February 16th, 2017. It's been 461 days since the Nov 8, 2016, election of some rich asshole, no. 45, and 389 days since the Jan 20th inauguration.
Bombshell indictment details Russian election interference operations
The 37-page indictment details efforts to support the rich asshole and undermine Clinton.
A bombshell indictment released Friday by the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller accused 13 individuals and a trio of Russian companies of “interference operations targeting the United States.”
The indictment primarily details the efforts of the Internet Research Agency — the Russian organization responsible for spearheading Moscow’s social media interference operations during the 2016 U.S. election. While the 37-page indictment doesn’t identify any new Facebook or Twitter accounts created by the IRA, it does detail the methods with which the Russian operatives skirted and allegedly broke U.S. law — as well as hints at the Americans with whom they communicated.
The biggest takeaway from the indictment — alongside the details of the operations, from bank transfers to false identities — likely comes with the confirmation that Russian social media interference operations were dedicated to “supporting the presidential campaign of [some rich asshole] and disparaging Hillary Clinton.” As the indictment reads:
[Russian operatives] engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate some rich asshole… Specialists were instructed to post content that focused ‘on politics in the USA’ and to ‘use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and the rich asshole — we support them).
One Russian operative, according to the indictment, was even “criticized for having a ‘low number of posts dedicated to criticizing Hillary Clinton’ and was told ‘it is imperative to intensify criticizing Hillary Clinton’ in future posts.”
The indictment describes how Russian operatives impersonated Americans, traveled to the U.S. for intelligence gathering operations, and, in at least one instance, “communicated with a real U.S. person affiliated with a Texas-based grassroots organization.” The indictment doesn’t identify the individual or the organization, but notes that the “U.S. person [said] they should focus their activities on ‘purple states like Colorado, Virginia & Florida.’”
All told, the defendants are accused of “conspir[ing] to obstruct the lawful functions of the United States government through fraud and deceit, including by making expenditures in connection with the 2016 U.S. presidential election without proper regulatory disclosure; failing to register as foreign agents carrying out political activities within the United States; and obtaining visas through false and fraudulent statements.”
While questions remain as to which Americans the Russian operatives communicated with, the indictment makes clear that the Russian operatives tried to primarily support the rich asshole’s campaign, while undercutting Clinton’s. Indeed, some of those identified “communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the rich asshole Campaign,” as well as “other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities.”
Coordinating with a number of LLCs and operating out of St. Petersburg, Russia, the operation, per the indictment, “employed hundreds of individuals for its online operations, ranging from creators of fictitious personas to technical and administrative support,” including data analysis and a graphics department. Approximately 80 employees within the broader Russian apparatus focused primarily on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts.
Some of those employees, including defendants like Aleksandra Krylova — at one point the third-highest ranking employee in the organization — traveled to the U.S. “under false pretenses for the purpose of collecting intelligence to inform” their operations. Others “oversaw the procurement of U.S. servers… that masked the [organization’s] Russian location when conducting operations within the U.S.”
The Russian operatives traveled extensively through the U.S., including to states like Nevada, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, Louisiana, Texas, and New York — all “to gather intelligence.” An additional trip to Atlanta provided further intelligence. While in the U.S., the defendants, according to the indictment, “posed as U.S. persons and contacted U.S. political and social activists.”
As it is, the indictment doesn’t shed any new light on specific fake Russian Facebook or Twitter accounts; rather, it details the efforts of groups already identified, including “Secured Borders,” “United Muslims of America,” “Blacktivist,” and “Heart of Texas,” confirming that the size of many of the pages “had grown to hundreds of thousands of online followers.” According to the indictment, the Russian operatives further tracked engagement using an assortment of metrics. As the indictment reads:
Defendants and their co-conspirators also regularly evaluated the content posted by specialists… to ensure they appeared authentic — as if operated by U.S. persons. Specialists received feedback and directions to improve the quality of their posts.
The indictment also details some of the methods with which the defendants purportedly purchased ads on Facebook as well as disbursed money, including opening PayPal accounts with fake identities. The operatives further “used, possessed, and transferred… the social security numbers and dates of birth of real U.S. persons without those persons’ knowledge or consent.”
But the efforts weren’t solely dedicated to undercutting Clinton’s campaign, or to sowing division across the U.S. As the indictment points, the Russian operatives “began to encourage U.S. minority groups not to vote in the 2016 U.S. presidential election” — or even to support third party candidates like Jill Stein. As one post read, “Choose peace and vote for Jill Stein. Trust me, it’s not a wasted vote.”
Mueller’s office announced an additional guilty plea on Friday. The plea, connected to Mueller’s ongoing Russia probe, details how a California man named Richard Pinedo “offered a variety of services designed to circumvent the security features of large online digital payment companies,” while also selling bank account numbers online. Pinedo, according to the plea, additionally “knew that many of the persons to whom he sold bank account numbers were outside the United States.” The plea does not detail where Pinedo’s customers were located.
This is a developing story and will be updated with additional information.
The 3 most important words Rosenstein said about the Mueller indictment
The deputy AG left open the possibility that collusion allegations may emerge.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of 13 individuals and a trio of Russian companies for “interference operations targeting the United States,” which was handed down Friday afternoon, does not allege that the the rich asshole campaign knowingly colluded with Russian agents during the 2016 presidential election — but in a news conference on Friday, deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein did not rule out the possibility that such allegations could be made in the future.
Alluding to the latest indictment’s allegation that some of the defendants were in communication with the rich asshole campaign officials, a reporter asked Rosenstein, “Were campaign officials cooperative, or were they duped?”
Rosenstein’s response to the question included an important caveat.
“There is no allegation in this indictment that any American had any knowledge, and the nature of the scheme was the defendants took extraordinary steps to make it appears that they were ordinary American political activists, even going so far as to base their activities on a virtual private network here in the United States so if anybody traced it back to the first jump they would appear to be Americans,” he said.
That was the second time during the news conference that Rosenstein emphasized there is no allegation of collusion “in this indictment” — leaving open the possibility that allegations of collusion against the rich asshole campaign officials could be made in future indictments.
While already know that the the rich asshole campaign was willing to collude with Russian agents. Last summer, some rich asshole Jr. released emails indicating that in June 2016, the rich asshole campaign officers were eager to meet with a Kremlin-connected lawyer who promised them political dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Three months later, the rich asshole Jr. exchanged direct messages with WikiLeaks — the organization that published stolen Clinton campaign emails in the weeks leading up to the election.
While Rosenstein left open the possibility that collusion allegations could be made in the future, the rich asshole supporters quickly seized upon the fact that no such allegations are included in Mueller’s latest indictment — along with the fact that it claims Russians were pushing pro-Bernie Sanders messages — to argue that it actually exonerates the president.
Fox News’ first response to Russian election meddling indictments: blame Obama
Former Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) uses that approach a lot.
Amid news that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has indicted 13 Russian nationals on charges of conspiracy related to meddling in the 2016 presidential election, Fox News returned to a favorite strategy: blame Barack Obama.
Former House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), now a Fox News contributor, was asked about the indictments on Friday afternoon. He immediately downplayed the notion that this interference may have had any impact on some rich asshole’s victory in the incredibly close 2016 election and suggested that it was the fault of the previous president.
“I think a lot of people were very concerned, even at a small level, that this was happening. [Current House Oversight Chairman] Devin Nunes [(R-CA)] has been talking about this for a couple of years. President Obama kind of pooh-poohed the idea that anybody could even interfere, but I think clearly — the more we’ve learned, particularly after the election, yes, there were people improperly trying to manipulate the election,” Chaffetz explained.
He then implied that the Russian effort had absolutely nothing to do with the rich asshole’s win: “Even if they weren’t successful… I don’t think there’s been any indication that it would’ve changed the outcome of the election but the fact that they were trying, I am glad there are going to evidently be some indictments and I hope they are prosecuted and put in jail for a long time. “
Watch:
Last month Vice President Joe Biden said at a Council on Foreign Relations event that then-President Barack Obama met with the congressional leadership in 2016 and informed them of Russia’s apparent effort to illegally meddle in the election. The information was not made public at the time, he recalled, because Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) blocked a bipartisan statement of condemnation.
Chaffetz led multiple unsuccessful investigations of the Obama administration before resigning from Congress after the rich asshole became president.
At least one Fox News host is done with the charade.
Fox News host Shepard Smith shut down the rich asshole’s frequent criticism of the Russia probe on Friday, saying that the new indictments handed down by special counsel Robert Mueller prove the investigation is not the “hoax” the rich asshole has made it out to be.
“The Russians set up websites and Facebook pages and Twitter accounts — pretending to be Americans — and duped us into following them and friending them and retweeting them,” Smith said Friday on Fox News’ “Shepard Smith Reporting.”
“The Russians infiltrated our system, manipulated us on behalf of Vladimir Putin — and they did it online and in person on our soil. If there was ever any question, even a single question, there is no more,” Smith said. “Russia attacked the United States of America.”
Smith’s comments came just hours after special counsel Mueller handed down indictments to 13 Russian nationals and three Russian groups, including the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency, for their role in an extensive effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
According to the indictment, Russian operatives created false American personas and stole the identities of real Americans as part of a broad effort aimed at “supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate some rich asshole (‘the rich asshole Campaign’) and disparaging Hillary Clinton.”
The indictment also alleges that Russian operatives organized pro-the rich asshole and anti-Hillary Clinton rallies — with the help of apparently “unwitting” American accomplices, including people associated with the the rich asshole campaign.
Besides laying out fresh new evidence of the extent of Russia’s influence operation, the new charges wholly debunk the rich asshole’s frequent claim that the Russia investigation is nothing but a hoax — a point that Smith made clear on Friday.
“The Russians … posed as Americans and communicated with unwitting people associated with the the rich asshole campaign to try to coordinate political activities. That’s a blockbuster charge,” Smith said.
“Russians, thought to be Americans, working with the rich asshole supporters or allies to do politics together,” he reiterated. “The Russia investigation is the opposite of a hoax.”
Smith’s comments were an obvious rebuttal to the rich asshole, who has clung to the false claim that the Russia investigation is a hoax for well over a year.
Even as four of his campaign associates were charged with crimes — including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former national security adviser Michael Flynn —the rich asshole continued to insist that Mueller’s probe was nothing but a “witch-hunt.”
In November, the rich asshole even said he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s denials that the Kremlin interfered in the U.S. presidential election — despite a “high confidence” assessment from the U.S. intelligence community saying that Russia did, indeed, interfere in the election.
the rich asshole continues to claim that he did nothing wrong and has nothing to hide, but he sure isn’t acting like it — and even Fox News is calling him out for it.
Multiple the rich asshole administration officials without proper security clearance were granted access to classified information for over a year.
The rich asshole White House is now admitting that it left American classified intelligence exposed for over a year. The revelation comes after a campaign in which the rich asshole repeatedly accused Hillary Clinton of exposing intelligence to the world.
In a memo to aides, White House chief-of-staff John Kelly made several changes to the White House security clearance process. These changes came about after it was revealed that the rich asshole team allowed several individuals to access classified materials even though they had not been cleared by intelligence agencies.
That group includes Rob Porter, who could not pass the clearance process at least in part because of a protective order granted to his ex-wife after abuse allegations, and Jared Kushner, the rich asshole’s son-in-law.
In the memo, Kelly says that the White House will “limit access to certain highly classified information for those individuals working with interim clearance status.”
The existing, faulty security process has been in place since the rich asshole team took over the White House, which means that for over a year, classified information was left exposed.
The admission proves that the administration had a process that was much more freewheeling and cavalier before reporters exposed the domestic abuse cover-up and resulting fallout.
It also illuminates the very real possibility for blackmail against West Wing staffers like Porter and Kushner – not to mention for the rich asshole himself.
After making so much noise with unjust accusations against Clinton, including rallies with the chant “lock her up,” the episode once again shows that the rich asshole is usually guilty of the offenses he smears others with.
One of the cheerleaders for those chants, Michael Flynn, has since pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and was in contact with foreign powers while the rich asshole granted him access to classified information.
Because the rich asshole chooses to surround himself with cronies like his son-in-law and men with abuse in their backgrounds (not to mention white supremacists and their ilk), American security is compromised.
An administration that already is under investigation for working with a foreign power to erode confidence in the nation has just admitted it was sloppy — at best — with classified information. The lives of all Americans hang in the balance.
In a direct rebuttal of the rich asshole, former CIA Director John Brennan said claims of a hoax are "in tatters" after Friday's stunning indictment.
