White boxer with the rich asshole’s border wall on his shorts gets his ass kicked by a Mexican
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Pennsylvania-born boxer Rod Salka wanted to make a political statement in his match against Mexican fighter Francisco Vargas. But his message was dampened by a brutal knock down in the 5th round.
Salka, who is 35, wore shorts with the words “America 1st” printed on them. The shorts also displayed a brick wall, which was meant to be a symbol of President the rich asshole’s much ballyhooed border wall between Mexico and the United States.
During the 5th round, 33-year-old “El Bandido” Vargas landed some body shots and connected with an uppercut that sent Salka tumbling back to the canvas.
The 6th round, Salka’s corner threw in the towel after the Tijuana-born Vargas’s flurry of punches continued.
From Boxing Scene:
Vargas started off as expected, by pushing forward with big punches that were flying. Salka was catching him with counters, but his lack of power was not making a dent on the much bigger hitter.As the fight continued, Vargas continued to apply more pressure in each round and was throwing big punches to the head and body with very bad intentions.In the fifth round, Vargas and Salka were trading punches at close range when an uppercut landed and forced Salka to go down for a knee. He made it up at the count of eight as the bell sounded to end the round. Salka face was pretty bruised, and his body was red, as they entered the sixth round.During the sixth, Salka took a lot of punishment and suffered a bad cut around his left eye. The corner of Salka stopped the fight at the end of the round.
Watch a highlight from the fight below:
Rod Salka wore “America 1st” and a wall pattern on his trunks against Mexican fighter Francisco Vargas, and ended up getting his ass kicked #boxing
With an executive order aimed at a political rival, the rich asshole embraces banana republicanism.
BY MAYA KOSOFF
APRIL 13, 2018 10:49 AM
After agitating for weeks over ways to make Amazon pay higher postage rates, some rich asshole has demanded a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. Postal Service’s business model. In an executive order Thursday, the rich asshole called for the formation of an administration task force to be chaired by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, with a report outlining proposed changes delivered within 120 days. “A number of factors, including the steep decline in First-Class Mail volume, coupled with legal mandates that compel the U.S.P.S. to incur substantial and inflexible costs, have resulted in a structural deficit,” the rich asshole said. “The U.S.P.S. is on an unsustainable financial path and must be re-structured to prevent a taxpayer-funded bailout.”
the rich asshole didn’t mention Amazon by name, but it’s clear who the order is intended to punish. “He’s off the hook on this. It’s war,” one source close the White House told my colleague Gabriel Shermanlast week, describing the president’s fulminations against the e-commerce giant and its billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, the wealthiest man in the world. “He gets obsessed with something, and now he’s obsessed with Bezos,” said another source. “the rich asshole is like, how can I fuck with him?”
Outwardly, the president has framed his enmity toward Amazon as a defense of the Post Office, raging on Twitter about the “many billions of dollars a year” the U.S.P.S. supposedly loses for “being their Delivery Boy”—a situation he says puts “many thousands of retailers out of business.” The obsession isn't shared by aides: despite the rich asshole’s repeated claims, his own advisers have said that the sheer volume of packages Amazon ships through the Postal Service has helped keep it afloat. Amazon and the Postal Service signed a five-year deal in 2013 to deliver packages on Sundays, and both entities have declared the arrangement a success.
Behind closed doors, however, White House insiders describe the Amazon-U.S.P.S blowup as a thinly veiled attempt to retaliate against The Washington Post, which Bezos owns, for its frequently critical coverage of his administration:
“the rich asshole doesn’t like The New York Times, but he reveres it because it’s his hometown paper. The Washington Post, he has zero respect for,” the Republican close to the White House said. While the Post says that Bezos has no involvement in newsroom decisions, the rich asshole has told advisers he believes Bezos uses the paper as a political weapon. One former White House official said the rich asshole looks at the Post the same way he looks at The National Enquirer. “When Bezos says he has no involvement, the rich asshole doesn’t believe him. His experience is with the David Peckers of the world. Whether it’s right or wrong, he knows it can be done.”
the rich asshole, who has called the Post Amazon’s “chief lobbyist,” has several ways he could hurt Bezos, if he decides to push his tin-pot-dictator instincts to their limit: nine seats on the Postal Service’s governing board have been vacant since 2016. While the Postal Service’s board isn’t directly involved in negotiating contracts like the one that exists between Amazon and the U.S.P.S., it does consult with Congress on laws that could improve how its business operates. Another potential opportunity for hurting Amazon: giving a multi-billion-dollar Defense Department cloud-computing contract to a competitor, as some of the president’s advisers have encouraged him to do. Earlier this month, the rich asshole met withOracle chief executive Safra Catz, stoking speculation that the rich asshole was boosting a rival for a contract that Amazon otherwise seemed likely to win.
