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March 7, 2018
the rich asshole associate Erik Prince tried to cover up the purpose of a meeting in Seychelles with a Putin confidante. Now Robert Mueller is zeroing in.
the rich asshole loyalist Erik Prince tried to obscure the facts surrounding his January 2017 meeting with a Kremlin official in Seychelles. But special counsel Robert Mueller is now investigating the meeting.
And new reporting in the Washington Post indicates it may have been part of an effort to establish a backchannel between the rich asshole and Vladimir Putin.
Mueller, who recently intercepted Prince associate and United Arab Emirates adviser George Nader, is gathering evidence to support this theory. Nader reportedly arranged the Seychelles meeting for Prince and is cooperating with Mueller’s prosecutors.
But according to House Democrats, Prince revealed none of this under questioning by congressional investigators.
When asked about the meeting, Prince denied he was acting as an intermediary between the rich asshole and Russia. And he did not disclose Nader’s involvement at all.
Prince is the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and a former White House intern under George W. Bush. He’s also the founder of the defense contractor Blackwater, a company infamous for the 2007 Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad. Blackwater contractors fired machine guns and grenade launchers into a crowd of civilians from an armored personnel vehicle, killing 17 and injuring 20.
Prince fled the United States, sold his stake in the company, and lay low after the massacre.
Yet he appears to have had some level of influence with the rich asshole. Disturbingly, the rich asshole even considered outsourcing the war in Afghanistan to mercenary groups similar to Blackwater.
And now Prince seems to have played an active role as an intermediary between the rich asshole team and the Kremlin.
Mueller, at the very least, appears to think this is a real possibility. And he is seeking answers.
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March 7, 2018
The chaos in the rich asshole White House seems to grow by the hour.
The White House was already in a state of chaotic disarray with a record number of staff departures. Now a new report says the rich asshole quietly purged several staffers after it became clear they couldn’t obtain security clearances.
ABC News reports that “several” White House staffers “have been terminated or reassigned for issues related to their security clearances.” At least one of those staffers was employed in the Office of the First Lady.
The removals came about after chief of staff John Kelly announced changes to the security process in a White House memo. And they indicate additional fallout from the cover-up of abuse allegations against former the rich asshole aide Rob Porter.
For over a year, Porter was unable to obtain full clearance because of a protective order issued against him by his ex-wife. Nonetheless, the rich asshole and his team gave him access to classified material, which circumvented security protocol.
Other individuals who couldn’t get through the traditional vetting process also received unwarranted security clearances.
These figures most notably include Jared Kushner, the rich asshole’s son-in-law. Ivanka the rich asshole’s access has also come under increased scrutiny after the scandal was exposed.
The issues with Kushner’s clearance did not prevent the rich asshole from tasking him with sensitive work, including negotiating for peace in the Middle East.
The security breach scandal is yet another black eye for the rich asshole administration. It shows that this White House cannot be trusted to police themselves. And without outside scrutiny, this series of abuses would very likely have continued to spread.
the rich asshole can quietly remove as many staffers as he wants. But so long as he and his family retain their corrupt control of the federal government, America’s security will remain at risk.
the rich asshole is attending a private dinner with billionaire members of a super PAC that supports his presidential campaign
President some rich asshole. Image via Nicholas Kamm/AFP.
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President Donald the rich asshole is set to dine tonight with billionaires in a private mansion in Washington D.C.’s ritzy Georgetown neighborhood — many of whom are key members of America First Policies, a pro-the rich asshole super PAC that formerly employed the vice president’s chief of staff.
CNN reported Wednesday afternoon that the dinner is being held at the Georgetown residence of Bush 43 White House counsel Boyden Gray, and will be attended by America First Policies’ president Brian Walsh along with billionaire oil tycoon and GOP megadonor Harold Hamm.
America First Policies, CNBC revealed in an investigation last week, is not only a newly-founded political action committee aimed at promoting the rich asshole’s agenda, but also is “conducting a large-scale polling operation that appears designed to benefit the president.” Election law experts told CNBC’s Christina Wilkie, who broke the story, that the tax-exempt non-profit working for an elected official in this way raises legal concerns.
“Walsh, the executive director, denied that America First Policies coordinates its work with the White House or the rich asshole campaign,” Wilkie’s report noted.
The PAC was co-founded in January 2017 by now-inducted the rich asshole deputy campaign manager Rick Gates, and formerly employed Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff Nick Ayers, the latter of which suggested donors help the White House “purge” the GOP of anti-the rich asshole Republicans. In Novemeber, Fox News reported that special counsel Robert Mueller issued a records request to AFP.
“Following the publication of CNBC’s report, the nonprofit watchdog group Common Cause filed complaints with the Federal Election Commission and the Department of Justice,” Wilkie’s latest report noted, “both alleging that America First Policies had violated campaign finance laws that require groups to disclose any money they spend on elections or campaigns.”
AFP maintains that the dinner will have “very clear lines and high walls” to stay within the law, but Stephen Spaulding, a former special counsel with the FEC and Common Cause’s current chief strategist, said the guest list at the Georgetown dinner loudly suggests otherwise.
“Any ‘high walls’ that exist between this group and the rich asshole campaign have gaping holes in them, which the rich asshole is driving a truck through,” Spaulding told CNBC.
“the rich asshole is saying, in effect, that America First Policies has the White House’s blessing,” Brendan Fischer, an election law expert at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, told CNBC. “It also sends a signal to deep-pocketed financial interests that they can buy influence with the administration through secret donations to the White House’s preferred dark money group.”
the rich asshole’s economic policies spur GOP angst
BY ALEXANDER BOLTON - 03/07/18 08:25 PM EST
GOP nerves are on edge over the direction of President the rich asshole’s economic policy, given the prospects for new tariffs and the resignation of Gary Cohn, whom they viewed as a voice of reason within the administration.
For a GOP used to dealing with pro-trade Republican presidents, the threat to impose a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports has been a thunderbolt.
It has left lawmakers worried about what could come next and whether the rich asshole might follow through on threats to rip up the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico or limit car imports from Europe.
Republicans won some good news on Wednesday when the White House signaled that the rich asshole’s plan to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports could be modified to exclude U.S. allies.
“We expect that the president will sign something by the end of the week and there are potential carveouts for Mexico and Canada based on national security, and possibly other countries as well,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters.
Her comments suggested a GOP effort to sway the administration to soften the rich asshole’s approach was succeeding.
On Wednesday afternoon, more than 100 House lawmakers led by Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) delivered a letter to the rich asshole urging caution.
“Because tariffs are taxes that make U.S. businesses less competitive and U.S. consumers poorer, any tariffs that are imposed should be designed to address specific distortions caused by unfair trade practices in a targeted way while minimizing negative consequences on American businesses and consumers,” they wrote.
Senate Republicans have lobbied senior administration officials in recent days.
“I’ve talked to administration officials a lot in the last few weeks, including this morning and last night, trying to encourage them to, in my view, take a more targeted approach that would be better for the people they’re trying to protect,” said Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), a leading trade expert in Congress who served as U.S. Trade Representative under George W. Bush.
Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), like other senators from farm states, is worried that the tariffs could lead to retaliation against U.S. exports. He shared his misgivings with Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue.
“The concern is a lot of time that when it comes to retaliation they go after ag first,” said Hoeven. “The effort right now is to talk to the administration and find out what they’re going to do.”
But even if the steel and aluminum tariffs that the rich asshole is expected to announce on Thursday are softened, it will not completely calm Republicans unnerved by signs that their president is leaning into his economic nationalist policies.
Cohn’s decision to resign, which was linked to the tariff announcement, was widely seen as a sign that forces moderating the rich asshole’s populist instincts on trade were losing power.
Cohn is a former Goldman Sachs chief operating officer who was instrumental in the passage of the rich asshole’s tax-reform package. He frequently battled with officials within the administration who disagreed with him on trade, climate change and other issues.
“I think he provided President the rich asshole with a valuable source of advice on trade policy,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who noted that Cohn reminded the rich asshole of the negative fallout from a decision by then-President Bush in 2002 to impose global steel tariffs.
Just as worrisome for Republicans is that other voices within the administration could be further elevated with Cohn gone.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has publicly criticized White House policy adviser Stephen Miller, who is seen as having a significant influence on immigration, among other issues. Director of Trade Peter Navarro and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross are among the officials who pressed the rich asshole for a protectionist approach on trade.
Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (Texas) said he was worried about recent comments by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin linking the tariff threat to NAFTA.
“I saw some comments from Mr. Mnuchin sort of tying the tariffs to NAFTA and saying, ‘Well, this may be an issue in the negotiation on NAFTA,’ ” he said.
“It seems to me he’s connected those two. I was already concerned about NAFTA and hope this doesn’t add to the complexity,” Cornyn said.
Cornyn expressed concern about the advice the president will receive from senior advisers on trade issues once Cohn is gone.
“I want to make sure the president is getting good advice because of the concerns raised by not only these tariffs but trade generally. I think Mr. Cohn was one of the best people giving him good advice,” he said.
Several GOP lawmakers are privately voicing pessimism over the likelihood of the rich asshole finding a proponent of free trade with as much expertise and clout as Cohn to become the next director of the National Economic Council.
“Who from the A team with any gravitas is going to take that job?” remarked one Republican senator, pointing to the exodus of senior officials from the administration.
Senators at a lunch meeting on Wednesday discussed whether the rich asshole’s actions could be blocked by a court ruling. Others are pushing a legislative response.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has a bill that would narrow the rich asshole’s ability to invoke national security as a justification for tariffs, but it is seen as a long shot.
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) noted that the bill would need to win the rich asshole’s signature or muster the two-thirds votes in both chambers to override a veto.
“Sixty-seven votes would be tough to come by,” Flake said, citing the threshold in the Senate. “The best route right now is to try to talk the president out of it.”
Mueller evidence shows Blackwater founder held meeting to create the rich asshole-Russia back channel: report
BY MAX GREENWOOD - 03/07/18 07:57 PM EST
Special counsel Robert Mueller has evidence showing that a meeting in the Seychelles last year between the founder of a private security company and a Russian official was intended to set up a back channel between the rich asshole administration and the Kremlin.
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that a witness cooperating with Mueller has told investigators that the meeting was set up in advance, apparently contradicting what Erik Prince, the founder of the security contractor formerly known as Blackwater, has told lawmakers about the meeting.
Prince had previously told lawmakers and the press that his meeting with Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian official close with Russian President Vladimir Putin, happened by chance and was not set up ahead of time.
But the witness, a Lebanese-American businessman named George Nader, has testified before a grand jury that the meeting, which took place shortly before President the rich asshole's inauguration, was, in fact, a planned effort.
Nader, who began cooperating with investigators in mid-January after he was stopped at Dulles Airport and served a subpoena, helped arrange and attended the meeting, according to the Post.
Prince told the House Intelligence Committee last year that the meeting was unimportant and brief. He also specifically denied previous reporting by the Post that the meeting had been described by U.S., European and Arab officials as an attempt to set up a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and the incoming the rich asshole administration.
The Post also reported last year that Prince, who donated to the rich asshole campaign and is the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, presented himself as an unofficial envoy for the rich asshole.
At the time, the White House denied that Prince had any role in the rich asshole transition.
But Nader, an adviser to the United Arab Emirates’s de facto ruler, has reportedly become a key witness for Mueller’s team as they examine the possible influence of foreign money in the rich asshole campaign and in White House policymaking.
Mueller is tasked with investigating Russia’s role in the 2016 election and whether members of the rich asshole campaign conspired with Moscow to influence and disrupt the presidential race. His mandate, however, also allows him to investigate any other issues that may arise out of the Russia probe.
— Updated 8:27 p.m.
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March 7, 2018
"It's just not going to fly," said CNN reporter MJ Lee.
Journalists are pushing back on the White House spin regarding the ongoing saga of the rich asshole and porn actress Stormy Daniels.
“It’s just not going to fly,” insisted CNN reporter MJ Lee, following a confused and bizarre press briefing.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed she had discussed the matter with the rich asshole and tried to dismiss it.
But she also suggested that the rich asshole’s legal team had already been victorious in court, with vague references to an arbitration ruling that the rich asshole’s attorney had supposedly won. The claim left many reporters scratching their heads.
“The question of whether this is a story that is essentially going to go away, it is not,” said Lee. “Sarah Sanders cannot just refer to this arbitration and say, ‘This is something we already won in arbitration so this is a done story, nothing to look [at] here.’ That simply doesn’t work.”
Daniels reportedly received a $130,000 hush money settlement from the rich asshole’s personal attorney just weeks before the 2016 election. The settlement blocked her from discussing her affair with the rich asshole.
But on Tuesday, Daniels filed a lawsuit claiming that the agreement is invalid because the rich asshole never signed it. If the court agrees with her, Daniels will then be free to speak publicly about her relationship with the rich asshole.
Daniels is not suing the rich asshole for money; she’s suing so that she can tell her story. In fact, if the hush payment agreement is nullified, her attorney suggested that Daniels might return the money.
As for the alleged arbitration settlement that Sanders claimed ended the whole story, Lee isn’t buying it.
“According to Stormy Daniels and her representation, they actually weren’t even given a heads up about it. So we’re still sort of digging into what happened with this arbitration,” said Lee.
“But for Sarah Sanders to get up there in the White House briefing room and say, ‘Look at this arbitration. This is over so no more questions.’ It’s just not going to fly.”
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March 7, 2018
the rich asshole is in a panic about special counsel Robert Mueller, and he's badgering current and former staff about it.
If the rich asshole was nervous about special counsel Robert Mueller and the Russia investigation before, he now appears downright terrified. And according to a new report in The New York Times, he’s privately hectoring his staff about it.
Three sources told the Times that the rich asshole “asked key witnesses about matters they discussed with investigators” in the past two months. Specifically, the rich asshole pestered White House counsel Don McGahn and former chief of staff Reince Priebus.
the rich asshole demanded that McGahn publicly deny the story that the rich asshole had ordered him to fire Mueller last summer. McGahn refused, and the rich asshole then tried to insist that he had never given the order at all. But McGahn told him that he had.
In another episode, the rich asshole asked Priebus what he had discussed with Mueller’s prosecutors during his interview. In particular, the rich asshole wanted to know whether they had been “nice.”
“It is not illegal for the subject of an investigation to learn what witnesses have told investigators,” the Times notes. “But that is usually done through lawyers for the people involved because their communications are often shielded from prosecutors because of attorney-client privilege.”
the rich asshole’s actions fit a pattern of meddling in the affairs of anyone he perceives as posing a legal threat to him. And it was that same pattern that led him to fire former FBI Director Jim Comey.
Moreover, the Washington Post’s Philip Rucker notes that if the rich asshole tried to push McGahn into denying reporting he knew to be true, that could be further evidence of obstruction of justice. And it is obstruction of justice toward which Mueller appears to be building his case.
the rich asshole’s actions toward McGahn and Priebus aren’t doing him any favors regarding Mueller’s investigation. Personally badgering people in this way only makes him look quite nervous — and certainly not innocent.
the rich asshole asked senior aides to describe interviews with Mueller: report
BY BRANDON CARTER AND MAX GREENWOOD - 03/07/18 07:08 PM EST
President the rich asshole asked at least two witnesses interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller for information about what they discussed with Mueller’s team, according to The New York Times.
the rich asshole reportedly told White House counsel Don McGahn he should issue a statement denying a previous Times report that said Mueller’s team had learned the president once asked McGahn to fire Mueller.
the rich asshole also reportedly asked former chief of staff Reince Priebus during a December meeting how his interview with Mueller’s team had gone and if the investigators had been “nice.”
