Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by MacCruiskeen » Tue Jan 17, 2017 4:34 pm
by seemslikeadream » Tue Jan 17, 2017 4:43 pm
by MacCruiskeen » Tue Jan 17, 2017 4:47 pm
seemslikeadream » Tue Jan 17, 2017 3:43 pm wrote:The first global cyber war has begun
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=30523
Tomgram: Nick Turse, A Shadow War in 150 Countries
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=38730
Nuclear War Scare
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=39247
Breaking Last Taboo Truth about Palestine World War Threat
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=38416#p552186
Israel Accused of War Crime over Army “Execution” of Innocent Palestinian Teens
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=38110
Bush Gang Found Guilty of War Crimes
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=34711
By conjuring the Holocaust, Netanyahu brought Israel closer to war with Iran
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=34185
Israel Warns World War III May be Biblical War of Gog and Magog
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=13935
these are just off the top of my bookmarks
why has no one taken exception to this in 12 years here but someone with a bug affection
by seemslikeadream » Tue Jan 17, 2017 4:50 pm
by seemslikeadream » Tue Jan 17, 2017 5:17 pm
by seemslikeadream » Tue Jan 17, 2017 7:24 pm
Former ‘Apprentice’ contestant sues Trump for defamation for denying alleged groping
Summer Zervos, right, listens to her attorney Gloria Allred during a news conference where she announced she has filed a defamation lawsuit against President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday in Los Angeles. (Mike Nelson/EPA)
By Rosalind S. Helderman January 17 at 6:12 PM
A former contestant on the reality show “The Apprentice” filed a defamation lawsuit Tuesday against President-elect Donald Trump over his response to her allegations that he groped her during a job interview in 2007.
Summer Zervos, a California restaurant owner who appeared on the show in 2006, accused Trump of aggressively kissing and grabbing her when she went to his bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel to discuss a possible job at the Trump Organization a year later.
In her suit, Zervos alleges that Trump defamed her when he denied her account of their interactions in the hotel room, accusing her and other women who made similar accusations of lying and fabricating their accounts. Zervos said she would drop her lawsuit, which was filed in New York, without seeking monetary damages if Trump would retract his claim that she lied and acknowledge his actions.
[Read Summer Zervos’s legal complaint]
Zervos appeared at a Los Angeles news conference alongside her lawyer, Gloria Allred, who said Zervos took and passed a lie-detector test before filing her suit.
Former ‘Apprentice’ contestant files defamation lawsuit against Trump Play Video1:08
Summer Zervos, a former contestant on “The Apprentice,” said on Jan. 17 that she has filed a defamation lawsuit against President-elect Donald Trump. (Reuters)
“Enough is enough,” Allred said. “Truth matters. Women matter, those who allege they were victims of sexual misconduct or sexual assault by Mr. Trump matter.”
Allred said that as the lawsuit proceeds, she would seek to depose Trump under oath and could also seek to subpoena recordings Trump made during tapings of “The Apprentice.”
Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks responded in a statement: “More of the same from Gloria Allred. There is no truth to this absurd story.”
Eleven women spoke publicly before the election, accusing Trump of inappropriately touching or kissing them. They stepped forward after Trump denied ever touching a woman without her consent during a presidential debate in October.
“Have you ever done those things?” Trump was asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, regarding comments Trump made during a taping of “Access Hollywood” in 2005, when he bragged about groping and kissing women without their permission. “I will tell you: No, I have not,” Trump responded.
During the campaign, Trump asserted that each of his accusers was lying and vowed to sue the women for making the claims.
“Total fabrication,” he said during a campaign rally in Gettysburg, Pa., in October. “The events never happened. Never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.”
Summer Zervos listens as her attorney Gloria Allred speaks during a news conference announcing the filing of a lawsuit against President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday in Los Angeles. (Mike Blake/Reuters)
Without evidence, he said the women were coordinating with the campaign of his rival, Hillary Clinton. He also mocked some of the women, suggesting they were not attractive enough for him to sexually harass.
[Here are the women who accused Donald Trump of inappropriate touching]
“When you looked at that horrible woman last night, you said, ‘I don’t think so,’ ” Trump said at a rally about one of his accusers, a People Magazine reporter who said Trump shoved her against a wall and forcibly kissed her while she was at his Florida Mar-a-Lago estate on assignment in 2005.
Trump has not yet filed suit against any of the women.
The Supreme Court has ruled that presidents can be sued while in office over their private conduct or activities before their election. The ruling came after President Bill Clinton sought to have a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by Arkansas state worker Paula Jones delayed until after he left office.
The Clinton case shows the potential peril of such suits for a sitting president. Clinton ultimately settled with Jones, but allegations that he had lied under oath during a deposition in the matter about his relations with intern Monica Lewinsky led to his impeachment.
Trump has already settled other lawsuits to ensure they do not linger into his presidency. In November, he agreed to pay $25 million to settle lawsuits accusing his defunct real estate seminar program Trump University of fraud. He did not admit fault.
In her suit, Zervos asserted that she had gone to the Los Angeles hotel to discuss a possible job with Trump after he had been complimentary of her performance on the television show. In the room, she alleged that Trump kissed her aggressively and groped her breast. As she attempted to reject his advances, she said Trump steered her toward the bedroom, saying, “let’s lay down and watch some telly telly.”
“Come on man, get real,” she replied, according to the suit. Trump then “repeated her words back to her lasciviously, drawing out the second word and saying, ‘get reeeeal,’ as he began to press his genitals against her, trying to kiss her again,” the suit alleges.
Immediately after leaving Trump, Zervos told her father about the encounter, according to the suit.
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Zervos said she excused Trump’s behavior for years, particularly because she was ultimately offered a job at the Trump Organization, but she had been compelled to step forward after hearing the presidential candidate brag to “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush about behaving similarly with other women.
According to the suit, the tape convinced Zervos that Trump was “a sexual predator who had preyed on her and other women.” She claimed his dismissal of her as a “phony” and her account as a “hoax” had resulted in lost business for her restaurant and emotional distress.
Zervos is one of four of Trump’s accusers represented by Allred, who also represents more than two dozen women who have accused comedian Bill Cosby of sexual assault.
In the suit, Zervos alleges that Trump knew his statements were defamatory, not just because he knew the truth of their interactions but also because he knew “he engaged regularly in this kind of unwanted sexual touching for years, and that was, in fact, how he treated women routinely and how he lived his life.”
If the case is allowed to proceed, the claim could allow Allred to explore other allegations made by women against Trump.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... 0456f981a3
by seemslikeadream » Tue Jan 17, 2017 11:20 pm
UPDATED: Trump Sexual Assault Accuser Going Ahead With Lawsuit
Law Newz writes that counsel Allred, who is well-known for taking on cases involving anti-woman discrimination, was with Zervos at the press event. The lawyer “suggested she may attempt to subpoena copies of unaired, unedited outtakes from the Apprentice show.” There has been plenty of curiosity about the tapes for months, dating back to October, just after the Access Hollywood tapes leaked. A former Apprentice producer tweeted “I assure you: when it comes to the #trumptapes there are far worse. #justthebeginning.” More recently, comedian Tom Arnold reignited interest in the footage when he claimed he’d seen outtakes from the show featuring Trump, “saying the N-word, saying the C-word, calling his son a retard, just being so mean to his own children.”
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/u ... ad-lawsuit
by seemslikeadream » Wed Jan 18, 2017 9:09 am
Politics
‘I will give you everything.’ Here are 282 of Donald Trump’s campaign promises.
By Jenna Johnson November 28, 2016
In Donald Trump’s final days on the campaign trail, he promised his supporters that “every dream you ever dreamed for your country” will come true if he becomes president — one of dozens of sweeping promises he made and is now expected to fulfill.
In January, I compiled a list of 76 campaign promises Trump had made. Since then, the list has grown to 282, collected from Trump’s speeches, public comments, tweets and campaign and transition websites.
JOBS
1. Create at least 25 million jobs and “be the greatest jobs president that God ever created.”
Watch 50 Trump promises in 2 minutes Play Video1:52
Here are some of the most memorable campaign promises Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has made since he declared his candidacy in June 2015. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)
2. Bring back manufacturing jobs from China, Mexico, Japan and elsewhere. States that can expect a rush of jobs include Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan, Ohio, Florida, New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada, New York and Virginia.
3. Encourage manufacturers to build or grow factories in the United States with tax incentives.
4. Refuse to eat another Oreo until Nabisco fully moves production back to the United States from Mexico.
5. Tell Ford’s president that unless he cancels plans to build a massive plant in Mexico, the auto company will face a 35 percent tax on cars imported into the United States. Trump is confident he can get this done before taking office. (Trump has twice incorrectly said this has already happened.)
6. “Get Apple to start building their damn computers and things in this country, instead of in other countries.”
7. Call the executives at the parent company of Carrier, an air-conditioning manufacturer that is closing a plant in Indiana and moving to Mexico, and threaten to impose a 35 percent tariff on air conditioners imported into the United States. Trump predicts the company will say: “Sir, we’ve decided to stay in the United States.”
8. Bring back the steel industry to Pennsylvania and use American-made steel in all federal infrastructure projects.
9. Make the auto industry in Michigan “bigger and better and stronger than ever before.” Trump plans to return to the state each time a new factory or auto plant opens.
10. Bring the coal industry back to life in the Appalachian Mountain region.
11. Require employers to recruit “from the unemployment office — not the immigration office.”
12. Leave the federal minimum wage at $7.25 per hour, which is already too high.
13. Raise the federal minimum wage to $10 per hour, as $7.25 is too low and “the minimum wage has to go up.”
14. Allow states to set their own minimum wage.
15. “Under a Trump presidency, the American worker will finally have a president who will protect them and fight for them.”
APPROACH TO THE PRESIDENCY
16. “I’m going to be so presidential, you’re going to be so bored.” He might also quit tweeting.
17. “I refuse to be politically correct.”
18. “My only special interest is you, the American people,” not major donors, the party or corporations.
19. “Be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”
20. Pass on the president’s annual salary of $400,000.
21. “I would not be a president who took vacations. I would not be a president that takes time off.” Trump will make time for golf but promises to “always play with leaders of countries and people that can help us.”
22. “I promise I will never be in a bicycle race. That I can tell you.” (Trump has criticized Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who was injured while riding a bicycle amid the Iran negotiations.)
23. “In negotiation, you must be willing to walk. . . . When the other side knows you’re not going to walk, it becomes absolutely impossible to win.”
24. “If I draw a line in the sand, I will enforce it.”
25. “I don’t settle cases. I don’t do it.” (This month Trump settled a fraud lawsuit against Trump University for $25 million.)
26. Fully focus on the presidency and put his three oldest children — Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump — in charge of running his company. (Trump has yet to take steps to fully isolate himself from his business, and his three oldest children have played a major role in his transition team. In an interview with the New York Times on Tuesday, Trump noted that he could legally continue running his business.)
TAXES
27. Release his tax returns as soon as an Internal Revenue Service audit is complete.
28. Pass the Middle Class Tax Relief and Simplification Act, which will reduce the number of tax brackets from seven to four and lower income taxes for all. The highest earners would pay a 25 percent tax. Individuals earning less than $25,000 per year or couples earning less than $50,000 would not be charged income tax, although they would have to file a one-page form with the IRS that states: “I win.”
29. Lower the corporate tax rate to 15 percent and get rid of most corporate tax loopholes or incentives. Allow corporations a one-time window to transfer money being held overseas, charging a much-reduced 10 percent tax.
30. Eliminate the carried interest loophole for Wall Street, the federal estate tax, the alternative minimum tax and the so-called marriage penalty that affects some high-income earners. Continue to allow taxpayers to deduct mortgage interest and charitable donations from their taxes.
31. “We are going to have the biggest tax cuts since Ronald Reagan.”
TRADE
32. Renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement or withdraw from the deal under Article 2205.
33. On the first day in office, pull out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, President Obama’s signature trade deal linking countries around the Pacific Rim.
34. Negotiate trade deals with individual countries instead of regions. Trump would gather together the “smartest negotiators in the world” and assign them each a country. Billionaire hedge fund manager Carl Icahn would be in charge of trade negotiations with China and Japan.
35. Identify all foreign trading abuses that affect American workers and “use every tool under American and international law to end those abuses immediately.” This would include cracking down on “sweatshops in Mexico that undercut U.S. workers.”
36. Impose new taxes on imports into the country from companies that used to be based in the United States. Trump’s most frequently cited number is 35 percent.
37. Impose a 45 percent tariff on Chinese products imported into the United States.
ECONOMY AND FEDERAL BUDGET
38. “We will double our growth and have the strongest economy anywhere in the world.” Grow the nation’s economy by at least 4 percent per year, although Trump has also suggested he will boost growth to at least 6 percent per year — if not much higher.
39. Eliminate the $19 trillion national debt within eight years by “vigorously eliminating waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government, ending redundant government programs and growing the economy to increase tax revenues.”
40. Never default on this debt, as the United States can “print the money” or renegotiate the amount owed with creditors, as the self-described “king of debt” has done with his private businesses.
41. Cut the budget by 20 percent by simply negotiating better prices or renegotiating existing deals.
42. Implement the “Penny Plan,” which each year would reduce net spending by 1 percent of the previous year’s total. Over 10 years, Trump says, this would reduce spending by almost $1 trillion. Defense and public safety spending would be exempt.
43. Immediately institute a hiring freeze on all federal employees to reduce the workforce through attrition. There would be exceptions for those in the military, public safety and public health.
44. Order every federal government department head to “provide a list of wasteful spending projects that we can eliminate in my first 100 days.” Review each agency and then decrease the size of the “bloated government,” making it “leaner and more responsive to the public.”
45. Stop spending money on space exploration until the United States can fix its potholes. Encourage private space-exploration companies to expand.
46. Stop so-called zombie spending, in which the government funds programs that have had their congressional authorization lapse. By cutting 5 percent of this spending, Trump estimates he could save almost $200 billion over 10 years.
