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March 10, 2018
As the reality of the Russia inquiry sets in, the rich asshole is ominously looking to an impeachment lawyer for help.
the rich asshole reportedly initiated discussions with an impeachment lawyer this week, signaling that he may be more worried about the Russia investigation than he’s willing to admit.
The New York Times reported Saturday that the rich asshole met with Emmet Flood, the lawyer who represented Bill Clinton in his impeachment proceedings, to talk about joining his legal team.
the rich asshole is looking to Flood for help dealing with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
The revelation that the rich asshole has reached out to an impeachment lawyer comes just as former aide Sam Nunberg is expressing new concerns about potential legal troubles awaiting the rich asshole campaign officials.
After meeting with Mueller and testifying before a grand jury for more than five hours on Friday, Nunberg told ABC News that he no longer believes the Russia probe is a “witch hunt.”
“No, I don’t think it’s a witch hunt,” he said. “It’s warranted because there’s a lot there and that’s the sad truth.”
Nunberg said he believes that many of those in his inner circle may end up facing major legal troubles stemming from the ongoing investigation into Russian interference and potential cooperation with the rich asshole campaign.
He is particularly concerned that his own mentor, former campaign aide Roger Stone, may be in serious legal jeopardy.
“I’m very worried about him,” Nunberg told ABC News. “He’s certainly at least the subject of this investigation, in the very least he’s a subject.”
the rich asshole’s outreach to an impeachment lawyer suggests that he, too, has come to the realization that Mueller’s investigation is not a “hoax” or a “witch hunt,” despite what he claims in his frequent rage–tweets.
To date, Mueller’s team has already either indicted or gotten guilty pleas from 19 people and three companies, including four members of the rich asshole campaign.
While the rich asshole’s overture to Flood isn’t a sign of guilt, it does signal an acknowledgement by the rich asshole that the investigation is not likely to come to an end anytime soon — and that the road ahead is not likely to be a smooth one
ACLU sues the rich asshole administration for forcibly separating immigrant parents from their young children
The lawsuit represents "hundreds of individuals whose minor children have already been taken from them."
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is suing the the rich asshole administration for forcibly separating parents awaiting asylum proceedings from their young children.
The ACLU, which filed the class action lawsuit at the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of California on Friday, claims the practice by government agencies of separating young children from their families violates the Process Clause and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The lawsuit represents a proposed class of “hundreds of individuals whose minor children have already been taken from them.”
The class-action suit broadens an existing ACLU lawsuit that attempted to reunite a woman with her 7-year-old daughter after they were detained separately by U.S. officials. The pair had sought asylum in the United States after fleeing violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the ACLU. The young girl frantically screamed that she “did not want to leave her mommy” as they were being separated, yet the government claims she would not be safe with her mother, according to the lawsuit.
The mother and child were placed in separate detention facilities 2,000 miles apart. The mother was released earlier this week but is still waiting to be reunited with her daughter, the ACLU said.
“Because the government has a practice of separating parents from their children without a hearing or any showing of abuse or neglect, they are operating in a manner that is common to all Plaintiffs,” the lawsuit read. “The class as a whole is therefore entitled to an injunction ordering Defendants to reunite class members with their minor children.”
An asylum-seeking mother from Brazil who was separated from her 14-year-old son was also recognized as a plaintiff in the lawsuit.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesman Tyler Houlton claimedthat the government is separating families to protect the child and reasons otherwise should be viewed “with the level of skepticism they deserve,” according to CNN.
“However, we retain the authority to do so in certain circumstances, particularly to protect a child from potential smuggling and trafficking activities,” Houlton said.
However, the practice of separating children from their parents resembles an intentional deterrence strategy by the the rich asshole administration.
DHS is reportedly considering a plan to separate Central American children from their parents at the U.S. boarder as a way of deterring parents from crossing the boarder, the agency’s secretary John Kelly told CNN earlier this week.
The agency would separate families “in order to deter more movement along this terribly dangerous network… They will be well cared for as we deal with their parents,” Kelly said.
Leak: White House staff are ‘just along for the ride’ while contemplating quitting ‘in exasperation’
some rich asshole speaking at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C. (Gage Skidmore/ Flickr)
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President some rich asshole’s decision to serve as his own chief of staff and communications director has exasperated White House staffers struggling to keep up amidst chaos of staffing failures, Axios reported Saturday.
Axios interviewed a senior administration official described as actually liking President the rich asshole.
“No single individual in history has been able to direct an entire news cycle on a whim, and he’s using that power at his sole discretion, with the [White House] policy, press, and comms teams just along for the ride,” the official argued. “Both at a policy level or a comms level, the rich asshole is doing what he wants, when he wants, how he wants.”
“The [White House] staff I talk to are constantly having to make the decision whether to push back on him, push forward with him, or head for the exits in exasperation,” the official explained.
Last Saturday, The Washington Post reported on the madness in the White House in a bombshell sourced to 22 people close to the administration.
Since that report, chief of staff John Kelly purged multiple staff members over lack of security clearances.
On Friday, Vanity Fair reported the rich asshole is planning to fire Kelly, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster along with daughter Ivanka and her husband and fellow senior White House advisor Jared Kushner.
the rich asshole Is Rambling On About North Korea And No One Knows What He’s Talking About
some rich asshole took his crazy little fingers to his Twitter account on Saturday to lash out at the ‘fake news’ media over something which makes no sense whatsoever. The former reality show star accepted an invitation to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders appeared to walk that back an hour later. No one knows what the rich asshole is talking about in his rambling, incoherent tweet.
“In the first hours after hearing that North Korea’s leader wanted to meet with me to talk denuclearization and that missile launches will end, the press was startled & amazed,” the rich asshole tweeted. “They couldn’t believe it.”
“But by the following morning the news became FAKE,” he added. “They said so what, who cares!”
President Senile
Sir. Take your meds.
Why are you always butthurt?
Oh my goodness.
Is this tantrum-throwing man our example of a president?
He is actually tweeting that no one cares about his North Korea coup?
I now have to be embarrassed on a daily basis.
Just fucking incredible.#NotMyPresident #snowflake #ManChildPres#ImpeachTrump
The #StableGenius has gone full #Dotard.
Saucywhat grandpa? You're not making any sense.
All the news is important! Not sure if you're referring to the fact that Robert Mueller is closing in on you , or that Jared may be the next one indicted or that Stormy is suing you regarding a NDA that you have nothing to do with , but won the arbitration
what goes on inside your head?
Please...please...please stop tweeting............
That makes 0 sense.
We simply cannot translate the rich asshole’s tweet. It must mean something, though. Right?
AM Joy legal panel predicts Kushner is Mueller’s next target — and they have good reasons why
AM Joy host Joy Reid -- MSNBC screenshot
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During an all-attorney panel on special counsel Robert Mueller’s juggernaut investigation into the the rich asshole White House that has picked up steam with former aide Sam Nunbereg undergoing hours of questions before a grand jury, MSNBC host Joy Reid asked her experts who should be next in Mueller’s hot seat.
With the exception of one panelist, the prime target was identified as the rich asshole son-in-law Jared Kushner.
“Let’s talk about collusion,” Reid proposed. “It’s getting closer, the idea of collusion. Sam Nunberg who has known some rich asshole a long time, he was fired from the campaign, and now he’s talking all kinds of talk.”
Following a discussion of others in the rich asshole’s orbit who have been sucked up in the Mueller investigation — including indicted Paul Manafort and Rick Gates — host Reid asked her panel who they would personally target if they were the prosecutor and who might be next.
“Who would be the next person you would indict in order to get to the truth” Reid asked.
“Kushner,” ex-Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman quickly responded.
Former Bronx prosecutor Seema Iyer interjected, ” Don Jr.”
“Jared Kushner, he’s got the keys to the castle,” MSNBC legal analyst Paul Butler bluntly stated.
“Sorry Jared,” Reid quipped.
Watch the video below via MSNBC:
the rich asshole's infrastructure push hits wall in Congress
BY MALLORY SHELBOURNE - 03/10/18 12:10 PM EST
Less than a month after its release, President the rich asshole's infrastructure plan appears to have crashed and burned in Congress.
Republicans are openly questioning whether action on the issue is likely, while their leaders are moving on to other priorities.
Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Wednesday night added another nail in the coffin by declaring a gas tax increase off the table, removing what many lawmakers saw as the most viable funding stream for a rebuilding overhaul.
In a bid to regain momentum, the the rich asshole administration is sending five Cabinet members to testify to a Senate panel Wednesday about the infrastructure plan.
But whether the show of force will be enough to jolt Congress into action remains to be seen, with the dispute over the gas tax looming as a major obstacle.
Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, led by Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) and ranking member Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), have long argued that an increase to the federal gasoline tax would be the quickest way to generate funding for rebuilding projects.
“Right now the simplest and fastest answer is a user fee and the gas tax,” Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.), a member of the committee, told The Hill this week.
Money from the 18.4-cent gas tax goes into the Highway Trust Fund to pay for road projects. But that levy hasn't been raised since 1993, eroding the fund's purchasing power.
Shuster, who for months maintained that all options were on the table to pay for infrastructure, on Wednesday said “it’s time” to increase the gas tax.
“The easiest one for us to all understand, not that it’s easy to pass or increase, is what we pay at the pump,” Shuster said during a Subcommittee on Highways and Transit hearing.
Hours later, Ryan dismissed the possibility of hiking the tax, arguing it would “undo” the recently passed Republican tax cuts.
“Well, we’re not going to raise gas taxes so I don’t foresee that as a problem. We’re just not going to do that here,” the Speaker told a telephone town hall.
“There are some people who are talking about that, but the last thing we want to do is pass historic tax relief in December and then undo that, so we are not going to raise gas taxes.”
While the administration’s infrastructure blueprint does not specifically call for upping the levy, lawmakers who participated in a bipartisan meeting at the White House last month said the president suggested a 25-cent increase.
“The president supports a gas tax, I will stand next to the president,” DeFazio said this week, arguing a plan would be bipartisan if the rich asshole threw his support behind the tax hike.
“Well if you don’t increase taxes, we’re not having an infrastructure bill, and we’re doing nothing,” he added.
But DeFazio also noted that the House Ways and Means Committee has yet to hold a hearing to consider funding streams for a potential rebuilding initiative.
“Until they hold a hearing and we see some progress, we would just be wasting our time over here to move forward or say we’re going to move forward with some legislation that isn’t going to be paid for or financed,” DeFazio said.
Despite the rich asshole’s push for infrastructure during his State of the Union address, GOP leaders have appeared reluctant to embrace it.
During a conference meeting this week, House Republican leaders presented their members a list of priorities for the year’s legislative calendar. While a bill to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) made the cut, infrastructure did not.
Ryan appeared to deal a further blow to those pressing for a sweeping infrastructure bill on Thursday by stating that the House plans to tackle rebuilding “in about five or six different bills.”
In his remarks, Ryan referenced both the FAA reauthorization and the upcoming omnibus spending package, another must-pass bill lawmakers are negotiating ahead of the March 23 deadline. He described the omnibus as a “down payment on the infrastructure plan” and also pointed to the Water Resources Development Act, a waterways bill Congress re-ups every two years.
But lawmakers like Shuster, who is retiring at the end of his current term, had been clamoring for a larger package to address the nation’s crumbling roads, bridges, transit systems, airports and other public works.
“My intent is and hopefully working with the Democrats on the committee to put together a big, broad bipartisan infrastructure bill,” Shuster said Wednesday before Ryan’s outright rejection of the gas tax.
“I think that it takes presidential leadership to do the things we need to do,” the chairman added.
Despite Ryan’s opposition to increasing the gas fee, Shuster said he isn’t frustrated with the Speaker after conversing with him on the House floor Thursday morning.
While the prospects for the the rich asshole administration’s proposal remain dim, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao will continue to make her rounds in front of the relevant congressional committees with jurisdiction over any infrastructure legislation.