Former CIA Director John Brennan hit back at the rich asshole’s claim Friday that “[t]he results of the election were not impacted” by Russian interference, calling it “implausible” that at least some votes were not influenced.
Brennan’s remarks came just hours after special counsel Robert Mueller released an explosive indictment charging 13 Russian nationals and three Russian organizations for their role in an expansive effort to influence the 2016 presidential election.
Predictably, the rich asshole responded to the indictment by fleeing from the press and refusing to answer reporters’ questions. The only comments the rich asshole has made about the stunning revelations came in the form of tweet in which he falsely claimed that the indictment exonerated him and proved that Russia’s efforts didn’t influence the election results.
“Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President,” the rich asshole tweeted Friday afternoon. “The results of the election were not impacted. The the rich asshole campaign did nothing wrong – no collusion!”
Less than 20 minutes after the rich asshole posted the tweet, Brennan took to Twitter to give his own take on the indictment — a take that completely shut down the rich asshole’s desperate claims:
Far from exonerating the rich asshole, the 37-page indictment handed down on Friday completely undermines the rich asshole’s frequent claims that the Russia investigation is a “hoax” or a “witch-hunt.”
According to the charges in the indictment, Russians working for the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency created false American personas and stole the identities of real Americans as part of an effort aimed at “supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate some rich asshole (‘the rich asshole Campaign’) and disparaging Hillary Clinton.”
The Russian operatives named in the indictment allegedly organized pro-the rich asshole and anti-Hillary Clinton rallies — and they knew to focus on swing states, thanks to help from apparently “unwitting” Americans, including people associated with the the rich asshole campaign.
“Some Defendants, posing as U.S. persons and without revealing their Russian association, communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the the rich asshole Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities,” the indictment says.
Furthermore, despite the rich asshole’s claim that the indictment proves that his campaign “did nothing wrong,” that’s not actually what it says — and the evidence clearly shows this isn’t the case.
Four former the rich asshole associates have already been charged in the investigation, including former the rich asshole campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Most importantly, the investigation is far from over. As Bloomberg News reported on Friday, “Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his prosecutors haven’t concluded their investigation into whether President some rich asshole or any of his associates helped Russia interfere in the 2016 election.”
the rich asshole can tweet whatever he wants — but unfortunately for him, he can’t change the facts.
Warren used the rich asshole's slur to highlight the very people he denigrated.
One of the rich asshole’s favorite schoolyard insults is to call Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas,” based on the debunked right-wing myth that she falsified her race to win academic positions. He loves doing it so much that he even brought up Warren, completely unprompted, at a ceremony honoring Navajo World War II code talkers.
But Warren is tired of the rich asshole’s puerile stunts to try to smear her. She wants it to be a teachable moment about Native American history and struggles.
And in a speech at the Tribal Nations Policy Summit on Wednesday, that is exactly what she made it.
“I’ve noticed that every time my name comes up, President the rich asshole likes to talk about Pocahontas,” said Warren. “So I figured, let’s talk about Pocahontas. Not Pocahontas, the fictional character most Americans know from the movies, but Pocahontas, the Native woman who really lived, and whose real story has been passed down to so many of you through the generations.”
“As you know,” she said, “Pocahontas’ real journey was far more remarkable — and far darker — than the myth admits.”
“Indigenous people have been telling the story of Pocahontas — the real Pocahontas — for four centuries,” she said. “A story of heroism. And bravery. And pain.”
America’s disrespect toward Native Americans didn’t start with the rich asshole, Warren said. “But now we have a president who can’t make it through a ceremony honoring Native American war heroes without reducing Native history, Native culture, Native people to the butt of a joke. The joke, I guess, is supposed to be on me.”
Since taking office, the rich asshole’s record on Native American affairs has been horrible. He supported an oil pipeline running right near a Native reservation, his Interior Secretary dramatically reduced the size of a national monument protecting sacred Native land, and his pick to lead the Indian Health Service was caught lying about his qualifications for office. He has also repeatedly praised former President Andrew Jackson, who was best known for a brutal genocide and forced resettlement of Native Americans.
Indeed, the rich asshole himself appears to harbor a deep-seated contempt for Native Americans. At a congressional hearing on tribal casinos in the 1990s, the rich asshole claimed some of the reservations competing with his business were fraudulent because “they don’t look like Indians to me.”
Warren proceeded to tell the story her family had handed down to her about her mother’s Cherokee ancestry and the tension and economic hardship her parents faced in the Great Depression.
“I understand that tribal membership is determined by tribes — and only by tribes,” she said. “I never used my family tree to get a break or get ahead. I never used it to advance my career. But I want to make something else clear too: My parents were real people.”
“I’m here today to make a promise,” she said. “Every time someone brings up my family’s story, I’m going to use it to lift up the story of your families and your communities.”
“There’s another story that also needs to be told,” she continued. “The story of our country’s mistreatment of your communities. And this isn’t just a story about casual racism – war whoops and tomahawk chops and insulting Facebook memes. It’s a story about discrimination and neglect — the unmet health care needs of Native children and families, the alarmingly high rate of suicide among Native teenagers, the growing opioid crisis and the broader epidemic of substance abuse that has ravaged so many Native communities.”
Warren concluded with a call to end the cycle of abuse and neglect of the vulnerable in America.
“At a time when children are still drinking bottled water in Flint, when families are still desperate for help in Puerto Rico, and when tribal governments are still asking Washington to live up to its promises,” she said, “we must demand a federal government that works for all of us — because if we don’t, we become a country that belongs to only a privileged few.”
“We must stand with everyone who has gotten the short end of the stick from Washington over and over and over,” she said. “We must weave our voices together to make them strong. We must come together to write a new story, not just for Native Americans, but for all Americans.”
In this speech, Warren laid bare not just the ignorance of the rich asshole, but the indifference of our whole nation to the suffering of those who came before us. We must look inside ourselves, and heed her words.
the rich asshole's refusal to address Russian interference makes him look more like a defendant than a president.
the rich asshole blew off reporters’ questions about Russia on Friday, just hours after special counsel Robert Mueller’s team released an indictment against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian groups for interfering in the 2016 presidential election.
The 37-page indictment lays out extensive new evidence about the lengths that Russian operatives went to undermine the American democratic process and change the outcome of the election.
Among other things, the charges allege that Russians working for the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency created false American personas and stole the identities of real Americans as part of an effort that was aimed at “supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate some rich asshole (“the rich asshole Campaign”) and disparaging Hillary Clinton.”
Importantly, the indictment puts to rest the rich asshole’s claims that the Russian investigation is a “hoax” or a “witch-hunt” — claims that he has made repeatedly, including in specific reference to the idea that Russians used social media to manipulate American voters.
Naturally, with the explosive new indictment in hand, reporters wanted to know if the rich asshole still believes the claims that he has clung to for well over a year.
He was confronted by some of those reporters Friday afternoon as he left the White House to board Marine One.
“Do you still the Russia investigation is a hoax?” one reporter asked. Others wanted to know about his failure to impose sanctions on Russia, asking, “Will you punish Russia?” and “Will you put sanctions on Russia?”
the rich asshole had no answers for the press — but he did awkwardly give them a thumbs-up as they probed him about a foreign adversary’s efforts to undermine our democracy.
Moments after blowing off the press, the rich asshole tweeted about the indictment, saying, “Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President. The results of the election were not impacted. The the rich asshole campaign did nothing wrong – no collusion!”
The indictment actually didn’t mention anything about the results of the election, nor did it state that there was no collusion. In fact, according to Bloomberg News, “Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his prosecutors haven’t concluded their investigation into whether President some rich asshole or any of his associates helped Russia interfere in the 2016 election.”
What the indictment did make clear, however, was that “by early to mid-2016, [Russia’s] operations included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate some rich asshole.”
the rich asshole’s ongoing refusal to acknowledge this fact makes him look more like a defendant than a president.
Ex-intelligence chief: the rich asshole’s ‘indifference’ to Russian election meddling is ‘so disturbing’
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper speaking to CNN's Jim Sciutto (image via screengrab).
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Intelligence community veteran James Clapper on Friday warned that President Donald the rich asshole’s “singular indifference” to Russian meddling in the American election may pose more danger to the country than any potential collusion he had with the Kremlin.
Discussing special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictments of more than a dozen Russian nationals and organizations on CNN, the former director of national intelligence said the highly-detailed report was a “compelling reinforcement” of what the intelligence community has been warning about since before the rich asshole was even elected.
Clapper noted that he and other intelligence chiefs briefed the president in January 2017 on their findings, but as host Anderson Cooper pointed out, the Justice Department and other agencies tasked with protecting America from foreign threats have not yet “manned the barricades” to prevent the same thing from happening in 2016.
“That’s what’s so disturbing about this,” Clapper mused. “The threat that the Russians are posing and which they’re going to continue to pose to our basic system.”
“The president, and his singular indifference to this, really imperils our country,” he added. “To me, that transcends whether there was collusion or not.”
Watch below, via CNN:
Manafort hit with another bank fraud charge by Mueller: report
Special counsel Robert Mueller and former the rich asshole campaign chairman Paul Manafort, composite image.
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One-time the rich asshole campaign chairman Paul Manafort has been hit with yet another bank fraud charge by special counsel Robert Mueller in his investigation into potential collusion between the Kremlin and the president’s campaign.
Politico reported Friday night that Mueller’s office has found “additional criminal conduct” since Manafort was indicted in October for committing bank fraud and failing to register as a foreign agent.
Prosecutors in Manafort’s case argued on Tuesday that the bail package their $10 million bail package currently in negotiations is no longer sufficient given the new charges, newly-redacted court records unsealed Friday reveal.
“The proposed package is deficient in the government’s view, in light of additional criminal conduct that we have learned since the Court’s initial bail determination,” prosecutors said in the records, accusing Manafort of “a series of bank frauds and bank fraud conspiracies.”
There are currently no known criminal charges brought against Manafort based on the new information.
Earlier in the week, news broke that Manafort’s longtime associate and the rich asshole deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates was finalizing a plea deal with Mueller. The move indicates that he’s cooperating with the special counsel, making him the third suspected the rich asshole aide to do so.
Special counsel Mueller’s Russia probe: Where it stands
Robert Mueller, the Special Counsel overseeing the investigation into possible collusion between Russians and the the rich asshole campaign in the 2016 election, continues to keep his cards close to his chest as his probe circles the White House AFP/File / SAUL LOEB
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With the surprise indictment Friday of 13 Russians for meddling in the US election, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of possible collusion between some rich asshole’s 2016 campaign and Moscow has entered new territory.
In the first charges directly related to the election, the indicted Russians were accused of running a secret campaign to tilt the vote, including by churning out online posts that were damaging to the rich asshole’s political rivals.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said however the indictments contained “no allegation” that any American was a knowing participant in the meddling, and that there was no judgment on whether the election outcome was affected.
Here is an update of where the Mueller probe stands, nine months after he was appointed.
– Indictments –
The indictments so far show Mueller’s team of investigators moving in multiple directions.
On October 30, he charged former the rich asshole campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and Manafort’s deputy Rick Gates, on money laundering-related charges arising from their work in Ukraine for former pro-Moscow president Viktor Yanukovych. That work, which ended in 2014, had no connection to the 2016 US election. Recent court filings suggest Gates is preparing a plea deal with Mueller.
Also on October 30, Mueller extracted a guilty plea from George Papadopoulos, a rich asshole campaign foreign policy advisor. The plea was to one count of lying over his contacts with Russians during the campaign, and made clear Papadopoulos was cooperating with the probe.
On December 1, Mueller announced a guilty plea by former the rich asshole national security advisor Michael Flynn, also to one count of lying, about his conversations with then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Flynn, who faces numerous other accusations, was also believed to be cooperating with Mueller in exchange for the single charge.
In addition to the conspiracy and identity theft charges announced Friday against the 13 Russians, Mueller unveiled identity fraud charges against Californian Richard Pinedo, who admitted to selling stolen bank and credit card numbers to the Russians.
– Investigation –
Mueller’s team appears to have interviewed most of those connected to the the rich asshole campaign, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the rich asshole son-in-law and White House senior advisor Jared Kushner, White House communications director and the rich asshole confidante Hope Hicks, former the rich asshole strategist Steve Bannon, and others in the president’s inner circle.
The interviews have focused both on the possible collusion with Russian attempts to sway the election, and on the rich asshole’s alleged obstruction of the Mueller probe, including his firing of FBI director James Comey.