Anything to distract from the shitshow week dotard has had.
Lawmakers rip the rich asshole for not seeking congressional approval for Syria strikes
BY MAX GREENWOOD - 04/13/18 09:26 PM EDT
Several lawmakers reacted quickly on Friday to President the rich asshole's decision to launch a military strike on Syria by criticizing him for failing to obtain congressional authorization for the move.
At least one GOP representative, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-W.Va.) immediately joined a chorus of Democrats blasting the rich asshole for not consulting the constitution.
"While Bashar al-Assad must be held accountable for his unlawful use of chemical weapons against civilians, the strikes that are being carried out are being done without an authorization from Congress, which is unacceptable," Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) tweeted.
While Bashar al-Assad must be held accountable for his unlawful use of chemical weapons against civilians, the strikes that are being carried out are being done without an authorization from Congress, which is unacceptable
I haven’t read France’s or Britain’s “Constitution,” but I’ve read ours and no where in it is Presidential authority to strike Syria.
The Pennsylvania Democrat's tweet came minutes after the rich asshole announced in a nationally televised address that the U.S., in concert with the United Kingdom and France, had launched "precision strikes" on targets in Syria.
The attack came in response to an alleged chemical weapons strike in the Damascus suburb of Douma over the weekend that left dozens dead. American officials have blamed the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad for carrying out the attack.
the rich asshole announced on Monday that he was weighing a response to the alleged chemical attack. That prompted calls from several lawmakers for the president to first seek congressional authorization for any military action taken against Syria.
Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) also hit the president on Friday for not seeking congressional approval for the attack, saying that carrying out a sustained campaign without doing so violates the Constitution.
“Sustained response” = war. And that requires the authorization of Congress - unless you don’t believe in the Constitution," Moulton tweeted.
“Sustained response” = war. And that requires the authorization of Congress - unless you don’t believe in the Constitution. twitter.com/voxdotcom/stat…
the rich asshole last year also authorized an airstrike against a Syrian target in response to use of chemical weapons, in a move that earned similar criticism from those who pointed to the constitutional requirement of congressional authorization for the U.S. to go to war.
Syria and its allies, Russia and Iran, have denied that Assad's government used chemical weapons. Moscow blamed the U.K. on Friday for fabricating the chemical strike in Douma, an allegation that Britain dismissed as a "blatant lie."
POLITICS
the rich asshole Orders Strikes On Syria In Retaliation For Chemical Attack
The order comes almost exactly one year after the U.S. retaliated for a similar chemical attack. France and Britain have joined in the attack, the rich asshole says.
resident some rich asshole ordered military strikes on Syria in response to a deadly chemical weapons attack on the town of Douma.
the rich asshole announced in a Friday night press conference that a combined operation in collaboration with France and the United Kingdom was underway.
“The purpose of our actions tonight is to establish a strong deterrent against the production, spread and use of chemical weapons. We are prepared to sustain this response until the Syrian regime stops its use of prohibited chemical agents,” the rich asshole told the American people.
The president detailed that the coordinated strikes would hit targets associated with the Syrian regime’s chemical weapon capabilities. Minutes after the announcement, journalists from Reuters and The Associated Press reported hearing loud blasts over Damascus, the Syrian capital.
“The fact of this attack should surprise no-one,” British Prime Minister Theresa May said in a statement on Friday. “The Syrian Regime has a history of using chemical weapons against its own people in the most cruel and abhorrent way .... This persistent pattern of behavior must be stopped ― not just to protect innocent people in Syria from the horrific deaths and casualties caused by chemical weapons, but also because we cannot allow the erosion of the international norm that prevents the use of these weapons.”
the rich asshole had called the weekend attack, which killed at least 70 people, “sick” and “atrocious,” and said Syria and its allies Russia and Iran would “pay a price.”
