US from making a deal with ZTE, while a bipartisan group of senators (including Chuck Schumer and Marco Rubio) have insisted that the administration maintain the ban as a matter of law enforcement and security. ZTE faced the renewed ban after it allegedly reneged on promises to punish workers for illegally shipping telecom hardware to Iran and North Korea, so another deal could be seen as going soft on the company. Whatever happens, ZTE doesn't have many bargaining chips. It suspended operations after the first ban, since its heavy dependence on American components (such as Qualcomm Snapdragon processors for phones) left it with a grim future where it either couldn't offer certain products at all or would be at a competitive disadvantage. However much it dislikes a given ideal, it might have to say yes for the sake of survival. New York Times This article originally appeared on Engadget. | |
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| 05-25-18 12:27pm - 2360 days | #759 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Security firm was ordered to pay $1 billion to a woman who was raped by one of its security guards. The fine seems more symbolic than real. The security firm has been dissolved. So I assume there is little or no money left at the security firm. -------- -------- Security firm ordered to pay $1bn after guard raped teenage girl The Independent Agencies,The Independent 23 hours ago A jury has awarded the victim $1bn damages: iStock A security company has been told by a jury to pay $1bn (£750m) to woman who was raped by one of its guards when she was 14-years-old. Hope Cheston was with her boyfriend outside a party in Atlanta, Georgia in October 2012, when the armed security guard approached, her attorney said. The guard told the boyfriend not to move and raped Ms Cheston. While the media never normally identify victims of rape – and it would be illegal to do so in a British case - but Ms Cheston, now 20, waived her anonymity. The full-time college student who plans to spend her summer working with an organisation in Atlanta that helps homeless people, said she wanted her story to provide strength for other sexual-assault victims. The guard, identified in the lawsuit as Brandon Lamar Zachary, is serving a 20-year prison sentence, according to online prison records. Ms Cheston’s mother, Renatta Cheston-Thornton, filed a lawsuit in 2015 on behalf of her daughter. The jury has now handed down the verdict against Crime Prevention Agency, the security company that employed Zachary. Zachary, who was 22 at the time, should never have been hired because he wasn’t licensed as an armed guard, attorney L Chris Stewart Stewart said. The judge had already determined the security company was liable, so the jury was only determining damages, Stewart said. After reading the verdict, jurors immediately left the jury box — without waiting for the judge’s permission — to hug Ms Cheston and her mother. Attempts to reach the company for comment were unsuccessful. Online corporate registration information for Crime Prevention Agency shows that it was dissolved in 2016. The phone at a number listed online for Mario Watts, who is named on the corporate registration as the CEO and identified in the lawsuit as the company’s registered agent, were unanswered. A lot of women who suffer sexual assault don’t pursue justice, choosing instead to put it behind them, Ms Cheston said. “I feel like my case is just to show that you may not get it immediately, but you will get what you’re worth. This shows that people do care about the worth of a woman.” Mr Stewart said: “I was really proud of the jury because there is no basis in the legal world for how high a rape verdict can be,” he said. Verdicts in the tens of millions of dollars, or even hundreds of millions, are not uncommon, Jeff Dion, director of the National Crime Victim Bar Association said in an email. But he’s never heard of a $1bn verdict in a case with a single victim. | |
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| 05-25-18 08:09pm - 2360 days | #760 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump working hard to make the federal government more efficient. He signed executive orders making it easier to fire federal workers, and cut funding and power for federal unions. --------- --------- Trump makes it easier to fire federal workers, cuts union powers By Alexander Mallin May 25, 2018, 8:21 PM ET President Trump signed executive orders Friday that take aim at what White House officials described as an overly bureaucratic and extensive process of firing “poorly performing” civil servants. The orders would also limit the power and funding from the federal unions set up to protect them. The head of the largest federal workers' union said the Trump administration "seems hellbent on replacing a civil service that works for all taxpayers with a political service that serves at its whim." In a call with reporters, administration officials described the three executive orders taking a wide variety of actions, including rolling back the amount of time that "poorly performing" civil servants have to correct their behavior before being fired – and making it harder for fired workers to move to a separate agency. A second executive order will create a federal 'Labor Relations Working Group' intended to analyze government contracts with federal unions and remove "wasteful expenditures." The third executive order restricts the amount of time federal employees can spend on "union work," and aims to charge federal unions for rent space in federal buildings and eliminates their ability to expense their travel to the government. The order will also halt payments to unions specifically related to their time lobbying Congress. The officials pushed back on the idea that the moves were politically motivated, insisting that it was more about increasing efficiency in government and saving taxpayer dollars. “This executive order is about promoting better use of taxpayer dollars and helping support the hundreds of thousands of federal civil servants that come to work every day to do a great job on behalf of their country and have consistently said the government's inability to effectively manage poor performing employees is a problem,” one official said. “We don't view this as an administration as a particularly political issue.” White House Director of the Domestic Policy Council Andrew Bremberg said in a statement that the orders are in line with the public opinion inside the civil service itself. "Every year the federal employee viewpoint survey has consistently shown that less than one-third of federal employees believe that poor performers are adequately addressed by their agency," Bremberg said. "These executive orders will make it easier for agencies to remove poor performing employees and ensure that taxpayer dollars are more efficiently used." Federal worker unions quickly objected. The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents about 700,000 federal workers, issued a statement saying "President Trump is attempting to silence the voice of veterans, law enforcement officers, and other frontline federal workers through a series of executive orders intended to strip federal employees of their decades-old right to representation at the worksite." "This is more than union busting – it's democracy busting," AFGE National President J. David Cox said in the statement. "These executive orders are a direct assault on the legal rights and protections that Congress has specifically guaranteed to the 2 million public-sector employees across the country who work for the federal government." As for the amount of taxpayer dollars saved as a result of the orders, the officials said their current estimates predict that it will save taxpayers “at least $100 million” annually." They could not say just how many civil servants would be cut from the federal government as a result of the orders. | |
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| 05-25-18 08:37pm - 2360 days | #761 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
USA TODAY Navy graduates deride 'physical coward' Trump ahead of Academy commencement address William Cummings, USA TODAY Published 5:35 p.m. ET May 25, 2018 | Updated 10:09 p.m. ET May 25, 2018 President Donald Trump addressed the 2018 graduates of the United States Naval Academy Friday, telling them the military rebuilding has begun and they are now leaders in the "most powerful and righteous force on the planet." (May 25) AP Two graduates of the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., penned an op-ed in The Baltimore Sun questioning President Trump's suitability to deliver the commencement speech to this year's graduating class of midshipmen on Friday. "It is right and fitting that the president of the United States give a commencement address to a service academy’s graduating class," Daniel Barkhuff and William Burke wrote in Wednesday's edition of the paper. "It is also right and fitting that citizens of the democracy for which these graduates will soon be charged with protecting point out the personal cowardice, narcissism and incompetency of the current president." Barkhuff and Burke graduated from the Academy in 2001. They now work at Veterans for Responsible Leadership. They wrote of the sacrifices made by various Naval Academy graduates, such as Sen. John McCain, over the years. "Contrast this to the personal and professional honor of the sitting president of the United States, who time and again makes small choices guided by self-interest, ego, impulse and immediate self-gratification," they wrote. "He could never do what we ask our U.S. Naval Academy graduates to do. He is a physical coward, a liar and no leader at all." If their opinion reached Trump, it had no impact on the enthusiastic tone of his address. "America is back," Trump told the graduates. "We are witnessing the great reawakening of the American spirit and of American might." Trump also told them that, "In case you haven’t noticed, we have become a lot stronger lately." | |
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| 05-26-18 07:11pm - 2359 days | #762 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Clapper: 'More and more' of Steele dossier proving to be true By John Bowden - 05/26/18 03:23 PM EDT Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said more of the so-called Steele dossier's claims are proving to be true. In an interview with Salon, Clapper said the dossier, part of which lays out alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, has been corroborated by subsequent U.S. investigations. The Obama-era intelligence chief stressed that while the most "salacious" claims in the dossier have not been proven to be true, "more and more" of the dossier's other allegations about President Trump and his allies' ties to Russia have been backed up over time. "Some of what was in the dossier was actually corroborated — but separately — in our intelligence community assessment, from other sources that we were confident in," Clapper said. "The salacious parts, no. That’s never been corroborated," he added. "It would appear to me that as time has gone on more and more of it has been corroborated, but I can’t actually give you a percentage." The dossier, which was created by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele as part of his work for political intelligence firm Fusion GPS, had circulated in media circles before being published in full by BuzzFeed News in January 2017. Clapper stressed that the dossier was never used as a source for the 2017 intelligence community assessment that stated the Russians interfered in the election for the purpose of damaging Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and aiding Trump. "Well, some of what was in the dossier … first of all, I need to make an important point here. We did not use the dossier as a source for the intelligence community assessment, that’s point one," Clapper said. "The dossier is not classified or an intelligence document," he continued. "It’s actually a collection of 17 separate memos." Republicans have frequently pointed to the dossier as proof that the FBI investigation into Trump's campaign began with political motivations, as the Fusion GPS investigation was funded in part by lawyers for the DNC and the Clinton campaign. Trump has erroneously accused the FBI and Clapper over the last several days of planting a spy in his campaign after it was revealed the agency used a confidential informant to contact several members of the Trump campaign. | |
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| 05-26-18 08:46pm - 2359 days | #763 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
What would Trump do? A cop shoots and kills another cop. Trump should give the dead cop a brutal tweet: that cop was a loser. Trump only admires winners. And Trump should give the killer cop 2 thumbs up: because Trump admires winners, and the killer cop was obviously the winner. ---------- ---------- This is not right. A cop shoots and kills a suspect. The suspect turns out to be the cop's brother, who is also a cop. But what is not right: The cop who shot and killed his brother has been charged with murder. This is not only not right, but also unbelievable: Cops can shoot unarmed civilians, and are sometimes put on paid leave while the shooting is investigated. But that is only sometimes. More often, you read that the cop who did the shooting is never charged with any crime. Even when the victim was unarmed. So why is this cop being charged with murder? Just because the guy he killed was another cop? Cops should have the right to kill other cops: especially if they think the other cops are doing something wrong. And I've read reports where the cop who was killed was breaking into his brother's house. So the cop who fired was obviously in fear of his life. And that alone, justifies shooting the suspect. -------- -------- Brother charged with murder after shooting Harris County deputy in apparent domestic dispute Stagecoach officer accused of killing his brother, Christine Dobbyn reports. By Pooja Lodhia Saturday, May 26, 2018 06:31PM STAGECOACH, Texas (KTRK) -- A Stagecoach police officer has been charged with murder after killing his brother, a Harris County deputy, Friday night. Robert Lee was booked into the Montgomery County Jail last night and charged with murder. A Harris County deputy was killed by his brother Friday night inside a Montgomery County home. Investigators said the body of Harris County deputy Rocky Lee, 57 was found in a bathroom after being shot multiple times. The Stagecoach police officer was treated for medical issues and is cooperating with law enforcement. Hours after the shooting, the Harris County Sheriff's Office asked for prayers for the family of the deputy. "This evening, was a tragic situation especially when you are talking about circumstances involving two brothers," Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said. The shooting is still under investigation. The Harris County Deputies' Organization released the following statement in regards to the tragedy: Open Letter to Our Members and the Public Today we are in mourning for the shooting death of Deputy Rocky Lee. We are confident in the ongoing investigation by the Texas Rangers, Montgomery County Sheriff's Office, and Montgomery County officials. A tragedy such as this always shakes the law enforcement community. Our prayers are with Deputy Lee's family and with our brothers and sisters in blue, especially those who have served with Deputy Lee. | |
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| 05-27-18 09:16am - 2358 days | #764 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump, the President whose administration is the most corrupt in America's history, who enjoys diverting money from the poor and middle class and giving it to the rich and corporations, is now trying to show he has a softer side: He mourns the "Young And Beautiful Lives Destroyed By Russia Probe". Of course, the Russia Probe is an investigation into illegal activity. But Trump does not seem to understand this. He is tough on criminals. He wants them in jail or dead. But his allies are not criminals. Even if they have done criminal acts, they are still not criminals. They are young, beautiful people, who deserve whatever money they can steal. They are beautiful people, who should be proud of being above the law that rules the peons of the US. Trump's people are free to kill or cheat or steal, all in the name of making America great again. But Trump's enemies are not beautiful people: Crooked Hilary, Crazy Joe Biden, Leakin' James Comey, and many others belong in jail or should be thrown out of the country: Making America great again means getting rid of the garbage. (Trump has stated repeatedly that he loves all his fellow citizens. Except some citizens deserve tough love-which might explain why he is so tough on Hilary Clinton and Comey and other enemies.) ----------- ----------- Politics Trump Mourns 'Young And Beautiful' Lives 'Destroyed' By Russia Probe HuffPost Hayley Miller,HuffPost 1 hour 4 minutes ago President Donald Trump on Sunday lamented the lives “devastated” by special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. In his latest attempt to discredit the federal probe, Trump tweeted that the “young and beautiful lives” allegedly “destroyed” by the “Russia Collusion Witch Hunt” had “journeyed to Washington, D.C., with stars in their eyes.” “They went back home in tatters!” he tweeted. It’s unclear who Trump was referring to in his tweet, though at least 19 people have been charged in Mueller’s investigation, which began in May 2017. Michael Flynn, 59, who served as Trump’s national security adviser for a month before his ouster, was the first person inside the president’s administration to be indicted in the probe. He pleaded guilty in December to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian government. Paul Manafort, 69, a former Trump campaign chairman, has been indicted on multiple criminal charges, including conspiring to launder money and bank fraud. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges. Several other Trump associates, including Rick Gates, 46, a former deputy chairman of Trump’s campaign, and George Papadopoulos, 30, a former Trump campaign adviser, have pleaded guilty to charges related to the probe and have agreed to cooperate with Mueller. Trump has repeatedly tried to undermine Mueller’s investigation, tweeting May 20 that “real Americans” should “get tough” on the probe. Still, the majority of Americans have said they support the probe into possible collusion between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia, according to a poll conducted in April by The Washington Post and ABC News. | |