There is no sign yet of the investigation reaching an end. Mueller still wants to interview the rich asshole himself, for one.
And his team is following other leads, apparently, such as financial connections between the the rich asshole Organization, the president’s real estate business, and Russia.
– the rich asshole –
Mueller and the rich asshole’s lawyers have been in discussions for weeks over whether the president will speak to him, as both a witness and potential defendant. While the rich asshole told journalists he is willing to do the interview, his lawyers are opposed, concerned that an unconstrained the rich asshole could incriminate himself.
Mueller could subpoena the rich asshole to appear before a grand jury, at which the rich asshole could possibly claim his 5th Amendment right to remain silent. But that would be politically risky for the president.
– Republican attacks –
Meanwhile Mueller’s team, and his Justice Department overseer, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, endure a daily barrage from Republicans accusing them of bias against the president.
The attacks, echoed by the rich asshole and his lawyers, aim to discredit the investigation as a political “witch hunt.” The effect could be, if the rich asshole faces impeachment in Congress over the Russia case, to provide political cover to Republican lawmakers to support the president.
the rich asshole visits Florida hospital to pay respects after school shooting
President of the United States some rich asshole speaks at the general political discussion during the 72th session of the UN Assembly in New York. (Shutterstock)
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U.S. President some rich asshole and first lady Melania the rich asshole on Friday visited a hospital where victims of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, were treated to “pay their respects,” a White House spokeswoman said.
The Trumps planned to thank people who work at the hospital for their response to the shooting on Wednesday, and later planned to visit the Broward County Sheriff’s office to meet law enforcement officials who responded to the shooting.
the rich asshole’s ‘American Innovation’ chief quits job in honor of failed ‘Infrastructure Week’
President some rich asshole responds to a question during Q&A with Reed Cordish, Assistant to the President for Intragovernmental and Technology Initiatives, on Tuesday, April 4, 2017, during the CEO Town Hall on Unleashing American Business hosted by “The White House Office of American Innovation” in the EEOB South Court Auditorium of the White House in Washington, D.C.
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Reed S. Cordish, who led the White House effort on infrastructure, resigned from the rich asshole administration on Friday, The Baltimore Sun reported Friday.
The White House had declared that this was “infrastructure week.”
“In that regard, it’s a good time for a transition for me,” Cordish told The Sun on the timing of his announcement after the administration presented its infrastructure plan earlier this week.
White House senior advisor Jared Kushner said Cordish was an “invaluable” member of the rich asshole administration.
“His leadership on initiatives ranging from work-force development to prison reform to modernizing key [Veterans Affairs] services will have a positive impact for millions of Americans,” Kushner said in a statement.
Cordish married Ivanka the rich asshole’s best friend in 2010.
The resignation was a dramatic capstone to the rich asshole’s widely-panned infrastructure week.
Watch Rachel Maddow wish everyone a “Happy Infrastructure Week”:
Ex-NSA chief blasts the rich asshole and ‘white supremacy media’ for promoting conspiracy that Mueller’s Russia probe is a ‘hoax’
Ex-CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden. Image via screengrab.
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The former head of both the National Security Agency and the CIA on Friday said special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictments against numerous Russian nationals and entities charged with election-meddling put to rest the conspiracy that his investigation is a “hoax.”
The report accompanying the 16 indictments is “really surprising in its detail,” retired Gen. Michael Hayden told CNN’s Brianna Keilar, noting that there’s so much detail in the report, it “looks like a modern remake of ‘The Americans.'”
Noting that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s stated the report does not prove collusion between the the rich asshole campaign and the Kremlin, Keilar asked the former intelligence chief if the indictments “exonerate” President some rich asshole, which he denied.
“No, it’s neutral,” Hayden said. “Particularly neutral on did this effect any votes and did it effect the outcome of the election.”
The impact of the Russian attempts to sow discord in the American political system, the former NSA head suggested, is proved by the “continued debate” on whether the Kremlin actually undertook this election-hacking campaign in the first place. It was a “high-confidence judgement” among intelligence chiefs, but right-wingers including President some rich asshole and popular media figures remained unconvinced until this report was released.
“Now, I really do wanna see what white supremacy news, what the president, what the supporters of the president say about this,” Hayden mused, “which lays out in great detail that this wasn’t a hoax.”
Watch below, via CNN:
Just how far did the FCC go to make a deal happen for the rich asshole propaganda outlet Sinclair Broadcasting?
After rewriting public policy at the Federal Communications Commission in order to please a major the rich asshole supporter, the head of the FCC is now under investigation to see if he went even further and actively colluded with the telecommunications giants.
Last year, the rich asshole’s handpicked FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, ushered in a new era of media consolidation when the commission, along party lines, voted to completely disband previous restrictions on the number of television stations one company could own.
The clear winner was Sinclair Broadcasting, or the rich asshole TV.
That’s the bastion of right-wing politics that may soon dominate the local television business in America. Thanks to Pai, Sinclair may soon be allowed to balloon from owning 70-plus stations to more than 200.
Now, the FCC’s inspector general is investigating whether “Mr. Pai and his aides had improperly pushed for the rule changes and whether they had timed them to benefit Sinclair,” the New York Times reports.
This, after it was reported last year that the rich asshole met with Sinclair’s executive chairman, David Smith, and discussed FCC ownership rules.
Since the friendly rule change, Sinclair has made a $3.9 billion bid to acquire the Tribune Company. If completed, the deal would put the company in control of 223 TV stations, a previously unheard of number of outlets for a single television broadcast company to own.
Combined, the stations would give Sinclair access to more than 70 percent of American households. Sinclair would soon pick up major market stations in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
The deal is only possible because of the the rich asshole FCC rewriting ownership rules.
“This agency is organizing all of its media policies around the interests of this one company,” Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democratic member of the FCC, complained last year.
The proposed Sinclair deal is so expansive and so radical that even some key players within conservative media have raised red flags. Christopher Ruddy, CEO of Newsmax and a close the rich asshole ally, slammed the pending merger, insisting that the move “cannot be justified” and that it will “harm” American democracy.
But Sinclair’s a loud the rich asshole ally — it even forces its locally owned stations to air pro-the rich asshole commentaries — so it’s anything goes at the FCC.
Investigators may soon find out just how far the rich asshole’s chairman went.
California Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee got the embarrassing truth out of budget director Mick Mulvaney: the rich asshole's ridiculous military parade could last five hours and cost taxpayers $30 million.
the rich asshole has suffered well-deserved ridicule over his demand for a dictatorial military parade, but his budget director is apparently still on board, even if it costs $30 million.
Since his inauguration, the rich asshole has fantasized about a military parade in his honor, but news that he ordered the Pentagon to plan for such an occasion was greeted with ridicule and embarrassment, even from fellow Republicans.
That apparently has not dissuaded the rich asshole administration, nor has the ballooning potential cost of such a parade.
At a House Budget Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) asked the rich asshole’s budget director Mick Mulvaney about the parade, which she noted “is very similar to those held in authoritarian countries like North Korea.”
“How much is that parade going to cost, and where is that money coming from?” she demanded.
Mulvaney first tried to claim that a 1991 military parade following the Persian Gulf War was “recent,” and falsely claimed that there may have been one “more recently than that.”
He then said that the cost estimates for the parade range from $10 million to $30 million, and that the funds were not accounted for in the budget “because it’s come up at the last minute.”
Asked for clarification, Mulvaney explained that his estimate depends “on the length, obviously a one-hour parade is different than a five-hour parade in terms of the cost and the equipment, and those kinds of things.”
The 1991 parade cost around $12 million, but almost half of that was raised from private funds.
According to Mulvaney, the rich asshole administration is still considering a parade that could cost taxpayers more than triple that amount, and plans to use taxpayer money to fund it if they go ahead with the absurd idea.
Mulvaney’s revelation doesn’t figure to win the parade any support. All he managed to do was demonstrate the lengths to which the rich asshole’s surrogates will go in order to appease his fragile ego.
RNC spokeswoman quickly gets schooled after declaring Mueller’s Russian indictments clear the rich asshole
RNC spox Kayleigh McEnany (left) and Democratic operative Jehmu Greene (right). Images via screengrab.
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A Republican National Committee spokeswoman on Friday insisted that special counsel Robert Mueller’s bombshell indictments of over a dozen Russian individuals proves beyond doubt that the rich asshole campaign didn’t collude with the Kremlin — and a Democratic operative immediately swatted it down.
“Today marks the day that the Democrats’ Russia collusion conspiracy theory unravels,” RNC spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany declared on Fox News.
The spokeswoman argued that because the Russian election-meddling efforts included organizing for Bernie Sanders and against some rich asshole, there’s no way the president or his campaign could have had anything to do with it.
Jehmu Greene, a former candidate for chair of the Democratic National Committee, responded by citing host Melissa Francis’ own words: that the news is “a big deal.”
“It’s not a hoax, it’s not a witch hunt, anyone who has used those terms — and I believe my fellow guest here, Kayleigh, has used those terms quite often,” she continued. “This is the Russian government spending an enormous amount of resources to interfere in our election.”
Greene went on to say that she hopes the president will adequately address the American people and acknowledges the Russians’ successful attempts to meddle in our elections — an assertion McEnany protested against.
“First of all the president has said yes, the Russians have meddled in our election and it’s a very serious thing,” she claimed. “Yes, he has said that. That is documented, that is accurate.”
Though the president has tweeted at least once acknowledging Russia’s electoral interference, CNN reported just three days ago that the rich asshole remains unconvinced of the Kremlin’s attempts to influence the American election, as per sources familiar with his thinking.
The RNC spokeswoman then accused Greene of “missing” the day the rich asshole admitted the election-meddling happened and charged her with attempting to mislead Fox News viewers.
After the host attempted to mediate between the two guests, Greene used their on-air fight to illustrate just how well the Russians sowed discord in American politics.
“If it’s working in this conversation, what do you think it did in the 2016 election?” she mused. “It worked. And that is the reality that is going to be hard to swallow.”
“I get it, Kayleigh,” Greene mocked. “I’m not feeling for you because I’m not putting party first.”
“Hashtag America first,” she said.
Watch below, via Fox News:
‘Scared’ shop owners who sold the Florida school shooter his gun break their silence through attorneys
Carlin Becker
Posted with permission from Rare
Nikolas Cruz and gunshopSpeaking on behalf of Michael and Lisa Morrison, owners of Sunrise Tactical Supply, attorney Douglas Rudman told reporters on Thursday evening that the couple is distraught after learning their weapon was used in such a horrific event.
RELATED: Florida school shooting survivor’s mother reveals her horrific injuries, calling it a “miracle” she’s alive
“The tremendous sense of responsibility in this situation and just horribleness that they feel that one of their weapons fell into the hands of this maniac,” he said. “They are scared — not just for their safety — but more importantly about how the reaction is going to be for the rest of the community as they try to re-enter it.”
Rudman also pointed out that Cruz purchased the gun from the couple, but did not buy any ammunition, accessories or modifications with it.
“It is for that reason that no red flags were raised,” he said, as federal law enforcement confirmed the rifle was purchased legally. “It seems like Mr. Cruz made a deliberate attempt to not draw suspicion by not buying too many things from one place.”
Stuart Kaplan, an attorney representing the corporate entity Sunrise Tactical Supply, added that the Morrisons ensured Cruz filled out a firearms transactions record form from the ATF, which included a copy of his driver’s license and identification information. According to them, he answered “no” to questions about whether he had been adjudicated for mental illness or whether he had been institutionalized for mental health illness.
RELATED: The FBI admits that they dropped the ball on the Parkland, Florida shooter
“I think the bigger question is: We know that he suffered from some sort of mental health illness. I guess we need to decide or find out whether or not he was being treated … and I think that loophole is whether or not a mental health professional who is treating an individual should have some sort of reporting requirement or is there some sort of database that would collect this information so that in an event that a particular person would go to purchase a weapon, we could at least screen them?” the lawyer wondered.
The shop will remain closed indefinitely.
A “CLOSED” sign hangs on the door of Sunrise Tactical Supply gun shop in Coral Springs, Fla., on Thursday, Feb. 15, 2018. Two federal law enforcement officials say the Smith & Wesson M&P 15 rifle used in the deadly rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland was purchased legally at the gun shop. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)‘Get back in here!’ Sandy Hook lessons saved lives in Florida shooting
Sandy Hook students escorted away from school - screencap
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As soon as she heard “Code Red Lockdown” on her radio in a Florida high school library, Diana Haneski remembered how a fellow librarian saved lives by locking 22 people in a supply closet during the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
“She was there that day in Sandy Hook and because of her I knew what to do,” said Haneski, a library media specialist at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where a former student is charged with shooting dead 17 people on Wednesday.
