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Post History:
lk2fireone (0)
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| 651-700 of 3618 Posts | < Previous Page | 1 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 13 | Page 14 | 15 | 24 | 33 | 42 | 51 | 60 | 72 | 73 | Next Page > |
| 09-01-18 05:35am - 2306 days | #1039 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User  Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
This is terribly unfair. So what if a Ukraine tycoon paid $50,000 for 4 tickets to Trump's inauguration? It might have been illegal, but it was for a good cause: giving money to Trump. That deserves a presidential pardon, if there ever was a person who deserved a pardon. Shame on slimeball Democrats, for attacking people who support Trump and the Republican party. The investigation into Russian meddling is a witch hunt, and Trump is totally blameless. Even if the high-level people who worked for Trump are found guilty of crimes in a court of law, Trump himself is blameless, as he keeps tweeting. Does Mueller understand the power of the tweet? ----------- ----------- U.S. Manafort associate admits paying Trump inauguration $50,000 in Ukrainian cash The Telegraph Agence France-Presse,The Telegraph 10 hours ago Sam Patten, an associate of Paul Manafort, leaves court in Washington DC - Getty Images North America A Republican consultant linked to President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort admitted on Friday he illegally funnelled money from a Ukraine tycoon to Mr Trump's inauguration. Sam Patten, who worked with Manafort to advise and lobby for Ukraine's pro-Russia Opposition Bloc, was the newest person to be charged out of special counsel Robert Mueller's sprawling Russia collusion investigation. In a deal with prosecutors Patten, 47, agreed to plead guilty to one charge of failing to register as a foreign agent, a relatively light charge that was conditioned on his cooperation with Mr Mueller and other investigations. A court filing said he earned more than $1 million between 2015 and 2017 representing the interests of the Opposition Bloc, which Manafort also previously consulted for. The work was performed by Patten's joint company with a Russian national who is unnamed in the court filing but appears to be Konstantin Kilimnik, a former linguist of Moscow's powerful GRU spy agency. US officials say Mr Kilimnik continues to maintain close ties to Russian intelligence. The charges said Patten worked with his Russian partner to set up meetings between an unnamed "prominent Ukraine oligarch" and member of the US Congress and their staff "to influence United States policy." Patten also, in January 2017, arranged for the Ukrainian oligarch to attend Mr Trump's inauguration. To obtain four tickets, the Ukrainian funneled $50,000 through Patten and another American. "Patten was aware at the time that the Presidential Inauguration Committee could not accept money from foreign nationals," the charges said. The Patten case came 10 days after Manafort, a longtime Republican consultant who was chairman of Trump's election campaign in 2016, was convicted of tax and bank fraud as a part of Mr Mueller's investigation. The Patten court filings indicate that he has been cooperating with Mr Mueller's investigation, and require him to continue to do so before he is sentenced. Manafort still faces more charges, including obstruction allegations against him and Mr Kilimnik for alleged witness tampering. | |
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| 08-31-18 03:44pm - 2306 days | #4 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
I've visited Porn Hub. Didn't realize they had a forum. Never used a VPN. Maybe I will give it a try. But I agree, that New Jersey qualifies as a foreign country. Is that where Donald Trump comes from?  | |
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| 08-31-18 10:36am - 2306 days | #2 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
I don't know why you call them idiots. They must be fabulously wealthy. From porn. Also: My guess is that a lot of the Porn Hub content is provided by sites for promotion as free advertising. Otherwise, Porn Hub would be constantly sued for piracy. Am I being naive? I assume that Porn Hub could steal (or at least show) content from paysites, and Porn Hub has the financial muscle to defend that theft. That was part of Microsoft's strategy in growing its software offerings. Pay a small fee to a software company for a utility program, then stop the fee when Microsoft came out with a "new" competing utility program that became part of its operating system. Except that Porn Hub does not pay a fee for any of the content posted at Porn Hub, I assume. | |
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| 08-31-18 10:15am - 2306 days | #1038 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Evil, slimeball Democrats are attacking the greatest President the US has ever had. They are even attacking his charitable foundation, which wants to spread Donald Trump's wealth to the poor and unwashed that Donald Trump loves. Shame on the Democrats, who are evil slimeballs from shithole countries. Furthermore, the Clinton charitable foundation is guilty of terrible crimes, because it is part of the Clinton empire of evil. Trump has resisted putting Bill and Hilary Clinton in prison, because Trump is such a warm-hearted man, who forgives his enemies. But now is the time that Trump must do his Christian duty, and let the law and his Attorney General, the ball-less Jeff Sessions (who recused himself from the Mueller investigation) prosecute the Clintons. --------- --------- New York attorney general: No backing down on Trump lawsuit Associated Press TOM McELROY,Associated Press 5 hours ago FILE - In this Tuesday, Aug. 28, 2018, file photo, President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House, in Washington. Lawyers for Trump have asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit brought against his charitable foundation by New York’s attorney general, arguing that it was politically motivated. Attorney Alan Futerfas argued in a motion filed late Thursday, Aug. 30, 2018, that former Attorney General Eric Schneiderman used his public antipathy for Trump to solicit campaign donations. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File) NEW YORK (AP) — Lawyers for President Donald Trump asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit brought against his charitable foundation by New York's attorney general, arguing that it was politically motivated. In the motion Thursday, Trump attorney Alan S. Futerfas argued that former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman "made it his stated mission to 'lead the resistance' and attack Mr. Trump whenever possible" and "used his public antipathy for Mr. Trump to solicit donations for his own re-election campaign and advance his career interests and aspirations." Trump very publicly announced his intention to dissolve the foundation and donate all of its remaining funds to charity, but the AG "actively stonewalled dissolution," Futerfas wrote. "At the same time, the NYAG turned a blind eye to serious and significant allegations of misconduct involving the Clinton Foundation, including claims that it, and its subsidiaries, violated New York law by failing to disclose $225 million in donations from foreign governments," Futerfas wrote. Schneiderman began investigating the Trump Foundation in 2016 following Washington Post reports that its spending personally benefited the presidential candidate. Schneiderman ordered the foundation to stop fundraising in New York. Schneiderman resigned in May after allegations that he physically abused women he had dated; he denied the claims. His successor, Democratic Attorney General Barbara Underwood, filed the lawsuit in June, claiming the Trump Foundation "was little more than a checkbook for payments from Mr. Trump or his businesses to nonprofits, regardless of their purpose or legality." The suit seeks $2.8 million in restitution and the foundation's disbandment. The filing said Underwood continued the "inflammatory rhetoric, stating publicly that she considers her battles with the President 'the most important work (she) has ever done' and has vowed that such 'work will continue.'" Trump's lawyers also argued that several impermissible donations by the foundation were due to clerical errors and were all corrected when brought to the attention of foundation officials. In a statement Thursday, the attorney general's office said it won't back down from "holding Trump and his associates accountable for their flagrant violations of New York law." "As our lawsuit detailed, the Trump Foundation functioned as a personal piggy bank to serve Trump's business and political interests," the statement said. | |
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| 08-31-18 09:28am - 2306 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Long list of porn site discounts for Labor Day at The Best Porn. https://www.thebestporn.com/special/discounts_new/ | |
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| 08-31-18 09:11am - 2306 days | #1037 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump, leader of the free world. Trump says 85 percent of journalists are “just dishonest, terrible people.” He also claimed, without evidence, that networks turn off cameras at his rallies. I don't understand why Trump does not nationalize the press (TV, radio, newspapers, and news outlets on the internet) to provide a better source of news to the American people. Trump, leader for life of the Moral Majority for a White America. --------- --------- Trump Volunteer Tries To Block Journalist From Photographing Protester At Rally HuffPost Ed Mazza,HuffPost 9 hours ago A volunteer for President Donald Trump attempted to physically block a photojournalist from taking a picture of a protester at a campaign rally in Indiana on Thursday night. AP photographer Evan Vucci snapped an image of the unidentified member of Trump’s advance team putting his hand in front of a journalist’s camera: AP reported that Trump “paced on stage” as the protester was escorted from the arena. “And now tomorrow, you’re gonna read headlines: ‘Trump had protesters all over the place,’” Trump said, according to Business Insider, which noted that the rally was interrupted by demonstrators several times. Trump has repeatedly called the media the “enemy of the people” and accused the press of spreading “fake” stories about him. He’s also told supporters not to believe what they see or read. “Just remember, what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what’s happening,” Trump said in July. At the event in Indiana on Thursday, Trump told the crowd that 85 percent of journalists are “just dishonest, terrible people.” He also claimed, without evidence, that networks turn off cameras at his rallies. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 08-30-18 04:21pm - 2307 days | #1036 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
President Donald Trump appeals to United States citizens: stop the press from lying about me. Give me the power to declare martial law, and to nationalize the TV and newspaper and radio news outlets, so Americans can, once more, respect the news they will be getting. America needs a truthful and honest press. Only Donald Trump can deliver on that promise. Trump, leader of the Moral Majority of White Americans. ----- ----- Trump, without evidence, says NBC 'fudging' 2017 interview on Russia Thomson Reuters WASHINGTON, Aug 30 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday, without offering any evidence, accused NBC News of "fudging" a May 2017 interview that he gave days after he fired then FBI Director James Comey and in which he cited the federal Russia investigation. Representatives for NBC News and its parent, Comcast Corp , could not be immediately reached for comment. Representatives for the White House did not immediately respond to a question about Trump's accusation. In the interview last year, Trump appeared to try to underscore that Comey's dismissal was tied to his performance at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and not about the U.S. Special Counsel Office's probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. RELATED: Trump's tweets about the Mueller Russia probe | |
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| 08-30-18 09:41am - 2307 days | #4 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
I have no idea why the ISPs did not advertise the increase in connection speed more widely, more prominently. I haven't seen a single ad that said: "We've gotten even better, with a faster basic connection speed for all our customers." I don't watch a lot of public television, so I'm missing a lot of advertising. Maybe the increased speed was advertised, but I just never saw it. | |
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| 08-30-18 09:29am - 2307 days | #1035 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump does not believe some Americans should have US passports. Just like he did not believe Obama was born in America, and was a fake president who shoud not have been elected. Trump, fighting to keep America for real Americans, and trying to keep people from shithole countries out of the country: Remember, people from Mexico are rapists and murderers, and should never enter the United States of White America. The State Department said it hasn’t changed any policy or practice on passport applications. It seems the State Department has a problem with truth: under Trump, not just Trump himself, but many of the people he has hired, the truth seems to be a moving target, and Trump has his own version of the truth. Which can change over time. -------- -------- Trump Administration Denies Passports To Americans Living On Border: Report HuffPost Liza Hearon,HuffPost 4 hours ago The Trump administration is accusing hundreds and possibly thousands of Hispanic Americans along the Texas-Mexico border of obtaining their citizenship using fraudulent birth certificates and the government is denying them passports as a result, according to a Washington Post report. Some passport applicants have been turned down in the United States and sent to immigration detention facilities, while others have been left stuck in Mexico because their passports are getting suddenly revoked when they try to re-enter the country. Individuals that the Post spoke to said they’re baffled and have been using their birth certificates since they were babies. According to the Post, it’s unclear precisely how many people are affected by this issue. But it comes as the Trump administration has increasingly gone after U.S. citizens in its crackdown on legal and illegal immigration. Over the last year, the administration has created a “denaturalization task force” to strip citizenship from people it says obtained it through fraud and has attempted to discharge immigrant military recruits who were seeking citizenship. The State Department said it hasn’t changed any policy or practice on passport applications. “There are numerous reasons why a customer may be asked to provide additional documentation or information. The burden of proving one’s identity and citizenship falls on the applicant for a U.S. passport regardless of where the application was submitted,” a Department of State spokesperson said in a statement. The State Department said it is looking for additional documentation from applicants with birth certificates filed by midwives or “other birth attendants” who are suspected of fraudulent activities. Midwifery is common in rural and underserved communities along the border. It’s unclear why the crackdown on birth certificates from midwives appears to be happening now. In federal court cases in the 1990s, several midwives admitted to fraudulently filing Texas birth certificates for babies who were born in Mexico. This led to the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations to deny passports for people born to midwives in the Rio Grande Valley. In 2009, the ACLU settled a case with the government over the issue, and the number of passport denials seemed to fall, The Washington Post reported. The State Department didn’t respond to a question from HuffPost on why the denials were happening again. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 08-30-18 09:10am - 2307 days | #1034 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Politics Trump stands by warning of 'violence' if Dems win midterms Associated Press Jill Colvin, Associated Press,Associated Press 2 hours 29 minutes ago WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump urged evangelical leaders this week to get out the vote ahead of the upcoming midterm elections and warned of "violence" by opponents if they fail. Trump made the dire warning at a White House dinner Monday evening attended by dozens of conservative Christian pastors, ministers and supporters of his administration. Trump was stressing the stakes in November when he warned that, if Democrats win, they "will overturn everything that we've done and they'll do it quickly and violently," according to attendees and audio of his closed-door remarks obtained by media outlets, including The New York Times. He specifically mentioned self-described antifa, or anti-fascist groups, describing them as "violent people." Asked Wednesday what he meant, Trump told reporters, "I just hope there won't be violence." "If you look at what happens ... there's a lot of unnecessary violence all over the world, but also in this country. And I don't want to see it," Trump said. At the dinner, Trump talked up his administration's efforts to bolster conservative Christian causes and urged those gathered to get their "people" to vote, warning the efforts could quickly be undone. "I just ask you to go out and make sure all of your people vote," Trump said, according to the Times. "Because if they don't — it's Nov. 6 — if they don't vote we're going to have a miserable two years and we're going to have, frankly, a very hard period of time because then it just gets to be one election — you're one election away from losing everything you've got." Ohio Pastor Darrell Scott, an early Trump supporter who attended the dinner, said he interpreted the comments differently than the media has portrayed them. "It wasn't any kind of dire warning," Scott said, "... except the things that we've been working on as a body of voters will be reversed and overturned." "What he was saying," Scott continued, is that "there are some violent people ... but it wasn't that we've got to worry about murder on the streets and chaos and anarchy ... just that the things we've worked for will be overturned." Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council and another attendee, said he, too, interpreted Trump's message as a warning not to be complacent. While Trump did make a reference to antifa, Perkins told CNN, "I don't think anybody in the room suggested that there was going to be violence across the nation." "I did not interpret him to say that the outcome of the election is going to lead (to) violence in the streets, and violence in the churches," he told CNN. | |
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| 08-29-18 11:41pm - 2308 days | #1033 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Real news: President Trump issues a warning: America will go to hell if Republicans lose in midterms. Not only will the stock market crash, but there could be massive violence in the streets. Trump warns people to stock up on rifles and handguns and lots of ammo to fight off the looters and rapists and people from shithole countries that will invade America if Democrats win more seats in Congress. Trump will have to declare martial law and order US troops to defend our cities and towns from civil unrest. Vote in the upcoming elections, people. Vote for Trump. Wait. Trump is not running yet. He will be re-elected in the 2020 election. So, for now, vote Republican. Yes. Save America from the slimeball Democrats. ------ ------ Politics Trump warns change would come 'violently' if Republicans lose in midterms ABC News MERIDITH MCGRAW,ABC News 5 hours ago Trump warns change would come 'violently' if Republicans lose in midterms originally appeared on abcnews.go.com President Trump told Evangelical leaders during a closed door dinner at the White House that there will be "violence" if Democrats take control in the November election. Trump invited Evangelical leaders for a special state dining room event on Monday at the White House and rattled off a list of promises his administration kept for the Christian community. Among them, nominating conservative judges and recent White House commitments to defend religious freedom. But he also talked about what he thinks is at stake in the upcoming 2018 midterms, and said those accomplishments could come under attack "quickly and violently" if Republicans lose. "You're one election away from losing everything that you've got," Trump told the room. Trump said if Republicans lose, "they will overturn everything that we've done and they'll do it quickly and violently." "When you look at Antifa and you look at some of these groups — these are violent people," Trump stated. Antifa is a group of anti-fascists activists who have protested against white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the Trump administration. President Trump appeared to equate Antifa and white supremacists after fighting in Charlottesville last year that left one woman dead. Trump said there was "blame on both sides." Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins was a guest at the dinner and confirmed the reported quotes from NBC and the Washington Post from an audio recording to ABC News, but said he interpreted Trump’s comments differently. ABC News did not listen to or obtain an audio recording of the president’s remarks. "The audio is accurate, but it was selectively released and you have to understand it in the context of the entire evening," Perkins said. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Perkins said President Trump returned to the podium after reporters left the room, and "as he does, speaks off the cuff, but reiterated his list of things that have been accomplished." "I think the people in the room interpreted that all those things that we talked about, we cared about -- that elections have consequences," Perkins said. "I did not take from his comments that based on the outcome of the election there would be violence in the streets or the churches." "We know the intent, the violence behind the left, because of what we have witnessed from Antifa," Perkins said. "What I interpreted it as him saying is that it’s not a time for complacency." When asked about his comments about violence potentially breaking out if Republicans lose, Trump said on Wednesday he hopes there "won't be violence." "There’s a lot of unnecessary violence all over the world, but also in this country and I don’t want to see this," Trump said. | |