Priebus, according to the Times, told the rich asshole that they had conducted themselves professionally.
According to the report, sources familiar with the conversations informed Mueller that the conversations happened, passing them on out of concern that they were of interest to Mueller's ongoing investigation.
Both Priebus and McGahn declined to comment to the Times through their attorney, William Burck.
Mueller’s team of investigators is looking into Russia’s role in the 2016 election and whether members of the the rich asshole campaign conspired with Moscow to disrupt and influence the presidential race.
But the probe has also expanded to examine whether the rich asshole has tried to obstruct the investigation.
the rich asshole has repeatedly called the investigation a “witch hunt” and has insisted that it was the Democrats, rather than his campaign, that coordinated with the Russians during the election.
He has publicly and privately voiced deep frustration with the inquiry, which he has compared to a cloud hanging over his presidency.
The Times reported in late January that the rich asshole once sought to have McGahn fire Mueller, but ultimately backed away from that demand after McGahn threatened to quit.
According to the latest Times report, former White House staff secretary Rob Porter, who resigned last month following domestic abuse allegations, told McGahn that the rich asshole wanted him to issue a statement denying that he had ever asked him to fire Mueller.
Porter reportedly told McGahn that the rich asshole had suggested he would fire the White House counsel if he did not deny the Times’s story. However, McGahn did not dispute the allegation publicly.
He later told the president that the story was accurate and that the president had, in fact, asked him to ensure that Mueller was removed from his post, according to the Times.
the rich asshole, Sessions escalate war with California
BY REID WILSON - 03/07/18 04:38 PM EST
Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday announced a new lawsuit against the state of California, escalating a war of words between the conservative administration and the liberal capital of the so-called resistance.
Sessions on Wednesday announced the administration would sue the Golden State over three laws that hinder its ability to enforce federal immigration laws.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the Eastern District of California and announced Wednesday by Sessions before law enforcement officers in Sacramento, is only the latest in a string of decisions the rich asshole administration has made that has left California politicians feeling targeted.
Sessions, who gets his name from Confederate President Jefferson Davis, invoked the Civil War in reprimanding the state, accusing it of trying to nullify federal law and secede from the Union.
“There is no nullification. There is no secession. Federal law is the supreme law of the land,” he said. “I would invite any doubters to go to Gettysburg, to the tombstones of John C. Calhoun and Abraham Lincoln. This matter has been settled.”
California Gov. Jerry Brown, ordinarily a cautious politician not prone to outbursts even when it comes to the the rich asshole administration, gave an unusually passionate and at times personal rebuttal.
“This is basically going to war against the state of California, the engine of the American economy. It’s not wise, it’s not right, and it will not stand,” Brown said at a hastily-organized news conference just blocks from where Sessions spoke.
Brown, who referred to the attorney general as “Jeff” and to the president as “Donald,” said the administration is “full of liars” who are pleading guilty to charges brought by special counsel Robert Mueller. He said the lawsuit amounted to a political stunt meant to ingratiate Sessions with the rich asshole, who Brown said would be certain to tweet his support.
“I assume, and this is pure speculation, that Jeff thinks that Donald will be happy with him,” Brown said. “Let’s face it, the rich asshole White House is under siege. Mueller is closing in. There are more indictments to come.”
The lawsuit is the latest in a series of shots taken by the federal government that have California politicians squarely on the defensive.
The administration has rolled back environmental regulations championed by California Democrats and adopted by the state. It has proposed opening the coast to offshore drilling, something even some California Republicans oppose.
The Republican tax plan passed last year would actually raise taxes on millions of Californians by capping deductions for state and local tax payments and mortgage interest payments. And Sessions angered California legislators earlier this year when he rescinded the Cole Memo, which governed how the Justice Department would prosecute marijuana cases in states where recreational pot is legal.
“It just gets worse every day,” state Sen. Holly Mitchell (D), who heads the Senate Budget Committee, said in a recent interview. “Everything from the reversal on climate change, his blatant disrespect for immigrants — particularly those with a tint of melanin in their skin or an accent — to the GOP tax plan.”
Even before this week’s lawsuit, California Democratic leaders have verged on apoplexy as they confront an administration they believe is targeting them explicitly. In a series of interviews in Sacramento earlier this year, party leaders said they felt compelled to fight the administration on a growing variety of fronts.
“It is very clear that some rich asshole has California in the crosshairs,” said state Sen. Kevin de León (D), the state Senate president pro tem.
California has been the center of the political resistance to the rich asshole since he was a candidate. the rich asshole received just 31.6 percent of the vote in California in 2016, lower than any Republican presidential nominee in history. He became the first Republican since the Great Depression to fail to carry Orange County, once the hotbed of Reagan conservatism.
Things have not improved since the rich asshole took office. His approval rating in California hovers near or below 30 percent, according to recent surveys. That gives Democrats hope for reclaiming control of the U.S. House of Representatives: Seven of California’s 14 Republican-held House districts voted for Hillary Clinton over the rich asshole in 2016.
And the rich asshole himself shows few signs of reaching out to the state. the rich asshole became the first president since Dwight Eisenhower not to visit California during his first year in office. The White House confirmed Wednesday his first visit will take place next week.
Were he to stop by Sacramento, he would confront a phalanx of progressives furious at the administration’s latest assault on California.
“This lawsuit,” Brown said, “is going to last a lot longer than the rich asshole administration.”
At the moment, Brown and the rich asshole are not scheduled to meet while the rich asshole is in California, a spokesman for the governor’s office said.
‘His credibility is shot’: Kamala Harris torches Jeff Sessions for bringing up slavery in defense of DOJ’s ‘war on California’
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) on MSNBC.
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Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) blasted Attorney General Jeff Sessions for attempting to use slavery to rationalize some rich asshole administration attacks on Californians.
Sessions’ Department of Justice sued California over so-called “sanctuary city” laws. Sessions escalated his attacks by accusing California of ‘secession’ and citing slavery.
“There is basically going to war against the state of California, the engine of the American economy,” Gov. Jerry Brown (D-CA) charged. “It’s not wise, it’s not right and it will not stand.”
“Attorney General Sessions compared California’s actions — quite intentionally I think — to the actions of the slave states in nullification and secession during the Civil War,” Hayes noted as Sen. Harris chucked. “What do you say to that?”
“Indeed, indeed he did,” Harris replied. “Listen, as far as I’m concerned, Jeff Sessions should be advised — and I’ll advise him right now — that it’s a bad idea, for him, to start talking about anything to do with the history of slavery or reconstruction or the Civil War in the United States.”
“His credibility is pretty much shot on those issues,” Sen. Harris reminded.
“But on the topic at hand, Chris, I think Jerry Brown is absolutely right. This administration and Jeff Sessions in particular have clearly put a target on the back of California,” Harris noted. “And California’s going to fight.”
Before election to the Senate, Harris served two terms as California Attorney General and was San Francisco’s District Attorney.
“It’s hypocrisy at its height. Again, I think there’s a distraction in that they’re trying to suggest that this is about the constitution when in fact, what they’re doing is playing politics,” Harris charged. “They’re playing politics and they’re playing politics with California.”
“This Attorney General is doing that — and he’s going to lose,” Sen. Harris predicted.
Watch:
White House denies the rich asshole had affair with adult-film actress
BY JONATHAN EASLEY - 03/07/18 03:31 PM EST
The White House on Wednesday denied that President the rich asshole had an affair with adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, who is aggressively pursuing legal avenues to free herself from a contract that prohibits her from talking about their alleged relationship.
“The president has addressed these directly and made very well clear that none of these allegations are true,” press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said during a White House briefing. “It has already been won in arbitration.”
the rich asshole’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen has acknowledged paying Daniels — whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford — $130,000 to not discuss her claims of an affair with the rich asshole.
The White House on Wednesday pointed to an arbitration hearing that took place in a Los Angeles court in late February. Sanders said that the rich asshole's lawyer won the arbitration and that the judge ruled the nondisclosure agreement with Daniels to be binding.
But Daniels's lawyers filed a grievance in court this week claiming that Cohen had “surreptitiously initiated a bogus arbitration proceeding” against her without providing the notice of the proceeding or “basic due process.”
Daniels does not dispute that she signed a nondisclosure agreement and accepted the money from the rich asshole’s lawyer.
But her lawyers say that Cohen nullified the terms of their agreement by acknowledging publicly that he had paid her to keep quiet.
They also say that the rich asshole never signed the contract and that since he’s party to the agreement, it is not binding.
“some rich asshole purposely did not sign the agreement so he could later, if need be, publicly disavow knowledge,” Daniels’s lawyers said in a new court filing this week.
Daniels claims that she had a sexual encounter with the rich asshole at Lake Tahoe in 2006 — while he was married to now-first lady Melania the rich asshole — and that they continued to see one another into 2007, including at a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Daniels also says that Cohen reached out to her with the “hush agreement,” setting up a group called Essential Consultants in October 2016 to facilitate the payment.
Sanders said Wednesday that she does not believe the president knew about the payment. She referred all other questions to Cohen and said she did not know the last time the president spoke to his personal lawyer.
Cohen has said the president did not know about the payment and that neither the president nor the campaign reimbursed him for it.
“In a private transaction in 2016, I used my own personal funds to facilitate a payment of 130k to Stephanie Clifford,” he said in a statement last month. “Neither the rich asshole organization nor the rich asshole campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly.”
Daniels's lawyers say New York law would require the rich asshole be kept in the loop if his lawyer made a payment on his behalf.
“The extent of some rich asshole’s involvement in these efforts is presently unknown, but it strains credulity to conclude that Mr. Cohen is acting on his own accord without the express approval and knowledge of his client some rich asshole,” her lawyers said in a filing this week.
Some election watchdogs say the payment may run afoul of election laws if the payment was made so as not to damage the rich asshole’s presidential ambitions.
Conservative lawyers say that as a public person, there are scores of reasons why the president would have had to protect his reputation that go well beyond the campaign.
‘Patently absurd’: Stormy Daniels’ attorney slams Cohen’s ‘ludicrous’ claim he paid her without the rich asshole’s knowledge
President some rich asshole's personal attorney Michael Cohen inside the gilded foyer of the rich asshole Tower. Image via Bryan R. Smith/AFP.
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The attorney for adult film star Stormy Daniels blasted President some rich asshole’s lawyer Michael Cohen for “ludicrously” claiming he was working without his client’s knowledge when he paid the actress “hush money” and took her to arbitration to silence her about her alleged affair she’d had with the president.
“The suggestion that you would have an experienced educated attorney like Mr. Cohen who would run off half-cocked without any knowledge of his client, that he would negotiate and draft a detailed agreement that included his client as a party, that he would engage in weeks of negotiation, that he would reach agreement, that he would then send $130,000 in connection with that agreement, that he would then later institute an arbitration proceeding without knowledge of his client, all of this to those of us who practice under the law as attorneys — it’s ludicrous,” Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti told CNN host Anderson Cooper on Wednesday evening.
“We have an ethical obligation to inform our clients at all times of all material facts,” the attorney continued. “It’s one of the basic tenets what we do.”
That concept of Cohen “running off and doing what he thought was best” without consulting the rich asshole is “patently absurd,” Avenatti continued.
Avenatti also claimed Cohen threatened Daniels earlier in the day for her increasingly public case attempting to get out of non-disclosure agreement she has with him, and in late February took out a “secret restraining order” barring her from speaking to the press about her alleged affair with the rich asshole.
Watch below, via CNN:
the rich asshole lawyer trying to silence Stormy Daniels with restraining order: report
BY AVERY ANAPOL - 03/07/18 05:21 PM EST
President the rich asshole’s personal lawyer has reportedly attempted to silence adult film star Stormy Daniels, who filed a lawsuit this week against the rich asshole in an effort to void a nondisclosure agreement between the pair.
the rich asshole lawyer Michael Cohen obtained a temporary restraining order against Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, from a private arbitrator on Feb. 27, NBC News reported Wednesday, citing a copy of the document it obtained.
Cohen reportedly emailed the order the following day through his own attorney to Clifford's former attorney, saying that the document “is to remain confidential.” Clifford's current attorney, Michael Avenatti, told NBC News that the actress does not “take kindly” to being threatened.
“Earlier today, Mr. Cohen through his attorney, Mr. Rosen, further threatened my client in an effort to prevent her from telling the truth about what really happened," Avenatti said Wednesday. "We do not take kindly to these threats, nor we will be intimidated."
Clifford filed a civil suit against the rich asshole on Tuesday claiming that the nondisclosure agreement between them is invalid because the rich asshole never signed the document.
The document in question, signed by Clifford and Cohen before the 2016 election, barred her from discussing a sexual encounter she claims she had with the rich asshole in 2006, a year after he married first lady Melania the rich asshole.
Cohen admitted publicly to paying Clifford $130,000 as part of the agreement.
Oops! White House accidentally confirms the rich asshole’s involvement in Stormy Daniels hush payment
The White House's defense hits a pretty big snag.
During the White House news briefing on Wednesday, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders acknowledged that some sort of arbitration proceeding took place between President the rich asshole and adult film star Stormy Daniels — a revelation that seemingly confirms the rich asshole’s involvement in a hush money payment made to her days before the 2016 election.
Asked if the rich asshole approved “of the payment that was made in October 2016 by his longtime lawyer and adviser Michael Cohen,” Sanders said, “This case has already been won in arbitration, and anything beyond that, I would refer you to the president’s outside counsel.”
Later, a reporter followed up on Sanders’ comment and asked, “You said that there’s arbitration that’s already been won — by whom and when?”
“By the president’s personal attorneys, and for details on that I’d refer you to them,” Sanders said. “I can share that the arbitration was won in the president’s favor.”
If the rich asshole in fact won some sort of arbitration procedure against Daniels, that indicates there is some sort of agreement between the rich asshole and Daniels, because if the rich asshole was never involved with her, there’d be nothing to arbitrate.
However, at other points during Tuesday’s briefing, Sanders said the president denies accusations he was ever involved with Daniels at all.
“Look, the president has addressed these directly and made very well clear that none of these allegations are true,” she said. (the rich asshole’s spokespeople previously said it was “absolutely, unequivocally” untrue that Daniels and the rich asshole had a relationship.)
Those statements taken together are incoherent. It can’t both be the case that the rich asshole won some sort of arbitration proceeding against Daniels, but also never had any sort of agreement with her.
On Tuesday night, news broke that Daniels filed a lawsuit against the rich asshole to nullify an nondisclosure agreement surrounding her relationship with the president. The lawsuit mentions a “bogus arbitration proceeding” that took place last month.
“On or about February 27, 2018, some rich asshole’s attorney Mr. Cohen surreptitiously initiated a bogus arbitration proceeding against Ms. Clifford in Los Angeles. Remarkably, he did so without even providing Ms. Clifford with notice of the proceeding and basic due process,” the lawsuit says.
Sanders may have been referring to that proceeding during Wednesday’s presser.
