minime » Wed Mar 14, 2018 6:57 pm wrote:He can already feel the power of the dark side coursing through his veins.
This is great stuff. Go out with a bang, man!
Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by JackRiddler » Thu Mar 15, 2018 12:17 am
minime » Wed Mar 14, 2018 6:57 pm wrote:He can already feel the power of the dark side coursing through his veins.
by SonicG » Thu Mar 15, 2018 4:32 am
Yesterday, after news broke that Rex Tillerson had been fired and replaced by Mike Pompeo, I heard some voices reassuring themselves that unlike many in the Trump world Pompeo is fairly hostile to Russia. At least, they say, he views Russia through a more traditional Republican prism.
"If we don´t take immediate, concrete measures to address this now, Salisbury will not be the last place we see chemical weapons use." She added, "They could be used here in New York or in cities of any country that sits on this council."
https://nation.com.pk/15-Mar-2018/russi ... ikki-haley
by 82_28 » Thu Mar 15, 2018 7:32 am
Jimmy Kimmel might end up costing President Donald Trump’s family some big money.
In light of the White House’s “buy American” rhetoric, the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” host bought a bunch of merchandise from the Trump Store, which is run by two of the president’s sons, to see where it all came from.
“I’m sure Eric and Donald Jr. take this American thing very seriously,” Kimmel said. “These guys are red, white and blue to the core. They’re like a couple of flags wearing hair gel, these two.”
Well, not so much.
Most of the merchandise Kimmel purchased was made abroad, and two items didn’t list a country of origin at all. Kimmel said such an omission could lead to potential fines of up to $500,000 if it turns out these products were made overseas.
“This could be very expensive,” Kimmel said. “Not to mention embarrassing. Are they even capable of shame? I mean Trump’s whole platform is about American companies, his company isn’t even supporting America!”
And Kimmel has a way to fix it.
“I’ll just file an official complaint and let them sort it out,” he said to cheers.
by seemslikeadream » Thu Mar 15, 2018 7:58 am
Kimmel: Melania Trump emerges after 'Winter Stormy Daniels' to renew cyberbullying crusade
By KARMA ALLEN Mar 15, 2018, 5:56 AM ET
PHOTO: President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump walk across the South Lawn upon arrival on Marine One at the White House in Washington, D.C., Feb. 5, 2018.Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
WATCHKimmel: Melania emerges after 'Winter Stormy Daniels' to renew cyberbullying crusade
Jimmy Kimmel celebrated first lady Melania Trump's return to the spotlight on Wednesday, insisting that she had been in "hiding" after adult-film actress Stormy Daniels sued the president for allegedly making her sign a hush agreement.
"Melania Trump has emerged from hiding -- she hasn't been seen much since Winter Stormy Daniels hit D.C.,” Kimmel, the host of "Live," said during his monologue.
The first lady hasn't been seen in public too often lately, but she announced that she plans to meet with officials from Twitter, Facebook, Google and others as part of her fight against online bullying.
"Melania Trump holding a summit to stop cyberbullying is like Camille Cosby calling a meeting with Benadryl because 'it's making people woozy,'" Kimmel joked, referring to Bill Cosby's wife.
After mentioning Melania Trump's meeting with tech giants, Kimmel said, "Apparently the word 'irony' doesn't translate from Slovenian."
"All she has to do to fight cyberbullying is take a hammer to her husband's thumbs and phone," he added.
PHOTO: Donald and Melania Trump arrive at the 57th Annual Emmy Awards held at the Shrine Auditorium, Sept. 18, 2005, in Los Angeles.Kevin Winter/Getty Images, FILE
Donald and Melania Trump arrive at the 57th Annual Emmy Awards held at the Shrine Auditorium, Sept. 18, 2005, in Los Angeles.
An administration official confirmed to ABC News on Tuesday that the first lady had invited tech executives to the White House to discuss online bullying and internet safety, but it is not clear if she plans to propose any policy changes.
Asked about the upcoming event, the first lady's spokesperson, Stephanie Grisham, said: "Mrs. Trump has simply asked for a meeting to discuss one of the many things that impacts children -- as she has done many times in the past, on several different topics."
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/kimmel-m ... d=53764020
BuzzFeed maneuver could free Stormy Daniels to speak on Trump
By JOSH GERSTEIN 03/14/2018 07:34 PM EDT
BuzzFeed may have found a legal opening to allow the porn actress Stormy Daniels to discuss her alleged relationship with President Donald Trump and a $130,000 payment she received just before the 2016 election as part of a nondisclosure agreement she is now trying to void.
The same Trump attorney who brokered the deal with Daniels, Michael Cohen, filed a libel suit in January against BuzzFeed and four of its staffers over publication of the so-called dossier compiling accurate, inaccurate and unproven allegations about Trump’s relationship with Russia.
Now, BuzzFeed is using Cohen’s libel suit as a vehicle to demand that Daniels preserve all records relating to her relationship with Trump, as well as her dealings with Cohen and the payment he has acknowledged arranging in 2016.
On Tuesday, BuzzFeed’s lawyer wrote to Daniels’ attorney asking that the adult film actress, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, preserve various categories of documents. Such preservation letters are often a prelude to a subpoena. If Daniels’ testimony is formally demanded in a deposition, the nondisclosure agreement would likely be no obstacle, legal experts said.
The letter from BuzzFeed’s attorney, obtained by POLITICO, argues that Cohen’s role in paying Daniels is similar to allegations in the dossier about Cohen. The dossier alleges that Cohen met Russian legal officials and legislators in Prague in August 2016 in a bid to “sweep … under the carpet” details of the relationship between Russia and Trump campaign officials like Paul Manafort and Rick Gates. Cohen has flatly denied the claim.
“Mr. Cohen’s role in President Trump’s 2016 campaign, including but not limited to any payments he made or facilitated to third parties during or in connection with the campaign, is therefore directly relevant to” Cohen’s suit, BuzzFeed lawyer Katherine Bolger wrote.