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| 05-27-18 09:27am - 2358 days | #765 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Is it true that not all Americans love and idolize President Trump? Here is Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of Crooked Hilary Clinton, and also the daughter of Wild Bill Clinton (the sex maniac, although Trump himself seems to have had a few sexual adventures). Chelsea does not seem to admire Trump. ------------ ------------ Chelsea Clinton: Trump Degrades 'What It Means To Be An American' HuffPost Hayley Miller,HuffPost 2 hours 3 minutes ago Chelsea Clinton skewered President Donald Trump’s character in a recent interview, accusing him of degrading “what it means to be an American.” Clinton, a philanthropist and the daughter of former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, tore into Trump when asked about his planned July visit to Britain during an interview published Saturday in The Guardian. “If I lived in Britain I would show up to protest, because I don’t agree with what he’s doing to degrade what it means to be an American,” Clinton said. Clinton, 38, also told the newspaper that she’s been the target of “vitriol” for as long as she could remember and credited Trump for prompting her decision to start firing back at people who say “hateful” things to her. “The reason, now, I no longer ignore it when people say hateful things to me on the street or on social media is, I think we have to shine a light,” Clinton said. “I think those of us who have platforms to do that have to say this is wrong and unacceptable, so we don’t normalize it but try to detoxify what has been unleashed,” she said. “Because if we don’t, we leave a vacuum. And I think the darkness fills that vacuum.” Trump has continued to call for Hillary Clinton, his 2016 election opponent, to be jailed for her e-mail practices as secretary of state, even though the FBI almost two years ago concluded no charges were warranted. The president has also mocked women’s appearances and promoted bigoted views. “I think that the way that our president and many people around him have not only mainstreamed hate, but mainlined it, is so deeply dangerous,” Clinton said. “I think the wreckage that we’re seeing at this moment is one that will, I hope, be repaired on the policy standpoint when we elect Democrats,” she continued. “But I think we will still then have work to do on repairing the tone in our country, the exposure of the real racist and sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic feeling which is on the rise in our country ― a rot that has been exposed.” Clinton praised the “hugely important” First Amendment, but said “freedom of speech” doesn’t mean there should be a “freedom of consequences.” “Sure, you should not be in prison because you said something racist,” Clinton said. “But you also shouldn’t be able to run for president. And yet here we are.” This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 05-27-18 09:33am - 2358 days | #766 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump loves children. He blames Democrats for separating immigrant kids from their parents. Says the Democrats are responsible for the horrible law that takes kids away from the parents (even though his Administration created and passed the law, Trump believes that the Democrats forced him to do this terrible thing. Trump is a Christ-like figure, who can do no wrong: any evil he does, is forced on him by evil Democrats and other evil people who oppose his loving ways.) --------- --------- HuffPost Trump Unbelievably Rips Dems For Immigrant Kids Being Separated From Parents HuffPost Mary Papenfuss,HuffPost 10 hours ago President Donald Trump has bashed the Democrats for a hugely controversial policy created by his own administration: separating undocumented immigrant children from their parents. He urged Americans in a Saturday morning tweet to “put pressure” on the Democrats to “end the horrible law that separates children from there [sic] parents.” Despite what Trump tweeted, there is no law requiring children to be separated from their parents. The separation policy was adopted by his own administration. It was underscored in a speech in early May by Attorney General Jeff Sessions (in the video above). The policy has been hit with a firestorm of criticism, with some even comparing the increasing dehumanization of immigrants in America as similar to the ugly atmosphere in Germany before the Holocaust. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) took first lady Melania Trump to task in light of her new “Be Best” mission for children. “Separating toddlers from parents is definitely not a ‘Be Best’ policy,” he tweeted. “Are you going to do anything about it?” In chilling Senate testimony last month, a Health and Human Services official said the government was unable to locate nearly 1,500 children who had been released from its custody. Steve Wagner, acting assistant secretary with the Administration for Children and Families of HHS, insisted that the federal agency is “not legally responsible for children” once they’re handed over to a sponsor. Until recently, families that illegally crossed the Mexican border together generally faced civil deportation proceedings. But as of May, the Trump administration is sending all parents to jails run by the U.S. Marshals Service. Because migrant children cannot be held in jails, they are placed elsewhere by the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement. Before the Trump administration, the office handled children who crossed the border alone. White House chief of staff John Kelly, who called the harsh new policy a “technique” and a “tough deterrent,” explained earlier this month to NPR: “They’ll be sent to foster care — or whatever. But the big point is they elected to come illegally into the United States.” CORRECTION: A previous version of this story identified Ted Lieu as a U.S. senator. He is a U.S. representative. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 05-27-18 06:23pm - 2358 days | #767 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Giuliani advises no Mueller interview without informant info. No problem. Slap Trump with a subpoena. Then put Trump in jail until he testifies under oath. They put reporters in jail for refusing to name sources. Put Trump in jail if he refuses to testify under oath. Waterboard the President if he refuses to testify. Since the President has stated he is in favor of waterboarding. Maybe first-hand experience with waterboarding will give him a better idea of what he really likes. The public has a growing awareness that Russians interfered in the election that voted Trump into the White House. Maybe Trump is a fake president, since the election was rigged by the Russians. In which case, Trump should either resign or be impeached. --------- --------- Giuliani advises no Mueller interview without informant info Associated Press Associated Press 3 hours ago FILE - In this May 5, 2018, file photo, Rudy Giuliani, an attorney for President Donald Trump, speaks in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File) WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's legal team would advise that he refuse to submit to an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller unless the team can review classified information shared with select lawmakers about the origins of the FBI investigation into Russia's election meddling, Trump's personal lawyer said Sunday. Rudy Giuliani said that should Mueller's investigators seek a court order to compel the president to testify, Trump's lawyers would fight such a subpoena all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary. "I think we win it," Giuliani said. Giuliani downplayed the chances that Trump would fire Mueller, a Republican who once was FBI director and has served under GOP presidents. Asked if Trump would dismiss anyone if the investigation kept going, Giuliani told "Fox News Sunday" that firings would play "into the hands of playing the victim, Watergate." Giuliani's public negotiation over terms of an interview focuses on the use of a government informant who approached members of Trump's 2016 campaign in a possible bid to glean intelligence on Russian efforts to sway his race against Democrat Hillary Clinton. Trump has made unproven claims of FBI misconduct and political bias and has denounced the informant, without evidence, as "a spy." The two meetings with select lawmakers, held last Thursday, were requested by Trump's GOP allies in Congress and arranged by the White House. The president has tried to sow suspicions about the legitimacy of the FBI investigation, and he and his allies have focused on the use of the informant. After the meetings, which included Justice Department, FBI officials, congressional leaders from both parties and Democratic and Republican leaders of the intelligence committees, Democrats said they saw no evidence to support Republican allegations that the FBI acted inappropriately. Nonetheless, Giuliani said the Trump camp wants access to the material presented at those briefings to help prepare the president for a possible interview with Mueller. "If they don't show us these documents, well, we are just going to have to say no," Giuliani said. It's unclear, however, if Trump would heed his lawyers' advice. Justice Department officials didn't immediately return a message seeking comment on whether the president had requested a briefing similar to what was provided to members of Congress last week. In a separate television appearance, Giuliani said Trump was "adamant" about wanting to agree to an interview, saying, "If he wasn't thinking about it and it wasn't an active possibility, we would be finished with that by now and we would have moved on to getting the investigation over with another way." The new wrinkle, he said, if the disclosure about the informant. "We are more convinced, as we see it, that this is a rigged investigation. Now we have this whole new 'Spygate' thing thrown on top of it, on top of already very legitimate questions," he told CNN's "State of the Union." Giuliani also raised the specter of a protracted legal fight over the question of a Trump interview if Mueller decided to seek a subpoena. "What we have to do is go to court and seek protection from the court, if we have to do that. Our first thing is we sure as heck are not going to testify unless it's all straightened out, unless we learned the basis of that Russian investigation," Giuliani told Fox. | |
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| 05-27-18 07:05pm - 2358 days | #768 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
20-year-old girl suspected of underage drinking spits on cop. So 3 cops push her to the ground, one cop hits her on the back of the head and neck, put her in a choke-hold, handcuff her, while the cops shout: Stop resisting. Is she attacking them? She faces 2 counts of aggravated assault. How did she assault the cops? By spitting on them? How many times did the cops assault the woman? Forcing her to the ground. Hitting her head and neck. A choke hold. Handcuffs. The cops are doing their duty? Beating on a 20-year-old woman? Wildwood Mayor Ernie Troiano Jr. told The Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday that the police soon would release body camera footage showing Weinman insulting the cops and spitting on them. “It wasn’t just that this officer decided to beat her up,” he said. “That wasn’t the case.” That wasn't the case. It seems to be the case. The mayor is either lying, or denying reality. Does a cop have the right to beat on a woman, if she spits on him? Not legally, as far as I can tell. Which might be why the cops were yelling, "Stop resisting". Because that gave them a legal right to beat on her. Except, maybe not. Excessive force is not legal. ------------ ------------ Police and Law Enforcement 4 hours ago NJ officer seen punching woman in the head during arrest at popular beach; police investigate By Frank Miles | Fox News New Jersey officers fight woman at Wildwood beach Officers involved in a violent scuffle with a 20-year-old woman suspected of underage drinking at a New Jersey beach — an incident caught on video — were “reassigned to administrative duty pending the outcome of a full and thorough investigation,” officials said Sunday. Video of the arrest Saturday went viral showing a Wildwood Police officer punching Emily Weinman of Philadelphia twice — once in the head and once in the neck — and putting her in a chokehold. Voices in the background could be heard shouting, “Stop resisting,” according to Fox 29. The police department issued a statement about the arrest on Facebook Sunday, noting: “While Chief [Robert Regalbuto] finds this video to be alarming, he does not want to rush to any judgment until having the final results of the investigation.” Weinman is facing multiple charges, including two counts of aggravated assault on an officer and being a minor in possession of alcohol. She posted about the incident on Facebook, which went viral before being taken down. “I asked them don’t they have something better to do as cops than to stop people for underage drinking on the beach,” she wrote. “Honestly, I can say if I took even a sip, then I would’ve gave them my information and called it a day; I’m underage, so I know better,” she wrote, according to The New York Post. “I know I should’ve gave him my name,” Weinman wrote. “I was partly wrong in a way but I was scared.” She noted: “I tripped and fell and the cop tackled me to the ground and smashed my head into the sand.” “But this whole situation was handled wrongly and blew out of proportion all because these pigs didn’t do their jobs the way they were TRAINED to do so.” Wildwood Mayor Ernie Troiano Jr. told The Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday that the police soon would release body camera footage showing Weinman insulting the cops and spitting on them. “It wasn’t just that this officer decided to beat her up,” he said. “That wasn’t the case.” He added: “We don’t like to see anyone get hit, period. But then again, when you have someone who’s aggressively attacking you or spitting at you. … I wasn’t there. I don’t know.” | |
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| 05-27-18 10:50pm - 2358 days | #769 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Impeach Trump now! Trump has threatened another shutdown of the Federal government. The man is obviously working as an agent of Putin, who threatens the workings of the US Government. Impeach him, throw him in an off-shore, secret prison, and waterboard him until he confesses he is a spy and agent working for his master, Putin. Putin must be stopped, before Trump can destroy America. --------- --------- Trump threatens another shutdown as budget battle heats up Andrew Taylor, Associated Press Andrew Taylor, Associated Press 1 hour 30 minutes ago WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump has warned Congress that he will never sign another foot-tall, $1 trillion-plus government-wide spending bill like the one he did in March. His message to lawmakers in both parties: Get your act together before the next budget lands on my desk. After a brief government shutdown earlier this year, Democrats and Republicans now agree on the need for budgeting day-to-day operations of government the old-fashioned way. That means weeks of open debate and amendments that empower rank-and-file lawmakers, rather than concentrating power in the hands of a few leaders meeting in secret. But Capitol Hill's dysfunction is so pervasive that even the most optimistic predictions are for only a handful of the 12 annual spending bills to make it into law by Oct. 1, the start of the new budget year. The rest may get bundled together into a single, massive measure yet again. The worst-case scenario? A government shutdown just a month before Election Day, Nov. 6, as Republicans and Democrats fight for control of the House and possibly the Senate. Trump is agitating for more money for his long-promised border wall with Mexico. So far, he has been frustrated by limited success on that front. "We need the wall. We're going to have it all. And again, that wall has started. We got $1.6 billion. We come up again (in) September," Trump said in a campaign-style event in Michigan last month. "If we don't get border security, we'll have no choice. We'll close down the country because we need border security." At stake is the funding for daily operations of government agencies. A budget deal this year reversed spending cuts that affected military readiness and put a crimp on domestic agencies. A $1.3 trillion spending bill swept through Congress in March, though Trump entertained last-minute second thoughts about the measure and promised he would not sign a repeat. The demise of the annual appropriations process took root after Republicans took over the House in 2011 and is part of a broader breakdown on Capitol Hill. The yearly bills need bipartisan support to advance, which has grated on tea party lawmakers. GOP leaders such as House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and his predecessor as speaker, Ohio Republican John Boehner, have preferred to focus on other priorities. Ryan did throw his weight behind a two-year budget agreement this year that set an overall spending limit of $1.3 trillion for both 2018 and 2019, citing a need to boost the Pentagon. That, in theory, makes it easier to get the appropriations process back on track. But in the GOP-controlled House, where Democratic votes are generally needed to pass the bills, Democrats are complaining that Republicans have shortchanged domestic agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Environmental Protection Agency. That's not the case in the Senate, where the new chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Alabama Republican Richard Shelby, is determined to get the system working again. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York is on board, as is Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., himself a decades-long veteran of that powerful committee. "We want this to work," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who criticized the GOP-controlled House for continuing to pack legislation with "poison pills." Obstacles remain, however. For starters, floor debates could lead to votes on contentious issues such as immigration, the border wall, gun control and others that some lawmakers might hope to avoid. Democrats are wary of Republicans trying to jam through the Pentagon spending bill before dealing with some agencies. And Trump could blow up the whole effort at any time. Trump is prone to threatening government shutdowns on Twitter or when he riffs in public, and then backing off when bills are delivered to him. In the House, a familiar problem awaits. Many conservative Republicans won't vote for some bills because they think they spend too much money. That means Democratic votes are a must. But many Democrats are upset over unrelated policy add-ons pushed by the GOP, and they won't vote for the spending bills unless those provisions are removed, which usually doesn't happen until end-stage talks. At the same time, House GOP leaders are distracted by disputes over immigration, and they haven't made the appropriations bills a priority. An effort led by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., to cut or "rescind" $15 billion in unspent money has run into greater opposition than anticipated. Meantime, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J., is unpopular with some House conservatives, who cite his votes against a recent farm bill and against last year's tax cut measure, and that may hamper his effectiveness. | |
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| 05-27-18 10:53pm - 2358 days | #770 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
And if any Republicans try to protect Trump, they must also be eliminated. America must be made clean again. Of all spies and agents working for Putin. That includes all Republicans who are hiding behind the American Constitution. Put them in prison. Then line them up for a firing squad. Desperate times require desperate measures. | |
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| 05-28-18 09:28am - 2357 days | #771 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Ivanka Trump photo with son sparks backlash over border separations AFP AFP 16 hours ago Washington (AFP) - Ivanka Trump is facing an online backlash for tweeting what one critic called a "tone deaf" photo of herself cuddling her son as outrage grows over a federal government policy to separate the children of undocumented migrants from their parents. The eldest daughter of President Donald Trump, who serves as an advisor to her father, posted the picture of her with her son on Sunday, with the caption: "My <3! #SundayMorning." Critics were quick to point to a "zero tolerance" policy announced earlier this month by Attorney General Jeff Sessions that authorizes border security agents to take away the children of people who enter the United States unlawfully. The government places such children in foster homes, but Steven Wagner, a senior official in the Department of Health and Human Services told a congressional committee last month the government was "unable to determine with certainty the whereabouts of 1,475" minors after attempting to contact their sponsors in the last three months of 2017. "Isn't it the just the best to snuggle your little one -- knowing exactly where they are, safe in your arms? It's the best. The BEST. Right, Ivanka? Right?" tweeted comedian Patton Oswalt. "This is so unbelievably tone deaf, given that public outrage is growing over young kids being forcibly ripped from the arms of their parents at the border — a barbaric policy that Ivanka Trump is complicit in supporting," added Brian Klaas, a political scientist at the London School of Economics. Many others tweeted using the #WhereAreTheChildren hashtag. Donald Trump, for his part, blamed opposition Democrats for the "horrible law" in a tweet on Saturday -- though there is no law mandating the policy and it was not immediately clear what he may have meant. | |