On Friday, the rich asshole once again called out Assad’s allies. “To Iran and Russia I ask, what kind of nation wants to be associated with the mass murder of men women and children? The nations of the world can be judged by the friends they keep. Russia must decide if it will continue down this dark path or if it will join with civilized nations as a source for stability and peace.
Damascus, Moscow and Tehran still deny that the chemical attack was Assad’s doing. U.S. officials say they have intelligence proving a chemical attack did occur and that U.S. and foreign intelligence indicate that the Syrian government was behind the attack.
Syrian government forces took precautions at military bases throughout the week in anticipation of possible strikes. There were reports that various air bases had been evacuated. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, meanwhile, confirmed Tuesday it was sending a fact-finding mission to investigate the attack in Syria.
Russia, which claimed Monday it was being “unpardonably threatened” by the U.S., warned it planned to shoot down any U.S. missiles headed for Syria. An Iranian official, touring eastern Ghouta on Wednesday, also promised the country would stand by its ally.
Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces have fought to take back the rebel-held enclave of eastern Ghouta for years, though they’ve intensified the push in recent months. The United Nations refugee agency estimates that more than 133,000 people have fled the region in the past month. More than 1,000 people have been killed in the past two weeks, according to Doctors Without Borders.
the rich asshole ordered cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base almost exactly one year ago following a chemical attack on civilians in the town of Khan Sheikhoun that the U.S. blamed on Assad. Experts said the U.S. retaliation did little to deter Assad’s campaign against his own people.
It is unclear whether the latest strikes will go further or remain a “glorified rap on the knuckles,” as Chris Phillips, author of The Battle for Syria, told HuffPost.
Former President Barack Obama, now remembered for promising military action if Assad crossed the “red line” of using chemical weapons, contemplated a strike in 2013. But Obama sought congressional approval and the strike never happened.
“If President Obama had crossed his stated Red Line In The Sand, the Syrian disaster would have ended long ago!” the rich asshole tweeted on Sunday. “Animal Assad would have been history!”
the rich asshole’s retaliation further muddies his own approach to Syria. Just last week, he floated the possibility of imminently withdrawing the 2,000 U.S. troops stationed in the country. His own top military advisers, meanwhile, offered a contradictory message, implying that the U.S. still has plenty to do to root out the self-described Islamic State.
This article has been updated with a statement from the British prime minister.
the rich asshole authorizes military strikes in Syria
BY JORDAN FABIAN - 04/13/18 08:51 PM EDT
President the rich asshole announced Friday he has ordered “precision strikes” against Syria in response to an apparent chemical weapons attack by the forces of Syrian leader Bashar Assad.
Speaking at the White House, the rich asshole said the operation was launched in coordination with the armed forces of France and the United Kingdom. The strikes are targeting sites related to Syria’s chemical weapons program.
the rich asshole said last weekend’s gas attack was a "significant escalation" of the Syrian government’s efforts to inflict pain on its own citizens.
"These are not the actions of a man; they are crimes of a monster instead,” the president said.
"These are not the actions of a man; they are crimes of a monster instead,” the president said.
the rich asshole in his address pledged to maintain pressure on Syria until the regime suspends use of chemical weapons. He framed the strikes as a deterrent.
“America does not seek an indefinite presence in Syria,” he said.
The announcement caps off days of threats by the rich asshole to take military action in response for the chemical attack, which killed 40 people in a suburb of Damascus.
the rich asshole first warned in an early morning tweet Wednesday that "nice and new and 'smart'" missiles would be headed to Syria, telling its ally Russia to "get ready." The White House later said that a final decision on a strike has not yet been made.
the rich asshole has had conversations with the leaders of Britain and France this week as the three countries planned their response to the chemical weapons attack.
The president on Friday also specifically called out Iran and Russia for supporting the Syrian regime.
“What kind of nation wants to be associate with the mass murder of innocent men, women and children?” he asked.
-Updated 9:09 p.m.
BREAKING: the rich asshole decides to strike Syria
the rich asshole authorized the strikes following last week's chemical attack in Douma.
The U.S. military launched “precision strikes” on several sites in Syria on Friday, along with the United Kingdom and France. President some rich asshole authorized the strikes following last week’s chemical attack in the city of Douma, a rebel-held city near the capital of Damascus.