Bolger asked Daniels to preserve all records of negotiations, agreements and payments involving Cohen, but also for more direct proof of Daniels’ alleged connection with Trump, including “any and all documents or communications about any relationship and/or sexual encounter(s) Ms. Clifford had and/or was alleged to have had, with President Trump.”
Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti, confirmed on Wednesday that he’d received the letter from BuzzFeed. Asked how Daniels would respond, he said, “We don’t have a position as of yet.” He declined further comment.
Last week, Daniels filed suit in state court in Los Angeles, seeking to have the nondisclosure agreement tossed out because Trump never signed it.
The preservation notice sent to Daniels’ attorney was one of more than a dozen such letters BuzzFeed’s legal team sent this week to a number of high-profile players in the Trump orbit, including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Manafort’s former deputy Rick Gates, former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, former White House adviser Steve Bannon, current White House adviser Kellyanne Conway and former Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller, as well as Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr.
A deposition by Daniels is probably some months away. It would not typically take place in public, but lawyers for either side would be free to release it or related documents unless a judge forbade it.
Cohen’s attorney in the libel suit against BuzzFeed, David Schwartz, said on Wednesday he was aware of the preservation letters and would probably object to any attempt by the news outlet to dig into the Daniels episode or other matters not referred to directly in the dossier.
“Certainly at the appropriate time there’ll be a fight in court as to limitations in discovery in this case,” Schwartz told POLITICO. “We want a very narrow view of discovery for many different reasons. … I think those recipients [of the letters] are going to be irrelevant to the case at hand.”
Schwartz said he expected to be buried in paperwork from the law firms representing BuzzFeed and Fusion GPS, the private investigation firm that commissioned the dossier. Cohen sued Fusion in a separate, parallel libel case in January.
“They’re going to try to wipe us out with demands on every unrelated issue under the sun,” the attorney for Cohen said. “I believe when you know something is fake and you still post it as if it were real, where no other news organization would do such a thing, I think you’re committing an intentional act and they’re going to be liable for defamation.”
A spokesman for BuzzFeed suggested that since the libel suit seeks compensation for damage to Cohen’s reputation, episodes affecting his public standing are fair game for discovery.
“Mr. Cohen’s personal reputation, and his actions on Donald Trump’s behalf, are directly relevant to this case,” spokesman Matt Mittenthal said. “We look forward to defending our First Amendment rights in court.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/ ... ump-462261
Stormy Daniels' lawyer says other women are considering legal cases against Trump
(CNN)The lawyer representing Stormy Daniels says that, on the heels of her lawsuit against Donald Trump, several other women are now exploring the possibility of legal action against the President.
Attorney Michael Avenatti confirmed that several women recently came to him seeking to potentially build legal cases against Trump. He would not identify the women. Avenatti's claim was first reported by BuzzFeed.
At least 15 women have come forward with a wide range of accusations against Trump, ranging from sexual harassment and sexual assault to lewd behavior around women. Of the women, 13 say Trump attacked them directly and two others say they witnessed behavior that made them uncomfortable. All the alleged incidents took place prior to his assuming the presidency.
Trump and the White House have denied all the allegations.
Stormy Daniels crowdfunding her legal fees in suit against Trump
It is unclear whether any women from that group are among those who Avenatti says approached him.
Avenatti filed a lawsuit on Daniels' behalf last week to get her out of a nondisclosure agreement she signed with Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen. The porn star, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, says the agreement was designed to keep her quiet about an alleged 2006 affair with Trump.
Both Cohen and the White House have denied the allegations of an affair between Daniels and Trump.
Cohen admitted that he had paid Clifford $130,000 from his own pocket through a private LLC as part of the deal just before the 2016 election. Her complaint argues the deal is not valid because Trump himself did not sign it, though Cohen did.
Lawyer: Trump Org. wanted a muzzle on Daniels
The lawsuit also alleges Daniels was intimidated into signing the nondisclosure agreement.
Since her lawsuit was filed, Daniels has offered to pay back the money she took to allow her to tell her story.
Avenatti says the deadline for that offer has passed with no response from either Michael Cohen or Donald Trump.
The first hearing in the case is scheduled for July 12 in a Los Angeles court.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/15/us/storm ... index.html
Trump company lawyer was part of push to hush Stormy Daniels, documents show
Adult film actress/director Stormy Daniels in January at the 2018 Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas.
Documents marked “HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL PROCEEDING” for the first time tie President Donald Trump’s flagship holding company to the continuing effort to silence a former adult-film actress who says she had an affair with Trump.
A Trump Organization lawyer, Jill A. Martin, is listed as counsel in an arbitration demand for Essential Consultants LLC, a Delaware company formed by Trump’s personal lawyer and used to pay $130,000 to Stephanie Clifford in exchange for her silence, according to Feb. 22 arbitration documents filed in Orange County, Calif.
At issue is a high-profile battle between Trump’s personal lawyer and Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels. Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer, has obtained a temporary restraining order against Clifford in the arbitration to stop her from talking about an alleged 2006 sexual encounter with Trump. Clifford has asked a judge to declare the nondisclosure agreement invalid.
The White House and Cohen repeatedly have sought to distance the president from the porn-star pact and payment. Cohen, who was employed by the Trump Organization when he brokered the deal with Clifford shortly before the 2016 presidential election, has maintained he was acting on his own and has called it a “private transaction.” Soon after Trump’s electoral victory, Cohen left the company to establish his own legal practice.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump ... 2018-03-15
Stormy Daniels' Lawyer Says More Women Are Exploring Legal Cases Against President Trump
A lawyer representing the adult film actress said he has received inquiries from other women about potential cases against the president.
Originally posted on March 14, 2018, at 8:42 p.m.
Updated on March 14, 2018, at 9:07 p.m.
Jim Dalrymple II
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Multiple women are exploring potential legal cases against President Donald Trump, following the lead of an adult film actress who has filed a lawsuit in order to speak out about an affair she says she had with Trump in 2006, her attorney said Wednesday.