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| 05-28-18 08:09pm - 2357 days | #772 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Breaking Bad The Giuliani of 1989 Would Try to Lock Up the Giuliani of 2018 Once upon a time, he grilled crooked pols on their relationships with Donald Trump and Roy Cohn. Now he’s acting like Trump’s new Cohn. Michael Tomasky 05.28.18 6:53 PM ET Once upon a time, Rudy Giuliani, as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, put crooked politicians in jail. This is 30 years ago now, which is a long time, and time, well, it does things to people. In fact, Giuliani himself delivered a pretty observant remark about time Sunday on CNN, speaking to Dana Bash: “Hey, there are a lot of people with decades of service,” Giuliani said. “Some are good, some bad, and some men get consumed with power, and some begin to lie.” Advertisement You can say that again, bub. Since becoming Donald Trump’s lead lawyer and defender, Giuliani has piled lie on top of lie— statements the Giuliani of the 1980s would have assembled into a devastating dossier that he would have presented with glee to a grand jury. That Giuliani of 1988—so zealous in pursuit of wrongdoing that he had a daughter wear a wire to record a conversation with her mother, a judge accused by Giuliani of a corrupt act (and acquitted!)—would have been scouring the law books looking for a way to indict the Giuliani of 2018. I’ve been writing about these people for 30 years now, and this person specifically, Giuliani, for 29—I met him in 1989. I’ve seen a lot of principles tossed out a lot of windows in these three decades, and a number of politicians who became the very thing they once ran against when they were young. But I have never seen a transformation as thorough and as chilling as Rudy’s. We were never on the same side of the ideological parking lot, and like a lot of people I objected to the gratuitous way he picked fights with political opponents who, funnily enough, were quite often black. But unlike a lot of liberals I had a grudging respect for him. New York City was a mess when he became mayor in 1994, after running and losing in 1989, and he definitely made the place more livable. For the most part, he hired serious people. Most of the time, I had decent to good relationships with a lot of them—Randy Mastro, Randy Levine, and especially his top aide Peter Powers, who was a terrific public servant and a total gentleman (putting out Rudy’s fires, he had to be). Then he started to run against Hillary for Senate. This was 1999. The mayor who had very carefully and sometimes showily distanced himself from the national GOP started to embrace it. He needed to raise millions from Republicans all over the country, so he picked some culture-war fights that were out of character or at least his character as mayor of New York City. Then he dropped out of that race after getting a prostate cancer diagnosis, and in the midst of a high profile divorce his then-wife found about from newspaper reports. . Then, after 9-11, he became America’s mayor. He deserved most of that good press, stupid placement of his bunker notwithstanding, because he did something very surprising. He expressed New Yorkers’ collective grief. You would have expected Rudy to do anger. But he did grief. It was surprising and, apparently, honest. Even an ill-conceived and executed 2008 campaign for presidential didn’t entirely dim his star. But now? Really—he wants to be out there calling men like James Clapper and John Brennan hacks? (That’s who he was speaking of in the quote to Bash above.) He’s really playing along with this ludicrous and cynical lie of Trump’s about his campaign being spied on? He’s become a complete caricature of the man he was 30 years ago. But don’t take that to mean he’s a joke. He’s not. As long as he’s out there lying for the lyingest president in the history of the country, he’s a threat to the Constitution. He said Sunday, also on CNN, that the Mueller investigation is “rigged.” It’s a horribly irresponsible thing for a lawyer to say. The discrediting of the Mueller investigation is also a discrediting of our laws and processes and institutions. Trump has proven repeatedly that he doesn’t care about any long-term damage he does to those, as long as he wins. Hack Republicans like Florida Congressman Matt Graetz don’t care either. I still might have thought that Giuliani would care, a little, and would be more sober and circumspect in his language. But no. He’s parroting the Trump line all the way. That’s another strange thing about this, too. Giuliani was always certainly his own man. He had a coterie of “Rudy men” around him. Now, for these past two years of his life and seemingly to his last days, Giuliani appears content to be a mere bagman—for a president almost certain to go down in history as one of our worst and perhaps our most lawless. Why would he do this? Well, one reason might be that Giuliani has his own motivations for discrediting Mueller, since Mueller may well be snooping around into how Giuliani apparently knew that James Comey was going to reopen the Hillary Clinton probe in late October (read Wayne Barrett’s Beast piece from last fall for the background on this). There may be other reasons we know nothing about. But whatever such facts may be, Giuliani has succumbed to the old adage that he has become what he once beheld. In 1986, when he was putting crooked pols behind bars, he grilled Bronx Borough President Stanley Friedman on his relationships with Roy Cohn—and Donald Trump. Now, he is acting as Trump’s new Cohn. Except that there’s more at stake now than New York City Parking Violations Bureau contracts. | |
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| 05-29-18 06:16am - 2357 days | #773 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
If Mueller is doing anything illegal, let Trump have Mueller arrested. If Mueller is not doing anything illegal, let Mueller have Trump arrested, or be impeached. Trump is famous for throwing out all kinds of slurs, most of which are either false or lies. Let Trump prove his accusations against Mueller, or have Trump removed from office. ----------- ----------- Trump: Mueller's team is 'meddling' in midterm elections Associated Press Associated Press 54 minutes ago WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is accusing special counsel Robert Mueller's investigative team of "MEDDLING" in the upcoming midterm elections and blames Democrats for "Collusion." Mueller is leading the probe into whether Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election with help from Trump campaign aides. So far, four Trump associates have been charged in Mueller's investigation; three have pleaded guilty to lying to the authorities. Trump has repeatedly referred to Mueller's team as "13 angry Democrats," although Mueller is a Republican. Mueller was appointed by Trump's deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein. On Tuesday, Trump tweeted: "The 13 Angry Democrats (plus people who worked 8 years for Obama) working on the rigged Russia Witch Hunt, will be MEDDLING with the mid-term elections, especially now that Republicans (stay tough!) are taking the lead in Polls. There was no Collusion, except by the Democrats." Later Tuesday morning, Trump appeared to be taking guidance from some of his advisers and supporters to heart, saying he needed to focus more of his attention on issues important to Americans and less on the Russia investigation. "Sorry, I've got to start focusing my energy on North Korea Nuclear, bad Trade Deals, VA Choice, the Economy, rebuilding the Military, and so much more, and not on the Rigged Russia Witch Hunt that should be investigating Clinton/Russia/FBI/Justice/Obama/Comey/Lynch etc.," he tweeted. | |
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| 05-29-18 12:24pm - 2356 days | #774 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
This minister deserves to serve as Donald Trump's spiritual advisor. Hopefully, the minister will guide Trump's path onto greater goodness and wealth. ------------- ------------- Christianity 6 hours ago Evangelist wants $54M jet: 'Jesus wouldn't be riding donkey' Associated Press DESTREHAN, La. – A prosperity gospel televangelist is asking disciples to "pray about becoming a partner" to his mission of obtaining a $54 million private jet. The Louisiana-based ministry of Jesse Duplantis has already paid cash for three other private planes, but he says God told him "I want you to believe in me for a Falcon 7X." NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune reports that Duplantis made the pitch to his followers in the May 21 edition of his weekly video address. Duplantis says the three-engine plane would allow the ministry to fly "anywhere in the world in one stop," reducing fuel costs while maintaining a global reach. Duplantis says Jesus Christ "wouldn't be riding a donkey" today -- "he'd be in an airplane flying all over the world." | |
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| 05-30-18 07:43am - 2355 days | #775 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Fake news: President Trump states that blacks have been voting for Democrats for over a hundred years. If they haven't learned any better (by starting to vote Republican), maybe the vote should be taken away from these stupid black people. Trump loves all people. Even the blacks that vote Democratic. But maybe they would be better off in shithole Africa, where they come from. God bless America. Home of the free white men. (And get rid of the rapist Mexicans, as well.) (And the terrorist Muslims.) (Did I leave out any other groups that are anti-Trump?) -------- -------- Trump argues black Americans have been voting for Democrats 'for over a hundred years' but that's incorrect Business Insider Bryan Logan May 30th 2018 5:18AM President Donald Trump, during a rally in Nashville, claimed African-Americans have been voting for Democrats "for over a hundred years." Trump made that comment during a long-winded missive on Tuesday about his dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party. The point was tied into remarks he gave about the November midterm elections. Though the 15th Amendment, codified in 1870, gave the right to vote to all men regardless of their "race, color, or previous condition of servitude," state and local governments implemented policies meant to discourage and prevent African-Americans from exercising that right. It wasn't until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law, just 53 years ago this year, that some of those barriers were addressed. During a rally in Nashville on Tuesday night, President Donald Trump claimed that African-American voters have been choosing Democrats almost exclusively "for over a hundred years." That comment was couched in a long-winded missive about the upcoming midterm elections in November, in which Trump aired some of his familiar grievances about the Democratic Party and some of its highest-profile lawmakers. "African-Americans vote for Democrats, for the most part," Trump said. "Vast majority. They've been doing it for over a hundred years," he added. While the 15th Amendment in the US Constitution (1870) allowed for all men to vote regardless of their "race, color, or previous condition of servitude," black people, particularly in the South, have faced certain barriers that prevented them from exercising that right. History teaches of the literacy tests, poll taxes, and other measures instituted at the state and local levels that sought to make voting far more difficult for African-Americans. In many cases, people simply resorted to violence. Perhaps the most memorable example was the protest march for voting rights from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, on March 7, 1965. It is known as "Bloody Sunday," because police confronted demonstrators on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where the lawmen attacked the marchers with billy clubs and tear gas. It wasn't until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law five months later that some of those institutional barriers were addressed. Voter registrations in the South rose dramatically as a result. So, African-American voters have only enjoyed sufficient freedom to vote for just over 50 years. Trying to exercise that right before 1965 was a potentially life-threatening proposition. | |
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| 05-30-18 08:12am - 2355 days | #776 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Fake news/real news If Trump has nothing to hide, why is he so concerned with a possible spy in his campaign? Is Trump a secret spy for Russia, and is afraid that being outed will force him to either resign or be impeached? What is the Truth about Trump? A Russian spy? A communist agent working to destroy America? A pervert who romps with Russian prostitutes? A pervert who romps with American porn stars? Enquiring minds want to know. --------- --------- HuffPost GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy Contradicts Trump On 'Informant' Claim HuffPost Igor Bobic,HuffPost 10 hours ago Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said the FBI acted appropriately when it used an informant to gather information about Donald Trump campaign advisers who allegedly had suspicious contacts linked to Russia prior to the 2016 election. “I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got, and that it has nothing to do with Donald Trump,” Gowdy said Tuesday during an interview on Fox News. Gowdy last week attended a classified DOJ briefing alongside other top lawmakers regarding the informant and the tactics the FBI had used during the 2016 campaign. The South Carolina congressman, who is retiring this year, is the first GOP lawmaker briefed on the informant to directly rebut Trump and his allies regarding the surveillance claims. Trump has ratcheted up his attacks against the Russia investigation, the Justice Department and the FBI in response to the revelation. He claimed the agency “infiltrated” and “spied” on his campaign under the orders of President Barack Obama, and he demanded that the Justice Department investigate the accusations and turn over any relevant documents to Congress. Trump again tore into the FBI during a rally in Nashville on Tuesday evening, insisting that his campaign had been “infiltrated” by his political opponents. “Can you imagine?” he said, to boos in the audience. But Gowdy maintained the FBI was simply following Trump’s orders when it investigated his campaign’s ties to Russia. “President Trump himself in the [former FBI Director James] Comey memos said, ‘If anyone connected with my campaign was working with Russia, I want you to investigate it,’” Gowdy said Tuesday on Fox News. “Sounds to me like that was exactly what the FBI did.” Gowdy faulted Democrats, however, for not specifying that Trump isn’t the target of the investigation. “This had nothing to do with Donald Trump.” | |
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| 05-30-18 08:31am - 2355 days | #777 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Fake news: Why are the police investigating this? The cop and his opponent pulled into the parking lot of a gentleman's sports club. Which proves they are both gentleman. So if they want to have a duel, the police should have the good manners to stay away from what does not concern them. Instead, the police say the cop who was shot, was only defending himself by shooting the other man. And if a bystander was also shot, they have to investigate who shot her. If she was shot by the other man, that other man will almost certainly face additional charges. But the other man, instead of being presumed innocent (as the cop is presumed innocent), is facing charges. By the way: if the female bystander was shot by the cop, it was only the cop defending himself. So even if the cop shot the female bystander, it would be almost impossible for the cop to be charged and convicted of attempted murder, because cops are shielded from personal liability in shootings (in the real world). ------------- ------------- Police and Law Enforcement 5 hours ago Off-duty Texas police officer shot 6 times after road rage incident, officials say Travis Fedschun By Travis Fedschun | Fox News An off-duty San Antonio police officer was shot 6 times during a road rage incident, officials said. An off-duty San Antonio Police Office was shot six times after a road rage incident turned into a shootout in the parking lot of a gentleman's sports club on Tuesday, according to the city's police chief. San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said at a news conference the off-duty officer and a 25-year-old driver pulled into the parking lot of the Allstars Gentleman's Sportsclub off Interstate 10 after the motorist accused the officer of cutting him off. The driver then pulled out a gun and started shooting, hitting the officer six times in the lower-torso. "Altercations and arguments on the roadway happen all the time, so that doesn't surprise me, unfortunately it does happen enough, too often," he said. McManus said the officer retreated back to his car to grab his weapon and returned fire, striking the 25-year-old at least twice. A woman who was sitting in the driver's car was also grazed in the head by gunfire. The off-duty officer, an 11-year veteran of the force, returned fire after he was shot 6 times by a motorist during a road rage incident. (FOX San Antonio) The chief added that authorities were still investigating whose bullet grazed the woman. The officer, whose name was not release, is an 11-year veteran of the force, and was transported to the hospital in critical, but stable condition. Police told FOX San Antonio he was expected to survive his injuries, and underwent surgery early Wednesday morning. Authorities are investigating how the incident began, but said nothing happened inside the gentleman's club. The shootout in the parking lot of a gentlemen's club came after a road rage incident nearby, police said. (FOX San Antonio) "I don’t know why they pulled into this lot," McManus said at an evening press conference. The suspect, whose name has also not been released by police, also underwent surgery and is listed in stable condition. The 25-year-old is expected to face charges in connection with the shootout, according to police. Fox News' Madeline Farber contributed to this report. Travis Fedschun is a reporter for FoxNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @travfed | |
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| 05-30-18 12:15pm - 2355 days | #778 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Press Secretary Sarah Sanders says Trump too busy to comment on Roseanne Barr's firing. Trump has bigger issues that are taking his time. But Trump proves Sarah Sanders wrong, by taking the time to tweet that ABC (who fired Barr) was unfair to Trump, and never apologized to Trump. So ABC (by implication) has no right to fire Barr. --------- --------- Trump weighs in on Roseanne: Where's my apology from ABC? Dylan Stableford 1 hour 31 minutes ago President Trump on Wednesday responded to ABC’s firing of Roseanne Barr over a tweet that made a racist slur against former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett. And, true to form, the president made it about him. “Bob Iger of ABC called Valerie Jarrett to let her know that ‘ABC does not tolerate comments like those’ made by Roseanne Barr,” Trump tweeted, referring to Disney chief Iger. “Gee, he never called President Donald J. Trump to apologize for the HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC. Maybe I just didn’t get the call?” It’s unclear what statements Trump was referring to. His tweet came less than a day after White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said the president was too busy to comment on Barr. ABC Entertainment canceled “Roseanne” on Tuesday after Barr, in a now-deleted tweet, referred to Jarrett, who is African-American, as the offspring of the “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes.” In another tweet, Barr called billionaire Democratic donor and a Holocaust survivor George Soros “a Nazi” who “turned in his fellow Jews 2 be murdered in concentration camps & stole their wealth.” Discredited conspiracy theories portraying Soros — who is Jewish and was 9 years old when World War II began — as a Nazi collaborator have become right-wing internet staples. Barr later apologized for her tweet about Jarrett, suggesting the sleep aid Ambien was to blame. The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., retweeted two of Barr’s tweets about Soros, including the false “Nazi” claim. ABC had been praised by critics for bringing back “Roseanne” — a show that featured a Trump supporter as its lead character. The president, who took credit for the successful reboot and even called Barr to congratulate her, did not mention her firing at his rally in Nashville Tuesday night. On Air Force One en route to the speech, Sanders told reporters that Trump was too focused on his upcoming summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to comment on the show’s cancellation. “That’s not what the president is looking at,” Sanders said. “That’s not what he’s spending his time on. And I think that we have a lot bigger things going on in the country right now, certainly, that the president is spending his time on.” | |