47. Collect unpaid taxes, which Trump says could be as much as $385 billion per year.
48. Crack down on improper government payments, which Trump estimates exceed $135 billion per year.
49. Dismantle the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which aims to prevent the excessive risk-taking that led to the financial crisis and was signed into law by Obama in 2010.
REGULATION
50. Issue a moratorium on new federal regulations that are not compelled by Congress or public safety. For every new regulation that is added, two existing regulations must be eliminated. And those new regulations must pass this test: Is this regulation good for the American worker?
51. Order agency and department heads to identify all “needless job-killing regulations” and then remove them.
HEALTH CARE
52. “Completely repeal” the Affordable Care Act and replace it with something “terrific” that is “so much better, so much better, so much better.” Americans will have “great health care at a fraction of the cost.” Trump plans to call Congress into a special session to do this, which will likely be unnecessary.
53. Eliminate the individual mandate, as “no person should be required to buy insurance unless he or she wants to.”
54. Allow individuals to fully deduct health insurance premium payments from their tax returns.
55. Knock down the regulatory walls between states for health insurance, making plans available nationally instead of regionally. “Insurance costs will go down and consumer satisfaction will go up.”
56. Expand use of Health Savings Accounts, which allow workers to save money for medical expenses without having to pay federal income tax on those funds. These payments will be allowed to accumulate and can be passed on to heirs. These funds can be used by any member of a family.
57. Encourage states to establish high-risk pools to cover individuals who have not maintained continuous coverage.
58. Preserve Medicare and Medicaid but encourage states to root out fraud, waste and abuse. Provide states with block grants of Medicaid funds to provide more freedom in designing programs to assist low-income citizens.
59. Reduce the number of individuals on Medicaid and/or using the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Trump would also cut any health care offered to undocumented immigrants.
60. Make medical marijuana widely available to patients and allow states to decide if they want to fully legalize pot.
61. Push the Food and Drug Administration to more quickly approve the thousands of drugs it is currently reviewing. Trump also wants to “advance research and development in health care.”
62. Bring down drug prices by importing cheaper medications from overseas and allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices.
63. Require price transparency from health-care providers so patients can shop for the best prices.
64. “You will be able to choose your own doctor again.”
BORDER SECURITY
65. Fully fund the construction of an “impenetrable physical wall” along the southern border with Mexico. The wall will be one foot taller than the Great Wall of China and “artistically beautiful,” constructed of hardened concrete, rebar and steel. The wall might cover only about 1,000 miles of the nearly 2,000-mile border because of natural barriers, and Trump is open to using fencing in some places.
66. Make Mexico pay for the wall, “100 percent.” If Mexico refuses, then the United States will impound remittance payments taken from the wages of undocumented immigrants, cut foreign aid, institute tariffs, cancel visas for Mexican business leaders and diplomats, and increase fees for visas, border-crossing cards and port use.
67. “Charge Mexico $100,000 for every illegal that crosses that border because it’s trouble.”
68. “Find and dislocate tunnels” along the border.
69. Supplement the wall with “above-and below-ground sensors, towers, aerial surveillance and manpower.” Hire an additional 5,000 Border Patrol agents and expand the number of Border Patrol stations.
70. End “catch-and-release.” Anyone who illegally crosses the border will be detained until they are removed from the country.
IMMIGRATION
71. On the first day in office, terminate President Obama’s executive orders related to immigration.
72. Triple the number of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
73. Cancel federal funding to “sanctuary cities” that choose to not prosecute undocumented immigrants for being in the country illegally.
74. Create a Deportation Task Force.
75. Immediately deport undocumented immigrants who have committed a crime, are a member of a gang or pose a security threat. Trump estimates this is 2 million to 3 million people, although experts say the number is much lower.
76. Deport the millions of undocumented immigrants who are in the United States on an expired visa.
77. Deport undocumented immigrants who are benefiting from government assistance programs such as food stamps or housing assistance.
78. Issue detainers for undocumented immigrants who are arrested for any crime and immediately begin removal proceedings.
79. Do not grant amnesty to immigrants who are in the country illegally. “Anyone who has entered the United States illegally is subject to deportation,” and those wanting legal status will have to return to their home country and apply for reentry.
80. Restore the Secure Communities deportation program, which was ended by the Obama administration in 2014. The program was a partnership among federal, state and local law enforcement agencies that worked together to identify and deport undocumented immigrants.
81. “Expand and revitalize” use of Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows the Department of Homeland Security to deputize state and local law enforcement officers to perform the functions of federal immigration agents.
82. On the first day in office, ask Congress to pass “Kate’s Law” — named for Kate Steinle, who was killed by an undocumented immigrant in San Francisco last summer — to “ensure that criminal aliens convicted of illegal reentry face receive strong mandatory minimum sentences.”
83. Introduce legislation named for Michael Davis Jr. and Danny Oliver, law enforcement officers in California who were killed by an undocumented immigrant in 2014. Such legislation would hasten the removal of “criminal immigrants and terrorists.” (Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama introduced the Davis-Oliver Act in June 2015, but it did not go anywhere.)
84. Stop issuing visas to countries that refuse to take back citizens who immigrated illegally to the United States.
85. Allow “tremendous numbers” of legal immigrants based on a “merit system,” selecting immigrants who will help grow the country’s economy.
86. Reduce the number of legal immigrants because it is “simply too large to perform adequate screening,” and these immigrants could be taking jobs away from American workers.
87. Expand the number of H-1B visas for highly skilled workers so that more of the “talented people” who graduate from Ivy League institutions can stay in the United States and work in Silicon Valley.
88. Get rid of the H-1B visa program because it’s “very, very bad” for American workers.
89. Continue to allow lowly paid foreign workers to come to the United States on temporary work visas to pick grapes and work in seasonal resorts.
90. Institute “extreme vetting” of all immigrants.
91. End birthright citizenship, only granting citizenship to babies whose parents are legally in the country.
92. Sunset visa laws, forcing Congress to periodically review and revise them.
93. Strongly enforce visa expiration dates. Complete the biometric entry-exit visa tracking system, which has been authorized by Congress but has yet to be completed.
94. Strengthen and expand the use of E-Verify, which allows employers to check an employee’s eligibility to work.
95. Urge assimilation because “our system of government, and our American culture, is the best in the world and will produce the best outcomes for all who adopt it.”
96. Accomplish more immigration reforms in a few months than politicians have accomplished in the past 50 years. With these reforms, Trump promises: “Crime will go down, border crossings will plummet, gangs will disappear, and welfare use will decrease.”
97. Make illegal immigration a “memory of the past.”
NATIONAL DEFENSE AND SECURITY
98. Be unpredictable and keep all military strategy a secret. “No one is going to touch us, because I’m so unpredictable.”
99. Put “different generals” in place because “under the leadership of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, I think the generals have been reduced to rubble.” Trim military bureaucracy.
100. Find great generals — like the next Gen. George Patton or Gen. Douglas MacArthur — and do not allow them to go on television news shows to explain their military strategy. Trump prefers generals who are rough, foul-mouthed and beloved by their troops.
101. As soon as he takes office, ask Congress to repeal the defense sequester that limited the military’s budget.
102. Strengthen the military so that it’s “so big and so strong and so great” that “nobody’s going to mess with us.”
103. Equip troops with the “best equipment known to mankind.”
104. Modernize and renew the nuclear weapons arsenal.
105. Grow the Army from its current size of 470,000 active-duty soldiers to 540,000.
106. Modernize and grow the Navy fleet to 350 surface ships and submarines. The Navy currently has 272 deployable battle-force ships.
107. Grow the Air Force to 1,200 fighter aircraft.
108. Grow the Marine Corps to 36 battalions, increasing the active-duty force from its current target of 182,000 to 200,000.
109. Involve all 50 states in rebuilding the military and developing new technologies. Create thousands of jobs building these new ships in Philadelphia, Portsmouth, N.H., and Hampton Roads, Va. North Carolina’s Research Triangle will also play a key role.
110. Develop a “state of the art” missile defense system and modernize naval cruisers to provide Ballistic Missile Defense capabilities. It will cost $220 million per modernization.
111. Leave troops in Afghanistan because it’s such “a mess.”
112. Increase the U.S. military presence in the East and South China Seas.
113. Keep the military prison at Guantanamo Bay open.
114. Continue use of drone strikes but put a renewed emphasis on human intelligence in information gathering and utilize technology such as “3-D printing, artificial intelligence and cyberwarfare.”
115. Drop that “dirty, rotten traitor” Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl out of an airplane into desolate Afghanistan without a parachute. Trump has also suggested that Bergdahl be shot.
116. “I will not hesitate to deploy military force when there is no alternative. But if America fights, it must fight to win.”
CYBERSECURITY
117. Assemble a “cyber review team” of the best military, civilian and private sector cybersecurity experts to comprehensively review all systems and technology, starting with the most sensitive ones. The team will also remain current on new methods of attack and set up protocols for each agency and government officials.
118. Establish a training program for government employees to make certain they understand what defenses are available and utilize them. Punish those who violate classification rules, holding them responsible to the fullest extent of the law.
119. Solicit recommendations from the secretary of defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff for strengthening and augmenting the country’s Cyber Command.
120. Order the Department of Justice to create joint task forces to coordinate responses to cyberthreats. (The FBI already runs “cyber task forces” in each one of its 56 field offices.)
121. Develop better cyberweapons.
VETERANS AFFAIRS
122. Appoint a Department of Veterans Affairs secretary whose “sole purpose will be to serve veterans.”
123. Dramatically reform the agency. Fire “the corrupt and incompetent” leaders and make it easier for the secretary to fire people. Trump promises to protect and promote “honest employees” who highlight wrongdoing. These employees will also receive bonuses.
124. Create a commission to investigate “all the fraud, cover-ups and wrongdoing that has taken place in the VA.” Present these findings to Congress to spur legislative reform.
125. Create a White House hotline that is active 24 hours a day and is answered by a real person who will handle veterans’ complaints of wrongdoing at the VA and “ensure no complaints fall through the cracks.”
126. Allow veterans to take their military identification card to any medical facility that accepts Medicaid patients to receive care. Veterans can also seek care “at a private service provider of their own choice.” Trump promises that: “Under a Trump administration, no veteran will die waiting for service. These days are over starting January 2017.”
127. Embed satellite VA clinics in rural hospitals and underserved areas, and ensure that every VA hospital is permanently staffed with obstetrics and gynecology doctors.
128. Increase funding for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injuries and mental health issues. Increase the number of mental health professionals.
129. Ensure that undocumented immigrants do not receive better health services than veterans.
130. Veterans who apply for a job at a VA facility will have five points added to their qualifying scores. For all jobs across the country, employers should consider veterans ahead of immigrants.
131. Invest more heavily in programs that help military veterans transition back to civilian life, including job training and placement services.
132. “Ensure our veterans get the care they need wherever and whenever they need it. No more long drives. No more waiting backlogs. No more excessive red tape.”
FOREIGN POLICY
133. “A Trump administration will never ever put the interest of a foreign country before the interest of our country. From now on, it’s going to be America first.”
134. Force other NATO countries to pay for more of their defense, and only come to the aid of other countries if those nations have “fulfilled their obligations to us.” In particular, Trump expects Germany, Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia to pay more for the security the United States provides.
135. Call a summit with NATO allies and a separate summit with Asian allies to discuss “a rebalancing of financial commitments” and adopting new strategies, such as upgrading “NATO’s outdated mission and structure.”
136. Get along with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “I hope that we get along great with Putin because it would be great to have Russia with a good relationship.” Trump would also look into lifting the sanctions imposed on Russia after its annexation of Crimea.
137. Communicate with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un about his nuclear program, which would mark a major shift in U.S. policy toward the isolated nation. “I would speak to him, I would have no problem speaking to him.”
138. Stay out of the Syrian civil war. Although Trump considers Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “bad,” he has said the United States has higher priorities. Around the world, Trump has said, he prefers stability over regime changes.
139. Reverse Obama’s executive orders and “concessions towards Cuba until freedoms are restored.” Trump has pledged to “demand political and religious freedom for the people of Cuba.”
140. “Stand with the oppressed people of Venezuela yearning to be free.”
141. Help Haiti and its “incredible people” rebuild their country.
142. Be a “true friend to Israel.” Trump says the United States will “be working with Israel very closely, very, very closely.”
143. Do not throw a lavish state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping, as Obama did last year, and instead buy Jinping a “double-size Big Mac” and tell him “we gotta get down to work.”
144. If not properly welcomed into a foreign country, turn around and leave.
145. “It is time to shake the rust off of America’s foreign policy. It’s time to invite new voices and new visions into the fold.” Trump wants to “establish a foreign policy that will endure for several generations.”
IRAN
146. Tear up the Iran deal and then “totally” renegotiate the whole thing.
147. Negotiate the release of all U.S. prisoners held in Iran before taking office. (Five Americans were released during the campaign, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian; Trump has claimed some credit for this.)
148. Refuse to call Iran’s leader by his preferred title. “I’ll say, ‘Hey baby, how ya doing?’ I will never call him the supreme leader.”
149. “Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon and, under a Trump administration, will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.”
CHINA
150. “We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country, and that’s what they’re doing.”
151. Direct the secretary of the treasury to label China a currency manipulator.
152. Instruct the U.S. trade representative to bring trade cases against China, both here and at the World Trade Organization. If necessary, apply tariffs against China consistent with Section 201 and 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 and Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.
153. Adopt a “zero tolerance policy” for Chinese hackers and those who steal American intellectual property and ideas.
154. Crack down on China’s “lax labor and environmental standards.”
FIGHTING THE ISLAMIC STATE
155. Immediately ask the generals to present a plan within 30 days to defeat and destroy the Islamic State.
156. Frequently use the term “radical Islamic terrorism.”
157. Call an international conference focused on how to halt the spread of the “hateful ideology of Radical Islam. ”
158. Allow Russia to deal with the Islamic State in Syria and/or work with Putin to wipe out shared enemies.
159. Work with allies to cut off funding to the Islamic State, expand intelligence sharing and use cyberwarfare to disrupt and disable their propaganda and recruiting. Work closely with NATO and “our Arab allies and friends in the Middle East.” Partner with Israel, King Abdullah II of Jordan, and Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi and “all others who recognize this ideology of death that must be extinguished.”