Michael Avenatti, who represents Stephanie Clifford — better known by her professional name Stormy Daniels — told BuzzFeed News that other women have reached out to him for representation in cases against Trump. Avenatti did not answer questions about the number of women, or the nature of their allegations.
When asked by BuzzFeed News if other women had approached him about potential legal cases, Avenatti replied, "confirmed."
Multiple women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct in the past, and Avenatti did not say if any of the accusers were the same people who had approached him about legal representation.
Clifford received $130,000 as part of a 2016 settlement that barred her from discussing her alleged relationship with Trump, details of which have leaked out via friends and old interviews. The payment came from Trump's long-time personal attorney, Michael Cohen, who has said that he used his own money and that Trump did not know about the payment. The White House has also said Trump didn't know about the payment.
Earlier this month Clifford sued Trump, claiming their "hush agreement" is invalid because he never signed it. She also wants to return the money in order to speak out about the alleged affair. Trump's lawyers, meanwhile, are considering legal action to stop 60 Minutes from airing an upcoming interview with Clifford.
Cohen, Trump's lawyer, has also sued BuzzFeed over the release of a dossier on the president's alleged Russia connections.
Newly released documents also appear to link Trump’s company to the payment for the first time, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. The documents show that an attorney who works for the Trump Organization, Jill Martin, was also listed as the counsel in an arbitration demand from the company that Cohen used to pay Clifford.
Martin is vice president and assistant general counsel at the Trump Organization, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Speaking on CNN Wednesday, Avenatti said the point of the arbitration was "to gag my client, put a muzzle on her and prevent her from speaking." Avenatti went on to argue the documents show that there is no separation between Trump's company and the company Cohen used to pay Clifford.
In an interview Wednesday on MSNBC, Avenatti said Clifford has been truthful about her relationship with Trump, and that if the president wants to sue her, "our position is very simple. Bring it."
Avenatti said he believes the $130,000 payment that Clifford received will ultimately be traceable to Trump.
When asked if he would seek to depose the president, Avenatti added, "we're not going to lay out our strategy, but that wouldn't be a big stretch."
https://www.buzzfeed.com/jimdalrympleii ... .hy7PXAwpM
House Republicans Say Japanese Did Not Meddle in Pearl Harbor
By Andy BorowitzMarch 13, 2018
Photograph by Tom Williams / CQ Roll Call via Getty
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Reaching the opposite conclusion of many of their committee peers, Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee said on Tuesday that the Japanese did not meddle in the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
“After an exhaustive investigation, we have come to the conclusion that there was no attempt by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service to influence the outcome of Pearl Harbor,” Rep. Mike Conaway, a Republican of Texas, said. “Any suggestion to the contrary amounts to nothing more or less than a witch hunt.”
Conaway said that while there were Japanese bombers in the vicinity of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, their role in the attack there has been “blown out of proportion.”
“Is it possible that some of their planes were flying in places they shouldn’t have flown and dropping some things that they shouldn’t have dropped, by accident?” Conaway said. “Absolutely. Does that prove that there was intent to meddle in Pearl Harbor? Absolutely not.”
The House Republican praised his fellow G.O.P. committee members for “finally putting the controversy of Pearl Harbor to rest.”
“December 7, 1941, is a day that will live in a big misunderstanding,” he said.
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowit ... arl-harbor
by Elvis » Fri Mar 16, 2018 3:13 am
by 82_28 » Fri Mar 16, 2018 3:27 am
by Elvis » Fri Mar 16, 2018 3:58 am
by 82_28 » Fri Mar 16, 2018 4:57 am
by seemslikeadream » Fri Mar 16, 2018 9:32 am
Rick Wilson
I think Michael Avenatti unspoken strategy is to make trump snap and start tweeting about Stormy Daniels.
It would be terrible if the Strongest President Ever was so impotent, weak, and scared that he wouldn't fight back.
Sam Stein
Michael Avenatti, Stormy’s lawyer, confirms to me that "six separate women with similar claims to my client" have approached him, two of whom have NDAs. He and the firm are still investigating their claims
By JEFF HORWITZ, JUAN ZAMORANO and MARK STEVENSON
Complaint claims Trump lawyers threatened Panama magistrate
PANAMA CITY (AP) — Lawyers for President Donald Trump’s family hotel business threatened a Panamanian judicial official handling a dispute related to Trump Hotels’ management of a 70-story luxury hotel, according to a complaint filed with the anti-corruption division of Panama’s chief prosecutor.
The complaint reviewed by The Associated Press said lawyers from the firm representing Trump’s hotel management business accosted a justice of the peace, Marisol Carrera, in her office after she ruled against Trump’s business on a minor issue in the fight over control of the Trump-branded luxury hotel. The abuse continued, she wrote, even after she called police to defuse the situation.
Trump’s lawyers dispute the claims, and the magistrate declined to discuss the matter with the AP.
The episode marks another odd turn in the feud over the Trump International Hotel on Panama City’s waterfront. Trump’s team was eventually evicted from the hotel, which was stripped of his name and reopened under new management. But the battle continues in court.
Trump stepped away from running his business interests after becoming president in January 2017 but he still owns them. On a day-to-day basis, they are managed by his children and longtime executives.
The behavior described in Carrera’s complaint occurred during the time Miami-based private equity investor Orestes Fintiklis was vying for control of the hotel, located within a high-rise that also contains a casino and a condo association.
The magistrate was not involved in the main hotel dispute, but ruled against Trump’s interests in a fight over control of the office containing the hotel’s closed-circuit security system.
Trump’s lawyers from the Panama City law firm of Britton & Iglesias berated her and her staff in her office, she said.
“I felt intimidated and threatened,” wrote Carrera, who handles basic legal matters and disputes as part of her job as justice of the peace for Panama City’s government.
Trump’s attorneys in Panama denied any misconduct.