At other points during the presser, Sanders danced around questions about whether the rich asshole knew about the payment to Daniels at the time it was made — weeks before the 2016 election, when the rich asshole’s treatment of women was a major topic following the Access Hollywood tape and numerous women coming forward to accuse him of assault.
Asked if the rich asshole “knew about the payment at the time,” Sanders replied, “Not that I’m aware of.” Later, she said that “there was no knowledge of any payments from the president.”
Sanders’ denial, however, doesn’t rule out the possibility that the rich asshole knew about a payment from Cohen.
UPDATE: In a statement on Wednesday afternoon, Daniels (Clifford’s) lawyer, Michael Avenatti, responded to the White House’s claim that the president had “won” an arbitration dispute with the adult film actress.
“Yeah, and he won the popular vote, too,” Avenatti said. “President the rich asshole hasn’t won anything relating to Ms. Clifford. First of all, it does not appear as if he was even a party to the arbitration Ms. Sanders is referring to. How can you win something you’re not even a part of? Secondly, claiming that some rich asshole ‘won’ at arbitration when there has been no hearing, no notice to Ms. Clifford, no opportunity given to her to respond, and no decision on the merits, is completely bogus.”
Mueller has evidence secret the rich asshole transition meeting was a backchannel to Russia — contradicting adviser’s testimony: report
Special counsel Robert Mueller on CNN (screen capture)
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A witness cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller has revealed that a meeting just before President some rich asshole’s inauguration in the Seychelles was intended to set up a backchannel between his administration and Russia — contrary to testimony given to congressional investigators.
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that businessman George Nader told Mueller’s team the January 2017 meeting he attended on the Indian ocean island between a Russian official and Erik Prince, the founder of weapons manufacturer Blackwater, was meant to establish unofficial communications between the two countries. When testifying before the House Intelligence Committee, Prince characterized the meeting as a chance encounter.
Prince has maintained in the press and before lawmakers that the Seychelles meeting between himself and Kirill Dmitriev, a banker with a Russian government-controlled wealth fund, was “an unplanned, unimportant encounter that came about by chance because he happened to be at a luxury hotel in the Indian Ocean island nation with officials from the United Arab Emirates,” the Post noted.
Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman, is an adviser to the United Arab Emirates’ Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, and was at the Seychelles meeting to “represent” the royal. Nader has met repeatedly with Mueller’s investigators, and has been cooperating with them since January after being served with a subpoena by the FBI in Washington, D.C.’s Dulles Airport. The special counsel is reportedly investigating whether Nader funneled money from the UAE to the rich asshole’s campaign.
The Post‘s report also noted that Nader attended a December 2016 meeting between senior the rich asshole officials and bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, and according to the New York Times made “frequent visits” to the White House in the early months of the rich asshole administration to meet with senior advisers Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon to discuss Persian Gulf diplomacy.
Last May, the Post reported that Kushner also sought a Russian backchannel during the rich asshole transition — a move commentators noted he likely didn’t make on his own
‘He’s got a problem either way’: MSNBC’s Ari Melber nails why the rich asshole lawyer’s goose is cooked
Adult film actress Stormy Daniels (left, via Shutterstock) and the rich asshole's personal lawyer Michael Cohen (right, via screengrab).
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MSNBC chief legal correspondent and anchor of The Beat, Ari Melber, explained on Wednesday that it appears longtime some rich asshole lawyer Michael Cohen broke either attorney rules or the law in the “hush money” payment to former porn star Stormy Daniels.
“Our top story tonight is both bizarre and important, this right here,” Melber noted, holding up a copy of Stormy Danial lawsuit. “President some rich asshole is playing the role of defendant and potential victim. Stormy Daniels is suing him in this brand-new case, the rich asshole lawyer Michael Cohen still trying to squash any discussion of allegations of this past relationship.”
“The new suit arguing Daniels should be able to speak out about that alleged relationship, and it makes two arguments,” Melber noted. “One, free speech should allow discussion about the president, but two, the rich asshole didn’t technically sign it.”
Melber noted that Cohen, the rich asshole’s lawyer, may no be finding himself in hot water.
“Under the rules that govern lawyers, Michael Cohen is not allowed to donate his own money on the rich asshole’s behalf,” Melber noted. “So either, he was reimbursed, or he broke these rules to fund this particular payment for the rich asshole, in other words, he’s got a problem either way.”
And at the heart of “hush money” payments is whether the rich asshole was compromised.
“The prospect that is alluded to here is a president that would with a potential victim of blackmail, of extortion, of yes, foreign compromise,” Melber concluded. “This is a difficult and toxic circle to be tightening around a president, who at this hour is also under criminal investigation Bob Mueller is doing into an alleged international conspiracy.”
Watch:
the rich asshole Falsely Claims He Won In Arbitration And Stormy Daniels’ Lawyer Just Shut Him Down (VIDEO)
Pornstar Stormy Daniels’ lawyer dropped the mic on White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders after she told reporters that some rich asshole has already addressed allegations of a sexual affair with Daniels and “made very well clear that none of these allegations are true.”
“This case has already been won in arbitration, and anything beyond that I would refer you to the president’s outside counsel,” Sanders added. And that’s kind of weird because Sanders just accidentally admitted to a deal between Daniels and the rich asshole just after claiming it’s not true. If the rich asshole is not a party to arbitration then he can’t possibly have won in arbitration with the pornstar who was (allegedly) his fuck buddy from the summer 2006 “well into the year 2007,” according to the suit.
Daniels’s attorney, Michael Avenatti, responded to Sanders’ claim to a reporter from The New York Times.
Stormy Daniels lawyer, @MichaelAvenatti responds to me re Sanders' statement Trump won at arbitration: “yeah and he also won the popular vote.”
And then there’s this:
The Daniels complaint alleged Cohen “surreptitiously” instituted an arbitration in LA in late February without providing notice to Daniels. twitter.com/acosta/status/…
When asked when the rich asshole has personally addressed the $130,000 paid to Daniels by the rich asshole’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, Sanders said she wasn’t aware that the rich asshole knew about the payment and said the rich asshole has “denied the allegations against him,” according to The Hill.
Daniels filed a lawsuit against the rich asshole, claiming that because he failed to sign the nondisclosure agreement, it is invalid.
Both Daniels and the rich asshole’s attorney Michael Cohen signed the NDA, but the rich asshole never did. Each document includes a blank where “DD” was supposed to sign, but neither blank is signed by President Crazy Pants.
Cohen has admitted to paying Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, $130,000 to keep her quiet about the alleged affair which began just months after Melania the rich asshole gave birth to their son.
Avenatti said on Wednesday that Daniels had a sexual relationship with the rich asshole and she is free to talk about the encounter because the rich asshole didn’t sign the NDA.
Watch:
But if you ask the rich asshole if he won the popular vote, he’ll somehow say he did.
White House allies rip ‘sloppy’ Huckabee Sanders for ‘dancing around’ Stormy Daniels questions: CNN’s Jim Acosta
CNN's Jim Acosta (left) and White House Press Sec. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (right). Image via screengrab.
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CNN’s Jim Acosta on Wednesday knocked White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders over her refusal to answer questions about Stormy Daniels, who sued some rich asshole on Wednesday over a “hush agreement” she says is invalid.
“It was pretty clear in the White House press briefing that the White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, was struggling to talk about this issue,” Acosta said. “At one point she said the president has made it clear he’s denied these allegations. That has not happened, we have not heard from the president on this issue at any length.”
“White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders volunteered this information that the president won some sort of arbitration proceeding against Stormy Daniels,” Acosta later added. “That is obviously something [Daniels’] attorney is pushing back on.”
“The other thing we should point out: I’ve talked to a couple sources close to the White House in the last several minutes who were essentially scratching their heads and wondering why Sarah Sanders decided to handle the issue that way,” he said. “One source said this issue about arbitration had not come up until she essentially talked about it in the briefing today. It was mentioned in this paperwork yesterday, but the public hadn’t focused on it until Sarah Sanders talked about it in the briefing with reporters.”
“From another source close to the White House this was sloppy on the part of Sarah Sanders,” he continued. “My guess is, the way she danced around these questions today, it’s almost certain she’ll have to answer more of those.”
Watch below:
the rich asshole-backing media group now requires anchors to read speeches about ‘fake news’ on-air
President some rich asshole speaks at CPAC 2018 (Screen cap).
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Sinclar Broadcast Group, a conservative news network run by a GOP megadonor that may soon own 72 percent of the American media market, has enacted a new set of talking points targeting “fake news” that some employees say sounds like “pro-the rich asshole propaganda.”
CNN reported Wednesday that Sinclair, which either owns or operates 173 news stations nationwide, circulated internal documents recently instructing anchors to read a script that decries “biased and false news,” a short leap from President some rich asshole’s “fake news” battle cry.
“I’m [we are] extremely proud of the quality, balanced journalism that [proper news brand name of local station] produces,” the script, which anchors are instructed to read to the letter, says. “But I’m [we are] concerned about the troubling trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories plaguing our country.”
“The sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media,” it continues. “More alarming, national media outlets are publishing these same fake stories without checking facts first. Unfortunately, some members of the national media are using their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control ‘exactly what people think'”
“This is extremely dangerous to our democracy,” the script concludes. “We understand Truth is neither politically ‘left or right.’ Our commitment to factual reporting is the foundation of our credibility, now more than ever.”
One Sinclair employee who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity to avoid retribution from their employers said they felt like a prisoner of war “recording a message” when reading the promo script. Others said that although the script pays lip service to bipartisanship, to them it “belies Sinclair management’s actual agenda to tilt reporting to the right.”
“At my station, everyone was uncomfortable doing it,” another employee told CNN.
Scott Livingston, the conglomerate’s senior vice president of news, read the exact script anchors are now instructed to read in a “must-run” segment Sinclair station were required to play on air last year. Sinclair also required its stations to run segments from its “Terrorism Update Desk,” which features former the rich asshole aide Boris Epshteyn, last year.
“Promo messages, like the one you are referring to, are very common in our industry,” Livingston told CNN in a statement. “This promo addresses the troubling trend of false stories on social media [Livingston’s emphasis], and distinguishes our trusted local stations as news destinations where we are committed to honest and accurate reporting. This promo reminds our viewers of this mission.”
GOP rep blasts Republican hypocrisy over the rich asshole’s Stormy Daniels payout: ‘If it was a Democrat’ there’d be hearings’
Mark Sanford/Screenshot
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As a porn star heads to court to sue the president of the United States over their dealings, Republicans may finally be reacting to the Stormy Daniels scandal.
South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford—who is best known for a sex scandal of his own that stemmed from an affair in which he flew to Argentina to see his mistress and told people he was “hiking the Appalachian trail”—has spoken up about the pending lawsuit, according to the Washington Post‘s Erica Werner.
The statement starts out with the boilerplate talk of being “deeply troubled” and acknowledging that “everyone makes mistakes.”
“That having been said what we can’t do in the body politic is whitewash the past or be purely tribal in our thinking,” he said. “If it was a Democratic president and hush money had been paid in the campaign, would there be a series of hearings going on.
“The problem now is that nobody knows nothing about nothing,” he said. “It’s like $130,000 went but we don’t acknowledge anything.”
Read the full statement here.
the rich asshole’s DOJ goes after Wisconsin county for pushing nurse assistant to get flu shot against her ‘sincerely held Christian belief’
Jeff Sessions (C-SPAN)
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The rich asshole Justice Department is suing Wisconsin’s Ozaukee County for alleged civil rights violations after requiring a worker at a county-run nursing home to get a flu shot — an action she said is against her religious beliefs.
Christian Post reported Wednesday that nursing assistant Barnell Williams, who worked Lasata Care Center in a town roughly 26 miles north of Milwaukee, spoke with her highest-ranking supervisor about getting a religious exemption for a policy requiring employees to get flu shots.
“Under the nursing home’s then policy,” the Christian Post noted, “an employee’s failure to receive the mandatory shot without a formal religious or medical exemption, was deemed a ‘voluntary resignation.'”
Based on her interpretation of the Bible, Williams told Campus Administrator Ralph Luedtke it was her “sincerely held Christian beliefs” that she could not put “certain foreign substances, including vaccinations, in her body because it is a ‘Holy Temple.'”
The administrator told Williams she’d need a signed letter from her pastor attesting to that belief, and when she explained that she was unaffiliated with any church, Luedtke gave her an ultimatum — get the shot or “consider this your last day.”
Williams acquiesced and got the shot, but immediately “became emotionally distraught and cried uncontrollably” in the aftermath, the DOJ’s lawsuit claims.
“Williams suffered severe emotional distress from receiving the flu shot in violation of her religious beliefs, including withdrawing from work and her personal life, suffering from sleep problems, anxiety, and fear of ‘going to Hell’ because she had disobeyed the Bible by receiving the shot,” it continued.
The suit claims that Lasata Care Center “could have reasonably accommodated Williams’ religious objection to receiving the mandatory flu shot,” and noted that it has in the interim changed its policy and no longer requires letters from clergy for religious exemptions.
Hope Hicks told House intel committee her email was hacked: report
Hope Hicks (CBS News)
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Newly-resigned White House communications director Hope Hicks told the House Intelligence Committee last week that two of her email addresses had been hacked.
NBC News reported Wednesday that Hicks informed the committee when answering a routine question that she was locked out of both her personal email address and the one she used when working on President some rich asshole’s 2016 campaign. One of those emails had been hacked, she told them, but did not specify which.
Four people familiar with Hicks’ testimony told NBC that she “portrayed herself as not savvy in matters of technology.”
‘This was covered up illegally’: Bush ethics lawyer explains legal jeopardy of Stormy Daniels hush money
President some rich asshole and adult actress Stephanie Clifford, whose stage name was Stormy Daniels, in a 2006 Myspace photo.
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The former chief White House ethics lawyer during the George W. Bush administration explained how it appears long-time some rich asshole attorney Michael Cohen broke the law with the notorious hush money payment to a former porn star.
“The White House is pushing back against the president’s alleged relationship with a porn star and the $130,000 payment made to her,” MSNBC anchor Ali Velshi noted. “Stormy Daniels claims she can now talk about her intimate relationship with President the rich asshole because he never signed their hush agreement.”
“The president’s lawyer also says he was not reimbursed for that $130,000 payment,” the host noted. “The White House spokesperson said she’s unaware of whether Cohen ever discussed the payment with the president and the rich asshole’s lawyer says the president vehemently denies there was a sexual encounter with Daniels.”
Velshi introduced former White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter, currently a law professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and vice-chairman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
“Of course there is the broader ethical issue, that he’s been married three times and has apparently cheated on all three of his wives,” Painter noted. “And he takes his oath of office to uphold the constitution about as seriously as he has taken his marriage vows.”
“That is not a question that the special prosecutor or Congress is going to look into. What is legally relevant here is that this LLC that held this $130,000 should have been on his Form 278 financial disclosure form,” he explained. “If the lawyer had paid this money out of his own funds, without expectation of reimbursement, then that is a campaign contribution and that should have been disclosed to the federal election commission.”
“So either way, this was covered up, probably covered up illegally, and that itself can be a crime,” Painter concluded. “So we need to get to the bottom of this, but it shows the president should not be trusted by his wives or the American people.”