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| 08-29-18 10:03pm - 2308 days | #2 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
It might be due to your ISP. A while back (at least several months ago), Spectrum (used to be Time Warner Cable) upgraded their basic cable connection to 100 Mbps. I think some other ISP providers did the same thing: upgraded their basic connection speed to 100 Mbps. So you might want to check on what your current ISP connection speed is, from your provider. Or you can do an internet speed test--that is free, and online, offered by different web pages. There was no increase in the fee charged by the ISP, in many cases, for the increased speed. So you can call on the phone your ISP, to see if that's why you are getting faster download speeds. Or not. Not, if you got the increased connection speed by mistake--which is very doubtful. The most probable cause was your ISP increased the basic connection speed they are now offering--which is 100 Mbps in my area. They used to offer 50 Mbps and around 30 Mbps and even lower, I think. | |
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| 08-29-18 05:58pm - 2308 days | #1032 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump blasts CNN. Says Carl Bernstein is a sloppy reporter who tells lies. Can anyone believe CNN, after Trump blasts CNN for fake news? Donald Trump, the source of the greatest fake news stories since George Washington became president. But Trump is greater than Washington, more popular than Lincoln. Just read Trump's tweets if you want the truth. Hail Donald Trump, leader of the Moral Majority for a White America. Digger-up of the news stories on Obama's birth in a shithole country (not the United States), and on how attractive his daughter Ivanka is, if she wasn't his daughter he'd be dating her right now--even though she is a married woman with children. ----- ----- The Wrap Trump Blasts CNN and ‘Sloppy’ Carl Bernstein Over Disputed Story: ‘Caught in a Major Lie’ “CNN stands by our reporting and our reporters. There may be many fools in this story but @carlbernstein is not one of them,” network responds Itay Hod | August 29, 2018 @ 4:35 PM Last Updated: August 29, 2018 @ 4:51 PM Donald Trump attacked both Carl Bernstein and CNN, calling the veteran reporter “sloppy” for what Trump said was a “major lie” in a recent article. “CNN is being torn apart from within based on their being caught in a major lie and refusing to admit the mistake,” the president tweeted Wednesday. “Sloppy @carlbernstein, a man who lives in the past and thinks like a degenerate fool, making up story after story, is being laughed at all over the country! Fake News.” A representative for CNN did not immediately respond to a request for comment from TheWrap, but on Twitter, the network responded forcefully, saying in part that “CNN does not lie. We report the news. And we report when people in power tell lies.” Bernstein, who now works for CNN, was one of three reporters who wrote a bombshell CNN in July. The article said that the president’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen was prepared to tell special counsel Robert Mueller about Trump’s involvement in a the now infamous Trump Tower meeting during the 2016 presidential campaign. The story received fresh attention this week after Davis admitted that he was the source for the story. He then appeared to contradict the news during an appearance on “Anderson Cooper 360,” revising his position and saying that he was no longer certain Cohen has witnessed Trump Sr. being informed. CNN has consistently said it stands by the story, and that it was based on accounts from more than just one source. | |
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| 08-29-18 09:54am - 2308 days | #1031 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Here is a perfect candidate for Trump's Attorney General. I don't know if the guy is a lawyer. But that doesn't matter: Trump knows the law, so Trump can guide the man on any questions regarding the law. And this man should act as Trump directs: The man has had anger issues in the past: He stabbed his girlfriend 23 times, but he claimed it was in self-defense. Trump, are you listening? This man would be a better attack dog than Rudy Guiliani! --------- --------- ’40-Year-Old Virgin’ Actor Granted Parole After 2010 Attempted Murder Conviction “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” actor Shelley Malil has been granted parole after he was convicted of attempted murder in 2010. According to the Los Angeles Times, Malil appeared before a panel of parole commissioners in Riverside County on Tuesday. The panel was set to revisit a previous ruling that the 45-year-old actor should be paroled due to him being at low risk of committing violence again in the future. Gov. Jerry Brown had spoken out against the decision, arguing that there still was no explanation as to why Malil’s “rage escalated so far out of control, and resulted in such a prolonged horror.” Malil was found guilty of assault with a deadly weapon in 2010 and convicted of attempted murder for repeatedly stabbing his girlfriend at her San Marcos home. The attack, which occurred in August 2008, left Kendra Beebe with 23 deep stab wounds and chunks of her skin on her chin “nearly sliced off,” scars of which she still sees today, she’s said. According to the San Diego Union Tribune, Beebe was at home with a friend when Malil stabbed her in the torso. Initially, Malil said the attack had been self-defense, but he admitted during a hearing in January that he had grabbed a knife and driven from his home to San Marcos with intent to “annihilate” Beebe after he had felt slighted by her the previous day. According to the outlet, the actor slashed at Beebe with a broken wine glass and also tried to smother her with a pillow. He was sentenced to 12 years to life in prison. Malil will be released in two weeks and will remain on supervised parole for five years. The Union Tribune reported that Malil told the panel that he takes “full responsibility for everything I did” and that the attack was “infinitely inexcusable — and I am sorry.” After the hearing, the outlet received a text message from Beebe, in which she said she was “shocked” about the decision. “Today, these men had a chance to take real action showing that we, as a society, value women and will protect them,” Beebe said. “For this I am sad. Because of their inaction, I will continue to live in fear.” | |
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| 08-29-18 09:07am - 2308 days | #1030 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
This man is my hero, right after Donald Trump. This man knows that women drivers should be illegal. And that the sole reason women exist is to give birth to male babies. That is why Texas is persecuting this man: for standing up for his beliefs. Texas is a terrible place to live. Trump should kick them out of the Union and make Texas part of Mexico. --------- --------- Texas Man Back Behind Bars After Allegedly Shooting a Woman While Driving for a Second Time: Reports News 11:36 AM PDT, August 27, 2018 - JOHANNA LI Nicholas Dagostino, 29, of Katy, Texas was arrested again Thursday. Nicholas Dagostino, 29, of Katy, Texas was arrested again Thursday. (Harris County Sheriff’s Office) A Texas man is back behind bars for the second time in weeks after prosecutors said he shot at female drivers because he doesn’t believe women should be behind the wheel. Nicholas Dagostino, 29, of Katy, was arrested Thursday and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after shooting a woman in the arm while she was driving, according to court documents. The unnamed victim was reportedly driving out of a Shell gas station when she heard a loud noise, and felt pain in her arm. She didn’t immediately realize she had been shot, according to reports. Investigators believe Dagostino is specifically targeting "female motorists in Katy," citing his Facebook posts in which "he rants and rambles on about motorists and how incompetent they are that their sole purpose is to give birth to male children," court documents stated. The latest incident comes just three days after he was released on bond related to the charges for a similar incident in July, for which he spent more than a month behind bars, when a 39-year-old woman was shot in the arm by the driver of a Ford Explorer on a main road last month, authorities said. "Just a few more inches and it could have been a fatal wound," the Harris County Sheriff’s Office told reporters. “We’re very lucky she survived her injuries.” Dagostino told investigators at the time that she had been "swerving into the lane twice" and that he fired his gun in "self-defense," authorities said. The victim denied there had been any road-rage incident leading up to the attack, and authorities said further investigation uncovered there may be more incidents in which he attacked other motorists. "Here’s the interesting twist: He did admit through statements and other information we’ve received that he’s been involved in at least five other similar situations,” the Harris County Sheriff’s Office said. “Five other similar situations in which he discharged his firearm at other vehicles." Dagostino’s defense attorney Ken Mingledorff reportedly said the allegations and charges come as a shock, telling local reporters, “The family […] is very very sorry for any problems or pain this has caused anyone.” Authorities said they are still considering additional charges, and asks anyone with more information to come forward. Dagostino is currently held on bonds totaling $400,000, and his next court date is Sept. 6. | |
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| 08-29-18 12:55am - 2309 days | #1029 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump's next wife? Trump seems to have problems with his current wife. Maybe he needs to trade her in for a newer model. The woman in the article might be a perfect fit, because she has a realistic view of how her love life should be financed: with lots of money from her friends and acquaintances. --------- --------- Celebrity This Bride Cancelled Her Wedding After Guests Refused to Pay Her $1,500 Attendance Fee Brides Christina Oehler,Brides Mon, Aug 27 9:20 AM PDT We don't need to tell you that weddings can get expensive. Even with the most meticulous budgeting, a few unexpected costs are bound to crop up. While most brides tend to accept this as fact, one Canadian woman, who is only known as "Susan," attempted to circumvent all wedding costs by asking her friends and family to pay up to attend her wedding. It went about as well as you'd expect. "Susan" is causing quite the debate online after posting a bizarre Facebook rant about her now-cancelled wedding. Yup, the couple called off the wedding just days before their I dos, after their guests refused to pay the $1,500 attendance fee Susan was demanding in order to pay for her CAD $60,000 ($46,020 USD) dream wedding. In her long-winded, expletive-filled explanation, the (former) bride accused her friends and family of ruining her marriage and her life. “How could we have our wedding that we dreamed of without proper funding? We'd sacrificed so much and only asked each guest for around $1,500. We talked to a few people who even promised us more to make our dream come true," she reportedly wrote on Facebook. "My maid of honor pledged $5,000 along with her planning services. We tearfully thanked and accepted. My ex's family offered to contribute $3,000. So our request for $1,500 for all other guests was not f***ing out of the ordinary. Like, we made it clear. If you couldn't contribute, you weren't invited to our exclusive wedding. It's a once and a lifetime party.” She continued, "We just needed a little push. Our dream wedding amounted to $60,000... All we asked was for a little help from our friends and family to make it happen." Surprise, surprise, none of that went over very well. After the couple sent out their invitations (and money requests), only eight guests RSVP'd. "We were f***ing livid," Susan wrote. "How was this supposed to happen without a little help from our friends. To make matters worse, my ex's family took back their offer. Suddenly, more people backed out, including the...maid of honor. My best friend since childhood. My second family. I was so shocked and tearful." Realizing they would not be able to afford their dream wedding, Susan's fiancé suggested tying the knot in Las Vegas. The bride quickly shut down the idea, asking, "Am I supposed to get married in the heart of shady gamblers, alcoholics and the get rich fast fallacy?" "I just wanted to be a Kardashian for a day and then live my life like normal," she said, totally and completely reasonably (JK), adding that her maid of honor advised her to stick to her budget, as she was asking for way too much from her guests. Oh, and then she accused her fiancé of talking behind her back, too. "I overheard him talking in the basement when he called me a stuck up b****. Anyway I am exhausted. I am bone tired. My heart is not the same. It's stone cold," she wrote. The Daily Mail only has screenshots of Susan's post, as she seemingly deactivated her Facebook account following the incident. They also managed to capture a few of the comments left underneath the post, including one of which that read, "I have no words. You're out of your mind, Susan." Yeah, we're going to have to agree... | |
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| 08-28-18 03:15pm - 2309 days | #1028 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Former US ambassador to Canada gives a cruel opinion of Trump. But that's all right, because the former ambassador served under Obama. And everyone knows that Obama was a fake president, who was born in a shithole country and lied to become eligible to serve as president. (I got that from President Trump himself, who can recognize a liar at 300 yards away.) --------- --------- Former U.S. ambassador to Canada: Trump 'is the arsonist that becomes the firefighter' Julia La Roche 3 hours ago Former U.S. ambassador to Canada Bruce Heyman described Donald Trump as “the arsonist that becomes the firefighter” when it comes to the president’s dealmaking rhetoric. “I think one of the strategies that the president has done, and he’s done this in a lot of areas, … He’s the arsonist that becomes the firefighter,” Heyman, who served from April 2014 to the end of President Obama’s tenure, told Yahoo Finance’s Dion Rabouin. “So he creates these false accomplishments. Because he created this drama. Whether he [does] it with the flag or whether he does it with the trade negotiations.” ‘Everyone should just pause a minute’ On Monday, President Donald Trump announced the U.S. and Mexico reached a bilateral trade agreement to replace NAFTA, which Trump calls the United States—Mexico Trade Agreement. During a televised phone call, Mexico’s outgoing President Enrique Peña Nieto told Trump that he wants to see Canada incorporated in the deal. “[The] announcement of an agreement — and I think that should be [considered] a soft agreement, preliminary agreement, or an understanding with Mexico — gave people a look at the path out of all of the tariffs that the president has been placing on so many of our allies and the issue he’s had with NAFTA,” Heyman said. Bruce Heyman. Photographer: Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press via AP Photo “The path ahead, though, is one that everyone should just pause a minute,” Heyman added. “The legal authority right now is for a trilateral deal — NAFTA. And so Canada needs to be part of this. Mexico wants Canada a part of it. And I think the president’s language was more a negotiating strategy than an outright say that he’s going to do separate agreements.” ‘I’m hopeful we can see that same approach’ During Tuesday’s televised call, Trump indicated that Canada could do a separate deal with the U.S. or one that’s incorporated into the new bilateral deal with Mexico. He added that he’d call Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “very soon” and start negotiations. “[And] if they’d like to negotiate fairly, we’ll do that,” Trump said. “You know, they have tariffs of almost 300 percent on some of our dairy products, and we can’t have that. We’re not going to stand for that. I think with Canada, frankly, the easiest thing we can do is to tariff their cars coming in. It’s a tremendous amount of money, and it’s a very simple negotiation. It could end in one day, and we take in a lot of money the following day.” This is the sort of rhetoric that Heyman interprets as part of Trump’s negotiating style of being an arsonist and then a firefighter. “These auto provisions, this is only one industry, and he stood up and declared victory,” Heyman said. “Remember, he promised a wall being paid for by Mexico. He’s really lambasted Mexicans as a population here. And so, now he declares victory and he loves them. It’s again, the arsonist then becoming the firefighter.” Heyman, noting that Trump seems to have “a hard time with multilateral agreements,” added that he hoped the president’s negotiating tactics will lead to more positive developments on trade. “I’m hopeful we can see that same approach with Canada and make peace here.” — Julia La Roche is a finance reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter. | |
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| 08-28-18 03:14pm - 2309 days | #1027 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Texas is a state that does not honor police officers. A Texas jury found an ex-police officer guilty of murdering a black teen. If the ex-police officer killed the black teen, it was a justified shooting: the cop was defending both himself and his partner, and shooting at criminals that were evading arrest. The dead black was 15 years old. The dead black was unarmed. But he was in a car, and any car can be considered a deadly weapon. So the officer that fired the deadly shot could be considered to have fired in self-defense. Even though the car was driving away from the officer. Don't people realize the car could have reversed direction, and tried to run down the officer? Cops only kill in self-defense. Cops are fearful of their lives, and must be brave and able to protect themselves. Shame on Texas, for not honoring all cops. Sentencing will come later. My hope is that the judge will be a law-abiding man, who sentences the cop to 1 day in jail, with time served already. So the cop can be free to walk the streets a proud man, and ready to be hired by a different police force who will employ a man who does his duty. (Cops that are fired by a police force often get hired by a different police force: because cops know they must stick together.) --------- --------- Texas jury finds ex-police officer guilty of murdering black teen Reuters By Jon Herskovitz,Reuters 1 hour 1 minute ago Defendant Roy Oliver, former Balch Springs police officer who is charged with the murder of 15-year-old Jordan Edwards, talks with his wife while the jury deliberates during his trial of at the Frank Crowley Courts Building in Dallas on Monday, Aug. 27, 2018.(Rose Baca/The Dallas Morning News via AP, Pool) By Jon Herskovitz AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - A Texas jury on Tuesday found a white former policeman guilty of murder for fatally shooting a black teenager in a car moving away from him in a 2017 case in a Dallas suburb that fueled a national debate over possible racial bias in U.S. policing. The police officer, Roy Oliver, 38, was fired by the Balch Springs Police Department for violating department policy a few days after he fatally shot Jordan Edwards, 15, a standout high school student and athlete. Edwards was shot in the head. The conviction was a rare instance in which an officer was found guilty of murdering an unarmed person. Oliver faces up to life in prison; sentencing will come later. Oliver, along with another officer, had responded to reports of underage drinking at a house party in the predominantly black and Hispanic city of Balch Springs, about 15 miles (25 km) southeast of Dallas. Oliver fired his rifle several times into a car with several other teens inside, prosecutors said. The jurors deliberated for about 12 hours over two days before reaching its verdict, following a trial that started in mid-August. First Assistant District Attorney Michael Snipes said Oliver was a trigger-happy policeman who sent the teenager to an early grave. "This guy is an angry, out-of-control, walking bomb," Snipes said in closing arguments. The arrest warrant for Oliver said he and the other officer tried to stop a car at an intersection near the party. The other officer broke a passenger window with the butt of his gun. Police body camera images showed to jurors indicated that the car was moving away from Oliver when he fired at it. Oliver's defense attorney, Jim Lane, said the vehicle was a threat to Oliver's partner that night and he reacted to save his partner by firing into the car. "Roy Oliver reasonably made the decision that he had to make," Lane said in closing arguments. Video footage shown in court showed the car was pointed away from the officers at the time of the incident, and still frames from body camera footage showed that Oliver turned his body to follow the car after it had passed by his partner and kept shooting, the Dallas Morning News reported from the courtroom. Two of Edwards’ brothers were in the car with him and watched him die, a family lawyer said. (Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Alistair Bell and Leslie Adler) | |