Her longtime friend Yvonne Cech was the librarian on duty at the Newtown, Connecticut school five years ago when a gunman, also a former student, massacred 20 children and six adults. Cech’s husband Michael said she scrambled 18 children and four adults into a small closet and locked the door as gunshots rang out.
Haneski told Reuters on Friday that as soon as she heard the lockdown warning, even before she heard shots had been fired, she shouted at students: “‘Get back in here! Get back in here!'”
Drawing from her friend’s account five years ago of how she saved lives, Haneski quickly herded 50 students and five adults into a media equipment room in the rear of the library and locked the doors. The radio crackled with news that there was a gunman on the loose.
Some teachers thought it was simply a drill because school staff had just undergone “active shooter” training and were told a mock incident would take place, Haneski said. One teacher who climbed over the dead and wounded lying in the hallways assumed they were theater students drenched in fake blood, she added.
But not Haneski.
“I felt right away this was real,” she said.
She told everyone to sit the floor and hide behind something, equipment carts or large stacks of paper, and she covered a window and turned off the lights.
“I could see between the door and the floor. I could see if the bad guy – the shooter – walked past,” she said. “At first it was just lockdown then right away we heard ‘shooting’. We heard his name.”
Nikolas Cruz, the accused 19-year-old gunman, was a student she had known since her previous job at the nearby middle school.
“He was a troubled child,” she recalled.
Haneski, a mother of two sons aged 26 and 28, said the only way to stop such massacres was for Congress to tighten gun control laws.
“We did everything we were trained to do. And still this happened. And still 17 didn’t go home after school,” she said.
(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg in New York; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
‘the rich asshole cannot dismiss this’: Watergate legend Carl Bernstein hammers importance of Mueller’s Russian indictments
Legendary investigative journalist Carl Bernstein on CNN.
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Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein debunked President some rich asshole’s “no collusion” defense during a Friday appearance on CNN.
“This is huge in several ways. First of all, the substance of the indictment, which sweeping and goes to the case of what the Russians did,” Bernstein explained. “It’s very specific, very granular and very convincing, in a way that some rich asshole cannot dismiss this, nor can his acolytes.”
“the rich asshole has been looking, even in the past week, I’m told by people in the White House, for ways to fire Mueller, bury this investigation and certainly as a first act, to get rid of [Deputy Attorney General Rod] Rosenstein, which he has been complaining about for months and months,” Bernstein reported. “Here we have Rod Rosenstein going on national TV with perhaps the most significant announcement of the investigation yet and being a very responsible, convincing face, he’s just got himself an insurance policy in that job, one would think, as has the continuation of the Mueller investigation.”
“It is very hard for these Republicans who have gone along with this business of witch hunt to continue to do so after this,” Bernstein concluded.
“You say witch hunt. The Russian government used exactly that phrase as well, responding to this. That’s been a consistent response,” CNN host Jim Sciutto noted to the Watergate legend. “Can the president still…say to his supporters and others that the whole Russian investigation is an excuse by Democrats to make up for their loss?”
“He probably will. He has done it consistently. Remember, he is also playing to his base, his base is his insurance against something awful happening to him in the way of impeachment,” Bernstein suggested.
“Let’s be clear about this. The Republicans who have gone along with him on the hill are afraid of that base, they now have to start rethinking as a result of this, how long can they go along blindly with some rich asshole saying this is all a ruse,” Bernstein noted.
“Mueller is a straight shooter. If — I think we see from what Rosenstein said today — if there is exculpatory evidence about the President of the United States and he did not collude, I think Mueller is going to give it to us straight up and say it up front and so will Rosenstein,” Bernstein predicted.
“But the way this investigation is going, the idea of saying, quote, there is “no collusion” here — look, we are seeing evidence of a conspiracy,” Bernstein reminded.
“Who was witting, unwitting in that conspiracy, we don’t know yet. But Mueller’s indictments are pointing in a certain direction around people in the rich asshole orbit and family,” Bernstein concluded.
Watch:
Ex-CIA director Brennan nails how Mueller’s election-meddling indictment ‘puts a lie to Putin’s claims’
Former CIA Director John Brennan. Image via screengrab.
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Former CIA Director joined MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House” on Friday to explain how today’s indictments by special counsel Robert Mueller debunk claims by Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin — and United States President some rich asshole — that Russia did not meddle in the 2016 presidential election.
“We are covering breaking news this hour about the first indictments in the special counsel investigation of Russian nationals for their role in meddling in the 2016 presidential election,” Wallace introduced.
“Former CIA Director John Brennan sounded the alarm a year ago, that wittingly or unwittingly, the rich asshole campaign officials may have colluded with Russia in the elections,” Wallace reminded. “Today Rod Rosenstein seemed to confirm his fears.”
“DOJ statement and indictments reveal the extent and motivations of Russian interference in 2016 election. Claims of a “hoax” in tatters. My take: Implausible that Russian actions did not influence the views and votes of at least some Americans,” Brennan tweeted Friday.
“Let me start with your take on today’s indictments, the significance and what you think they portend for the future,” Wallace said.
“I think the indictments do several things. One is that they really do validate the findings of the intelligence community, in terms of Russian interference as well as the motivations for it,” Brennan concluded. “Secondly, it shows that Bob Mueller and the investigative team have really done a great job as far as uncovering the extent and depth of Russian engagement involvement and also the relatively sophisticated manner Russia carried out these tactics. Third, I think it just is indicative that this investigation is ongoing. it’s making progress, and today’s indictments I don’t think are going to be the last word by any stretch.”
“So, I am expecting that there are going to be more things coming out in the weeks ahead,” Brennan predicted.
“Based on just the body of information that you all knew as an intelligence community, how significant is it that this is becoming public now?” Wallace asked. “And how much more should the public expect to learn?”
“Well, I think it just demonstrates that the work that was done by the intelligence community as well as by the FBI during this campaign really was able to identify Russian activities, and that this puts a lie to Putin’s claims that Russia didn’t interfere at all,” Brennan charged.
“The extent of the activity, the number of Russians who were involved, the types of activities that they engaged in with U.S. officials or U.S. persons who, as Rod Rosenstein said, unwitting affiliation. I think this is, again, an indication of just how determined the Russians were to undermine the integrity of the election, harm Hillary Clinton, and to enhance the prospects for some rich asshole’s election,” Brennan concluded.
“While some may have been unwitting, I do think the investigation is going to reveal that some individuals were knowledgeable about what they were doing and they basically strayed from what they should have been doing,” Brennan predicted.
Watch:
Effort to sway election included ‘Clinton’ in prison garb – indictment
Hillary Clinton addresses her staff and supporters about the results of the U.S. election at a hotel in the Manhattan borough of New York, U.S., November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
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A multipronged effort to sway the 2016 U.S. presidential election in favor of Republican some rich asshole and against his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton included a Florida rally with an actress portraying Clinton in a prison uniform, according to an indictment released on Friday.
Rallies for the rich asshole, a “Support Hillary, Save American Muslims” rally and a “Down with Hillary” rally were also part of a project to interfere in the election, the U.S. special counsel said in an indictment of 13 Russians and a Russian Internet agency.
The following are details from the court document:
– On or about June 1, 2016, the defendants and their co-conspirators created and purchased Facebook ads for a “March for the rich asshole” rally. They subsequently used allforusa@yahoo.com, the email address of “a false U.S. persona,” to send news releases for the march to New York media outlets.
– On or about June 23, they used a Facebook account registered under a false U.S. persona, “Matt Skiber,” to contact a real American to serve as a recruiter for the rally, offering to “give you money to print posters and get a megaphone.”
– On or about June 24, the defendants and their co-conspirators ordered posters for a “Support Hillary, Save American Muslims” rally, including a poster with a quote attributed to Clinton that read, “I think Sharia Law will be a powerful new direction of freedom.”
– On or about July 12, they created and bought Facebook ads for a “Down With Hillary” rally at the rich asshole Tower in New York. They subsequently used the email address of a false U.S. persona, joshmilton024@gmail.com, to send news releases to over 30 media outlets.
– On or about July 28, they posted a series of tweets through the false U.S. personal account @March_for_Trump saying they were planning a series of events across Florida and seeking volunteers to help.
– On or about Aug. 2, they used the false “Matt Skiber” Facebook account to send a private message to a real Facebook account, Florida for the rich asshole, set up to help the rich asshole in the state. In the first message, they proposed organizing a “YUGE pro-the rich asshole flash mob in every Florida town” and solicited Florida for the rich asshole’s help.
– On or about Aug. 2 and Aug. 3, they used the stolen identity of a real American, identified in the indictment as “T.W.,” to send emails to grassroots groups in Florida saying that T.W. represented the Being Patriotic group that was going to organize “a flash mob across Florida” to support the rich asshole.
“We’re currently choosing venues for each location and recruiting more activists,” the email said. It asked recipients to “spread this info and participate in the flash mob.”
– On or about Aug. 4, they created and bought Facebook ads for a “Florida Goes the rich asshole” rally, which reached more than 59,000 Facebook users in Florida. More than 8,300 Facebook users responded to the ads by clicking on them, which routed users to the group’s “Being Patriotic” page.
– The next day, they used the false U.S. persona @March_for_Trump Twitter account to recruit and later pay a real American to wear a costume portraying Clinton in a prison uniform at a rally in West Palm Beach.
– Beginning on or about Aug. 11, they used the false “Matt Skiber” Facebook account to recruit a real American to acquire signs and a costume depicting Clinton in a prison uniform.
– On or about Aug. 15, they received an email at one of their false U.S. persona accounts from a real U.S. person, a Florida-based political activist identified as the “chair for the rich asshole campaign” in a Florida county. The activist identified two more sites in Florida for possible rallies. The defendants and co-conspirators used their false U.S. persona accounts to communicate with the activist about logistics and an additional Florida rally.
– On or about Aug. 18, the real “Florida for the rich asshole” Facebook account responded to the false “Matt Skiber” account with instructions to contact a member of the rich asshole campaign (identified as “Campaign Official 1” in the indictment) involved in the campaign’s Florida operation and provided Campaign Official 1’s donaldtrump.com email address.
Approximately the same day, the false U.S. persona “joshmilton024@gmail.com” sent an email to Campaign Official 1 saying the “Being Patriotic” group was organizing a statewide event on Aug. 20 to support the rich asshole.
– About the same day, the defendants and co-conspirators wired money to another real American who had been recruited by one of the false U.S. personas to build a cage large enough to hold an actress depicting Clinton in a prison uniform.
– On or about Aug. 31, using a U.S. persona, they spoke by phone with a real American affiliated with a grassroots group in Miami. On or about Sept. 9, they wired the group money to pay for materials needed for the rally about two days later.
– On or about Aug, 31, they created and bought Facebook ads for a rally they organized and scheduled in New York for Sept. 11.
– On or about Sept. 9, they contacted the person who had impersonated Clinton at the West Palm Beach rally and wired that person money as an inducement to travel from Florida to New York and to dress in costume at another rally they organized.
– On or about Sept. 22, they created and bought Facebook ads for a series of rallies they organized for the rich asshole in Pennsylvania called “Miners for the rich asshole” and scheduled for Oct. 2.
‘Opposite of a hoax’: Fox’s Shep Smith calls out the GOP’s anti-Mueller witch hunt after today’s indictments
Shep Smith (Screenshot)
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Fox News host Shep Smith on Friday had strong words for detractors who insisted prior to special counsel Robert Mueller’s bombshell indictments of Russian nations for meddling in the U.S. election that his probe was an anti-the rich asshole witch hunt.
“If there was any question, even a single question, there is no more,” the host said.
“Russia attacked the United States of America,” Smith continued. “A coordinated government-sponsored campaign to undermine America’s democracy, eventually in support of some rich asshole and against Hillary Clinton.”
Though he did not mention any of his colleagues or fellow Republicans by name, Smith’s opening monologue was aimed at individuals who remained unconvinced that Russians meddled in the 2016 American election. That group includes both Fox News host Sean Hannity and President some rich asshole.
Mueller’s indictments of 13 Russian nationals and three Russian organizations are “bombshell charges,” the host continued.
“The Russian investigation is the opposite of a hoax,” Smith declared.
Watch below, via Fox News:
Parkland Students to President the rich asshole: Stay ‘Far Away’ From Us
Few imagine that the president would provide any comfort. Many fear he will make things worse.