160. “Bomb the s--- out of ISIS” and “knock them out.” Also bomb oil fields controlled by the Islamic State, then seize the oil and give the profits to military veterans who were wounded while fighting.
161. Target and kill the relatives of suspected terrorists, a violation of international law.
162. Shut down parts of the Internet so that Islamic State terrorists cannot use it to recruit American children.
163. Bring back waterboarding, which is widely considered torture, and use interrogation techniques that are “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.” Even if such tactics don’t work, Trump says, suspected terrorists “deserve it anyway, for what they’re doing.” (Trump suggested after the election, however, that he was reconsidering his position because of a conversation with a general who opposed the tactic.)
164. Establish a Commission on Radical Islam that will include “reformist voices in the Muslim community” and will identify the warning signs of radicalization, educate the American public and develop protocol for police officers, federal investigators and immigration screeners.
165. Temporarily ban most foreign Muslims from entering the United States “until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” Trump would allow exceptions for dignitaries, business people, athletes and others who have “proven” themselves. Although Trump’s aides, surrogates and running mate insist he no longer wants this so-called Muslim ban, Trump himself has yet to fully disavow the idea and it is still posted on his campaign website.
166. Temporarily suspend “immigration from some of the most dangerous and volatile regions of the world that have a history of exporting terrorism.” Order the Department of State, Homeland Security and the Department of Justice to develop a list of regions and countries to include. The list will likely include Syria and Libya.
167. Create an ideological screening test for all immigration applicants with the goal of keeping “radical Islamic terrorists the hell out of our country.” For example, immigrants from Iraq and Afghanistan would be asked for their views on honor killings and sharia law, along with their opinions of women, gays and minorities.
168. Heavily surveil mosques in the United States. Trump has said he would “strongly consider” closing some mosques.
169. Encourage Muslim communities to “cooperate with law enforcement and turn in the people who they know are bad — and they do know where they are.”
170. Deport those “who are guests in our country that are preaching hate.”
171. Aggressively investigate and charge anyone who lends material support to terrorism.
172. “Our administration will be a friend to all moderate Muslim reformers in the Middle East, and will amplify their voices. This includes speaking out against the horrible practice of honor killings.”
173. “If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president because this would not have happened.”
REFUGEES
174. Bar Syrian refugees from entering the country and kick out any who are already living here, as they might be “the ultimate Trojan horse.”
175. Create a database of Syrian refugees. Trump has also seemed open to the idea of creating a database of Muslims in the country, although his aides say that is not true.
176. Set up safe zones in Syria and then force wealthy Persian Gulf nations such as Saudi Arabia to pick up the bill. “They’re gonna put up all the money. We’re not gonna put up money. We’re gonna lead it and we’ll do a great a job. But we’re gonna get the Gulf states to put up the money.”
177. Do not admit any refugees without the support of the local community where they will be placed.
ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT
178. Gut, if not eliminate, the Environmental Protection Agency, which Trump has called a “disgrace.”
179. Rescind all environmental executive actions signed by Obama.
180. Eliminate “intrusive” regulations, along with “any regulation that is outdated, unnecessary, bad for workers, or contrary to the national interest.” Eliminate duplication in regulations, deferring to local officials and residents. Remove the “draconian barriers” to allow energy infrastructure projects and development to proceed.
181. Eliminate the Clean Water Rule that defines the ”waters of the United States” and gives added protection to tributaries that impact the health of downstream waters.
182. Scrap the Clean Power Plan, which reduces the amount of carbon pollution from power plants. Trump says this could save the country $7.2 billion per year.
183. Oppose a carbon tax on fossil fuels use that could be used to reverse damage to the environment caused by the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
184. Revoke restrictions on new drilling technologies and support “safe hydraulic fracturing” to create “millions of jobs.” Lease more federal land for drilling, including “vast areas of our offshore energy resources.”
185. Ease federal regulations on coal mining to revive the industry. Eliminate Obama’s moratorium on new leases for coal mined from federal lands.
186. Treat climate change like the “hoax” that Trump has said it is. (In a recent interview with the New York Times, Trump seemed to soften that position.)
187. Cancel all funding for domestic and international climate change programs, which he estimates would total $100 billion over two terms. Trump would instead spend that money on domestic infrastructure projects.
188. Pull out of the Paris Agreement, which was recently signed by 196 countries pledging to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
189. Become the world’s dominant leader in energy production. Attain “complete American energy independence” so that the United States is no longer dependent on foreign oil.
190. Lower energy prices for consumers.
191. Ask TransCanada to renew its permit application for the Keystone XL pipeline so that it can be approved.
192. “Unleash an energy revolution that will bring vast new wealth to our country.” Create at least a half million jobs a year, prompting a more than $30 billion increase in annual wages over seven years. This will increase the GDP by more than $100 billion annually. Use the revenue from energy production to rebuild roads, schools, bridges and public infrastructure.
193. Restore and protect the Florida Everglades, even though it’s a “rough-looking sight down there.”
194. Ensure the country has “absolutely crystal clear and clean water” and “beautiful, immaculate air.”
INFRASTRUCTURE
195. Spur the spending of $1 trillion in public and private dollars on infrastructure projects over 10 years. Invest in “transportation, clean water, a modern and reliable electricity grid, telecommunications, security infrastructure, and other pressing domestic infrastructure needs” without adding to the national debt.
196. Negotiate rates for these projects that are one-third of what the United States is currently paying. “Cut wasteful spending on boondoggles” by streamlining the permit and approval processes.
197. Provide tax incentives to encourage public-private partnerships.
198. Employ incentive-based contracting to ensure projects are on time and on budget.
199. Triple funding for revolving loan fund programs to help states and local governments upgrade drinking water and wastewater infrastructure.
200. Create “thousands of new jobs in construction, steel manufacturing, and other sectors” to carry out this work. Only “American workers” will be hired for these jobs.
201. Modernize airports and air traffic control systems. Reform the Federal Aviation Administration and Transportation Security Administration to reduce wait times and hassle for travelers.
202. Look to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who championed the interstate highway system, for inspiration.
ETHICS REFORM
203. “Drain the swamp” in Washington and “cut our ties with the failed politicians of the past.”
204. Propose a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress, limiting House members to three terms, or six years, and senators to two terms, or 12 years.
205. Institute a five-year ban on White House and congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave office. (Trump is already having staff and Cabinet members sign pledges..
206. Institute a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government.
207. Ban foreign lobbyists from raising money for American elections.
208. Appoint an attorney general who will reform the Department of Justice “like it was necessary after Watergate.”
HILLARY CLINTON
209. “Lock her up.” Instruct the attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton’s “situation because there has never been so many lies, so much deception.” Trump had said the investigation would include Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state and the ways in which the Clinton Foundation raised money. (Trump told the New York Times on Tuesday this is now a lesser priority. “I want to move forward, I don’t want to move back. And I don’t want to hurt the Clintons. I really don’t,” he said.)
EDUCATION
210. “When I am president, I will work to ensure that all of our kids are treated equally, and protected equally.”
211. Limit the influence of the Department of Education and give more control to local school districts. The department might also see a major budget cut.
212. Get rid of Common Core because it’s “a disaster” and a “very bad thing.”
213. “Be the nation’s biggest cheerleader for school choice,” use the “pulpit of the presidency” to campaign for expanded school choice in all 50 states and support the election of local, state and federal officials who agree.
214. Allow families to redirect their share of education spending to a private, charter, magnet, religious or homeschool. Provide $20 billion in federal funding to establish block grants that states could use to help children in low-income families enroll at private and charter schools.
215. Support merit pay for teachers.
216. Expand vocational and technical training programs.
217. Take away federal tax breaks and other perks from colleges and universities that do not make “a good faith effort” to reduce the cost of tuition and the amount of student debt.
218. “Make post-secondary options more affordable and accessible through technology enriched delivery models.”
219. Push universities to spend their “multibillion-dollar endowments” on tuition, student life and student housing.
220. Cap repayment of federal student loans at 12.5 percent of a person’s discretionary income and forgive any remaining balance after 15 years. Current income-based plans allow for payments of 10 to 15 percent of discretionary income, with balances forgiven after 20 to 25 years.
221. Reduce or end the government’s role in student loans.
222. Ensure that jobs are waiting for high school and college graduates.
CHILD CARE
223. Rewrite the tax code to allow parents to fully deduct child-care expenses for up to four children and elderly dependents. (Some of these expenses are already deductible under the law.)
224. Create Dependent Care Savings Accounts and provide matching funds for low-income families.
225. Add incentives for employers that offer on-site child care to employees. Trump has said companies can “very easily” and inexpensively do this because “you need one person or two people, and you need some blocks and you need some swings and some toys.”
226. Guarantee six weeks of paid maternity leave by amending the conditions of unemployment insurance employers are required to carry.
INNER-CITY POVERTY AND VIOLENCE
227. “Every action I take, I will ask myself: Does this make life better for young Americans in Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, Ferguson who have as much of a right to live out their dreams as any other child America?”
228. Rebuild and fix inner cities, especially Detroit. “The inner cities are unbelievably dangerous. The education is no good, the safety is horrible, and there are no jobs. And I tell everybody: ‘What the hell do you have to lose?’ I’m going to fix it.”
229. Quickly end inner-city violence, which Trump has repeatedly compared to war zones. “I’ll be able to make sure that when you walk down the street in your inner city, or wherever you are, you’re not gonna be shot. Your child isn’t gonna be shot.”
230. Create “jobs and opportunities for African Americans and Hispanic Americans.”
231. Reduce the number of people receiving welfare.
232. “And at the end of four years, I guarantee you that I will get over 95 percent of the African American vote. I promise you. Because I will produce.”
POLICING
233. “The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon come to an end. Beginning on January 20, 2017, safety will be restored.” On that day, Trump says, “Americans will finally wake up in a country where the laws of the United States are enforced.”
234. Stop the surge of violent crime and homicides in Chicago within “one week.”
235. “Dismantle every last criminal gang and cartel threatening our cities. . . . They are not going to be here very long, folks. They’re gonna be out of here.”
236. Immediately stop the killing of police officers. “It’s going to stop, okay? It’s going to stop. We’re going to be law and order. It’s going to stop.”
237. Sign an executive order calling for the death penalty for anyone found guilty of killing a police officer.
238. Provide more funding for police training.
239. Ensure that firefighters are not shot at when they are responding to a fire.
240. Expand the use of “stop and frisk,” which Trump says worked “incredibly well” in New York.
241. Encourage profiling and targeting “people that maybe look suspicious.”
242. “The police and the law enforcement in this country — I will never ever let them down, just remember that.”
SUPREME COURT
243. Pick Supreme Court justices who are “really great legal scholars,” opposed to abortion and fans of the Second Amendment. Select a replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia from a list of more than 20 contenders that has already been released.
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
244. “If I become president, we’re all going to be saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again.”
245. Get rid of the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits tax-exempt organizations like churches from formally endorsing or opposing political candidates.
246. Sign the First Amendment Defense Act if it passes Congress. The legislation, introduced by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), would prevent any federal agency from denying a tax exemption, grant, contract, license or certification to an individual, association or business that discriminates against gays.
247. “We will be one people under one God.”
ABORTION
248. Defund Planned Parenthood and reallocate its funding to community health centers.
249. Sign into law the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would prohibit abortions after 20 weeks, the point at which antiabortion activists say a fetus can feel pain.
250. Make the Hyde Amendment permanent. Since 1976, Congress has annually passed the Hyde Amendment, banning the use of federal dollars — in particular, Medicaid funds — for abortion, except in the case of rape, incest or a threat to the mother’s life.
GUNS
251. On the first day in office, get rid of gun-free zones at military bases, recruiting centers and, in some cases, schools. These zones are like “target practice for the sickos and for the mentally ill.”
252. Use “common sense” to fix the mental health system to prevent mass shootings. Expand treatment programs and reform laws to make it easier to take preventive action.
253. Rescind Obama’s executive actions related to gun control.
254. Arm more of the “good guys” who can reduce the severity of mass shootings. Get rid of bans on certain types of guns and magazines so that “good, honest people” can own the guns of their choice.
255. Fix the background check system used when purchasing guns to ensure states are properly uploading criminal and health records.
256. Allow concealed-carry permits to be recognized in all 50 states.
257. Impose a minimum sentence of five years in federal prison for any violent felon who commits a crime using a gun, with no chance for parole or early release.
258. Expand programs like Project Exile, a federal program started in Virginia in 1997 that locked up criminals possessing illegal guns for years in federal prisons far from their homes.
259. “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed upon. Period.”
MEDIA
260. “Open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.”
261. Oppose the killing of journalists. “I hate some of these people, but I would never kill them.”
262. Stop AT&T from buying Time Warner, the parent company of CNN. Federal antitrust regulators would have to review and approve that type of merger.
263. “It’s time to reject the political and media elite that’s bled our country dry.”
OTHER
264. Fix the rigged system.
265. Sue the women who have accused him of sexual misconduct or assault. “All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.”
266. Sue the New York Times for publishing accusations from women who say Trump groped them.
267. Reopen Trump University. (Earlier this month, Trump paid $25 million to settle a fraud case against the now defunct business.)
268. Ensure that Iowa continues to host the nation’s first presidential nominating contest.
269. Boost American agriculture by lessening environmental regulations and ensuring family farms aren’t double taxed.
270. Push federal regulators to increase the amount of ethanol blended into the nation’s gasoline supply.
271. “I will take care of women, and I have great respect for women. I do cherish women, and I will take care of women.”