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| 08-28-18 03:07pm - 2309 days | #1026 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Texas is a state that does not honor police officers. A Texas jury found an ex-police officer guilty of murdering a black teen. If the ex-police officer killed the black teen, it was a justified shooting: the cop was defending both himself and his partner, and shooting at criminals that were evading arrest. The dead black was 15 years old. The dead black was unarmed. But he was in a car, and any car can be considered a deadly weapon. So the officer that fired the deadly shot could be considered to have fired in self-defense. Even though the car was driving away from the officer. Don't people realize the car could have reversed direction, and tried to run down the officer? Cops only kill in self-defense. Cops are fearful of their lives, and must be brave and able to protect themselves. Shame on Texas, for not honoring all cops. Sentencing will come later. My hope is that the judge will be a law-abiding man, who sentences the cop to 1 day in jail, with time served already. So the cop can be free to walk the streets a proud man, and ready to be hired by a different police force who will employ a man who does his duty. (Cops that are fired by a police force often get hired by a different police force: because cops know they must stick together.) --------- --------- Texas jury finds ex-police officer guilty of murdering black teen Reuters By Jon Herskovitz,Reuters 1 hour 1 minute ago Defendant Roy Oliver, former Balch Springs police officer who is charged with the murder of 15-year-old Jordan Edwards, talks with his wife while the jury deliberates during his trial of at the Frank Crowley Courts Building in Dallas on Monday, Aug. 27, 2018.(Rose Baca/The Dallas Morning News via AP, Pool) By Jon Herskovitz AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - A Texas jury on Tuesday found a white former policeman guilty of murder for fatally shooting a black teenager in a car moving away from him in a 2017 case in a Dallas suburb that fueled a national debate over possible racial bias in U.S. policing. The police officer, Roy Oliver, 38, was fired by the Balch Springs Police Department for violating department policy a few days after he fatally shot Jordan Edwards, 15, a standout high school student and athlete. Edwards was shot in the head. The conviction was a rare instance in which an officer was found guilty of murdering an unarmed person. Oliver faces up to life in prison; sentencing will come later. Oliver, along with another officer, had responded to reports of underage drinking at a house party in the predominantly black and Hispanic city of Balch Springs, about 15 miles (25 km) southeast of Dallas. Oliver fired his rifle several times into a car with several other teens inside, prosecutors said. The jurors deliberated for about 12 hours over two days before reaching its verdict, following a trial that started in mid-August. First Assistant District Attorney Michael Snipes said Oliver was a trigger-happy policeman who sent the teenager to an early grave. "This guy is an angry, out-of-control, walking bomb," Snipes said in closing arguments. The arrest warrant for Oliver said he and the other officer tried to stop a car at an intersection near the party. The other officer broke a passenger window with the butt of his gun. Police body camera images showed to jurors indicated that the car was moving away from Oliver when he fired at it. Oliver's defense attorney, Jim Lane, said the vehicle was a threat to Oliver's partner that night and he reacted to save his partner by firing into the car. "Roy Oliver reasonably made the decision that he had to make," Lane said in closing arguments. Video footage shown in court showed the car was pointed away from the officers at the time of the incident, and still frames from body camera footage showed that Oliver turned his body to follow the car after it had passed by his partner and kept shooting, the Dallas Morning News reported from the courtroom. Two of Edwards’ brothers were in the car with him and watched him die, a family lawyer said. (Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Alistair Bell and Leslie Adler) | |
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| 08-28-18 02:56pm - 2309 days | #1025 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Real news Judge does not buy President Trump's authority. The judge should be arrested and shot for treason. Judges must respect the law of the land, and Trump is the chief lawgiver. -------------- -------------- Lawyer tries Trump argument that flippers should be outlawed Associated Press LARRY NEUMEISTER,Associated Press 2 hours 19 minutes ago NEW YORK (AP) — A New York defense lawyer wasted no time in trying to use President Donald Trump's argument that cooperators, or flippers, in criminal cases "almost ought to be illegal." Kafahni Nkrumah didn't get very far in his closing argument Thursday when he tried to bring up Trump's statement to disparage a cooperator who was testifying against his client in a drug case. A judge disallowed it, calling the attempt "out of line." "I am not going to permit you to argue here regarding statements made by the president of the United States in a case that has nothing to do with this one," U.S. District Judge Gregory H. Woods said in a conversation with lawyers outside earshot of the jury. Trump's remark aired earlier the same day during a "Fox & Friends" interview in which he suggested it should be illegal for people facing prosecution to cooperate with the government in exchange for a reduced sentence. As for Trump's comment that the decision by those under legal scrutiny to cooperate "almost ought to be illegal," the judge said: "As we all know, and as I am going to instruct the jury, it is not illegal." Nkrumah's client, Jamal Russell, was eventually convicted on a drug charge and exonerated on a weapons count. Nkrumah did not return a message seeking comment Tuesday. The courtroom development illustrated the concern of some lawyers that Trump's comments and tweets about the criminal justice system were starting to intrude on actual court cases. "The president is the leader of the country. What he says can have effect and potentially prejudice trials in lots of different ways," said Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond Law School professor. In his closing argument, Nkrumah urged jurors to disregard the testimony of a cooperator, saying it wasn't true. Then, Nkrumah referenced the financial fraud trial of Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, which relied in part on cooperating witnesses, saying: "You know what's funny? Yesterday, Manafort was convicted." Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam S. Hobson objected and the judge immediately called lawyers into a private conversation. Nkrumah argued, unsuccessfully, that Trump's comments were relevant "because it is concerning cooperators and people's opinions of cooperators. ... I believe that the president's opinion of cooperators is just as pertinent as anyone else's." After the jury left the room, the judge reiterated that he rejected Trump's opinion because "it is a politically charged, polemic issue that need not be introduced into this case." Trump went on "Fox & Friends" after his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, entered a guilty plea to eight felony charges, including violations of campaign finance law for payments made to two women who had alleged affairs with Trump. Trump told "Fox and Friends" that for "30, 40 years I've been watching flippers. Everything's wonderful and then they get 10 years in jail and they — they flip on whoever the next highest one is, or as high as you can go." Trump said cooperators "make up things" to get leniency at sentencing and become "a national hero." A 2016 report by the U.S. Sentencing Commission found that the majority of more than 10,000 federal defendants who received a reduced sentence from 2009 to 2014 for cooperating with the government were used in drug cases. Annemarie McAvoy, a former Brooklyn federal and state prosecutor, said cooperators were necessities in the American justice system. "It was inartful at best," she said of Trump's remarks. "I'm hoping it was inartful." | |
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| 08-28-18 10:14am - 2309 days | #1024 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump must be brave. Trump must be strong. He must realize that America is in danger from the slime-ball Democrats and aliens from shit-hole countries that are tearing down the moral fiber of America. Trump must declare martial law. And assume the powers that God Almighty granted him, to lead America in the proper paths. Arrest all slime-ball Democrats and illegal immigrants and any persons who endanger America. Put them in prison. And if there is not enough room in prison, shoot the bastards! Hard times demand hard solutions. Hail Trump, leader of a Free America and keep it White! | |
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| 08-28-18 10:04am - 2309 days | #1023 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump: fighting to drain the swamp in Washington. But the swamp seems determined to drown Trump in a sea of lies. Trump claims Google rigged searches against him. Google denies that it rigged searches against Trump. But who are you going to believe? The President of the United States, a moral man who has promised to drain the swamp of Washington? Or Google, a vast, overpowering tech giant that is thirsting for profits, that attacks the privacy of all individuals? Hail Trump, Neo-Nazi leader of the Christian Moral Majority of White America. He warns that Google is dangerous, suppressing the views of conservatives and hiding important information from the American public. Can Trump shut down Google as a terrorist tool? Stay Tuned for further developments in Trump's fight for the American people. ------ ------ Trump claims Google 'rigged' searches against him but company denies it Good Morning America KARMA ALLEN and ALEXANDER MALLIN,Good Morning America 1 hour 34 minutes ago Trump claims Google 'rigged' searches against him but company denies it originally appeared on abcnews.go.com President Donald Trump attacked Google in Tuesday morning tweets that accused the company of prioritizing "fake news" in its search results, which the company denies. The results are “rigged” against him and other conservatives, he wrote on Twitter. Trump also alleged that 96 percent “of results on 'Trump News' are from National Left-Wing Media” but he did not identify a source or any evidence. He appeared to be referring to a story published over the weekend by conservative media company PJ Media that reported “96 Percent of Google Search Results for 'Trump' News Are from Liberal Media Outlets.” “Google search results for 'Trump News' shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake New Media," he said. "In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal? 96% of results on “Trump News” are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous. “Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed," he added. A Google spokesperson pushed back on the president's allegations, however, saying its search engine algorithm doesn't include any consideration of politics. "When users type queries into the Google Search bar, our goal is to make sure they receive the most relevant answers in a matter of seconds," the spokesperson said in a statement. "Search is not used to set a political agenda and we don't bias our results toward any political ideology. "We continually work to improve Google Search and we never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment," the spokesperson added. A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment expanding on what the president meant by saying the situation "will be addressed." The president’s tweets come as more tech companies, including Google and Facebook, make investments to limit the spread of misinformation online. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, said in March it planned to invest $300 million over the next three years to combat false content on its platforms, including Google Search and YouTube. “We’re focused on combating misinformation during breaking news situations. Bad actors often target breaking news on Google platforms, increasing the likelihood that people are exposed to inaccurate content,” Richard Gringas, vice president of news products, said in reference to Google Search. “So we’ve trained our systems to recognize these events and adjust our signals toward more authoritative content. “While we take great care to present the most authoritative information, there are many cases where users can and will find information that’s not authoritative.” The company is trying to find other ways to help people understand that “not all the results they see are indeed authoritative or accurate,” he added. Trump's attack on Google is just his latest foray into championing recent grievances issued by conservative media figures who have accused tech companies of unfairly targeting conservative voices. The president has also threatened to probe allegations of Twitter’s “shadowbanning” conservative accounts, making it more difficult for their profiles to be discovered in the search engine. And most recently, Trump told a crowd at a campaign rally in West Virginia that he rejected Facebook and Twitter's recent move to suspend or remove accounts that it accused of spreading fake news or hate speech in social posts, including platforms like conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' InfoWars. "You have Twitter, or whatever you have, you have Facebook. But you can't pick one person and say, 'We don't like what he's been saying, he's out,'" Trump said. "So we will live with fake news.” | |
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| 08-28-18 09:48am - 2309 days | #1022 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Real news: Is there such a thing as truth in the Donald Trump era? Everyone seems to have such a spin on events, that black is white and black is red and there is no such thing as black. ------- ------- Yahoo Cohen’s lawyer says senators failed to ask the right ‘follow-up questions’ in collusion probe Michael IsikoffChief Investigative Correspondent Yahoo News•August 24, 2018 Michael Cohen’s lawyer Lanny Davis says that members of the Senate Intelligence Committee failed to ask the right “follow-up questions” when his client appeared before the panel last year and therefore failed to elicit crucial answers about President Trump’s prior knowledge of Russian hacking of Democratic emails during the 2016 election. Davis was questioned on the Yahoo News podcast “Skullduggery” about Cohen’s testimony to the Senate intelligence panel last September in which Cohen testified, in a prepared statement: “I never saw anything — not a hint of anything — that demonstrated [President Trump’s] involvement in Russian interference in our election or any form of Russian collusion.” But Davis, in multiple television appearances this week, gave an apparently conflicting account, suggesting that Cohen has information he is now prepared to tell special counsel Robert Mueller about Trump’s prior knowledge of the hacking. “Was he telling the truth?” Davis was asked during the “Skullduggery” interview about Cohen’s previous testimony to the Senate. “He was telling the truth, but there’s a problem in some of the words used there,” Davis replied. “Those were his words,” it was pointed out to Davis. Davis then replied that the senators failed to ask the right follow-ups to Cohen’s prepared statement — about Trump’s “level of awareness” of the hacking, seeming to draw a distinction between awareness and “involvement.” “If he were asked, ‘Were you aware of Mr. Trump’s level of awareness before the hacking illegally done by a foreign government? Were you aware that Mr. Trump might have known and didn’t call the FBI?’ I don’t think you would’ve gotten the answer that you just read. But that question wasn’t asked.” Davis’s response was significant because Cohen’s previous denials of any knowledge of Russian collusion could expose him to a further felony charge and additional prison time if he now says something else to Mueller. And Senate Intelligence leaders have already flagged the issue, saying this week they wanted to reinterview Cohen after he pleaded guilty to multiple felonies, including campaign finance crimes for paying hush money during the 2016 campaign to women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump. But Davis insisted that “when the time comes” for Cohen to tell his new story to Mueller — and the special counsel is able to “digest” it and piece it together with other evidence — “it could be an impeachable offense” on the part of the president. Davis, who has practically beseeched Mueller this week to call his client as a witness, has steadfastly refused to specify what Cohen would say about Trump’s knowledge of Russian hacking. He also declined to say whether Mueller has even reached out to Cohen yet, despite Davis’s repeated television interviews offering his client’s testimony. Davis then wrapped up the “Skullduggery” interview by saying: “Being on this podcast and being asked questions, especially by Michael Isikoff, no offense intended, is the functional equivalent of a root canal without anesthetics.” _____ | |
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| 08-26-18 07:40pm - 2311 days | #8 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
@pat362, Thanks for the fast response. Some of the posts at the site have value. Yours included.  Edited on Aug 26, 2018, 07:48pm | |
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| 08-26-18 05:31pm - 2311 days | #6 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
The basic problem is that most of those sites are not worth joining. So why would a non-professional reviewer join a bunch of sites not worth joining? You would be wasting your money. (I'm speaking in general terms, because I've never joined this type of site.) There are plenty of mainstream porn sites that are worth joining. I think you're slightly bored by what you know is available, and want something special. (Like most of us, I believe. Just my opinion, of course.) | |
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| 08-26-18 05:18pm - 2311 days | #11 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
That sums up what most reviews should be. Except that some reviewers, like mbaya, for example, can make their reviews not just complete, but easy to read, and with good details that give the flavor of the site. Some reviews are not just instructive, but a pleasure to read. (I can't write reviews like that: it takes talent, plus time and patience to write them.) Even though we don't or can't write gem-like reviews, I think a lot of reviews are instructive, giving the reader a general idea of the pros, cons, and bottom line (see how easily I remember the basic form of the review--I think my mind is slipping down the slope of old age). LOL. | |
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| 08-26-18 04:56pm - 2311 days | #4 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
@pat362, Would you post the forum URL? I'd like to browse that forum, as a possible source of new porn sites that might be worth joining, or just for interesting facts/ideas about porn. Thanks in advance. | |
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| 08-26-18 08:20am - 2311 days | #1021 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