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| 05-30-18 04:11pm - 2355 days | #779 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Fake news: President Trump has the keen eyes of an eagle. He can see things no reporter can see. ----------- ----------- Melania Trump dismisses conspiracy theories, says she's 'feeling great' Yahoo Lifestyle Elise Solé,Yahoo Lifestyle 1 hour 11 minutes ago Melania Trump is squashing conspiracy theories that have swirled in the three weeks that she’s been absent from the public eye. “I see the media is working overtime speculating where I am & what I’m doing,” Trump, 48, tweeted Wednesday. “Rest assured, I’m here at the @Whitehouse w my family, feeling great, & working hard on behalf of children & the American people!” Trump hasn’t been seen in public since May 10 in Maryland, when she and the president welcomed home three American detainees from their captivity in North Korea. Four days later, she underwent an embolization procedure for a benign kidney condition, spending that week recuperating at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Still, Trump hasn’t been completely absent — in a now-deleted May 19 tweet, President Trump wrote that his wife “Melanie” was doing “really well” and had returned home. On Tuesday, a White House representative told NBC News, “She has had several meetings … and will continue to do so this week. We are focusing on her initiatives, and also some longer-term planning for events.” And Melania Trump’s spokesperson Stephanie Grisham told CNN that all the public speculation was “just more silly nonsense.” Plus, Trump herself has been active on Twitter — praising the hospital, thanking a Navy SEAL who received the Medal of Honor at the White House, acknowledging the victims of the deadly Santa Fe school shooting, and noting Memorial Day. Still, suspicion was stirred on social media. Some wondered whether the first lady had been hospitalized in the first place, due to procedure logistics that typically allow patients to return home that same day. Many were convinced that Trump had moved back to New York City to prep for divorce after long-time rumors of a split, fueled by the first lady’s seemingly cold body language toward her husband. And some chalked up her absence as another example of her private tendencies. On Friday, the president told White House reporters of his wife, “She’s doing great. Right there,” while gesturing toward a White House window. “She’s doing great. She’s looking at us, right there.” However, there was no one at the window. | |
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| 05-31-18 07:49am - 2354 days | #780 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump is giving out pardons. Is there a limit on how many pardons a president can issue? My guess is that Trump is holding back pardons for his ex-aides who will be convicted of crimes under the Meuller probe. And maybe pardon(s) for Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, and Trump's own children, if they are convicted of any crimes. -------- -------- Trump announces pardon for provocateur Dinesh D’Souza Laina Yost 15 minutes ago Donald Trump, Dinesh D’Souza. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images, Evan Vucci/AP) President Trump announced Thursday on Twitter that he plans to pardon Dinesh D’Souza today, a controversial conservative pundit and provocateur who was convicted of violating federal campaign finance laws. “Will be giving a Full Pardon to Dinesh D’Souza today. He was treated very unfairly by our government!” Trump tweeted. D’Souza told Yahoo News he appreciated the move. “Obama and his stooges tried to destroy my American dream and faith in America. Trump has fully restored both. I’m very grateful,” he said. In 2014, D’Souza was sentenced to five years’ probation after he was convicted for illegal campaign donations to Republican candidate Wendy Long in 2012. D’Souza served the first eight months of his sentence in a community confinement center. Long lost her race against Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. D’Souza has a long history of inflammatory remarks. Recently, he mocked the student survivors of the Parkland, Fla., mass shooting after Tallahassee lawmakers voted down a bill to ban assault weapons. “Worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs,” he tweeted. (He apologized for the tweet but didn’t delete it.) Among other things, D’Souza also falsely claimed that Adolf Hitler was not anti-gay. He has also propagated a false conspiracy theory accusing George Soros of being “collection boy for Hitler.” The comment is similar to tweets made recently by Roseanne Barr, whose TV show was cancelled as a result. “Could it be that the organizer of the #Charlottesville rally is a left-wing fascist pretending to be a right-winger?” he said on Twitter. Trump has also issued controversial pardons to former Arizona Sheriff Joe Apaio, who defied a court order to stop detaining people suspected to have immigrated illegally to the U.S., and to Scooter Libby, who was convicted of leaking a CIA officer’s identity. Additional reporting by Alexander Nazaryan. | |
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| 06-01-18 01:46am - 2354 days | #781 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Do cops have the right to shoot to kill? Of course they do. Which is why it's better to be safe than sorry. A cop gives you an order, even if he is beating on you or is fucking unreasonable, your best course of action is to stand there or lie there and take it. Here is a case where a cop shoots and kills a man in his own garage. The man had an unloaded gun in his back pocket. But the man did not try to draw the gun. Instead, it's unclear what reason the cop had for shooting the man. Self-defense? Nothing is explained in how the cop was being threatened. However, the jury awarded the man's family $4. $1 for each child the man had. $1 for funeral expenses for the man. That is just an insult to the man's family. First, the cop shoots and kills a man for no explained reason. Then the jury gives the cop a big cheer for doing his duty. -------- -------- Jury Awards $4 to Family of Man Fatally Shot by Sheriff's Deputy in His Own Garage Newsweek Chantal Da Silva,Newsweek 19 hours ago A federal court jury has awarded the family of a man who was fatally shot by a Sheriff's Deputy in the garage of his own home $4 in a wrongful death suit. Gregory Hill Jr, a 30-year-old black man, was fatally shot by Christopher Newman, a white deputy with the St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office, at his home in Fort Pierce, Florida ,in January 2014 after Newman responded to a noise complaint about loud music, TCPalm.com reported. st lucie St. Lucie County Sheriff Ken Mascara said he was 'pleased' to see a 'difficult and tragic incident come to a conclusion.' St Lucie County Sheriff's Office Newman and his partner, Deputy Edward Lopez, had reportedly knocked on Hill's garage door to investigate the noise complaint. When the garage door eventually opened, Hill was standing by it with his left hand on the door and his right hand by his side. It is still unclear what exactly happened in the seconds that unfolded, as Newman drew his gun and fired four times toward Hill as the garage door started to go down. However, when a SWAT team arrived, they found Hill dead. He had been shot three times, including once in the head. Toxicology reports had shown Hill had been intoxicated at the time of the incident and the SWAT team found a gun in the 30-year-old's back pocket, but it was not loaded, TCPalm reported. On the second anniversary of Hill's death, the 30-year-old's mother, Viola Bryant, launched a lawsuit for wrongful death. Her battle for justice ended last Thursday, when the jury came to the conclusion that Newman had not used excessive force in the incident following 10 hours of deliberation. The jury did find that St. Lucie County Sheriff Ken Mascara had been negligent in his role, but determined him to be liable by just 1 percent, the New York Times reported. Hill, the jury said, was responsible for 99 percent of the negligence in the case. As a result, the jury awarded $4 in damages to Hill's family, with $1 going towards funeral expenses and $1 going towards each of Hill's three children for their loss. The family's lawyer, John M. Philips told the Times he would have preferred the jury to have found no negligence than award such insignificant damages, calling the award "hurtful." "I think they were trying to insult the case," Philips said. "Why go there with the $1? That was the hurtful part." Mascara said that his office was "pleased to see this difficult and tragic incident come to a conclusion," in a statement posted on Facebook. "Deputy Newman was placed in a very difficult situation and like so many fellow law enforcement officers must do every day, he made the best decision he could for the safety of his partner, himself and the public given the circumstances he faced," Mascara said, adding: "We appreciate the jury's time and understanding." This article was first written by Newsweek --------------------- HuffPost Bodycam Video Released Of New Jersey Cop Punching Woman At The Beach HuffPost Hayley Miller,HuffPost 17 hours ago New Jersey police released bodycam video Wednesday that shows an officer pinning a beachgoer to the ground and punching her in the head, days after cellphone footage of her arrest went viral over the weekend. The nine-minute clip features graphic footage of Wildwood police apprehending Emily Weinman, 20, while she sat on the beach with her daughter, her daughter’s father and a friend. Police officers asked Weinman to breathe into a breath analysis device after they found alcohol near her beach blankets. She apparently passed the test and said the booze belonged to her aunt. Weinman was apprehended after she refused to provide her last name to the officers. “You thought we were drinking so now you’re mad because your Breathalyzer came up negative,” Weinman told the two cops as they attempted to write her a ticket. “You don’t need my last name.” “OK, that’s it ― I’m done with you,” one police officer can be heard saying in the video before asking his partner for handcuffs. “You’re about to get dropped,” the officer tells Weinman when she walks away and tells him to leave her alone. Weinman puts her hands up and moves forward as the cop approaches her, but it’s unclear from the video who initiates the contact. The video cuts out momentarily, then shows Weinman screaming as the police officer pulls her to the ground and grabs her hair. “They’re choking me!” Weinman yells while trying to free herself from the officer. “That’s it,” the cop says before punching her in the head several times. The officers involved in the arrest were patrolmen Thomas Cannon, John Hillman and Robert Jordan, according to NJ.com. It is not clear which officer hit Weinman. Weinman was handcuffed, put into a police vehicle, and charged with two counts of aggravated assault on an officer and possession of alcohol as a minor. In the video, the arresting officer can be heard explaining the situation to his colleagues: I go to stop her for ... underage drinking. She says she’s 20. She had Twisted Teas. She wouldn’t give me her last name, so I said, ‘Hey, if you’re not going to give me your information, you’re going to be locked up.’ She tried walking away from me. Once she tried walking away from me, I tried grabbing her. She tried kicking at us so I slammed her on the ground. She kicked him and then I hit her a couple times. And then I put her in cuffs and locked her up. Wildwood Police Chief Robert Regalbuto defended the officers’ actions. “From what I see on the video and only on the video, from not even talking to the officers, I think they did a decent job,” Regalbuto told NJ.com. “I think we could have done a better job at trying to explain to her, but it didn’t appear Ms. Weinman wanted to hear what we had to say.” The officers have been placed on administrative duty while Wildwood and county prosecutors investigate the incident, reported The New York Post. A representative for the Wildwood Police Department did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment. An onlooker captured cellphone footage of the arrest and tweeted it on Saturday. It had been viewed more than 6 million times as of Thursday morning. This story has been updated to include more detail about the actions seen in the video. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. Edited on Jun 01, 2018, 01:49am | |
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| 06-01-18 04:45am - 2354 days | #782 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
This guy running for Congress is making a mistake. Instead of running as an independent, he should be a proud member of the Republican party, which is the current home of Donald Trump. The guy seems like he would be comfortable supporting Donald Trump's policies: The guy is a pedophile. He also bragged he repeatedly raped his late ex-wife. According to Larson’s campaign manifesto, his platform as a “quasi-neoreactionary libertarian” candidate includes protecting gun ownership rights, establishing free trade and protecting “benevolent white supremacy,” as well as legalizing incestuous marriage and child pornography. In the manifesto, Larson called Nazi leader Adolf Hitler a “white supremacist hero.” He urged Congress to repeal the Violence Against Women Act, adding, “We need to switch to a system that classifies women as property, initially of their fathers and later of their husbands.” He also showed sympathy for men who identify as involuntary celibates, or incels, suggesting it is unfair that they “are forced to pay taxes for schools, welfare, and other support for other men’s children.” ------------- ------------- Congressional Candidate In Virginia Admits He’s A Pedophile HuffPost Jesselyn Cook,HuffPost 10 hours ago Nathan Larson is running for Congress as an independent in Virginia. In an interview with HuffPost, he was open about his pedophilia. Nathan Larson, a 37-year-old accountant from Charlottesville, Virginia, is running for Congress as an independent candidate in his native state. He is also a pedophile, as he admitted to HuffPost on Thursday, who has bragged in website posts about raping his late ex-wife. In a phone call, Larson confirmed that he created the now-defunct websites suiped.org and incelocalypse.today ― chat rooms that served as gathering places for pedophiles and violence-minded misogynists like himself. HuffPost contacted Larson after confirming that his campaign website shared an IP address with these forums, among others. His sites were terminated by their domain host on Tuesday. On the phone, he was open about his pedophilia and seemingly unfazed about his long odds of attaining government office. “A lot of people are tired of political correctness and being constrained by it,” he said. “People prefer when there’s an outsider who doesn’t have anything to lose and is willing to say what’s on a lot of people’s minds.” When asked whether he’s a pedophile or just writes about pedophilia, he said, “It’s a mix of both. When people go over the top there’s a grain of truth to what they say.” Asked whether there was a “grain of truth” in his essay about father-daughter incest and another about raping his ex-wife repeatedly, he said yes, offering that plenty of women have rape fantasies. According to Larson’s campaign manifesto, his platform as a “quasi-neoreactionary libertarian” candidate includes protecting gun ownership rights, establishing free trade and protecting “benevolent white supremacy,” as well as legalizing incestuous marriage and child pornography. In the manifesto, Larson called Nazi leader Adolf Hitler a “white supremacist hero.” He urged Congress to repeal the Violence Against Women Act, adding, “We need to switch to a system that classifies women as property, initially of their fathers and later of their husbands.” He also showed sympathy for men who identify as involuntary celibates, or incels, suggesting it is unfair that they “are forced to pay taxes for schools, welfare, and other support for other men’s children.” Using the pseudonyms Leucosticte and Lysander, Larson frequently participated in conversations on his own message boards, he confirmed to HuffPost. Larson posted as As Lysander on suiped.org, a forum for “suicidal pedophiles,” Larson wrote numerous posts endorsing child rape and other forms of sexual abuse. “Why doesn’t every pedo just focus on making money so they can get a pedo-wife and then either impregnate her with some fucktoys or adopt some fucktoys?” he wrote on the platform in October. “That would accommodate both those who are and aren’t into incest. And of course, the adoption process lets you pick a boy or a girl.” Larson has a 3-year-old daughter who lives with relatives. He told HuffPost that he relinquished his parental rights during a custody battle. His ex-wife got a court-ordered restraining order against him in 2015 before committing suicide. He has since remarried, he says, and is now living in Catlett, Virginia. Larson used the moniker “Leucosticte” on incelocalypse.today ― a forum for incels who are pedophiles that was removed this week after the website Babe contacted the domain host. There, he identified as a “hebephilic rapist,” noting that he’s not a typical incel because he’d had sex by raping his ex-wife. According to the site, which HuffPost viewed before it was taken down, “incelocalypse” refers to “the day we make the jailbaits our rape-slaves.” (The term “jailbait” is slang for a person who is under the legal age of consent for sex.) Larson posted as HuffPost did not view any posts explicitly stating that he has engaged in sexual activity with minors, although he repeatedly expressed a desire to have sex with infants and children, including his own daughter. In the phone call, Larson said that the word “pedophile” is “vague” and “just a label,” adding that it’s “normal” for men to be attracted to underage women. He said he did not commit any crimes. In a 3,300-word essay on incelocalypse.today, titled “Here’s How to Psyche Yourself Up to Feel Entitled to Rape,” Larson tells other members: “Don’t forget: feminism is the problem, and rape is the solution.” On the platform, he also advocated for father-daughter marriage, killing women and raping virgins. Larson is less worried about his run for Congress than about his sites coming down. He told HuffPost that the termination of his websites is an affront to his freedom of speech and that he’s going to try to get them hosted elsewhere. Not that it’ll matter ― there are still plenty of forums where incels and other such communities can congregate. The removal of Larson’s sites caused an uproar on incels.me, a separate, much larger forum for incels. Larson’s political ambitions span more than a decade. He first ran for Congress in Virginia’s 1st District in 2008 on what he described as an “anarcho-capitalist” platform. That same year, he sent a letter to the Secret Service threatening to kill the president, which landed him in federal prison for 14 months and barred him from seeking public office. But in 2016, then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) restored voting and other civil rights to thousands of felons, allowing Larson to campaign yet again. In 2017 he ran in Virginia’s House of Delegates District 31 and secured less than 2 percent of the vote. Now he is gunning for a seat in Virginia’s 10th Congressional District. On websites, Nathan Larson, 37, has advocated for rape, pedophilia, incest