“The lawyers were never disrespectful, nor rude, nor did we make any sort of threats nor intimidation like the kind we are falsely accused of,” the firm said in a statement. The statement said the firm’s attorneys had not been given timely access to documents related to the dispute by Carrera’s office and simply demanded them in the presence of a notary hired to document the interaction.
Panamanian anticorruption officials declined to comment.
The Trump Organization’s general counsel, Alan Garten, did not respond to an email or telephone messages inquiring about the magistrate’s complaint.
In 2015, condo residents voted overwhelmingly to oust Trump’s company from its job as building manager, but Trump’s hotel contract remained in place.
After an investment fund run by Fintiklis bought out a majority of the hotel last year, he and other hotel unit owners voted to terminate Trump Hotels’ management contract, alleging financial misconduct and ineffectiveness.
Arbitration over the dispute stalled. Fintiklis, who heads the hotel owners association, escalated the battle last month by attempting to hand-deliver termination notices to Trump’s team.
What followed was a 12-day scramble in which Fintiklis’ lawyers alleged Trump’s team barricaded doors on the property and Trump’s team claimed “thug-like, mob style tactics” on the part of Fintiklis and his allies. Amid repeated skirmishes by rival security teams, police in riot gear were sometimes called in to restore order.
One flashpoint centered on control of the hotel’s closed-circuit security system, housed in part of the building the hotel does not own.
When managers of the condo association attempted to enter the office, which contained both the hotel’s security monitors and electronics equipment key to the building’s operation, the Trump security staff refused to let them enter. Video obtained by the AP shows that, after building staff disabled the lock on the office door, rival teams of security guards ended up grappling in a stairwell. Police were called.
The building’s overall owners association, which has generally been aligned with the hotel owners seeking to oust Trump, sought legal help from Carrera’s office to regain control of the office.
Carrera approved an order requiring the Trump staff to leave.
After Carrera visited the property and issued her ruling, Trump’s staff vacated the office, taking their closed-circuit TV equipment with them.
Carrera’s complaint said the encounter with Trump’s attorneys occurred a few days after her ruling when they came to her office to retrieve case files related to the dispute.
According to the magistrate’s assistant, who also submitted an official statement, the lawyers berated Carrera and called her biased.
“Emotions boiled over and the judge intervened calling for order over the shouts of both sides,” notary Gisela Edith Dudley de Lau wrote, though she did not describe any threats made in her presence. The notary wrote she had been called in because the Trump lawyers were frustrated they had not yet received access to case files, though they eventually received the records.
___
Horwitz reported from Washington and Stevenson from Mexico City. Associated Press writer Chris Sherman in Mexico City also contributed to this report.
Laurence Tribe
Did you know that, even though corporations have 1st Amendment free speech rights, they DO NOT have 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination? That’s key to Mueller’s subpoena to the Trump Organization. The jig is up, Donald.
Trump White House Worked with Newt Gingrich on Political Purge at State Department, Lawmakers Say
Trump officials called civil servants “turncoat” and “Obama/Clinton loyalists.”
Dan FriedmanMar. 15, 2018 2:26 PM
Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich on March 16, 2017.Melanie Rodgers/Cox/Planet Pix via ZUMA Wire
White House and State Department officials conspired with prominent conservatives, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, to purge the State Department of staffers they viewed as insufficiently loyal to President Donald Trump, two top House Democrats allege in a letter released Thursday.
The letter states that an unidentified whistleblower shared documents with Democrats on the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees showing that a group of White House officials pressed political appointees at the State Department to oust career civil service employees they described with terms like “Turncoat,” “leaker and a troublemaker,” and “Obama/Clinton loyalists not at all supportive of President Trump’s foreign policy agenda.”
As described in the letter, those actions would likely violate federal laws protecting federal civil servants from undue political influence.
In the letter to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and State Department Deputy Secretary John Sullivan, Reps. Elijah Cummings of Maryland and Eliot Engel of New York, the top Democrats on the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees, cite an email forwarded by Gingrich to Trump appointees in the State Department (the Democrats released a summary of the leaked documents, rather than the original emails). In an undated email, David Wurmser, who advised former Vice President Dick Cheney and former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton, wrote, “Newt: I think a cleaning is in order here. I hear [Secretary of State Rex] Tillerson has actually been reasonably good on stuff like this and cleaning house, but there are so many that it boggles the mind.” (Trump fired Tillerson earlier this week.)
Cummings and Engel say they are “particularly concerned” about documents showing an effort to drive out Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, a career civil servant at the State Department assigned to the policy planning staff. The letter notes that Brian Hook, the director of that division, forwarded an email from Nowrouzzadeh in which she defended herself against an attack that had been published in a conservative publication. The officials then discussed whether she was too supportive of the nuclear deal with Iran negotiated by President Barack Obama. Several of the officials discussed ousting Nowrouzzadeh. Julia Haller, a White House liaison to the State Department, wrote that Nowrouzzadeh “was born in Iran and upon my understanding cried when the President won.”
Nowrouzadeh was removed from her post on the Policy Planning Staff three months earlier than scheduled in a manner she said violated a memorandum of understanding governing her assignment.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... akers-say/
Dems: Trump Officials Worked With Activists To Target State Dept. Career Staff
Tierney Sneed
House Democrats on Thursday accused Trump-appointed officials in the State Department and at the White House of working with outside conservative activists to conduct a “cleaning” of career staff whom, according to emails handed over to Dems by a whistleblower, they deemed insufficiently loyal to the President’s agenda.
Reps. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and Eliot Engel (D-NY) — the top Democrats on the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs Committees, respectively — made the claims in a letter dated Thursday to White House chief of staff John Kelly and Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan. In the letter, Cummings and Engel requested documents and interviews related to the reassignment of State Department career staff and civil servants.
Politico has also obtained the emails the Democrats referenced in their letter.
In one email, David Wurmser, formerly a Middle East adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, sent former House Speaker Newt Gingrich a March 2017 article in the Conservative Review targeting Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, a career State staffer and expert in Iran policy.