The night Donald Trump was elected president, Winner was finishing out the last days of a six-year stint with the Air Force. She’d enlisted straight out of high school, turning down a full-ride to Texas A&M University, Kingsville, to pursue a dream of deploying to Afghanistan. Her father, an amateur religious scholar, ignited her fascination with both religion and religious extremists after September 11th. (He also gave her her name — as her mother, Billie Winner-Davis, tells it, he told Billie, “I want a real Winner.”) “I just remember being 11 years old, in the reference section of the library, with the A encyclopedia. I’d draw my own maps of Afghanistan and I’d trace Arabic letters,” Winner told Rolling Stone last fall. It was only after joining that she learned the vast majority of Air Force linguists never make it overseas. Winner spent the entirety of her career stateside, much of it eavesdropping on foreign nationals and using information gleaned from their conversations to help pinpoint drone targets abroad. She earned a commendation during her time at Maryland’s Fort Meade for, among other accomplishments, “geolocating 120 enemy combatants during 734 [air missions]… and removing more than 100 enemies from the battlefield.” By November 2016, Winner was preparing to leave the service, and making plans to move abroad. Her mother says she hoped to put the language skills she gained in the military to work at a humanitarian organization. (Winner is fluent in Farsi, Dari and Pashto). According to a record of her Internet search history later presented in court, in the days immediately preceding the election, she was Googling flights to Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. “Well. People suck. #ElectionNight,” Winner tweeted from a pseudonymous account at 10:34 p.m. on November 8th, 2016. (She’d voted absentee, in Texas, for Hillary Clinton.) Later that night, she floated the idea of a mass exodus in protest of the election. “50 million Americans defecting to #syria will end the civil war, revive real estate in the country, and defeat #ISIS w/ #starbucks #done.” After the election, though, Winner began actively searching for government contractor jobs in the United States — specifically jobs that could make use of her security clearance — while also retweeting accounts like @RogueNASA, @AltForestServ and @AltUSDA, that imagined an army of anonymous civil servants inside the government who were actively resisting the Trump agenda. In December 2016, she accepted what she would later tell FBI agents was “the only job I could get” — as a linguist for Pluribus International Corporation, an NSA contractor at Fort Gordon in Augusta, Georgia. She started on February 9th, three weeks after Trump’s inauguration. Over the past 20 years, the NSA’s outpost at Fort Gordon has transformed from a small 50-person operation into one of the agency’s most important hubs, with a workforce of several thousand focused on intercepting communications from Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. (It was a pair of whistleblowers from Fort Gordon who, in 2008, provided one of the earliest indications that the agency was eavesdropping on U.S. citizens living abroad.) As a contractor, Winner was required to go through a security orientation that warned new employees to be on the look-out for insider threats. She’d later tell Brittany on Facebook, “It was hard not to laugh when he was like, ‘Yeah, so, uh, we have guys like Edward Snowden who, uhh, thought they were doing the right thing, but you know, they weren’t so, uh, we, uh, have to keep an eye out for that insider threat, especially with contractors…” In chats that were later introduced as evidence by the prosecution, Winner spoke of her admiration for Snowden and Wikileaks’ Julian Assange; discussed how “awesome” it was that Wikileaks’ published Vault 7 (internal documents that detailed the CIA’s cyber warfare capabilities) and joked to her sister, “I have to take a polygraph where they’re going to ask if I’ve ever plotted against the govt. #gonna fail.” Presumably, she passed the polygraph and background checks, because she was soon assigned to the Iranian Aerospace Forces office, on the second floor of the Whitelaw Building at the Georgia Cryptologic Center inside Fort Gordon, translating documents from Farsi to English. Security at the building was so tight that every day Winner had to open her lunchbox and allow the guard to inspect her Tupperware. Nonetheless, on May 9th — the day Donald Trump fired James Comey — Winner printed the report on Russian hacking. She folded it in half, stuck it down her pantyhose and smuggled it out of the building undetected. Later that day, parked at a shopping center across the street from the studio where she taught yoga, Winner looked up the news outlet’s mailing address on her phone. (It took “three minutes of scrolling” she’d later say, which “felt like an eternity sitting in my car.”) She took a stamp out of her glove box, applied it and dropped the envelope in a mailbox. A month later, after she confessed, FBI agents asked her why she did it. The best Winner could offer was: “It was just that day, that week — it was too much. And [to] just sit back, and watch it, and think, ‘Why do I have this job if I’m just going to sit back and be helpless?’…I just thought that was the final straw.” This past Thursday, Reality Winner shuffled out of the Lincolnton County jail handcuffed, in a standard-issue orange jumpsuit, to learn her fate. Her light-blonde hair had darkened and her features had softened since her arrest, but Winner smiled and flashed a peace sign as she climbed into a van that would transport her to the federal courthouse an hour away in Augusta. It had been 446 days since she’d come home from grocery shopping to find a cadre of federal agents waiting in her driveway, handed over her cell phone, the keys to her white Nissan Cube covered in bumper stickers and voluntarily answered the agents’ questions. On her phone, the FBI would gain access to her messages and find a screenshotted list, made by @Anonymous, about how to securely leak documents to several news outlets, including the Intercept; in her car, they’d find a box of envelopes and stamps; in her house, the diaries prosecutors would introduce as evidence in court. “I did not even think about the consequences for, like, a second,” Winner told her sister by phone after that first night in jail. “I wish there was a reset button.” Winner was denied bail the next day, deemed a flight risk and a threat to national security. She was denied again in October 2017. “I thought I was going to get out of here,” she told Rolling Stone back in the fall. “And then it kind of sunk in that I am not getting out of here. They’re not going to let me go back to my life. Now it’s just been a battle of trying to keep the smallest portion of who I am.” In court on Thursday, Winner, who admitted to leaking a single document, apologized “profusely” for the “undeniable mistake I made.” She was formally sentenced to 63 months in prison with three years of supervised release. Her sentence — the longest ever handed down for an “unauthorized disclosure to the media” — was intended, prosecutors said, to deter other would-be leakers inside the government. The next morning, President Trump tweeted, “Ex-NSA contractor to spend 63 months in jail over ‘classified’ information. Gee, this is ‘small potatoes’ compared to what Hillary Clinton did! So unfair Jeff, Double Standard.” | |
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| 08-26-18 08:16am - 2311 days | #1020 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Reality Winner sentenced to 63 months in prison for leaking classified information that Russia was meddling in the United States 2016 election. She leaked it to a US newspaper. The US wanted to keep that knowledge secret from the American public. So she get a prison sentence of 63 months. Trump and his shithole adminstrators deserve a lifetime prison sentence for doing far worse crimes to the American public. But they are too big and important to get what they deserve. --------- --------- Rolling Stone Issue 1318: August 1st, 2018 Politics Politics News August 25, 2018 9:43PM ET Why Did Reality Winner Do It? How an Air Force vet exposed Russian interference in our election — and got 63 months in prison By Tessa Stuart Reality Winner, 26, walks out of the Federal Courthouse in Augusta, Ga., Tuesday, June 26, 2018 after pleading guilty to leaking a classified document allegedly taken while she was working as a NSA contractor at Fort Gordon, Ga. She has been held in custody for nearly 13 months on a charge of violating the federal Espionage Act. (Michael Holahan/The Augusta Chronicle via AP) Reality Winner stood in a county jail in rural Georgia, phone receiver pressed to her ear, staring at a brick wall and racking her brain, trying to remember the minimum sentence for violating Chapter 18, Section 793(e) of the U.S. Criminal Code. She’d signed papers acknowledging the penalty so many times — it was a requirement for anyone who handled classified information — but whatever recess of her mind the details were tucked away in, she was having trouble accessing it. The date was June 4th, 2017. Winner was 25 years old, blonde, blue-eyed, 5-foot-5, approximately 145 pounds, according to an FBI search warrant executed the day before. She’d spent exactly one night in jail. She didn’t fully recognize it yet, but life as she knew it — her day job as a subcontractor for the National Security Agency, the yoga classes she taught in her spare time, the date she’d missed because of her arrest — was rapidly slipping away from her. On the other end of the phone line, an automated voice repeated, “We are attempting to receive acceptance information from your called party… Please continue to hold.” The only thing she was focusing on in that moment was getting through to her sister. She’d called before, but Brittany, who was busy finishing up her Ph.D in Michigan, didn’t recognize the jail’s number, assumed it was an aggressive telemarketer and ignored the calls. This time she picked up. “Oh boy, Britty, I screwed up,” Reality said. Brittany, the elder sister, knew from speaking to their mother that Reality had been arrested. “Probably not wise to tell me any details about what they think you did,” she warned. Then, to lighten the mood, she cracked a joke, asking if Reality was in trouble for something like misremembering her brother-in-law’s birthday on a government background check. “No,” Reality replied. “I leaked a document. And they were able to trace it back to me. And it’s kind of an important one… So there’s a minimum sentence.” She just couldn’t remember what that sentence was. Brittany was right to be cautious. The jail was recording that call, and all of Reality’s calls. Government lawyers were preparing to use them — and her emails, Facebook messages, diary entries and Internet search history — to portray her as a radical, vindictive would-be terrorist instead of a whistleblower determined to reveal the extent of the government’s knowledge of a hostile foreign power’s attempts to compromise a U.S. election. Winner, who was sentenced to 63 months on August 23rd, should, by all rights, be the poster child of #TheResistence. While others were play acting on Twitter, she was a real life @AltNatSecAgency — a veteran who had planned to leave government service, but changed her mind when Trump was elected. She sought a job, seemingly, with the express purpose of infiltrating an administration she opposed — then she actually did it, releasing information that the government appeared intent on hiding. The fact that her case failed to catch on as a cause célèbre for the mainstream left is a tribute, at least in part, to Department of Justice lawyers who made sure particular details — a throwaway comment that she “hate[ed] America” because of capitalism and a note she’d scribbled in her diary expressing a desire to “burn the White House down” — ultimately defined the public narrative about her. When she spoke to her sister that night in June, Winner was still hopeful that she might be released from jail the very next day. She had a bail hearing scheduled, and her mother was driving from Texas to Georgia, ready to offer the family’s home as collateral. But she was drastically underestimating the Department of Justice’s determination to make an example of her — the first arrest they’d made in President Trump’s war on leakers. Billie Winner-Davis, mother of Reality Winner, carries a sign in support of her daughter outside the Lincoln County Law Enforcement Center in Lincolnton, Ga., Sunday evening June 3, 2018. Winner-Davis and other supporters gathered outside the jail a year after Reality Winner's arrest. Winner worked for the national security contractor Pluribus International at Fort Gordon in Georgia when she was charged last June with mailing a classified U.S. report to an unidentified news organization. (Michael Holahan/The Augusta Chronicle via AP) About a month before Winner’s arrest, an envelope postmarked May 10th, 2017, in Augusta, Georgia — no return address — had arrived at the Manhattan offices of First Look Media, parent company of the Intercept, the online outlet founded in 2013, in part, to continue reporting on the massive trove of classified documents secretly spirited out of the NSA by Edward Snowden. Folded inside the envelope was a five-page document. Classified as Top Secret/Special Intelligence, it contained details of Russian Military Intelligence efforts to hack at least one electronic voting software provider and more than 100 local election officials nationwide ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Today, we know the federal government was aware as early as January 2017 that voter registration systems in at least seven states — Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Texas and Wisconsin — were compromised, and systems in an additional 14 states were targeted by Russian hackers before the election. At the time, though, the government had only acknowledged the hackers’ success accessing “multiple U.S. state or local electoral boards.” Journalists who report on national security often spend years gaining a source’s trust before that person feels comfortable enough sharing documents that might put them at risk of prosecution. It’s unusual — even at an outlet like the Intercept, which offers detailed instructions on how to leak information to its reporters — for a classified document to arrive in the mail, out of the blue, with no indication of who provided it or why. When the envelope showed up, reporters were skeptical of its authenticity. If real, it had major implications. The report represented the first evidence that — contrary to the Obama administration’s assurances — the Russian government penetrated systems involved in tallying the 2016 vote. Verifying the document without knowing anything about its origin, however, would be challenging. It remains unclear how the government was first tipped off to the leak, but an FBI agent would later testify about interviewing a witness in Tampa, Florida, who was approached by an Intercept reporter attempting to authenticate the document. That person’s texts with the reporter were described in court, but prosecutors requested an exhibit containing the messages itself remain restricted, ensuring the person’s identity and any details of the conversation are still secret. “When the identity of a source is unknown, you have to find some other way to authenticate the materials — and that process always entails risk,” Intercept editor-in-chief Betsy Reed told Rolling Stone in a statement. “The risk can be minimized, but it is always there. It is far preferable to know who has given you documents, so you can better understand the risks the source may face and also gain perspective on the authenticity and context of the materials.” It took four Intercept reporters several weeks to verify the report and to reach out for comment from the government agencies and software vendor it mentioned. The story was published on June 5th, 2017. Later the same day, the Department of Justice put out a press release trumpeting Winner’s arrest, which had occurred two days prior. The blowback was instant. There was fevered speculation that the Intercept — an outlet that prides itself on specializing in digital security — had burned its source, and badly. (The Intercept, which has steadfastly maintained it has no knowledge of the source who provided the report in its story, has since instituted new newsroom procedures. Its parent company, First Look Media, volunteered to help finance Winner’s defense.) In a statement, Reed said, “It’s regrettable that the media has largely covered this case as a whodunit, bank robbery-type story, when it is really a story about a courageous whistleblower facing persecution by a vindictive and politically motivated Justice Department.” CONTINUED IN NEXT POST | |
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| 08-26-18 04:22am - 2312 days | #1019 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Great news for Donald Trump. He's been firing so many people working for him that he needs new blood. Here is a man and women (a married couple) who can fill some empty positions. The man has political experience, because he is a US Congressman. A Republican, of course. Also, the man's wife served as his campaign manager. Both the man and his wife have been indicted on corruption charges. But that's no problem for Trump: Trump is an expert dealing with corruption. --------- --------- U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter Blames Wife For Campaign Spending Under Inquiry [HuffPost] Carla Baranauckas ,HuffPost•August 24, 2018 Scroll back up to restore default view. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), who has been indicted on corruption charges related to the use of his campaign money, appeared to blame his wife for the predicament when he said in an interview Thursday night that she handled the finances for their family and his campaign. Hunter and his wife Margaret, who was also indicted, entered pleas of not guilty in federal court Thursday morning. They face 60 charges related to the alleged misuse of $250,000 in campaign money. Prosecutors say the couple used the money to illegally pay for personal expenses, including lavish vacations, dental fees and a plane ticket for their pet rabbit. Among the allegations is that Hunter called his wife when he wanted to buy some Hawaii shorts and that she told him to purchase them at the pro shop of a golf club so they could be listed as golf balls for the Wounded Warriors Project, a veterans charity. Hunter denied that accusation. On Thursday evening, Fox News host Martha MacCallum asked Hunter, “Are you saying it’s more her fault than your fault?” Hunter, a Republican from San Diego who served in the Marines, replied: “I’m saying when I went to Iraq in 2003, the first time, I gave her power of attorney and she handled my finances throughout my entire military career and that continued on when I got into Congress. Because I’m gone five days a week, I’m home for two.” “And she was also the campaign manager,” he added. “Whatever she did, that will be looked at too, I’m sure. But I didn’t do it. I didn’t spend any money illegally. I did not use campaign money, especially for Wounded Warriors stuff, there’s no way.” Hunter, who is running for re-election in November, said the charges were politically motivated. “This is pure politics and the prosecutors can make an indictment read like a scandalous novel if they want to,” he said. “They’ve had a year and a half to do this. There’s no way for me now to go out and be able to talk to my people or get this done in court before my election. They’ve had this for a long time. This is a late hit.” Hunter did admit that he said “f**k the Navy” after his request for a tour of a naval base in Italy was turned down. The proposed tour was allegedly intended to be used as a cover story for a family vacation. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 08-26-18 04:06am - 2312 days | #1018 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Real news: If Allen Wiesselberg cooperates fully, Trump may be forced to pardon himself. And then move to Russia or some country where there is no extradition treaty with the US. Why? Because a presidential pardon only covers federal crimes. It does not cover state crimes. So New York and California could both go after Donald Trump. ---------- ---------- Politics For Trump, Allen Weisselberg may be the man who knew too much [Yahoo News] Luppe B. Luppen and Hunter Walker ,Yahoo News•August 24, 2018 As the long-tenured finance chief of the Trump Organization, Allen Weisselberg spent decades working as one of the senior figures in the president’s real estate business. Now, his reported cooperation with a probe related to Donald Trump’s financial dealings could have ramifications for both federal and states investigations into the president and his business dealings. Prosecutors investigating Trump’s inner circle reportedly now reportedly have a limited deal with Weisselberg, who has provided testimony against former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. If his cooperation expanded, it could play a crucial role in multiple ongoing investigations. According to the Wall Street Journal, federal prosecutors granted immunity to Weisselberg in exchange for information about payments to Cohen, which were made to two women during the 2016 presidential campaign in order to suppress their stories of alleged affairs with Trump. Cohen pleaded guilty to eight felonies on Tuesday, including charges related to his personal finances and campaign finance law violations stemming from the payments designed to shield Trump from the damaging allegations during the 2016 presidential race. The U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York, which led the Cohen investigation, declined to comment on this story. The Associated Press subsequently reported that the immunity deal was “restricted to Weisselberg’s grand jury testimony last month in the Cohen case.” Weisselberg is in a unique position to fully lay bare the inner workings of Trump’s empire. If prosecutors were able to secure Weisselberg’s broader cooperation, there could be dramatic ramifications. He almost certainly has valuable information on much more than the hush money payments. A source familiar with the Trump Organization said Weisselberg, who did not respond to requests for comment, was intimately involved in every aspect of the company’s finances and even helped craft the statement Trump debuted during the campaign describing his net worth. “Every bill went through him,” the source said of Weisselberg. Trump has attacked allies who turned on him by either airing dirty laundry in the press or a courtroom. In the three days since Cohen’s guilty plea, the president has excoriated his former attorney in a series of tweets, including one where he criticized Cohen for breaking under pressure. In an interview with Fox News that aired Thursday, Trump had harsh words for colleagues who offer information about him in order make deals with prosecutors. “It’s called flipping and it almost ought to be illegal,” Trump said in the interview, later adding, “It almost ought to be outlawed; it’s not fair.” The Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment. However, there were indications Trump might not have given up on Weisselberg just yet and may be hoping the executive stays loyal. A source close to the Trump family spoke highly of Weisselberg, even after the reports of the immunity deal surfaced on Friday. “Allen is an amazing person. Truly a class act. I have the highest respect for him,” the source said. Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, dismissed the deal in a text message to Yahoo News. “Old news,” wrote Giuliani. “SDNY checking the boxes.” Giuliani also said he believes Weisselberg “still works” at the Trump Organization. Weisselberg played a crucial part in the payments Cohen set up to secure the silence of the women, Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels. After Cohen brokered deals with each of the women, Weisselberg arranged for Cohen to be reimbursed from Trump’s own funds. After news of Weisselberg’s immunity deal broke, CNN reported that his interview with federal prosecutors occurred weeks ago and was indeed focused on the payments. In the case of McDougal, a surreptitious recording Cohen made of Trump features the two men talking about the plan. Cohen notes on the tape that he collaborated with Weisselberg on the project, seeking his input on how best to form a shell company that was used to give a tabloid publisher $150,000 so it could buy the exclusive rights to McDougal’s story while never actually planning to run an article about it. In the case of Daniels, the plan Cohen admitted in his guilty plea was less intricate. Cohen negotiated a $130,000 payment to Daniels in exchange for her signature on a nondisclosure agreement. Once again, the money came through a shell company, but this time Cohen initially paid out of pocket and went into debt. Weisselberg comes into this story when Cohen sought reimbursement for the $130,000. Cohen created fake invoices to submit to the Trump Organization, and eventually the Trump Organization’s executives, reportedly including Weisselberg, decided to pay Cohen $420,000 spread out over several months in what they would call a “monthly retainer.” The amount was greater than $130,000 to allow Cohen to recoup the hush money expenses, cover his taxes, and to provide him some additional compensation. Weisselberg was in charge of making these “retainer” payments. Federal and local prosecutors have been cooperating on various Trump probes. The U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York began its investigation of Cohen based on a referral from special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and whether the Trump campaign cooperated with those efforts. Mueller is continuing to investigate Cohen’s role in a plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. If Weisselberg decided to fully open his kimono and reveal all he knows, the federal investigation in the Southern District of New York would be the most obvious potential beneficiary. However, in some ways, the nature of that office’s interest in Trump is the most mysterious. As of Friday afternoon, it is not known what other subjects that federal investigation is pursuing. If Trump Organization executives, or even the president, are in its cross hairs, then Weisselberg could offer key insights. Special counsel Mueller’s investigation, headquartered in Washington, D.C., is another potential beneficiary. For Mueller’s investigators, Weisselberg could detail the nature and extent of the financing the Trump Organization has received from sources connected to Russia. He could also offer them insight into any investments or potential investments Trump has made either in Russia or with Russian partners. A spokesperson for the special counsel’s office declined to comment for this story. Weisselberg could also potentially be a valuable material witness in the New York attorney general’s state-level investigation into President Trump’s charitable foundation. In June, New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood filed a lawsuit against the Trump Foundation alleging a “pattern of illegal conduct,” including “willful self-dealing.” Weisselberg has long been the treasurer of the Trump Foundation. In preparation for its lawsuit, the attorney general’s office conducted a lengthy interview with Weisselberg and obtained his emails. The investigators allege that Weisselberg collaborated with Trump and campaign officials in advance of the 2016 Iowa primary to use the charity’s funds to benefit the campaign. The New York attorney general’s office declined to comment on Weisselberg. After Weisselberg’s deal became public on Friday morning, speculation intensified about the information that such a well-placed cooperative witness could provide to investigators looking into Trump’s business and personal affairs. Bloomberg Opinion Executive Editor Tim O’Brien was among the chorus on Twitter. “Weisselberg’s cooperation takes the Mueller and SDNY investigations out of some of the penny ante stuff in play so far and into the heart of the Trump Organization and President Trump’s business history. The game gets started here,” O’Brien wrote. With Weisselberg’s deal relatively limited in scope, that game will have to wait — for now. Updated at 9:32 pm with comments from Rudy Giuliani. | |
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| 08-25-18 08:18pm - 2312 days | #1017 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Politics Money and loyalty: A look inside dramatic Trump-Cohen rift Associated Press JONATHAN LEMIRE,Associated Press 4 hours ago FILE - In this Dec. 16, 2016, file photo, Michael Cohen, then an attorney for President-elect Donald Trump, arrives in Trump Tower in New York. For Cohen and Donald Trump, it’s always been about money and loyalty. Those were guiding principles for Cohen when served as more than just a lawyer for Trump during the developer’s rise from celebrity to president-elect. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File) NEW YORK (AP) — For Michael Cohen and Donald Trump, it's always been about money and loyalty. Those were guiding principles for Cohen when he served as more than just a lawyer for Trump during the developer's rise from celebrity to president-elect. Cohen brokered deals for the Trump Organization, profited handsomely from a side venture into New York City's real estate and taxi industries and worked to make unflattering stories about Trump disappear. Money and loyalty also drove Cohen to make guilty pleas this past week in a spinoff from the swirling investigations battering the Trump White House. Feeling abandoned by Trump and in dire financial straits, the man who once famously declared that he would "take a bullet" for Trump now is pledging loyalty to his own family and actively seeking to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. The unraveling of their relationship was laid bare Tuesday when Cohen pleaded guilty to eight criminal charges and said in federal court that he broke campaign finance laws as part of a cover-up operation that Trump had directed. In the days after Cohen's guilty plea, two close associates — the magazine boss who helped him squash bad stories and the top financial man at the president's business — have been granted immunity for their cooperation. These moves could have a ripple effect on the legal fortunes of Cohen and, perhaps, Trump. For years, Cohen was a fixture in Trump's orbit. Working alongside Trump and Trump's three adult children — Don Jr., Ivanka, Eric — in Trump Tower, Cohen took on a number of roles for the developer, including emissary for projects in foreign capitals and enforcer of Trump's will. At times a bully for a family-run business, Cohen was known for his hot temper as he strong-armed city workers, reluctant business partners and reporters. He was there in the lobby of Trump Tower in June 2015 when his boss descended an escalator and changed history by declaring his candidacy for president. But Cohen's place in Trump's political life ended up being peripheral. Cohen did become a reliable surrogate on cable TV — he created a viral moment by repeating "Says who?" when told Trump was down in the polls — and founded the candidate's faith-based organization. But Cohen was never given a prominent spot in the campaign. And despite telling confidants that he thought he had a shot at White House chief of staff after the election, Cohen was never given a West Wing job. He remained in New York when Trump moved to Washington. Cohen found ways to profit from the arrangement, making millions from corporations by selling access to Trump, but felt adrift and isolated from Trump, according to two people familiar with his thinking who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss private conversations. But early one April morning, more than three dozen federal agents raided Cohen's home, office and hotel room. A chief focus for investigators was Cohen's role in making payments during Trump's campaign to women who claimed they had sex with Trump, and whether campaign finance laws were violated. In the fall of 2016, weeks before the election, Cohen had set up a limited liability company in Delaware to hide the deal he made to silence the pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels about an affair she said she had with Trump. Worry grew within the White House about what had been seized. That April day, Trump berated the raid as "an attack on all we stand for." But then, in a "Fox & Friends" interview, Trump began to dramatically play down his relationship with Cohen. "I have nothing to do with his business," Trump said, asserting that Cohen was just one of many lawyers and was responsible for "a tiny, tiny fraction" of Trump's legal work. A dispute soon broke out between Cohen and Trump over who would pay the former fixer's mounting legal bills. Holed up in a Park Avenue hotel after his apartment flooded, Cohen began to worry about his financial future, according to the two people. By all appearances, Cohen's lifestyle was lavish. He bought a $6.7 million Manhattan apartment last fall, though the sale didn't close until April and no one could move in until the summer. With bills piling up for his team of expensive lawyers, the suddenly unemployed Cohen began to tell confidants that he was worried about his job prospects and ability to support his family. Meanwhile, the broadsides from the White House kept coming. Trump and Cohen had long stopped speaking, but word would get back to the lawyer that the president was belittling him. The president's attorney and frequent attack dog Rudy Giuliani went from calling Cohen "an honest, honorable lawyer" in May to deriding him as a "pathological liar" in July. Cohen began wondering to friends whether loyalty with Trump had become a one-way street, the people said. Eager to hit back and attempt to regain some hold on the story, Cohen hired Lanny Davis, a former Bill Clinton attorney, to be his public relations lawyer. Davis began striking back at the White House and lobbed a clear warning shot at the president when he released a secret recording of a conversation in which Trump appears to have knowledge about hush-money payments to former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who also alleged an affair with the developer. Cohen was embraced by the cable news networks as an irresistible foil to Trump. Some on the left styled him as a star of the resistance. Cohen's camp made some effort to play into the role, reaching out to Watergate whistleblower John Dean and, after Cohen's plea, establishing an online fundraising tool that seemed to predominantly receive backing from liberals. Cohen, who could get about four years to five years in prison, is due to be sentenced Dec. 12. Davis has strongly telegraphed that Cohen is willing to cooperate with Mueller's investigation. But a deal has yet to be struck and there are doubts about what Cohen can prove or whether the special counsel would want to rely on an untrustworthy witness. Cohen has stayed out of sight and has remained emotional since his plea, according to the people close to him. The attacks from Trump have continued. "If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don't retain the services of Michael Cohen!" Trump tweeted Wednesday. ___ Follow Lemire on Twitter at http://twitter.com/@JonLemire | |
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| 08-25-18 08:09pm - 2312 days | #1016 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Real news: Trump White House blocks passage of a bill that would help prevent Russia from interfering in US elections. Why? Possibly Trump favors Russian interference in US elections, if it improves Republican chances of winning. Does Putin have tapes of Trump and Russian whores playing games together? --------- --------- Politics News August 24, 2018 12:59PM ET Why Is the White House Trying to Block a Key Election Security Bill? Despite significant bipartisan support, the Election Security Act hit a massive roadblock this week By Ryan Bort Susan Watts/NY Daily News via Getty Images Hours after the Justice Department indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers for interfering in the 2016 election, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats warned that Russia is still very much a threat to America’s democratic process. “The warning lights are blinking red again,” he said. “Today, the digital infrastructure that serves this country is literally under attack.” President Trump doesn’t seem to share his intelligence director’s concern. On Wednesday Yahoo reported that the White House intervened to block a bipartisan Senate bill that would have fortified election security nationwide. Introduced by Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) and co-sponsored by a powerful bipartisan cadre of lawmakers including Sens. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Susan Collins (R-ME), the Secure Elections Act would have fostered greater coordination between states and the federal government in combating election interference. Top state election officials would have been given clearance to receive information regarding threats, an advisory board would have been established to outline the best ways to combat cybersecurity threats and states would have been required to conduct an audit following federal elections. The bill also focused on creating a paper record of votes that could not be manipulated by hacking efforts. “Paper is not antiquated,” Lankford said while defending the bill. “It’s reliable.” Lankford and the co-sponsors had already secured bipartisan support, and the bill was scheduled to go up for a vote in October. Senate Rules Committee Chairman Roy Blunt (R-MO) was set to conduct a markup of the bill on Wednesday, but the review was abruptly canceled after Blunt claimed it lacked enough Republican support. According to congressional sources interviewed by Yahoo, it was the White House that stepped in to kill the effort. “Elections are the responsibility of the states and local governments,” White House spokesperson Lindsay Walters said in a statement. “We cannot support legislation with inappropriate mandates or that moves power or funding from the states to Washington for the planning and operation of elections.” Lankford disagreed, arguing that states should not be expected to protect against attacks from foreign adversaries, and that because the elections in question are federal, the federal government should work with states to ensure their integrity. “Your election in Delaware affects the entire country,” the senator told Yahoo. “Your election in Florida affects the entire country.” Klobuchar added in a statement that “each and every day Vladimir Putin, hostile nations, and criminal forces devise new schemes to muck up our democracy and other infrastructure” and that “when our nation is under attack from foreign governments there is a federal obligation to act.” The bill was thwarted on the same day senators were briefed on Russia’s current efforts to influence U.S. elections. “Everything we’ve done on Russia has not worked,” Graham said as he was leaving the briefing, which was attended by all 100 senators. Despite the clarity of the threat — as well as several recent reports of attempts to interfere in the midterms — many feel that not enough has done to bolster America’s election security ahead of the November midterms. In July, Rep. Mike Quiqley (D-IL) introduced an amendment that would have added election security grants to an appropriations bill. “The American people should be very worried about the commitment of this president and his Republican allies in Congress to securing our elections,” Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-RI) said in defense of the amendment. “This is a party that has worked with this administration to undermine and minimize the investigation surrounding Russian interference in our presidential election.” The amendment was voted down. The lack of action can be traced to the White House, which hasn’t projected any consistent sense of urgency in safeguarding America’s electoral system against cyberattacks. More specifically, it can be traced to Trump, who has neglected the issue almost entirely. It’s unclear what exactly is behind Trump’s apathy when it comes to election security. Maybe he feels acknowledging interference in some way diminishes the magnitude of his victory over Hillary Clinton. Maybe he sees that Democrats are targeted more than Republicans and wants all the help he can get. Maybe he is in some way indebted to Putin. One thing that’s clear is that the president is still (publicly) skeptical that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, despite the overwhelming consensus of the U.S. intelligence community, as well as every legislative body that has investigated the matter. After siding with Putin in Helsinki last month, Trump was pressured into professing his faith in the intelligence community. As time as passed he’s reverted to questioning their findings. While speaking with Reuters earlier this week, the president once again expressed doubt that Russia meddled in the election. “[Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation] played right into the Russians,” Trumps aid. “If it was Russia, they played right into the Russians’ hands.” | |
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| 08-25-18 06:49pm - 2312 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
John McCain, Senator And Former Republican Presidential Nominee, Dead At 81 HuffPost Igor Bobic,HuffPost 1 hour 11 minutes ago Arizona Sen. John McCain, a former Republican presidential nominee and a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, died on Saturday. He was 81. McCain, who had a history of skin cancer, was diagnosed with brain cancer in July 2017 after a routine physical revealed a blood clot over his left eye. He had surgery to remove the clot, which doctors then determined was the result of an aggressive tumor called a glioblastoma. Earlier this week, McCain decided to discontinue his cancer treatment. His family announced his death in a statement late Saturday. Tributes poured in from both sides of the aisle, including from President Donald Trump and former President Barack Obama. The diagnosis did not immediately impede McCain from his work in the Senate, where, among other issues he was involved in, he played a major role in derailing the Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He later described the disease as “very, very serious,” and said his doctors had told him he had “a very poor prognosis.” McCain was hospitalized in December 2017 with a viral infection, his office said, and returned home to Arizona to recuperate. In April, the senator had surgery to treat an intestinal infection at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix. He had reportedly been recovering at his home near Sedona with his wife, Cindy. McCain was born on Aug. 29, 1936, at a U.S. air base in the Panama Canal Zone. After his family moved to northern Virginia in 1951, McCain attended the prestigious U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. He later trained as a fighter pilot and served aboard several U.S. aircraft carriers in the 1960s. On Oct. 26, 1967, McCain’s plane was shot down while he was flying a bombing mission over Hanoi in Northern Vietnam. The North Vietnamese held him in captivity for five and a half years, during which he was interrogated and subjected to repeated beatings. The injuries McCain sustained left him unable to raise his arms above his head. He was ultimately released on March 14, 1973, after his captors determined he was no longer of value. McCain’s military service briefly became a flashpoint during the 2016 presidential race, after real estate mogul and then-Republican candidate Donald Trump questioned his status as a war hero. McCain said he never received an apology from Trump. This photo shows John McCain, right, after being captured in Vietnam. The man on the left is Navy Lieutenant Charles Donald Rice. (Bettmann via Getty Images) After his return and rehabilitation in the U.S., McCain served as the Navy’s liaison to the Senate in 1977. Following his separation from his first wife, Carol Shepp, he married Cindy Lou Hensley and settled in Phoenix. There, he successfully ran for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982. Four years later, McCain was elected to the Senate, defeating his Democratic challenger by some 20 points. McCain served six terms in the Senate at various posts, including stints as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee. Early in his career, he made campaign finance one of his signature issues by working to curtail the influence of political contributions and dark money. His efforts eventually led to the passage of the McCain-Feingold Act in 2002, which restricted the use of “soft money” to boost campaigns. As a member of the so-called Gang of Eight, McCain helped craft a bill overhauling the nation’s immigration system that included a comprehensive path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants. It passed in the Senate, but was not taken up in the House. Later in his career, he became a prominent voice among foreign policy hawks, advocating for a more aggressive U.S. approach to world affairs. His experience as a prisoner of war lent him credibility in opposing so-called enhanced interrogation techniques such as waterboarding. McCain first ran for president in 1999 with a scrappy and upstart campaign known for its “Straight Talk Express” bus that promoted his reputation as a “maverick” who would do and say things other Republicans would not. He lost the race, however, to the establishment-backed George W. Bush, due in part to a bitter smear campaign that falsely claimed McCain had fathered a black child out of wedlock. Bush and his team denied involvement, but McCain suspected otherwise. His 2008 presidential run was more successful. After key wins in the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries, and the flame-out of other challengers, including former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R), both of whom would later go on to mount presidential bids in 2012, McCain finally won his party’s backing for president. Facing freshman Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), McCain cast himself as an experienced and sensible Republican, but his quixotic decision to select Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) as his running mate also turned into a major liability as the political novice floundered time and time again under the spotlight. McCain was ultimately unable to prevail against a younger, charismatic candidate who promised change amid a harsh recession and the costly war in Iraq. On Capitol Hill, the longtime lawmaker was celebrated for, among many noble qualities, his quick wit and good humor. He often sarcastically chided reporters to dismiss or make a point. He traded barbs with colleagues and was known to frequently repeat some of his favorite quips. “After I lost [the 2008 election], I slept like a baby,” McCain has joked over the years. “Sleep two hours, wake up and cry. Sleep two hours, wake up and cry.” In recent years, McCain took on the role of party statesman, but one who was fiercely critical of the Obama administration’s strategy with respect to renewed conflicts in the Middle East, Ukraine and Libya. Along with friend and colleague Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), McCain advocated for committing additional U.S. troops on the ground to defeat Islamic State terrorists in Iraq and Syria. In 2016, McCain easily won re-election to his sixth term in the Senate by defeating Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick. The longtime lawmaker faced a more difficult test with several challengers in the GOP primary, reflecting pent-up frustration with his time and record in Washington among several tea party groups that failed to oust him in 2010. The following year, McCain played a pivotal role in opposing several Republican bills to repeal and replace the health care program known as Obamacare. In a surprise move that cemented his legacy, McCain cast a dramatic late-night vote against GOP legislation rescinding the law. He repeatedly urged Republican leaders to start over by including Democrats in a more open process. Toward the end of his life, McCain appeared to have made peace with his approaching death. In his book The Restless Wave, an excerpt of which was published on Apple News on April 30, the senator said his current term would be his last. “If I hadn’t admitted that to myself before this summer, a stage 4 cancer diagnosis acts as ungentle persuasion,” he wrote. “I’m freer than colleagues who will face the voters again. I can speak my mind without fearing the consequences much. And I can vote my conscience without worry.” Asked last year during a CNN interview about how he hoped to be remembered, McCain said, “He served his country.” He added: “And not always right, made a lot of mistakes. Made a lot of errors. But served his country, and I hope you could add honorably.” The senator is survived by his wife and seven children, including popular author and national radio personality Meghan McCain. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 08-25-18 08:32am - 2312 days | #1015 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Omarosa is a true patriot. She is willing to testify at Trump's impeachment trial. She is willing to face Trump's war of tweets and his hit squad of Neo-Nazi slimeballs to protect United States citizens from Trump's racist policies. God save Donald Trump, the most corrupt President the United States has ever had. ------------- ------------- Politics Omarosa Manigault Newman says she's ready to testify at Trump's impeachment trial Michael Isikoff Fri, Aug 24 2:00 AM PDT Donald Trump, Omarosa Manigault Newman. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Andrew Harnik/AP, Mary Altaffer/AP) WASHINGTON — Former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman says she is ready to testify to Congress “anytime, anyplace” about what she knows about Russian ties to President Trump’s campaign and offered to appear as a witness at a potential Senate impeachment trial. “I have the truth on my side as well as a hundred emails and documents and other things,” said Newman in an interview with the Yahoo News podcast “Skullduggery.” Asked specifically about serving as an impeachment witness against the president, she replied: “I think I’ve made it very clear that I am fully willing and ready to testify, to cooperate, to help advance this investigation.” Even though Manigault Newman first floated the idea that she had information relating to the Russia investigation 10 days ago, she said that so far none of the congressional committees have reached out to her to seek her testimony. It remains far from clear, what she knows — if anything — that might be relevant to the Russia probes. While Manigault Newman insisted she has been “cooperating” with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation since the spring, she only hinted at her role on the last page of her new bestselling book, “Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House.” In that passage, she wrote that in early 2018 “I, too, received a call from the FBI.” But she has been coy about what that cooperation has consisted of — and what she has to say about Trump’s knowledge of Russian assistance to his campaign. “I don’t want to compromise” Mueller’s probe, Manigault Newman told “Skullduggery.” (She also said she wanted to include more details in her book but her publisher’s lawyers made her take them out.) But Manigault Newman — who was fired as a White House staffer last December — was more than willing to discuss Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime lawyer who pleaded guilty this week to eight federal felonies, including arranging “hush money” payments to two women in violation of federal election laws. Download or subscribe on iTunes: “Skullduggery” by Yahoo News According to Manigault Newman, Trump habitually mocked and belittled Cohen over the years, even humiliated him at his son’s bar mitzvah. “Michael wanted Donald Trump to come to his son’s bar mitzvah,” Manigault Newman said. “And he basically begged the president to come — it would mean so much to his son … And Donald came and in front of the entire group said that ‘the only reason I came is because Michael begged me to be here. He literally begged me.’” Trump “said this in front of all of Michael’s sons, friends, peers, Michael Cohen’s family,” added Manigault Newman, who also attended the bar mitzvah. “And he was very demeaning about it… He could have just shown up and said, ‘Yeah, I’m here, OK, let’s go.’ But instead, in front of his family, in front of his friends, peers, in front of his religious community, Donald Trump took a shot at him.” Manigault Newman said she called Cohen on Wednesday, the day after his court appearance. “Michael Cohen and I are still close,” she said. “I talked to him today and I wanted him to know and reassure him that his friends are still his friends. We still have his back.” The interview with “Skullduggery” took place not long after Trump, in a Wednesday morning tweet, once again mocked Cohen. (In another tweet that same morning, Trump contrasted Cohen with his just convicted former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, noting that “unlike Michael Cohen, Manafort refused to ‘break’ – make up stories in order to get a ‘deal.’”) Manigault Newman said she was “very upset about the president’s tweet” commenting on Cohen’s skills as a lawyer. “Why kick a man while he’s down, you know? This man is facing jail time, he has a family, he has a beautiful wife. His daughter was my intern at the White House. I love this family and, you’re right, Michael Cohen was 100 percent loyal to Donald Trump. And so I have to tell you that the way he’s been portrayed is completely inaccurate.” She added: “He would not be paying off porn stars if Donald Trump had not slept with them and had these illicit relationships with them and If Donald Trump had not directed him to pay these women off.” | |
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| 08-25-18 08:06am - 2312 days | #1014 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Politics Trump news: Top Democrat calls for House Intel Committee investigation to be reopened after Cohen guilty plea The Independent Tom Embury-Dennis, Clark Mindock, Chris Riotta,The Independent 20 hours ago Donald Trump's disastrous week continues to rumble on, as the US president attempts to change a narrative that is swiftly spiralling out of his control and once again leading opponents to call for thorough investigations. On Tuesday, two former associates of Mr Trump were convicted of a number of charges, with the president's former lawyer admitting to a pair of campaign finance violations during the presidential election. Michael Cohen, Mr Trump's so-called legal "fixer" implicated the president when he told the court his client had directed him to make payments to two women for the "purpose of influencing the election". Cohen admitted paying the hush money to adult film actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, two women who have alleged they had extramarital affairs with Mr Trump. The developments have once again raised the spectre of impeachment, with one Democratic congressman warning the "countdown" is underway. The threat to Mr Trump's presidency was raised once again on Friday, when Representative Eric Swalwell, a Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that the committee's now-closed Russia investigation should be reopened in the light of the disclosures from Cohen. Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former White House aide, has added fuel to the fire, saying she is "fully willing and ready" to testify in impeachment proceedings against the president. Paul Manafort, Mr Trump's one-time campaign manager, was also found guilty on Tuesday over numerous charges of financial and tax fraud, the same day Cohen admitted his guilt. The convictions stemmed from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into alleged ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, as well as the Kremlin's interference in the 2016 election. On Thursday, it was revealed the White House opposed a bill which would significantly bolster America's defences against future election hacking. Mr Trump has consistently dismissed the threat posed by Russia, and has flip flopped on whether he believes Moscow interfered in the last election. | |
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| 08-24-18 08:45pm - 2313 days | #1013 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump Changed Washington D.C. People Now Stab Each Other in The Front. Graves were meant to be danced on. Jackie Kucinich 08.24.18 9:41 PM ET For Trump’s Team of Enemies there is nothing more satisfying than seeing a rival vanquished and then being able to comment on it in the immediate aftermath. But unlike other administrations, where the misfortunes of colleagues are gossiped about behind the scenes, Team Trump prefers to stab each other in the front. After all, it’s more personal that way. After a colleague is fired, charged with a crime, or otherwise smited by fate, their former colleagues have routinely taken to Twitter or television to dole out sick burns on said person’s political corpse. The latest was Corey Lewandowski who appeared on NPR hours after former Trump fixer/lawyer/ “guy who he didn’t know very well,” Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to tax fraud and campaign finance violations. “Well, I know Michael Cohen very well. I ran the campaign,” Lewandowski said. “Michael has been a serial liar for the last...Three years that I've known him.” His bloodthirst not quite quenched, Lewandowski then let Paul Manafort — who helped push Lewandowski out of the campaign — have it too. It’s a culture that, of course, comes from the top. Because no one loves to kick a perceived enemy when they are down more than the President of the United States. This week it was Cohen who drew Trump’s ire. Previously it was former FBI agent Peter Strzok. Others who received mean tweets in the wake of bad news or tough career decisions include former FBI director James Comey, former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, Sens. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Bob Corker (R-TN) and former Trump aide Sam Nunberg. The practice dates back to the early days of the Trump campaign, before Trump won the Republican election. When Lewandowski was fired after a series of missteps including grabbing a female reporter, lying about it and getting caught on tape lying about it, then-Trump adviser Michael Caputo tweeted “Ding dong the witch is dead!” complete with GIF of the wicked witch of the East, striped socks and ruby red slippers (Caputo quickly resigned from the campaign - but the tweet remains). The street fighting continued through the transition. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was unceremoniously booted from the transition after, he said, Jared Kushner, then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Chief Strategist Steve Bannon united against him. This may have been the second round of previous brawl as Christie had put Kushner’s dad in jail. But then came round three. After Bannon was fired in August 2017, Christie did a victory lap. “Now that he has been fired, no one is going to care about anything else Steve Bannon has to say,” Christie told PBS Newshour.” “[T]his I suspect is his last 15 minutes of fame. I hope he enjoys it.” The hits have come from the podium as well. After Omarosa Manigault Newman’s dramatic exit from the administration, White House spokesman Raj Shah was ready for questions about her departure, complete with a witty dig. "Omarosa was fired three times on The Apprentice and this was the fourth time we let her go," Shah said. "She had limited contact with the president while here. She has no contact now." Sometimes the public burying is done accidentally. Anthony Scaramucci, Trump’s communications director for ten days, famously burned a whole slew of staffers in a profanity-laced New Yorker tirade. He thought it was off-the-record but never bothered to check first. That particular saga was different from the others for one major reason. The Mooch attacked his colleagues while he, and they, were still in their job. But not for long. Scaramucci was soon fired. He has since tried to be diplomatic with respect to his former colleagues. He indicated that Bannon should be fired days before he eventually was. But one of the only departures that Scaramucci has publicly celebrated was that of former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who had quit when he heard Scaramucci had been hired. During an interview on The View in September 2017, Scaramucci told the hosts he referred to Spicer as “Liar Spice.” Spicer, for his part, declined to celebrate Scaramucci’s departure during one of his myriad TV hits since leaving his post. “I don't think it's right to relish in somebody else's problems,” Spicer told Jimmy Kimmel in an interview a few months after Scaramucci’s stint as communications director came to an end. “And so I just as a person, I don't think that's right. But again, I think it proved my point. And that to do this job is one in which you have to have the proper background." Instead, he opted for a much more Beltway approach when throwing daggers: he delivered them in a book lamenting his rival’s “betrayal of Donald Trump, Reince Priebus and the good people who were to serve under him.” “What had originally stopped Scaramucci from getting a coveted White House job was the approval of a government office in the Department of Treasury to sell his company to a Chinese conglomerate,” Spicer wrote. “Months after his brief stint, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States...still did not approve the sale, and the Chinese conglomerate pulled out of the deal.” Cold. —With additional reporting by Asawin Suebsaeng | |
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| 08-24-18 03:20pm - 2313 days | #1012 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Real news: Trump taking charge. Wants political foes investigated. Is prison the next stop for Hilary Clinton, Comey, Mueller, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Ohr, Christopher Steele and so many other slimeball Democrats who have slandered the good name of Donald Trump? ---- ---- Donald Trump Tweet-Directs Attorney General To Investigate Political Foes by Lisa de Moraes August 24, 2018 6:23am The President of the United States this morning directed the U.S. Attorney General to investigate his political rivals. Related Attorney General Jeff Sessions Punches Back After Donald Trump Questions His Fitness And Manhood... One day after telling Fox & Friends he only gave Jeff Sessions the job because he thought he was loyal (during the same interview, he questioned Sessions’ manhood), Trump mocked Sessions’ rare response. “‘Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations,’ Jeff, this is GREAT,” Trump tweeted snidely, then directed Sessions to investigate those Trump believes to be his political rivals. Many of the names also are on Trump’s Enemies List of current and former government folks whose security clearances Trump says he plans to pull. Sessions who had previously stayed mum when Trump has publicly throttled him over his recusal in the Russia election-tamper probe, punched back after Trump’s Fox & Friends interview, saying, “While I am Attorney General, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations. I demand the highest standards, and where they are not met, I take action.” Jeff Sessions On Twitter, Trump detailed who he wanted investigated. “[L]ook into the other side, including deleted Emails, Comey lies & leaks, Mueller conflicts, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Ohr, FISA abuse, Christopher Steele & hi phony and corrupt Dossier, the Clinton Foundation, illegal surveillance of Trump Campaign, Russian collusion by Dems – and so much more.” “Open up the papers & documents without redaction? Come on Jeff, you can do it, the country is waiting!” Referencing the sentencing of Reality Winner, Trump added, “Ex-NSA contractor to spend 63 months in jail over ‘classified’ information. Gee, this is ‘small potatoes’ compared to what Hillary Clinton did! So unfair Jeff, Double Standard.” Trump also tweeted this week in service of the impeach-me-and-you-will-become-poor” argument he had unveiled on Fox & Friends one day earlier. “Target CEO raves about the Economy. ‘This is the best consumer environment I’ve seen in my career.’ A big statement from a top executive. But virtually everybody is saying this, & when our Trade Deals are made, & cost cutting done, you haven’t seen anything yet!” Trump tweeted. “Economy is setting records on virtually every front – Probably the best our country has ever done,” he added. “Tremendous value created since the Election. The World is respecting us again! Companies are moving back to the U.S.A.” | |
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| 08-24-18 02:50pm - 2313 days | #1011 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Fake news: Trump pardons Manafort of all crimes. Fires Mueller for incompetence and wasting government funds. Places Manafort in charge of the Russian investigation. Manafort promises speedy results and a final conclusion on the Russia probe. Tells the American public that all the facts will be exposed. Although Manafort can not promise, he says that he will be investigating both Bill Clinton and Hilary Clinton for interference in the 2016 election: and that there will be a recount of the popular vote, which, in his opinion, will expose the truth that Trump was the winner of the popular vote by a wide margin. The truth will set you free. Trump, the bestest, most honorable and hardest-working President the US has ever had. God save Trump, leader of the White Moral Majority. | |