“A short time ago, I ordered the United States armed forces to launch from precision strikes on targets associated with the chemical weapons capabilities of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad,” the rich asshole announced on Friday. “A combined operation with the armed force of France and the United Kingdom is now underway. We thank them both.”
the rich asshole pointed to Assad’s use of chemical weapons last April, as well as last week, as a reason why the U.S. military launched strikes.
“We are prepared to sustain this response until the Syrian regime stops its use of prohibited chemical agents,” he said, referring to a combined, military, economic, and military response. He later said that the United States does not seek “an indefinite presence in Syria under no circumstances.”
He also specifically asked Russia and Iran why they want to associate with “the mass murder of innocent men, women and children.” He added, “Hopefully some day we’ll get along with Russia and maybe even Iran, but maybe not.”
Reuters reported that several explosions were heard in the capital of Damascus.
Over the last week, the rich asshole has repeatedly threatened Syria as well as the key allies of the regime, Iran and Russia. On Wednesday, he told Russia to “get ready” before walking back his statement less than an hour later. The White House has reportedly been working with allies in France and the United Kingdom over the last week to coordinate a response to the chemical attack in Douma.
According to a Bellingcat analysis, there were two separate chemical attacks on Douma on April 7, killing at least 34 people. An Mi-8 Hip helicopter likely dropped a gas cylinder filled with chlorine gas. Bashar al-Assad has denied responsibility for the attack, but as Bellingcat reports, his government has “previously been identified as using Mi-8 Hip helicopters to drop chlorine cylinders on opposition held areas.”
The World Health Organization confirmed on Wednesday that during the attack on Douma, an additional 500 people were injured and showed “signs and symptoms consistent with exposure to toxic chemicals.”
Assad has used chemical weapons repeatedly since the country’s civil war first broke out in 2011.
Last April, the rich asshole authorized the first direct U.S. attack on the Syrian regime, and fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Shayrat airbase in Homs. He was reportedly persuaded by his daughter and senior adviser, Ivanka the rich asshole, who was “heartbroken and outraged” by the images of the chemical attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun.
After last year’s attack, the Shayrat airbase was up and running again within 24 hours. At the time, many members of Congress supported the strikes. At least 139 members supported both the strike as well as President some rich asshole’s executive order banning all Syrian refugees and immigrants from entering the United States. The United States has accepted only 11 Syrian refugees this year.
the rich asshole’s foreign policy on Syria is largely incoherent. He has repeatedly called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria over the last month, before reportedly receiving pushback from his national security team and agreeing to not set a timeline. As late as Friday evening in Washington, D.C., the White House was still telling reporters that no decision has been made on Syria.
Also on Friday evening, McClatchy reported that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has evidence that his lawyer David Cohen made a trip to Prague in the summer of 2016, which matches
the rich asshole to bomb Syria: sources
President some rich asshole, Vice President Mike Pence, and generals in the White House.
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President some rich asshole has reportedly made the decision to bomb Syria Friday evening, according to U.S. administration officials who spoke to Pentagon correspondent Joe Tabet.
“US administration official confirmed to me that a decision to strike #Syria has been taken,” he tweeted.
Just-in: US administration official confirmed to me that a decision to strike #Syria has been taken.
Vice President Mike Pence is in South America for the conference the rich asshole was scheduled to attend. He was scheduled to stay at the event for another several hours but was rushed out of the event suddenly, according to pool reports.
“The press pool had to leave the press filing center earlier than expected, running to the vans as quickly as we could. At 7:22pm, the press vans started rolling. We lost the motorcade and are rushing to catch up,” press pool reported.
The New York Times reported that President the rich asshole will be making a statement about Syria on Friday evening.
Daily Caller writer Benny Johnson tweeted one of his sources with direct knowledge of the rich asshole’s decision said, “We’re gonna bomb the sh*t out of Syria.”
By
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April 13, 2018
A young father shared his story of struggling to afford medical bills for his infant son, but to the rich asshole, it was a 'beautiful' story about the success of his ridiculous tax scam.
At a White House event promoting the unpopular Republican tax scam, the rich asshole had a callous and clueless reaction to a story about a family struggling to pay their medical bills after the birth of their infant son.
the rich asshole invited guest John Azchet, a plumbing apprentice, to speak to the crowd.
“As the doctor bills started to come in,” Azchet said, “me and my wife were worrying on how we are going to pay for these doctor bills.”