272. Change the new name of North America’s tallest mountain back to Mount McKinley.
273. Provide more funding for drug treatment, especially for heroin addicts. “We are going to work very hard with medical professionals to take care of those people that are so badly addicted.”
274. Fully protect Social Security benefits.
OVERARCHING PROMISES
275. “The whole psyche [of the United States] will change” on Election Day.
276. “Whether you vote for me or not, I’m with you. I will never ever let you down.”
277. “I will give you everything.”
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278. “I pledge to protect and defend all Americans who live inside of our borders. Wherever they come from, wherever they were born, all Americans living here and following our laws will be protected. America will be a tolerant and open society.”
279. Be a cheerleader for America and bring the country’s spirit back. “Bring us all together as Americans. We’re living in a divided nation. We’re living in a very divided nation. We’re going to be brought together.”
280. Bring back the American Dream. “Take the brand of the United States and make it great again.”
281. “We will start winning again and winning like you’ve never seen before.”
282. “Together we will make American wealthy and prosperous again. We will make America strong again. We will make America safe again. And we will make America great again.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... ing&wpmm=1
by stefano » Wed Mar 01, 2017 2:30 pm
Wombaticus Rex » Sat Aug 27, 2016 10:47 pm wrote:One major name that's been emerging in the past year is Robert Mercer, which is wild. He's part of the James Harris Simons hedge-fund Renaissance Technologies. Simons is one of the single most impressive & intelligent people on the East Coast, to me.
Mercer, less so. Dude supported Ted Cruz and now he's rallying to Trump's side -- Mercer is also the connection that's linked up walrus-faced John Bolton as a "Foreign Policy Advisor," although I doubt Trump listens to a single word that wonk has to sputter. His other claim to fame is spending over $2m on a fucking model railroad and then suing the guy who actually built it for him -- the rich need hobbies, bruh.
Last December, I wrote about Cambridge Analytica in a piece about how Google’s search results on certain subjects were being dominated by rightwing and extremist sites. Jonathan Albright, a professor of communications at Elon University, North Carolina, who had mapped the news ecosystem and found millions of links between rightwing sites “strangling” the mainstream media, told me that trackers from sites like Breitbart could also be used by companies like Cambridge Analytica to follow people around the web and then, via Facebook, target them with ads.
On its website, Cambridge Analytica makes the astonishing boast that it has psychological profiles based on 5,000 separate pieces of data on 220 million American voters – its USP is to use this data to understand people’s deepest emotions and then target them accordingly. The system, according to Albright, amounted to a “propaganda machine”.
...
Wigmore scrolls through the snaps on his phone. “That’s the one I took,” he says pointing at the now globally famous photo of Farage and Trump in front of his golden elevator door giving the thumbs-up sign. Wigmore was one of the “bad boys of Brexit” – a term coined by Arron Banks, the Bristol-based businessman who was Leave.EU’s co-founder.
Cambridge Analytica had worked for them, he said. It had taught them how to build profiles, how to target people and how to scoop up masses of data from people’s Facebook profiles. A video on YouTube shows one of Cambridge Analytica’s and SCL’s employees, Brittany Kaiser, sitting on the panel at Leave.EU’s launch event.
Facebook was the key to the entire campaign, Wigmore explained. A Facebook ‘like’, he said, was their most “potent weapon”. “Because using artificial intelligence, as we did, tells you all sorts of things about that individual and how to convince them with what sort of advert. And you knew there would also be other people in their network who liked what they liked, so you could spread. And then you follow them. The computer never stops learning and it never stops monitoring.”
...
They hadn’t “employed” Cambridge Analytica, he said. No money changed hands. “They were happy to help.”
Why?
“Because Nigel is a good friend of the Mercers. And Robert Mercer introduced them to us. He said, ‘Here’s this company we think may be useful to you.’ What they were trying to do in the US and what we were trying to do had massive parallels. We shared a lot of information. Why wouldn’t you?” Behind Trump’s campaign and Cambridge Analytica, he said, were “the same people. It’s the same family.”
There were already a lot of questions swirling around Cambridge Analytica, and Andy Wigmore has opened up a whole lot more. Such as: are you supposed to declare services-in-kind as some sort of donation? The Electoral Commission says yes, if it was more than £7,500. And was it declared? The Electoral Commission says no. Does that mean a foreign billionaire had possibly influenced the referendum without that influence being apparent? It’s certainly a question worth asking.
...
Cambridge Analytica said last Friday they are in touch with the ICO and are completely compliant with UK and EU data laws. It did not answer other questions the Observer put to it this week about how it built its psychometric model, which owes its origins to original research carried out by scientists at Cambridge University’s Psychometric Centre, research based on a personality quiz on Facebook that went viral. More than 6 million people ended up doing it, producing an astonishing treasure trove of data.
These Facebook profiles – especially people’s “likes” – could be correlated across millions of others to produce uncannily accurate results. Michal Kosinski, the centre’s lead scientist, found that with knowledge of 150 likes, their model could predict someone’s personality better than their spouse. With 300, it understood you better than yourself. “Computers see us in a more robust way than we see ourselves,” says Kosinski.
...
But in many ways, it’s what Cambridge Analytica’s parent company does that raises even more questions.
Emma Briant, a propaganda specialist at the University of Sheffield, wrote about SCL Group in her 2015 book, Propaganda and Counter-Terrorism: Strategies for Global Change. Cambridge Analytica has the technological tools to effect behavioural and psychological change, she said, but it’s SCL that strategises it. It has specialised, at the highest level – for Nato, the MoD, the US state department and others – in changing the behaviour of large groups. It models mass populations and then it changes their beliefs.
SCL was founded by someone called Nigel Oakes, who worked for Saatchi & Saatchi on Margaret Thatcher’s image, says Briant, and the company had been “making money out of the propaganda side of the war on terrorism over a long period of time. There are different arms of SCL but it’s all about reach and the ability to shape the discourse. They are trying to amplify particular political narratives. And they are selective in who they go for: they are not doing this for the left.”
by Iamwhomiam » Wed Mar 01, 2017 2:40 pm
by seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 01, 2017 2:59 pm
Billionaire father and daughter linked to Trump shake-up
By Jonathan Swan - 08/17/16 04:37 PM EDT
Donald Trump’s dramatic staff shake-up on Wednesday revealed the growing influence wielded on his campaign by a Republican megadonor duo.
The fingerprints of Robert Mercer, a New York hedge fund billionaire, and his middle daughter, Rebekah, can be seen all over the new Trump staffing appointments and other decisions being made by the GOP presidential nominee.
The Mercers, who previously put $13.5 million into a super-PAC supporting Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's presidential bid, have recently converted the group into the Defeat Crooked Hillary PAC, targeting Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Robert Mercer has reportedly made a “substantial” additional investment of at least $1 million in the new super-PAC, which has already spent $500,000 on digital ads attacking Clinton in eight battleground states. Additionally, he and particularly Rebekah have become influential figures in Trump World in the past few months.
Rebekah Mercer “lives in a beautiful apartment in one of Trump's buildings on the Upper West Side [of New York City] overlooking the Hudson River,” a source who knows her told The Hill.
A Heritage Foundation trustee and director of the Mercer Family Foundation, Rebekah takes the lead on the details of the Mercers’ political operation, while her father provides the funds.
She’s known as a hands-on operator who won’t open up the Mercer checkbook without strict conditions about which vendors are used and which consultants are hired.
Now loyal to Trump, the Mercers were furious when Cruz didn’t endorse the nominee at the Republican National Convention last month. And because they are among the few megadonors to get fully behind Trump, they now increasingly have his ear.
Stephen Bannon, the Trump campaign’s newly appointed CEO, is “tied at the hip” with Rebekah Mercer, said a source who has worked with the Mercers in their political activities.
The Mercers are united with Bannon in their deep opposition to Clinton. They worked with Bannon and provided funds for the "Clinton Cash" movie, based on the book by Peter Schweizer.
And Trump’s other major appointment Wednesday — his promotion of veteran pollster Kellyanne Conway from senior adviser to campaign manager — also bears the hallmarks of the GOP megadonor family’s influence, according to sources who have worked with the Mercers.
“The Mercers basically own this campaign,” said a source who has worked with Rebekah Mercer in her political activities. “They have installed their people. ... And now they’ve got their data firm in there.”
That assertion is possibly overselling the Mercer’s influence because the GOP nominee is his own man and has strong personal relationships with both Bannon and Conway, a source close to Trump said.
But even this source, who said Trump would not be swayed by any donor, conceded that the Mercers have built significant influence over the campaign in a relatively short time.
Trump’s recent decision to employ the data firm Cambridge Analytica, a company in which Robert Mercer is an investor, is another clear sign of Rebekah Mercer's influence, two sources who have worked with Cambridge said.
“As a donor, this is reflective of how she operates,” one of these sources said of Rebekah Mercer, who has both a dual bachelor's degree and a master's degree from Stanford University.
“She’s very nice and very unassuming ... but she’s also no bullshit. Her style is, 'If you want my money, you have to do things the way I want.'"
Neither Cambridge Analytica, the Trump campaign, nor representatives for the Mercers would comment for this report.
Conway, who also did not respond to a request for comment, led the Cruz-aligned Keep the Promise super-PAC funded by the Mercers and is a trusted political adviser to the family.
Rebekah Mercer has been known to recommend that people she works with travel to Los Angeles to meet with Bannon.
“And it’s not a recommendation; it’s happening. It’s understood that it’s happening. She’ll set up the dinner with Bannon,” said a source who has worked with Mercer.
Bannon, a former Goldman Sachs banker and Navy officer, predated Trump in pushing the populist nationalism that now dominates the GOP nominee’s campaign.
To lead Trump’s campaign, he’s taking temporary leave from running Breitbart News, a pro-Trump news website also funded by the Mercers.
Rebekah Mercer has been known to indicate to people in the public policy world that she can influence Breitbart coverage where needed.
During the Republican convention, Bannon and Breitbart’s Washington political editor, Matt Boyle, were listed as invited guests of Mercer in a private donor suite, according to a document published by Bloomberg Politics. The Hill could not confirm their attendance in the suite.
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Mercer spoke to Trump on Saturday evening at a Hamptons fundraiser hosted at the home of New York Jets owner Woody Johnson. She reportedly spoke highly of Bannon, who has long been a confidant of Trump’s.
Little has been written about the Mercers because they avoid the public spotlight, but conservative sources who know the family, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described them as “kind, civic-minded people and consensus-builders.”
“Bekah and her two sisters have a side cookie business,” one of these sources said when asked to give a flavor of Bekah's personal style.
“She will serve these delicious gourmet cookies at her apartment, at conservative fundraisers. ... She sends people on their way with hand-wrapped cookies."
But that source, who has worked with Mercer in some of her other political ventures, said it was a surprise to some people that the Mercers had swung so forcefully behind Trump, given her ideological bent.
“She identifies as a libertarian. At least she always did,” the source said, adding that Mercer was a big supporter of libertarian think tanks like the Goldwater Institute and Cato.
“With Bekah you always had to prove your libertarian racing stripes,” the source added. “This seems really strange.”
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/29 ... mp-shakeup
Donald Trump Finds an Easy Mark in Urine Mogul Robert Mercer
Jon Schwarz
October 13 2016, 12:30 p.m.
EVEN AS DONALD TRUMP’S campaign has exploded like the Krakatoa volcano in 1883, his primary financial backer, billionaire hedge fund manager Robert Mercer, has never wavered.
In a recent statement Mercer declared, in language reminiscent of an early John Birch pamphlet, that “America is finally fed up and disgusted with its political elite. Trump is channeling this disgust and those among the political elite who quake before the boombox of media blather do not appreciate the apocalyptic choice that America faces on November 8th. We have a country to save and there is only one person who can save it.”
Mercer, the co-CEO of Renaissance Technologies on Long Island, is the most generous conservative donor of this election, contributing more than $20 million so far. Mercer began the cycle as a key supporter of Ted Cruz, creating Keep the Promise I, a Super PAC devoted to electing Cruz, and giving it $13.5 million. But when Cruz dropped out, Mercer changed its name to Make America Number 1, gave it millions more, and set it to work electing Trump. Mercer is also one of the main investors in Breitbart, and his daughter organized the August campaign shakeup that put Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon — both longtime Mercer intimates — in charge.
So why does Mercer feel such allegiance to Trump? Is it Trump’s policies, élan, and extraordinary judgement and poise?
Maybe. But based on Mercer’s past, it’s more likely that it’s that Mercer is an incredibly easy mark. He has a long history of falling for cranks and grifters, and Trump is just the largest.
Mercer is a relative newcomer to big-time Republican politics, but not to writing big checks to people with exciting proposals to change the world.
For instance, in 2005 Mercer’s family foundation sent $60,000 to Art Robinson, an Oregon chemist, so Robinson could expand his huge collection of human urine. Robinson, who believes that a close analysis of urine can “improve our health, our happiness and prosperity, and even the academic performance of our children in school,” has now received a total of $1.4 million from the Mercer foundation. He’s used this to buy urine freezers and mail postcards to puzzled Oregonians asking them to send him their urine, among other things.
Robinson, who also feels public education is America’s “most widespread and devastating form of child abuse and racism,” ran for Congress in 2010 against Democrat Peter DeFazio. Mercer, smitten with Robinson’s vision of low taxes and large-scale urine collection, co-funded a Super PAC that spent $600,000 on ads supporting him.
Mercer also funds the peculiar organization Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, to which Robinson belongs. The group’s other members hold varied beliefs, such as that low doses of radiation are good for you, that HIV does not cause AIDS, and that the U.S. government did not stop the San Bernardino terrorist attacks because it’s “on the other side.”