“Newt: I think a cleaning is in order here,” Wurmser wrote, according to the Democrats’ letter. “I hear Tillerson actually been reasonably good on stuff like this and cleaning house, but there are so many that it boggles the mind…”
Gingrich then passed Wurmser’s email (which referred to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, whom President Donald Trump fired earlier this week) along to Trump appointees in the State Department, according to Cummings and Engel.
The Conservative Review story that Wurmser cited claimed that Nowrouzzadeh, who joined the State Department under the George W. Bush administration, had “burrowed” into the State Department. It also noted her role in the promotion of President Barack Obama’s Iran deal, which Trump has disparaged as a “disaster.”
Nowrouzzadeh reached out to her advisor Brian Hook, a political appointee and director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, seeking that he help her “correct the record,” according to the Democrats’ letter.
Instead, according to Cummings and Engel, Hook forwarded her email to other State Department officials, who in turned forwarded it to aides at the White House.
One White House aide, Julie Haller, said falsely in an email that Nowrouzzadeh was “born in Iran” (she is of Iranian descent but was born in Connecticut, according to Politico). “[U]pon my understanding,” Haller wrote, Nowrouzzadeh “cried when the President won.”
According to the Democrats’ letter, Haller also wrote to Trump aide Sean Doocey and other White House officials that it was “easy to get a detail suspended and because she’s a conditional career, we just need to confirm the year she is in.”
Hook cut short Nowrouzzadeh’s year-long stint at the Policy Planning Staff, which serves as an in-house think tank, by three months, Politico reported, and the State Department misled Politico when it initially reported her reassignment last year.
In an email exchange where career staffer Edward Lacey, the deputy director of Policy Planning Staff, instructed a press aide to stress that Nowrouzzadeh’s tenure in the role had been completed, Nowrouzzadeh rebuked his characterization, according to the report.
“Ed – My assignment was not ‘completed,’” she wrote, according to Politico. “The 3 month curtailment to the duration of my detail was also not handled in accordance with that which was explicitly stated in my [memorandum of understanding].”
According the House Democrats’ letter and Politico’s report, Nowrouzzadeh was not the only career staffer whom Trump appointees treated with suspicion.
Last April, according to Politico, Hook sent an email to himself with a list of names where he described one name as a “turncoat” and another as a “leaker and troublemaker.”
The email was titled “Derek notes” — an apparent reference to then-National Security Council aide Derek Harvey, according to the report.
State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert, in a comment to Politico, denied that members of the Policy Planning Staff were biased against career staffers, and said that more than half of the office’s current staff are career professionals.
“Any suggestion that the makeup of the Policy Planning Staff reflects a bias against career civil servants is completely without merit,” she said. “The details of Policy Planning’s staffing under Director Hook demonstrate that career civil servants continue to play an integral role, as do political appointees.”
Read the House Democrats’ letter below:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ ... dem-letter
by seemslikeadream » Fri Mar 16, 2018 10:06 am
Trump plans to replace H.R. McMaster as White House shakeup continues: sources
Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey, Philip Rucker and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post
President Donald Trump has decided to remove H.R. McMaster as his national security adviser and is actively discussing potential replacements, according to five people with knowledge of the plans, preparing to deliver yet another jolt to the senior ranks of his administration.
Trump is now comfortable with ousting McMaster, with whom he never personally gelled, but is willing to take time executing the move because he wants to ensure both that the three-star Army general is not humiliated and that there is a strong successor lined up, these people said.
The turbulence is part of a broader potential shake-up under consideration by Trump that is likely to include senior officials at the White House, where staffers are gripped by fear and uncertainty as they await the next move from an impulsive president who enjoys stoking conflict.
For all of the evident disorder, Trump feels emboldened, advisers said - buoyed by what he views as triumphant decisions last week to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum and to agree to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The president is enjoying the process of assessing his team and making changes, tightening his inner circle to those he considers survivors and who respect his unconventional style, one senior White House official said.
Just days ago, Trump used Twitter to fire Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state whom he disliked, and moved to install his close ally, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, in the job. On Wednesday, he named conservative TV analyst Larry Kudlow to replace his top economic adviser, Gary Cohn, who quit over trade disagreements.
And on Thursday, Trump signaled that more personnel moves were likely. "There will always be change," the president told reporters. "And I think you want to see change. I want to also see different ideas."
This portrait of the Trump administration in turmoil is based on interviews with 19 presidential advisers and administration officials, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer candid perspectives.
The mood inside the White House in recent days has verged on mania, as Trump increasingly keeps his own counsel and senior aides struggle to determine the gradations between rumor and truth. At times, they say, they are anxious and nervous, wondering what each new headline may mean for them personally.
But in other moments, they appear almost as characters in an absurdist farce - openly joking about whose career might end with the next presidential tweet. Some White House officials have begun betting about which staffer will be ousted next, though few, if any, have much reliable information about what is actually going on.
Many aides were particularly unsettled by the firing of the president's longtime personal aide, John McEntee, who was marched out of the White House on Tuesday after his security clearance was abruptly revoked.
"Everybody fears the perp walk," one senior White House official said. "If it could happen to Johnny, the president's body guy, it could happen to anybody."
Trump recently told White House Chief of Staff John Kelly that he wants McMaster out and asked for help weighing replacement options, according to two people familiar with their conversations. The president has complained that McMaster is too rigid and that his briefings go on too long and seem irrelevant.
Several candidates have emerged as possible McMaster replacements, including John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and Keith Kellogg, the chief of staff of the National Security Council.
Kellogg travels with Trump on many domestic trips, in part because the president likes his company and thinks he is fun. Bolton has met with Trump several times and often agrees with the president's instincts. Trump also thinks Bolton, who regularly praises the president on Fox News Channel, is good on television.
Some in the White House have been reluctant to oust McMaster from his national security perch until he has a promotion to four-star rank or other comfortable landing spot. They are eager to show that someone can serve in the Trump administration without suffering severe damage to their reputation.
McMaster is not the only senior official on thin ice with the president. Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin has attracted Trump's ire for his spending decisions as well as for general disorder in the senior leadership of his agency.