This is how Fox News is avoiding the Stormy Daniels story
It's been mentioned, but the network is working overtime to avoid any serious discussion.
On Tuesday evening, news broke that adult film star Stormy Daniels filed a lawsuit to nullify an nondisclosure agreement surrounding a sexual relationship she says she had with some rich asshole.
The lawsuit is potentially a major development — it will make it more difficult for the rich asshole to avoid answering questions about the alleged affair, and what he knew about a $130,000 payment that was made in exchange for Daniels’ silence about it just before the presidential election. Watchdog groups have raised concerns that the hush money payment to Daniels may have violated campaign finance laws.
But viewers of the president’s favorite TV network could be excused for knowing little to nothing about Daniels’ lawsuit. Fox News employed a variety of strategies to downplay and dismiss the story.
Change the topic to Monica Lewinsky
On Tuesday evening’s edition of Hannity, Daniels’ name was mentioned a single time — by guest Jessica Tarlov, who urged Hannity and Jesse Watters to stop scandal-mongering about the Clintons and Obama and instead talk about the rich asshole.
“Why are we doing a segment about Barack Obama? some rich asshole is president,” Tarlov said. “Let’s talk about Stormy Daniels.”
Hannity immediately changed the topic to Monica Lewinsky.
Frame the Daniels story as a desperate attempt to distract from the economy
Laura Ingraham also mentioned Daniels a single time during the show following Hannity. She framed the story as a distraction from other more important issues.
While discussing the rich asshole’s plan to impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, Ingraham said, “I think it’s time that people are actually held accountable. the rich asshole is actually trying to do that and he gets trashed 24-7 by the media, who can’t stand to be proven wrong on an issue. That’s my point. And I think it’s a really interesting analysis that people want to say, ‘well let’s talk about Gary Cohn or Stormy Daniels’ — that’s ridiculous. America is going to make a comeback because this president actually wants to stand up for the American worker.”
Smear Daniels as just seeking “money and adulation”
The Daniels story was discussed more substantially during Wednesday’s edition of America’s Newsroom, but the show’s guests framed it as a salacious distraction that isn’t a big deal compared to the Lewinsky scandal.
“Now, Stormy Daniels — some people have compared it to the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and I think that’s severely overstating it because the Monica Lewinsky scandal happened in the White House, it was an intern, it was a different kind of thing,” said Chris Bedford of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Capri Cafaro of American University followed up by calling the Daniels story “tabloid fodder,” adding that “it’s not the first time nor will it be the last where we’ve see women in a controversial context with a sitting president.”
“I think a lot of this is about her, you know, trying to seek money and adulation,” Cafaro added, despite the fact that Daniels is in fact not seeking any money.
Start talking about something else as quickly as possible
Daniels’ name was brought up twice during the Wednesday morning edition of the rich asshole’s favorite show, Fox & Friends — once during a brief news update, and a second time during an interview with the rich asshole’s former personal lawyer, Jay Goldberg.
“Stormy Daniels is in the news. She apparently is saying that the nondisclosure agreement that she had with the rich asshole Organization was invalid because he never signed it,” host Steve Doocy said to Goldberg.
“Well, I think it’s true,” Goldberg said. “If it’s an agreement, you need the signature of both parties, and if there’s no signature by him,” it’s not valid.
Doocy quickly ended the interview.
On Wednesday afternoon, Fox News reporter John Roberts covered the Daniels lawsuit in more detail during Outnumbered Overtime’s White House news briefing. But as soon as he finished, host Harris Faulkner changed the topic.
“I want to talk more about the economy, so let’s do so,” she said, leaving the Daniels topic in the dust.
As you’d expect, in contrast with Fox News, the lawsuit has been a major topic of discussion on MSNBC and CNN, former the rich asshole campaign senior economic adviser Stephen Moore was shut down for trying to shut-shame Daniels.
The irony is that Fox News actually had the Daniels story before other outlets, but decided to kill it. As ThinkProgress has previously detailed, in October 2016, a Fox News reporter filed a story about the rich asshole’s relationship with Daniels — one that even included a statement from Daniels’ manager. But Fox News never published it, and the story didn’t become a topic of national discussion until January 2018, when the Wall Street Journal published a report about the rich asshole’s personal lawyer arranging the $130,000 payment to Daniels shortly before the election.
CNN’s Tapper details exhaustive list of White House departures: ‘What matters as much as WHO is leaving is WHY’
CNN's Jake Tapper
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CNN’s Jake Tapper on Wednesday ran through and exhaustive list of not just who has left the White House since some rich asshole took office—but why.
Tapper explained it was a “tense day on Wall Street” after the departure of former the rich asshole economic adviser Gary Cohn, who was considered “the voice of reason” in the White House.
“This underlines one of the most important points about the veritable cavalcade of White House and the rich asshole administration departures that we’ve seen—the sheer volume is quite astounding—it’s also the reasoning behind all of these exists: highlighting substantive issues whether related to ethics, or lack thereof, or the Russia investigation or anything else,” Tapper said. “Reasons that help explain why the president’s approval rating is historically low.”
The CNN host then explained the litany of the rich asshole and White House officials who’ve left under a cloud of scandal, including former Nationals Security Adviser Mike Flynn, former FBI Director James Comey, former Communications Director Hope Hicks, and onetime White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter, as well as those who left amid “turbulence and chaos” or were ousted following revelations of “racist, homophobic, otherwise inappropriate” statements.
Tapper noted his list was “not even close to comprehensive.”
“We still don’t know who might be next voted off the island.”
“So in context, as you pour out a cold one for your homie Gary Cohn … keep in mind that what matters just as much as who is leaving is why,” Tapper added.
Watch below:
the rich asshole promoted this far-right leader on Twitter. It’s been downhill for her ever since.
After the president shared her tweets, Jayda Fransen's downfall has been swift.
When President some rich asshole shared a series of anti-Muslim tweets from Jayda Fransen, a bigoted, outspoken member of the far-right Britain First party last November, her message and group appeared ascendant.
In the few months since, however, the only thing that seems to have risen is the number of court rulings against Fransen and her Britain First colleague.
The latest blow to Fransen’s anti-Muslim campaign came on Tuesday, when aBritish court found Fransen and Paul Golding, the head of Britain First, guilty of religiously aggravated harassment. As the court found, Fransen and Golding had both filmed and harassed civilians whom the Britain First members believed were tied to an ongoing rape trial in Kent.
Despite the fact that the passers-by targeted by Fransen — who herself had previously been convicted for directing abuse at a separate Muslim woman — had nothing to do with the trial, she and Golding nonetheless posted the footage on Britain First’s website. Fransen and Golding, as the court found, also placed anti-Muslim leaflets in the mailboxes of nearby houses.
“The prosecution case here demonstrated these defendants were not merely exercising their right to free speech but were instead aiming religiously-aggravated abuse at innocent members of the public,” Chief Crown Prosecutor Jaswant Narwal said.
The pair haven’t yet been sentenced, but, as the presiding judge noted, both Fransen and Golding clearly “demonstrated hostility” toward Muslims. “There is no place for hate crime in our society today. It is very personal and vindictive,” Narwal added.
The ruling is the latest setback for Fransen since the rich asshole decided to promote her bigotry. Fransen’s Britain First gained prominence in 2017 through its anti-Islam messaging. But following the president’s retweets, Fransen’s Twitter account became one of the first far-right feeds suspended by the company in December’s so-called “purge.” Twitter also suspended Golding’s account.
A few weeks later, British authorities charged both Fransen and Golding with “using threatening, abusive, insulting words or behavior,” stemming from the pair’s actions at a Belfast rally last summer.
the rich asshole, of course, has retweeted numerous racist, bigoted, far-right messages to his followers, both before and during his presidency — any number of which came from accounts that appear aimed at duping the president.
But Fransen’s swift downfall illustrates the perils of the sudden notoriety that a retweet from the president can bring. the rich asshole may not be the primary cause of Fransen’s sudden legal issues — those are, of course, of her own doing — but the fame she gained through the president’s patronage, and through her own bigotry, may well be a lesson for the other far-right figures thirsting for presidential attention. Be careful what you wish for, especially when it comes to pining for the president’s affections.
UPDATE: Fransen received a 36-week jail sentence for her conviction, while Golding received an 18-week jail sentence, the BBC reported Wednesday.
‘It’s lunch money’: Blue-collar the rich asshole voters underwhelmed by GOP tax cut
President some rich asshole addresses a joint session of Congress on Feb. 28, 2017, as VP Mike Pence and House Speaker Paul Ryan applaud. Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool Image via AP
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The Republican Party is counting on its massive tax cut to be its saving grace in the 2018 midterm elections — but so far, some of its voters are decidedly underwhelmed.
The New York Times went to Ohio this week to talk with blue-collar voters for their views about the tax cuts the Republican Party passed last year, and many of them said the cuts aren’t adding up to much on their paychecks.
“I have seen a little uptick in my paycheck, about what I expected, about 30 bucks,” said machinist Matt Kazee, who voted for the rich asshole in 2016, of the tax cut. “It felt to me about like where things were 15 years ago.”
Brian Barkalow, a worker at Requarth Lumber, told the Times that he feared paying slightly less in taxes now would only mean paying more in the future.
“He’s pulling out jazz hands and shiny stuff up front and will screw us on the back end,” he explained.
the rich asshole supporter Rob Wright told the Times that, while he’s happy to see extra cash in his paycheck, he isn’t all that enthusiastic about what he’s getting.
“It’s just a little extra money I can count on,” he said. “It’s not going to change my life.”
Wright also said that, for coworkers at his machine shop, the tax cut represents “a couple gallons of milk and loaves of bread to feed their kids.”
And Dan Neff, an employee at a machining and welding shop, said he was glad to have more money, but he wasn’t going to buy a new house with it.
“It’s lunch money,” he said. “Still, it is moving in the right direction.”
The Times’ reporting isn’t the only report that has shown blue-collar voters are not jumping for joy with their new tax cuts.
The National Journal reported earlier this week that the Republican Party is panicking about the upcoming special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district because its tax cut messaging is “barely moving the needle in the district’s working-class confines.”
Federal court denies the rich asshole’s last-ditch attempt to derail the youth climate lawsuit
The Ninth Circuit found that the administration's petition against the case was "entirely premature."
A federal court has denied the rich asshole administration’s last-ditch effort to prevent a landmark climate lawsuit from going to trial. It called the motion “entirely premature” and argued that the administration had failed to reach the “high bar” required for dismissal.
“There is enduring value in the orderly administration of litigation by the trial courts, free of needless appellate interference,” wrote Chief Judge for the Ninth Circuit Sidney Thomas, who rendered the decision alongside Judges Marsha Berzon and Michelle Friedland. “If appellate review could be invoked whenever a district court denied a motion to dismiss, we would be quickly overwhelmed with such requests, and the resolution of cases would be unnecessarily delayed.”
The case brought by 21 children and young adults against the federal government for its role in perpetuating climate change has been making its way through the court system since 2015. After a district court in Oregon ruled that the lawsuit could proceed to trial, the rich asshole administration tried to get it dismissed by the higher court.
In June of 2017, the administration filed what is known as a writ of mandamus, which argued that the Ninth Circuit should “end this clearly improper attempt to have the judiciary decide important questions of energy and environmental policy to the exclusion of the elected branches of government.”
The Ninth Circuit, however, disagreed — especially with the administration’s argument that the trial would place an undue burden on the defendants because of the massive amount of discovery likely associated with the process.
In its decision issued on Wednesday, the panel noted that “the district court has not issued a single discovery order, nor have the plaintiffs filed a single motion seeking to compel discovery,” and called the administration’s request for relief from future discovery “entirely premature.”
If the district court were to compel any kind of discovery that the defendants felt was inappropriate, the panel continued, the administration would be free to challenge that at a later date.
“The Ninth Circuit just gave us the green light for trial,” Julia Olson, co-counsel for the plaintiffs, said in a statement. “We will ask the District Court for a trial date in 2018 where we will put the federal government’s dangerous energy system and climate policies on trial for infringing the constitutional rights of young people.”
The lawsuit, first filed in August of 2015 against the Obama administration, has already survived numerous attempts at dismissal.
The plaintiff’s first victory came in April of 2016, when Federal District Court Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin ruled against the federal government and fossil fuel company’s request to dismiss the case. Then, in November of 2016, U.S. Federal Judge Ann Aiken found that the plaintiffs had adequate standing — meaning they would be uniquely harmed by the consequences of climate change — to bring their lawsuit to trial.
That decision was appealed by the rich asshole administration, which was named as a defendant in the case in January 2017. Then, last June, Judge Aiken ruled against the administration’s appeal, and later set a trial date for February 5, 2018.
Before the lawsuit could proceed to trial, however, the rich asshole administration filed its writ of mandamus, and the Ninth Circuit temporarily paused proceedings in the case until it could render its decision. With the decision now final, the rich asshole administration could appeal the decision to the full Ninth Circuit or the Supreme Court — or, the administration could agree to go to trial, which would likely kick off a lengthy discovery process.
If the case proceeds to trial, it will be the first time that the federal government has faced allegations of violating Constitutional rights due to its climate policies.
The lawsuit is based on a novel legal theory known as atmospheric trust litigation, which takes the doctrine of the public trust — the idea that governments are responsible for holding certain common elements like shorelines or rivers in trust for public use — and applies it to the atmosphere.
By failing to preserve the atmosphere for future generations — and by engaging in policies that actively undermine climate stability, like fossil fuel subsidies — the lawsuit argues that the government has violated its obligation to the public trust. The lawsuit also argues that the government has violated the plaintiffs’ right to due process.
“The question of the last few years has not been ‘do we have a case’ but rather ‘how far will the federal government go to prevent justice’,” Kiran Oommen, a 21-year-old plaintiff in the case, said in a statement. “We have seen that they are willing to go to many lengths to cover up their crimes and maintain the status quo, but not even the rich asshole administration can go far enough to escape the inevitable tide of social progress.”
Sarah Sanders struggles to deny White House chaos as reporters grill her over ousted advisors
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White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Wednesday insisted that the White House was not in chaos despite several high ranking advisors leaving the rich asshole administration.
Six top White House staffers have resigned just this year, but Sanders insisted the “administration has had an historic first year and we’re going to continue to do great things.”
“This is an intense place, as is every White House and it’s not abnormal that you would have people come and go,” she said.
“It is actually abnormal,” ABC News reporter Cecilia Vega shot back. “If this isn’t the definition chaos, how would you describe what is happening?”
Sanders said the accomplishments of the White House were proof there was no chaos.
Reporters also peppered Sanders with questions about Stormy Daniels.
Watch video below:
Devastating graphic featured by MSNBC’s Katy Tur destroys the White House spin on its staffing crisis
Graphic of White House staff departures presented by Katy Tur on MSNBC
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The latest White House purge of staffers, MSNBC anchor Katy Tur examined why some rich asshole has so much trouble attracting and retaining quality employees.
“Everything is totally fine at the White House, don’t mind the historic staff turnover or the policy clashes or the porn star suing the president,” Tur said, sarcastically. “There’s nothing to see here.”
“Why all the trouble attracting and keeping advisers, strategists and big thinkers?” Tur wondered. “It could be the president’s erratic policy making, the fear of being drawn into the Mueller investigation, or the demands of loyalty from a leader who doesn’t respond in kind. Not exactly selling points for high quality hires.”