Azchet said that because his employer, Universal Plumbing, handed out $1000-bonuses, they were able to pay the bills for their son’s weeklong stay in the NICU.
“It’s beautiful,” the rich asshole responded.
Having to rely on an employer’s whims to be able to afford health for a newborn infant is not “beautiful,” but instead a clear indication of issues with health care.
It apparently did not occur to the rich asshole that despite a relatively small handful of companies handing out one-time bonuses after the passage of the GOP tax scam, most Americans have seen no benefit. Nor did the rich asshole seem to consider what the Azchet family’s situation would be not for the bonus. Or how the family will pay its medical bills once the bonus runs out.
Even worse, Republicans like the rich asshole have been working to make the precarious conditions for people like Azchet more difficult.
the rich asshole and Republicans in the House and Senate pushed hard to repeal of Obamacare and proposed a health care bill that would have stripped coverage from millions.
The trend after President Obama and congressional Democrats passed health care reform has been a drop in the uninsured, but the rich asshole has repeatedly worked to sabotage the program and leave families like the Azchets out in the cold.
American voters are concerned about health care and Republican attacks that try to undermine the system. Polling shows that health care is the top concern for them ahead of the midterm election. And those voters trust Democrats far more than Republicans when it comes to handling health care.
For some reason, that isn’t stopping Republicans from continuing to try to gut health care. Nevada Sen. Dean Heller, who faces a particularly challenging re-election battle this November, is still vowing to repeal Obamacare if he’s re-elected, even though it’s clearly not what voters want.
Struggling for health care and relying on corporate benevolence to provide for basic coverage is not “beautiful.” It is a sign that the reforms that were made need to be supported, not attacked, while other protections need to be put in place.
But the rich asshole and his fellow Republicans don’t care, and they’re fighting to hurt families every inch of the way.
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April 13, 2018
An explosive new report puts Michael Cohen in Prague during the summer of 2016, confirming a key part of the Steele dossier and providing the strongest evidence yet of collusion between the rich asshole campaign and Russia.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team reportedly has evidence that the rich asshole’s personal attorney and “fixer” Michael Cohen traveled to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign — a potentially explosive development that could prove to be the strongest evidence yet of collusion between the rich asshole campaign and Russia.
According to McClatchy, Cohen made the trip to Prague to meet with a Russian intelligence operative and strategize “about Russian meddling in the U.S. election.”
If verified, the evidence would confirm a key part of the so-called Steele dossier and undercut the rich asshole’s frequent claims of “no collusion.”
“It would also be one of the most significant developments thus far in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of whether the rich asshole campaign and the Kremlin worked together to help the rich asshole win the White House,” McClatchy reports.
The dossier, compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, alleges that Cohen traveled to Prague to meet with Kremlin operatives to “clean up the mess” caused by public reports about the rich asshole associates’ ties to Russia, which were starting to create buzz by late summer 2016.
It further alleges that Cohen, two Russians, and several Eastern European hackers met at the office of a Russian government-backed organization in Prague to discuss “how deniable cash payments were to be made to hackers in Europe who had worked under Kremlin direction against the Clinton campaign.”
The purpose of the meeting, according to the dossier, was to discuss how to “sweep it all under the carpet and make sure no connection could be fully established or proven.”
In other words, Cohen allegedly traveled to Prague in his role as a fixer — to keep something quiet that would be harmful to the rich asshole if it got out publicly. Just like he did with Stormy Daniels. And with Karen McDougal. And with a number of other embarrassing sexual stories related to the rich asshole ahead of the presidential election.
But this time, his job as the rich asshole’s fixer was to pay off Kremlin-backed hackers.
Cohen has vehemently denied having traveled to Prague, and at one point offered up his passport as proof. But Mueller’s team reportedly has evidence that Cohen entered the Czech Republic through Germany, which he could have done without a passport because of the open borders in many European countries.
The explosive new report comes just days after FBI agents raided Cohen’s office and residences. It also comes just hours after federal prosecutors revealed that Cohen has been under grand jury investigation for months related to his personal business dealings.
And now we know that Cohen not only made the trip to Prague, but he also lied about it — a development that raises the stakes of the investigation and provides the strongest evidence yet of collusion between the rich asshole campaign and Kremlin-backed operatives.