Others considered at risk for being fired or reprimanded include Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, who has generated bad headlines for ordering a $31,000 dining room set for his office; Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, who has been under fire for his first-class travel at taxpayer expense; and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, whose agency spent $139,000 to renovate his office doors.
Meanwhile, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos drew attention this week when she stumbled through a pair of high-profile television interviews. Kelly watched DeVos' sit-down with Lesley Stahl of CBS's "60 Minutes" with frustration and complained about the secretary's apparent lack of preparation, officials said. Other Trump advisers mocked DeVos' shaky appearance with Savannah Guthrie on NBC's "Today" show.
Kelly's own ouster has been widely speculated for weeks. But two top officials said Trump on Thursday morning expressed disbelief to Vice President Mike Pence, senior advisers and Kelly himself that Kelly's name was surfacing on media watch lists because his job is secure. Trump and Kelly then laughed about it, the officials said.
The widespread uncertainty has created power vacuums that could play to the advantage of some administration aides.
Pompeo, who carefully cultivated a personal relationship with the president, had positioned himself as the heir apparent to Tillerson, whom Trump had long disliked.
Similarly, Pruitt has made no secret inside the West Wing of his ambition to become attorney general should Trump decide to fire Jeff Sessions, who he frequently derides for his decision to recuse himself from the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
White House officials have grown agitated that Pruitt and his allies are privately pushing for the EPA chief to replace Sessions, a job Pruitt has told people he wants. On Wednesday night, Kelly called Pruitt and told him the president was happy with his performance at EPA and that he did not need to worry about the Justice Department, according to two people familiar with the conversation.
With Hope Hicks resigning her post as communications director, the internal jockeying to replace her has been especially intense between Mercedes Schlapp, who oversees the White House's long-term communications planning, and Tony Sayegh, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin's top communications adviser.
Trump enjoys watching his subordinates compete for his approval. Many of the rumors are fueled by Trump himself because he complains to aides and friends about other staffers, or muses about who might make good replacements.
"I like conflict. I like having two people with different points of view," Trump said last week, rapping his fists toward one another to simulate a clash. "I like watching it, I like seeing it, and I think it's the best way to go."
Shulkin, meanwhile, is facing mounting trouble after The Washington Post first reported that he and his wife took a sightseeing-filled trip to Europe on taxpayer funds, including watching tennis at Wimbledon. Shulkin is now facing an insurrection at his own agency, with tensions so high that an armed guard stands outside his office.
Another episode haunting Shulkin was a trip to the Invictus Games in Canada last September with first lady Melania Trump's entourage. Shulkin fought with East Wing aides over his request that his wife accompany him on the trip because he was eager for her to meet Prince Harry of Wales, who founded the games, according to multiple officials familiar with the dispute.
The first lady's office explained there was not room on the plane for Shulkin's wife, and officials said the secretary was unpleasant during the trip.
Shulkin said in an email sent by a spokeswoman: "These allegations are simply untrue. I was honored to attend the Invictus Games with the First Lady and understood fully when I was told that there wasn't any more room for guests to attend."
A leading contender to replace Shulkin is Pete Hegseth, an Iraq War veteran and Fox News personality who is a conservative voice on veterans policy, officials said.
White House officials said there are several reasons Trump has not axed Cabinet members with whom he has grown disenchanted: the absence of consensus picks to replace them; concern that their nominated successors may not get confirmed in the divided Senate; and reluctance to pick allied senators or House members for fear of losing Republican seats in special elections, as happened last year in Alabama.
Also, Trump has sometimes expressed confusion about what agencies and secretaries are in charge of what duties, a senior administration official said. For example, this official said, he has complained to Pruitt about regulatory processes for construction projects, although the EPA is not in charge of the regulations.
Amid the disarray, White House staff are training Cabinet secretaries and their staffs on ethics rules and discussing new processes to prevent mistakes. William McGinley, who runs the White House Office of Cabinet Affairs, and Stefan Passantino, a deputy White House counsel, have met individually and in groups with Carson, Pruitt, Shulkin, Zinke and other Cabinet secretaries to impress upon them the importance of changing behavior.
Simply following the letter of the law is not enough, administration officials said. Trump and Kelly demand that their Cabinet secretaries be mindful of political optics and the bad headlines that come with misbehavior.
"Even if the legal guys sign off on it," one official said, "you still step back and say, 'Does this make sense optically?' "
The Washington Post's Greg Jaffe contributed to this report
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nati ... story.html
ACLU sues Trump administration over detaining asylum seekers
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — A lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington on Thursday alleges that the Trump administration is illegally jailing asylum seekers with credible cases for months on end in an attempt to deter them and others from seeking refuge in the United States.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed the class-action lawsuit on behalf of nine detained asylum seekers from Haiti, Venezuela and other countries. They are asking a judge to order the administration to follow a 2009 policy that allows officials to release foreigners while they await their immigration court hearings, a process that can take years.
Among the plaintiffs are Ansly Damus, a 41-year-old ethics teacher who said he was attacked by a gang in Haiti that beat him, set his motorcycle ablaze and threatened to kill him for criticizing a politician. He won his asylum case – twice – but has spent 16 months in detention, most recently in Ohio, while the government appeals.
Other plaintiffs are Alexi Montes, an 18-year-old gay man harassed and beaten in Honduras and who has a relative in Virginia; Abelardo Asensio Callol, a 30-year-old software engineer from Cuba who refused to join the Communist Party or rally for the now-deceased Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and an unnamed father of two from Mexico who said a drug cartel kidnapped his two brothers and threatened to kill him and his family.
All were initially deemed to have had credible stories and are entitled to a hearing before an immigration judge, lawyers said. While awaiting those hearings, they have been jailed for months.
“The fact that we are doing this to people . . . is really outrageous,” said Michael Tan, a New York-based staff attorney for the ACLU. “What they’re doing here is using detention to send a message that asylum seekers need not apply and they’re not welcome here in the United States.”