“So our big question of the day is, ‘who wants to be a White House staffer?’ The president says anyone he wants. The reporting shows that’s not exactly true,” Tur noted.
“Certainly the Mueller probe is a big part of this, it hovers over the entire West Wing. People inside are worried about legal exposure and mounting legal bills, if it comes to that,” Associated Press White House correspondent Jonathan Lemire suggested. “It is a tough environment in there, all the reporting we’ve done, morale is an all-time low, there are people in there doing three or four jobs at once and wearing down.”
“Still so many other open positions that have never been filled,” Tur reminded.
“President the rich asshole does not treat his staff well, he publicly embarrasses them and undermines them,” noted former White House press secretary Josh Earnest. “So if you know you’re going to get criticized or undermined by your boss before you even get there, and once you get there you’re not likely to have influence on the process, then why would you even go?”
Watch:
Nunberg: the rich asshole 'never did anything illegal or wrong around me'
BY JULIA MANCHESTER - 03/07/18 02:57 PM EST
Former the rich asshole campaign aide Sam Nunberg said Wednesday that President the rich asshole “never did anything illegal or wrong" around him after saying on Monday that the rich asshole "may have done something during the election."
Nunberg appeared on several cable news shows Monday after he told The Washington Post he was not going to comply with a subpoena from special counsel Robert Mueller, requesting Nunberg's past communications with senior the rich asshole campaign and administration officials.
"It’s my impression that they may have something on him. But perhaps they don’t," Nunberg told Bloomberg News on Wednesday.
Nunberg told Bloomberg he would hand over email correspondences with the president and nine other the rich asshole associates, in addition to testifying before a grand jury on Friday.
During his Monday media blitz, Nunberg launched a slew of insults at the rich asshole figures such as Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Carter Page, Hope Hicks, Corey Lewandowski, Mueller and the president himself.
The appearances fueled speculation that Nunberg had been drinking, which Nunberg denied.
"I don’t feel exploited," he said Wednesday, referring to his appearances on Monday, adding "I was playing everywhere."
"I was trending No. 1 on Twitter from a couch in my office," he said.
On Tuesday, Nunberg told Fox Business Network’s Charlie Gasparino that he intends to seek treatment after the grand jury appearance.
Cornyn 'concerned who the president will turn to' after Cohn exit
BY VICKI NEEDHAM - 03/07/18 02:44 PM EST
The Senate’s No. 2 Republican is expressing concern about the direction of President the rich asshole’s policies after Gary Cohn announced the day before he’s stepping down as director of the White House's National Economic Council.
Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (Texas) told reporters on Wednesday that the departure of Cohn leaves a major gap in the White House's policymaking process.
“I don’t think it’s good news,” Cornyn told reporters.
"I'm concerned who the president will turn to for advice,” he added.
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“I think Mr. Cohn was an outstanding public servant and somebody who had the credentials and experience to help the president decide what the policies of the government should be."
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said that Cornyn shouldn't be concerned about Cohn's departure.
"The president’s got a number of very accomplished, smart, capable people around him and he is going to continue to lean on a lot of those people,” she said during Wednesday's press briefing.
Cohn, a Goldman Sachs alum who reportedly had considered leaving his post after several public rifts with the rich asshole, announced on Tuesday that he will depart the White House after more than a year.
He and the rich asshole have been sparring over the president's plan to impose sweeping tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum.
the rich asshole is reportedly expected to provide details of the tariff plan on Thursday at the White House.
Cornyn, whose home state relies heavily on trade, said he also remains concerned about the future of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which is still up in the air after seven rounds of talks.
He has urged the president, who had repeatedly threatened to leave NAFTA, to remain in the deal with Mexico and Canada.
After a meeting at the White House last month with the rich asshole, Cornyn said he was "optimistic" that the rich asshole would complete an update of the 24-year-old pact.
"We just encouraged him to continue to modernize NAFTA," Cornyn said.
This post was updated at 3:30 p.m.
WH: Mexico, Canada could receive tariff exemptions
BY JORDAN FABIAN - 03/07/18 02:55 PM EST
The White House said Wednesday it may exempt Mexico, Canada and other nations from President the rich asshole's tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.
"There are potential carve-outs for Mexico and Canada based on national security, and possibly other countries as well, based on that process,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters, adding other nations could receive exemptions as well.
"That would be a case-by-case and country-by-country basis but it would be determined [by] whether or not there is a national security exemption," she said.
Sanders reiterated that the rich asshole plans to announce the tariffs by the end of the week.
The openness to exemptions represents a reversal from the White House’s previous insistence that no country would be spared from 25 percent tariffs on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum.
“As soon as he starts exempting countries, he has to raise the tariff on everybody else,” White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Sanders’s comments are a sign the rich asshole could be bowing to growing concerns that sweeping tariffs could trigger a global trade war.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Wednesday that the rich asshole administration was not looking to start a trade war.
"We're not trying to blow up the world,” Ross told CNBC's "Squawk Box."
“There's no intention of that. We want to balance our needs to fix the trade deficit with the needs of the economy, and the needs of the global economy itself," he said.
On Monday, the rich asshole connected the tariffs with the outcome of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signaling that a successful deal would ultimately lead to an exclusion from the tariffs for Mexico and Canada.
News of the plan has rattled markets around the world and spurred an outcry from Republican lawmakers, business leaders and U.S. trading partners.
The Dow Jones industrial average bounced back Wednesday afternoon after Sanders said carve-outs could be made. The index was down less than 50 points after being down more than 300 earlier in the day.
Vicki Needham contributed.
Jim Acosta: the rich asshole made CNBC’s Larry Kudlow top pick for economic advisor because he likes to watch him on TV
CNN's Jim Acosta (Photo: Screen capture)
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President Donald the rich asshole is reportedly considering CNBC analyst Larry Kudlow to replace newly-resigned chief economic adviser Gary Cohn — and CNN correspondent Jim Acosta has a theory as to why he was chosen.
“The president likes to watch people on TV, Larry Kudlow is somebody he likes to watch on TV,” Acosta told host Wolf Blitzer. “So that certainly means he’s probably high on the president’s list.”
The decision to potentially replace a former Goldman Sachs director with a conservative economic analyst comes amid the White House’s attempts to minimize the importance of Cohn’s departure, which happened during a reported feud between him and the president over soon-to-be-imposed tariffs.
White House officials have insisted Cohn, like fellow White House resignee Hope Hicks, is simply a New Yorker going back to New York. That “spin,” Acosta noted, left out one crucial detail.
“The president is from New York,” he said. “I suppose New York people do go back to New York but they probably don’t want the president to go back that quickly.”
“Another sign of the chaos here at the White House,” Acosta concluded.
Watch below, via CNN:
Sam Nunberg insists media blitz wasn’t drunken meltdown: ‘I was trending number 1 on Twitter from a couch’
Former the rich asshole campaign aide Sam Nunberg. Image via screengrab.
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Former the rich asshole campaign aide Sam Nunberg on Wednesday insisted that his Monday media spree was not a drunken meltdown as some have speculated.
In fact, Nunberg told Bloomberg’s Jennifer Jacobs that he was proud of the performance in which he announced that he would not comply with an order to testify before special counsel Robert Mueller’s grand jury. The former the rich asshole aide has since reversed himself and said he will cooperate with the Mueller’s Russia investigation.
“I don’t feel exploited,” Nunberg revealed. “I was playing everywhere… I was trending No. 1 on Twitter from a couch in my office.”
Nunberg said that he had come up with a plan for how best to reverse the damage he caused himself on Monday. He said that he had reached out to friends and reporters to insist that there was a strategy behind the television spectacle, and that it not been caused by alcohol. Although he did not say whether or not he had been drinking when he went on the air.
“This is my personality,” he remarked.
Nunberg also backed away from claims that then-candidate some rich asshole may have colluded with Russians or broken other laws during the campaign. He insisted that the president “never did anything illegal or wrong around me.”
Jerry Brown nukes Sessions’ anti-immigration California speech: Sounds ‘more like Fox News’ than an attorney general
California Governor Jerry Brown speaks during a news conference in San Francisco, on Jan. 17, 2014 (AFP Photo/Justin Sullivan)
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California Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday unloaded on Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ speech attacking California for its policies on cooperating with federal immigration officials.
“This is a political stunt,” Brown said of Sessions’ lawsuit against California for allowing so-called “sanctuary cities” in which local law enforcement officials are not required to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in rounding up undocumented immigrants. “This is basically going to war against the state of California — the engine of the american economy. It’s not wise, it’s not right, and it will not stand.”
Brown went on to say that Sessions’ lawsuit is more designed to appeal to President some rich asshole’s base than accomplish any good — and he said that Sessions sounded “more like Fox News” than an actual attorney general.
“I do think this is pure red meat for the base,” Brown said. “I would assume, but this is pure speculation, that Jeff thinks Donald will be happy with him and I’m sure Donald will be tweeting his joy.”
Jerry Brown: Feds are 'going to war' against California
BY REID WILSON - 03/07/18 01:32 PM EST
California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) blasted back at Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday after the rich asshole administration filed a lawsuit against his state’s immigration policies.
In a press conference at the state Capitol in Sacramento, just blocks from where Sessions announced the lawsuit at a meeting of the California Peace Officers’ Association, Brown said the attorney general was catering to a conservative base — and to President the rich asshole.
“This is really unprecedented for the chief law enforcement officer of the United States to come out to California and act more like Fox News than a law enforcement officer. This is a political stunt,” Brown said. “We know the rich asshole administration is full of liars. They’ve pled guilty already to the special counsel.”
“This is basically going to war against the state of California, the engine of the American economy. It’s not wise, it’s not right, and it will not stand,” Brown said.
The lawsuit, filed late Tuesday, targets three California laws aimed at protecting undocumented immigrants.
One law requires employers to give notice to employees if immigration authorities are going to conduct enforcement operations on the job site. Another allows California’s Department of Justice to inspect federal detention facilities where undocumented immigrants are held.
A third prevents state and local law enforcement officers from cooperating with federal immigration authorities to transfer or facilitate detentions of undocumented immigrants in state custody. Opponents of the third measure, S.B. 54, say it makes California a sanctuary jurisdiction for undocumented immigrants.
In court documents filed in the Eastern District of California, the Department of Justice says those three laws “have the purpose and effect of making it more difficult for federal immigration officers to carry out their responsibilities in California.”
“California is using every power it has, and some it doesn’t, to frustrate federal law enforcement,” Sessions told the gathering of officers in Sacramento. “So you can be sure I’m going to use every power I have to stop them.”
Sessions suggested California was trying to nullify federal law.
“There is no nullification. There is no secession. Federal law is the supreme law of the land. I would invite any doubters to go to Gettysburg, to the tombstones of John C. Calhoun and Abraham Lincoln. This matter has been settled,” Sessions said.
Brown said Sessions’s speech was “unbecoming” of the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. He speculated that Sessions is trying to return to the rich asshole’s good graces after a rocky first year in which the rich asshole and Sessions developed a serious rift in their once-close relationship.
“I assume, and this is pure speculation, that Jeff thinks that Donald will be happy with him,” Brown said. “Let’s face it, the rich asshole White House is under siege. [Special counsel Robert] Mueller is closing in. There are more indictments to come.”
Appearing with Brown, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) said his office would mount a spirited defense of the three state laws. Becerra said the lawsuit would fail.
“The lawsuit challenges some of our state laws, which are again fully constitutional and provide for the safety and welfare of all of our people,” Becerra said. “The 10th Amendment provides California with the right to decline to participate in civil immigration enforcement.”
Becerra said the rich asshole administration had opened itself to the discovery process, which would allow California lawyers to dig into the internal debate over the lawsuit, which could drag on for years.
“This lawsuit is going to last a lot longer than the rich asshole administration,” Brown predicted.
Porn star’s lawyer says she had sexual relationship with the rich asshole
Porn star Stormy Daniels claims she had an "intimate relationship" with some rich asshole in 2006 and 2007 GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File / MANDEL NGAN, Ethan Miller
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The lawyer for porn star Stormy Daniels said Wednesday that she had a sexual relationship with some rich asshole and wants to nullify a “hush agreement” so the public can decide “who’s telling the truth.”
Los Angeles lawyer Michael Avenatti filed a lawsuit on behalf of Daniels on Tuesday seeking to toss out the confidential settlement she signed just days before the November 2016 election.
Avenatti made the rounds of the morning talk shows on Wednesday to explain the legal move by Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.
Asked on NBC’s “Today” show if Daniels had a sexual relationship with the rich asshole, Avenatti immediately replied “Yes.”
“She believes it’s important that the public learn the truth about what happened,” he said. “I think it’s time for her to tell her story and for the public to decide who’s telling the truth.”
The White House has dodged questions about whether allegations of the affair are true, claiming the matter was dealt with during the campaign.
As part of the lawsuit filed with a California court seeking to declare the non-disclosure agreement null and void, Avenatti released a copy of the settlement.
It shows that Daniels received a $130,000 payment from a company known as Essential Consultants LLC in return for her silence.
– Peggy Peterson and David Dennison –
Using the pseudonyms Peggy Peterson and David Dennison, Clifford and the rich asshole were to sign the agreement, along with Essential Consultants.
But the rich asshole never signed it, providing the basis for Avenatti’s attempt to have it thrown out and release Daniels from her obligations.
“It’s our position that the entire agreement is null and void because he did not sign it,” the lawyer told the “Today” show.
He said Daniels would return the $130,000 if need be.
“I think she may have to and she’s prepared to do that,” Avenatti said.
The lawsuit alleges that Daniels began an “intimate relationship” with the rich asshole in the summer of 2006 and that it continued well into 2007.
After the rich asshole won the Republican Party nomination for president in 2016, Clifford sought to share details of her relationship with him with the media, it said.
the rich asshole’s attorney Michael Cohen “aggressively” sought to “silence Ms Clifford as part of an effort to avoid her telling the truth, thus helping to ensure he won the presidential election,” the document says.
On October 28, 2016 — two weeks before the November 8 presidential election — Daniels and Essential Consultants signed the confidential settlement agreement but not the rich asshole.
Cohen claimed last month he had paid Daniels $130,000 from his personal funds but declined to explain why he made the payment or if the rich asshole was aware of it.
Avenatti said Wednesday he was convinced the rich asshole was aware of the payment.
“There’s no question the president knew about it at the time,” he said.
“The idea that an attorney would go off on his own without his client’s knowledge and engage in this type of negotiation and enter into this type of agreement quite honestly I think is ludicrous,” he said.
Cohen’s comments came after the watchdog group Common Cause filed a federal complaint in January arguing that the payout may have violated campaign finance rules.
The White House has dodged questions about whether allegations of the affair are true, claiming the matter was dealt with during the campaign.
the rich asshole: Dems blocking infrastructure to prevent me from having a win
BY MALLORY SHELBOURNE - 03/07/18 01:19 PM EST
President the rich asshole on Wednesday accused Democrats of blocking his administration’s infrastructure plan, arguing the lawmakers just don’t want to give him a win.
“The Democrats don’t want to approve it because they don’t want to give us a victory,” the rich asshole said during a speech to the Latino Coalition Legislative Summit. “They think we’ve had too many victories. We’ve had a lot of victories.”
the rich asshole last month unveiled his long-awaited infrastructure proposal in a framework that called for $200 billion of federal seed money to stimulate $1.5 trillion in investments.