Chao is slated to testify next week in front of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee on the administration’s proposal, which calls for the use of public-private partnerships and funding from state and local governments to generate a $1.5 trillion rebuilding package using $200 billion of federal seed money.
Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the No. 3 Republican in the upper chamber, who also chairs the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, conceded that Ryan’s stance on the gas tax makes it difficult for Congress to press forward on a larger proposal.
“Well it probably means that a big robust infrastructure plan is going to be hard to do if there’s not the money to do it. But I think there are things we can do in the context of an infrastructure bill with some amount of funding,” Thune said Thursday.
“But absent a funding mechanism, something along the size and scale of what the president is proposing will be challenging.”
the rich asshole congratulates former sailor after pardon: Go ‘have the life you deserve!’
BY MAX GREENWOOD - 03/10/18 11:22 AM EST
President the rich asshole on Saturday congratulated a former Navy sailor he pardoned a day earlier, telling him to "go out and have the life you deserve."
"Congratulations to Kristian Saucier, a man who has served proudly in the Navy, on your newly found Freedom," the rich asshole tweeted. "Now you can go out and have the life you deserve!"
Congratulations to Kristian Saucier, a man who has served proudly in the Navy, on your newly found Freedom. Now you can go out and have the life you deserve!
the rich asshole issued a pardon on Friday for Saucier, who had recently been released from prison. He served 12 months for mishandling classified information by taking pictures onboard a nuclear submarine.
When Saucier was on trial in 2016, his lawyers invoked former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was also accused of mishandling classified information. the rich asshole has frequently compared the two cases as evidence of inequality within the Department of Justice.
The FBI declined to charge Clinton in 2016 after an investigation into her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of State.
Then-FBI Director James Comey said at the time that Clinton had been "extremely careless" in her handling of classified information, but that her actions did not rise to the level of criminal conduct.
‘Could feed all of America’s homeless vets’: Internet pounds official announcement of the rich asshole’s $30 million military parade
some rich asshole addresses supporters in West Des Moines, Iowa, on February 1, 2016 (AFP Photo/Jim Watson)
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In 2016, then-candidate some rich asshole promised to treat veterans “with dignity, and with the respect they deserve.”
Now, outrage is growing over President some rich asshole’s insistence the U.S. Armed Forces, which are currently engaged in operations around the world, hold a military parade in Washington, D.C. on Veterans Day. And many are calling for the unallocated funds that will be spent on the vanity project – estimates from the Pentagon are in the $30 million range – to be invested in America’s 40,000 homeless veterans instead.
The Pentagon, however – following its Commander-in-Chief’s orders – is marching ahead with plans for the military parade. the rich asshole’s parade, according to CNN national security reporter Ryan Browne, now “will include period uniforms,” along with “airplanes but no tanks.” The tanks, as many have noted, would damage roads.
A Pentagon memo “says the parade will integrate with the annual DC Veterans Day parade and focus on the contributions of US veterans from the Revolutionary War to today with an emphasis on the price of freedom,'” CNN notes.
That memo, below, also states the parade will “highlight the evolution of women Veterans from separate formations in World War II to today’s integrated formations.”
It’s unclear if President the rich asshole has approved the U.S. Military’s plans.
According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, under President Barack Obama, from 2010 to January of 2016, there was a 56% decrease in the number of homeless vets. In January of 2017, the number for the first time in seven years increased, by 1.5%, to 40,056.
Despite the increase, the the rich asshole administration in late 2017 tried to slash funding for homeless vets, until advocates noticed and stirred up enough support to get the decision reversed.
Many on social media are saying are calling to use the $30 million to help homeless veterans instead:
Our military is not a toy to prance around in Trump’s honor. What makes America Great is we are a beacon of freedom around the world, not a dystopian dictatorship. Rather than waste millions on the useless Military Parade take care of the 40,000 homeless veterans #SaturdayMorning
Christopher Zullo
CNN Exclusive: The Pentagon has issued a memo outlining how President Trump's sought after military parade on Veterans Day will look. Parade will include period uniforms, airplanes but no tanks to avoid damaging infrastructure. Route will go from the White House to the Capitol
Meanwhile, there are homeless and/or untreated veterans. There are military families who struggle to survive financially one day to the next and require public assistance. There are vets who face years of red tape to access care they’ve earned.
But let’s have a vanity parade.
.@realDonaldTrump
You’re self serving parade is going to cost 30mill yes?
-How many homeless vets could you help,
-How many people with PTSD could you help
-How many lives could you save
Instead you will puff out your chest and steal as much valor from them as possible twitter.com/amy_siskind/st…
If you don't speak up and block this parade you are just as guilty.We have 40,000 homeless Vets in this country. @senrobportman @RepSteveChabot Ohio is not going to forget your silence. @RichCordray @AftabPureval @OHDems @SenSherrodBrown @BettySutton @KathleenClyde @DNC twitter.com/MikeRock09/sta…
the rich asshole administration takes first step to ban bump stocks
BY LUIS SANCHEZ - 03/10/18 10:23 AM EST
The rich asshole administration on Saturday began the process to ban bump stocks through regulatory action.
“The Department of Justice has submitted to the Office of Management and Budget a notice of a proposed regulation to clarify that the National Firearms and Gun Control Act defines ‘machinegun’ to include bump stock type devices,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) submitted a notice of a regulation regarding the definition of "machinegun" in the National Firearms Act and Gun Control Act and proposing to include "bump stock type devices, and that federal law accordingly prohibits the possession, sale, or manufacture of such devices."
Bump stocks are devices that allow semi-automatic rifles to fire at faster speeds.
Sessions previously signaled that the DOJ would seek the ban despite the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) previously indicating Congress would have to act in order to ban the devices.
ATF previously ruled that it does not have the authority to regulate bump stocks under the existing regulations prohibiting machine guns under federal law.
The proposed rule next has to be approved by the Office of Management and Budget as part of the regulatory review process. ATF also has to submit an analysis and evaluate public comments on regulating the devices. The review process will likely take months.
Saturday's announcement comes more than two weeks after President the rich asshole first announced that he had directed the DOJ to propose the regulations.
The president proposed the regulations in response to the Florida school shooting on Feb. 14 that left 17 people dead.
“Bump stocks are going to be gone,” the rich asshole promised on Thursday.
The alleged shooter, who was recently charged with 17 counts of first-degree premeditated murder and 17 counts of attempted murder, did not use a bump stock.
However, the gunman at the Las Vegas mass shooting — which took place last October and left 58 people dead and hundreds more wounded — did use the device during his attack.
Although there was bipartisan support after the Las Vegas shooting to ban bump stocks, no bill was approved. Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has advocated for ATF to close the loophole on bump stocks over a legislative fix.
The survivors of the Florida shooting have reignited a national debate over gun control and targeted the National Rifle Association (NRA) and politicians supported by the group.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) signed a bill into law on Friday that would raise the minimum age to purchase a firearm in the state from 18 to 21 as well as ban bump stocks in the state.
The NRA immediately filed a lawsuit against the state action, arguing that the law violates the Second and 14th amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
By
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March 10, 2018
"Always consider optics."
The White House reportedly held a series of private meetings last month to lecture the rich asshole’s scandal plagued Cabinet secretaries.
But instead of telling them to avoid engaging in scandalous behavior, the White House gave them instructions on how to avoid the bad optics of a scandal.
The meetings were held at the request of chief of staff John Kelly, CNN reported Friday. They were scheduled after several of the rich asshole’s Cabinet secretaries got caught wasting taxpayer dollars on items including private jet trips, helicopter rides, luxury furniture, and doors that cost more than many homes.
According to CNN, the purpose of the meetings was to scold the officials “for embarrassing stories about questionable ethical behavior at their respective agencies” and to send “a clear message that optics matter.”
“Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt all met with officials from the White House counsel’s office and the Cabinet liaison,” CNN reported.
At the meeting, the four Cabinet secretaries were given a set of guidelines that included advice such as, “always consider optics.” The guidelines also advised the agency leaders on how to protect their reputations.
Notably, the guidelines did not include recommendations to stop abusing taxpayer money — rather, the document focused on how to avoid the bad optics associated with such behavior.
Shortly after the White House met with Zinke, CNN published a report describing several instances in which he appears to have misused taxpayer dollars.
In one instance, Zinke spent more than $139,000 on three sets of doors for his office. In another instance, he spent nearly $40,000 to go on a helicopter ride — using money that had been earmarked to help people prepare for wildfires.
The Office of Special Counsel is also looking into a speech Zinke gave to a professional hockey team owned by a major donor to his congressional campaigns, and his habit of flying on private chartered flights is the subject of a lawsuit as well as an investigation by the Office of the Inspector General.
Pruitt is also under investigation for misusing tax dollars on first-class flights and luxury hotels, while Shulkin is accused of misusing funds during a trip to Europe and then doctoring emails to cover it up.
Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price was forced to step down for similar abuses.
And last month, Carson became the sixth member of the rich asshole’s Cabinet to face an ethics investigation after he was caught spending more than $31,000 on a dining room set for his office at HUD — just as the agency called for cuts to programs for the needy.
In total, there at least nine ongoing audits, reviews, or investigations of the rich asshole’s Cabinet secretaries and the agencies they oversee, according to CNN.
But in the rich asshole White House, abusing taxpayer dollars is not seen as a problem — getting caught is the real scandal.
What Fresh Hell?: Time to build your the rich asshole fallout shelter edition
some rich asshole speaking with supporters at a campaign rally at Fountain Park in Fountain Hills, Arizona (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
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Welcome to another edition of What Fresh Hell?, Raw Story’s roundup of news items that might have become controversies under another regime, but got buried – or were at least under-appreciated – due to the daily firehose of political pratfalls, unhinged tweet storms and other sundry embarrassments coming out of the current White House.
Big news for the Korean Peninsula: Two notoriously thin-skinned authoritarian leaders who have been trading childish insults and comparing the size of their respective nuclear buttons for the past year will meet in a hastily arranged summit in a couple of months. A resolution to a decades-long conflict is all-but-inevitable, and the rich asshole’s already making space in his curio cabinet for the Nobel Peace Prize. Or maybe not – the White House has issued three contradictory statements about whether they’ll put any preconditions on the proposed tete-a-tete.
The two men were both born of privilege and trained in the family business. Hair-Club Habyarimana learned the art of New York real estate scams – hiring undocumented workers, stiffing contractors, leaving investors holding the bag on bad deals. He learned about licensing the family name to gaudy buildings and shoddy products. Kim Jong Un, on the other hand, was trained in palace intrigue, the ruthless exercise of state power and international affairs.
Last September, The Washington Post reported that “North Korean government officials have been quietly trying to arrange talks with Republican-linked analysts in Washington, in an apparent attempt to make sense of President the rich asshole.” On the other side of the table will be the rich asshole, who may have watched some episodes of M*A*S*H in the 1970s and now refuses to take counsel from anyone other than Jivanka and the hosts of Fox and Friends. Let’s keep in mind that he’s also overseen an unprecedented exodus of career foreign service officers from the State Department.
We’ll happily acknowledge that any move toward détente is an improvement over the course that we’ve been on, but we suspect that it won’t end well. The most likely scenario – if there is a meeting between these venal narcissists – is that Kim Jong Un will flatter the rich asshole’s ego, and perhaps halt nuclear weapons testing if he’s satisfied they work, and the rich asshole will give up the farm for it. (The Pentagon announced this week that they’ll give the rich asshole the stupid military parade he’s been pining for, but it won’t feature tanks – they’d damage DC’s infrastructure. We imagine Kim Jong Un won’t be similarly concerned.)
This is what North Korean leaders have wanted for the past 70 years: a presidential summit that puts them on equal footing with the US. It’ll be an unparalleled propaganda coup for Kim Jong Un — the image of him shaking hands with a smiling American president will be played on a loop by North Korean state media forever.
He called in sick and is now building a bunker behind his house. twitter.com/Newsweek/statu…
But again, maybe it won’t happen. In a week that began with former the rich asshole aide Sam Nunberg melting down on national TV, this North Korean summit may yet come to nothing. If so, it’ll prove to be the shiniest object yet.