The legal challenge comes as the Trump administration engineers a wide-ranging review of the nation’s immigration policies and asylum fraud, which it blames in part for a backlog in the immigration courts of over 600,000 cases, triple the number in 2009.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said last year that the asylum system is being “gamed” by foreigners and “dirty immigration lawyers.” Instead of a lifeline to people in peril, he said it had become an “easy ticket to illegal entry into the United States.”
The Department of Justice has also said it wants to slash the immigration court docket of 600,000 cases in half by 2020.
The ACLU lawsuit is filed against the Department of Homeland Security and its sub-agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which detains immigrants, and the Justice Department, which runs the immigration courts where immigrants can seek bond hearings. ICE spokeswoman Sarah Rodriguez said the agency does not comment on pending litigation. The Justice Department also declined to comment.
Asylum is a provision in federal law that allows foreign nationals to seek permanent residency and eventually, citizenship, if they have a fear of persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or “membership in a particular social group,” a broad category that has included people fleeing gang activity, domestic violence or other circumstances.
The process often starts at an airport or a land border when a person requests asylum and is interviewed by a federal officer who decides if their claims seem credible, and then refers their cases to an immigration judge.
Although the federal government under former President Barack Obama also detained asylum seekers – including Damus, the Haitian teacher who is a plaintiff in the lawsuit – the ACLU said the number who are released while their cases are pending has plunged under the Trump administration.
The lawsuit said 96 percent of release requests at five U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field offices – Detroit, El Paso, Los Angeles, Newark, and Philadelphia – were denied during Trump’s first eight months in office.
The ACLU estimates that more than 1,000 asylum seekers were detained in those field offices alone in 2017.
The ACLU says it is not attempting to interfere with the government’s right to detain individuals who are flight risks or who pose a danger to society. Instead, they said, they want the government to consider each case individually and release individuals who do not pose a risk while their cases are pending.
Lawyers argue that the Trump administration’s approach is endangering lives by forcing people to choose between fleeing for their lives or enduring severe conditions while jailed in the United States.
Last year Martín Méndez Pineda, a journalist from Mexico who said he fled to the United States after receiving death threats and having a gun pointed at his head, spent three months in U.S. detention – which he described as “hell” – before he gave up and went home.
Beyond detaining immigrants, Sessions also recently issued a decision that eliminated a requirement that all asylum seekers get a full hearing before an immigration judge. He is considering a separate matter that could affect asylum applications from people fleeing criminal gangs.
Based on the 2009 directive, the Obama administration released thousands of asylum seekers who had passed their credible-fear interviews. But in response to a surge of border crossings in Obama’s second term, the administration began locking up women and children from Central America who illegally crossed the border, prompting a lawsuit from the ACLU.
A federal judge in that case, which was also filed in Washington, issued a preliminary injunction, saying it was likely unlawful to jail the women and children in the civil immigration system to prevent others from crossing. The Obama administration then relaxed its policy.
https://www.dailyrepublic.com/wires/acl ... m-seekers/
Why Are Murders Of Gay And Bi Men Up A Staggering 400 Percent?
Michelangelo Signorile
A 20-year-old man linked to a neo-Nazi group was charged last month in the brutal stabbing death of 19-year-old Blaze Bernstein, an openly gay Jewish college student who was reported missing by his family in Orange County, California, in early January and whose body was found in a wooded area.
Samuel Woodard, who allegedly stabbed Bernstein more than 20 times, is a member of the group Atomwaffen Division, ProPublica reported. Men with connections to the group have allegedly killed four other people across the country within an eight-month period.
HuffPost reporter Christopher Mathias described the Atomwaffen Division as “a well-armed neo-Nazi group enamored with Charles Manson and Adolf Hitler whose members harbor grand and demented delusions of fighting a ‘race war’ and overthrowing the U.S. government.”
In a recent report by the Anti-Defamation League, killings committed by white supremacists more than doubled in 2017. And hate-motivated homicides of LGBTQ people were up a whopping 86 percent nationwide in 2017 over the previous year, according to a report by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs. Transgender women of color have consistently been the most targeted group among LGBTQ people, each year making up the highest number of hate-motivated killings.
Those numbers have been increasing dramatically. “In 2017, there were 27 hate-violence related homicides of transgender and gender non-conforming people, compared to 19 reports in 2016,” according to the NCAVP report. “[Twenty-two] of these homicides were of transgender women of color.”
And then there is the staggering statistic from the NCAVP report on murders of cisgender queer, gay or bisexual men: a 400 percent increase in hate-motivated homicides in 2017 ― from four in 2016 to 20 in 2017.
Many men, whether they be white supremacists or not, have felt their masculinity threatened by the increased push for equality for LGBTQ people over the years.
The great majority of these homicides, which include killers who lured their queer male victims using social media apps, weren’t committed by men involved with neo-Nazis or white supremacist groups. But those hate groups and their allies may feel emboldened by a president who talked about the neo-Nazi rally that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year as having “very fine people” on “both sides.” And according to another ADL report, white supremacists hate groups are organizing on campuses, targeting college students. Those factors, in turn, have added to the culture of fear in which rising violence against LGBTQ individuals has taken place.
It is also appears to be true that many men, whether they be white supremacists or not, have felt their masculinity threatened by the increased push for equality for LGBTQ people over the years, as well as by the call for full equality for women, which the rise of the #MeToo movement both reflects and challenges. A study published last year showed that men who make sexist and homophobic jokes are the most insecure about their masculinity.
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Much of the violence against gay and bi men and transgender women over the years has been committed by men who are deeply insecure about their masculinity and even sometimes about their own sexual orientation. Studies have shown that men most likely to harbor hate are often tormented themselves about their own same-sex attraction.