More recently, Mercer contributed $425,000 to the Super PAC “Black Americans for a Better Future.” The other donors — all of whom appear to be, like Mercer, white — have given only $38,350 combined, making Mercer responsible for 92 percent of the haul. BABF seems to exist only to employ Raynard Jackson, an African-American political consultant in Washington, D.C., who has accused Barack Obama of “relentless pandering to homosexuals.” Given that BABF’s stated goal is to deliver “at least 15% of the black vote” to the GOP presidential nominee this year, it’s fair to say it hasn’t been a rousing success. In the small world of black Republicans, Jackson is viewed as an embarrassment and a conman.
Then we come to Trump, whose portfolios of scams seems as infinite as the stars. Remarkably, Trump has also been involved in urine solicitation — his multilevel marketing scheme The Trump Network asked members to send in a urine sample so they could receive vitamins perfectly tailored to their metabolism. Perhaps it was hearing about the urine angle that ultimately sold Mercer on Trump’s trustworthiness and acumen.
In the end, Mercer’s story seems a little sad. It’s easy to imagine Trump, Bannon, and Conway explaining to him that with just a little more of his money they can win the election by proving that two wrongs in fact do make a right. “We’ve got trouble, right here in New York City,” they must tell him on conference calls. “And that starts with T, and that rhymes with C, and that stands for Clenis.”
Then everybody hangs up and Mercer goes back to playing with his $2 million model train, overjoyed that he’s finally got some nice, smart friends who really like him.
https://theintercept.com/2016/10/13/don ... rt-mercer/
As Trump Ally, Rudy Giuliani Boasts of Ties to F.B.I.
About New York
By JIM DWYER NOV. 3, 2016
Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, seemed in a giddy mood when he was interviewed last week on the “Fox & Friends” morning television show.
Tireless if often wildly inaccurate in his attacks on Hillary Clinton’s ethics, health and work as a United States senator and as secretary of state, Mr. Giuliani has been spending every minute in the public spotlight as a surrogate for Donald J. Trump.
His most remarkable claim is that he has a pipeline into the Federal Bureau of Investigation and that agents tell him they are “outraged” that they have not been able to bring Mrs. Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, to justice.
But his television appearance on Tuesday of last week appeared, at the time, to be in a softer hue.
Brian Kilmeade, a Fox News host, asked Mr. Giuliani about the presidential campaign during its last two weeks.
“Does Donald Trump plan anything except a series of inspiring rallies?” Mr. Kilmeade asked.
“Yes,” Mr. Giuliani replied.
Another host, Ainsley Earhardt, jumped in.
“What?” she asked.
“Ha-ha-ha,” Mr. Giuliani laughed. “You’ll see.”
Appearing to enjoy his own coy reply, Mr. Giuliani resumed chuckling: “Ha-ha-ha.”
“When will this happen?” Ms. Earhardt asked.
“We got a couple of surprises left,” Mr. Giuliani said, smiling.
This enigmatic reply roused the show’s third host, Steve Doocy.
“October surprises?” he asked.
Mr. Giuliani expanded a bit.
“Well,” he said, “I call them early surprises in the way we’re going to campaign to get our message out, maybe in a little bit of a different way. You’ll see. And I think it’ll be enormously effective. And I do think that all of these revelations about Hillary Clinton finally are beginning to have an impact.”
Three days later, James B. Comey, the director of the F.B.I., said agents were reviewing emails “that appear to be pertinent” to a closed investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s use of a personal email server while secretary of state.
Mr. Comey said he did not know whether the material was significant but felt Congress should know because he had testified at hearings in July about the investigation.
Against the ceaseless droning buzz of the presidential campaign, Mr. Comey’s revelation boomed like a sudden, unexpected crack of thunder — though a poll by The New York Times and CBS News released on Thursday found that it had not changed people’s minds.
Did Mr. Giuliani have an inside track on the F.B.I.’s discovery of emails, apparently on a laptop belonging to Anthony D. Weiner, the estranged husband of the Clinton aide Huma Abedin?
Oh, not at all, said Jason Miller, a spokesman for the Trump campaign.
“Rudy was just having fun,” Mr. Miller said. “To keep the other side on their toes.”
Since August, Mr. Giuliani has publicly claimed that F.B.I. agents were telling him that Mrs. Clinton should have been criminally charged for the email server.
“It perplexes numerous F.B.I. agents who talk to me all the time,” Mr. Giuliani said during an August interview with Chris Cuomo on CNN. “And it embarrasses some F.B.I. agents.”
Mr. Giuliani has not named the embarrassed or perplexed agents, and as Wayne Barrett noted in The Daily Beast on Thursday, it is a violation of F.B.I. policy for agents to share investigative information.
This week, Mr. Giuliani opened a new front. He attributed what might be seen as a commonplace difference of opinion about law and evidence to rampant corruption at the highest levels of the Justice Department, specifically naming the attorney general, Loretta E. Lynch, who began her career as a prosecutor in the New York area in 1990 and has obtained convictions of politically corrupt Republicans and Democrats.
Mr. Giuliani provided no substantiation of this grave accusation, but instead staked his claims on information that he said came from unnamed law enforcement sources.
“You have outraged F.B.I. agents that talk to me,” Mr. Giuliani said in an interview on Wednesday with Megyn Kelly on Fox News. “They are outraged at the injustice. They are outraged at being turned down by the Justice Department to open a grand jury. They are convinced that Loretta Lynch has corrupted the Justice Department.”
Asked about Mr. Giuliani’s statements, Mr. Miller said that, in fact, the former mayor had not been speaking with any active F.B.I. agents. “He has only had conversations with retired F.B.I. agents who no longer work inside the building,” Mr. Miller said.
So Mr. Giuliani was apparently basing his charges on second- or thirdhand information when he declared, “This is worse than Watergate.”
A bit much? Maybe. But he is giving Joseph McCarthy a run for his money.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/04/nyreg ... e-fbi.html
FBI fear of leaks drove decision on emails linked to Clinton: sources
By Mark Hosenball | WASHINGTON
FBI Director James Comey was driven in part by a fear of leaks from within his agency when he decided to tell Congress the FBI was investigating newly discovered emails related to Hillary Clinton, law enforcement sources said on Thursday.
The examination of the email traffic is now being carried out under the tightest secrecy by a team at Federal Bureau of Investigations headquarters in Washington, the sources said, requesting anonymity because of the inquiry's sensitivity.
Several sources said it was unclear whether the FBI would make any further public disclosures about its latest review before Tuesday's presidential and congressional elections. Two sources said such disclosures were unlikely.
Another source, recently in contact with top investigators, said: "It depends on how it goes and what they find." The source said that, as of Thursday, "nobody really knows" whether the FBI will have anything further to say before the election.
Dropping like a bombshell on the U.S. presidential campaign, Comey's disclosure last Friday in a letter to senior lawmakers just days before the elections raised questions about his motives and drew criticism from some over his timing.
Comey disclosed that the FBI was looking at emails as part of a probe into Clinton's use of a private email system while secretary of state, without describing the emails' content or how long the inquiry might take. The FBI normally does not comment on ongoing inquiries.
The latest emails examination was moving forward "expeditiously," said one source close to the review.
The new emails turned up as FBI investigators were examining electronic devices used by former Democratic Representative Anthony Weiner in connection with an alleged "sexting" scandal. Weiner's estranged wife, Huma Abedin, is a Clinton confidante.
Two law enforcement sources familiar with the FBI's New York Field Office, which initially discovered the emails, said a faction of investigators based in the office is known to be hostile to Hillary Clinton. A spokeswoman for the FBI's New York office said she had no knowledge about this.
Democratic Party sources said such a faction was likely responsible for a recent surge in media leaks on alleged details of an ongoing FBI investigation of the Clinton Foundation.
ALSO IN POLITICS
FBI examining fake documents targeting Clinton campaign: sources
Trump gains ground on Clinton: Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation
The FBI has made preliminary inquiries into Clinton Foundation activities and alleged contacts between Trump and associates with parties in Russia, according to law enforcement sources. But these inquiries were shifted into low gear weeks ago because the FBI wanted to avoid any impact on the election.
The FBI previously had spent about a year investigating Clinton's use of the unauthorized server at her home in Chappaqua, New York, instead of the State Department system after classified government secrets were found in some of her emails.
Comey had said in July that while there was "evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case."
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-e ... SKBN12Y2QD
HAS THE F.B.I. GONE FULL BREITBART?
New reports reveal how the F.B.I. relied on an infamous Breitbart source as the basis for its investigation into the Clinton Foundation—and that agents see Clinton as “the antichrist personified.”
BY ABIGAIL TRACY NOVEMBER 3, 2016 12:48 PM
Throughout her campaign, Hillary Clinton has battled accusations of fostering a “pay for play” culture at the State Department, giving undue access to major Clinton Foundation donors. So far, Republicans have failed to find a smoking gun, but the narrative has served its purpose: tarnishing the public perception of the Democratic nominee and her family’s namesake charity. For this, no one deserves more credit than Peter Schweizer, Breitbart editor-at-large and the author of Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. The controversial, mostly discredited book has been held up by many as irrefutable proof of wrongdoing, or at least common venality, by the Clintons. It also found plenty of eager readers within the Federal Bureau of Investigation, The Wall Street Journal and New York Times report, galvanizing a number of F.B.I. agents to launch an investigation into the Clinton Foundation, based mostly on assertions made by Schweizer in the book.
On Thursday, the Journal reported that last summer, shortly after Clinton Cash was published, a number of F.B.I. agents began investigating claims made against the Clinton Foundation in the book, ultimately prompting an internal battle between the agents and F.B.I. and Justice Department officials. The agents secretly recorded conversations with two informants—both of whom were involved in separate public-corruption investigations—about the Clinton Foundation, and believed that they had enough evidence to build a case. Senior officials in the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, however, were skeptical of the evidence and the primary source, Schweizer’s book. Public-integrity prosecutors reportedly “weren’t impressed” and “thought the talk was hearsay and a weak basis to warrant aggressive tactics, like presenting evidence to a grand jury, because the person who was secretly recorded wasn’t inside the Clinton Foundation,” according to the Journal’s report.
The argument is certainly a compelling one. Even Schweizer—whom the Journal reports was interviewed on several occasions by the F.B.I. agents interested in the Clinton Foundation—has conceded that he does not have any “direct evidence” to prove that the Clintons have done anything beyond the pale. During an interview with ABC’s This Week in April 2015, the author said, “The smoking gun is the pattern of behavior,” and when pressed by host George Stephanopoulos, added, “It’s not up to an author to prove the crime.” Schweizer is also hardly without his own agenda. At Breitbart, Schweizer worked under former executive Stephen Bannon, now the campaign C.E.O. for Donald Trump. He is also the president of the Government Accountability Institute, a nonprofit organization co-founded by Bannon that seeks to build criminal cases against political figures. The institute helped publish Clinton Cash, and Bannon co-wrote and produced a film based on the book.
CLINTON IS “THE ANTICHRIST PERSONIFIED TO A LARGE SWATH OF FBI PERSONNEL.”
Despite a questionable source and orders from the Justice Department and senior F.B.I. officials to “stand down,” F.B.I. agents reportedly continued to investigate the Clinton Foundation. The Journal reports that the dispute reached a fever pitch on August 12, when a Justice Department official called the deputy director of the F.B.I., Andrew McCabe, to complain about the agents’ continued inquiry, prompting him to ask, “Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?” to which the official replied, “Of course not.” The F.B.I. agents, meanwhile, were reportedly furious that leadership seemed to be trying to rein them in. As the Times reports, senior F.B.I. officials originally agreed with the Justice Department to wait until after the election to decide how to proceed against the Clintons. Now, with F.B.I. director James Comey’s decision to publicize the investigation into Clinton’s e-mail server—and the subsequent explosion of leaks and counter-leaks emanating from the agency—the infighting and partisan politics within the bureau are open for all the world to see.
The implications of an increasingly partisan F.B.I. are deeply troublesome. If Clinton becomes president, the bureau will likely become the primary tool of Republicans seeking to investigate her. The word “impeachment” is already on the lips of several lawmakers eager to resurrect the scandal-driven Clinton mania of the late 1990s. And if Trump becomes president, he may find in the bureau an army of sympathetic law enforcement officers ready to assist his political agenda—or vendetta, as the case may be. During interviews with The Guardian, published Thursday, a number of F.B.I. agents described an intensely anti-Clinton atmosphere at the F.B.I., with one characterizing it as “Trumpland.” Clinton, the agent said, is seen as “the antichrist personified” to many people within the bureau, and “the reason why they’re leaking is they’re pro-Trump.”
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/11/ ... -breitbart
THURSDAY, NOV 3, 2016 03:58 AM CDT
FBI takes a page from Breitbart: Far-right “Clinton Cash” book used in Foundation investigation
The New York Times report on the FBI's Clinton Foundation investigation reveals a pretty sketchy information source
GARY LEGUM
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has gone full Breitbart.
OK, not really. But this nugget from a New York Times story on how the bureau kept two investigations under wraps this summer so as not to appear to be meddling in the presidential campaign could lead you to wonder.
In August . . . the F.B.I. grappled with whether to issue subpoenas in the Clinton Foundation case, which . . . was in its preliminary stages. The investigation, based in New York, had not developed much evidence and was based mostly on information that had surfaced in news stories and the book “Clinton Cash,” according to several law enforcement officials briefed on the case.
Oh, neat, “Clinton Cash,” the partisan hit job published last year by Breitbart’s editor-at-large, Peter Schweizer, and later adapted into a documentary that was executive produced by former Breitbart chairman and current Trump campaign CEO Stephen Bannon. Next the FBI will tell us that Roger Stone was the special agent in charge of the investigation.
If you have forgotten about “Clinton Cash,” Digby laid out a nice case against it and Schweizer. The short version is that the book was one in a long, long line of thinly sourced tales about the Clintons that have made millions of dollars for various right-wing writers and publishing houses since the early 1990s. For that matter, these tales sold a lot of copies of the Times as well, when it went all in chasing Whitewater stories early in Bill Clinton’s presidency.