and kidnapping. Until it was pulled down, Larson’s site Nathania.org, a wiki page with details about his latest candidacy, featured posts titled “A Man Should Be Allowed to Choke His Wife to Death as Punishment for Cutting Her Hair Short Without Permission, or Other Acts of Gross Insubordination,” “Advantages of Father-Daughter Incest” and “The Justifiability of an Incel’s Kidnapping a Girl and Keeping Her as His Rape-Slave for Sex and Babymaking.” Wiki pages can be edited by other people, but Larson confirmed he wrote these posts as well as several other disturbing entries. In “Let’s Define What Rape Is,” a 3,000-word essay posted on Nathania.org as well as other incel sites, Larson wrote: “Women are objects, to be taken care of by men like any other property, and for powerful men to insert themselves into as it pleases them, and as they believe will be in women’s own interests. In most cases, their interests are aligned, as long as the man is strong. Female sex-slaves actually get a much better deal than animals, because in most cases, they are allowed to reproduce, unlike animals raised for meat or companionship.” When asked what his constituents would think about his pedophiliac writings, he said, “People are open-minded.” He continued, “A lot of people who disagreed with someone like Trump … might vote for them anyway just because the establishment doesn’t like them.” This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 06-01-18 07:14am - 2353 days | #783 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump calls for comedian Samantha Bee to be fired for her vulgar comments about Trump's daughter. But Trump has made many more vulgar comments about most of his enemies. So why shouldn't Trump be fired, as well? Except that Trump has such a big ego, he feels he is above the law. And he can always lie his way out of any situation. Except maybe Trump will be impeached, for graft and other crimes. ------- ------- Trump calls for Samantha Bee to be fired Dylan Stableford 21 minutes ago President Trump on Friday called for the firing of Samantha Bee, the host of TBS’ “Full Frontal,” over her vulgar comments about his daughter, Ivanka Trump. “Why aren’t they firing no talent Samantha Bee for the horrible language used on her low ratings show?” the president tweeted. “A total double standard but that’s O.K., we are Winning, and will be doing so for a long time to come!” Bee called Ivanka Trump a “feckless c***” for refusing to speak out against her father’s immigration policies. The remark drew widespread criticism from both sides of the political aisle, something the White House, which called Bee’s language “vile and vicious,” apparently did not notice. “The collective silence by the left and its media allies is appalling,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement. “Her disgusting comments and show are not fit for broadcast, and executives at Time Warner and TBS must demonstrate that such explicit profanity about female members of this administration will not be condoned on its network.” Bee apologized on Thursday afternoon. “I would like to sincerely apologize to Ivanka Trump and to my viewers for using an expletive on my show to describe her last night,” Bee said. “It was inappropriate and inexcusable. I crossed a line, and I deeply regret it.” TBS issued a statement in support of Bee’s apology. “Samantha Bee has taken the right action in apologizing for the vile and inappropriate language she used about Ivanka Trump last night,” the network said. “Those words should not have been aired. It was our mistake too, and we regret it.” The controversy came a day after Roseanne Barr was fired by ABC for making a racist comment about former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett. Samantha Bee accepts an award at the Television Academy Honors on Thursday in Los Angeles. (Photo by Dan Steinberg/Invision for the Television Academy/AP Images) Bee further addressed the controversy in a speech at while accepting an award at the Television Academy Honors in Hollywood on Thursday night. “Every week I strive to show the world as I see it, unfiltered. Sometimes I should probably have a filter. I accept that. I take it seriously when I get it right and I do take responsibility when I get it wrong,” Bee said, according to IndieWire. “Stories about 1,500 missing unaccompanied migrant children flooded the news cycle over the weekend. So last night we aired a segment on the atrocious treatment of migrant children by this administration and past administrations. Sometimes even the ones who look best in swim trunks do bad jobs with things. Our piece attracted controversy of the worst kind.” She continued: “We spent the day wrestling with the repercussions of one bad word, when we all should have spent the day incensed that as a nation we are wrenching children from their parents and treating people legally seeking asylum as criminals. If we are okay with that then really, who are we?” Trump responded to ABC’s firing of Barr by twice noting he never received an apology from the head of ABC’s parent company, Disney chief executive Bob Iger. “Bob Iger of ABC called Valerie Jarrett to let her know that ‘ABC does not tolerate comments like those’ made by Roseanne Barr,” Trump tweeted on Wednesday. “Gee, he never called President Donald J. Trump to apologize for the HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC. Maybe I just didn’t get the call?” The president repeated his call on Thursday morning. “Iger, where is my call of apology?” Trump tweeted. He did not denounce Barr’s slur. At the White House, Sanders told reporters that Trump was “pointing out the hypocrisy in the media” before reading a lengthy statement citing examples of alleged bias. “Where was Bob Iger’s apology to White House staff for Jemele Hill calling the president and anyone associated with him a white supremacist, to Christians around the world for Joy Behar calling Christianity a mental illness?” Sanders said. “Where was the apology for Kathy Griffin going on a profane rant on ‘The View’ after a photo showed her holding the president’s decapitated head? And where was the apology from Bob Iger for ESPN hiring Keith Olbermann after his numerous expletive-laced tweets attacking the president as a Nazi and even expanding Olbermann’s role after that attack against the president’s family? This is a double standard.” Trump, himself, has a long history of using vulgar and offensive language, both in public and private. But he has rarely apologized. After Trump was caught on the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape bragging about forcing himself on women, he issued a videotaped statement. “I’ve said some things that I regret and the words released today on this more-than-a-decade-old video are one of them,” Trump said. “I was wrong and I apologize.” | |
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| 06-01-18 07:27am - 2353 days | #784 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Once Trump leaves the White House, he can move to Doraville, GA, where he can fix the city's finances. Maybe he can come up with a better plan than arresting the citizens for unsightly properties. And he could even build a Trump Tower of Heaven in the center of the town, to celebrate both Trump and the Spirit of Democracy in GA. --------- --------- REGULATION 21 hours ago Georgia city sued by fed-up residents over 'ridiculous' fines for chipped paint, driveway cracks By Kaitlyn Schallhorn | Fox News Hilda Brucker has signed onto a lawsuit with other Doraville, Georgia, residents to challenge the city's fines and fees system. The lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of Doraville “using its law enforcement and municipal court system for revenue generation.” Hilda Brucker has signed onto a lawsuit with other Doraville, Georgia, residents to challenge the city's fines and fees system. The lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of Doraville “using its law enforcement and municipal court system for revenue generation.” (Institute for Justice) Hilda Brucker went down to the municipal court in October 2016 after receiving a phone call. She hadn’t received a formal summons or known of any wrongdoing; instead, she thought she needed to clear a ticket. But when she arrived at the Doraville, Georgia, courthouse, Brucker said she was placed before a judge and prosecutor who accused her of violating city code -- because of cracks in her driveway. She was fined $100 and sentenced to six months criminal probation, even though this was the first time she was made aware her driveway was considered a problem. Eventually the charges were dropped, but Brucker said Doraville “went too far” in going after her for the driveway’s appearance. hilda Hilda Brucker said her experience in court over cracks in her driveway was "horrifying." (Institute for Justice) “It was just absolutely horrifying for someone like me who never even had a detention in high school,” Brucker told Fox News on Wednesday. Brucker is part of an Institute for Justice (IJ) lawsuit against Doraville, a town of about 10,000 people just northeast of Atlanta. The lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of Doraville “using its law enforcement and municipal court system for revenue generation.” The suit takes aim at the government's rampant fines over seemingly minor code infractions. About 25 percent of Doraville’s operating budget is reliant on fees and fines, according to IJ, a nonprofit law firm. From August 2016 to August 2017, it raked in about $3.8 million in fines, according to IJ's lawsuit. “It’s unconstitutional because it creates a financial incentive for the city government … to ticket people,” Josh House, an IJ attorney on the case, told Fox News. He said people in the town were being “punished” for the condition of their property by having to “fund the Doraville city government.” The lawsuit also contends that "prosecutors and law enforcement have a financial interest in convicting the defendant," as they have an "incentive" to ticket and prosecute because they are paid from Doraville's revenue. jeffrey Jeff Thornton was fined $1,000 and threatened with an arrest warrant because he had a "disorganized" pile of wood in his backyard. (Institute for Justice) Brucker isn’t the only Doraville citizen to fall “victim” to its fees. Jeff Thornton, a neighbor, was fined $1,000 and threatened with an arrest warrant because he had a “disorganized” pile of wood in his backyard, according to IJ. Thornton told the nonprofit that he used the wood for cooking or building birdhouses. CITY’S ‘NITPICKY’ FINES FOR TREE STUMPS, BLINDS TRIGGER CIVIL RIGHTS LAWSUIT The fine and charges against Thornton were also eventually dropped. But, the lawsuit said, he "lives under the threat of being ticketed again by Doraville code enforcement and law enforcement and convicted by Doraville's municipal court personnel." Aside from residents, drivers passing through Doraville -- many on their way to or from Atlanta -- have also faced excessive ticketing, according to IJ. Janice Craig was given a $215 ticket for holding up traffic when she attempted to switch lanes while driving through town. A 2014 Atlanta Journal-Constitution report called Doraville one of the "most aggressive police forces" in Georgia when it comes to traffic tickets. The newspaper reported the city collects more fines per capita than anywhere else in the metro Atlanta area. “Every city is unique,” Shawn Gillen, then the city manager, told the Journal-Constitution. “It’s probably very difficult to do comparisons. But we feel our level of traffic enforcement is extremely reasonable relative to the traffic counts that we have.” A spokesperson for Doraville did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. “Am I going to cross the border into this town and be subject to a rapacious law enforcement? Is driving through Doraville something I can afford today?” - Institute for Justice Attorney Josh House Doraville’s policies “place a huge burden on not only the homeowners but those who are in the area driving and have to think about, ‘Am I going to cross the border into this town and be subject to a rapacious law enforcement?’” House said. “Is driving through Doraville something I can afford today?” Doraville ranks sixth in the nation for the amount of revenue it brings in from fines and fees as a proportion of its total revenue, according to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. That study also said, as of 2012, the median income was $43,311 and more than 30 percent of the population lived in poverty. Brucker, a freelance writer, said most of the citizens in the town are working-class or single women, such as herself. House said he hopes the town of Doraville will change its policy, but said a lawsuit may be necessary for that to happen. BIKINI BARISTAS HIT WITH COURT BRIEF DEMANDING THEY COVER UP “I didn’t want it to happen to me again, and I didn’t want it to happen to anyone else either,” Brucker said of the lawsuit. Aside from her driveway, Brucker also said the prosecutor tried to nail her for some chipped paint near a water drain on her house and a small patch of what appeared to be weeds in her yard. The prosecutor brought photos of the supposed neglect to her house to the judge, but those complaints were dismissed, she said. In a video for IJ, Brucker called the actions taken against her "ridiculous and ludicrous." "No one ever asked me to fix the driveway. This is a very old driveway," she said. "Who does that?" Nearly two years after she was brought before a judge for the condition of her driveway, Brucker said it remains unchanged. Kaitlyn Schallhorn is a Reporter for Fox News. Follow her on Twitter @K_Schallhorn. | |
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| 06-01-18 08:17am - 2353 days | #785 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
The man who called police was in the right. He knows that black people don't know how to play golf. So what were they doing on the golf course? Holding up play, that's what. And the man was brave enough, honest enough, to tell the cops that the black people didn't have any weapons, except for the mouth of one of the black women. ---------- ---------- CBS/AP June 1, 2018, 6:56 AM Man who called police on black golfers: No weapons involved "other than her mouth" YORK, Pa. -- A man who called police on a group of black women golfers accused of playing too slowly at a Pennsylvania golf club denied to dispatchers that he was acting out of racism. Grandview Golf Club in York issued an apology following the April 21 incident. The women were club members and have described the experience, which began at the second hole, as demeaning and discriminatory. In one of two recordings of 911 calls to police posted by the York Daily Record, the caller says the group was "holding everybody up" and one of the women accused the golf club of racism. The caller told a dispatcher, "We have a tough situation here with a group of golfers that decides they don't want to abide by the rules." Asked if the gofers had any weapons, Chronister said: "It's even worse than that, but anyway I can't ..." He then said no weapons were involved "other than her mouth." Normally clubs don't allow groups larger than four. Sandra Thompson previously told the York Daily Record she was the last member to arrive, and checked with a clerk to see if it was OK to join the four others, knowing a fifth member might be an issue. The clerk said it was fine, said Thompson, an attorney and president of the York branch of the NAACP. The York Daily Record reports that Chronister told the 911 dispatcher that he knew Thompson. "She ran for judge. She's an attorney. She knows it all," Chronister said. "She totally thinks we're being racist. We're not being racist. We're being golf course management that has to have play moving a certain way." But Thompson disputed that, the newspaper reported. "He saw a group of black women and told them to get off the course," she said. "He racially profiled us. Would he have called the cops on a white group of golfers? Would he have done that to a white lawyer and judge candidate he knew? No." No charges were filed, but the confrontation came amid two other similar incidents. A Starbucks employee called police on two black men in Philadelphia because they hadn't bought anything in the store. Police handcuffed and arrested them. And employees of an LA Fitness in New Jersey wrongly accused a black member and his guest of not paying to work out and called police. 2018 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report. | |
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| 06-01-18 04:46pm - 2353 days | #786 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Fake news: EPA chief spends $1,560 for 12 customized fountain pens. His office says this is merely following protocol, as gifts for dignitaries. If true, no big thing. But--since many statements made by the EPA regarding its EPA chief have turned out to be false, it would be nice to see what past EPA chiefs have spent on customized fountain pens. Was the average amount close to $130 per pen? Or did the office even give out customized pens as gifts? Enquiring minds want to know. Especially since EPA statements need to be fact-checked, under the current administration. ------- ------- News Pruitt spent over $1,500 on customized fountain pens By Chris Perez June 1, 2018 | 5:48pm Pruitt spent over $1,500 on customized fountain pens EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt spent $1,560 on a set of customized fountain pens — each of which cost taxpayers $130, according to agency documents. The order was processed by a shop in Washington called Tiny Jewel Box, which describes itself as the capital’s “premier destination for fine jewelry and watches.” Documents obtained by the Sierra Club outline the request and feature an exchange between staffers who helped push it through. “The cost of the Qty. 12 Fountain Pens will be around $1,560.00,” one staffer wrote an email on Aug. 14 to Millan Hupp, Pruitt’s scheduling director. “All the other items total cost is around $1,670.00 which these items are in process,” they said. “Please advise.” Hupp responded in an email later that day, according to the documents, which were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. “Yes, please order,” he said. “Thank you.” The purchase is just the latest in a long line of controversial expenditures reported about Pruitt this year. The EPA chief has come under fire for using taxpayer money to fund first-class travel, among other things. His office defended the pen order in a statement Friday to the Washington Post, saying it had been done in the past. “[The purchases] were made for the purpose of serving as gifts to the Administrator’s foreign counterparts and dignitaries upon his meeting with them,” said EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox. “This adheres to the same protocol of former EPA Administrators and were purchased using funds budgeted for such a purpose.” | |
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| 06-01-18 04:53pm - 2353 days | #787 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Fake news: President Trump needs to give this teacher a presidential pardon. And give the man a Presidential Medal of Honor for teaching kids life lessons, while risking his career for the sake of his students. The man fed a puppy to a snapping turtle in class. If any students were horrified, it taught the students that life can be cruel. Trump understands this. He practices tough love on immigrants and their children. --------- --------- News Teacher charged after feeding puppy to turtle in class By Associated Press June 1, 2018 | 5:41pm Modal Trigger Teacher charged after feeding puppy to turtle in class Robert Crosland Preston School District 201 PRESTON, Idaho — An eastern Idaho teacher accused of feeding a sick puppy to a snapping turtle in front of several students has been charged with misdemeanor animal cruelty. Preston Junior High School science teacher Robert Crosland was charged Friday in Franklin County Court. He faces up to six months in jail and a $5,000 fine if convicted. The Idaho attorney general’s office handled the investigation after Franklin County Prosecutor Vic Pearson cited a conflict of interest. Several parents came forward to say Crosland fed the puppy to the turtle on March 7. Several weeks later, state officials seized the turtle and euthanized it as a non-native species. | |