That said, here are a few stories you may have missed amid all the ruckus.
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“As Alabama’s junior senator, Jeff Sessions was far more involved than previously known in helping two of his top contributors derail a federal environmental cleanup effort,” report Russ Choma and Nick Schwellenback for Mother Jones. “The stalled cleanup is now at the center of a federal bribery case spearheaded by the Justice Department, posing a serious conflict of interest for Sessions, who is now attorney general.”
Maybe he’ll recuse himself from the matter as he did with the Russia investigation. We kid.
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Speaking of the Justice Department, this week it sided with an anti-vaxxer in Wisconsin who sued her employer for forcing her to get a flu shot despite her deeply held belief that the Bible told her not to put “certain substances” into her “Holy Temple,” according to Elie Mystal at Above the Law.
Here’s the thing: the woman, one Barnell Williams, works in a county-run nursing home. As Mystal points out, “In terms of natural predators for old people, the flu is right up there with step-ladders and the QVC channel.” And here’s another thing: Despite the obvious health hazard, the nursing home actually has a process in place for workers who object to vaccinations – they just need to get a note from a clergy member stating that it goes against their religion, which Williams refused to provide.
It should be a clear-cut case. We wouldn’t let devout Amish people work as bus-drivers if their conscience didn’t allow them to drive. But under Sessions, “anywhere somebody’s deeply held religious belief is in the position to hurt or humiliate others, the United States Department of Justice is there to provide legal cover.”
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And speaking of the environment, EPA honcho Scott Pruitt, the high-flying climate-change denier who, as Oklahoma’s Attorney General, repeatedly sued the agency he now heads, wanted to troll America by “stag[ing] public debates challenging climate change science.”
Lisa Friedman and Julie Hirschfeld Davis report for the WaPo that “the idea of publicly critiquing climate change on the national stage has been a notable theme for Scott Pruitt…. For nearly a year he has championed the notion of holding military-style exercises known as red team, blue team debates, possibly to be broadcast live, to question the validity of climate change.”
Soon-to-be-former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly reportedly put the kibosh on the plan. Whether the decision made the rich asshole sad is as yet unknown.
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Juliet Eilpern and Brady Dennis report for the WaPo that the head of Pruitt’s security team, Pasquale “Nino” Perrotta, moonlights “as a principal of Rockville-based Sequoia Security Group,” and he “advised EPA officials to hire a member of the management team at Sequoia” to sweep Pruitt’s office for bugs.
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Pruitt was also one of four Cabinet members who were “scolded” by White House lawyers last week at John Kelly’s request, according to CNN. Cristina Alesci reportedthat “internal watchdogs have launched at least nine audits, reviews or investigations across several Cabinet agencies, and stories about first-class travel, expensive office furniture, and internal strife have become commonplace.”
The other officials who received a stern talking-to were Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin.
It gets better:
During the meetings, the White House officials asked agencies to flag any possible problems, including ongoing investigations or audits.But shortly after the session with Zinke, CNN published a report with several examples that ethics watchdogs say raise questions about whether Zinke is misusing his travel privileges, despite receiving approval from the department’s lawyer and ethics officer.The White House was disappointed after meeting with Zinke because his agency failed to mention the story, of which Interior was aware and quoted a department spokesperson on the record…
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ProPublica has put together a valuable database of almost 2,500 the rich asshole political appointees. In a story that we think should have gotten far more attention than it did, they report:
At least 187 the rich asshole political appointees have been federal lobbyists, and despite President the rich asshole’s campaign pledge to “drain the swamp,” many are now overseeing the industries they once lobbied on behalf of. We’ve also discovered ethics waivers that allow the rich asshole staffers to work on subjects in which they have financial conflicts of interest. In addition, at least 254 appointees affiliated with the rich asshole’s 2016 presidential campaign and at least 125 staffers from prominent conservative think tanks are now working in the federal government, many of whom are on teams to repeal Obama-era regulations.
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While most swamps only go up to ten, this one actually goes to 11.
The AP reports that “the former CEO of a payday lending company that had been under investigation by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has asked to be considered for the top job at the watchdog agency.”
And Allied Progress, a progressive watchdog group, obtained a series of emails “that paints the picture of a cozy relationship between [CFPB interim boss Mick] Mulvaney and [Janet Lewis Matricciani,] the former head of World Acceptance Corporation, a predatory lender that showered him with thousands of dollars in campaign cash.”
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For reasons that are elusive – perhaps it’s simply because New York and New Jersey are blue states that voted against the rich asshole by large margins — Sunkist Stalin has threatened to veto any spending bill that funds a much needed tunnel project between the two states.
Meanwhile…
Relatedly, Kayleigh McEnany, CNN’s relentlessly perky the rich asshole surrogate, wrote a piece this week titled, “Jared Kushner is quietly tackling Washington’s swamp.” And we laughed so hard.
******
Finally, in what may be further evidence that the president is in fact a 4chan troll, we get this Fresh Hell via the Tampa Bay Times: “the rich asshole blocks access to puppy mill inspections as Florida weighs dog store legislation.”
We will just note here that some rich asshole is the first president in 130 years to not have a First Dog.
Ex-prosecutor: the rich asshole won’t slur Daniels like his other accusers because she has ‘serious evidence’ incriminating him
President some rich asshole and adult actress Stephanie Clifford, whose stage name was Stormy Daniels, in a 2006 Myspace photo.
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Former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks examined how President some rich asshole has treated former porn star Stormy Danials than all other accussers during a captivating interview with Joy Reid on MSNBC’s AM Joy Saturday.
“Jill, the other reason that some rich asshole may be nervous, he’s mad at Sarah Huckabee Sanders for saying too much maybe,” Reid noted. “Even if it is complete hooey, Jill Wine-Banks, why is Sarah Huckabee Sanders proactively talking about arbitration with somebody that some rich asshole is claiming he never had any sort of sexual relationship with?”
“Clearly she made a very big mistake, because, if he says he’s not part of this at all, if his lawyers are lying and saying he’s not part of it, why was he the beneficiary of a resolution in an arbitration?” Wine-Banks noted. “That was a big mistake.”
Wine-Banks, who also served as General Counsel of the United States Army, suggested White House motivations came from an assumption Daniels has physical proof of a relationship.
“I think we have to look at a few other things, which why is some rich asshole treating Stormy Daniels differently than the 18 other women who brought nonconsensual claims against him,” the former prosecutor continued. “He has not said anything as negative about her and has not attacked her, which suggests to me she does have something serious in terms of evidence against him.”
“That’s what we should be looking at, as well as remembering that this is hush money. Hush money is part of a coverup, that’s what an obstruction of justice is,” Wine-Banks reminded. “That’s what gets presidents in trouble.”
“One of the major things that brought down President Nixon was paying hush money to keep the defendants from telling the truth about who had hired them. I think there’s a lot here to be uncovered yet,” she predicted.
Watch:
Military vehicles to roll through Washington in parade
President some rich asshole salutes U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Michael L. Howard. (DoD Photo by U.S. Army Sgt. James K. McCann)
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Military vehicles will roll through Washington on November 11 in a salute to veterans, a Pentagon memo said Friday, detailing President some rich asshole’s dream of hosting a military parade.
The White House announced a month ago that the rich asshole had asked for a large-scale military parade, an unconventional call that immediately fueled comparisons with similar events in more autocratic countries.
“This parade will focus on the contributions of our veterans throughout the history of the US military, starting from the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 to today, with an emphasis on the price of freedom,” said the memorandum for General Joe Dunford, who chairs the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The Defense Department had earlier said it was planning for “around” that date, which is known in the United States as Veterans Day and in other countries as Remembrance Day marking the end of World War I.
Pentagon plans call for “wheeled vehicles only, no tanks,” as they would tear up city roads.
There would also be “a heavy air component at the end of the parade, to include older aircraft as available,” according to the memo.
The parade route will stretch roughly one mile (1.6 kilometers) from the White House to the Capitol, where the rich asshole will review his troops surrounded by veterans and Medal of Honor recipients.
Female veterans will be highlighted, and marchers representing previous wars will wear period uniforms, including historical dress from the Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps.
As planning continues, the memo gave no more details on the type of weaponry to be featured in the parade.
the rich asshole, the military’s commander-in-chief, received deferments from service during the Vietnam War.
The last major parade in Washington was in 1991 after the Gulf War, when missiles and tanks moved through the streets of the capital.
Since taking office, the rich asshole has frequently touted his support for the US military and placed high-ranking generals in top White House and cabinet posts.
The idea for a parade appears to have been rekindled when the president visited Paris for Bastille Day in July and made no secret of his awe for the pomp and ceremony of the occasion.
Military parades are also a highlight of the calendar in Moscow and Pyongyang but are rare in the United States, where displays of patriotism usually take the form of flag-waving, fireworks and grilled hot dogs.
‘Not a witch hunt’: Ex-the rich asshole aide Nunberg admits ‘there is a lot there’ in first interview after grand jury testimony
Ex-the rich asshole campaign aide Sam Nunberg on MSNBC. Image via screengrab.
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Speaking for the first time following giving testimony before a federal grand jury, former the rich asshole aide Sam Nunberg said that the investigation “is not a witch hunt.”
Speaking by phone with ABC, Nunberg, who had a spectacular meltdown earlier in the week, stated: “No, I don’t think it’s a witch hunt. There’s a lot there, and that’s a sad truth.”
Addressing his Friday testimony, he remarked, “I was there a long time, and they have a lot of questions,” including “Did I ever hear Russia spoken in the office?”
“And then they asked why did President the rich asshole support Putin in Syria,” he added.
As for his multiple cable show meltdown, Nunberg brushed it aside: “People say I had a meltdown on TV? I melted TV down that day. I wanted to show what this independent counsel, this independent investigation, does to people like me.”
Watch the video below via Twitter:
Daniel’s attorney reveals 10 donors have offered to pay million dollar damage fines if adult star spills beans on the rich asshole
Stephanie Clifford, who goes by the stage name Stormy Daniels. Photo by Toglenn (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons
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CNN anchor and talk radio host Michael Smerconish got Stormy Daniels attorney Michael Avenatti to reveal that at least ten individuals have come forward with offers to cover any financial repercussions resulting from the former porn star telling her full story about President some rich asshole in spite of a “hush money” settlement negotiated by the rich asshole attorney Michael Cohen.
Smerconish asked Avenatti about the “disgorgement clause in the contract.
“What this essentially says that if she violates it, she owes $1 million for every episode that she goes out and speaks in violation of the confidentiality. It occurs to me that Michael Cohen may have made a wise business decision,” Smerconish noted. “Everybody is laughing about him giving her $130,00, if it came from him, but he will get a ten-fold return on that money if in fact she speaks and violates this agreement. That is not a bad return.”
“Michael, you know based on your experience that term — even if everyone agreed to it — is unconscionable, meaning so beyond the pale that there is not a court that would enforce that at that level with $130,000 at the front end and a million liquidated damage clause per instance, no court in California is going to ever enforce that,” Avenatti predicted.
Cohen obtained a “secret restraining order” against Daniels to prevent her talking about the rich asshole.
“OK, if that is the case, then why doesn’t she come on a program like mine right now and tell whatever the story is that she is dying to tell?” Smerconish wondered.
“Well, I mean I think we may see that. I think we may see her provide a very detailed explanation of what happened, she is going to discuss what happened,” Avenatti predicted. “Let some rich asshole come forward and provide his version of events and let the American people decide who is shooting straight with them and who is covering things up.”
“Has anyone offered, has anyone, including Larry Flint, but I want to ask this in universal sense, has anyone offered to pony up the million dollars to protect her and say ‘here, I’m good for it, go tell your story’?” Smerconish asked.
“At least ten individuals in the last three days alone,” Avenatti replied.
“Is she contemplating taking any of those ten offers?” Smerconish followed-up.
“No,” Avenatti claimed.