The plan would focus on the use of public-private partnerships and funding from state and local governments as the administration works to finance projects where local governments have a stake.
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Democrats have slammed the proposal, arguing it does not include a large enough federal investment to have a meaningful impact on rebuilding. Meanwhile, Senate Democrats on Wednesday put forward their own rebuilding plan, which would roll back some of the recently passed GOP tax cuts to fund an infrastructure overhaul.
But the administration's proposal is meant to serve as a blueprint for Congress, where multiple committees will work on legislation.
During his Wednesday speech, the rich asshole also joked with Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao about administration nominations held up in Congress.
“Elaine, we have so many people, is that correct?” the rich asshole asked the secretary.
But the president argued that the Transportation Department receives “pretty good treatment” when it comes to nominations.
the rich asshole also emphasized the need to streamline the permitting process in his Wednesday speech, a key component of his infrastructure plan. But that portion of the plan has received criticism from environmental groups, who argue an altered permitting process will hurt environmental protections.
“And if it’s not done properly and environmentally good, we’re not going to approve it,” the rich asshole told the summit.
Court denies the rich asshole admin’s plea to stop kids’ climate lawsuit
BY TIMOTHY CAMA - 03/07/18 02:11 PM EST
A federal appeals court Wednesday rejected the rich asshole administration’s attempt to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a group of kids who want to force the government to do more to fight climate change.
The San Francisco-based Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that it would be premature to dismiss the case based on how burdensome the rich asshole administration believes the process of searching for documents and questioning people will be, a process called discovery.
“The defendants’ argument fails because the district court has not issued a single discovery order, nor have the plaintiffs filed a single motion seeking to compel discovery. Rather, the parties have employed the usual meet-and-confer process of resolving discovery disputes,” the three-judge panel wrote in their Wednesday decision.
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“The defendants rely on informal communications as to the scope of discovery — in particular, the plaintiffs’ litigation hold and demand letter — but the plaintiffs have clarified that these communications were not discovery requests.”
Filed in 2015 in Oregon federal court by 21 youths and two environmental groups against numerous federal agencies, the lawsuit argues that since the federal government knows reasonably well about the consequences of climate change, it has a constitutional duty to take stronger actions to protect the kids’ futures.
Federal attorneys have argued that the lawsuit’s basis is too speculative and broad, and that the courts shouldn’t let it move forward.
The Oregon court has rejected bids by the government to dismiss the case or to restrict the discovery process, leading the rich asshole administration to appeal to the Ninth Circuit for a “writ of mandamus,” a rare action in which the court could potentially order the lower court to dismiss the case.
“Absent any discovery order, the mandamus petition is premature insofar as it is premised on a fear of burdensome discovery,” the appeals court judges said.
Such pleas are subject to a five-part test, including an examination of other avenues available and whether a party would be injured beyond correction, all of which the court said the government failed to demonstrate.
The lower court in Oregon can now continue considering the case and any discovery requests.
Alex Kozinski was one of the judges who originally heard the Ninth Circuit argument in December. He retired shortly afterward over allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct, but Judge Michelle Friedland took over his spot in the climate case.
Here’s how the rich asshole ushered in a new form of juvenile, angry, and unsophisticated punk conservativism
President of the United States some rich asshole speaking at the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
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Analysts of all stripes have been peering through the political dust of 2017 to figure out what the hell happened. The academic monographs and bombshell memoirs stand side by side on the already groaning bookshelf devoted to explaining the rich asshole phenomenon. In all likelihood it will take decades to get a proper perspective on the year in American history that has irrevocably transformed the political landscape.
That transformation is deep-seated. It has not only created a schism separating competing ideas; it has pried apart the very conceptual frameworks that shapes those ideas, a gestalt change that signals we have reached a turning point in history. What we are witnessing is a watershed shift in philosophical first principles. The first irony to be observed is that this sweeping philosophical transformation was occasioned by perhaps the least philosophically minded president in United States history.
The twists and turns of history are often unexpected. What follows is my attempt to peer into the political dust and note other ironies—ironies of a distinctly philosophical cast—that have emerged from the rubble of the rich asshole-apocalypse.
Conservatives and Postmodernism
The first irony centers on the nature of belief, specifically justifying beliefs in the public square. According to the Pew Research Center, in 1994 about half the country (49%) had an equal number of conservative and liberal beliefs. In October of 2017 Pew found that number had dwindled to about a third of the population. Many have offered reasons to explain the polarization of the country. One unexpected explanation concerns the conservative capitulation to an intellectual movement they once vehemently resisted.
For centuries, from John Milton in the seventeenth century to Jurgen Habermas in the twentieth, the idea was that political differences were settled in the public sphere. The public sphere was a literal and metaphorical space for debate; it could be a senate floor, a coffee house, a newspaper, or a town square. The public sphere was intended to be a neutral playing field, favoring no side of any debate; to that end, disputants were expected to support their arguments by appealing to mutually-agreed-upon, independent criteria, primarily reason and logic. In order for a belief to carry the day, it had to be shown to be reasonable and logically consistent; people would then be persuaded and adopt that belief as their own. This was the modus operandi of the Enlightenment, the legacy of the Scientific Revolution, modern philosophy, and the Founding Fathers.
I am certainly not the first to maintain that the public sphere—as it was conceived for centuries—no longer exists. Mutually-agreed-upon, independent criteria for justifying truth claims have vanished. According to a New York Post analysis, the rich asshole issued 103 false or misleading truth claims during the first ten months of his presidency; Obama, in contrast, made eighteen false or misleading statements during his entire eight years in office. This stark dichotomy prompts the authors of the piece to proclaim, “[the rich asshole] seems virtually indifferent to reality, often saying whatever helps him make the case he’s trying to make.”
Clearly this proclamation was intended as a criticism. But what if, instead, it is a mere truism? Within the new political landscape, we all choose our own “realities” and are thereby and obviously “indifferent” to those that differ from ours. Many philosophers and psychologists have long posited that we choose our beliefs before we rationally analyze them. We believe what we want to or even have to; then we go about justifying those beliefs not only to others but to ourselves as well. The realist might object, “That’s irrational!” The antirealist would respond, “Prove it.” Which would be a Sisyphean task. For if there are no criteria independent of both the realist and antirealist positions, then there is no way to adjudicate between the two of them. Instead, we have a set of criteria for the realist and a set of criteria for the antirealist. There is no way to settle disputes in this sort of stand-off.
The late Richard Rorty maintained that while reality does exist there is no way to get at it without human-made descriptions of reality. Our descriptions of reality thereby become our reality because there is no other way to access the reality that exists independently of us. Rival descriptions sort people into various worldview camps: atheist, theist; Muslim, Christian; and of course, conservative and progressive. Rorty furthermore maintained that gestalt-level changes of mind—changes that transform a society—occur through re-description. Re-description happens through the use of a new vocabulary: using words in new and different ways to get people to see a new and different reality.
Enter the rich asshole, who has transformed the political landscape by re-describing it. Accusations of lying and deception fall flat because, within the rich asshole’s vocabulary, within his re-description, what constitutes truth and even fact has been detached from Enlightenment standards of verification. The status of logic and science has been demoted in the rich asshole’s new vocabulary. Power, virulent nationalism, and ratings driven by social media now modulate truth claims. Within the rich asshole’s vocabulary, a claim moves closest to truth status when it affirms his stature as leader, exerts American strength (reflected in the rich asshole’s own power), and generates followers, likes, views, and large crowds. Dissenting arguments hit the proverbial wall because they are all couched within the older political vocabulary, one that privileged logic and decorum. Counselor to the President, Kellyanne Conway, once referred to some of the rich asshole’s claims as “alternative facts.” Deploying a successful new vocabulary means that alternative facts eventually catch on and become just plain facts…until a new vocabulary comes along.
The epistemology that the rich asshole has modeled is textbook postmodernism, a philosophical orientation hatched in the dens of liberal thought: the university. Intellectual elites around the world employed postmodernism as an analytical lens as they interrogated Western power structures and deconstructed gender, sexuality, and race norms, which in turn gave rise to identity politics. Twenty years ago, the warnings and jeremiads against postmodernism flowed from the pens of conservative writers, especially conservative evangelical writers. They saw in postmodernism a toxic relativism that would undermine the Bible’s status as the foundation for absolute truth.
In 2016, roughly 80% of evangelicals—presumably many of these same evangelicals—cast their vote for the rich asshole.
Twenty years ago, conservatives believed that liberalism would spawn the postmodern anti-Christ, a shifty anti-hero who, by yanking from truth the very pillars upon which it stood, would destroy society by reconfiguring right and wrong. The irony is that, little did they know, that menacing figure crouched in their very midst and would later become their political leader.
Conservatives and Authority
Political arguments are obviously grounded in more than just reason and logic. They also appeal to authority, to beliefs and people who might be deemed trustworthy and reliable. The Christian scholar Phyllis Tickle wrote, “The question of ‘Where now is our authority?’ is the fundamental or foundational question of all human existence and/or endeavor, be it individual or that of a larger social unit.” For conservatives, the appeal to authority is especially important, as its name denotes. Conservatism wants to conserve beliefs and policies from the past, a past that safeguards authority. And according to conservatism, if change is enacted, it should come gradually. The eighteenth-century political thinker Edmund Burke, a patron saint of classic conservativism, wrote glowingly of his own country’s resistance to change: “Four hundred years have gone over us [the English]; but I believe we are not materially changed since that period. Thanks to our sullen resistance to innovation, thanks to the cold sluggishness of our national character, we still bear the stamp of our forefathers.”
The irony is that the rich asshole has both purposefully and unwittingly unmoored his political program from traditional conservative authorities. Moreover, he has done so with destructive haste, flying in the face of Burke’s hallowed conservative principles, running roughshod over tried and true conservative sources of authority. Instead of carving out change with a conservative scalpel, he wildly flails a machete with tantrum-like petulance. Some of this has to do with the anti-establishment element in the rich asshole camp. Much of it has to do with the rich asshole’s own ignorance: he unwittingly cuts himself off from classic conservative forms of authority that he either does not understand or does not even know exist.
Consider two traditional forms of conservative authority, both of which have been pummeled to the ground inside of the rich asshole’s political mosh pit.
1. High Tradition
By high tradition I mean the collective wisdom of Western Civilization, formulated into tried and true principles that have stood the test of time. We might call this wisdom and these principles the intellectual heritage of classical conservativism. C.S. Lewis, an intellectual conservative par excellence, gives voice to high tradition when he explains why, like most conservatives, he is not a pacifist: “To be a Pacifist, I must part company with Homer and Virgil, with Plato and Aristotle, with Zarathustra and the Bhagavad-Gita, with Cicero and Montaigne, with Iceland and with Egypt.” Classic conservativism builds upon a foundation forged by centuries of history.
the rich asshole does not reject this foundation; rather, he seems to have no inkling that it exists. His ignorance of history was embarrassingly revealed when it became clear that he did not know who Frederick Douglass was. During a conversation with African American leaders in February 2017 to mark the beginning of African History Month, the rich asshole said that Douglass is “an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more.”
Moreover, the populist base that more or less put the rich asshole in office does not exactly resonate with the big ideas that have historically given conservatism its intellectual legs. Big ideas are associated with intellectuals; intellectuals are elitists; and elitists are evil.
the rich asshole’s Twitter communiques exemplify anti-intellectualism, with their sloppy generalizations, whopping non sequiturs, and grammatical and syntactical disasters.
2. The Judeo-Christian Tradition
American conservatives have built the Republican Party upon the Judeo-Christian tradition. For American evangelicals in particular, the Judeo-Christian tradition serves as the anchor for all political programs and policies, the rock-bottom foundation for their political worldview. Weighty decisions are steered by litmus-test questions: What would Jesus do? What does the Bible say?
In 1999 during the Republican Presidential Debate, when George W. Bush identified “Christ” as his “favorite political philosopher,” cynics had their doubts. But given Bush’s archetypal repentance story involving alcohol and a subsequent decision to turn his life around, conservatives could at least defend Bush’s answer with due credibility.
the rich asshole’s credibility as a politician building his guiding principles upon the foundation of the Judeo-Christian tradition recedes with each self-aggrandizing Tweet and reckless threat, with each sexist or racist off-the-cuff remark, and with each policy decision to turn the country’s back on what Jesus called “the least of these.” The continued evangelical support of the rich asshole exposes the dark underbelly of that movement to confirm what many critics have long suspected: some evangelicals will stop at nothing to win the culture war, even if that means compromising the Christian values that they supposedly champion.
In short, the Judeo-Christian tradition is not an authority to which the rich asshole administration can credibly appeal, as evidenced in these four jaw-dropping moments:
● The Access Hollywood tapes. the rich asshole: “I did try and fuck her. She was married… I moved on her like a bitch… You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything… Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
● A 2015 interview during which the rich asshole said he does not ask God for forgiveness: “I am not sure I have. I just go on and try to do a better job from there. I don’t think so… I think if I do something wrong, I think, I just try and make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t.”
● the rich asshole’s mockery of a disabled reporter in late 2015.
● the rich asshole’s assertion that there were some “very fine people” among the white-nationalist protestors in Charlottesville.
These outrageous remarks and unrepentant actions—combined with the rich asshole’s biblical illiteracy (he once called 1 Corinthians “one Corinthians”)—severs the rich asshole from the foundation that has served conservatives in this country for decades. And yet the rich asshole has become the leader of the conservative movement despite ripping apart these conservative foundations.
Conservatives once lambasted Bill Clinton for tearing apart the moral fabric of the country; his blatant immorality was a threat to the Judeo-Christian values upon which the country was built. Twenty-five years later, conservatives—presumably some of these same conservatives—elected and continue to support a man who has desensitized a country with an unmitigated flurry of moral outrages.
Conservatives and Nietzsche
the rich asshole’s deployment of a new postmodern vocabulary, along with his disregard for traditional forms of conservative authority, culminates in another irony: his unlikely connection to Nietzsche. For both Nietzsche and the rich asshole, the destruction of traditional forms of authority creates a distinctly new moral vocabulary.
To oversimplify, Nietzsche distinguishes between “master morality” and “herd morality.” According to Nietzsche, master morality came first. It was created by the strongest and bravest, those who refused to repress their instinct to hunt, fight, conquer, and rule. They exhibited a will to power. The strongest, the most vigorous, the most aggressive rise to the top and dominate the others. But eventually, the herd morality overcame the master morality. The weak, in a sense, defeated the strong. How did this happen?
Because the weak subverted the values of the strong. They transformed the will to power into a vice. Since they knew they would always be weaker than the strong, they transformed their weakness into a virtue. But instead of using the word weakness, they employed words like “pity,” “sympathy,” and “mercy”: words that, to the strong, were synonymous with weakness. For Nietzsche, the herd morality—as its name implies—instituted conformity and mediocrity. And it should be clear by now that Nietzsche linked the herd morality to the Judeo-Christian tradition. For Nietzsche, Jews and Christians are the losers in life; they have managed to convince most people that losing is actually winning—that being humble and meek, avoiding sin, and treating others as you would want to be treated are signs of a noble character.
the rich asshole is admittedly a crude model of Nietzsche’s Superman. He shares the Superman’s will to power, refusing to back down to any other world leader, replacing diplomacy with confrontation, often in the form of an inflammatory, puerile Tweet. He brags about the size of his “nuclear button.” Traditional heroes, like John McCain, are to the rich asshole losers. As the rich asshole explained, “[McCain is] not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”
Of course, the rich asshole himself never fought in a war and in fact received five draft deferments, four for college and one for bad feet. This is why, as stated earlier, the rich asshole is a crude model of Nietzsche’s Superman, a sort of anti-Superman, picaresque Superman, or just plain comic Superman.