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| 06-01-18 05:14pm - 2353 days | #788 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Fake news: Michael Cohen, man of mystery. Is Michael Cohen still the president's lawyer? Rudy Guiliani, one of Trump's lawyers, said that Cohen is no longer Trump's personal lawyer. However, Guiliani has been known to flip-flop on his statements. Sarah Sanders, White House Press Secretary, is willing to answer the question: On May 17, she said that the question had already been asked — and not answered – several times before. And until she knows more, or is authorized to speak on the matter, her position is that she's answered the question by not answering the question. That's what the President of the United States has a tendency to do: give out statements that are hard to read: Is the sky blue? Maybe yes. Maybe no. But what counts is that I am giving you an honest opinion. Go, Trump!!! --------- --------- Is Michael Cohen still the president's lawyer? Hunter Walker 8 hours ago WASHINGTON — While the FBI raid on President Trump’s longtime attorney Michael Cohen and subsequent court proceedings have received extensive press coverage, the public still doesn’t have a straight answer to a very basic question about the case. Is Cohen still the president’s lawyer? In the many media appearances he’s made since joining Trump’s legal team, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has given conflicting accounts of Cohen’s status. In an appearance on “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” on May 6, Giuliani flatly said Cohen was no longer Trump’s personal lawyer. “Of course not,” Giuliani said. He went on to suggest it would be inappropriate for Cohen to remain Trump’s attorney amid his own legal drama. “It would be a conflict right now for him to be the president’s attorney,” Giuliani said of Cohen. But Giuliani was less definitive on May 11 when he told Politico that Cohen isn’t the president’s lawyer anymore “as far as we know.” “And there’d be nothing for him to do right now,” he added. Though he’s not normally press shy, Giuliani hasn’t responded to multiple questions about Cohen from Yahoo News. Given the confusion, Bloomberg White House Correspondent Shannon Pettypiece tried to ask about the matter at press secretary Sarah Sanders’s briefing on May 17. She began by noting that the question had already been asked — and not answered – several times before. “I know we’ve asked this a few times, but …” Pettypiece began. Sanders cut her off. “That’s OK,” Sanders said. “That’s kind of what we do here, ask the same question over and over and over again. But Sanders still didn’t answer. “Can you say yet when Michael Cohen stopped being the president’s personal lawyer?” Pettypiece asked. “I’m not going to get into anything on that matter. You’d have to reach out to the president’s outside counsel,” Sanders responded. Pettypiece was incredulous. “But you still haven’t been able to answer that,” Pettypiece said. Sanders ignored her and moved on to another questioner. Since then, Yahoo News has tried to ask multiple members of Trump’s legal team whether Cohen remains the president’s attorney. Like Giuliani, they have not responded. Cohen and his lawyers also haven’t answered the question despite multiple attempts to press them on it. Cohen has been spending almost all his time dealing with his own legal situation, as a target of an investigation by federal prosecutors in New York. The president’s legal team for the special counsel investigation into the 2016 campaign includes Jay Sekulow, Emmet Flood and White House counsel Don McGahn. Giuliani appears to function primarily as a sounding board and confidante for the president and a defender in the media. Cohen spent more than a decade working for Trump. In that time, he earned a reputation as one of the president’s fiercest loyalists. During the 2016 campaign, Cohen had no official role on the campaign, but he served as an outside adviser and television surrogate who took a special interest in Trump’s minority outreach. The FBI search of Cohen’s office and home was part of a criminal investigation into the lawyer’s personal businesses, payments to two women who alleged having affairs with Trump, and his efforts to build a Trump-branded skyscraper in Moscow. Cohen was working to build a Trump Tower in the Russian capital up until at least May 2016, just as Trump was clinching the Republican nomination and far later than Cohen initially acknowledged to congressional investigators. Cohen has not been charged with a crime. The material seized in the FBI raid is being reviewed by lawyers for Cohen, Trump and Trump’s business to flag items that may fall under attorney-client privilege. A court-appointed special master is overseeing the process. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood, who is presiding over the case, held a hearing at a federal courthouse in New York City to discuss the progress. While the lawyer representing adult film actress Stephanie Clifford (aka Stormy Daniels) was the focus of much of the hearing, discussions of the documents showed the enormous scope of the materials the FBI took from Cohen. Cohen’s attorneys said they have gone through about 1.3 million of the 3.7 million files they received from the government. Cohen attorney Todd Harrison said this included information taken from “13 separate mobile devices” that belonged to Cohen and 19 different “digital devices” including thumb drives and hard drives. Cohen’s team asked to have until mid-July to go through the items. Wood said she wanted the review concluded by June 15. Harrison pleaded for more time, saying Cohen’s team was “moving heaven and earth” to complete the process as quickly as possible. He claimed to have people working around the clock, sleeping in his office, and even one associate who developed “a tremor” while going through the documents and went back to work the next day. Wood was unmoved, noting it was Cohen’s representatives who requested a special master in place of the standard procedure in these cases: authorizing a government “taint team” to review possibly privileged documents in isolation from the prosecutors actually working on the case. She said Cohen’s lawyers would have until June 15 and that the “balance” of any material not reviewed by then would be given to a taint team. At the hearing, prosecutors also revealed they still have “three items” from the raid to hand over to Cohen’s team. The remaining materials include two BlackBerries the government hasn’t been able to open and the contents of a paper shredder that investigators are working to piece together. | |
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| 06-01-18 05:35pm - 2353 days | #789 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Roger Stone gives up the game on Trump’s pardons It's all right out in the open. Aaron Rupar Jun 1, 2018, 3:29 pm On Thursday, President Trump issued his sixth pardon. Each of them bypassed the standard vetting process, and a number of the underlying convictions stemmed from prosecutions conducted by his perceived political enemies, such as James Comey and Preet Bharara. Trump’s most recent pardon was granted to Dinesh D’Souza, a conservative commentator and bigot who pleaded guilty in May 2014 to a campaign finance felony. In comments made to reporters and on Twitter, Trump indicated that he has little to no familiarity with the details of D’Souza’s case, but nonetheless believes he was “treated very unfairly.” Trump’s pardons are widely interpreted as signals to former aides ensnared in investigations related to his campaign who are not known to be cooperating with investigators, such as Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen. Advertisement It wouldn’t be wise for Trump — currently under investigation for obstruction of justice — to admit as much publicly. But in an interview with The Washington Post, his longtime adviser, Roger Stone, said the quiet part very loudly. “It has to be a signal to Mike Flynn and Paul Manafort and even Robert S. Mueller III: Indict people for crimes that don’t pertain to Russian collusion and this is what could happen,” Stone said. “The special counsel has awesome powers, as you know, but the president has even more awesome powers.” Trump’s pardons also serve as a signal to Stone himself. As ThinkProgress detailed last week, emails recently obtained by The Wall Street Journal indicate that Stone withheld key documents from the House Intelligence Committee pertaining to his campaign communications about WikiLeaks. CNN recently reported that Mueller is investigating Stone’s finances. Stone responded to the report with a defiant statement that vows, “I have no intention of being silenced or turning my back on President Trump.” In the wake of D’Souza’s pardon, Stone has more reason than ever to think he’ll be rewarded by Trump if he doesn’t. | |
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| 06-01-18 10:42pm - 2353 days | #790 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
President Trump can see what no one else can see. He gave a recent interview in which he says of his wife, “She’s doing great. Right there,” while gesturing toward a White House window. “She’s doing great. She’s looking at us, right there.” However, there was no one at the window. Now, Trump is showing a "Very Nice Letter" to reporters from Kim Jon Un. The letter is supposed to be inside a very large envelope that was hand-delivered by a senior North Korean official. Trump said "“That letter was a very nice letter". However, a few minutes later, Trump said: “I haven’t seen the letter yet. I purposely didn’t open the letter. I haven’t opened it. I didn’t open it in front of the director. I said, ‘Would you want me to open it?’ He said, ‘You can read it later.’” My guess is that Trump is a fine actor who seems to blur the distinction between reality and fantasy, or whatever is going through his mind. Which is why he has a problem with fake news: Fake news is whatever news Trump hears or reads, that he does not like: So it must be fake. His own news is so much better than fake news. Because it comes from his head. ------- ------- World Watch Trump Tout 'Very Nice Letter' From Kim Jong Un, Then Say He Hasn't Opened It HuffPost Mary Papenfuss,HuffPost 2 hours 27 minutes ago President Donald Trump on Friday talked warmly to reporters about the “very nice” and “very interesting” letter he received earlier in the day from North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un. “That letter was a very nice letter,” Trump said at a White House news conference. “Oh, would you like to see what was in that letter? How much? How much?” he quipped with the press. The letter was hand-delivered to the president by senior North Korean official Kim Yong Chol. The two men posed with the very large envelope in the Oval Office. After Trump received the letter, he announced that the June 12 summit with North Korea was on again in Singapore. When asked if he could offer a “flavor of what the letter said,” Trump said: “It was a very interesting letter. At some point, it may be appropriate and maybe I’ll be able to give it to you, maybe.” But mere minutes later, in response to another question, the president responded: “I haven’t seen the letter yet. I purposely didn’t open the letter. I haven’t opened it. I didn’t open it in front of the director. I said, ‘Would you want me to open it?’ He said, ‘You can read it later.’” He added: “I may be in for a big surprise, folks.” Check out the president’s letter versions in the video above. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 06-01-18 11:21pm - 2353 days | #791 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Can you believe what the EPA chief (Scott Pruit) says? Yes, if you have God Himself giving Mr. Pruitt a lie detector test and certifying that Pruitt is telling the truth. Otherwise, you have to take what Pruitt says with a grain of salt. (Which means Pruitt lies a lot, even when making official statements.) -------- -------- Lobbyist tied to EPA chief's condo tried to influence agency By MICHAEL BIESECKER Associated Press 2 hrs ago (…) Lobbyist tied to EPA chief's condo tried to influence agency FILE - In this Wednesday, May 16, 2018 file photo, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt appears before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies on budget on Capitol Hill in Washington. Newly filed disclosure reports show the Washington lobbyist whose wife rented a bargain-priced Capitol Hill condo to Pruitt had far more contact with the agency than previously disclosed, despite repeated denials by both men. Pruitt has denied that lobbying firm Williams & Jensen's former chairman J. Steven Hart lobbied his agency in 2017, most recently during Congressional testimony in May. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File) WASHINGTON (AP) — Newly filed reports show the Washington lobbyist whose wife rented a bargain-priced Capitol Hill condo to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt had far more contact with the agency than previously disclosed, despite repeated denials by both men. Powerhouse lobbying firm Williams & Jensen amended its 2017 disclosure filings to show that former chairman J. Steven Hart contacted EPA on behalf of the Coca-Cola Company, pork producer Smithfield Foods and a board overseeing the finances of hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico. Pruitt has denied that Hart lobbied his agency in 2017, most recently during congressional testimony last month. The firm amended its required federal lobbying disclosures after an extensive review of Hart's emails, calendar entries and other materials. Hart was forced to retire early as a result of the scandal that erupted following public disclosure of the EPA chief's unusual living arrangements. Pruitt has denied wrongdoing, describing Hart as a personal friend from his home state of Oklahoma. In a statement, Williams & Jensen said Hart had failed to fully disclose his lobbying activities to his own firm, resulting in prior reports omitting information. Federal law requires lobbyists to file quarterly reports detailing their contacts with government officials, including the clients they were representing, what topics were discussed and how much they were paid. "Following press reports of a former member of our firm engaging in lobbying activity that had not been disclosed, we engaged outside counsel to conduct a review of relevant filings," the firm's statement said. "Following the completion of that review and the advice of counsel, today the firm filed amendments to several disclosure reports that include information that was not previously disclosed to our firm and therefore not included in the original filings." Both Pruitt and Hart have publicly denied the lobbyist had conducted any business with EPA in 2017. At a May 16 hearing before a Senate appropriations subcommittee, the embattled EPA chief erroneously insisted that Hart had not lobbied the government last year. "Steve Hart is someone that was not registered as a lobbyist in 2017," Pruitt testified. "He's a longtime associate and friend." Records showed that Hart was in fact a registered lobbyist in 2017, though at the time it had not yet been formally disclosed that he directly lobbied Pruitt's agency. Federal law makes it a crime to "knowingly and willfully" give materially false statements to Congress. EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox did not respond to requests for comment Friday night about whether Pruitt still stood by his testimony. A spokesman for Hart did not respond to phone or email Friday. Pruitt's connections to Hart have been under intense scrutiny since March, when media reports first revealed that the EPA chief had rented a luxury Capitol Hill condo from a corporation co-owned by Hart's wife for just $50 a night. Pruitt's daughter, then a White House summer intern, stayed in a second bedroom at the condo at no additional cost. On Pruitt's 2017 condo lease, a copy of which was reviewed by The Associated Press, Steven Hart's name was originally typed in as "landlord" but was scratched out. The name of his wife, health care lobbyist Vicki Hart, was scribbled in. The AP and other media outlets reported in April that Pruitt had met in his office last year with Hart on behalf of the philanthropic arm of Smithfield Foods to discuss efforts to preserve the Chesapeake Bay. The world's largest pork producer, Smithfield has been involved with efforts to clean up the bay since EPA fined the company $12.6 million in 1997 for illegally dumping hog waste into a tributary. The amended disclosure report filed Friday by Williams & Jensen acknowledges the meeting between Hart and Pruitt constituted lobbying, as did additional communications by the lobbyist with Pruitt's staff to recommend potential candidates for a science advisory board and other positions appointed by the EPA administrator. A spokeswoman for Smithfield did not respond to a request for comment Friday. The new disclosure report says Hart also lobbied EPA in 2017 on behalf of the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico about water quality and infrastructure in the wake of Hurricane Maria. A spokesman for the oversight board did not immediately respond Friday to an email seeking comment. The firm also disclosed for the first time that Hart had contact with EPA on behalf of Coca-Cola. According to the reports, Hart lobbied the agency about clean water supplies, water conservation and "environmental issues impacting the beverage industry, including hydrofluorocarbon replacement." Hydrofluorocarbons are potent greenhouse gases commonly used for refrigeration. Under the Obama administration, EPA had sought to phase out the use of hydrofluorocarbons because they contribute to global warming, but the effort was stymied after industries challenged the proposed ban in court. In a statement issued Friday, Coca-Cola said the company has severed ties with Williams & Jensen. "The Coca-Cola Company is committed to the highest level of integrity in all aspects of our business, and we expect our lobbying firms to uphold that same commitment," the statement said. ——— Follow Associated Press investigative reporter Michael Biesecker at http://twitter.com/mbieseck | |
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| 06-02-18 07:49am - 2352 days | #792 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