What may be different since 2017 is that these men ― and the vast majority of hate-motivated killings of queer people are committed by cisgender men ― now feel more empowered to act out. A GLAAD annual survey published in recent weeks found, for the first time in four years, a ”swift and alarming drop” in acceptance of LGBTQ people ― rather than the steady rise the survey saw each year prior ― and an increase in reports of discrimination by LGBTQ people:
The 2018 Accelerating Acceptance report found that 49 percent of the non-LGBTQ respondents identified themselves as LGBTQ “allies” in 2017, down from 53 percent in 2016. At the same time, 55 percent of the LGBTQ respondents said they experienced anti-queer discrimination last year, compared to 44 percent in 2016.
It’s hard not to see the connection between these recent changes and President Donald Trump’s actions. As I’ve reported and analyzed over the past year in several columns, Trump is the most anti-LGBTQ president in history, attempting to strip away hard-fought rights that have been won.
From banning transgender people in the military to advocating for allowing discrimination against gay, lesbian and bisexual people in employment, the Trump administration has brutally attacked LGBTQ rights by promoting religious exemptions.
Trump also put a man on the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, whose judicial history shows a propensity to carve out religious exemptions to civil rights ― something which he has already demonstrated with recent dissents on the high court itself. As Trump stated in his first State of the Union address last week, his administration has “taken historic actions to protect religious liberty.” That was not-so-subtle code for clamping down on LGBTQ rights, directed squarely at his white evangelical base.
The aforementioned GLAAD survey likely doesn’t reflect that people have become more uncomfortable with queer people in the past year. Rather, it shows that in a climate in which the president of the United States actually privileges discrimination as a “liberty” people should enjoy, individuals who’ve always harbored that bias now feel more comfortable expressing it publicly.
Likewise, in this kind of hostile environment toward LGBTQ people, those who would engage in hate-motivated violence surely feel that there is a brisk wind at their backs.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/op ... a61b4df141
Alert (TA18-074A)
Russian Government Cyber Activity Targeting Energy and Other Critical Infrastructure Sectors
Original release date: March 15, 2018
Systems Affected
Domain Controllers
File Servers
Email Servers
Overview
This joint Technical Alert (TA) is the result of analytic efforts between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). This alert provides information on Russian government actions targeting U.S. Government entities as well as organizations in the energy, nuclear, commercial facilities, water, aviation, and critical manufacturing sectors. It also contains indicators of compromise (IOCs) and technical details on the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by Russian government cyber actors on compromised victim networks. DHS and FBI produced this alert to educate network defenders to enhance their ability to identify and reduce exposure to malicious activity.
DHS and FBI characterize this activity as a multi-stage intrusion campaign by Russian government cyber actors who targeted small commercial facilities’ networks where they staged malware, conducted spear phishing, and gained remote access into energy sector networks. After obtaining access, the Russian government cyber actors conducted network reconnaissance, moved laterally, and collected information pertaining to Industrial Control Systems (ICS).
https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA18-074A
Cyberattacks Put Russian Fingers on the Switch at Power Plants, U.S. ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/15/us/p ... tacks.html
51 mins ago - Cyberattacks Put Russian Fingers on the Switch at Power Plants, U.S. Says. By NICOLE PERLROTH and DAVID E. SANGER MARCH 15, 2018 ... The Trump administration accused Russia on Thursday of engineering a series of cyberattacks that targeted American and European nuclear power plants and ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/15/us/p ... 43&gwt=pay
DHS and FBI warn Russia is behind cyberattacks on US infrastructure
Energy, nuclear, aviation and manufacturing sectors are among those affected.
Mallory Locklear, @mallorylocklear
2h ago in Security
The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI released a report today detailing Russian efforts to hack into US government entities and infrastructure sectors, including energy, nuclear, commercial, water, aviation and critical manufacturing sectors. The agencies said the cyberattacks have been ongoing since at least March 2016 and their report described the attacks as "a multi-stage intrusion campaign by Russian government cyber actors."
Those behind the cyberattacks are said to be targeting two types of entities. First, they go after groups that are linked to their ultimate targets, such as third-party suppliers with networks that are less secure than those of their main targets. Then after gathering useful information, they use it to stage malware and to conduct phishing campaigns in order to gain access into energy sector networks. "After obtaining access, the Russian government cyber actors conducted network reconnaissance, moved laterally and collected information pertaining to industrial control systems," the report said.
Reports surfaced last year that the US nuclear power industry had been the target of hackers, but while Russia was thought to be behind it, DHS and the FBI didn't name Russia as the source at the time. Ben Read, manager for the cybersecurity company FireEye Inc., told Reuters, "People sort of suspected Russia was behind it, but today's statement from the US government carries a lot of weight." The report didn't describe what sort of impact the attacks had on US infrastructure organizations.
Today's report comes the same day that the US Treasury Department issued sanctions on a number of Russian groups and individuals who have allegedly been involved in massive cyberattacks like NotPetya and efforts to sway the US presidential election.
https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/15/dhs ... erattacks/
John Fugelsang
I refuse to joke about Vanessa Trump bc it's NEVER funny when a couple files for an uncontested quick divorce, one where assets can be swiftly transferred, on the same day an independent special counsel subpoenas their family business. People, this could happen to you someday.
by Asta » Fri Mar 16, 2018 11:04 am
by dada » Fri Mar 16, 2018 11:17 am
82_28 » Fri Mar 16, 2018 4:57 am wrote: Someone else can start a new thread about Trump. This one just simply became the clearinghouse for the insanity of this person, Trump, over the past couple of years.
by seemslikeadream » Fri Mar 16, 2018 11:42 am
because of the cognitive dissonance created by having a tweeting tweeter at the top of your hierarchy.
by JackRiddler » Fri Mar 16, 2018 12:41 pm
dada » Fri Mar 16, 2018 10:17 am wrote:Donald is seriously dangerous in the way this thread is getting at, sure. He's also seriously dangerous because of the cognitive dissonance created by having a tweeting tweeter at the top of your hierarchy. Authoritarians are put in a difficult position. How do you defend the system while at the same time attacking Donald without appearing hypocritical and foolish? Short answer, you don't. That doesn't stop the NYTimes and the rest from trying, of course.
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