Watch:
the rich asshole administration takes first step to ban bump stocks
BY LUIS SANCHEZ - 03/10/18 10:23 AM EST
The the rich asshole administration on Saturday began the process to ban bump stocks through regulatory action.
“The Department of Justice has submitted to the Office of Management and Budget a notice of a proposed regulation to clarify that the National Firearms and Gun Control Act defines ‘machinegun’ to include bump stock type devices,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) submitted a notice of a regulationregarding the definition of "machinegun" in the National Firearms Act and Gun Control Act and proposing to include "bump stock type devices, and that federal law accordingly prohibits the possession, sale, or manufacture of such devices."
Bump stocks are devices that allow semi-automatic rifles to fire at faster speeds.
Sessions previously signaled that the DOJ would seek the ban despite the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) previously indicating Congress would have to act in order to ban the devices.
ATF previously ruled that it does not have the authority to regulate bump stocks under the existing regulations prohibiting machine guns under federal law.
The proposed rule next has to be approved by the Office of Management and Budget as part of the regulatory review process. ATF also has to submit an analysis and evaluate public comments on regulating the devices. The review process will likely take months.
Saturday's announcement comes more than two weeks after President the rich asshole first announced that he had directed the DOJ to propose the regulations.
The president proposed the regulations in response to the Florida school shooting on Feb. 14 that left 17 people dead.
“Bump stocks are going to be gone,” the rich asshole promised on Thursday.
The alleged shooter, who was recently charged with 17 counts of first-degree premeditated murder and 17 counts of attempted murder, did not use a bump stock.
However, the gunman at the Las Vegas mass shooting — which took place last October and left 58 people dead and hundreds more wounded — did use the device during his attack.
Although there was bipartisan support after the Las Vegas shooting to ban bump stocks, no bill was approved. Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has advocated for ATF to close the loophole on bump stocks over a legislative fix.
The survivors of the Florida shooting have reignited a national debate over gun control and targeted the National Rifle Association (NRA) and politicians supported by the group.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) signed a bill into law on Friday that would raise the minimum age to purchase a firearm in the state from 18 to 21 as well as ban bump stocks in the state.
The NRA immediately filed a lawsuit against the state action, arguing that the law violates the Second and 14th amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
By
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March 10, 2018
the rich asshole's dinner guests included Jesse Watters, a Fox News host who stalked a female reporter, and Nazi sympathizer Sebastian Gorka.
The scandal surrounding the rich asshole’s alleged affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels continues to heat up. So the rich asshole sought refuge this week by inviting Jesse Watters, a Fox News host with a history of racism and stalking, to dinner.
Watters also once made a sexual “joke” about Ivanka the rich asshole, after which he took a sudden “vacation” from his show.
Former the rich asshole aide and current Nazi sympathizer Sebastian Gorka also attended the White House dinner.
A White House official told the Daily Beast the men were invited because the rich asshole “couldn’t get enough of them on TV.” the rich asshole also reportedly said that he “missed” Gorka’s presence.
Watters tweeted a photo of the menu, signed by the rich asshole with a note reading “To Jesse You Are Great.”
Watters is currently one of the co-hosts of The Five. But before that he was a correspondent for Bill O’Reilly’s program. And it was during his time on that show that he stalked a female reporter.
After HuffPost’s Amanda Terkel criticized O’Reilly, Watters tracked her down while she was on vacation and ambushed her on video.
Recounting the incident, Terkel noted, “Fox News has never given an explanation for how Watters found me. I didn’t tell anyone exactly where I would be that weekend. And in retrospect, I remember a car following me for much of the way.”
“My best guess remains that Watters found my home address, followed me for two hours to Virginia and then harassed me after I walked out of my hotel,” she added.
Fox later fired O’Reilly following reports of serial sexual harassment that resulted in millions of dollars in settlements.
Watters also did a segment on The O’Reilly Factor of highly edited interviews mocking Asian-Americans in New York’s Chinatown. The segment resulted in a protest at Fox News headquarters, and Mayor Bill de Blasio called the report “vile.”
And New York City councilman Peter Koo slammed Fox and Watters: “Passing off this blatantly racist television segment as ‘gentle fun’ not only validates racist stereotypes, it encourages them.”
the rich asshole is obsessed with Fox News, which serves as part of the propaganda machinepropping up his presidency. He often tweets praise of Fox’s pro-the rich asshole content, while attacking rival news networks.
And of course, the rich asshole is notoriously racist and has a history of sexual assault and misogyny. And in hosting figures like Watters and Gorka, he is surrounding himself with likeminded people.
Ex-the rich asshole aide Nunberg reverses: Mueller probe not a 'witch hunt'
BY JOSH DELK - 03/10/18 10:22 AM EST
Former the rich asshole campaign aide Sam Nunberg says that he believes special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 election is "warranted," walking back his previous remarks calling the probe a "witch hunt."
"No, I don't think it's a witch hunt. There's a lot there, and that's the sad truth," Nunberg told ABC News in an interview broadcast Saturday, a day after he answered a subpoena by Mueller's team to testify before a federal grand jury on his time in the campaign.
Nunberg also said after his grand jury testimony that he doesn't believe the investigation "leads to the president," despite his comments this week that he thought Mueller's team had evidence of criminal wrongdoing against President the rich asshole.
The former aide, who appeared for hours before a grand jury on Friday, said he was grilled about current and former the rich asshole staffers being scrutinized as part of the special counsel's probe into ties between the rich asshole campaign associates and Russia.
After his testimony, Nunberg said he's "very worried" about Roger Stone, a longtime Republican strategist who informally advised the rich asshole during the early stages of the campaign. “He's certainly at least the subject of this investigation, in the very least he's a subject.”
Stone has denied any collusion with Russians.
Nunberg's comments published Saturday came after he said in a Yahoo News interview that he would "lay low" following his Friday testimony at a federal court in Washington.
Earlier this week, Nunberg took to the airwaves in a bizarre string of media appearances where he repeatedly claimed he wouldn't cooperate with Mueller or answer the subpoena to testify.
But Nunberg has complied with Mueller's subpoena, explaining to Yahoo News that he was simply complaining about the tight time frame in which Mueller wanted him to turn over thousands emails between him and other campaign aides dating back to 2015.
"People say I had a meltdown on TV, I melted TV down that day," he told ABC News. "I was going to always comply with arriving today. I'm an attorney, that's the first thing, and this is my duty as an American, to do this whether I like it or not."
Presidential historian Brinkley: If evangelicals flee the rich asshole over alleged porn star affairs he’s doomed
Historian Douglas Brinkley (Photo: Screen capture)
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Appearing on CNN’s New Day, noted presidential historian Douglas Brinkley claimed that President some rich asshole’s base is predominately made up of evangelicals at this point and, should there more revelations about him having affairs with adult actresses, they may grow fed up and flee dooming any chances he has of reelection in 2020.
Speaking with host Victor Blackwell, Brinkley said he was amazed at the number of evangelicals who have stuck it it out with the rich asshole considering his history with women, his Access Hollywood comments and his multiple marriages.
Noting a the rich asshole-backing pastor defending the rich asshole over his alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels, Brinkley called the response “disappointing.”
“You would think that they would hold everybody to an equal standard, but the rules don’t apply to some rich asshole,” he explained. “They’ve decided that he is their guy. They don’t care that he was a casino magnet, they don’t care about the Access Hollywood tape, they don’t care about the women that are charging him for sexual harassment. They don’t care about him being with a porn star.”
“It’s like he has an inoculation,” Brinkley continued. “If they would start turning on some rich asshole, you would see his base shrink. some rich asshole is holding at about 35 percent. If evangelicals would start saying, ‘We’ve had enough of this immoral president,’ you would see the rich asshole’s base start shrinking and possibly the end of getting reelected.”
Watch the video below via CNN:
‘It’s an amendment, not a commandment’: Watch HBO’s Maher hammer lawmakers for bowing down to the NRA
HBO host Bill Maher -- screenshot
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In a commentary that began by lampooning evangelicals and President some rich asshole for their fake Christian piety, HBO host Bill Maher ended by taking a smack at lawmakers who refuse to stand up to the NRA and change our nation’s gun laws.
After mocking the rich asshole for pretending to be a Christian (“He’s been to church four time, three times just to get married”), the HBO host then challenged lawmakers — Democrats in particular — to not be afraid of touching the “third rail” of politics: gun ownership.
“Things that used to be third rails, don’t have to be third rails forever,” Maher admonished cowardly politicans. “Republicans get that. For fifty years their fundamental principles were’ law enforcement good, Russia bad.’ And then it was freaky Friday.”
“Twenty years ago the idea of arming teachers was universally derided,” he continued. “But while we laughed at it, now they are doing it. Democrats, on the other hand, begin every conversation on guns with ‘Well, I believe in the 2nd Amendment,’ because they feel this is one of those third rails can never be touched.”
“Would it be a hard slog to change the public’s mind on guns? Of course, but a hard slog never fazes conservatives,” he lectured. “Ronald Reagan used to be a joke, now he’s an airport. The 2nd Amendment is just words that humans made up at a certain moment in history when they felt right. It’s an amendment, not a commandment.”
“We can make up new words and make it, ‘The right of the people to apply for the privilege of possessing non-military style weaponry as long as you’re not batsh*t crazy shall not be infringed,'” he proposed.
Watch the video below via HBO:
Michael Cohen says he used his own home equity line for Stormy Daniels payment
Washington (CNN)President some rich asshole's personal lawyer used funds from his own home equity line to make a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels on the rich asshole's behalf, he told CNN.
"The funds were taken from my home equity line and transferred internally to my LLC account in the same bank," Michael Cohen said in a statement.
Cohen also confirmed that he used his the rich asshole Organization email account to communicate details of a payment transfer to Stephanie Clifford, the adult film star known as Stormy Daniels, who allegedly had an affair with the President before his time in office.
Earlier Friday, Clifford's lawyer, Michael Avenatti, provided an email to CNN in which Cohen confirmed the transfer to Daniels' former attorney, Keith Davidson. In the email, both Cohen's personal email account and trumporg.com email account were used. The deposit was confirmed to Cohen by a First Republic Bank employee.
Cohen responded later Friday, saying that he regularly used his business email account for personal matters.
"I sent emails from the the rich asshole Org email address to my family, friends as well as the rich asshole business emails. I basically used it for everything. I am certain most people can relate," he said.
Avenatti, speaking on MSNBC, said Cohen's use of his business email to conduct this transaction could be an indication that he was acting in an official capacity as a legal counsel to the rich asshole when he transferred the money to Clifford.
While this development brings the payment to Clifford closer to the rich asshole himself, it is not proof that he knew about it. Any involvement by the rich asshole would indicate the payment was an in-kind campaign contribution which was not disclosed to the Federal Election Commission, which would be a violation of federal law, according to Paul S. Ryan, a campaign finance attorney who works for Common Cause.
The email does not say where the funds originated from.
NBC News first reported Cohen's use of the email account.
The day after the email, Cohen wired money from First Republic Bank to Davidson's bank account, according to NBC News.
Davidson did not respond to a request for comment from CNN. First Republic Bank declined to comment to the network.
the rich asshole's 2017 financial disclosures listed an account at First Republic Bank, valued between $15,001 and $50,000.
Cohen also regularly used that same email account to negotiate with Clifford last year before she signed a nondisclosure agreement, NBC News reported.
Last month, Cohen said he wired Clifford $130,000 of his own money right before the 2016 election in exchange for her silence about the alleged affair.
Cohen said Friday that he is in the midst of a "witch hunt," saying, "These incessant attacks against me are meritless and are concocted by the liberal mainstream media to continue to malign our President and distract the country from his historic achievements over the past year. This witch hunt has now gone from ludicrous to insane."
He has denied the the rich asshole Organization's involvement in the payment, and both Cohen and the White House have denied any sexual encounter between the President and Clifford.
"In a private transaction in 2016, I used my own personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000 to Ms. Stephanie Clifford," Cohen said in a statement in February. "Neither the the rich asshole Organization nor the the rich asshole campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly."