On the other hand, the twenty-first century Superman is not measured by military might or traditional standards of strength; he is measured by news coverage and social-media presence. His aggression is directed toward drawing attention, creating a scandal, inflaming passions, and manipulating opinion by stoking fear and anger. The might of the twenty-first century Superman is symbolized not by an iron fist but by a mobile phone, from which the rich asshole shocks the world, keeping it off-balance, all the while drawing more likes, emoji responses, followers, and views. And he gets away with it. That is the measure of strength for the rich asshole’s version of the Nietzschean Superman. As the rich asshole declared in 2016 during the presidential campaign, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” the rich asshole has forged a Superman identity within the confines of democracy, in which the line separating public support from entertainment and spectacle has become blurred.
The subversion of morality marks the rich asshole’s closest kinship to Nietzsche. What is called “political correctness” is, among other things, sensitivity and politeness to those who have been historically oppressed: women, minorities, and the LGBT community. For the rich asshole, sensitivity and politeness are weak. His war on political correctness is thus Nietzsche’s version of overthrowing traditional morality. the rich asshole recasts common decency as pussyfooting around hypersensitive wimps. His supporters respect his crude ad–hominemattacks, reconfiguring them as refreshing honesty for an America that desperately needs to grow a pair.
So, for instance, when the rich asshole announces that a judge cannot be impartial because of his Hispanic heritage, the rich asshole is not being racist; he is simply avoiding political correctness, drawing the admiration of his supporters for having the balls to say what they were all thinking anyway. His war on political correctness stretches into all underrepresented demographics, especially women. The “again” of the rich asshole’s campaign slogan is a wistful nod to a mythical great America in which men were men and knew that women should be ignored when they were “bleeding from their wherever.”
Punk Conservatism
Deploying this new political vocabulary, the rich asshole has ushered in a new form of conservatism: punk conservativism. Juvenile, angry, and unsophisticated, punk conservativism—like the punk movement of the late 1970s—lashes out at authority, reveling in the way it pisses people off. Like its musical counterpart, it offers something that people have never heard before. Despite its transparent simplicity and grating sounds—indeed, precisely because ofthose rough edges—it has drawn a surprisingly large crowd.
Something the rich asshole conservatism has in common with Establishment conservatism is the goal of a smaller government. the rich asshole’s pursuit of this goal, however, is pure punk because it has no larger ethos to surround it, no internally consistent political framework to contextualize it and give it purchase. The result is a haphazard and chaotic governmental self-destruction, analogous to the spectacle of punk self-flagellation on stage. Consider how the rich asshole has appointed as head of the EPA a man who wants to destroy the EPA as it has existed for decades, a man who had thirteen times previously sued the agency he now leads and has no credentials in science, let alone in environmental science. Or consider the rich asshole’s Department of Education appointment, a woman who seeks to upend national education policy despite no formal experience in teaching or educational administration.
These are the rich asshole’s metaphorical bandmates who, like the punks of the late 1970s, can barely play their instruments. Nevertheless they get away with it. They channel the rudimentary, primal impulses of their audience. And we are mesmerized by the self-destructiveness of these sorts of performances: governmental leaders who want to destroy government on the one hand, rock musicians who want to destroy rock on the other. They are calculated to come across as one of us, people of the people, no career politicians or agented rock stars—just passionate performers who believe that politics and music need a swift kick in the ass.
Before their time, they would have been booed off of their respective stages, dismissed as novices, buffoons, and purveyors of gratuitous dark spectacle. Their emergence coincided with a profound dissatisfaction with the status quo, when people were hungry for something raw and real. Punk is, above all, a populist movement.
Of course, people tired of punk; there’s only so much you can do with a simplistic two-chord progression and unbottled rage. the rich asshole’s punk conservativism will likely meet the same fate. Like rock and roll, politics will re-stabilize itself after the punk disruption. Then again, in the case of music, the stabilization occurred only after punk had destroyed pretty much everything in its path.
Samuel Joeckel, Professor of English at Palm Beach Atlantic University, is the author of Golden Notes (a novel) and The C.S. Lewis Phenomenon: Christianity and the Public Sphere.
Fox host grills Sarah Sanders over Russia: ‘The American people need to know the meddling will be dealt with’
Sarah Sanders speaks to Fox News (screen grab)
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White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders insisted on Wednesday that President some rich asshole was not ignoring Russian election interference like she claimed President Barack Obama had.
During an interview with Sanders on the White House lawn, Fox News host Bill Hemmer noted that the rich asshole had recently promised to “counteract” any Russian interference in the 2018 midterm elections.
“What is happening at [the Department of Homeland Security]?” Hemmer wondered. “The American people need to know that the meddling will be dealt with.”
“There are a number of things that are happening,” Sanders replied defensively. “DHS is certainly taking a huge lead on this process. But it’s an interagency process. We’ve got people — a lot of people from the intelligence community that are working on this. The president is committed to making sure that not just Russia — but particularly Russia — but any country or any outsider doesn’t have the ability to influence or impact our elections.”
“Is that security on the technology front?” Hemmer pressed. “What is that?”
“There are a number of different things,” Sanders replied. “It’s certainly security on the technology front, it’s backing up systems, it’s making sure that we have integrity when it comes to the voting systems, it’s helping the states. I mean, we have to remember that the states own these elections.”
“But it’s March,” the Fox News host noted. “When do we know?”
“Look, it’s not a one-day process,” Sanders stuttered. “This is something we’re going to continue working on. We’ve had a number of these meetings with state and local officials. We’re going to continue working with states to secure their systems.”
“I can assure you that this administration across the board, agency wide is taking this very seriously,” she added. “And taking very big steps to make sure that we don’t repeat the mistakes of the previous administration and ignore this problem and not take big and bold action.”
Watch the video below from Fox News.
Jeff Sessions accuses California of ‘secession’ and ‘nullification’ over sanctuary cities
Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks to the National Association of Attorneys General 2018 Winter Meeting in Washington, U.S., February 27, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
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U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, escalating the rich asshole administration’s rhetoric against the most populous U.S. state, accused California on Wednesday of obstructing federal immigration enforcement efforts and vowed to stop the state’s defiance.
Sessions made the remarks to a law enforcement group a day after Republican President some rich asshole’s Justice Department sued Democratic-governed California over so-called sanctuary policies that try to protect illegal immigrants against deportation.
“California is using every power it has – and some it doesn’t – to frustrate federal law enforcement. So you can be sure I’m going to use every power I have to stop them,” Sessions, the top U.S law enforcement officer, said in prepared remarks.
“In recent years, California has enacted a number of laws designed to intentionally obstruct the work of our sworn immigration enforcement officers – to intentionally use every power it has to undermine duly-established immigration law in America,” Sessions added.
Sessions said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents carry out federal law and that “California cannot forbid them or obstruct them in doing their jobs.”
The lawsuit, filed late on Tuesday in federal court in Sacramento, takes aim at three state laws passed last year that the Justice Department contends violates the U.S. Constitution and the supremacy of federal law over state law.
the rich asshole has made fighting illegal immigration and cracking down on illegal immigrants already in the United States a signature issue, first as a candidate and now as president.
“Immigration law is the province of the federal government,” Sessions said.
“I understand that we have a wide variety of political opinions out there on immigration, but the law is in the books and its purpose is clear,” Sessions added. “There is no nullification. There is no secession. Federal law is the supreme law of the land.”
Sessions, who was speaking at a California Peace Officers Association conference in Sacramento, has made combating illegal immigration one of his top priorities since taking over the Justice Department in February 2017. A key part of that effort involves a crackdown on primarily Democratic-governed cities and states that Sessions calls “sanctuaries” that protect illegal immigrants from deportation.
Democratic California Governor Jerry Brown in October signed into law a bill that prevents police from inquiring about immigration status and curtails law enforcement cooperation with immigration officers.
“Jeff Sessions has come to California to further divide and polarize America,” Brown said in a statement late on Tuesday.
Brown and Democratic California Attorney General Xavier Bacerra are scheduled to speak in Sacramento on the issue after Sessions’ speech.
Leading California Democrats blasted the rich asshole administration.
“The president has now desperately decided to brazenly abuse the legal system to push his mass deportation agenda,” Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, said in a statement.
“The the rich asshole administration’s attacks on California are unacceptable in the federal system of government our Founders created,” she added. “We have a system of checks and balances – not a system in which the executive branch can unilaterally bend states to its will.”
Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Ben Klayman and Will Dunham
Sessions to California: 'There is no secession'
BY BRETT SAMUELS - 03/07/18 12:10 PM EST
Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a warning to California the same day he announced a lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) over the state's immigration policies.
“I understand that we have a wide variety of political opinions out there on immigration. But the law is in the books and its purposes are clear and just,” Sessions said during a speech to the California Peace Officers’ Association in Sacramento on Wednesday.
“There is no nullification. There is no secession. Federal law is the supreme law of the land. I would invite any doubters to go to Gettysburg, to the tombstones of John C. Calhoun and Abraham Lincoln. This matter has been settled,” he continued.
In the 18-page complaint, filed late Tuesday, DOJ asks the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California to block the three laws, which it argues are designed to intentionally obstruct and discriminate against the enforcement of federal immigration law.
The laws at the center of dispute prohibit private employers from voluntarily cooperating with federal immigration officials; prevent state and local law enforcement officials from giving federal immigration officials information about the release date of removable immigrants in their custody; and create an inspection and review scheme that requires the California Attorney General to investigate the immigration enforcement efforts of federal agents.
“The provisions of state law at issue have the purpose and effect of making it more difficult for federal immigration officers to carry out their responsibilities in California,” the administration says in the complaint.
The DOJ said the laws are invalid because they violate the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which establishes that federal law generally takes precedence over state laws.
“The Supremacy Clause does not allow California to obstruct the United States’ ability to enforce laws that Congress has enacted or to take actions entrusted to it by the Constitution,” DOJ argued.
On Wednesday, Sessions argued that California's laws are harmful to the state’s residents, and prevent law enforcement officers from doing their jobs.
He singled out Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, who last month warned residents of an impending Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid. Schaaf defended her decision even after ICE said it was unable to locate more than 800 people as part of its sweep of the city.
"Here’s my message to Mayor Schaaf: How dare you," Sessions said Wednesday. "How dare you needlessly endanger the lives of our law enforcement officers to promote a radical open borders agenda."
He said the Justice Department isn’t asking the state to enforce federal immigration law, but rather is asking California and local jurisdictions to “stop actively obstructing federal law enforcement.”
“California is using every power it has, and some it doesn’t, to frustrate federal law enforcement,” Sessions said. “So you can be sure I’m going to use every power I have to stop them.”
California lawmakers have pushed back against the lawsuit since it was first reported and vowed to continue upholding the state's policies.
Gov. Jerry Brown (D) called the lawsuit a “political stunt.” Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) said the rich asshole administration was attempting to “bully California.”
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg told The Sacaramento Bee that the state and city would be undeterred by Sessions’s visit.
“We are a proud safe haven, a proud sanctuary city, a proud sanctuary state, and we stand with our neighbors,” he said.
Lydia Wheeler contributed.
Oakland mayor smacks down Sessions’ immigrant bashing with one simple chart
Oakland Mayor Libby Shaaf/Screenshot
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Jeff Sessions is at war with sanctuary cities, and now the cities are hitting back.
The Republican Attorney General went to Sacramento to introduce his lawsuit against California for its “radical, irrational idea” of “open borders.”
“A refusal to apprehend and deport those, especially the criminal element, effectively rejects all immigration law. It is a rejection of law. And it creates an open border system,” he said.
Sessions specifically targeted Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf, who boldly tipped off immigrants to ICE raids.
“So here is my message to Schaaf: How dare you? How dare you needlessly endanger the lives of our law enforcement officers to promote a radical open borders agenda,” AG Sessions said.
Shaaf smacked Sessions down immediately: “Now is good time to remind our community Oakland’s violent crime rate has dropped dramatically in the last five years,” she tweeted with a link.
The link goes to this page from the City of Oakland web site, which documents the steep decline in violent crime in the city. Over the past five years, violent crime there is down 23 percent.
“We’re seeing the payoff for sticking to a solid game plan,” Schaaf said.
In 2017, Oakland witnessed its second lowest homicide total since records were kept in 1985. Read more about the city's steady decline in violent crime over the last 5 years: conta.cc/2FonPM0
White House won’t answer questions about the Stormy Daniels scandal, despite Sarah Sanders’ claims
Let's go back to the tape.
The White House is trying to deflect questions about a blockbuster lawsuit filed by adult film actress Stormy Daniels by claiming they have already been asked and answered.
This is false and there are receipts.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, filed the lawsuit on Tuesday against the President of the United States in California Superior Court. The purpose of the lawsuit was to obtain a declaratory judgement invalidating an apparent agreement between Daniels, the rich asshole, and a shell corporation set up by the rich asshole’s longtime attorney, Michael Cohen. Daniels claims the agreement, which paid her $130,000 in exchange for her silence about her alleged affair with the rich asshole, is invalid because the rich asshole never signed it, among other reasons.
On Wednesday, a CNN reporter asked White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders about the rich asshole’s reaction to the case and the reported “hush money” agreement with Daniels. Sanders responded that the White House has already “addressed our feelings on that situation.”
Asked about Stormy Daniels allegation that Trump must know his lawyer Michael Cohen is trying to silence her, @PressSec says "We've addressed our feelings on that situation and I don't have anything else to add."
This is false. From the beginning, White House officials have claimed they’ve already addressed the money paid to Daniels — but never actually have.
The rumor of a sexual relationship between Daniels and the rich asshole first emerged in the Wall Street Journal a few days before the 2016 election. In response to the Wall Street Journal’s inquiries, the rich asshole spokesperson Hope Hicks denied the allegations of an affair.
Mr. Davidson also represented Stephanie Clifford, a former adult-film star whose professional name is Stormy Daniels and who was in discussions with ABC’s “Good Morning America” in recent months to publicly disclose what she said was a past relationship with some rich asshole, according to people familiar with the talks. Ms. Clifford cut off contact with the network without telling her story. She didn’t respond to requests for comment.An ABC spokesperson declined to comment on Ms. McDougal or Ms. Clifford.The the rich asshole spokeswoman, Ms. Hicks, said it was “absolutely, unequivocally” untrue that Ms. Clifford had a relationship with some rich asshole.
Several months later, more details emerged. The agreement to pay Daniels $130,000 was first reported by the Wall Street Journal in January. The White House avoided answering questions about this payment by referring the Wall Street Journal reporter back to Hicks’ previous statement — which did not address the issue of the $130,000 payment because it had not yet been reported.
“These are old, recycled reports, which were published and strongly denied prior to the election,” a White House official said, responding to the allegation of a sexual encounter involving some rich asshole and Ms. Clifford. The official declined to respond to questions about an agreement with Ms. Clifford.