NEWS FLASH: Trump's policies favor the wealthy while hurting the poor. Which was already known. But Trump supporters believe in Trump. That is the way it's supposed to be: Take from the undeserving and give to your wealthy friends. And maybe you will become one of the wealthy, who deserve more tax breaks and other programs to make you even wealthier. ----------- ----------- America's poor becoming more destitute under Trump - U.N. expert Thomson Reuters Jun 2nd 2018 7:28AM * U.N. rights expert issues report on extreme poverty in U.S. * Says Trump policies remove safety net for the poor, reward rich * Urges U.S. authorities to provide health care, social protection * 41 million live in poverty in America, one third are children By Stephanie Nebehay GENEVA, June 2 (Reuters) - Poverty in the United States is extensive and is deepening under the Trump administration whose policies seem aimed at removing the safety net from millions of poor, while rewarding the rich, a U.N. human rights investigator has found. Philip Alston, U.N. special rapporteur on extreme poverty, called on U.S. authorities to provide solid social protection and address underlying problems, rather than "punishing and imprisoning the poor." While welfare benefits and access to health insurance are being slashed, President Donald Trump's tax reform has awarded "financial windfalls" to the mega-rich and large companies, further increasing inequality, he said in a report. U.S. policies since President Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty in the 1960s have been "neglectful at best," he said. "But the policies pursued over the past year seem deliberately designed to remove basic protections from the poorest, punish those who are not in employment and make even basic health care into a privilege to be earned rather than a right of citizenship," Alston said. Almost 41 million people live in poverty, 18.5 million of them in extreme poverty, and children account for one in three poor, he said. The United States has the highest youth poverty rate among industrialized countries, he added. "Its citizens live shorter and sicker lives compared to those living in all other rich democracies, eradicable tropical diseases are increasingly prevalent and it has the world's highest incarceration rate...and the highest obesity levels in the developed world," Alston said. However, the data from the U.S. Census Bureau he cited covers only the period through 2016, and he gave no comparative figures on the extent of poverty before and after Trump came into office in January 2017. The Australian, a veteran U.N. rights expert and New York University law professor, will present his report to the United Nations Human Rights Council later this month. It is based on his mission in December to several U.S. states, including rural Alabama, a slum in downtown Los Angeles, California, and the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico. U.S. officials in Geneva were not immediately available for comment. "SHAMEFUL STATISTICS" Citing "shameful statistics" linked to entrenched racial discrimination, Alston said that African Americans are 2.5 times more likely than whites to live in poverty and their unemployment rate is more than double. Women, Hispanics, immigrants, and indigenous people also suffer high rates. At least 550,000 people are homeless in America, he said. "The tax reform will worsen this situation and ensure that the United States remains the most unequal society in the developed world," Alston said. "The planned dramatic cuts in welfare will essentially shred crucial dimensions of a safety net that is already full of holes." The tax overhaul, which sailed through the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress in December, permanently cut the top corporate rate to 21 percent from 35 percent. Tax cuts for individuals, however, are temporary and expire after 2025. Trump has said they will lead to more take-home pay for workers and have touted bonuses some workers received from their employers as evidence the law is working. Alston dismissed allegations of widespread fraud in the welfare system and criticized the U.S. criminal justice system. It sets large bail bonds for a defendant seeking to go free pending trial, meaning wealthy suspects can afford bail while the poor remain in custody, often losing their jobs, he said. "There is no magic recipe for eliminating extreme poverty and each level of government must make its own good-faith decisions. At the end of the day, however, particularly in a rich country like the United States, the persistence of extreme poverty is a political choice made by those in power," he said. (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by David Stamp) | |
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| 06-02-18 02:01pm - 2352 days | #793 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Old news: Trump's lawyers have argued that Trump has the legal power to end the Mueller probe. Also the legal power to pardon anyone that the Mueller probe can indict, including President Trump himself. The President is apparently, according to Trump's lawyers, above the law, because of his powers (including the power to pardon). Do these claims of Trump's lawyers hold water? Let's get the show on the road, already: Subpoena Trump. Force him to testify under oath. See what happens. Then, based on what Trump says, charge him with crimes if there is evidence of wrong-doing. Is the President above the law? According to his lawyers, yes. According to common sense, not if the country or prosecutors can stand up to him. The president is not King for life. Even though Trump wants to be King for life. Let Trump declare martial law and arrest and execute the Mueller probe agents. That would be legal, according to Trump's lawyers. Bullshit. --------------- --------------- Trump's lawyers to Mueller in letter: President can end probe, use pardon power Christal Hayes, USA TODAY Published 3:33 p.m. ET June 2, 2018 | Updated 4:39 p.m. ET June 2, 2018 A confidential memo issued by President Trump’s lawyers to Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been obtained by the New York Times. Susana Victoria Perez (@susana_vp) Lawyers for President Trump told special counsel Robert Mueller in a confidential letter that the president would not comply with requests for an interview, could end the special counsel's investigation and could use his executive powers to pardon if needed. The January 2018 letter, along with a second letter sent in June 2017, was obtained by The New York Times and provide the clearest view yet of Trump's legal strategy in Mueller's wide-ranging investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and possible obstruction of justice. Ahead of The Times' report, Trump tweeted about the leaked letters, saying "there was No Collusion with Russia (except by the Democrats). When will this very expensive Witch Hunt Hoax ever end?" He continued: "So bad for our Country. Is the Special Counsel/Justice Department leaking my lawyers letters to the Fake News Media? Should be looking at Dems corruption instead?" There was No Collusion with Russia (except by the Democrats). When will this very expensive Witch Hunt Hoax ever end? So bad for our Country. Is the Special Counsel/Justice Department leaking my lawyers letters to the Fake News Media? Should be looking at Dems corruption instead? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 2, 2018 The more recent letter, dated Jan. 29, was written by two of the president’s lawyers at the time, John Dowd and Jay Sekulow and responded to a request to interview the president. The letter lists 16 subject areas Mueller's team intended to question Trump about, including his firing of FBI Director James Comey. Dowd later resigned from the case. In April, Trump hired former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and two other former federal prosecutors to join his legal team. Multiple times throughout the letter, Trump's lawyers appear trying to discredit Comey as a witness. They also contend that Trump has the power to shut down any investigation by the FBI or Justice Department "at any time and for any reason." "He could, if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon if he so desired," the letter says. The inclusion of pardoning and ending the probe could serve as both a defense that if Trump was indeed obstructing the investigation, he would have ended it long ago. It could also leave open a pardon for his former national security adviser Michael Flynn or, himself if charged. The Times notes no president has ever pardoned himself. The letter goes on to say that if the president did order the termination of an investigation, even though he contends he did not, "this could not constitute obstruction of justice." Dowd and Sekulow deny the request for a presidential interview and argue that Mueller has been granted access to a slew of documents and other witnesses, and already the same information that Trump would tell them in an interview. "In light of these voluntary offerings, your office clearly lacks the requisite need to personally interview the President," the letter argues. "The information you seek is 'practically available from another source,' and your office, in fact, has already been given that other source." In the June 23, 2017 letter from Marc Kasowitz, one of Trump’s longtime personal attorneys, he makes many of the same points, arguing there was no basis for an obstruction charge and the president, as Comey said, has the power to fire anyone when he so chooses. It again makes the case that Trump did not order the closure of the investigation but a president can close an investigation if he so chooses. “President Clinton fired FBI Director [William] Sessions in July 1993 at a time when the FBI had multiple open investigations implicating the Clintons, including the Whitewater and the Travel Office investigations, yet there were no claims and certainly no investigations into whether President Clinton’s exercise of his Constitutional power constituted obstruction,” the letter states. But Clinton's decision varied in many ways. Ahead of Clinton's inauguration, allegations were made against then FBI Director William Sessions, no relation to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, that he'd used an FBI plane for personal use and used tax dollars to install a security system at his home. He was under intense pressure to resign but did not and Clinton was later forced to dismiss him. Kasowitz also said an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt was taken out of context when Trump said, “I was going to fire Comey knowing there was no good time to do it. And in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself - I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.” He said Trump’s thoughts were diverted and he later finished his point on Comey’s firing, saying he wanted the investigation to proceed but Comey needed to be fired because he was “the wrong man for that position.” The letter also questions why there wasn’t a special counsel investigation into President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton amid the email server debacle. Kasowitz details several of Obama’s comments that there wouldn’t be an indictment and Clinton wasn’t a target before the investigation was completed. “Yet, no special counsel was appointed and no obstruction investigation was launched,” he argued. Contributing: Richard Wolf Edited on Jun 02, 2018, 02:06pm | |
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| 06-02-18 06:10pm - 2352 days | #794 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
My God. I can't believe it. Roseanne Barr is the female copy of Donald Trump. Barr "I love all people." Trump "I love all people." Even people from shithole countries? Of course. ------- ------- Celebrity Roseanne Barr surfaces, speaks publicly for 1st time since tweetstorm: 'I love all people' Good Morning America MICHAEL ROTHMAN,Good Morning America Fri, Jun 1 2:52 PM PDT Roseanne Barr spoke publicly for the first time since her ABC show was canceled on Tuesday, telling a reporter that despite what's happened in the past few days, "I love all people." Barr, 65, was approached in Utah by a reporter from The Daily Mail. "I believe in one law for all people. I love all people. Thank you," she told the reporter, who recorded the exchange on camera. Earlier this week she compared former Obama administration adviser Valerie Jarrett to a character from "Planet of the Apes" on Twitter. The fallout was immediate for Barr, whose hit sitcom on ABC was canceled just a few hours later. PHOTO: Roseanne Barr and John Goodman appear in a scene from 'Roseanne.' (Adam Rose/ABC) Barr initially said she would quit the social media platform after tweeting an apology to Jarrett. Instead, she fired off a barrage of messages to her 860,000 followers. She wrote late Thursday night, "I end by offering everyone involved one more apology and prayers for healing of our divided nation. Tomorrow is Shabbat and I will continue to pray that everything for everyone goes forward & ends well for all. signing off twitter for a while. love u guys!" In another tweet she said she would "not forgive" herself for the Jarrett comment. Barr was scheduled to appear on the "Joe Rogan Experience" podcast Friday, but Rogan said this is not happening anymore. "The Roseanne podcast is not happening today. She’s not doing well and doesn’t want to travel, and she’s gone radio silent on me, so I’m just going to step away. The whole thing has been pretty brutal on her, and I hope she can find some peace," he wrote on Twitter. PHOTO: Roseanne Barr waves on her arrival to the 75th Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, Calif., Jan. 7, 2018. (Mario Anzuoni/Reuters, FILE) In his Thursday broadcast, Rogan told director Kevin Smith that he's spoken to the comedian by phone. “She told me that she was taking Ambien and that she was drunk on Memorial Day weekend and she tweeted a bunch of stupid s---,” he told Smith. “In her words, she said, 'I need to adjust my meds. I’m not thinking straight.'” Rogan said Barr also told him that she didn't know Jarrett was black. "Only she knows for sure," Rogan said of these claims. Yahoo Entertainment 'No one threw Roseanne under the bus but Roseanne': Tweet controversy sparks heated comments Yahoo Entertainment Arjuna Ramgopal,Yahoo Entertainment Fri, Jun 1 2:30 PM PDT “It’s always a ‘joke’ after the backlash.” “Sometimes SORRY just doesn’t cut it.” The fallout has been swift and severe for Roseanne Barr’s racist comment on Twitter. The “Roseanne” reboot has been canceled, the scandal has dominated the news for days, and fans remain outraged. That includes thousands of Yahoo commenters. To take us back to the beginning: On May 28, in a now-deleted post, the comedian referred to Valerie Jarret, a former adviser to President Barack Obama as the “offspring of the Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes.’” Facing immediate backlash, Barr apologized, saying: “I am truly sorry for making a bad joke about her politics and her looks. I should have known better. Forgive me — my joke was in bad taste.” But it was too little too late. Thousands of Yahoo readers have been expressing their outrage, including one who wrote: “She just crossed the line again. I’M DONE.” Another commenter said, “Is anyone really surprised that Roseanne said something offensive?” And another added: “No one threw Roseanne under the bus but Roseanne.” Barr, 65, has maintained that she did not know that Jarrett, 61, is black when she compared her to an ape. One of the first signs of serious trouble came when Wanda Sykes, a consulting producer on the ABC sitcom, quit in protest. Co-star and co-producer Sara Gilbert quickly condemned the comments. And then, on May 29, the network lowered the boom: “Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show,” said ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey. Barr blamed the sleep medicine Ambien for her outburst. “It was 2 in the morning and I was ambien tweeting,” she posted. “I made a mistake I wish I hadn’t but … don’t defend it please.” In the wake of the show’s cancellation, the controversy has featured a diverse cast of characters. Barr’s ex-husband and onetime “Roseanne” writer Tom Arnold said he always had a bad feeling about the TV series reboot. (“I knew it would not end well.”) Jimmy Kimmel riled some fans with a measured show of support: “The Roseanne I know could probably use some compassion.” Barr’s son Jake Pentland has also come to his mother’s defense, saying: “It’s insensitive, we get it. … Me and Mom are completely out of touch, that we would think that it’s okay for a white person to call a non-white person and compare them to a monkey. Like, you got it. You won. You took the show off. She’s apologized. It’s over. War’s over.” On Thursday, Barr sent a series of tweets, which have now been deleted, begging ABC to save her show. “I begged Ben Sherwood at ABC 2 let me apologize & make amends,” Barr tweeted. “I begged 4 my crews jobs. Will I ever recover from this pain? omg.” The sudden cancellation of Roseanne because of Roseanne Barr's racist tweets may have come as a shock to fans, the cast, and crew of the show, but according to People there was a certain awareness that things could take a turn for the worst. "Everyone is upset for the cast and the crew, but there was always a feeling that something was going to happen," an ABC source told People. "There was always a heightened awareness with her, and we were always on edge about her going off track." Well, Barr's racist tweets about former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett certainly were the final "off track" straw for ABC, as the network canceled the show hours after she pressed send. The ABC source revealed they were holding their breath for Barr to eventually slip up, but her offensive and inappropriate tweets were entirely unexpected. "Did we think she would say something like that? No. But then it all fell apart," the source reportedly said. While the cast and crew are, sadly, left to deal with the repercussions of Barr's actions, many fans (and even Jimmy Kimmel!) have solutions to share that could revive the show without Barr herself. Hopefully, one of these ideas can help put back together the pieces that fell apart for the rest of the Conner family. | |
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| 06-03-18 03:46am - 2352 days | #795 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump just sent a clear signal to associates in Mueller's crosshairs to 'stay the course and he will protect them' Sonam Sheth Jun. 1, 2018, 1:34 PM President Donald Trump announced this week that he had pardoned the conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza, and was considering pardoning Martha Stewart and commuting the sentence of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. D'Souza, Stewart, and Blagojevich were all convicted on charges that Trump and his associates are currently being investigated for or have been charged with. Experts say people in Trump's orbit who are being investigated should find the developments "quite comforting." One Justice Department veteran pointed out that Trump's comments strike at two levels: "One, he's targeting the crimes that are the subject of the investigation of his associates, and two, he's punching back at some of those in law enforcement that he thinks are arrayed against him." Sign up for the latest Russia investigation updates here » President Donald Trump sent a not-so-subtle signal on Thursday when he pardoned the conservative political commentator Dinesh D'Souza and openly mused about pardoning the television personality Martha Stewart and commuting the sentence of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. D'Souza was convicted of violating campaign finance laws. Stewart was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and making false statements to investigators. Blagojevich was convicted, among other things, of making false statements. And Trump's recent actions come as the Justice Department probes whether some of Trump's associates committed those same crimes. Michael Cohen, Trump's longtime personal lawyer and closest confidant, is under investigation for violating campaign finance laws. Michael Flynn, Rick Gates, and George Papadopoulos — all of whom worked on Trump's campaign in some capacity — have pleaded guilty to lying to investigators, and Gates has additionally pleaded guilty to conspiracy. Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, has been charged with lying to the FBI. Jens David Ohlin, a vice dean at Cornell Law School who is an expert in criminal law, put it bluntly: "If I were Cohen, Flynn, or Manafort, I would find these recent developments quite comforting." 'What a gamble' Donald TrumpDonald Trump. Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images The power to pardon people convicted of federal crimes is perhaps the one tool in Trump's box that is entirely up to his discretion, and the president has not shied away from reminding the public — and his embattled associates — of that. "I've always felt [D'Souza] was very unfairly treated," Trump told reporters on Air Force One this week after announcing the conservative commentator's pardon. "And a lot of people did, a lot of people did. What should have been a quick, minor fine, like everybody else with the election stuff. ... What they did to him was horrible." The president's comments likely resonated with Cohen, who is being investigated by the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York for possibly violating campaign finance law when he paid the porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 shortly before the 2016 election in exchange for her silence about an affair she claims to have had with Trump. He is also a subject of interest to the special counsel Robert Mueller, stemming from his involvement in several key events Mueller is scrutinizing as part of the probe into Russian election interference. "There is no question in my mind that this is a signal to people who are caught up in the Mueller investigation to stay the course and [Trump] will protect them," said Alex Whiting, a longtime former federal prosecutor in Boston and Washington, DC. Cohen has been described at different times as Trump's fixer, pit bull, and consigliere, and he has a long history of going to bat for the president to quash negative stories and protect his reputation. In addition to serving as Trump's personal lawyer, Cohen also worked for over a decade as the Trump Organization's lead counsel and is likely privy to the innermost workings of Trump's business and financial dealings. "The critical question for someone like Cohen is, can he take it to the bank?" said Harry Litman, a former deputy assistant attorney general. "Is he going to completely trust in Trump's words? Boy, what a gamble." Trump also expressed sympathy toward Stewart and Blagojevich, both of whom he said did not deserve to go to jail for their actions. His comments could be a good sign for Flynn, who has already pleaded guilty in the Russia investigation and is cooperating with prosecutors. "Right now, Mueller's biggest leverage over Flynn is that he can sharply reduce his sentence if Flynn cooperates," Litman said. "If Flynn thinks he'll get pardoned, he'll start speaking in mono-syllables." Paul ManafortPaul Manafort leaves Federal District Court in Washington, Monday, Oct. 30, 2017. AP Photo/Alex Brandon Manafort, meanwhile, has been hit with dozens of charges related to his lobbying work for the Ukrainian government and pro-Russian interests, but he has pleaded not guilty. His lawyers have mounted an aggressive defense that rests on the claim that Mueller was not authorized to indict Manafort on charges unrelated to Russian collusion. Last month, a federal judge in Virginia delivered a massive setback to Manafort's lawyers when he ruled that Manafort's indictment falls within the scope of Mueller's mandate. But before making his final decision, US District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III laid into prosecutors, questioning whether they had only charged Manafort to get him "to sing." For that reason, despite the final ruling, Trump's defense team sees the case as somewhat of a win for the president, who accuses Mueller of embarking on a politically motivated "witch hunt" against him and his associates. "The fact that a federal judge even questioned Mueller's motives here is a big deal for us," said Rudy Giuliani, Trump's outside lawyer, who is a former Justice Department veteran. "It means there's something there." Asked Friday whether Trump's comments about D'Souza, Stewart, and Blagojevich were intended as a signal to Manafort and others ensnared in the Russia probe, Giuliani replied: "No, only independent situations." Trump's comments strike at two different levels Even so, Justice Department veterans emphasize that there are other, deeper consequences to Trump's haphazard approach to granting pardons, particularly as it relates to Thursday's comments. Former FBI Director James Comey was leading the Manhattan US attorney's office when it prosecuted the Martha Stewart case. Former US attorney Preet Bharara led the office when it tried D'Souza. And Patrick Fitzgerald, a close associate of Comey's, led the US attorney's office for the Northern District of Illinois, which handled the Blagojevich case. Trump's statements strike at two different levels, Whiting said. "One, he's targeting the crimes that are the subject of the investigation of his associates, and two, he's punching back at some of those in law enforcement that he thinks are arrayed against him," Whiting said. Litman agreed. "The pardon power defines the border between mercy and justice," he said. "And Trump's actions are completely disconnected from any of the sorts of considerations that presidents traditionally have." He added: "This might be the most purely corrupt or abusive of all his exercises of executive power, because it's not simply that he's ignoring the norms, but he's almost gleefully undermining the core principles of justice and law enforcement." | |
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| 06-03-18 03:54am - 2352 days | #796 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
President Donald Trump is a great businessman. He is able to make extra money for himself and his family while serving as President of the United States. Is it legal? Who cares? As long as Trump can get away with it. -------- -------- Lawyer suing Trump over emoluments expects to see hotel records Michael Isikoff Fri, Jun 1 9:36 AM PDT Norm Eisen; Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Paul Morigi/ Brookings Institution, AP) In what could presage a new legal headache for the Trump White House, the lawyer leading a suit against President Trump over his ownership of a Washington hotel says he is “confident” that a federal judge will require the Trump Organization to begin turning over evidence about the hotel’s internal operations — a key step that could reveal details about the president’s finances. The suit charges that the president is profiting from foreign governments doing business with Trump International Hotel, in violation of the Constitution. “I do believe there is going to be accountability for this,” said Norm Eisen, the chief of Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW), in an interview on the Yahoo News podcast Skullduggery. “This is the first time in American history that a president has been brazen enough to take emoluments” — referring to the clause in the U.S. Constitution that bars presidents from taking foreign gifts or payments from foreign governments. Eisen, who served as special counsel for ethics and government reform under President Obama, is the chief counsel in a lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia claiming that foreign governments doing business with Trump’s hotel in Washington violate the Emoluments Clause of the constitution. Lawyers for the president recently asked U.S. Judge Peter Messitte, who is presiding over the case, to toss the lawsuit on the grounds that the president can’t be sued in his personal or official capacity. But Eisen, noting that Messitte has already allowed the case to proceed, said he fully expects another favorable ruling after a hearing in the case over the scope of the Emoluments Clause slated for June 11. “We are confident the judge is going to allow us to take discovery,” he said. The president’s decision to maintain ownership of his business while serving in the White House is only one of the ethics issues that has drawn the attention of ethics watchdogs like Eisen. In the interview with Skullduggery hosts Daniel Klaidman and Michael Isikoff, Eisen also pointed to benefits the Trump family businesses have received from the Chinese government. Ivanka Trump’s accessories company was recently granted seven trademarks by the regime, and a Chinese state-owned construction company provided $500 million in financing to Indonesian developers for construction of a theme park venture that will include a Trump-branded hotel and golf course. Download or subscribe on iTunes: “Skullduggery” by Yahoo News “The Chinese are a one-party state, Isikoff,” Eisen said. “Do you believe these [Chinese] officials are not aware they are giving these benefits to the Trump family members and they don’t intend to shape American policy? Of course they do.” While he acknowledged he has no “conclusive” evidence of a “quid pro quo,” Eisen noted that these moves came around the same time that Trump tweeted, on May 13, his intention to provide relief for China’s telecom giant, ZTE, which was subject to U.S. sanctions for doing business with Iran and North Korea. “Look at the proximity,” Eisen said. ZTE is a “threat to American national security and Trump says we are going to save ZTE. That happens around the same time as this $500 million [Indonesian] financing and these trademarks to Ivanka. It is a lot” to accept that “it’s just a coincidence.” | |
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| 06-03-18 04:15am - 2352 days | #797 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Law enforcement under Trump is full of flaws. We need to impeach Trump, and get a President who will give us the kind of police force our citizens need. We must support our local police force. Here is an officer who was fired after using his car to run down a suspect. Did the officer kill the suspect? No. So why was the officer fired from his job? My guess is the Police Chief, after reviewing the camera footage and all other facts and circumstances of the case, decided that the fired officer was not being effective in his use of police equipment. The suspect who was hit by the police car was taken by ambulance to a hospital, but only had scrapes and bruises. Scrapes and bruises? After being hit by a police car? A gun would have been more effective: 5 or 6 bullets to the head and body would have put the suspect down more strongly. Or running over the suspect with the police car's tires would have taught the suspect that police are not to be trifled with. So, yes, maybe the officer should have been fired for not dealing with the suspect in an effective manner. Or--the officer could have been given training in how to use police equiment in the best, most effective way. -------- -------- Officer fired after intentionally hitting fleeing suspect with his police car By Mark Osborne Jun 3, 2018, 1:55 AM ET Athens-Clarke County Police Department WATCH Police officer fired after hitting suspect with car The Athens-Clarke County Police Department has fired one of its officers after an investigation showed he intentionally ran down and hit a fleeing suspect with his police cruiser. Officer Taylor Saulters, who was driving the car, was initially suspended, but he was fired by the police department on Saturday. "After reviewing the officers’ body camera footage, and all the other facts and circumstances of this case, Chief Scott Freeman terminated the employment of Officer Taylor Saulters," the Athens-Clarke County Police Department said in a statement. The department released video of the June 1 incident, in which Saulters can be seen driving after a suspect fleeing on foot from he and his partner. Saulters initially turns left to try to block the suspect, but the man dodges the car. The suspect then continues running down the street, at which point Saulters drives to the right and hits the suspect with the front right of his police car. The man who was hit, identified as Timmy Patmon, rolls up on the hood of the car and falls to the pavement. Saulters and his partner, officer Hunter Blackmon, who had been chasing the suspect on foot, arrest Patmon as a group of angry onlookers gather around the arresting officers. A woman bystander can be heard saying, "You didn't have to hit that man like that." Saulters also threatened to use a stun gun on Patmon while he is face down on the pavement being restrained by Blackmon. "Give us your hands now, or you're gonna get Tased," the officer can be heard saying on the video. "Do you understand me? Make the right decision." Patmon was wanted on a felony probation warrant, according to Athens-Clarke County police. Patmon was taken to the hospital by ambulance, but suffered just "scrapes and bruises" when being struck by the car, police said. He was taken into custody after being released from the hospital. Saulters was immediately placed on administrative leave, but was fired the next day following an independent investigation. "Athens police Chief Scott Freeman initially placed Saulters on administrative leave, initiated an internal affairs investigation, and requested that the Georgia State Patrol and Georgia Bureau of Investigation conduct independent investigations of the incident," police said in a statement. | |
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| 06-03-18 08:44am - 2351 days | #798 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Rudy Giuliani says the president probably has the power to pardon himself but does not plan to do so. So if the president is impeached, he can pardon himself. And the impeachment process would be thwarted, concerning the president. However, not everyone agrees with the president's lawyer. The law is what is written, except it has to be interpreted and enforced. Which means, lawyers can argue the moon is made of yellow cheese, but that does not necessarily make it true. What is more true, is that the constitution is made of yellow cheese, and the lawyers can argue over the meaning of the constitution, which is the law of the land. Trump's lawyers argued in a letter to the special counsel that the president could not have obstructed the probe given the powers granted to him by the Constitution, the New York Times reported on Saturday. So why did Nixon resign? Because he was stupid. He did not have the lawyers Trump has, who realize that the president can do no legal wrong. And as for lying to the public, which Nixon did, so what? Trump has lied to the public continuously, even more than Nixon did. Again, why did Nixon resign? Because his lawyers did not realize the president has the legal right to stop any investigation, and to pardon anyone. So none of Nixon's aides needed to go to prison, or even be convicted, because Nixon had the power to pardon. And Nixon had the right to stop any investigation into Nixon's own conduct, even conduct which might or might not be illegal. So, basically, the president has absolute power. Except a lot of people might not agree that the power of the president is absolute. Actually, there's a flaw in the argument. The president has the power to pardon on federal matters. But some people believe that states can prosecute on the state level, which would need a state governor's pardon to avoid. Has Trump or his aides broken any state laws? Can they be prosecuted at the state level. It seems like they might have. When will this corruption/graft/influence scandal be finished? Drain the swamp in Washington. Put Trump, Giuliani, and their cronies and allies in prison: Federal and state prison, if there isn't enough room for them in the federal prisons. -------- -------- Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani says president probably can pardon himself Thomson Reuters Jun 3rd 2018 10:06AM WASHINGTON, June 3 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani said on Sunday the president probably has the power to pardon himself but does not plan to do so. Asked whether Trump has the power to give himself a pardon, Giuliani said, "He's not, but he probably does." Giuliani added that Trump has no intention of pardoning himself," but that the U.S. Constitution, which gives a president the authority to issue pardons, "doesn't say he can't." Giuliani said on ABC's "This Week" program, "It would be an open question. I think it would probably get answered by, gosh, that's what the Constitution says." Giuliani also said it is an "open question" whether Trump would sit for an interview with Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating potential collusion between Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and Russia, but that the president's lawyers were leaning against having him testify. Mueller is also looking into whether Trump unlawfully sought to obstruct the Russia investigation. House Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said on CNN on Sunday that no president should pardon himself. Trump's lawyers argued in a letter to the special counsel that the president could not have obstructed the probe given the powers granted to him by the Constitution, the New York Times reported on Saturday. In the Jan. 29 letter, Trump's lawyers contended that the Constitution gives the president the power to "terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon," the Times reported. (Reporting by Yasmeen Abutaleb and Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Will Dunham) | |
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| 06-03-18 08:51am - 2351 days | #799 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
1. OH, OKAY an hour ago Giuliani: Our ‘Recollection Keeps Changing’ on Trump Tower Meeting [Giuliani: Our Memory of Trump Tower Meeting ‘Keeps Changing’] Leah Millis/Reuters Rudy Giuliani on Sunday said President Trump’s explanation for a statement on the controversial 2016 Trump Tower meeting has repeatedly changed because “our recollection keeps changing.” “This is the reason you don't let the president testify. Our recollection keeps changing, or we're not even asked a question and somebody makes an assumption,” Giuliani told ABC News’ This Week. Giuliani’s comments came after it was revealed that a statement released by Donald Trump Jr. to explain his and other Trump aides’ meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer ahead of the election was actually dictated by Trump—something the president had earlier denied. The Trump Tower statement is now a central focus of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into whether the president obstructed justice, as it deceptively claimed the meeting focused on U.S. adoptions of Russian children. In fact, the meeting was arranged on the assumption Trump Jr. and other members of the Trump team would receive damaging information on Hillary Clinton. | |
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| 06-03-18 01:32pm - 2351 days | #800 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump: I'm totally innocent. Innocent. There was no Russian collusion. And if there was Russian collusion, it was the fault of my aides. And the fault of the FBI. And any other traitors to the United States of America. But don't blame me. I'm innocent. But don't worry, fans of people who are being investigated by the Mueller probe: Trump stands willing and able to hand out pardons for these fine, young men who are being persecuted by Dirty Democrats. God save Donald Trump, who will make America great again (while lining his pockets and the pockets of his children with the fruits of his labors as President of the United States. Unethical, certainly. Illegal, probably. But Trump believes he can get away with it.) ------------ ------------ Trump asks why FBI didn't tell him about Paul Manafort investigation Michael Walsh 5 hours ago President Trump complained Sunday morning that the Federal Bureau of Investigation never warned him about its investigation into Paul Manafort before he joined Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign team. In a handful of tweets, Trump asked why the FBI did not tell Democrat Hillary Clinton and him about a secret investigation into Manafort after they had won their respective party’s nominations. He scoffed at the Department of Justice’s commitment to fairness by placing “justice” in quotes. Manafort, a veteran conservative political consultant, joined Trump’s campaign as convention manager in March 2016 and was responsible for transitioning the campaign’s activities toward the Republican National Committee in Cleveland. He was promoted to campaign manager on May 19 and resigned that August amid scrutiny into his pro-Russian work in Ukraine. On Sunday, Trump continued to distance himself from Manafort by pointing out that he came to his team late in the process, only stayed for a few months and had contributed to several other Republican presidential bids in the past. These included campaigns for Presidents Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, as well as Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole. Trump insisted he should have been informed that former FBI director James Comey and the bureau’s investigators — whom the president called “Comey and the boys” — were “doing a number” on Manafort. With this knowledge, he continued, Manafort would have never been hired. This is a continuation of Trump’s efforts to rationalize his ties to Manafort that kicked into high gear after Robert Mueller, the special counsel for the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s interference with the U.S. presidential election, indicted him and his former business partner Rick Gates in October 2017. Despite Trump’s claims to the contrary, CNN reported that U.S. intelligence officials warned Trump in August 2016 that Russia would likely try to infiltrate his campaign and interfere with the election. Manafort faces charges of acting as an unregistered foreign agent, conspiring to launder money and making false statements to the Justice Department about his political work in Ukraine. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson has rejected several of Manafort’s attempts to get certain charges dismissed. He had unsuccessfully filed motions challenging Mueller’s authority, insisting some charges amounted to double jeopardy (being charged twice for the same offense) and arguing that piling up charges could prejudice jurors against him. Manafort, who has pleaded not guilty, is expected to stand trial in July. | |
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