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Wednesday that "arbitration was won in the President's favor" regarding the case. The statement is an admission that the nondisclosure agreement exists and that it directly involves the rich asshole. It was the first time the White House had admitted the President was involved in any way with Clifford.
Clifford filed suit against the rich asshole on Tuesday, alleging that he never signed a hush agreement regarding the alleged affair and therefore the agreement is void.
Michelle Goldberg MARCH 9, 2018
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In January we learned, thanks to The Wall Street Journal, that Michael Cohen, a lawyer for some rich asshole, arranged a $130,000 hush money payment to the pornographic film star known as Stormy Daniels in the closing days of the 2016 presidential campaign. The payment was to stop Daniels from speaking out about an alleged affair she’d had with the rich asshole shortly after Melania the rich asshole, his third wife, gave birth to their son, Barron.
With any previous president the story would have been explosive, but with this one, it felt relatively minor. The real scandal, it seemed, was that there was no scandal, because no one expects any better of the rich asshole. The religious right was willing to give him a “mulligan,” in the words of Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. Liberals rolled their eyes at right-wing hypocrisy, but ranked the affair fairly low on the list of the rich asshole outrages.
But Daniels — whose real name is Stephanie Clifford — is a clever capitalist who’s been determined to force the story of her relationship with the rich asshole into the public eye. She has parlayed her new notoriety into a series of strip-club appearances, including two in South Florida on Friday and Saturday. More significantly, her lawyer has filed a lawsuit arguing that the nondisclosure agreement she signed is null and void because the rich asshole himself never signed it. The suit, ingeniously, has given Daniels’s lawyer a pretext to make that agreement public.
As this drama unfolds, it’s becoming clear that, for all its sordid details, it isn’t really a sex scandal. It’s a campaign finance scandal, a transparency scandal and potentially part of an ongoing national security scandal. It’s salacious and absurd, but we should take it seriously. the rich asshole’s team certainly seems to; Cohen recently obtained a temporary restraining order to silence Daniels.
Let’s start with the campaign finance piece. On Jan. 22, the nonpartisan government watchdog group Common Cause filed complaints with the Federal Election Commission and the Department of Justice claiming that the $130,000 payment to Daniels constituted an in-kind contribution to the rich asshole’s presidential campaign, in violation of federal campaign law.
In response, Cohen claimed that the payment was a private transaction that he was able to “facilitate” with his own personal funds. (It was made through a limited liability company Cohen created called Essential Consultants.) “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,” Cohen said in a statement to The Times.
Paul Seamus Ryan, vice president for policy and litigation at Common Cause, told me that even if Cohen didn’t tell the rich asshole what he did, the rich asshole was still responsible, since “the actions of agents are attributable to their principals.” But the release of the NDA makes clear that the rich asshole himself was a party to the agreement. If the rich asshole authorized the $130,000 payment, it’s harder to explain away his campaign’s failure to disclose it, as required by law. The White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, all but confirmed the rich asshole’s involvement on Wednesday, when she said that a recent arbitration proceeding — the one that resulted in the temporary restraining order — was “won in the president’s favor.”
Norman Eisen, the chairman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and Barack Obama’s former ethics czar, points out another potential violation on the rich asshole’s part. He calls it the “Al Capone problem.” The Daniels NDA refers repeatedly to “property” that she agreed to turn over to the rich asshole, including video images, still images, emails and text messages. Eisen argues that the rich asshole was required to report ownership of this property, as well as any obligations he might have had to reimburse Cohen for the $130,000, in his federal financial disclosure forms.
“The asset here is this incredibly valuable agreement with Stormy,” Eisen told me. “Imagine what she could get if she has texts or images. Imagine the millions she could command! So there’s this incredibly valuable agreement, and the L.L.C., Essential Consultants, which the rich asshole now appears to be a beneficiary of. That’s an asset.” But it’s an asset the rich asshole didn’t reveal.
Finally, the Daniels story is germane to the overriding scandal of the rich asshole administration, the one involving the rich asshole’s relationship with Russia. Christopher Steele, the British ex-spy who compiled an infamous dossier of opposition research on the rich asshole, wrote that Russia could blackmail the rich asshole with evidence of his “sexual perversion.” Nothing we know of Daniels confirms the dossier’s outré claims about what such perversion entailed. The NDA does, however, show that the rich asshole was susceptible to blackmail.
Indeed, Daniels isn’t the only woman who was allegedly paid off after an encounter with the rich asshole. The former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who claims she had an affair with the rich asshole, was paid $150,000 by a media company closely aligned with the president, which quashed her story. Steve Bannon told “Fire and Fury” author Michael Wolff that another the rich asshole lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, “took care” of “a hundred women” during the campaign.
“It all kind of fits together in a way,” Nick Akerman, a former Watergate prosecutor, said of the Daniels scandal and the Russia one. “It’s really blackmail over sex.”
Ultimately, the details of the rich asshole’s relationship with Daniels will likely come out. David Super, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, told me he was surprised by how legally strong Daniels’s lawsuit seems, due to the way the original NDA was written. “Any halfway competent lawyer could have drafted the contract so that he didn’t need to sign it,” Super said of Cohen and the rich asshole. “But they didn’t do it that way.”
Should Daniels prevail in court, we might learn interesting information about the president. Among other things, the NDA forbids her from discussing the rich asshole’s “alleged children” or “paternity information.” But the scandal will lie less in the details of the rich asshole’s degeneracy than in the steps he and his lawyers took to cover it up. “This is early days yet in the unfolding of this scandal,” said Eisen. Like the rich asshole himself, it’s preposterous, but it’s not going away.
Liberal Redneck Trae Crowder: the rich asshole and Kim Jong Un are like two drunk guys talking about what to do with a brain tumor
Trae Crowder (Photo: Screen capture)
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Liberal Redneck Trae Crowder doesn’t anticipate President some rich asshole being able to work out the nuclear problems with North Korea. During a discussion with Bill Maher Friday, he admitted the rich asshole has made strides in getting some potential negotiation, the difference, he explained is that the rich asshole is no Barack Obama.
“Still I’m not going to sit here and say I have a lot of inspired confidence of this working out,” he said. “Watching these two guys debate on what to do about the nuclear situation in North Korea is like two hammered drunk bricklayers talk about what to do with a brain tumor.”
Republican strategist Ana Navarro can’t imagine it working out.
“What are they going to do? Put their buttons on the table and see who’s got the bigger button?” she wondered.
Maher explained that the only thing he can think is that the two men will have a “d*ck measuring contest” and then move on to actual negotiations.
“He doesn’t understand math or spelling or science, but he does understand schmoozing,” Maher said.
Maher recalled the photo that shows the Korean Peninsula where South Korea has is alive with lights and North Korea is “in the dark.” He noted that his people likely haven’t seen that but Kim Jong Un knows he’s in the dark and “he’s thinking the lights look pretty good.”
“Well, I can tell you right now Puerto Rico thinks the same thing,” Navarro quipped.
Watch the full commentary below:
Ana Navarro tells Maher panel: the rich asshole ‘has more policy positions than the Kama Sutra’
Ana Navarro (Photo: Screen capture)
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When it came to the trade war, conservative Erik Erikson noted that Peter Navarro (no relation to Ana Navarro) has figured out how to manipulate the rich asshole and managed to issue tariffs.
“The only consistent thing about some rich asshole is his inconsistency,” Navarro said. “We saw him do it with immigration. We saw him do it with guns. We saw him do it with barring gays from the military. The guy can hold more positions than the Kama Sutra!”
Crowder explained that the rich asshole’s base probably doesn’t understand these issue either, so it likely won’t matter to them.
He then said that he’s spent his entire life growing up poor, “when is it going to start trickling down?” he asked about the rich asshole’s tax bill.
Maher noted that the “great conservative experiment” has already been attempted in Kansas and it failed so bad that the state was downgraded by the S&P.
Erikson tired to say that the tactic has worked in the past, but Navarro cut in to say that it was before Republicans decided they were no longer anti-spending. Now, with the rich asshole, they want to cut taxes while increasing spending.
Navarro said that the short term looks good, but that the jury is still out on the long-term effects.
Watch the full discussion below:
‘Stay away from old man the rich asshole’s house!’: Colbert runs through all the ghosts in the soon-to-be-haunted White House
"Late Show" host Stephen Colbert appears alongside images of the many actual and rumored resignees of the the rich asshole White House. Image via screengrab.
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With the exit of President some rich asshole’s senior economic adviser Gary Cohn, The Late Show‘s Stephen Colbert noted that soon, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue may become a haunted house.
Given the week they’ve had, “no one in the world is looking forward to this weekend more than the people in the White House,” the host noted on Friday night.
“Assuming anyone still works there,” he joked, “because they’re having some trouble hanging on to staff.”
Cohn, who announced his resignation after reportedly losing his battle to bar the president from imposing steel and aluminum tariffs, “is the latest in a mass exodus of White House staff.”
Detailing the recent resignations — from Hope Hicks to her boyfriend and alleged domestic abuser Rob Porter and even Omarosa Manigault-Newman among numerous others — the host’s screen became crowded with photos of them all, causing him to “squeeze” in between Jared Kushner and Ivanka the rich asshole who are both rumored to be on their way out.
“We’re two departures from the White House turning into that creepy abandoned house in the neighborhood,” Colbert joked, mimicking a panicked voice telling children to “stay away from old man the rich asshole’s house!”
“They say, if your baseball lands in his yard,” he stage-whispered, “he’ll come out and make you his chief economic adviser!”
Watch below:
the rich asshole invites anti-Semitic ex-aide and Fox News host to gossip at the White House because he ‘can’t get enough of them on TV’
Fox News host Jesse Watters (left) and President some rich asshole (right). Images via screengrab.
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On Monday, President Donald the rich asshole welcomed his former staffer and current Fox News personality Sebastian Gorka and his colleague Jesse Watters to the White House to have dinner, gossip and talk shop.
According to a source that spoke to the Daily Beast, the president invited his potentially anti-Semitic ex-aide and his Fox News flunky because he “couldn’t get enough of them on TV.”
The meeting was initially teased by Watters, who on Thursday night tweeted an un-captioned photo of a White House menu signed by the president.
“To Jesse,” an autograph on the menu reads. “You are great!”
During the meeting, which was described by the Beast’s source as “lit,” the rich asshole reportedly told Gorka he “missed” having him in the administration.
Gorka, a loyalist to former senior adviser Steve Bannon, left the White House in August after his former mentor’s exit. Though the Hungarian-born former aide claimed he resigned due to “forces” that were trying to “sabotage” the rich asshole’s agenda, subsequent reporting and the White House’s own statement suggest otherwise.
Following the publication of Gorka’s “resignation letter” by The Federalist, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes reported that the Secret Service was instructed to bar him from the premises an hour before he went public with his exit. In their statement, the White House said Gorka “did not resign,” but that he “no longer works” for the the rich asshole administration.
POLITICS
Michael Cohen May Have Used the rich asshole Org Email For Stormy Daniels Arrangement: Report
It’s unclear which bank account Cohen used to wire the money.
Michael Cohen, personal attorney for President some rich asshole, used his the rich asshole Organization email to arrange to have money transferred to former adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, NBC News reported on Friday.
A source familiar with the negotiations said Cohen used the rich asshole-affiliated email address to arrange the 2016 transfer of $130,000 to Clifford, who goes by the stage name Stormy Daniels. The lawyer used the same email in other negotiations with Clifford, who signed a nondisclosure agreement not to speak publicly about an alleged 2006 affair she had with the rich asshole.
In those email communications, Clifford’s then-attorney, Keith Davidson, referred to Cohen as “Special Counsel to some rich asshole” and addressed correspondence to him in his capacity at the the rich asshole Organization, a source familiar with the discussions told NBC News.
The report could undermine Cohen’s efforts to take the rich asshole out of the discourse surrounding Clifford and the 2016 payout.
“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,” Cohen told The New York Times last month.