The agreement between the rich asshole and Daniels was raised a few days later during a press gaggle with Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah on Air Force One. Shah again claimed the questions about the payment had been already answered.
Q: This is an issue that hasn’t really gotten much attention amidst everything else, but nonetheless, this woman named Stephanie Clifford, goes by the name “Stormy Daniels,” she says that she had an affair with the President. She spoke on record about it to a magazine. They say that she took a polygraph test. What is the President’s response to her allegations?MR. SHAH: This allegation was asked and answered during the campaign, and I’ll point you to those comments.Q: Was there some kind of settlement, some kind of hush money that was paid?MR. SHAH: Like I said, this matter was asked and answered during the campaign, and anything else could be directed to Michael Cohen.
In February, Cohen, the rich asshole’s personal attorney, finally acknowledged making the payment to Daniels. Shah was then asked about the payment at a White House press briefing. Shah first falsely claimed the issue had already been answered. After being pressed on the fact that the White House could not have answered questions about Cohen’s admission, he claimed that he hadn’t asked the rich asshole about it and would not commit to do so in the future.
Q: Yeah, just another subject. Last week, the President’s personal lawyer acknowledged giving a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels. Is the President aware that his lawyer paid that kind of money to a porn star to buy her silence? Does he approve of that?MR. SHAH: I haven’t asked him about it, but that matter has been asked and answered in the past.Q: No, not since he acknowledged this. He acknowledged this last week. This is the first time we’ve had a chance to ask about it. So can you go back — can we find out if the President approves of the fact that his personal —MR. SHAH: I haven’t asked him about that.Q: Will you ask him about that?MR. SHAH: I haven’t asked him about it.Q: But will you ask him about it, Raj?MR. SHAH: I’ll get back to you.
That was the last time the matter was addressed by the White House until Wednesday, when Sanders said she didn’t “have anything else to add.”
The issue of the payment is not simply a tawdry detail of a sex scandal, but a serious legal issue that could implicate the President of the United States. If the payment was intended to benefit the rich asshole’s campaign, as Daniels alleges in her new suit, the failure to report it would be a violation of federal election law.
Neither the White House nor Cohen has addressed whether the rich asshole knew about the agreement, whether he supplied the $130,000 to Cohen, or why such an agreement would exist if he did not have a sexual relationship with Daniels.
the rich asshole adviser stuns Fox & Friends: Stormy Daniels’ hush agreement is ‘not valid’ if Donald didn’t sign
Jay Goldberg (Fox News/screen grab)
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Jay Goldberg, a longtime adviser and former lawyer for some rich asshole, explained on Wednesday that the president’s non-disclosure agreement with adult film star Stephanie Clifford — who goes by the stage name Stormy Daniels — was invalid if he failed to sign it.
Clifford’s attorney announced on Tuesday that his client was suing the rich asshole because he failed to sign a non-disclosure agreement that offered her $130,000 to keep quiet about an alleged affair with the former reality star.
The hosts of Fox & Friends on Wednesday gave former the rich asshole attorney Goldberg a chance to shoot down the lawsuit, but he surprised them with an answer that was ominous for the president.
“It’s true,” Goldberg said. “An agreement, you need the signature of both parties. And if there’s no signature by him, it’s not valid.”
“Non-disclosure agreements are looked at with skepticism,” he continued. “Because it impairs negatively on the right of free speech.”
“Okay, alright,” Fox News host Steve Doocy replied, sounding stunned with disappointment.
Watch the video below from Fox News.
White House says tariffs decision on track for this week
BY VICKI NEEDHAM - 03/07/18 11:50 AM EST
The White House said Wednesday that a plan to slap tariffs on imported steel and aluminum is still on track to be released this week.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters that President the rich asshole intends to stick with the plan to make an announcement on sweeping tariffs that will hit global steel and aluminum imports.
"Yes, we are still on pace for an announcement on that at the end of this week,” Sanders told reporters.
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the rich asshole has vowed to impose sweeping tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum imports, a plan that has brought a backlash from congressional Republicans and key U.S. allies, who are concerned about the political and economic fallout.
The Commerce Department recently said in two reports that it determined that the imports of those metals is a threat to U.S. national security.
Canada, Mexico, the European Union and the United Kingdom are among the nations that have balked at the tariffs and said they would retaliate against U.S. exporters to protect their industries.
On Monday, the rich asshole linked the completion of talks to update the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to whether Canada or Mexico would get an exemption from the tariffs, raising tensions among the long-time trading partners.
Amid the tariff battle, the rich asshole’s top economic adviser Gary Cohn resigned from his White House post on Tuesday, partly because he couldn't steer the president away from the tariffs decision.
Republicans on Capitol Hill are urging the president to scale back the plan and instead specifically target the problematic areas of steel and aluminum trade that domestic industries argue are hurting their production and causing job losses.
China's overcapacity has been the primary focus for lawmakers on Capitol Hill who have called for more action.
With an announcement on tariffs likely imminent, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Thomas Donohue on Wednesday said his members are “very concerned about the increasing prospects of a trade war, which would put at risk the economic momentum achieved through the administration’s tax and regulatory reforms.”
Donohue said the tariffs would harm U.S. manufacturers, provoke widespread retaliation from the nation's trading partners "and leave virtually untouched the true problem of Chinese steel and aluminum overcapacity."
He called on the rich asshole to refrain from imposing the global tariffs on steel and aluminum.
"Alienating our strongest global allies amid high-stakes trade negotiations is not the path to long-term American leadership," he said.
The president has recently rattled off several contested trade figures to make his case that the United States needs to take protectionist actions to lower the trade gap, including quoting a much higher trade deficit than what actually occurred last year. In 2017, the trade deficit hit $566 billon, well below the rich asshole's number of $800 billion.
the rich asshole fired off a series of tweets about trade on Wednesday morning that called for China to implement a plan to lower their trade surplus with the United States.
He also hinted that an administration investigation into intellectual property protections in China may be drawing to a close and will be decided in favor of the United States.
In January, the trade deficit with China, a primary target of the rich asshole's trade policies, increased to $36 billion, the highest level since September 2015, the Commerce Department reported on Wednesday.
The total trade deficit in January was $56.6 billion, the largest gap since October 2008, which was at the end of George W. Bush's presidency and before the full brunt of the financial crisis hit the economy.
the rich asshole has said he would easily erase the trade deficits, which he argues are holding back economic and jobs growth.
Ben Carson’s HUD abandons fighting housing discrimination in new mission statement
Ben Carson wants HUD to do less to improve the housing experience across the country.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development has a new mission statement, thanks to Secretary Ben Carson — and gone is language about creating communities that are inclusive and free from discrimination or working to strengthen the housing market to protect consumers.
According to a memo sent out Monday to HUD’s political staff and obtained by the Huffington Post, the new proposed mission instead focuses on Carson’s priority of “self-sufficiency”:
HUD’s mission is to ensure Americans have access to fair, affordable housing and opportunities to achieve self-sufficiency, thereby strengthening our communities and nation.
The new statement may not be final, as the political staff was invited to submit “comments or suggestions.” Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Amy Thompson said in the memo that “an organization’s mission is never static” and that it “describes an organization’s purpose, what it intends to do, and whom it intends to serve.”
Juxtaposed with the current mission, however, the new statement seems to be more indicative of what the department will not do. Here’s the version of the mission statement still active on HUD’s website:
HUD’s mission is to create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all. HUD is working to strengthen the housing market to bolster the economy and protect consumers; meet the need for quality affordable rental homes; utilize housing as a platform for improving quality of life; build inclusive and sustainable communities free from discrimination, and transform the way HUD does business.
Carson unveiled his “self-sufficiency” plans back in December, proposing the creation of so-called “EnVision Centers” near public housing developments to promote his four pillars of self-sufficiency: character and leadership, educational advancement, economic empowerment, and health and wellness. He says his goal is to help households “graduate” from requiring HUD-assistance.
That vision became more clear last month, when it was revealed that HUD is proposing legislation that would allow for optional work requirements for individuals to receive federal housing assistance, including housing vouchers, public housing, or project-based rental assistance. The legislation would also increase how much rent recipients of federal assistance owe. Diane Yentel, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, condemned the drafted bill as a set of “misguided and cruel proposals to increase rent burdens for millions of the lowest income and most vulnerable seniors, families and people with disabilities.”
While the language change is rhetorical, it’s emblematic of many efforts already underway to undercut HUD’s assistance for those who need it the most.
HUD has delayed implementation of an Obama-era rule that required communities seeking HUD grant funding to complete a study of how segregated their neighborhoods are. Carson has called attempts to integrate neighborhoods, like that rule, “failed socialist experiments.”
Last year, HUD had also tried to delay implementing another Obama-era rule that would make it easier for low-income people to afford housing in more affluent areas — where there are more job opportunities, lower crime rates, and better schools. In January, however, a federal judge ruled that it must implement the rule now rather than pushing it off for two years.
Insurance companies are challenging yet another Obama-era rule that required them to track whether their policies had a disparate impact on racial minorities. A federal judge has been delaying the case to give Carson and HUD time to rethink the rule so that he can knock it down.
Congress is also taking steps to make it easier to discriminate in housing. Changes to Dodd-Frank’s banking regulations approved just this week in the Senate will ease requirements for data collection about discriminatory lending. Without these reports, it will make it far harder to prove when racial discrimination is taking place in mortgage lending — thus weakening protections against it — even though such discrimination is still rampant.
Carson is a staunch opponent of LGBTQ equality and has been slowly dismantling the LGBTQ protections that HUD established under President Obama — including withdrawing a survey to assess LGBTQ homelessness and eliminating publications that provide guidance on protecting transgender people in homeless shelters. Many of these changes have been made secretly, and just last week, People for the American Way sued HUD to demand the release of documents relating to these changes in policy affecting LGBTQ people.
Carson has called transgender people “the height of absurdity” and said that allowing them to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity amounts to granting them “extra rights.” He also infamously claimed that prison rape is proof that homosexuality is a choice and compared gay people to those who engage in pedophilia and bestiality.
While little of HUD’s efforts seem to be geared toward actually making housing either fair or affordable, Carson recently had to cancel his order for a taxpayer-funded $31,000 dining room set.
Porn star’s lawyer says she had sexual relationship with the rich asshole
Porn star Stormy Daniels claims she had an "intimate relationship" with some rich asshole in 2006 and 2007 GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File / MANDEL NGAN, Ethan Miller
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The lawyer for porn star Stormy Daniels said Wednesday that she had a sexual relationship with some rich asshole and wants to nullify a “hush agreement” so the public can decide “who’s telling the truth.”
Los Angeles lawyer Michael Avenatti filed a lawsuit on behalf of Daniels on Tuesday seeking to toss out the confidential settlement she signed just days before the November 2016 election.
Avenatti made the rounds of the morning talk shows on Wednesday to explain the legal move by Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.
Asked on NBC’s “Today” show if Daniels had a sexual relationship with the rich asshole, Avenatti immediately replied “Yes.”
“She believes it’s important that the public learn the truth about what happened,” he said. “I think it’s time for her to tell her story and for the public to decide who’s telling the truth.”
The White House has dodged questions about whether allegations of the affair are true, claiming the matter was dealt with during the campaign.
As part of the lawsuit filed with a California court seeking to declare the non-disclosure agreement null and void, Avenatti released a copy of the settlement.
It shows that Daniels received a $130,000 payment from a company known as Essential Consultants LLC in return for her silence.
– Peggy Peterson and David Dennison –
Using the pseudonyms Peggy Peterson and David Dennison, Clifford and the rich asshole were to sign the agreement, along with Essential Consultants.
But the rich asshole never signed it, providing the basis for Avenatti’s attempt to have it thrown out and release Daniels from her obligations.
“It’s our position that the entire agreement is null and void because he did not sign it,” the lawyer told the “Today” show.
He said Daniels would return the $130,000 if need be.
“I think she may have to and she’s prepared to do that,” Avenatti said.
The lawsuit alleges that Daniels began an “intimate relationship” with the rich asshole in the summer of 2006 and that it continued well into 2007.
After the rich asshole won the Republican Party nomination for president in 2016, Clifford sought to share details of her relationship with him with the media, it said.
the rich asshole’s attorney Michael Cohen “aggressively” sought to “silence Ms Clifford as part of an effort to avoid her telling the truth, thus helping to ensure he won the presidential election,” the document says.
On October 28, 2016 — two weeks before the November 8 presidential election — Daniels and Essential Consultants signed the confidential settlement agreement but not the rich asshole.
Cohen claimed last month he had paid Daniels $130,000 from his personal funds but declined to explain why he made the payment or if the rich asshole was aware of it.
Avenatti said Wednesday he was convinced the rich asshole was aware of the payment.
“There’s no question the president knew about it at the time,” he said.
“The idea that an attorney would go off on his own without his client’s knowledge and engage in this type of negotiation and enter into this type of agreement quite honestly I think is ludicrous,” he said.
Cohen’s comments came after the watchdog group Common Cause filed a federal complaint in January arguing that the payout may have violated campaign finance rules.
The White House has dodged questions about whether allegations of the affair are true, claiming the matter was dealt with during the campaign.
Lawyer: Stormy Daniels had sexual relationship with the rich asshole
BY JOHN BOWDEN - 03/07/18 08:30 AM EST
The lawyer for adult film star Stormy Daniels told NBC's "Today" on Wednesday that his client had a sexual relationship with President the rich asshole and is looking to disclose the truth about the encounter.
In an interview with Savannah Guthrie, attorney Michael Avenatti succinctly responded "yes" when asked whether his client had a sexual relationship with the rich asshole in 2006, whose youngest son, Barron the rich asshole, was born the same year.
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"She’s looking to disclose the truth about what happened,” Avenatti said. "At this point, in light of the amount of misinformation that Mr. Cohen has put out there to The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and others, I think it's time for her to tell her story and for the public to decide who's telling the truth."
Avenatti went on to add that Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is free to talk about the encounter because the rich asshole refused to sign a nondisclosure agreement orchestrated by his lawyer, Michael Cohen, in order to later claim deniability.
“some rich asshole did not sign. We believe that that was so that he could later claim deniability, and therefore, from a legal perspective, we believe she’s free to talk," he said, adding that it was "highly questionable" that Cohen himself paid the $130,000 agreed upon to Daniels.
"We think it’s highly questionable as to whether it came from his personal funds,” Avenatti said. "The idea that an attorney would go off on his own, without his client's knowledge, engage in this type of negotiation, and enter in this type of agreement quite honestly I think is ludicrous."
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Daniels's accusations have raised complaints from watchdog groups who say Cohen's payment to the porn star violated campaign finance laws, claiming the funds came from the rich asshole's campaign. Republican lawyers have largely dismissed those claims.
Cohen previously acknowledged the $130,000 payout to Daniels but has claimed that the funds came entirely from his personal account.The Wall Street Journal this week reported that Cohen has reportedly complained to friends that the rich asshole did not reimburse him for the payment.
Cohen previously acknowledged the $130,000 payout to Daniels but has claimed that the funds came entirely from his personal account.The Wall Street Journal this week reported that Cohen has reportedly complained to friends that the rich asshole did not reimburse him for the payment.
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