“Clinton Cash,” published just as Hillary Clinton was announcing her own campaign for the presidency, is an obvious effort to cash in early to what will likely be four to eight years’ worth of salacious and worthless investigations of her upcoming administration. It immediately ran into the same problem that dozens of anti-Clinton books have encountered over the years: It contained more bullshit than a waste pond on a cattle ranch. The publisher had to make revisions to the book’s later editions. Schweizer was forced to admit in both interviews and in the conclusion of his book that he had not quite made the case he was trying to present.
Senior FBI and Justice Department officials came to the same conclusion, much to the apparent dissatisfaction of some agents, as the Times reported:
In meetings, the Justice Department and senior F.B.I. officials agreed that making the Clinton Foundation investigation public could influence the presidential race and suggest they were favoring Mr. Trump. . . . They agreed to keep the case open but wait until after the election to determine their next steps. The move infuriated some agents, who thought that the F.B.I.’s leaders were reining them in because of politics.
Or possibly the agents were being reined in because they were being snookered by the right-wing noise machine. The right has been doing this for 25 years — trying to turn the nation’s criminal investigatory apparatus into an arm of the Republican Party for the sole purpose of destroying the Clintons.
And if it can’t get the GOP what it wants? Just this week Rep. Elijah Cummings, ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, mentioned the pressure that Republicans on the committee have been putting on the FBI to turn up something — anything — on Hillary Clinton regarding her private email server and suggested the GOP is going to start investigating the bureau and its director, James Comey, over the agency’s failure.
This latest blowup is simply the newest chapter in better than two decades of Republicans co-opting the FBI and other investigative agencies in service of chasing whatever dark Clintonian shadows they can conjure from the fever swamps of right-wing media and websites. No charge is too spurious or absurd, which is how the nation wound up with the specter in the 1990s of a Republican congressman shooting cantaloupes in his backyard to “prove” that Vince Foster could not have committed suicide.
It is not new, of course, for right-wing demagogues to use the FBI to chase down false and inflammatory garbage. But even with its history, one of the ways the bureau maintains legitimacy as an institution is by giving the appearance of a nonpartisan actor. If its agents are so determined to base investigations on right-wing con jobs that their bosses do have to rein them in, then it will lose whatever moral authority it wants to claim.
http://www.salon.com/2016/11/03/fbi-tak ... stigation/
[/quote]Fox’s Bret Baier Walks Back Flawed Reporting About “Likely” Clinton Indictment
Blog ››› 6 hours 55 min ago ››› MEDIA MATTERS STAFF
Fox News’ Bret Baier walked back his November 2 claim, which was based on two unnamed sources, that FBI investigations relating to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton will “continue to likely an indictment.” On the November 3 edition of Fox’s Happening Now, Baier described his comments as “inartful,” acknowledging that “that’s not the process.” Baier’s uncritical reporting of anonymous, unvetted sources has been parroted by a stream of Fox hosts and correspondents, as well as right-wing blogs.
The Daily Beast has reported on a pipeline between conservative FBI agents (both active and retired) -- angered by FBI Director James Comey’s conclusion in July that there was insufficient evidence to recommend any indictment in the review of Clinton’s use of private email as secretary of state -- and Fox News. According to The Daily Beast, “Trump supporters with strong ties to the agency kept talking about surprises and leaks to come -- and come they did.” From the November 3 edition of Fox News’ Happening Now:
MARTHA MACCALLUM (CO-HOST): The FBI sources that you spoke with suggest that an indictment is likely. That would prove -- go ahead.
BRET BAIER: I want to be clear -- I want to be clear about this, and this was -- came from a Q and A that I did with Brit Hume after my show and after we went through everything. He asked me if, after the election, if Hillary Clinton wins, will this investigation continue, and I said, “yes absolutely.” I pressed the sources again and again what would happen. I got to the end of that and said, “they have a lot of evidence that would, likely lead to an indictment.” But that’s not, that’s inartfully answered. That’s not the process. That’s not how you do it. You have to have a prosecutor. If they don't move forward with a prosecutor with the DOJ, there would be, I'm told, a very public call for an independent prosecutor to move forward. There is confidence in the evidence, but for me to phrase it like I did, of course that got picked up everywhere, but the process is different than that.
https://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/11/0 ... ent/214274
seemslikeadream » Fri Nov 04, 2016 6:47 pm wrote:seemslikeadream » Fri Nov 04, 2016 6:18 am wrote:The FBI. Giuliani. Of Course.
It's only downhill from here.
BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
NOV 3, 2016
Since the passing of Mike Royko and with the possible exception of Kevin Cullen at The Boston Globe, there is no reporter who knows an individual city as well as Wayne Barrett knows New York. Years ago, when he was writing for The Village Voice and I was starting out at The Boston Phoenix, Barrett was one of the people I read to learn the difference between the alternative press and everything else. He is steeped in the political history of modern New York, particularly the h0istory of the last quarter of the 20th Century and the various ambulatory relics who are still wandering through our politics here in the first quarter of the 21st.
On Thursday, in The Daily Beast, Barrett came as close as anyone has in explaining the Byzantine internal politics of the FBI as regards the presidential campaign. It involves Rudy Giuliani, his pals in the FBI from his days as a U.S. Attorney, and his current role as security jefe for El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago.
Hours after Comey's letter about the renewed probe was leaked on Friday, Giuliani went on a radio show and attributed the director's surprise action to "the pressure of a group of FBI agents who don't look at it politically." "The other rumor that I get is that there's a kind of revolution going on inside the FBI about the original conclusion [not to charge Clinton] being completely unjustified and almost a slap in the face to the FBI's integrity," said Giuliani. "I know that from former agents. I know that even from a few active agents." Along with Giuliani's other connections to New York FBI agents, his former law firm, then called Bracewell Giuliani, has long been general counsel to the FBI Agents Association (FBIAA), which represents 13,000 former and current agents. The group, born in the New York office in the early '80s, was headed until Monday by Rey Tariche, an agent still working in that office. Tariche's resignation letter from the bureau mentioned the Clinton probe, noting that "we find our work—our integrity questioned" because of it, adding "we will not be used for political gains."
Of course not.
Barrett further identified James Kallstrom, who ran the FBI New York office under former director Louis Freeh, a running buddy of Giuliani. As Barrett demonstrates, Kallstrom has been more than vocal in his dissatisfaction with the fact that no Clinton has yet been clapped in irons.
Kallstrom has, like Giuliani, been on an anti-Comey romp for months, most often on Fox, where he's called the Clintons as a "crime family." He has been invoking unnamed FBI agents who contact him to complain about Comey's exoneration of Clinton in one interview after another, positioning himself as an apolitical champion of FBI values. Last October, after President Obama told 60 Minutes that the Clinton emails weren't a national security issue, Megyn Kelly interviewed Kallstrom on Fox. "You know a lot of the agents involved in this investigation," she said. "How angry must they be tonight?" "I know some of the agents," said Kallstrom. "I know some of the supervisors and I know the senior staff. And they're P.O.'d, I mean no question. This is like someone driving another nail in the coffin of the criminal justice system." Kallstrom declared that "if it's pushed under the rug," the agents "won't take that sitting down." Kelly confirmed: "That's going to get leaked."
Apparently, ever since news of the Comey letter broke last Friday, Kallstrom has been on a kind of victory lap around the various platforms of the Fox News empire. Meanwhile, Barrett got him on the phone and prompted an energetic tap dance.
Kallstrom adamantly denied he'd ever said he was in contact with agents "involved" in the Clinton case, insisting that he didn't even know "the agents' names." He asked if this story was "a hit piece," and contended that it was "offensive" to even suggest that he'd communicated with those agents. When I emailed him two quotes where he made that claim, he responded: "I know agents in the building who used to work for me. I don't know any agents in the Washington field office involved directly in the investigation." Later, though he acknowledged that "the bulk" of the agents on the Weiner case are "in the New York office," even as he insisted that the "locals" he told Pirro would've leaked the renewed probe had not Comey revealed it were not necessarily agents. He declined to explain why Megyn Kelly stated as a fact that he was in contact with agents "involved" in the case. Asked in a follow up email if he suggested or encouraged any particular actions in his exchanges with active agents, Kallstrom replied: "No."
Politics be damned, it's time for the White House and/or the Attorney General, the nominal superiors of everyone who works for the FBI, to come off the bench and break this scam once and for all. This is now for more than just this election. This is law enforcement trying to force its will of the civil authorities, no different from some backwater sheriff who has compromising photos of the mayor.
And, as far as the immediate future goes, this is going to be a stunning chapter when Dante comes back from the dead and writes the definitive history of this campaign.
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/po ... -giuliani/Maddow Examines How Fox's Debunked Clinton Report Began With FBI Agents Presenting Breitbart Hit Pieces As Evidence
Maddow: The FBI "Actually Used That Breitbart.com, Anti-Hillary Clinton Book As Their Source For Launching A Local FBI Inquiry Into Hillary Clinton"
RACHEL MADDOW (HOST): This week, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal reported that there has been, I guess you'd call it, like, a breakout? There's been a breakout from this otherwise insular little Breitbart.com corner of conservative media and political activism. Those two papers reported that apparently there are Breitbart.com fans, there are Breitbart.com true believers, there are people who buy this stuff who are working inside the New York field office of the FBI. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal were first to report that the New York field office of the FBI used that anti-Hillary Clinton book, and the DVD of the same name, from the Breitbart.com guys, from the Breitbart.com editor and his boss who's now the head of the Donald Trump campaign, the one funded by Donald Trump's biggest donor, right? They actually used that Breitbart.com, anti-Hillary Clinton book as their source for launching a local FBI inquiry into Hillary Clinton. That was their evidence. That was their research. These agents in the New York field office reportedly decided that they needed to look into what Breitbart.com was saying about Hillary Clinton. It all sounds terrible. Sounds totally legit. We should look into that. We're the FBI.
It had previously been reported that New York FBI agents brought this anti-Hillary Clinton Breitbart stuff to a meeting -- excuse me, they had brought this anti-Hillary Clinton stuff to a meeting with career Justice Department prosecutors back in February, and one of the participants in that meeting described it as, quote, "one of the weirdest meetings I have ever been to." But, all we knew before now was that they had brought some stuff about Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation to that meeting. We now know, based on the current reporting, that what the New York agents brought prosecutors at meeting wasn't just generic anti-Hillary Clinton stuff, or Hillary Clinton stuff they had cooked up on their own. No, it was this stuff that had been cooked up at Breitbart. It is the stuff that came from the eco-sexuals having sex with trees website. That is what they had, that is what they brought to career Department of Justice prosecutors, and reportedly the career prosecutors were like, "uhh, where you did you get this? I'm not sure that's a case."
Thanks to lord knows whatever's going on, apparently, inside that New York field office of the FBI, that little adventure, which is now reportedly over, that little adventure of the Breitbart.com readers inside this one FBI field office, that's what's out now in today's news five days before the election. That's what was breathlessly reported on Fox News last night based on FBI sources, breathlessly reported on Fox last night as a whole new Hillary Clinton FBI investigation. One that was definitely going to lead to an indictment.
http://mediamatters.org/video/2016/11/0 ... ces/214289The FBI Is Self-Destructing at the Worst Possible Moment
And it was a long time coming.
BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
NOV 3, 2016
Of all the astonishing things in an astonishing (and increasingly grim) presidential campaign, the sudden involvement of elements of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the act of ratfcking a candidacy is even more amazing than the fact that there is a vulgar talking yam one step away from running almost the entire federal government. There hasn't been a hotter hot mess in Washington since John Mitchell was running both the Department of Justice and a criminal conspiracy to obstruct same.
On Thursday, for example, thanks to the folks at Think Progress, we discovered that the Feebs are now investigating their own Twitter account.
ThinkProgress has learned that the FBI's Inspection Division will undertake an investigation of the account. Candice Will, Assistant Director for the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility, said she was referring the matter to the FBI's Inspection Division for an "investigation." Upon completion of the investigation, the Office of Professional Responsibility will be referred back to the Office of Professional Responsibility for "adjudication." Federal law and FBI policy prohibit employees from using the power of the department to attempt to influence elections.
Yeah, horses, barns, that whole thing. The important thing to remember is that one portion of the FBI seems to be at war with another portion of the FBI and that almost everybody has a gun.
But, by far, the most astonishing revelation has been that, in launching their probe into the Clinton Foundation, the Feebs in charge relied for source material on Clinton Cash, the meretricious hit job by veteran GOP ratfcker Peter Schweizer, as The New York Times tells us. (Schweizer runs a rightwing chop shop founded by Steve Bannon, the Breitbart slug who's running the Trump campaign.) Keep the Times in mind, because it gets better.
In August, around the same time the decision was made to keep the Manafort investigation at a low simmer, the F.B.I. grappled with whether to issue subpoenas in the Clinton Foundation case, which, like the Manafort matter, was in its preliminary stages. The investigation, based in New York, had not developed much evidence and was based mostly on information that had surfaced in news stories and the book "Clinton Cash," according to several law enforcement officials briefed on the case. The book asserted that foreign entities gave money to former President Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, and in return received favors from the State Department when Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state. Mrs. Clinton has adamantly denied those claims.
If that seems a rather anodyne description of the book, it should, because, more than most publications, the Times has a good reason to soft-pedal the impact of Clinton Cash on federal law enforcement. In April of 2015, in an act that both reminded us all of how the Times was Ken Starr's lapdog regarding the Clintons in the 1990s and presaged the abysmal coverage that followed of Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign, the Times—and, alas, Marty Baron's Washington Post—entered into an unprecedented deal with Schweizer, whose history as an ideological picklock already was well-known.
The Day Political Journalism Died
At the time, we pointed that out to the regulars here in the shebeen, and commented on how that decision was both ethically bizarre and perfectly predictable.
Again, why not just wait until you can order the damn thing on Amazon, rather than climbing under the covers with someone whose CV contains a stint as a hack in the service of Princess Dumbass Of The Northwoods? The answer can be found in the first story that the Times produced under this arrangement.