Cohen added that the $130,000 payment came out of his own pocket and “was not a campaign contribution or a campaign expenditure by anyone.”
But an email provided to NBC by Clifford’s current attorney, Michael Avenatti, appears to show that Cohen communicated with First Republic Bank using his the rich asshole company email address in discussing the payout.
The bank emailed Cohen on Oct. 26, 2016, to say that a certain amount of money had been deposited into his checking account. It was not clear whether the bank was referring to a personal bank account or a work account, but the correspondence was addressed to Cohen’s the rich asshole Organization email address.
Cohen then forwarded the communication to his Gmail address and then forwarded that to Davidson, perhaps to indicate that the money was ready to be wired.
“Mr. Cohen should immediately provide the prior emails to show exactly where the money came from,” Avenatti told NBC.
Cohen called Avenatti’s concerns “ludicrous” and downplayed the significance of the email.
“I sent emails from the rich asshole Org email address to my family, friends as well as the rich asshole business emails. I basically used it for everything. I am certain most people can relate,” he told ABC News on Friday.
On the matter of where the $130,000 sent to Clifford’s attorney came from, Cohen said: “The funds were taken from my home equity line and transferred internally to my LLC account in the same bank.”
Cohen’s payment to Clifford, which was routed through an account with City National Bank controlled by Davidson, was flagged on several occasions. First Republic filed a suspicious activity report on the money transfer with the Treasury Department, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. It wasn’t clear when the bank filed the report.
In September 2017, City National asked Davidson about the source of the payment, according to The Washington Post. The bank didn’t specify the reason for its interest.
Watchdog group Common Cause filed a complaint to the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department to determine if the payment ran afoul of campaign laws as an in-kind contribution.
The rich asshole Organization, Davidson, Cohen and Cohen’s attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders did not respond Friday to questions from reporters about Daniels, saying, “I’ve addressed this extensively, and I don’t have anything else to add.”
Avenatti is currently representing Clifford in a lawsuit against the president, claiming the rich asshole never signed their nondisclosure agreement. The agreement blocked Clifford from publicly discussing her alleged relationship with the rich asshole. According to the suit, Clifford and Cohen signed the document, but the rich asshole did not, allegedly nullifying the agreement.
In January, The Wall Street Journal reported that Clifford allegedly had an affair with the rich asshole in 2006, a year after he married Melania Knauss and a few months after their son, Barron, was born.
The White House has denied that ever happened.
Clifford’s lawyer also initially released a statement from the actress denying the affair. But the lawsuit, filed on Tuesday, said Clifford was forced into signing that denial by Cohen through “intimidation and coercive tactics.”
Clifford also said through her manager in February that Cohen invalidated their agreement when he acknowledged that he’d paid her $130,000 in a “private transaction” just before the 2016 presidential election.
“Everything is off now, and Stormy is going to tell her story,” manager Gina Rodriguez told The Associated Press.
This post has been updated with comments from Michael Cohen and Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
POLITICS
Leaked Memo: GOP Fundraiser Pitched the rich asshole On International Muslim Army To Fight America’s Wars
Elliott Broidy envisioned a team of 5,000 “Muslim soldiers recruited from Arab and Islamic nations.”
WASHINGTON — A top GOP fundraiser pitched President some rich asshole last year on a plan to recruit a thousands-strong international Muslim army — to be advised by retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal — that would help the United Arab Emirates battle the Taliban and the Islamic State in Afghanistan, according to a leaked memo the fundraiser wrote documenting his meeting with the president.
The army “would consist of two brigades (5,000 total troops) comprised of Muslim soldiers recruited from Arab and Islamic nations,” Elliott Broidy, a Republican National Committee deputy finance chair, wrote in the memo. The military force would be “fully funded and a completely unprecedented commitment from the UAE and Saudi Arabia,” he continued. It would be “an amazing win” for the rich asshole administration, Broidy wrote.
The idea was that the soldiers would be paid a stipend but the fighting force would not be a mercenary group, Broidy said in an interview with HuffPost.
“This is as if NATO countries participate in a coalition, this is the same thing. This would be a coalition task force made up of moderate Muslims from around the world,” he said. “They are already soldiers, they’re in uniform.”
The memo is part of a cache of his emails that were leaked to various news outlets including HuffPost. Broidy, who has hired computer forensics experts to investigate the breach, believes that the government of Qatar, the UAE’s regional rival, is behind the hack — an allegation the Qataris deny. (HuffPost has been unable to identify the people who leaked the emails or the motivation behind the operation.)
Last October, Broidy sent the three-page document — which memorializes his meeting with the rich asshole at the White House — to George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman who has advised the UAE’s government. According to the memo, Broidy told the rich asshole that he had recently traveled to the UAE on behalf of Circinus, his private defense and intelligence firm. He met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan (MBZ), the country’s de-facto leader, and with the UAE’s top military leaders. The purpose of the meeting with MBZ was to “discuss providing Train, Advise, and Assist support to the UAE military,” Broidy wrote.
Circinus has hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts with the UAE, The New York Times reported on Saturday.
Broidy’s lawyer Chris Clark told HuffPost that some of the leaked documents are forged and said he has warned reporters off stories based on forgeries. But Broidy and Clark did not dispute the authenticity of the Muslim army memo, the existence of which The New York Times first reported.
Officials at the Saudi and Emirate embassies did not respond to requests for comment.
According to the memo, Broidy told the rich asshole that the team behind the Muslim army plan was led by McChrystal, a retired Army general who had previously commanded U.S. and international troops in Afghanistan. That appeared to boost the credibility of the proposal in the president’s eyes: the rich asshole interrupted to say that he had offered McChrystal a job but the retired general declined, Broidy wrote.
McChrystal, whom President Barack Obama fired from the Afghanistan command in 2010, did not respond to requests for comment through multiple channels. Before the rich asshole won the presidential election, McChrystal told CNN he would decline “any role” in a rich asshole administration.
In the memo, Broidy also named Bennet Sacolick, a retired Army lieutenant general, and Brian Losey, a former commander of the Navy SEALs, as members of the team. Sacolick did not respond to requests for comment. Losey directed questions to Circinus, which also did not respond to requests for comment.
Broidy left the meeting with the rich asshole under the impression that he had support from the top levels of government for his idea, the memo shows. He told the rich asshole that MBZ discussed the plan with Defense Secretary James Mattis and received his endorsement, Broidy wrote. the rich asshole “was extremely enthusiastic” and asked about moving forward, he noted.
Broidy suggested that the rich asshole and MBZ hold a quiet meeting in New York or New Jersey. According to the memo, the president agreed to the idea, but his national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, indicated that such a meeting would typically occur in the White House. The Pentagon and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.
In a departure from its predecessor’s practice, the rich asshole administration does not make records of visitors to the White House available to the public.
Broidy’s proposal isn’t entirely new. Saudi Arabia launched its own majority-Sunni counterterrorism coalition in 2015 with several dozen member countries, and the U.S. military already partners with Muslim allies abroad. For that matter, around 4,000 U.S. service members self-identify as Muslim, and many of them have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Although Broidy insisted to HuffPost that the Gulf-funded brigades would not be a mercenary force, the rich asshole has considered the idea of using mercenaries in Afghanistan in the past.
Last year, as the rich asshole fumed at the Pentagon’s recommendation that he send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, Blackwater founder Erik Prince — the brother of Betsy DeVos, the rich asshole’s secretary of education — and DynCorp International head Stephen Feinberg floated the idea of using private military contractors instead. Like Broidy, Prince has deep ties in the UAE. In 2010, he sold his stake in Blackwater and moved to the UAE, where he helped its government assemble a private military battalion made up of foreign troops.
But the rich asshole’s official military advisers shot down Prince’s proposal. In August, when the president announced a vague plan to continue the war effort in Afghanistan, he said the military would no longer make public the number of U.S. troops deployed to the battlefield. Broidy pitched the Muslim army idea to the rich asshole less than two months later.
Circinus did not respond to questions about whether Broidy’s proposal for a Muslim fighting force had ever moved forward.
Broidy’s leaked memo was part of a 22-page email dump from a person or group that call themselves L.A. Confidential. It was one of several sets of documents leaked to reporters. “We expose people associated with Hollywood,” the leaker wrote in an email sent to HuffPost.
Last week, Broidy wrote to Sheikh Meshal bin Hamad al-Thani, Qatar’s ambassador to the U.S., accusing the Qatari government of engaging in “hostile intelligence operations against United States citizens.” The letter was first reported by The New York Times.
“Your agents’ commission of espionage against U.S. citizens may have violated numerous federal and state statutes,” Broidy wrote to al-Thani in an apparent reference to his own leaked emails. He claimed that a “team of intelligence community and law enforcement personnel, experts, and attorneys” had gathered information implicating the Qatari government.
There is no public evidence that Qatar is responsible for the breach and Broidy declined to show HuffPost any evidence to support his claim.
When asked if Qatar is responsible for the hack, Clark hedged. “That’s certainly Elliott’s belief based on the work that’s been done so far,” he said.
A spokesman for Qatar’s government communications office denied that Qatar hacked Broidy or paid anyone else to steal his emails: “We believe that Mr. Broidy’s baseless accusations are simply a diversionary tactic to distract attention from the serious allegations against himself and his client the Government of the United Arab Emirates.”
Akbar Shahid Ahmed and Maxwell Strachan contributed reporting.
POLITICS
the rich asshole’s Latest Pardon Shows The Best Way To Get One: Go On Fox News
By comparing his case to Hillary Clinton’s, a Navy sailor and his lawyer were able to grab Fox’s attention — and the president’s.
WASHINGTON ― A former Navy sailor who pleaded guilty to a felony count of unauthorized possession and retention of national defense information for snapping photos on a nuclear attack submarine has received a pardon from President some rich asshole — and his attorney says Fox News deserves the credit.
The legal team for Kristian Saucier compared his case to the handling of the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. That grabbed the rich asshole’s interest, and it’s now paid off in the form of a presidential pardon, announced Friday.
Last week, Saucier appeared on “Fox & Friends,” a program that the president records and watches during his morning “executive time.” the rich asshole frequently sends tweets that correspond with segments on the morning show.
Ronald Daigle, a lawyer hired to advocate for Saucier’s pardon, told HuffPost that Fox News played a key role in getting the case on the rich asshole’s radar.
“Absolutely,” Daigle said when asked whether going on Fox News was a big part of their strategy. “They were big supporters of Kris right from the beginning. They supported Kris.”
In 2016, shortly after then-FBI Director James Comey announced the results of the Clinton email investigation, Saucier’s legal team began comparing the submariner’s case to Clinton’s. The Justice Department responded that Saucier was “grasping at highly imaginative and speculative straws,” but the case got the rich asshole’s attention.
Saucier was sentenced to a year behind bars prior to the 2016 election ― a sentence he completed before his pardon. One reason that federal prosecutors likely handled the case the way they did: Saucier destroyed a laptop, a camera and the camera’s memory card shortly after he was interviewed by the FBI. Pieces of a laptop were later found in the woods near a Saucier family home. Prosecutors tend to treat suspects more harshly when they are accused of destroying evidence.
Since the election, Saucier’s team has “sent tons of marketing materials to the White House” and distributed press releases in an effort to “capture the president’s opinion,” Daigle said.
Saucier’s team was aiming for a “political” pardon rather than a pardon that goes through the normal process of the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, Daigle said. Saucier was not yet eligible to go through that lengthy procedure.
“I flipped the process around,” Daigle said. “We were doing something to try to capture the attention of the president. When we put the pardon in, we did a press release for that. When we heard back from the pardon office, we put a press release for that. Every step of the way, we’re trying to do what we can to be on the radar, and hopefully the president will hear us. We think he heard us more than once.”
Daigle believes that the rich asshole simply ordered that a pardon be prepared for his signature and that the Justice Department had very little involvement. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on its role in the pardon.
Daigle’s pardon strategy isn’t going to work for defendants across the board, he said.