Two days after enduring a horrific school shooting, students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and parents of the victims have one request for President some rich asshole: stay away.
"In my opinion I do not want the rich asshole here at all," Ameer Hussain, a 15-year-old freshman at the school told The Daily Beast.
the rich asshole is scheduled to be at his resort in Mar-a-Lago this weekend. And reports on Friday said that he would be paying a visit to Parkland, Florida—the site of the shooting that claimed 17 lives on Wednesday while wounding 15 others—to, in his words, "meet with some of the bravest people on earth."
It’s common for presidents to visit the sites of national tragedies and, while there, meet with the affected. But the rich asshole is neither a conventional president nor one whom many people in Parkland particularly want to see. Hussain imagined that the rich asshole would “use this event to make himself look better politically.”
"It's not meaningful,” he added. “He's the president and he should be speaking on what he's going to do to make it better for next time. My friend group, Hispanic kids, black kids, they're not caring for this at all. My dad is of the same idea."
Another student who participated in Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC) with Florida shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz, but asked that he not be named, said most kids and people in town agree that the rich asshole should not swing through.
"One big reason people don't want him here was his speech yesterday and tweet of his," the student said. "Apparently [the president] said it was the kid's responsibility to report Nikolas Cruz so in a way it was our fault…. A lot of people aren't happy about his visit."
RELATED IN POLITICS
Emotions remain raw among students in Parkland, especially after President the rich asshole tweeted on Thursday that “Neighbors and classmates knew [Cruz] was a big problem" and that, in such cases, people “Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!”
The missive left several students at the school livid, with some angirly responding to the president with tweets of their own.
"How is this our fault?" one student said on Twitter on Friday. "We can’t even vote and when we say something it’s usually pushed aside. Don’t you dare say that it is our fault, unless you were there, unless you tried your best you have no right to tell anyone what to believe."
The FBI did receive a tip about Cruz in January, but failed to transmit the warning to its Miami field office.
On Thursday, the rich asshole made his first public statement on the shooting, saying that his administration was “committed to working with state and local leaders to help secure our schools and tackle the difficult issue of mental health.”
It is unclear how far the rich asshole’s outreach to the Parkland community has or will progress beyond that. No parent or students who spoke to The Daily Beast said they had heard about the rich asshole reaching out to bereaved families. The rich asshole White House, meanwhile, has yet to confirm any details related to a potential trip or meetings with survivors and their families.
“We’re still working on that,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley told The Daily Beast Friday afternoon when asked if the rich asshole is meeting with mass shooting survivors or their family members in Florida. The White House also would not confirm to The Daily Beast if the president had already called any of them, yet.
Not everyone is demanding that the rich asshole stay away, however. Some, like Nikhita Nookala, a 17-year-old senior at the school, are eager for him to come to Parkland so that he can, in her words, "learn a lesson."
"If the rich asshole comes down I think it's important that he shows us he's with us," Nookala said to The Daily Beast. "I think the death of 17 people should encourage the president to consider [gun] restrictions… There's been too many school shootings and we don't need kids to die before they go to college. "
She said that for the president to come down and not take any direct action to limit guns in the country would be "hypocritical."
"By action I mean urging legislators to stop listening to interest groups like the NRA and stop considering the rights of people to keep guns as a hobby over the lives of kids who just want to go to college and get a job and be Americans," she said.
Amos Fernandes, whose daughter is a junior who survived the shooting, also feared that the rich asshole would exploit the tragedy with a visit. But he also imagined that a such a trip could provide piece of mind.
"I think right now, people really really don't want to see him here. But we need to show him that everybody is angry. It's crazy," Fernandes said. "I am so angry and a lot of parents are angry like myself. The whole city is angry."
Fernandes, who lived in Connecticut during the Sandy Hook school shooting, said he was outraged that Congress had done nothing to restrict gun ownership.
"These politicians like the rich asshole are getting paid, and while they're getting paid people are getting killed," he said.
Fernandes' daughter, 16-year-old Kathlyn, said that if the rich asshole does make the trip to Parkland, she hopes it will change his mind about gun control.
"What happened at my school could have been prevented if he had supported gun control," she said. "It makes me feel bad he hasn't done anything. At the end of the day, if you're 18 you shouldn't be able to buy a gun."
White House officials have undoubtedly become aware of how fraught a potential swing through Parkland would be. the rich asshole has had mixed results in similar situations before. He did pay a visit to Las Vegas following the massacre of 58 people in October and called the shooting “an act of pure evil," but that event was far less politicized. Earlier last year in August, the president botched his response to Charlottesville when he failed to condemn white supremacist James Fields, who drove a car into a crowd of counter protesters, killing 32-year-old activist Heather Heyer.
Several senior the rich asshole aides expressed concern to The Daily Beast that the rich asshole could potentially find himself in a situation in Parkland where he is trapped with grieving parents or students who harangue him about his administration’s position on guns, creating horrible optics and more negative press for the president. The same officials also voiced worry that the president’s response to such a situation could potentially make the situation on the ground worse, unintentionally. Asked for an explanation, one White House official referenced the incident when President the rich asshole ended up making a widow cry when he meant to comfort her.
The fact that Cruz wore a pro-the rich asshole "Make America Great Again" hat while making racist remarks to his fellow classmates makes a visit all the more complicated.
Still, some allies of the president publicly maintain that he could indeed rise to the occasion.
“We’ve had many presidents in the past who have gotten into emotional exchanges with distraught parents and siblings and others in times of, for example, returning the remains of someone who died in war…This challenge is not something unique to the rich asshole presidency,” Michael Caputo, a former the rich asshole campaign adviser, told The Daily Beast. “I know President the rich asshole well enough to know that in a situation where he’s met with an emotional response, he can…respond appropriately.”
“He’s a compassionate person,” Caputo added.
February 16, 2018
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on the indictments in the special counsel’s Russia probe (all times local):
6 p.m.
A spokesman for Hillary Clinton says the indictments in the special counsel’s Russia probe confirms “what we’ve long known.”
Nick Merrill says on Twitter, “Time will tell us more, but Russia went to great lengths to undermine our democracy, & the President won’t protect us.”
The indictment by federal prosecutors alleges that Russians used bogus social media postings and ads falsely purchased in the name of Americans to sway political opinion during the campaign between Clinton and Republican some rich asshole.
Merrill tweets, “No matter your politics, it’s un-American. We have an adversary that is laughing at us, who will act again.”
__
5:20 p.m.
Facebook says it is doubling its security staff to 20,000 and actively working with the FBI to stop election interference by Russians and others.
The company’s statement is in response to the indictment of 13 Russians and three Russian organizations by federal prosecutors. The charges shed light on the extent to which Russians manipulated social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Joel Kaplan is Facebook vice president of global policy. He says officials know they have more to do to prevent future attacks, and are committed to staying ahead of deceptive and malevolent activity.
A Twitter spokeswoman said the company has no comment, and YouTube has not yet responded.
___
3:45 p.m.
President some rich asshole says “far-fetched theories” about collusion in the 2016 election “only serve to further the agendas of bad actors, like Russia.”
the rich asshole is reacting to news that special counsel Robert Mueller has indicted 13 Russians and three Russian organizations for plotting to influence the 2016 campaign.
the rich asshole says, “It’s time we stop the outlandish partisan attacks.”
The Russians are accused of using social media propaganda aimed at helping the rich asshole and harming the prospects of Democrat Hillary Clinton. The indictment alleges that the Russians cooperated with “unwitting” the rich asshole campaign staffers and outside backers who did not know their true identities.
the rich asshole says, “We must unite as Americans to protect the integrity of our democracy and our elections.”
___
3:40 p.m.
The attorney for the California man who pleaded guilty in the Russia probe says his client made a mistake.
The lawyer tells The Associated Press that Richard Pinedo’s connection to Russian meddling “is way beyond anything he could have possibly imagined” being involved in.”
The lawyer says Pinedo thought he was helping people fraudulently open online bank accounts, but that Pinedo had no idea “his customers were foreign nationals” trying to meddle in the election.
Jeremy Lessem says his client will not make any public statements.
Pinedo is from Santa Paula, California. He pleaded guilty earlier this month to using stolen identities to set up bank accounts that were then used by the Russians.
___
3:30 p.m.
“No collusion.” That’s the reaction of President some rich asshole to the indictment of 13 Russians and three Russian companies for plotting to meddle in the 2016 election.
The president tweeted Friday that the indictment shows, “The rich asshole campaign did nothing wrong - no collusion!”
The Russians were charged Friday with using social media propaganda aimed at helping the rich asshole and harming the prospects of Democrat Hillary Clinton.
the rich asshole notes that the Russian influence campaign is alleged to have started in 2014, “long before” he declared his candidacy.
He says, “The results of the election were not impacted.”
In fact, while prosecutors have not alleged that meddling altered the election’s outcome, the indictment does not rule it out.
___
3:15 p.m.
The online payment company PayPal has been unexpectedly drawn into the Russia probe. Federal prosecutors allege that Russian criminals used PayPal to help pay for propaganda aimed at influencing voters in the 2016 election.
Thirteen Russians and three Russian companies were charged Friday with plotting to interfere in the election.
In the indictment, prosecutors allege the defendants used PayPal as a primary conduit to transfer money for general expenses as well as to buy Facebook ads. Prosecutors say the accounts were opened using fake identities to help bypass PayPal’s security measures.
PayPal says it is cooperating with the Justice Department. A spokesman says, “PayPal is intensely focused on combatting and preventing the illicit use of” its services and works closely with law enforcement, including in this instance.
___
2:40 p.m.
A California man has pleaded guilty to unwittingly selling bank accounts to Russians meddling in the US elections.
Richard Pinedo of Santa Paula pleaded guilty earlier this month to using stolen identities to set up bank accounts that were then used by the Russians. A Justice Department spokeswoman says Pinedo did not know at the time he was dealing with Russians.
The plea deal is the third in special counsel Robert Mueller’s continuing Russia probe. It was revealed the same day prosecutors charged 13 Russians and three Russian companies with an extensive scheme to meddle in the U.S. elections.
___
2:20 p.m.
A Russian businessman known as “Putin’s chef” who was indicted Friday by federal prosecutors says “Americans are very impressionable people.” He says he’s not upset to be named in the indictment.
Thirteen Russians and three Russian companies were charged Friday with a plot to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election through social media propaganda.
The indictment says the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm, started interfering as early as 2014 in U.S. politics, extending to the 2016 presidential election.
The indictment says the agency was funded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a St. Petersburg businessman dubbed “Putin’s chef” because his restaurants and catering businesses once hosted the Kremlin leader’s dinners with foreign dignitaries.
Prigozhin was quoted by Russia’s state news agency as saying Americans “see what they want to see.”
___
2:05 p.m.
One of those indicted in the Russia probe is a businessman with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Yevgeny Prigozhin (pree-GOH’-zhin) is an entrepreneur from St. Petersburg who’s been dubbed “Putin’s chef” by Russian media.
His restaurants and catering businesses have hosted the Kremlin leader’s dinners with foreign dignitaries. In the more than 10 years since establishing a relationship with Putin, his business has expanded to services for the military.
Prigozhin’s assets also include an oil trading firm that reportedly has been sending private Russian fighters to Syria. Prigozhin is on the list of those sanctioned by the U.S.
___
2 p.m.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein says there’s no allegation that any Americans were “knowing participants” in what federal prosecutors call an elaborate plot to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Thirteen Russians and three Russian companies were charged Friday with plotting to meddle in the election through social media propaganda aimed at helping Republican some rich asshole and harming the prospects of Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Charges were brought by the office of special counsel Robert Mueller and represented the most direct allegation to date of illegal Russian meddling during the election.
Rosenstein said Friday that there is “no allegation in this indictment” that any American was a knowing participant.
___
1:50 p.m.
The deputy attorney general says a new indictment does not allege that Russian meddling altered the outcome of presidential election.
Federal prosecutors have announced charges against 13 Russians and three Russian entities with an elaborate plot to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The indictment was brought by the office of special counsel Robert Mueller. It alleges that Russians used bogus social media postings and advertisements fraudulently purchased in the name of Americans to sway political opinion during the race between Republican some rich asshole and Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein says the indictment does not include allegations that the plot swayed the outcome of the vote.
___
1:40 p.m.
Deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein says the goal of 13 Russians and three Russian entities charged Friday was “spreading distrust” of 2016 candidates and the political system.