But Clinton Cash is potentially more unsettling, both because of its focused reporting and because major news organizations including the Times, The Washington Post and Fox News have exclusive agreements with the author to pursue the story lines found in the book.
Got that? The book has credibility because the New York Times cut a deal with the author. Because of this, the author, and his curious resume, are washed in the blood of the Lamb. (It's God's own little joke that Judy Miller's out there shilling for her longform alibi at the same time that her old employers are touting this unique "arrangement.) I will make the Toby Ziegler bet with Carolyn Ryan that her newspaper linked up with this character because her newspaper has had a hard-on for the Clintons from the time it botched the original Whitewater story right up until last Sunday, when its star political columnist went off her meds again.
If you want to find the source point at which the elite political media began mainstreaming dangerous political pollution—which is to say, when the notion of Donald Trump as an actual presidential candidate took shape—you can do worse that pick this particular moment, when the Times decided that we were all just haggling about the price. The pollution has poisoned the election and it appears to have poisoned the FBI into a kind of self-destructive madness.
And there's less than a week left to find the antidote, assuming anyone really wants to look for one.
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/po ... ork-times/The Putin-Trump Axis
A subject FBI Director James Comey has not seen fit to discuss.
BY TODD GITLIN | NOVEMBER 2, 2016
Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump supporters march in Milan, Italy. (Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images)
For months now, journalists have noted the wrestler Vladimir Putin’s not-so-funny entanglement with Donald Trump. Newsweek, along with USA Today and The New York Times have written about what The Times described as a he-man “bromance” between the Republican presidential nominee (better known in America for wrestling other people out of their money) and the maximum leader Russians know to be no slouch at palling with oligarchs.
Some Democrats think there’s more to it than sexting. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) goes so far as to say, in a letter this week to FBI Director James Comey:
In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors and the Russian government….
What needs further exploration is another convergence between the crazy right and the Russian. They share crackpot ideas.
In August, I wrote about Trump surrogate Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s adventure in cozying up to Putin and RT. It’s not news, exactly, that Trump’s admiration for Putin is boundless. In December, when Joe Scarborough told Trump that Putin “kills journalists that don’t agree with him,” Trump replied:
Well, I think our country does plenty of killing also, Joe. You know. There’s a lot of stuff going on in the world right now, Joe. A lot of killing going on and a lot of stupidity…I’ve always felt fine about Putin. I think he is a strong leader, he’s a powerful leader, he’s represented his country the way — the country is being represented. He’s got popularity within his country. They respect him as a leader, certainly the last couple of years they’ve respected him as the leader. Obama’s in the low 30s, upper 40s, and he’s in the 80s.
Mother Jones’s David Corn now reports that Russian intelligence has been cultivating Trump. This is not hard and fast. What does the FBI have to say? An FBI spokeswoman told Corn, “Normally, we don’t talk about whether we are investigating anything.”
Normally. Except when agency Director James Comey decides otherwise. Comey has been known to make insinuations about the content of emails without having read them.
It’s worth more attention that Russia is meddling in the politics of the still-democratic West.
Whether or not it “becomes clear” what “explosive information” Reid refers to, if indeed it exists, it’s worth more attention that Russia is meddling in the politics of the still-democratic West.
It’s been bruited about that Putin’s strategy is to make trouble for the West in the interest of neutralizing NATO as he goes about his expansionist schemes. It’s a plausible notion on the face of it, but there might be many ways to disrupt the West. Funny thing, though, is the particular method to their meddling. Putin has a characteristic and consistent way of making trouble: backing the far right.
Sometimes that’s with money. In 2014, Marine Le Pen’s nativist National Front received an €11 million loan from the Moscow-based First Czech Russian Bank. This year they’re asking for €27 million more.
Germany’s neo-fascist leader Jürgen Elsässer has likened Russia’s bombing of Aleppo to the successful wartime defense of Stalingrad, but what Germany’s nativist far right gets from Russia in return for compliments is not so clear.
Russia and its allies share not only contempt for liberal democracy but, increasingly, the same enemies list.
Which makes you wonder about WikiLeaks’ email dump before the Democratic Convention. Why did party or parties unknown hack into the Democrats’ mail and not the Republicans?
The ideological affinity between the Kremlin and the nativist right extends beyond foreign policy.
In June after the dump, a British reporter spoke to WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange: “Plainly, what you are saying, what you are publishing, hurts Hillary Clinton. Would you prefer Trump to be president?” Assange told the reporter “that what Mr. Trump would do as president was ‘completely unpredictable.’ By contrast, he thought it was predictable that Mrs. Clinton would wield power in…ways he found problematic.”
Assange has refused to say where he got the emails, but he has denied any Russian hand in the hack. There is some circumstantial evidence of Russian hacker tactics, but nothing conclusive.
The ideological affinity between the Kremlin and the nativist right extends beyond foreign policy. These days the Moscow propaganda network RT sounds like a head start on the hypothetical Trump TV, or like Glenn Beck during one of his diagram days where all arrows on the whiteboard led to George Soros.
Here’s the latest: a headline on a new column by one of their regulars, the American Robert Bridge: “And the Weiner is! Hillary Clinton and the obedient lapdog media.”
Forget the bad pun. It gets worse. Bridge writes: “[T]he US mainstream media is on a mission to prove, despite all indications to the contrary, that Hillary Rodham Clinton would make a squeaky clean political queen.” Here’s Bridge on the mainstream media’s “disastrous effort to protect Hillary Rodham Clinton come hell or high water.” In case you haven’t noticed, the mainstream media have been, in Bridge’s view, neglecting the all-time grand scandal of — wait for it — Clinton emails. And here’s Bridge’s bottom line:
[S]o long as the mainstream media has gained almost total purchase of the election process, heavily controlling what the voters see and hear, we will continue discussing the Russians, WikiLeaks and Anthony Weiner’s unhealthy sexting habit.
Bridge is living in an earlier century, when America’s mainstream media were as controlling as, say, Pravda. Patently, Trump would not object to such a media regime as long as he gets to control TV and the tabloids. If his fan mobs can’t get the job done pointing fingers and screaming at reporters, they’ll be looking for bludgeons.
http://billmoyers.com/story/putin-trump-axis/NOVEMBER 4, 2016
Memo to Comey: Keep Your Damn Hands Off Our Elections
by MIKE WHITNEY
Without a shred of evidence and against the expressed wishes of his superiors at the Department of Justice, the head of the nation’s most prestigious law enforcement agency announced the reopening of an investigation into the mishandling of classified material by Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. The surprise announcement was delivered last Friday by FBI Director James Comey who knew that the action would create a cloud of suspicion around Clinton that could directly effect the outcome of the election.
Recent surveys suggest that that indeed has been the case, and that Hillary is now neck in neck with GOP contender Donald Trump going into the home-stretch of the bitterly contested campaign.
By inserting himself into the democratic process, Comey has ignored traditional protocols for postponing such announcements 60-days prior to an election, shrugged off the counsel of his bosses at the DOJ, and tilted the election in Trump’s favor. His action is as close to a coup d’état as anything we’ve seen in the U.S. since the Supreme Court stopped the counting of ballots in Florida in 2000 handing the election to George W. Bush.
It is not the job of the FBI to inform Congress about ongoing investigations. Comey’s job is to gather information and evidence that is pertinent to the case and present it to the DOJ where the decision to convene a grand jury is ultimately made. Comey is a renegade, a lone wolf who arbitrarily decided to abandon normal bureaucratic procedures in order to torpedo Clinton’s prospects for election. The widespread belief that Comey is a “good man who made a bad decision” is nonsense. He is an extremely intelligent and competent attorney with a keen grasp of Beltway politics. He knew what he was doing and he did it anyway. It’s absurd to make excuses for him.
In a carefully-crafted statement designed to deflect attention from his flagrant election tampering, Comey said this to his fellow agents:
“We don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed,” Comey said. “I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record.” (CNN)
Let’s take a minute and parse this statement. First: “We don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations.”
True, because it is not the FBI’s job to do so. The FBI’s job is to dig up evidence and refer it to the Justice Department. Comey is not the Attorney General although he has arbitrarily assumed her duties and authority.
Second: “I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record.”
“Supplement the record”?
That’s a pretty suggestive statement, don’t you think? When someone says they’re going to supplement the record, you naturally assume that they’re going to add important details to what the public already knows. Obviously, those details are not going to be flattering to Hillary or there’d be no reason to reopen the case. So the public is left with the impression Comey is going to produce damning information that could lead to an indictment of Hillary sometime in the future.
This is precisely why normal protocols require that no new investigations be announced 60 days before an election. Why?
Because the public invariably assumes that “investigation” equals “guilt”. In other words, “The FBI wouldn’t be investigating Hillary unless they had some dirt on her. Therefore, I’d better not waste my vote on Hillary.”
This is the logic upon which Comey’s dirty trick rests. He knows the effect his announcement will have because he is law enforcements version of Karl Rove, a bone fide partisan who’s mastered the dark art of political sabotage.
And just in case Comey’s announcement didn’t produce the desired effect (by destroying Hillary’s chances for victory), a former assistant director at the FBI, Tom Fuentes, appeared on CNN shortly after the announcement was made with more explicit information. Here’s a clip from the interview:
“The FBI has an intensive investigation ongoing into the Clinton Foundation,” Fuentes said Saturday, citing current and former senior FBI officials as sources…
According to the CNN report, officials with the FBI and Justice Department met in Washington earlier this year to discuss opening an investigation into possible conflicts of interest between the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton State Department.”
(“Former FBI Official: FBI Has An ‘Intensive Investigation’ Ongoing Into Clinton Foundation“, Daily Caller)
Okay. So we’re no longer dealing with just classified emails. The FBI expanded its investigation and is now wading through the real sewage, the pay-to-play corruption scandal that surrounds that vast reservoir of illicit contributions known as the Clinton Foundation. In other words, the FBI is on to something big, really BIG. I can almost see them dragging poor Hillary off to the hoosegow in leg irons and shackles. Isn’t that the impression the above quote is supposed to produce? Here’s more from Fuentes:
“Several FBI field offices and U.S. attorneys offices pushed for the investigation after receiving a tip from a bank about suspicious donations to the Clinton Foundation from a foreign donor, according to the report….” (Daily Caller)
“Foreign donors”, “suspicious donations”, smoky rooms, bundles of money. It all fits, doesn’t it? It’s all designed to increase suspicion and make Hillary look like a crook which, coincidentally, is the relentless mantra of the Trump campaign. Funny how the FBI and Trump appear to be reading from the same script, isn’t it? It’s almost like it was planned that way.
But what about the timing of all this? Is it really a coincidence or are Comey and Fuentes part of a one-two punch from the Trump campaign?
And, more important, what does the FBI actually have on Hillary? According to Fuentes:
“When the team looking at the Weiner computers went to the team of investigators who worked on the Clinton email case, and showed the emails to them earlier in the week, they said, “This is really significant. We need to take this to the Director.” (2:05 to 2:23 video)
Repeat: “This is significant”.
What’s significant? Neither Comey nor Fuentes nor the more than year-long investigation has uncovered anything, unless you think the ridiculous rehash of the 15-year old Marc Rich investigation (which popped up on the FBI website this week) is “new news” that should alter the course of the election. This is pathetic. If they have something, show us. Otherwise, Ferme ta bouche.
Check this out from Thursday’s Wall Street Journal:
“As 2015 came to a close, the FBI and Justice Department had a general understanding that neither side would take major action on Clinton Foundation matters without meeting and discussing it first. …
The public-integrity prosecutors weren’t impressed with the FBI presentation, people familiar with the discussion said. “The message was, ‘We’re done here,’ ” a person familiar with the matter said.
Justice Department officials became increasingly frustrated that the agents seemed to be disregarding or disobeying their instructions.
Following the February meeting, officials at Justice Department headquarters sent a message to all the offices involved to “stand down,’’ a person familiar with the matter said….
As prosecutors rebuffed their requests to proceed more overtly, those Justice Department officials became more annoyed that the investigators didn’t seem to understand or care about the instructions issued by their own bosses and prosecutors to act discreetly.
In subsequent conversations with the Justice Department, Mr. Capers told officials in Washington that the FBI agents on the case “won’t let it go,” these people said.” (Wall Street Journal)
Can you see what’s going on here? There’s a nest of rogue agents running wild at the FBI who’ve been giving the DOJ the finger while they conduct their witch hunt on Hillary. And what have they achieved?
Nothing! So far, they have nothing.
Now, I’m not a fan of Madame Clinton either, in fact I wouldn’t vote for her if they rubbed me down with bacon grease and stuck me in a bear cage, but, c’mon now, do we really want rogue cops and self righteous bureaucrats inserting themselves into our elections and picking the winners?
That’s bullshit.
If the FBI has some solid proof of wrongdoing that will put Hillary behind bars for good, than I say, “Bravo”. But until then, they should keep their damn hands off our elections!
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/04/ ... elections/FBI under scrutiny amid speculation over Trump's Russian ties
http://www.france24.com/en/20161102-fbi ... a-manafort
[/quote]seemslikeadream » Thu Nov 03, 2016 8:52 pm wrote:This needs to be a new thread because in the next few days there is going to be a whole lot more on the FBI and this election and I don't want it hidden away in the other threads ...The FBI Wants to Make America Great Again
600NOV 3, 2016 6:00 AM EDT
By
Eli Lake
Maybe it’s just me, but I think the FBI is trying to send a message about next week’s election.FBI examining fake documents targeting Clinton campaign: sources
By Mark Hosenball | WASHINGTON
The FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies are examining faked documents aimed at discrediting the Hillary Clinton campaign as part of a broader investigation into what U.S. officials believe has been an attempt by Russia to disrupt the presidential election, people with knowledge of the matter said.
U.S. Senator Tom Carper, a Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, has referred one of the documents to the FBI for investigation on the grounds that his name and stationery were forged to appear authentic, some of the sources who had knowledge of that discussion said.