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| 08-24-18 12:20am - 2314 days | #1010 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Newt Gingrich thinks Bill Clinton deserved to be impeached because he committed perjury (lying under oath) and obstruction of justice. Gingrich does not think Donald Trump deserves to be impeached because he has not committed perjury. Trump lies daily, to the American public and to the news, but Trump is not under oath. Therefore he has not committed perjury. It takes a lawyer to understand the difference of lying to the public and the news, which both Clinton and Trump did (except that Trump lies a lot more than Clinton ever did), and perjury. The reason Trump has not committed perjury is that Trump has refused to testify under oath. Even though Mueller has been after Trump for many months to testify. So, according to Newt Gingrich, Clinton deserved to be impeached, while Trump does not deserve to be impeached. However, Trump, like Clinton was, could be impeached for obstruction of justice. And also for a number of other possible crimes that Clinton was never charged with. So, in spite of Newt Gingrich's opinions, if the Democrats win enough seats in Congress, Trump could be impeached. And even if Trump is not impeached, he could be prosecuted under both federal and state laws for crimes he committed both before and during his term of president. ------- ------- Politics Why Bill Clinton Deserved to Be Impeached but President Trump Doesn't, According to Newt Gingrich Time Katie Reilly,Time 11 hours ago The fallout from Tuesday’s federal court proceedings involving two of Donald Trump’s former top associates seemed to spell trouble for the President. But his supporters don’t see it that way. Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s guilty plea and ex–Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s conviction sparked questions among some pundits and activists about impeachment, a prospect that remains far-fetched based on the current makeup of Congress. Some experts argue that Cohen’s plea, which he directly connected to his work for the President’s campaign, could become a legal argument for impeachment. But Newt Gingrich — the former Republican House Speaker who led successful impeachment proceedings against former President Bill Clinton, one of only two U.S. presidents to ever be impeached — doesn’t see it that way at all. Gingrich argues that impeachment proceedings against Trump would amount to a distraction by Democratic lawmakers, who have thus far hesitated to seriously discuss impeachment. “The elites in Washington get tremendously excited about things which are totally irrelevant to normal people,” Gingrich tells TIME in an interview the day after the Cohen plea and the Manafort verdict. “They’re just background noise that people pay no attention to.” He defends Kenneth Starr’s independent investigation into Clinton, but now calls Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation a “witch hunt,” a phrase Trump has often used. In 1998, Gingrich accused Clinton of degrading the presidency through the Monica Lewinsky investigation. “This has nothing to do with vendettas or witch-hunts or partisan advantage,” Gingrich said at the time. “This is very simply about the rule of law, and the survival of the American system of justice. This is what the Constitution demands, and what Richard Nixon had to resign over.” Clinton was impeached later that year, in a vote largely along party lines, on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. The proceedings grew to focus too heavily on “salacious details,” Gingrich says now. Clinton was subsequently acquitted by the Senate — an outcome that Gingrich now considers appropriate. “It probably was the right result,” he says. “[Clinton] was primarily defined in history as an impeached president, which he deserved. And he did lose his right to practice law. He had to pay a big penalty, and people generally agree what he did was wrong. But on the other hand, it probably didn’t rise to the level of replacing the president of the United States.” Gingrich does not think the Constitution “demands” similar action when it comes to Trump. “The argument of our whole case was that [Clinton], as governor, had imposed his will on a state employee and then committed perjury by lying about it. Now, perjury is a felony, and the question is: Is anybody about to suggest that Donald Trump has done something comparable? Federal election law rules don’t quite rise to the same level as exploiting his own employee,” he says. “Which one would you rank higher in dubiousness? That’s the problem the Democrats have.” Trump, who has also been accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women, was implicated in a felony when Cohen pleaded guilty Tuesday to fraud and campaign finance violations. Cohen said he arranged payments to women to keep them quiet about alleged affairs with Trump and did so “in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office.” Trump has denied any wrongdoing. “Just because Michael Cohen made a plea deal doesn’t mean that that implicates the President on anything,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at a press briefing Wednesday. “The idea of an impeachment is frankly a sad attempt by Democrats,” Sanders added. However, Democratic leaders remain unwilling to call for impeachment. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told the Associated Press on Wednesday that impeaching Trump was still “not a priority” for Democrats and said Mueller should be left to conclude his investigation. “Impeachment has to spring from something else,” she said. “It’s not a priority on the agenda going forward unless something else comes forward.” Even if Democrats win control of Congress in the midterms, removing a president from office requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate, which means the effort would need some Republican support. That’s why Princeton professor Keith Whittington, who studies impeachment, does not think Trump’s latest legal troubles increase the likelihood of impeachment. “I just find it a little implausible that the President’s own partisans are going to be motivated by a campaign finance violation to think that that’s sufficient rationale to remove a president from office,” Whittington says. Gingrich thinks of it in terms of the public perception of the chief executive. “President Trump is 80% a historic figure, and 20% a reality TV personality,” he says, “and when you get that, you understand what’s going on. And the country — a majority of the country in the next election — will accept that equation.” Gingrich notes that impeachment can quickly become unpopular, as it did during the Clinton proceedings, when public opinion of Republicans fell, while Democrats and Clinton experienced a surge. A CNN poll in June suggested that 42% of Americans support impeaching Trump, close to the 43% who supported impeaching Nixon in March 1974. A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll from October 1998, suggested 34% of Americans supported impeaching Clinton. There is little doubt impeachment of Trump would be divisive — perhaps more divisive than impeaching Nixon would have been. Recent polls show that Republicans are far more likely oppose impeachment, view Mueller unfavorably, and see Cohen as “not honest and trustworthy.” “The Trump base has concluded that he’s achieving real things,” Gingrich says, “and the rest of this is noise.” | |
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| 08-23-18 06:33pm - 2314 days | #1009 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
WARNING: Gather your assault rifles and 10,000 rounds of ammo. Prepare for an American revolution if the crazy Commie Democrat slimeballs impeach Donald Trump, the bestest, most honest, hard-working President the US has ever had. Give me liberty or give me death. I will fight to clear the good name of Donald Trump. ------- ------- 1. STORMY CLOUDS 6 hours ago Giuliani Warns: ‘American People Would Revolt’ if Trump Is Impeached Alex Wong/Getty President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani said Thursday that “the American people would revolt” if Trump were impeached. During the same interview with Sky News, conducted on a golf course in Scotland, Giuliani called Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen a “liar.” When asked if if Trump could be impeached, the former NYC mayor replied: “Hardly. I think it’s inevitable that he won’t.” He continued: “You have this Cohen guy. He doesn’t know anything about Russian collusion, doesn’t know anything about obstruction. He’s a massive liar. If anything, it’s turned very much in the president’s favor.” Giuliani also said that “everything Cohen’s said has been disproved,” and maintained that the president did not collude with the Russians or obstruct justice. In a plea deal earlier this week, Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance, tax and bank fraud charges. The former Trump fixer said that he paid off two women before the 2016 election at Trump’s direction for “the principal purpose of influencing the election.” | |
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| 08-23-18 05:03pm - 2314 days | #1007 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders says Trump did nothing wrong. So why are people investigating Trump? It's a witch hunt. The proof is that Trump himself has said the investigation is a witch hunt. Trump is a free man. He's the leader of the Untied States of Trumpland. Seig Heil, Trump, Neo-Nazi leader for life of the Great White Moral Majority. ---- ---- Politics Sanders says Trump did 'nothing wrong' in wake of Cohen allegations ABC News NATALY PAK, JORDYN PHELPS and ALEXANDER MALLIN,ABC News 10 hours ago Sanders says Trump did 'nothing wrong' in wake of Cohen allegations originally appeared on abcnews.go.com White House press secretary Sarah Sanders insisted Wednesday that President Donald Trump has done "nothing wrong" in the wake of statements in court from his former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, that he made illegal campaign contributions "in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office.” Sanders repeated that answer when asked about a Fox News interview with the president, taped Wednesday, in which Trump makes the case that because the payments to Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels, who both claimed to have had affairs with Trump, were not made with campaign funds, they don't amount to campaign finance violations. (MORE: Michael Cohen, Trump’s former longtime personal attorney, pleads guilty to illegal campaign contributions 'at the direction of a candidate for federal office'  Trump, in backing up his press secretary's backing of himself, wrote in a tweet at 1:10 a.m. EST on Thursday: "NO COLLUSION - RIGGED WITCH HUNT!" "They weren’t taken out of campaign finance, that’s the big thing. That’s a much bigger thing. Did they come out of the campaign? They didn’t come out of the campaign, they came from me," the president said. He admits that he did know about the payments, but only "later on" despite an audio of him apparently talking about the payment to McDougal beforehand. Trump has denied the women's allegations. PHOTO: White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders speaks during the daily briefing in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, on Aug. 22, 2018. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images) When asked whether Trump had lied to the American people about the payments, Sanders called it a "ridiculous accusation" and said, " I don't think the president is concerned at all” when asked if the president is concerned about what Cohen might tell special counsel Robert Mueller. Earlier Wednesday, the president contended in a tweet that two of the counts to which Cohen pleaded guilty don’t amount to crimes. In another tweet, Trump mocked Cohen, calling his professional competence into question. "If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!" the president tweeted Wednesday morning. Shortly after the Cohen tweets, the president expressed sympathy toward his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was found guilty on eight counts of financial crimes Tuesday. Manafort served on the president’s campaign for nearly five months, serving in the highest ranking position of campaign chairman for much of that time, and overseeing the presidential campaign through the critical Republican National Convention in the summer of 2016. (MORE: Manafort found guilty on 8 counts in tax fraud trial) PHOTO: President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort stands before Judge T.S. Ellis as he was found guilty of eight of the 18 charges he faced in a case of bank and tax fraud at U.S. District Courthouse in Alexandria, Va., Aug. 21, 2018. (Bill Hennessy/Reuters) Trump said Manafort, "unlike Michael Cohen," did not "make up stories in order to get a ‘deal.’" For more than a decade, Cohen was one of the president’s most ardent and loyal aides and the keeper of his secrets as his so-called fixer. Soon after Cohen's homes and office were raided by the FBI in April, the president declared on Twitter that “Attorney-client privilege is dead!” even as he also predicted that Cohen would remain loyal to him and “never flip.” PHOTO: Michael Cohen leaves Federal court, Aug. 21, 2018, in New York. (Mary Altaffer/AP Photo) But in July, Cohen told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos that his first loyalty was to his family and country, not the president. “My wife, my daughter and my son have my first loyalty and always will. I put family and country first,” he said. (MORE: EXCLUSIVE: Michael Cohen says family and country, not President Trump, is his 'first loyalty' The formerly close relationship between the two men further devolved in recent months after Cohen released an audio recording of him and then-candidate Trump discussing what Cohen's lawyer has said is a payoff deal for Karen McDougal. Cohen has also said that Trump had advance knowledge of a 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian promising dirt on Hillary Clinton. Edited on Aug 23, 2018, 05:14pm | |
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| 08-23-18 05:01pm - 2314 days | #1006 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Flash news: Michael Cohen pleads guilty. He says he helped in a payment to 2 women at the direction of a candidate for federal office. That would be a criminal matter, because it would be an attempt to influence a federal election. However Michael Cohen did not identify who he was working for. Could Cohen have been working for Mike Pence, who was running for Vice President. Pence is thought of as a straight arrow. But if Pence was playing around with women who were not his wife, that would be horrible news to Mike Pence fans. Inquiring minds want to know: How many women has Mike Pence played around with? How many underage boys has Pence played with? Get Ken Starr to investigate Mike Pence, to help drain the Washington swamp. Starr is an expert investigator, who came very close to bringing down Bill Clinton. Starr should have a much easier time bringing down Trump and Pence, if Starr puts his energy into the investigation. But remember: Starr is a dyed in the wool Republican, who is blind to any faults a Republican might have. Starr is much better attacking Democrats. | |
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| 08-23-18 04:43pm - 2314 days | #1005 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
AP: National Enquirer hid damaging Trump stories in a safe Associated Press Jeff Horwitz, Associated Press,Associated Press 28 minutes ago WASHINGTON (AP) -- The National Enquirer kept a safe containing documents on hush money payments and other damaging stories it killed as part of its cozy relationship with Donald Trump leading up to the 2016 presidential election, people familiar with the arrangement told The Associated Press. The detail came as several media outlets reported on Thursday that federal prosecutors had granted immunity to National Enquirer chief David Pecker, potentially laying bare his efforts to protect his longtime friend Trump. Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty this week to campaign finance violations alleging he, Trump and the tabloid were involved in buying the silence of a porn actress and a Playboy model who alleged affairs with Trump. Several people familiar with the National Enquirer's parent company, American Media Inc., who spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity because they signed non-disclosure agreements, said the safe was a great source of power for Pecker, the company's CEO. The Trump records were stored alongside similar documents pertaining to other celebrities' catch-and-kill deals, in which exclusive rights to people's stories were bought with no intention of publishing to keep them out of the news. By keeping celebrities' embarrassing secrets, the company was able to ingratiate itself with them and ask for favors in return. But after The Wall Street Journal initially published the first details of Playboy model Karen McDougal's catch-and-kill deal shortly before the 2016 election, those assets became a liability. Fearful that the documents might be used against American Media, Pecker and the company's chief content officer, Dylan Howard, removed them from the safe in the weeks before Trump's inauguration, according to one person directly familiar with the events. It was unclear whether the documents were destroyed or simply were moved to a location known to fewer people. American Media did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Pecker's immunity deal was first reported Thursday by Vanity Fair and The Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources. Vanity Fair reported that Howard also was granted immunity. Court papers in the Cohen case say Pecker "offered to help deal with negative stories about (Trump's) relationships with women by, among other things, assisting the campaign in identifying such stories so they could be purchased and their publication avoided." The Journal reported Pecker shared with prosecutors details about payments that Cohen says Trump directed in the weeks and months before the election to buy the silence of McDougal and another woman alleging an affair, porn star Stormy Daniels. Daniels was paid $130,000, and McDougal was paid $150,000. While Trump denies the affairs, his account of his knowledge of the payments has shifted. In April, Trump denied he knew anything about the Daniels payment. He told Fox News in an interview aired Thursday that he knew about payments "later on." In July, Cohen released an audio tape in which he and Trump discussed plans to buy McDougal's story from the Enquirer. Such a purchase was necessary, they suggested, to prevent Trump from having to permanently rely on a tight relationship with the tabloid. "You never know where that company — you never know what he's gonna be —" Cohen says. "David gets hit by a truck," Trump says. "Correct," Cohen replies. "So, I'm all over that." While Pecker is cooperating with federal prosecutors now, American Media previously declined to participate in congressional inquiries. Last March, in response to a letter from a group of House Democrats about the Daniels and McDougal payments, American Media general counsel Cameron Stracher declined to provide any documents, writing that the company was "exempt" from U.S. campaign finance laws because it is a news publisher and it was "confident" it had complied with all tax laws. He also rebuffed any suggestion that America Media Inc., or AMI, had leverage over the president because of its catch-and-kill practices. "AMI states unequivocally that any suggestion that it would seek to 'extort' the President of the United States through the exercise of its editorial discretion is outrageous, offensive, and wholly without merit," Stracher wrote in a letter obtained by The Associated Press. Former Enquirer employees who spoke to the AP said that negative stories about Trump were dead on arrival dating back more than a decade when he starred on NBC's reality show "The Apprentice." In 2010, at Cohen's urging, the National Enquirer began promoting a potential Trump presidential candidacy, referring readers to a pro-Trump website Cohen helped create. With Cohen's involvement, the publication began questioning President Barack Obama's birthplace and American citizenship in print, an effort that Trump promoted for several years, former staffers said. The Enquirer endorsed Trump for president in 2016, the first time it had ever officially backed a candidate. In the news pages, Trump's coverage was so favorable that the New Yorker magazine said the Enquirer embraced him "with sycophantic fervor." Positive headlines for Trump, a Republican, were matched by negative stories about his opponents, including Hillary Clinton, a Democrat: An Enquirer front page from 2015 said "Hillary: 6 Months to Live" and accompanied the headline with a picture of an unsmiling Clinton with bags under her eyes. Associated Press writers Chad Day and Jake Pearson contributed to this report. | |
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| 08-23-18 09:55am - 2314 days | #1004 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Relationship between Trump, Enquirer goes beyond headlines Associated Press DAVID BAUDER and JEFF HORWITZ,Associated Press 3 hours ago NEW YORK (AP) — The plea deal reached by Donald Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen has laid bare a relationship between the president and the publisher of the National Enquirer that goes well beyond the tabloid's screaming headlines. Besides detailing the tabloid's involvement in payoffs to porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal to keep quiet about alleged affairs with Trump, court papers showed how David Pecker, a longtime friend of the president and head of Enquirer parent company American Media Inc., offered to help Trump stave off negative stories during the 2016 campaign. Court papers say that Pecker "offered to help deal with negative stories about (Trump's) relationships with women by, among other things, assisting the campaign in identifying such stories so they could be purchased and their publication avoided." The accusations threaten Pecker's company, American Media Inc., both legally and in the court of public opinion. The relationship between Trump and the Enquirer has been cozy for decades. Former National Enquirer employees who spoke to the AP said that negative stories about Trump were dead on arrival dating back to when he starred on NBC's reality show "The Apprentice." In 2010, at Cohen's urging, the National Enquirer began promoting a potential Trump presidential candidacy, referring readers to a pro-Trump website Cohen helped create. With Cohen's involvement, the publication began questioning President Barack Obama's birthplace and American citizenship in print, an effort that Trump promoted for several years, former staffers said. The Enquirer endorsed Trump for president in 2016, the first time it had ever officially backed a candidate. In the news pages, Trump's coverage was so favorable that the New Yorker magazine said the Enquirer embraced him "with sycophantic fervor." Positive headlines for Trump were matched by negative stories about his opponents: an Enquirer front page from 2015 said "Hillary: 6 Months to Live" and accompanied the headline with a picture of an unsmiling Clinton with bags under her eyes. Campaign finance laws generally prohibit corporations from cooperating with a campaign to affect an election, though media organizations are exempted from that restriction so long as they're performing a journalistic function. AMI's problem, said campaign finance expert Richard Hasen, is that Cohen's prosecutors don't appear to think hush money payments qualify as journalism. "AMI and Pecker have not been charged, but they might be charged," he said. Though a novel legal case might be made that paying sources for silence is in fact standard tabloid reporting practice, he said, Cohen's plea agreement doesn't give that theory much weight. The Cohen case outlined a tabloid strategy known as "catch and kill," or paying for exclusive rights to someone's story with no intention of publishing it in order to keep it out of the news altogether. McDougal reached a deal to be paid $150,000 for her story about an alleged affair in 2006 and 2007, prosecutors said. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, negotiated a $130,000 payment through Cohen for her story — and both were successfully buried until after the campaign. When negotiations lagged on the Clifford deal shortly before the election, her lawyer told the Enquirer that she was close to reaching a deal with another outlet to tell her story. An editor at the tabloid, in turn, texted Cohen to say something needed to be done "or it could look awfully bad for everyone," according to court papers. The deal was quickly reached, and Cohen agreed to make the payment. In court on Tuesday, Cohen said that he had agreed to work with Pecker to make the deals "in coordination with, and at the direction of, a candidate for federal office" — clearly Trump. AMI did not respond to requests for comment. The accusations raise the question — can the Enquirer, indeed all of American Media, really be considered a media company when people become more familiar with its political activities? Through an aggressive acquisition strategy, AMI has lately cornered a large part of the celebrity publication market. Besides tabloids like the Enquirer, Star and Globe, it also owns Us Weekly, In Touch and Life & Style. "I think AMI is probably squirming," said Jerry George, a former editor at the Enquirer, on Wednesday. "They've painted themselves into a corner." Despite a reputation for fanciful stories, the Enquirer has a history of some aggressive political reporting; the tabloid's stories on John Edwards and Gary Hart helped end the chances of both men becoming president. The Enquirer's willingness to bend journalistic rules and potentially the law on Trump's behalf tarnishes that reputation, George said. And while a juicy political scandal involving adult film star, hush money and the President of the United States might seem like ideal tabloid fare, the Enquirer is steering clear. On the tabloid's web site Wednesday, the emphasis was on celebrity news — an old story about feuding on the set of "Golden Girls" and squabbling between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. | |