The indictment details an elaborate plot to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The indictment was brought by the office of special counsel Robert Mueller. It alleges that Russians used bogus social media postings and advertisements fraudulently purchased in the name of Americans to sway political opinion during the race between Republican some rich asshole and Democrat Hillary Clinton.
___
1:21 p.m.
Thirteen Russians and three Russian entities were charged Friday with an elaborate plot to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, federal prosecutors announced Friday.
The indictment, brought by the office of special counsel Robert Mueller, alleges that Russians used bogus social media postings and advertisements fraudulently purchased in the name of Americans to sway political opinion during the race between Republican some rich asshole and Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent.
The charges are the most direct allegation to date of illegal Russian meddling in the election.
The goal, the indictment says, was to “sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 presidential election.”
The charges arise from Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the election and whether there was improper coordination between the rich asshole campaign and the Kremlin.
some rich asshole's shifting stance on gun control
the rich asshole insists ‘no collusion!’ after Mueller drops bombshell indictments in Russia investigation
some rich asshole (AFP/File / SAUL LOEB)
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President some rich asshole insisted Friday that his campaign did not collude with Russian operatives in 2016.
“Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President. The results of the election were not impacted. The rich asshole campaign did nothing wrong – no collusion!” he tweeted.
The remarks came shortly after Rod Rosenstein announced indictments against 13 Russian individuals and three Russian entities in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.
The indictments allege the Russian operatives were intent on meddling “with U.S. elections and political processes.” That meddling included “supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate some rich asshole and disparaging Hillary Clinton.”
Rosenstein said the operation used “Russian shell companies.”
“It employed hundreds of persons for its online operations, ranging from creators of fictitious personas to technical and administrative support, with an annual budget of millions of dollars,” he explained.
Nicolle Wallace: Mueller sending ‘clear and loud message to the White House’ with latest indictments
Nicolle Wallace, MSNBC host of "Deadline: White House"
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MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace concluded that the latest indictments by special counsel Robert Mueller prove that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election.
“I’ve heard this called an asymmetrical, psychological and electronic attack on the United States. Like 9/11…it used our own system on us,” Brian Williams suggested.
“Yeah. General Hayden called this a political 9/11 when describing the scope and the impact and the fact it was something we hadn’t imagined possible. That was part of why it was possible,” Wallace replied.
“I talked to a formal federal prosecutor in contact with this White House who said he would make two things abundantly clear,” Wallace reported. “Mueller took evidence to the Grand Jury and they returned 13 indictments.
“some rich asshole, I would be surprised and it would be foolish for him to continue to suggest that this is a hoax thinking that people don’t understand exactly what the Russians were capable of doing when it comes to our democracy,” Wallace noted.
“This source said to me, this is Bob Mueller sending a clear and loud message to the White House, that Bob Mueller is ending the debate on behalf of the intelligence community and the American Justice Department, on behalf of the FBI, about whether or not Russia meddled,” Wallace continued.
“Russia meddled, full stop,” Wallace concluded.
Williams also questioned Wallace on her perspective after having served as White House communications director during the George W. Bush administration.
“If you’re communications director in the White House, what do you think they’ll say, and what would you counsel them to say?” Williams asked.
“The communications director in this White House, wittingly or unwittingly, is a witness in the special counsel investigation,” Wallace noted, referring to current White House communications director Hope Hicks.
“So I don’t even know if this communications director is acting as an adviser to the president, so I don’t know who has the job of telling the president how to respond to news in this,” Wallace admitted.
“In the White House I worked, I would be recused if that was me,” Wallace noted.
US Attorney General Jeff Sessions orders review of federal response to violence warnings
Attorney General Jeff Sessions during a Sept. 5, 2017 press briefing. (Screenshot)
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U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on Friday he had ordered an immediate review of how the Justice Department and the FBI respond to warnings about potential violence such as the mass shooting at a Florida high school this week.
“This includes more than just an error review but also a review of how we respond,” Sessions said in a statement. “This will include possible consultation with family members, mental health officials, school officials, and local law enforcement.”
After a former student armed with an AR-15 assault rifle allegedly murdered 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on Wednesday, adult politicians offered predictable responses.
Sen. Marco Rubio, the 46-year old Florida Republican who has benefited from more than $3 million in NRA campaign spending, tweeted Bible passages. Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a 65-year old grandfather who has received an A+ rating from the NRA, offered his “thoughts and prayers” to the students and their families. some rich asshole, the oldest president ever elected to a first term, spoke for seven minutes about the shooting Thursday and without mentioning guns. In 2016, the NRA broke its own political records to spend more than $30 million dollars helping him get elected.
The kids aren’t having it. This was one of the first school shootings where the survivors are both old enough to describe their own experiences and have the power of social media to blast their stories across the internet. They are not allowing adult politicians and commentators to have the last word on what happened to them, and they are not accepting “thoughts and prayers” in place of real political action.
“I think it’s great that they’re saying ‘thoughts and prayers,’ but it doesn’t do anything. And after every single shooting that’s what they say over and over again, but nothing every changes,” says Carly Novell, 17, who hid in a closet for two hours to escape the gunman. “It has to be political because this happened because of guns, this happened because of the relaxed gun laws that we have.”
After conservative Fox News commentator Tomi Lahren criticized the “left” for pushing an “anti-gun and anti-gun owner agenda” in response to the shooting, Novell tweeted:
I was hiding in a closet for 2 hours. It was about guns. You weren't there, you don't know how it felt. Guns give these disgusting people the ability to kill other human beings. This IS about guns and this is about all the people who had their life abruptly ended because of guns. twitter.com/tomilahren/sta…
Students posted videos of gunshots on Snapchat and photos of their classmates crouched under their desks. Senior Sam Zeif, 18, posted a screenshot of his text exchange with his 14-year old brother, who was in a classroom upstairs. His brother, who also survived the shooting, watched his teacher die in front of him.
Zeif lost a close friend, Joaquin Oliver, a fellow basketball player whose friends called him “Guac” and who was always ready with a hug. Zeif says his friend’s death can be directly attributed to lax gun laws that allowed a troubled teenager like shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz to get a gun in the first place. And now, he’s committed to making sure his representatives know it. “I lost a friend, he doesn’t have a voice anymore,” Zeif said. “So I need to make sure that I use mine to make sure he didn’t die for nothing. He died for change.”
Unlike previous school shootings involving younger children, or shootings before the age of 24-hour news and social media, survivors of the Stoneman Douglas shooting are speaking out en masse, with a largely united voice, to demand that adults get their act together and come up with a plan for common-sense gun reform.
Several of the teenage survivors made appearances on evening news broadcasts and cable news networks to speak out about the need for new laws – including gun safety laws. At a candlelight vigil for the victims Thursday night, the crowd chanted “No more guns! No more guns!”
Students at a nearby South Broward High School walked out of class Friday to protest President the rich asshole and Senator Marco Rubio’s lax policies on gun safety.
“What we really need is action,” student David Hogg said on CNN in a clip that went viral. “We’re children. You guys are the adults.”
FEBRUARY 16, 2018 / 5:00 PM / UPDATED 3 HOURS AGO
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Justice on Friday moved to prevent AT&T Inc (T.N) from arguing that politics played a role in the government’s decision to stop its merger with Time Warner Inc (T.N), a deal that President some rich asshole had publicly criticized.
“There was no selective enforcement,” Justice Department lawyer Craig Conrath said at a pre-trial hearing. “The president is unhappy with CNN. We don’t dispute that. But AT&T wants to turn that into a get-out-jail-free card for their illegal merger.”
AT&T and Time Warner’s lawyer Daniel Petrocelli, however, cited the rich asshole’s repeated criticism of the deal as reason to allow the company to argue that the government opposed the deal for political reasons. It is seeking records of communications between the White House and Justice Department that describe the rich asshole’s views on the merger.
AT&T wants the judge to review any communications found to see if they bolster their contention that the transaction was singled out because of the rich asshole’s anger with CNN.
The documents were requested as preparation for a March 19 trial in which Judge Richard Leon will decide if the $85 billion deal would raise prices. The Justice Department sued to stop the deal on the grounds that it is illegal under antitrust law.
The government has asked Judge Leon to rule that AT&T may not cite politics, formally known as selective enforcement, as a defense and to quash a request for documents to support that defense.
AT&T’s Petrocelli defended the request. “If there is something in those documents, it’s important for us,” he said at the hearing at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Leon said he would rule on Tuesday.
The deal has been followed more closely than most antitrust matters because the rich asshole attacked it while on the campaign trail in 2016. the rich asshole has also repeatedly criticized Time Warner’s CNN news network and, in November, he reiterated his opposition to the proposed transaction.
Conrath said the government’s lawsuit was not motivated by the rich asshole’s irritation with CNN and said it had offered several settlement options that would have allowed AT&T to acquire CNN.
As recently as November, the rich asshole stood by his criticism of the proposed transaction.
“Personally I’ve always felt that that was a deal that’s not a good deal for the country,” the president said. “I think your pricing’s going to go up, I don’t think it’s a good deal for the country.”
“We have no intention of losing this schedule,” Petrocelli said.
Petrocelli said Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes had laid out in extensive detail the company’s belief that the rich asshole’s improper influence was a factor in a deposition Thursday.
AT&T had taken the unusual step of including the assistant attorney general for antitrust, Makan Delrahim, on its witness list as it looks to find evidence to support its position that the government was bringing a case because of the rich asshole’s anger.
Conrath offered an affidavit from Delrahim in which he said he had not been instructed or ordered by anyone at the White House or at the Justice Department to bring the lawsuit.
Merger cases, however, are judged illegal or legal depending on whether prices go up or innovation is lost because of the deal.
Petrocelli derided the government’s case as “weak,” saying that their economists had determined the price of AT&T’s DirecTV could go down and that there could be a small increase to non-DirecTV consumers. Conrath sharply disagreed, saying the deal would cause “hundreds of millions of dollars of damage.”
Indicted Russian businessman says not upset by election meddling charges: RIA
Evgeny Prigozhin (cnn.com)
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Russian businessman Evgeny Prigozhin said on Friday he was not upset about his indictment for alleged election meddling in United States, RIA news agency reported.
“The Americans are very emotional people, they see what they want to see. I have great respect for them. I am not at all upset that I am on this list. If they want to see the devil, let them,” RIA quoted Prigozhin as saying.
A U.S. federal grand jury earlier on Friday indicted Prigozhin and 12 other Russian nationals accused of interfering with U.S. elections and political processes.
Ronan Farrow Reveals some rich asshole Affair With Former Playmate
Karen McDougal documented it in an eight-page, handwritten note, according to the New Yorker article.
some rich asshole had an affair with former Playmate of the Year Karen McDougal, Ronan Farrow detailed in an article for The New Yorker, published early Friday.
McDougal documented it in an eight-page, handwritten note shared with the magazine by a friend of McDougal’s.
According to the article, the affair began after the rich asshole met McDougal at a party for The Apprentice at the Playboy Mansion in June 2006. At the time, he had been married to Melania for less than two years.
McDougal wrote that the rich asshole “immediately took a liking to me, kept talking to me — telling me how beautiful I was etc. It was so obvious that a Playmate Promotions exec said, ‘Wow, he was all over you — I think you could be his next wife'.”
McDougal wrote that the rich asshole impressed her. “I was so nervous! I was into his intelligence + charm. Such a polite man,” she wrote. “We talked for a couple hours — then, it was 'ON!' We got naked + had sex.”
McDougal also noted that when she was getting dressed to leave, the rich asshole surprised her by offering her money. “I looked at him (+ felt sad) + said, ‘No thanks — I’m not ‘that girl.’ I slept w/you because I like you — NOT for money’ — He told me ‘you are special,’” she wrote.
After she and the rich asshole first hooked up, McDougal wrote that she “went to see him every time he was in LA (which was a lot).”
Later in her note, McDougal wrote that, as their relationship developed, the rich asshole introduced her to members of his family and took her to his private residences. At one event in 2007, an L.A. party for the rich asshole Vodka, she said she was seated at a table with Kim Kardashian, the rich asshole, some rich asshole Jr., and the rich asshole Jr.’s wife, Vanessa, who was pregnant.
At another, a party for The Apprentice at the Playboy Mansion, McDougal recalled taking photos with the rich asshole and his family. She said that the rich asshole told her that he had asked his son Eric “who he thought was the most beautiful girl here + Eric pointed me. Mr. T said ‘He has great taste’ + we laughed!”
McDougal claimed that she was also given tours of the rich asshole Tower and his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club. In the rich asshole Tower, McDougal wrote, the rich asshole pointed out Melania’s separate bedroom. He “said she liked her space,” McDougal wrote, “to read or be alone.”