In the letter identified as fake, Carper is quoted as writing to Clinton, “We will not let you lose this election,” a person who saw the document told Reuters.
The fake Carper letter, which was described to Reuters, is one of several documents presented to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of Justice for review in recent weeks, the sources said.
A spokeswoman for Carper declined to comment.
As part of an investigation into suspected Russian hacking, FBI investigators have also asked Democratic Party officials to provide copies of other suspected faked documents that have been circulating along with emails and other legitimate documents taken in the hack, people involved in those conversations said.
A spokesman for the FBI confirmed the agency was “in receipt of a complaint about an alleged fake letter” related to the election but declined further comment. Others with knowledge of the matter said the FBI was also examining other fake documents that recently surfaced.
U.S. intelligence officials have warned privately that a campaign they believe is backed by the Russian government to undermine the credibility of the U.S. presidential election could move beyond the hacking of Democratic Party email systems. That could include posting fictional evidence of voter fraud or other disinformation in the run-up to voting on Nov. 8, U.S. officials have said.
Russian officials deny any such effort.
In addition to the Carper letter, the FBI has also reviewed a seven-page electronic document that carries the logos of Democratic pollster Joel Benenson’s firm, the Benenson Strategy Group, and the Clinton Foundation, a person with knowledge of the matter said.
The document, identified as a fake by the Clinton campaign, claims poll ratings had plunged for Clinton and called for “severe strategy changes for November” that could include “staged civil unrest” and “radiological attack” with dirty bombs to disrupt the vote.
Like the Carper letter, it was not immediately clear where the fraudulent document had originated or how it had begun to circulate.
On Oct. 20, Roger Stone, a former Trump aide and Republican operative, linked to a copy of the document on Twitter with the tag, “If this is real: OMG!!”
Benenson’s firm had no immediate comment. Craig Minassian, a spokesman for the Clinton Foundation, said the document was “fake.” He said he did not know if the FBI had examined it.
Stone did not respond to emails requesting comment.
A spokesman for the Clinton campaign, Glen Caplin, said the document was a fake and part of a “desperate stunt” to capitalize on the leak of Democratic emails by Wikileaks.
The developments highlight the unusually prominent role U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies have played in a contentious election and an ongoing debate about how public they can or should be about their inquiries.
FBI Director James Comey, a Republican appointed by President Obama, touched off an outcry from Democrats last week when he alerted Congress that agents had found other emails that could be linked to an inquiry into Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was Secretary of State, effectively re-opening an investigation he had closed in July.
(Editing by Kevin Krolicki, John Walcott, Toni Reinhold)
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-e ... SKBN12Y2WYAgent: FBI is ‘Trumplandia’
By Tim Devaney - 11/03/16 03:40 PM EDT
The FBI is “Trumplandia,” according to an agent who spoke anonymously to The Guardian newspaper.
In a report published Thursday, multiple sources within the FBI say that deep antipathy toward Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and anger that FBI Director James Comey did not bring charges against her this summer have motivated leaks that could damage her presidential campaign.
One agent told The Guardian that many at the bureau view Clinton as the “antichrist” and are supportive of Trump.
“That’s the reason why they’re leaking is they’re pro-Trump,” the FBI agent told The Guardian.
But another FBI source disputed the level of support Trump has within the bureau, according to The Guardian.
“There are lots of people who don’t think Trump is qualified, but also believe Clinton is corrupt,” the source said. “What you hear a lot is that it’s a bad choice, between an incompetent and a corrupt politician.”
According to the report, the tensions boiled over in July when Comey declined to recommend charges against the Democratic presidential nominee for possibly mishandling classified information through her use of a private email server to conduct government business, according to the FBI agent.
Comey last week sent a letter to congressional committees notifying them that the FBI was looking at new emails uncovered in a separate investigation that could be related to the Clinton case. The FBI has come under tremendous criticism from Democrats and some Republicans for interfering with the election by releasing that information to Congress just under two weeks from Election Day.
There have been further leaks about internal fights within the FBI and other possible investigations since the Comey news broke, all of which has suggested an agency in a public war with itself.FBI launches internal investigation into its own Twitter account
An FBI tweet may have crossed the line.
The FBI has launched an internal investigation into one of its own Twitter accounts.
The account at issue, @FBIRecordsVault, had been dormant for more than a year. Then on October 30 at 4 a.m., the account released a flood of documents, including one describing Donald Trump’s father Fred Trump as a “philanthropist.”
But it wasn’t until two days later, when the account tweeted documents regarding President Bill Clinton’s controversial pardon of Marc Rich, that the account began to attract significant attention.
The account has not been active since that tweet.
ThinkProgress has learned that the FBI’s Inspection Division will undertake an investigation of the account.
Candice Will, Assistant Director for the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility, said she was referring the matter to the FBI’s Inspection Division for an “investigation.” Upon completion of the investigation, the findings will be referred back to the the Office of Professional Responsibility for “adjudication.”
Federal law and FBI policy prohibit employees from using the power of the department to attempt to influence elections.
Will was responding to a complaint from Jonathan Hutson, a former investigative reporter who now works in communication in Washington, DC. She did not respond to requests, via phone and email, for further comment.
Nancy McNamara, the Assistant Director of the FBI’s Inspection Division, also confirmed to Hutson that she had received the complaint. She copied Voviette Morgan, a 19-year veteran now serving as Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Los Angeles office.
News of the internal investigation is at odds with the FBI’s official position, which is that the Twitter account followed all FBI procedures.
“Per the standard procedure for FOIA, these materials became available for release and were posted automatically and electronically to the FBI’s public reading room in accordance with the law and established procedures,” the FBI said in a statement.
The strange tweets come days after James Comey released a letter revealing that the department was reviewing some emails that could be relevant to the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server. The Justice Department opposed release of the letter, arguing that it violated department protocols.
Since that time, there has been a series of leaks about FBI activity that appear to be designed to damage Hillary Clinton and benefit Donald Trump. An anonymous source for example, leaked to the Wall Street Journal that there was an investigation — including “secret recordings” — into the Clinton Foundation. The New York Times, also citing anonymous sources, reported that the FBI believed that Russia was just trying to disrupt the U.S. election, not help Donald Trump.
https://thinkprogress.org/fbi-launches- ... .vosttcd7nThe Theory That the FBI Is Out to Get Clinton Is Becoming More Plausible
By Ben Mathis-Lilley
The Federal Bureau of Investigations headquarters in Washington, USA on August 26, 2016.
When Democrats reacted to FBI Director James Comey's letter to Congress about the sort-of-reopened investigation into Hillary Clinton's private server by accusing Comey of trying to meddle in the election on behalf of the Republican Party, the accusation seemed far-fetched. Comey was, until last Friday, generally despised by Republicans for his earlier decision to recommend against prosecuting Clinton. But while there's been of yet no evidence revealed that Comey himself has an ax to grind, a number of data points have emerged indicating the presence of a politically motivated anti-Clinton faction within the agency.
For one, leaks keep coming out of the FBI that are unflattering to Clinton. First there was the revelation that the Clinton emails the FBI is currently checking for classified info came from Anthony Weiner's computer. (A good rule of thumb is that no political candidate wants his/her name anywhere near a headline that also involves the notorious A-Weens.) Then there was a story on Fox News (and a much more measured one in the Wall Street Journal) about the existence of an investigation into potential corruption at the Clinton Foundation. And the FBI also tweeted about a document release related to Bill Clinton's controversial pardon of Marc Rich.
On a parallel track, there was a report Thursday in the Guardian about FBI agents actively supporting Trump:
“The FBI is Trumpland,” said one current agent ... The currently serving FBI agent said Clinton is “the antichrist personified to a large swath of FBI personnel,” and that “the reason why they’re leaking is they’re pro-Trump.”
Longtime Trump expert Wayne Barrett wrote Thursday in the Daily Beast, meanwhile, about the connections between Trump and the FBI. The FBI Agents Association—a unionlike 13,000-member group—has close ties to Rudy Giuliani, a top Trump surrogate, and Giuliani has said on Fox News that he's in touch with current agents who are upset about Comey's decision not to prosecute Clinton. A former agent named Jim Kallstrom has appeared on Fox several times saying the same thing; Kallstrom's Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation has received funding from Trump and the Trump Foundation, and one of its directors is Rush Limbaugh.
The Guardian piece notes that other sources besides its quoted agent "dispute the depth of support for Trump within the bureau." And Barrett is writing only about Trump allies making claims of connections to current agents; we don't know whether those connections are in fact as strong as Giuliani and Kallstrom make them out to be, or whether said agents are upset about the Clinton email situation specifically because they support Trump. But when you combine the Guardian/Barrett reports with the kind of leaks that are coming out, Democrats' dark suggestions about the FBI's motives start to sound less like the reflexively defensive innuendo they at first seemed.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/ ... _says.htmlAnti-Clinton Sentiment Reportedly Prompted FBI Leaks: 'The FBI Is Trumpland'
http://www.complex.com/life/2016/11/fbi ... ry-clintonOpticsPolitics
Joy Reid @JoyAnnReid 22h22 hours ago
To reiterate: if the @WSJ story is correct, the FBI mounted an investigation based on a book that financially benefits the GOP campaign CEO.Bad, Bad Stuff Out of FBI
ByJOSH MARSHALL
Published
NOVEMBER 3, 2016, 7:00 PM EDT
Mark Hosenball has another look inside what's been happening at the FBI. It's another slice of the story but one that is consistent with Spencer Ackerman's piece in The Guardian and the best reporting I've seen on James Comey's role in this. I continue to think that one key part of Comey's role was simply a mix of naivete and indifference about the effect of his letter. Another driving force, though, as Hosenball reports, was fear of leaks and the Republican criticism they would drive.
From Hosenball ...
FBI Director James Comey was driven in part by a fear of leaks from within his agency when he decided to tell Congress the FBI was investigating newly discovered emails related to Hillary Clinton, law enforcement sources said on Thursday.
And this (emphasis added) ...
Two law enforcement sources familiar with the FBI's New York Field Office, which initially discovered the emails, said a faction of investigators based in the office is known to be hostile to Hillary Clinton. A spokeswoman for the FBI's New York office said she had no knowledge about this.
Democratic Party sources said such a faction was likely responsible for a recent surge in media leaks on alleged details of an ongoing FBI investigation of the Clinton Foundation.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/bad ... out-of-fbiTHURSDAY, NOV 3, 2016 02:16 PM CDT
Donald Trump’s FBI: James Comey’s department is filled with pro-Trump, anti-Hillary Clinton partisans
The bureau seems to be filled with partisan hacks hell-bent on investigating Hillary Clinton
MATTHEW ROZSA
Under the FBI’s director, James Comey, whose ethically challenged letter sent last Friday put wind in Republican Donald Trump’s sails, the bureau appears to be ready to kick off a partisan witch hunt against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton — and it’s all because the agents harbor a pro-Trump bias.
As The Guardian reported on Thursday, sources within the FBI told the newspaper that many agents were outraged that Comey decided to not recommend an indictment against Clinton in July in connection with her use of a private email server. Last Friday Comey signaled in his letter that the agency is reviewing newly surfaced emails to see if they are pertinent to the now closed Clinton investigation.
“The FBI is Trumpland,” one agent told The Guardian, with another describing how Clinton is “the antichrist personified to a large swathe of FBI personnel” and “the reason why they’re leaking is they’re pro-Trump.”
While some of The Guardian’s sources disagreed that the FBI is overwhelmingly pro-Trump, all indicated that the attitude toward Clinton is extremely negative.
“There are lots of people who don’t think Trump is qualified, but also believe Clinton is corrupt,” said a former FBI official. “What you hear a lot is that it’s a bad choice, between an incompetent and a corrupt politician.”
VideoThe FBI Reopens Its Investigation of Hillary Clinton’s Emails
One of these partisan agents is feeding Fox News’ Brett Baier, who claimed on Wednesday that he had sources in the FBI personally assuring him that Clinton is going to be indicted.
“Two separate sources with intimate knowledge of the FBI investigations into the Clinton emails and the Clinton Foundation tell Fox the following,” Baier said on his show. “The investigation looking into possible pay-for-play interaction between secretary of state Hillary Clinton and the foundation has been going on for more than a year. Led by the white-collar crime division, public corruption branch of the criminal investigative division of the FBI.”
There have been hints at an anti-Clinton bias in the FBI before now. Two days before Comey released his October surprise, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani (who has very close connections to the FBI) told Fox, “I think [Donald Trump’s] got a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about in the next few days. I mean, I’m talking about some pretty big surprises.” When asked what he meant by that, he said, “We’ve got a couple of things up our sleeve that should turn this thing around.”
After Comey released his letter last Friday, Giuliani appeared on radio saying that many FBI agents believed that not charging Clinton was “completely unjustified and almost a slap in the face to the FBI’s integrity. I know that from former agents. I know that even from a few active agents.”
http://www.salon.com/2016/11/03/donald- ... partisans/
by Cordelia » Wed Apr 19, 2017 2:10 pm
Donald Trump isn’t going to like this. On Monday, Comedy Central finally divulged details about its upcoming late-night series, The President Show—which up until now has been teased solely through cryptic social-media accounts and a conspicuous prank on The Daily Show. With executive producers onboard who used to write for Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, we’re guessing this newcomer will fit right in amid late-night’s increasingly politicized landscape.
As the title suggests, this satirical series will be hosted by none other than the president himself—as played by creator and master Trump impressionist Anthony Atamanuik. The show will air weekly on Thursdays after The Daily Show, starting April 27 at 11:30 P.M.; Chris Hardwick’s @midnight will continue to air in that slot on Mondays through Wednesdays, according to The Hollywood Reporter, and shift to its original time, midnight, on Thursdays, to accommodate the new show.
http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/201 ... -atamanuik
by 82_28 » Wed Apr 19, 2017 2:26 pm
by Cordelia » Wed Apr 19, 2017 2:41 pm
by Luther Blissett » Thu Apr 20, 2017 9:26 am
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