“It’s not going to happen in every case. It just happened because we had a set of circumstances that were truly unjust,” said Daigle, referring to his argument that his client was prosecuted where others who committed similar offenses weren’t.
Daigle said he and his client were “very excited” about the news. He said he hoped Saucier, who has a young child, would be able to get his military benefits back.
“This would make a huge difference to his family if he can get his benefits back,” Daigle said. “This is a very talented young man, and he couldn’t find a job coming out for anything, only as a garbage collector. Now he’ll be able to go after these licenses and stuff to have a nice career on the outside.”
Ryan Reilly is HuffPost’s senior justice reporter, covering the Justice Department, federal law enforcement, criminal justice and legal affairs. Have a tip? Reach him at ryan.reilly@huffpost.com or on Signal at 202-527-9261.
the rich asshole rolls the dice on North Korea
BY REBECCA KHEEL - 03/09/18 05:21 PM EST
President the rich asshole is making a serious roll of the dice with his decision to meet face-to-face with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
the rich asshole would be the first U.S. president to ever meet with a leader of North Korea, and success in the negotiations — if the Korean peninsula was denuclearized — would be a tremendous, historic achievement.
At the same time, there’s little reason to believe Kim has actually changed his mind about nuclear weapons when he’s on the verge of achieving his goal of a nuclear-tipped missile capable of striking the U.S. mainland.
While GOP lawmakers said Kim’s offering of a meeting was proof that the rich asshole’s policies are having some success, they also urged caution going forward.
In Friday’s press briefing, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders appeared to give the administration wiggle room to cancel the meeting, attaching conditions that were not announced Thursday night.
“We’re not going to have this meeting take place until we see concrete actions that match the words and the rhetoric of North Korea,” Sanders said. “We’ve accepted the invitation to talk based on them following through with concrete actions on the promises that they’ve made.”
That followed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s comments Friday morning seeking to make a distinction between talks and negotiations. On Thursday, Tillerson, who is traveling in Africa, said “we’re a long ways from negotiations” hours before the announcement was made.
“President the rich asshole has said for some time that he was open to talks and he would willingly meet with Kim Jong Un when conditions were right and the time was right,” Tillerson said Friday in Djibouti. “And I think in the president’s judgment, that time has arrived now. So there’s no — in my comments yesterday, I was indicating comments about negotiations, but we’ve been open for talks for some time.”
“We’re not going to have this meeting take place until we see concrete actions that match the words and the rhetoric of North Korea,” Sanders said. “We’ve accepted the invitation to talk based on them following through with concrete actions on the promises that they’ve made.”
That followed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s comments Friday morning seeking to make a distinction between talks and negotiations. On Thursday, Tillerson, who is traveling in Africa, said “we’re a long ways from negotiations” hours before the announcement was made.
“President the rich asshole has said for some time that he was open to talks and he would willingly meet with Kim Jong Un when conditions were right and the time was right,” Tillerson said Friday in Djibouti. “And I think in the president’s judgment, that time has arrived now. So there’s no — in my comments yesterday, I was indicating comments about negotiations, but we’ve been open for talks for some time.”
the rich asshole sees himself as the ultimate deal-maker. An agreement with Kim in which North Korea abandoned its nuclear ambitions would deliver an achievement that multiple presidents have failed to reach.
“It’s really a high-stakes poker game, and you can either win big or perhaps get taken to the cleaners,” said Bruce Klingner, a former CIA division chief for the Koreas who is now at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Harry Kazianis, director of defense studies at the Center for the National Interest, said both the rich asshole and Kim risk looking foolish if they don’t walk away with something.
“There’s something that’s going to be achieved if they get together or it’s not going to happen,” he said. “It’s too much of a risk for both sides.”
North Korea has negotiated with the United States before, only to walk away once winning sanctions relief and other concessions.
Harry Kazianis, director of defense studies at the Center for the National Interest, said both the rich asshole and Kim risk looking foolish if they don’t walk away with something.
“There’s something that’s going to be achieved if they get together or it’s not going to happen,” he said. “It’s too much of a risk for both sides.”
North Korea has negotiated with the United States before, only to walk away once winning sanctions relief and other concessions.
It’s a pitfall lawmakers have been reminding the rich asshole about since Thursday’s announcement.
“We can pursue more diplomacy as we keep applying pressure ounce by ounce,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) said in a statement. “Remember, North Korean regimes have repeatedly used talks and empty promises to extract concessions and buy time. North Korea uses this to advance its nuclear and missile programs. We’ve got to break this cycle.”
Administration officials insist the rich asshole will not fall into that trap.
“The North Koreans are coming to the table despite the United States making zero concessions and, in close coordination with our allies, we have consistently increased the pressure on the Kim regime,” Vice President Pence said in a statement Friday. “Our resolve is undeterred and our policy remains the same: all sanctions remain in place and the maximum pressure campaign will continue until North Korea takes concrete, permanent, and verifiable steps to end their nuclear program.”
Kazianis said the meeting could be a good idea if three conditions are true. The first is that the meeting should not take place in North Korea. Kazianis suggested having it at the demilitarized zone between the Koreas.
Second, he said, the maximum pressure campaign should continue. And third, joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises should go on as planned.
Still, he said, Kim will probably get at least a little propaganda victory just by meeting with the rich asshole.
“He’s going to get some great photo ops, but when history calls, you’ve got to answer the bell,” Kazianis said.
Klingner, though, said the meeting risks giving Kim the same sort of the propaganda win the the rich asshole administration was worried about him getting during the North Korean delegation’s “charm offensive” at the Winter Olympics.
the rich asshole, he said, “impetuously and prematurely” accepted the invitation without getting concessions from Kim, such as progress on freeing the three Americans detained in North Korea or evidence of Kim’s sincerity in denuclearizing.
“If the first time a president meets with the North Koreans is the highest coin in the diplomatic realm, you don’t want to spend that too quickly,” he said.
It’s possible the rich asshole’s business acumen could yield positive results, Klingner said. But the situation reminded him of the arguments in favor of sending former President Clinton to meet with Kim Jong Il in 2000 — that the force of his personality would cause Kim to buckle. The foreign policy establishment’s majority view that that would be a bad idea won out, and Clinton never met with the leader while in office.
To mitigate risk now that the meeting has been agreed to, Klingner said, U.S. and North Korean officials need extensive discussions to agree to parameters for the summit.
“We can pursue more diplomacy as we keep applying pressure ounce by ounce,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) said in a statement. “Remember, North Korean regimes have repeatedly used talks and empty promises to extract concessions and buy time. North Korea uses this to advance its nuclear and missile programs. We’ve got to break this cycle.”
Administration officials insist the rich asshole will not fall into that trap.
“The North Koreans are coming to the table despite the United States making zero concessions and, in close coordination with our allies, we have consistently increased the pressure on the Kim regime,” Vice President Pence said in a statement Friday. “Our resolve is undeterred and our policy remains the same: all sanctions remain in place and the maximum pressure campaign will continue until North Korea takes concrete, permanent, and verifiable steps to end their nuclear program.”
Kazianis said the meeting could be a good idea if three conditions are true. The first is that the meeting should not take place in North Korea. Kazianis suggested having it at the demilitarized zone between the Koreas.
Second, he said, the maximum pressure campaign should continue. And third, joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises should go on as planned.
Still, he said, Kim will probably get at least a little propaganda victory just by meeting with the rich asshole.
“He’s going to get some great photo ops, but when history calls, you’ve got to answer the bell,” Kazianis said.
Klingner, though, said the meeting risks giving Kim the same sort of the propaganda win the the rich asshole administration was worried about him getting during the North Korean delegation’s “charm offensive” at the Winter Olympics.
the rich asshole, he said, “impetuously and prematurely” accepted the invitation without getting concessions from Kim, such as progress on freeing the three Americans detained in North Korea or evidence of Kim’s sincerity in denuclearizing.
“If the first time a president meets with the North Koreans is the highest coin in the diplomatic realm, you don’t want to spend that too quickly,” he said.
It’s possible the rich asshole’s business acumen could yield positive results, Klingner said. But the situation reminded him of the arguments in favor of sending former President Clinton to meet with Kim Jong Il in 2000 — that the force of his personality would cause Kim to buckle. The foreign policy establishment’s majority view that that would be a bad idea won out, and Clinton never met with the leader while in office.
To mitigate risk now that the meeting has been agreed to, Klingner said, U.S. and North Korean officials need extensive discussions to agree to parameters for the summit.
But even that could run into pitfalls.
“Even if you have that kind of detail planned … someone can throw out the playbook as soon as they walk into the room,” Klingner said. “the rich asshole may not abide by it. Supporters will say that’s what makes him effective.”
Analysis: Whatever comes next, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un can claim a win against the rich asshole
March 9, 2018
Barbara Demick
Los Angeles Times
Posted with permission from Tribune Content Agency
No matter what else comes of it, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has scored a huge win with President Donald Trump's agreement to sit down for a face-to-face meeting.
For decades, North Korean officials have angled to meet with a high-level U.S. representative using all measures of persuasion, whining, wheedling and threatening. To secure that meeting with a sitting U.S. president no less provides a success beyond their wildest dreams.
From a propaganda standpoint, getting into the same room with Donald Trump would elevate the 34-year-old Kim, a pariah and terrorist in the eyes of much of the world, to the status of a world leader.
"This has been North Korea's long-standing objective to get the president of the United States to come," said Sue Mi Terry, a former CIA analyst now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "They just got lucky with Trump. They have been monitoring him very closely. They saw him as a window of opportunity with a personality that likes to grab attention."
Proud and isolated, jealous of their capitalist cousin, South Korea, North Koreans have long yearned to be treated as a great power. Their nuclear program has been motivated not only by their desire to protect their system of government but by their hunger for respect on the world stage, analysts say.
Trump's agreement announced Thursday to sit down with Kim is being compared by some observers to President Richard Nixon's meeting with China's Mao Zedong in 1972, which is flattering to North Korea.
"The North Korean have always been waiting for the United States to treat them like China. The U.S. decision to improve relations with China showed China's centrality," said Scott Snyder of the Council on Foreign Relations. "They want to matter strategically."
Since the establishment of the Communist state of North Korea at the end of World War II, no sitting American president has met with a North Korean leader. But it was an ex-president, Jimmy Carter, who negotiated a 1994 pact known as the Agreed Framework that was going to provide energy assistance for North Korea in return for gradual denuclearization.
In October 2000, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright traveled to Pyongyang to meet with Kim Jong Il, father of the current leader. The expectation was that her meeting would pave the way for a follow-up trip by President Bill Clinton to take place after the November election but before the inauguration of a new president. The momentum was lost amid the confusion about hanging chads and eventually the presidency of George W. Bush.
As a scant consolation prize to the North Koreans, Clinton did visit North Korea as an ex-president in 2009 to secure the release of American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who had been taken prisoner while reporting on the China-North Korea border.
Under the Bush administration, the Agreed Framework collapsed. The North Koreans reached out repeatedly to get a meeting with Bush. They failed to get any high-level negotiations going with the United States and were frustrated that the nuclear issue was relegated to six-nation talks led by China.
North Korea's 25 million people are among the poorest and most isolated in Asia. Normalizing relations with the United States is seen as key to developing their economy and reintegrating then into the international community.
Although Kim's invitation to Trump and Trump's acceptance came as a shock to much of the world — dominating headlines amid Trump's alleged tangles with porn actress Stormy Daniels and the Russia investigation—North Korea has been angling for this meeting almost from the moment Trump was inaugurated.
"Kim Jong Un is not some young callow kid. He is a very shrewd character," said Robert Carlin, a former CIA analyst and negotiator, now a visiting scholar at Stanford University. "I think the North Koreans have been on this course for months and months."
With its Fourth of July test of an intercontinental missile capable of reaching the continental United States to its powerful hydrogen bomb test in September, North Korea succeeded in getting Washington's attention. Then in November, when Kim announced the country had completed the development of its nuclear arsenal, he signaled that he was ready to launch a new phase that included negotiations.