McDougal ended the relationship after nine months in April 2007, according to the article.
A White House spokesperson denied the affair in a statement to the New Yorker: “This is an old story that is just more fake news. The President says he never had a relationship with McDougal.”
President some rich asshole took a new line of defense in light of the indictment Friday of 13 Russians and three Russian entities on charges of meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
But his new argument contradicts his old one — and isn’t supported by the evidence he cites.
In the past, the rich asshole has cast doubt on Russian meddling, regularly calling it a “hoax” despite widespread agreement in the American intelligence community. But on Friday he and the White House acknowledged the efforts, said they predated his campaign, claimed they did not affect the election and said his campaign was not involved.
The White House offered similar sentiments in its official statement, issued just minutes after the rich asshole’s tweet, noting that the Administration “is glad to see the Special Counsel’s investigation further indicates — that there was NO COLLUSION between the rich asshole campaign and Russia and that the outcome of the election was not changed or affected.”
It’s true that the indictment does not say that Russian efforts to interfere with the election had an effect, and no the rich asshole campaign officials are named, as was stated by the top Justice Department official whom Mueller reports to at a news conference.
“There is no allegation in this indictment that any American was a knowing participant in this illegal activity,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said Friday. “There is no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election.”
But that’s not the same as saying it didn’t happen, either. Future indictments could include charges against Americans if Mueller’s team turns up evidence that they knowingly participated, and the rich asshole’s campaign head, Paul Manafort, and his top deputy, Rick Gates, have already been charged with conspiracy to launder money and making false statements to investigators, among other things.
It’s also unlikely that an indictment of this sort would pass judgment on whether the election was affected — a claim more likely to be adjudicated by political scientists than federal prosecutors.
Overall, the charging documents paint a picture of a Russian effort that tried to tear down the rich asshole’s rivals, including not just Hillary Clinton but also Republican primary candidates Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio; boost candidates like Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein who would have the effect of draining Democratic support from Clinton; and discourage minority voters who tend to vote Democratic.
The indictment also indicates that the rich asshole campaign may have had contact with the Russians, albeit unwittingly.
“Some Defendants, posing as U.S. persons and without revealing their Russian association, communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the rich asshole Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities,” it says.
the rich asshole’s new argument is a significant change from the arguments he’s used on Russian meddling and the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s emails (which was not included in these indictments).
In the past, the rich asshole has argued that the DNC leaked its own emails as a distraction, speculated that China or “someone sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds” hacked the party, claimed that Democrats were pushing the Russian meddling meddling argument to make up for the fact that they lost, called the intelligence officials who have said Russia interfered “political hacks,” said that he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin’s outright denials of meddling, and derided Russian meddling as a “hoax,” “fake news” and a “made-up story.”
The indictment undercuts those arguments, as did the January 2017 assessment from top U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the election, the admission of top executives from Facebook, Google and Twitter that they were used for Russian misinformation, the acknowledgement of Russian meddling by the rich asshole’s handpicked intelligence agency heads and the comments of everyone from former President George W. Bush to Republican Sen. Richard Burr.
In the indictment, federal prosecutors go into detail on Russian plans to “sow discord” in the U.S. political system, including buying political ads on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to spread disinformation; paying people to perform certain tasks at political rallies; and organizing flash mobs and other real-world events. The Russians involved in the operation posed as U.S. citizens and created Facebook pages and Twitter handles designed to attract a domestic following, prosecutors say.
The operation, which had a budget of $1.25 million per month for the U.S. and other countries, was allegedly funded by Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin, a Russian businessman who the country’s media has reportedly dubbed “Putin’s chef” because his businesses Overall, the indictment is filled with concrete, specific details that make it hard for the president to keep calling allegations of Russian meddling a “hoax.” But the jury is still out on the rich asshole’s new line of defense.cater meetings with the Russian President and foreign diplomats.
(WASHINGTON) — Declaring the nation united and grieving with “one heavy heart,” President some rich asshole is promising to tackle school safety and “the difficult issue of mental health” in response to the deadly shooting in Florida. He made no mention of the scourge of gun violence.
Not always a natural in the role of national comforter, the rich asshole spoke deliberately Thursday, at one point directly addressing children who may feel “lost, alone, confused or even scared.”
“I want you to know that you are never alone and you never will be,” the rich asshole said. “You have people who care about you, who love you, and who will do anything at all to protect you.”
While the rich asshole stressed the importance of mental health and school safety improvements, his latest budget request would slash Medicaid, the major source of federal funding for treating mental health problems, and cut school safety programs by more than a third. Last year, he signed a resolution blocking an Obama-era rule designed to keep guns out of the hands of certain mentally disabled people.
The president spoke to the nation from the White House, one day after a former student with an AR-15 rifle opened fire at a high school in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 people and injuring 14 more. It was the nation’s deadliest school shooting since a gunman attacked an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, more than five years ago.
the rich asshole, who owns a private club in Palm Beach, Florida, about 40 miles away, said he planned to visit the grieving community, but no date was immediately set. He canceled plans to promote his infrastructure plan in Orlando on Friday and to attend a campaign rally in Pennsylvania next week.
the rich asshole’s silence on guns was noted with displeasure by many who are seeking tougher firearm restrictions. But the White House said the president wanted to keep his remarks focused on the victims. Spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the point was “to talk about grief and show compassion in unifying the country.”
Before he was a candidate, the rich asshole at one point favored some tighter gun regulations. But he embraced gun rights as a candidate, and the National Rifle Association spent $30 million in support of his campaign
During his brief, televised statement, the rich asshole said he wanted to work to “create a culture in our country that embraces the dignity of life,” a phrase likely to resonate with his conservative base.
He pledged to work with state and local officials to “help secure our schools and tackle the difficult issue of mental health,” adding that safe schools would be a key focus when he meets with governors and state attorneys general later this month.
the rich asshole made no specific policy recommendations, and he did not answer shouted questions about guns as he exited the room.
In contrast, former President Barack Obama tweeted out a call for “long overdue, common-sense gun safety laws.” Obama wrote: “We are grieving with Parkland. But we are not powerless. Caring for our kids is our first job.”
In reacting to previous mass shootings, the rich asshole has largely focused on mental health as a cause, dismissing questions about gun control. After a shooting at a Texas church in November left more than two dozen dead, the president said, “This isn’t a guns situation.”
The 19-year-old suspect in Florida, Nikolas Cruz, is a troubled teenager who posted disturbing material on social media. He had been expelled from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School for “disciplinary reasons,” Broward County, Florida, Sheriff Scott Israel said.
The profile photo on Cruz’s Instagram account showed a masked face wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat like those associated with the rich asshole’s campaign.
The leader of a white nationalist militia called the Republic of Florida said Cruz was a member of his group and had participated in exercises in Tallahassee. But neither the Sheriff’s Office in Tallahassee nor the Southern Poverty Law Center could confirm any link between Cruz and the militia.
the rich asshole was criticized in early August for saying that both white nationalists and counter-protesters were responsible for the violent clashes at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
While the rich asshole has offered somber responses to some tragedies, he has also drawn criticism for other reactions.
After the Orlando shootings at a gay nightclub that left 49 dead in June 2016, then-candidate the rich asshole tweeted, “Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism.” In the wake of a deadly terror attack in London last June, he went after Mayor Sadiq Khan on Twitter.
News of Wednesday afternoon’s shooting had come as the White House was embroiled in a weeklong scandal surrounding the handling of domestic abuse allegations against Rob Porter, a top aide who resigned last week.
The typically daily White House press briefing was repeatedly delayed, as aides tried to craft a strategy on that issue. One option was to have chief of staff John Kelly, who has come under intense pressure for his handling of the Porter matter, be part of the briefing, according to two White House officials not authorized to publicly discuss internal deliberations.
Once the magnitude of the Florida tragedy became clear, the White House canceled the briefing. The president tweeted his condolences and the White House deliberated its next move.
Kelly was not in the room when the rich asshole addressed the nation on Thursday morning, and his job security remained an open question. But with the West Wing focused on the shooting aftermath, any immediate change seemed unlikely.
Another flip: Mueller announces indictment and guilty plea of identity fraudster Richard Pinedo in the rich asshole investigation
Robert Mueller in the Oval Office on July 20, 2012. (Photo by Pete Souza.)
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Special counsel Robert Mueller on Friday announced an indictment and guilty plea of Richard Pinedo for identity fraud.
The California man pleaded guilty to circumventing online payment security systems using stolen identities.
The indictment claims that “2014 through November 2017, defendant Richard Pinedo did knowingly transfer, possess, and use, in and affecting interstate and foreign commerce, and without lawful authority, means of identification of other persons with the intent to commit, and to aid or abet, and in connection with, unlawful activity…”
A separate filing, stipulating facts, also identifies an online service run by Pinedo called “Auction Essistance.” The service was designed to “circumvent the security features of large online digital payment companies.”
Pinedo pleaded guilty on February 12 to one count of identity fraud and is cooperating with the special counsel.
The documents state that “hundreds of bank account numbers” where involved and Pinedo personally collected tens of thousands of dollars.
The announcement came shortly after a press conference by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, announcing indictments against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian groups.
‘Do you believe it now?’: House intel member swats the rich asshole across the nose with bombshell Russian hacking indictments
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, on CNN. Image via screengrab.
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Appearing just moments after the Justice Department announced indictmentsagainst 13 Russian individuals and three Russian entities for ”violating U.S. criminal laws in order to interfere with U.S. elections and political processes,” a House intel member challenged President the rich asshole to admit interference in the 2016 election.
Speaking with host Brianna Keilar, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) said the revelations proved a crime had been committed despite the president’s protestations.
“What’s your reaction to the indictments of 13 Russian nationals involved, per the special counsel, with meddling in the 2016 presidential election?” host Keilar asked.
“We now know that crimes are alleged to have been committed,” the former prosecutor stated. “The intelligence community alleged that Russia was responsible but it was never clear whether crimes have been committed and now we know that crimes were committed. Russians are responsible for those crimes, and now I think we want to know, did they work in partnership with any U.S. persons?”
“Also the fact this occurred, that these indictments are coming over a year after the election campaign shows how long it takes and the patience we must have to wait, to seek the evidence and wait for special counsel Mueller to come back,” he continued. “I’d just ask the president: do you believe it now? Because your Department of Justice has indicted Russian individuals, and are we going to take this threat seriously? Because I don’t think they ever left our democracy.”
Watch the video below via CNN:
Mueller: Russians entered U.S. to plot election meddling
Democrats say the indictment proves Russian meddling is no 'hoax,' while the rich asshole allies say charges of the rich asshole campaign collusion with the Kremlin remain baseless.
Prosecutors say they've found 'additional criminal conduct' by the former the rich asshole campaign chairman.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s office has told a federal judge it has found evidence that Paul Manafort, the former the rich asshole campaign chairman, committed bank fraud not addressed by the indictment last October in which he was charged with money laundering and failure to register as a foreign agent.
As legal wrangling continues over a $10 million bail package for Manafort, prosecutors this week accused him of submitting false information to a bank in connection with one of his mortgages.
“The proposed package is deficient in the government’s view, in light of additional criminal conduct that we have learned since the Court’s initial bail determination,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing submitted on Tuesday and made public in a redacted form on Friday evening. “That criminal conduct includes a series of bank frauds and bank fraud conspiracies.”
No criminal charges are known to have been filed over the alleged fraud, and Mueller’s office does not say in the filing whether it intends to bring any.
The filing by Mueller’s office says Manafort obtained a mortgage using “doctored profit and loss statements” overstating “by millions of dollars” the income for his consulting company, DMP International. Prosecutors appear to be referring to a $9.5 million mortgage that Federal Savings Bank of Chicago extended in late 2016 to a Manafort-linked firm, Summerbreeze LLC.
Prosecutors’ references to “conspiracies” suggest that someone beyond Manafort was involved in the alleged fraud, but no further details were given.
Defense attorneys for Manafort did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday. Lawyers and the defendants are under a gag order imposed by U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson, limiting their out-of-court statements about the case.
A report in The Wall Street Journal last year said investigators from the office of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman were examining loans that Manafort obtained in connection with various real estate transactions, including mortgages issued by Federal Savings Bank. That and other articles also noted that the bank’s chairman, Stephen Calk, was an economic adviser to the rich asshole campaign.
A spokeswoman for the bank did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on Friday night.
Manafort has been under house arrest at his condominium in Alexandria, Virginia, since he was indicted in October along with Rick Gates, a business partner and the rich asshole campaign deputy.