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| 08-23-18 09:51am - 2314 days | #1003 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump aides' felony convictions spur calls to oppose Kavanaugh nomination David Knowles 21 hours ago In the words of Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., Tuesday’s legal developments are a “game-changer” for the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Democrats quickly seized on the guilty plea by President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen and the guilty verdicts in the case against former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort as fresh justification for their long-shot bid to stop Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Schumer’s rationale is based on an article Kavanaugh authored in 2009 for the Minnesota Law Review in which he argued that presidents should not be subject to legal proceedings while in office. “I believe it vital that the President be able to focus on his never-ending tasks with as few distractions as possible. The country wants the President to be ‘one of us’ who bears the same responsibilities of citizenship that all share. But I believe that the President should be excused from some of the burdens of ordinary citizenship while serving in office,” Kavanaugh wrote. While Manafort still faces the prospect of a retrial on the 10 counts that the jury in federal court in Alexandria, Va., failed to decide, he also will be tried separately on charges of money laundering, obstruction of justice and failing to register as a foreign agent. Trump argued Tuesday that Manafort’s convictions had nothing to do with him, which appears to be true, but it is unclear if the president will be implicated in the upcoming trial. Trump is in far greater legal jeopardy regarding Cohen, who in his statement to the court tied the president to campaign finance felonies. Cohen told a judge in federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday that Trump had directed him to pay off Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal to hide allegations of extramarital affairs that were seen as damaging to his presidential campaign. Cohen admitted that he knew the payments constituted illegal and unreported political contributions. The president has not been charged with a crime in the case, and it is not known if he is under investigation, but legal observers have said he faces a potential legal liability. President Trump announcing the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, in the East Room of the White House on July 9. (Photo: Alex Brandon/AP) Thus, according to Democrats in the Senate, Kavanaugh’s nomination presents a clear conflict of interest, a point that Schumer attempted to hammer home on Wednesday. Several other Democrats joined Schumer’s call to stop Kavanaugh from reaching the Supreme Court. At Wednesday’s briefing, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders called the notion that the Manafort and Cohen cases have changed the outlook for Kavanaugh’s nomination “desperate.” Some senators, like New Hampshire’s Jean Shaheen, did not go so far as to argue that Kavanaugh was now effectively disqualified from being considered, but called for a delay. But others, like Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono, saw Cohen’s guilty plea as the end of the line. For many Democrats, “co-conspirator” was the favored way to describe Trump. Of course, Trump had his own verdict on the matter. | |
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| 08-23-18 09:36am - 2314 days | #1002 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Whistleblower gave evidence that Russia interferred in the 2016 election to a news outlet. She was sentenced to 63 months in prison, plus a 3 year probation once she is released. For giving evidence the US government wanted to hide. "She blatantly violated the trust put in her by the United States. This sentence will deter others from committing the same offense," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Solari. Based on that reasoning, Trump and his allies should all be put in prison for life. If you are a Republican, you are guilty of treason. ----------- ----------- Reality Winner sentenced to more than 5 years for leaking info about Russia hacking attempts U.S. news Reality Winner sentenced to more than 5 years for leaking info about Russia hacking attempts The Georgia woman, who leaked a secret report on Russian hacking of the U.S. election, faced a maximum penalty of 10 years. by Bianca Seward and Elizabeth Chuck / Aug.23.2018 / 8:05 AM ET / Updated 9:23 AM ET Image: Reality Winner Reality Winner arrives at a courthouse in Augusta, Georgia on Thursday.Michael Holahan / AP AUGUSTA, Georgia — A former government contractor who pleaded guilty to leaking U.S. secrets about Russia's attempts to hack the 2016 presidential election was sentenced Thursday to five years and three months in prison. It was the sentence that prosecutors had recommended — the longest ever for a federal crime involving leaks to the news media — in the plea deal for Reality Winner, the Georgia woman at the center of the case. Winner was also sentenced to three years of supervised release and no fine, except for a $100 special assessment fee. The crime carried a maximum penalty of 10 years. U.S. District Court Judge J. Randal Hall in Augusta, Georgia, was not bound to follow the plea deal, but elected to give Winner the amount of time prosecutors requested. Winner, 26, who contracted for the National Security Agency, pleaded guilty in June to copying a classified report that detailed the Russian government's efforts to penetrate a Florida-based voting software supplier. U.S. intelligence agencies later confirmed Russia had meddled in the election. Authorities have never confirmed what exactly the report said, or identified the news organization that received it. But a leaked document that was published by the online news outlet The Intercept in June 2017 bore the same May 5 date as the NSA report that Winner had leaked. The Justice Department announced it had arrested Winner on the same day as the Intercept report came out. Ex-NSA contractor Reality Winner speaks out in jailhouse interview Dec.22.201703:00 Thursday's hearing lasted less than 45 minutes. Winner entered the courtroom in handcuffs, her hair down and smiling. She held her hands behind her back for most of the hearing, except when she delivered her personal statement. "I would like to apologize profusely for my actions. I want to apologize to my family. Nothing is worth time spent away from loved ones," she said. Winner's attorneys called her a good person with an otherwise clean criminal record, and said that she suffers from depression and bulimia. Recommended President Trump on defense after Cohen guilty plea Air Force sergeant’s wife opens up about accepting his posthumous Medal of Honor Prosecutors said her offense was serious, and urged Hall to sentence her to the recommended 63 months. "She blatantly violated the trust put in her by the United States. This sentence will deter others from committing the same offense," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Solari. Hall acknowledged the need to deter others and said the sentence reflected the seriousness of the offense. Winner has been held with no bail since she was arrested last June and charged under the Espionage Act. The former Air Force linguist speaks languages used in Afghanistan, including Arabic and Farsi, and had a top-secret security clearance while working for national security contractor Pluribus International at Fort Gordon in Georgia when she was charged. In her guilty plea, Winner told the court that she did "all of these actions I did willfully, meaning I did them of my own free will," the Atlanta Journal-Constitution had reported. Bianca Seward reported from Augusta, Georgia, Elizabeth Chuck reported from New York. | |
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| 08-23-18 09:26am - 2314 days | #1001 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Is the law fair? Of course not. Taxpayers are spending millions of dollars investigating Trump. Why not stop the investigation, and put Trump in jail. Where he obviously belongs. Here is a case of a woman who gave information about Russian interference in the 2016 election to a US newspaper. She was sentenced to more than 5 years in prison. After completing her 63 months in prison, Winner has been ordered to serve three years of supervised release. For giving information about Russian interference in the 2016 election? She was a whistleblower. Giving news about Russian interference that the US government wanted to hide. 5 plus years in prison, plus 3 more years on probation? Based on her punishment, Trump and his allies deserve life sentences in prison, without the possibility of parole. Also, hard time, on a work gang, clearing swamps, to make up for the evil they have done. Million dollar graft, corruption, and they will, at best, get a slap on the hand. ------------- ------------- Reality Winner, National Security Agency Leaker, Sentenced To 5 Years HuffPost Sebastian Murdock,HuffPost 1 hour 9 minutes ago Reality Winner, the U.S. intelligence contractor charged with leaking classified National Security Agency material, is seen in these undated booking photos in Lincolnton, Georgia. (Handout . / Reuters) A former government contract employee who leaked information to the press about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was sentenced Thursday to more than five years in prison. Reality Winner, 26, worked for federal contractor Pluribus International Corp. in Augusta, Georgia, when she was arrested last year after “removing classified materials from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet,” a criminal complaint said at the time. The former Air Force linguist sent a National Security Agency memo that detailed Russia’s attempts to gain access to “multiple U.S. state or local electoral boards” to The Intercept. She had faced a maximum of 10 years in prison, but reached a plea deal with prosecutors. Still, her sentence of 63 months is the longest yet for a government leaker, prosecutors said when requesting the sentence. U.S. Attorney Bobby Christine said Winner “knowingly and intentionally betrayed the trust of her colleagues and her country” in a statement following the sentencing. “Make no mistake: THIS WAS OT[sic] A VICTIMLESS CRIME,” the statement from Trump-appointed Christine said. “Winner’s purposeful violation put our nation’s security at risk.” During her sentencing, Winner apologized to the government, the court and her family. Since her arrest, Winner has spent every day in jail after being denied bail. In June, Winner pleaded guilty to a charge of violating the Espionage Act, a law passed more than 100 years ago in an effort to combat foreign spies. Barack Obama was the first president to use the act to target whistleblowers. “People automatically hear ‘espionage’ and think she’s a traitor to her country, and I don’t want people thinking that she’s a traitor to the U.S.,” her mother, Billie Winner-Davis, told HuffPost in June. “I don’t agree with how the government uses the Espionage Act. She should not be labeled a traitor.” During her time in county jail, Winner has had limited access outside, has shared a shower and toilet with multiple other inmates, and was only recently given a second pair of pants to wear, her mother said. Transferring to a new prison system is “going to improve her situation drastically,” Winner-Davis said. “I think she has maintained her strength and sanity [while incarcerated,]” Winner-Davis told HuffPost on Tuesday before her sentencing. “She maintains her sense of humor which helps her through it. People who have written to her have helped keep her going, kept her strong.” Winner-Davis added she hopes her daughter will be moved to a prison closer to her and her family in Texas. After completing her 63 months in prison, Winner has been ordered to serve three years of supervised release. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 08-23-18 09:10am - 2314 days | #1000 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Why doesn't Trump do the smart thing? Issue pardons for all people who worked for him? Issue a pardon for Trump himself, for any and all actions he might have done both before and after he became President? Put that in your pipe, Mueller, and smoke it. | |
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| 08-23-18 09:03am - 2314 days | #999 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Cohen's plea deal is prosecutor's attempt to set up Trump By Mark Penn, opinion contributor - 08/22/18 07:25 AM EDT The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill Here we go, from Russia with love, to campaign finance with love. Why was Michael Cohen investigated? Because the “Steele dossier” had him making secret trips to meet with Russians that never happened, so his business dealings got a thorough scrubbing and, in the process, he fell into the Paul Manafort bin reserved by the special counsel for squeezing until the juice comes out. We are back to 1998 all over again, with presidents and candidates covering up their alleged marital misdeeds and prosecutors trying to turn legal acts into illegal ones by inventing new crimes. The plot to get President Trump out of office thickens, as Cohen obviously was his own mini crime syndicate and decided that his betrayals meant he would be better served turning on his old boss to cut the best deal with prosecutors he could rather than holding out and getting the full Manafort treatment. That was clear the minute he hired attorney Lanny Davis, who does not try cases and did past work for Hillary Clinton. Cohen had recorded his client, trying to entrap him, sold information about Trump to corporations for millions of dollars while acting as his lawyer, and did not pay taxes on millions. The sweetener for the prosecutors, of course, was getting Cohen to plead guilty to campaign violations that were not campaign violations. Money paid to people who come out of the woodwork and shake down people under threat of revealing bad sexual stories are not legitimate campaign expenditures. They are personal expenditures. That is true for both candidates we like and candidates we do not. Just imagine if candidates used campaign funds instead of their own money to pay folks like Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about affairs. They would get indicted for misuse of campaign funds for personal purposes and for tax evasion. There appear to be two payments involved in this unusual agreement. Cohen pleaded guilty to a campaign violation for having “coordinated” the American Media payment to Karen McDougal for her story, not for actually making the payment. He is pleading guilty over a corporate contribution he did not make. Think about this for a minute. Suppose ABC paid Stormy Daniels for her story in coordination with Michael Avenatti or maybe even the law firm of the Democratic National Committee on the eve of the election. By this reasoning, if the purpose of this money paid, just before the election, would be to hurt Trump and help Clinton win, this payment would be a corporate political contribution. If using it not to get Trump would be a corporate contribution, then using it to get Trump also has to be a corporate contribution. That is why neither are corporate contributions and this is a bogus approach to federal election law. Note that none of the donors in the 2012 John Edwards case faced any legal issues and the Federal Election Commission ruled their payments were not campaign contributions that had to be reported, both facts that prosecutors tried to suppress at trial. Now, when it comes to Stormy Daniels, Cohen made a payment a few days before the election that Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani says was reimbursed. First, given that this payment was in October, it would never have been reported before the election campaign and so, for all intents and purposes, was immaterial as it relates to any effect on the campaign. What is clear in this plea deal is that, in exchange for overall leniency on his massive tax evasion, Cohen is pleading guilty to these other charges as an attempt to give prosecutors what they want, which is a Trump connection. The usual procedures here would be for the Federal Election Commission to investigate complaints and sort through these murky laws to determine if these kinds of payments are personal in nature or more properly classified as campaign expenditures. On the Stormy Daniels payment that was made and reimbursed by Trump, it is again a question of whether that was made for personal reasons, especially since they have been trying since 2011 to obtain agreement. Just because it would be helpful to the campaign does not convert it to a campaign expenditure. Think of a candidate with bad teeth who had dental work done to look better for the campaign. His campaign still could not pay for it because it is a personal expenditure. Contrast what is going on here with the treatment of the millions of dollars paid to a Democratic law firm which, in turn, paid out money to political research firm Fusion GPS and British spy Christopher Steele without listing them on any campaign expenditure form, despite crystal clear laws and regulations that the ultimate beneficiaries of the funds must be listed. This rule was even tightened recently. There is no question that hiring spies to do opposition research in Russia is a campaign expenditure, yet no prosecutorial raids have been sprung on the law firm, Fusion GPS or Steele. The reason? It does not “get” Trump. So, Trump spends $130,000 to keep the lid on a personal story and the full weight of state prosecutors comes down on his lawyer, tossing attorney-client privilege to the wind. Democrats spend potentially millions on secret opposition research and no serious criminal investigation occurs. Remember that the feds tried a similar strategy against Democratic candidate Edwards six years ago and it failed. As Gregory Craig, a lawyer who worked both for President Clinton and Edwards, said, “The government theory is wrong on the facts and wrong on the law. It is novel and untested. There is no civil or criminal precedent for such a prosecution.” Tried it there anyway and it failed. Let us also not forget that President Clinton was entrapped into lying about his affairs and, although impeached, was acquitted by the Senate. The lesson was clear: We are not going to remove presidents for lying about who they had affairs with, nor even convict politicians on campaign finance violations for these personal payments. With Cohen pleading guilty, there will be no test of soundness of the prosecution theories here, and it is yet another example of the double standards of justice of one investigation that gave Clinton aides and principals every benefit of the doubt and another investigation that targeted Trump people until they found unrelated crimes to use as leverage. Prosecutors thought nothing of using the Logan Act against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, but they are using obscure and unsettled elements of campaign finance law against Trump lawyer Cohen to manufacture crimes in what is a naked attempt to take Trump down and defeat democracy. Trump should do a better job of picking aides who pay their taxes, but he is not responsible for their financial problems and crimes. These investigations, essentially based on an opposition dossier, were never anything other than an attempt to push into a corner as many Trump aides and family members as possible and shake them down until they could get close enough to Trump to try to take him down. That is why so many of his aides, lawyers, and actions in the campaign and in the White House have undergone hour by hour scrutiny to find anything that could be colored into a crime, leaving far behind the original Russia collusion theory as the fake pretext it was. Paying for nondisclosure agreements for perfectly legal activities is not a crime, not a campaign contribution as commonly understood or ruled upon by the Federal Election Commission. Squeezing guilty pleas out of vulnerable witnesses does nothing to change those facts. Mark Penn is a managing partner of the Stagwell Group, a private equity firm specializing in marketing services companies, as well as chairman of the Harris Poll and author of “Microtrends Squared.” He served as pollster and adviser to President Clinton from 1995 to 2000, including during Clinton’s impeachment. You can follow him on Twitter @Mark_Penn. | |
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