The decision to participate in South Korea's Winter Olympics effectively co-opted Seoul — a traditional U.S. ally — in the role of an intermediary with its own prestige on the line to make the talks succeed.
"Now they have South Korea as their chess piece," said Carlin.
During the presidential campaign in 2016, Trump famously quipped that he'd been willing to meet with Kim over a hamburger, but his public statements once in office have been less about breaking bread than bloodying noses.
To the many North Korean analysts who were wringing their hands over a potentially catastrophic war, if not a nuclear Armageddon, the upcoming talks come as a relief. But any relief is balanced by the worry that Trump, inexperienced in diplomacy and anxious for a foreign policy win, will be no match for the surprisingly wily North Koreans.
As though anticipating a diplomatic breakthrough, North Korea in 2016 named a seasoned negotiator, Ri Yong Ho, as foreign minister and just two weeks ago promoted another, Choe Son Hui, to a vice ministerial position. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has been losing its experienced hands, most notably with the recent retirement of the State Department's top Korea specialist, Joseph Yun.
North Korea has said repeatedly it would not give up its nuclear program, which Kim has referred to as a "treasured sword," without assurances that the United States has dropped its "hostile policy" against North Korea. Those demands are likely to include the withdrawal of thousands of U.S. military personnel from South Korea.
Moreover, North Korea's nuclear program today is sufficiently advanced that even a freeze would leave them with enough plutonium to make 10 nuclear warheads.
"If I'm right about North Korea's game plan, they see the summit as a chance to sit down with the United States as 'one nuclear weapons state with another,'" Evans Revere, a former U.S. diplomat with decades of experience dealing with North Korea, wrote in response to an email query from the Los Angeles Times.
So far it is unclear where the proposed meeting between Trump and Kim would take place. One possibility would be for Trump to join with South Korean President Moon Jae-in at a summit scheduled for late April in Panmunjom, the truce village located at the demilitarized zone separating the Koreas.
Joshua Stanton, an attorney who helped draft the North Korean sanctions law, says that by all means Trump must avoid a trip to Pyongyang.
"That would show that Kim Jong Un is controlling the event and dictating terms to the president of the United States," Stanton said.
the rich asshole’s Military Parade Planned For Veterans Day — Without Tanks
The parade will cost taxpayers up to $30 million.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A military parade requested by President some rich asshole will take place in November on Veterans Day in Washington D.C., but to minimize damage to roads it will not include tanks, a Pentagon memo released on Friday said.
Last month the rich asshole asked the Pentagon to explore a parade in celebration of American troops after the Republican president marveled at the Bastille Day military parade he attended in Paris last year.
The memo listed a number of guidelines for the parade on Nov. 11 and said the parade route will be from the White House to the Capitol and have a “heavy air component at the end of the parade.”
“Include wheeled vehicles only, no tanks - consideration must be given to minimize damage to local infrastructure,” the memo said.
It added that the parade would focus on the contributions of U.S. military veterans throughout history, starting from the American Revolutionary War.
Critics have argued that a parade could cost millions of dollars at a time when the Pentagon wants more stable funding for an over-stretched military.
The parade will cost taxpayers up to $30 million, the White House budget chief has said.
Military parades in the United States are generally rare. Such parades in other countries are usually staged to celebrate victories in battle or showcase military might.
In 1991, tanks and thousands of troops paraded through Washington to celebrate the ousting of Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces from Kuwait in the Gulf War.
The District of Columbia Council had ridiculed the idea of a parade on Pennsylvania Avenue, the 1.2-mile (1.9-km) stretch between the Capitol and the White House that is also the site of the rich asshole International Hotel.
“Tanks but no tanks!” it tweeted last month.
White House Refuses House Investigation Request On Rob Porter
Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, now wants GOP chair Trey Gowdy to issue a subpoena to obtain the information.
WASHINGTON ― White House officials are refusing to turn over information to congressional leaders on their handling of domestic abuse allegations against former top aide Rob Porter, further raising questions about the rich asshole administration’s already muddled explanations.
House Oversight Committee chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) launched an investigation into the White House’s handling of the matter on Feb. 14, giving chief of staff John Kelly a deadline of Feb. 28 to submit information, particularly on why Porter worked under an interim security clearance to handle sensitive information.
But in a letter on Thursday night, first reported by Talking Points Memo, White House Director of Legislative Affairs Marc Short did not provide answers to the committee’s questions about Porter, and suggested to Gowdy that officials would not cooperate until a later time.
Porter resigned last month after reporting by The Daily Mail and The Intercept revealed allegations that he had physically abused his two ex-wives. The White House continually changed its story of what officials, particularly Kelly, knew about the allegations against Porter, and for how long.
FBI Director Christopher Wray later contradicted key parts of the administration’s account, saying that the bureau had warned the White House about the allegations as early as last March, and completed its investigation this January, several weeks before Porter resigned.
In his letter, Short told Gowdy the White House has formed “a working group” of officials who plan “to streamline, harmonize, and modernize applicable standards across the Administration” regarding the process of background checks and security clearances.
“We would be pleased to update you and others on the progress of the working group at the appropriate time,” Short said.
On Friday, the committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), called Short’s letter “a completely inadequate response,” asking Gowdy to issue a subpoena to obtain the information from the White House, or “step aside” from the committee.
“There is an obvious pattern here. Unfortunately, by repeatedly backing down, the Committee has now enabled and emboldened the White House to openly defy congressional oversight,” Cummings wrote in a letter to Gowdy. “It is now clear that the White House will not respond to this Committee unless it is compelled to do so.”
Gowdy’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Read the White House and Cummings letters below.
BUSTED: Stormy Daniels’ attorney releases new email where Michael Cohen admits he’s speaking for some rich asshole
Stormy Daniels attorney Michael Avenatti (Photo: Screen capture)
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In a Friday evening interview with Anderson Cooper, Stormy Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti revealed a new chain of emails that create a paper-trail of the transfer for the $130,000 payoff. The email also has Cohen admitting that he was speaking on behalf of the rich asshole.
Avenatti also noted that there was language in their exchange of emails that seems to refute the claim that Cohen was acting of his own accord and not on behalf of the rich asshole Organization or the rich asshole himself.
He also refuted the idea that the arbitration was a valid legal standing to move forward. He explained the case was brought by an LLC and not by the rich asshole. Avenatti also questioned whether Cohen is licensed to practice law in California, where the case moved forward. If Cohen is not barred in California, it is illegal to act as an attorney in the state.
“This is yet another e-mail that shows that throughout this negotiation period, this period during which his attorney, Cohn, was negotiating on the president’s behalf,” he explained. “He was routinely using his e-mail address at the rich asshole Organization and his e-mail signature block to identify that he was doing this on behalf of the rich asshole Organization. And if you look at the e-mail, the last e-mail in the string, it talks about how the office is closed for Yom Kippur. And, if I can set the stage, mid-October was around the time period that the payment was to be made. It ultimately was not made and the deal fell apart for a while.”
He explained that that nugget of information is important because if Cohen was acting of his own accord and not on behalf of the rich asshole, it wouldn’t have mattered whether the rich asshole Organization office was open or not.
Another email exchange walks through the fact that the payment had been deposited into Daniels’ account.
“We believe this is pivotal for the following reason: the initial e-mail in the string, which is at the bottom of the page is an e-mail from a representative of the alerting him that they have effectively laid out his wishes,” Avenatti said about the payment to Daniels. “He turns around then and forwards that e-mail to himself. He then turns around and forwards that to his personal e-mail account which is the next e-mail in the string above that.”
“Why would Michael Cohn then feel the need to forward that e-mail to himself to his private e-mail address to then communicate with Stormy Daniels’ attorney?” Cooper wondered.
Avenatti said he didn’t have an answer.
In the second half of the interview, Avenatti explained that the payment to Daniels was done via wire transfer. Banks are required to file a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) for transfers over $9,000, and that can be tracked because the Internal Revenue Service requires specific details be filed for large transfers. The federal government would have that information and Avenatti explained that the rich asshole and the IRS could release the information on where the wire transfers all came from. If they wanted.
Watch the full interview below:
POLITICS
Michael Cohen May Have Used the rich asshole Org Email For Stormy Daniels Arrangement: Report
It’s unclear which bank account Cohen used to wire the money.
Michael Cohen, personal attorney for President some rich asshole, used his the rich asshole Organization email to arrange to have money transferred to former adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, NBC News reported on Friday.
A source familiar with the negotiations said Cohen used the rich asshole-affiliated email address to arrange the 2016 transfer of $130,000 to Clifford, who goes by the stage name Stormy Daniels. The lawyer used the same email in other negotiations with Clifford, who signed a nondisclosure agreement not to speak publicly about an alleged 2006 affair she had with the rich asshole.
In those email communications, Clifford’s then-attorney, Keith Davidson, referred to Cohen as “Special Counsel to some rich asshole” and addressed correspondence to him in his capacity at the rich asshole Organization, a source familiar with the discussions told NBC News.
The report could undermine Cohen’s efforts to take the rich asshole out of the discourse surrounding Clifford and the 2016 payout.
“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,” Cohen told The New York Times last month.
Cohen added that the $130,000 payment came out of his own pocket and “was not a campaign contribution or a campaign expenditure by anyone.”
But an email provided to NBC by Clifford’s current attorney, Michael Avenatti, appears to show that Cohen communicated with First Republic Bank using his the rich asshole company email address in discussing the payout.
The bank emailed Cohen on Oct. 26, 2016, to say that a certain amount of money had been deposited into his checking account. It was not clear whether the bank was referring to a personal bank account or a work account, but the correspondence was addressed to Cohen’s the rich asshole Organization email address.
Cohen then forwarded the communication to his Gmail address and then forwarded that to Davidson, perhaps to indicate that the money was ready to be wired.
“Mr. Cohen should immediately provide the prior emails to show exactly where the money came from,” Avenatti told NBC.
Cohen called Avenatti’s concerns “ludicrous” and downplayed the significance of the email.
“I sent emails from the rich asshole Org email address to my family, friends as well as the rich asshole business emails. I basically used it for everything. I am certain most people can relate,” he told ABC News on Friday.
On the matter of where the $130,000 sent to Clifford’s attorney came from, Cohen said: “The funds were taken from my home equity line and transferred internally to my LLC account in the same bank.”
Cohen’s payment to Clifford, which was routed through an account with City National Bank controlled by Davidson, was flagged on several occasions. First Republic filed a suspicious activity report on the money transfer with the Treasury Department, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. It wasn’t clear when the bank filed the report.
In September 2017, City National asked Davidson about the source of the payment, according to The Washington Post. The bank didn’t specify the reason for its interest.
Watchdog group Common Cause filed a complaint to the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department to determine if the payment ran afoul of campaign laws as an in-kind contribution.
The rich asshole Organization, Davidson, Cohen and Cohen’s attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders did not respond Friday to questions from reporters about Daniels, saying, “I’ve addressed this extensively, and I don’t have anything else to add.”
Avenatti is currently representing Clifford in a lawsuit against the president, claiming the rich asshole never signed their nondisclosure agreement. The agreement blocked Clifford from publicly discussing her alleged relationship with the rich asshole. According to the suit, Clifford and Cohen signed the document, but the rich asshole did not, allegedly nullifying the agreement.
In January, The Wall Street Journal reported that Clifford allegedly had an affair with the rich asshole in 2006, a year after he married Melania Knauss and a few months after their son, Barron, was born.
The White House has denied that ever happened.
Clifford’s lawyer also initially released a statement from the actress denying the affair. But the lawsuit, filed on Tuesday, said Clifford was forced into signing that denial by Cohen through “intimidation and coercive tactics.”
Clifford also said through her manager in February that Cohen invalidated their agreement when he acknowledged that he’d paid her $130,000 in a “private transaction” just before the 2016 presidential election.
“Everything is off now, and Stormy is going to tell her story,” manager Gina Rodriguez told The Associated Press.
This post has been updated with comments from Michael Cohen and Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
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