Jackson has signaled a willingness to release Manafort in exchange for $10 million in security, but prosecutors, the judge and defense lawyers have been at odds for months over various formulations Manafort has proposed to post that collateral. The latest proposal involves two properties in New York, including a rich asshole Tower condo, as well as Virginia real estate in Arlington and Fairfax counties.
Jackson met with both sides behind closed doors for more than an hour on Wednesday to discuss the bail issue, but there was no indication of any resolution.
The judge has yet to set a trial date in the case, but she suggested last month that a trial starting in September or October might be feasible.
Rod Rosenstein: Americans listed in Mueller indictment were ‘unwitting’ pawns in Russian meddling
Rod Rosenstein (MSNBC)
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Deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein said none of the Americans mentioned in the indictment of 13 foreign nationals were aware they were communicating with Russians about the presidential campaign.
The indictment shows Russian agents posed as Americans to conduct what they called “information warfare” against the U.S. by turning voters against certain candidates and sowing mistrust in political systems.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators found those Russians communicated with “unwitting” the rich asshole campaign officials and other political activists before and after the 2016 election.
Rosenstein explained that Russians helped organize competing rallies on the same day in New York City to both support President some rich asshole and protest him.
Three Russian companies were also named in the indictment.
Rosenstein said defendants purchased space on U.S. servers starting in 2014, set up a virtual private network and established hundreds of social media accounts using stolen or fictitious identities.
They purchased social media ads and promoted themes intended to help Hillary Clinton’s election opponents, including the rich asshole, Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein.
Rosenstein stressed the indictment did not show evidence that any of the Russian efforts were successful in shaping American voters’ views.
Kremlin ‘not yet familiar’ with US indictments for election meddling
Dmitry Peskov (rt.com)
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Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters on Friday he was not yet familiar with a U.S. indictments of Russian nationals accused of interfering with U.S. elections.
A U.S. federal grand jury indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities on Friday.
“We have not yet familiarized ourselves (with the indictments),” Peskov said in a response to a request for comment from Reuters.
Read: 13 Russians indicted for interfering in US election
BY THE HILL STAFF - 02/16/18 01:23 PM EST
Special counsel Robert Mueller on Friday brought charges against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian groups for interfering with the 2016 U.S. elections, the latest development in the ongoing federal probe.
The individuals are connected to an online Russian "troll farm" that attempted to influence Americans through online ads, among other actions.
Read the full Mueller indictment below.
Mueller indicts 13 Russians for interfering in US election
BY THE HILL STAFF - 02/16/18 12:58 PM EST
Special counsel Robert Mueller has brought charges against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian groups for interfering with the 2016 U.S. elections, the Department of Justice announced Friday.
The explosive new charges allege that the Russians created false U.S. personas and stole the identities of real U.S. people in order to interfere with the 2016 presidential election, an assessment previously reached by U.S. intelligence agencies.
Their efforts, which began in 2014, were connected to the so-called Internet Research Agency, a shadowy Russian operation based in St. Petersburg that leveraged Facebook and other social media platforms to spread divisive messages leading up to the 2016 election.
The indictment says that the goal or the entities and people indicted was to support now-President the rich asshole's campaign and to hurt Democrat Hillary Clinton's, and that some defendants while posing as U.S. people communicated with "unwitting individuals associated with the rich asshole Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities."
"Defendants' operations included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate some rich asshole ("the rich asshole campaign") and disparaging Hillary Clinton," the indictment reads.
"Defendants made various expenditures to carry out those activities, including buying political advertisements on social media in the names of U.S. persons and entities."
The indictment describes a conspiracy to alter the U.S. election that involved fraudulently won visas to enter the United States, and a sophisticated operation to reach voters in key states for the purpose of affecting the election through political advertisements, events and social media operations.
The Russians are alleged to have talked to U.S. people, and to have been advised to focus efforts on swing states such as "Colorado, Virginia and Florida."
It also states that the named individuals staged political rallies in the United States, and while posing as U.S. grassroots entities "compensated real U.S. persons to promote or disparage candidates."
“From in or around 2014 to the present, defendants knowingly and intentionally conspired with each other (and with persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury) to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the government through fraud and deceit for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016,” the indictment reads.
The indictment also alleges that the defendants and co-conspirators, through their personas, tried to encourage minority groups not to vote in the 2016 election or to vote for third party candidates. In addition, the defendants allegedly promoted allegations of "voter fraud" in the Democratic Party beginning in the summer of 2016, through their personas on social media and political advertisements.
The individuals and entities are associated with the Russia-based Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm in St. Petersburg that was found last year to have purchased $100,000 in political advertisements on Facebook running up to the election. The social media platform told Congress that the ads, designed to exploit political and social divisions in the United States, potentially reached 126 million American users.
Twitter has also uncovered some 3,800 fake accounts and 50,000 bots tied to the shadowy Russian operation.
The defendants are being charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States; three defendants also face additional charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and five with charges of aggravated identity theft.
—Updated at 1:36 p.m.
the rich asshole gets recommendation for steep curbs on imported steel, risking trade war
BY VICKI NEEDHAM - 02/16/18 12:21 PM EST
The Commerce Department is recommending hefty tariffs or quotas severely restricting imported steel and aluminum, which if taken would almost certainly lead to an international trade war.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told reporters on Friday that his department's investigations found that imported steel is a threat to national security and recommended at least a 24 percent tariff on all steel imports from around the world under a law called Section 232.
The report highlights a number of options for President the rich asshole, who could also decide to not take any action.
If he takes steps to severely restrict imports, it would almost certainly lead to retaliation against U.S. exports around the world, as well as litigation within the World Trade Organization.
It would be the biggest example yet of the muscular actions the rich asshole promised during his presidential campaign to take on behalf of U.S. workers and manufacturers.
But it would lead to certain criticism that the rich asshole risks putting the U.S. economy's growth at risk.
The president is required to make a decision on the steel recommendations by April 11 and on the aluminum recommendations by April 19.
The report from the Commerce Department includes the 24 percent tariff on all steel imports as one of three options for President the rich asshole.
Under the section option, the rich asshole could levy a 53 percent tariff on all steel imports from 12 countries: Brazil, China, Costa Rica, Egypt, India, Malaysia, South Korea, Russia, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam. This option could also include a quota limiting steel imports from all other countries that would be equal to 100 percent of their 2017 exports to the United States.
The third option outlined in the report includes no tariffs, but would impose a quota on all steel products from all countries equal to 63 percent of each country’s 2017 imports into the United States.
On aluminum, the report recommends a tariff of at least 7.7 percent on all aluminum exports from all countries.
As an option, it says the administration could impose a tariff of 23.6 percent on all products from China, Hong Kong, Russia, Venezuela and Vietnam. All the other countries would be subject to quotas equal to 100 percent of their 2017 exports to the United States.
The third option set out for aluminum is a quote apply that would apply on all imports from all countries equal to a maximum of 86.7 percent of last year’s exports to the United States.
‘It’s absurd’: Broward County official blasts ‘hypocrite’ the rich asshole for daring to visit after high school attack
Broward County Vice Mayor Mark Bogen --m screenshot
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In an interview on CNN, a local official from Broward Country blasted President some rich asshole for planning to visit the Florida community still reeling from a high school massacre on Wednesday, after the president’s low-key response to the shooting.
Speaking with host Fredricka Whitfield, Vice Mayor Mark Bogen launched into an attack on the president who is expected to stop by the area on the way to his weekend resort retreat at Mar-a-Lago.
Early Friday morning, the rich asshole tweeted, “I will be leaving for Florida today to meet with some of the bravest people on earth – but people whose lives have been totally shattered. Am also working with Congress on many fronts.”
“It was just last year that Parkland, Florida, was named the safest city in Florida,” Whitfield began. “That title and the relative innocence it projects was erased in that explosion of bullets on Wednesday. Mr. Vice Mayor, our hearts go out to all of you. so how is the community holding up there in your view?”
“You know, we have a devastated community from this horrific event. and they’re in mourning. We have funerals as you just mentioned earlier,” the Florida Democrat replied. “We’ll have funerals going on today and in the future, and it is going to take a long time to get over this.”
Asked about how local politicians are responding to the shooting that claimed 17 lives at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Bogen said they were more wrapped up in focusing on the perpetrator and not on the broader issues of easily available weapons.
“The elected officials of this state, the governor and many state legislators, are focusing on the individual, when the focus should really be on the laws that allowed this individual to obtain an assault weapon as a teenager,” Bogen explained. “Okay, so right now this is not about guns, this is not about the 2nd amendment, this is about two words really, about assault weapons and what the laws allow teenagers to obtain them — that’s really the problem.”
“I have many friends who belong to the NRA, I have many friends who have concealed weapons permits, guns,” he continued, “but all telling me the same thing; that we need to do something about assault weapons and that’s something that can be done tomorrow, with the governor and our state legislature. But instead, you have elected officials coming here, the governor was here, our president of the State Senate was here, and what they’re doing, they’re expressing grief and their support for the families, but then they go back and they support laws and enact laws that allow this to happen — and that’s the tragedy as well.”
“Are you looking forward to the president’s visit and how do you expect he will be met with when he arrives, if he arrives there?” the CNN host asked. ”
“Well, I can speak only as a Broward County commissioner and vice mayor, and I speak for myself, and him coming here to me is absurd,” he blurted. “Him being — coming here is absolutely absurd. And he’s a hypocrite.”
“How can you come here and talk about how horrible it is when you support these laws,” he continued. “And what is most interesting, what I just learned, is one year ago this month, the president reversed a rule banning mentally ill people from purchasing a gun. So President the rich asshole now based on his actions, allows mentally ill people to purchase guns when over a year ago they could not. So this is a man who supports teenagers and other people to do buy weapons and wants to come down here and wants to act as though this is horrible, this shouldn’t happen, but then goes back to Washington and supports it. It’s hypocrisy, it is absolute hypocrisy.”
Watch the video below via CNN:
At least 3 Russian groups and 13 Russian individuals indicted in Mueller’s investigation: report
Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein testifies about the Justice Department's budget before a subcommittee hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. June 13, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
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Deputy attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced the indictments of 13 foreign individuals and three entities the special counsel probe.
A federal court handed up indictments against 13 Russian individuals and three Russian entities in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of the rich asshole campaign ties to Russia.
The Russian nationals are “accused of violating U.S. criminal laws in order to interfere with U.S. elections and political processes.”
President some rich asshole has disputed the widely shared view of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence services that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
The Russians named in the indictment are accused of posing as Americans on social media to influence American political discourse in an operation that started as early as 2014.
The indictment notes that the defendants were by mid-2016 “supporting the campaign of some rich asshole and disparaging Hillary Clinton,” sometimes posing as Bernie Sanders or Jill Stein supporters.
Fox host gets destroyed by former Army reservist after suggesting we regulate video games instead of guns
Fox News host Jon Scott and radio host Ethan Bearman (Screenshot)
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Fox News host Jon Scott on Friday wonder if limiting access video games could help stop gun violence — but his suggestion was quickly shot down by a former Army reservist.
Scott invited conservative radio host Jamie Weinstein and liberal radio host Ethan Bearman on his show to discuss gun violence in the United States.
After Weinstein argued that efforts to limit gun ownership would be ineffective, Scott asked Bearman why the United States couldn’t regulate video games to reduce gun violence.
“How about video games? Would you support regulating video games? There are video games out there that are very realistic and you can shoot to death every video character on the screen and leave them lying in a pool of blood,” Scott asked.
“Well, I think that’s a much more challenging issue because it gets into parenting and greater social issues,”” Bearman replied.
“Why?” Scott interrupted.
“Because how do you regulate video games? Whereas a handgun you can control the flow of them. Germany did it very successfully after a series of school shootings. They have a psychological background check before you get your permit.”
But Weinstein doubted German citizens owned many guns before the country implemented stricter laws.
“They actually have a very high gun ownership rate,” Bearman shot back. “Finland is another one that put in the same system. Switzerland has a very high gun ownership rate, again, where the society has chosen to allow the government to be more intrusive if you are going to have a deadly weapon in your hands.”
“The key is to make it more difficult to rapidly kill a large number of people in a very short period of time. I call for banning bump stocks immediately, let’s remove high capacity magazines immediately. Look, I fired AR-15s. I have a DD214 from the Army Reserve. I’ve gone skeet shooting. I’ve gone hunting. I know what it is like to use firearms. There is a rational basis to limit what is available.”
Watch video below:
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