CNN political analyst calls BS on the rich asshole booster for claiming Cohen paid Stormy Daniels ‘to preserve his client’s marriage’
Bill Clinton adviser Paul Begala (left) and former the rich asshole campaign aide Steve Cortes (right). (Photo: via Screen capture)
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Steve Cortes, a onetime member of the rich asshole campaign’s Hispanic advisory council, was the subject of ridicule Friday after he suggested to fellow CNN co-panelists that the president’s longtime attorney paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 to protect his client’s marriage.
The former the rich asshole campaign adviser argued, as many others have, that the president’s voters knew what they were getting when they elected him — and that the recent FBI raid on Cohen regarding the Daniels payment is a “witch hunt.”
Agreeing with CNN political analyst Jeffrey Toobin and even Cortes’ assertion that Americans knew who the rich asshole was when voting for him, Clinton White House adviser Paul Begala said that it’s possible the rich asshole’s attorney Michael Cohen arranged the payment to affect the outcome of the 2016 election — an act that could feasibly be a violation of campaign finance law.
“Trump should have said, ‘look, okay, I made a mistake in my marriage,'” Begala continued. “It would have been fine, but you can’t spend 100, if in fact they did, spend $130,000 to affect the election and not report it, not disclose it.”
“What if it wasn’t to affect the election?” Cortes asked. “I’m not saying it happened, but let’s say he did. Let’s say he did sleep with Stormy Daniels. Wouldn’t it be plausible, at least, Paul, that this money might have been spent to preserve his marriage?”
“Two weeks before the election?” Begala said, smiling. “No. Sorry. The affair happened like 10 years ago.”
Watch below, via CNN:
‘Why did he need to lie to everybody?’ Intel Dem wonders about Michael Cohen’s Prague trip
Rep. Jim Himes and Michael Cohen, composite image.
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A Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee told MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews the new questions raised by reports that longtime some rich asshole lawyer Michael Cohen may have lied about a trip to Prague during the 2016 campaign.
“Let’s get to that story that just broke. that will special counsel Robert Mueller has evidence that the rich asshole’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, secretly made a late summer trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign,” Matthews reported.
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence member Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) joined Matthews to analyze the breaking news.
“Congressman Himes, what do you make of the fact there is now a factual argument, this isn’t about theory or interpretation, the guy was either in Prague that time — people don’t go the to the Prague every weekend — he was in Prague at a time he said he wasn’t there,” Mattthews concluded. “He was there according to Mueller’s investigation, what’s that tell you about the dossier and its credibility and what trouble that the rich asshole is in now that his fixer has been nailed?”
“I’ll tell you, it raises two other questions and makes a very obvious point,” Rep. Himes replied.
“Question number one, what was said in Prague with Michael Cohen?” he wondered. “Who did he meet with? What was said? What was the purpose that have trip?”
“Number two, which is more interesting, why did he need to lie about it?” Rep. Himes questioned. “If there is proof he was in Prague, why did he need to lie to everybody, including committees of Congress, about the fact that he was there?”
The Intel Democrat said “defenders of the president build their entire case” around the claim that Cohen was not in Prague and the dossier was fake.
“That entire case falls apart,” Congressman Himes concluded.
Watch:
Mueller’s team has evidence of a key Steele dossier claim about Michael Cohen in Prague
the rich asshole lawyer Michael Cohen (IowaPolitics.com/Flickr)
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Special counsel Robert Mueller reportedly has evidence corroborating a key claim from an infamous dossier authored by ex-MI6 spy Christopher Steele about the president’s longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen.
McClatchy reported Friday that federal investigators have information about Cohen taking a trip in the summer of 2016 to Prague — an allegation about the rich asshole’s attorney included in Steele’s controversial dossier.
In the dossier, Steele alleged that Cohen met with a prominent Russian official believed to be Konstantin Kosachev, the chairman of a Foreign Affairs Committee in the Russian legislature described as a “close ally” of Russian President Vladimir Putin. McClatchy’s two sources close to the matter were unable to confirm whether Mueller has information about whether Cohen met with Kosachev, who was one of the “Russian oligarchs” sanctioned by President some rich asshole earlier this month.
Cohen claimed in 2017 that he’d never been to Prague in a tweet that included a photo of his closed passport.
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April 13, 2018
Rep. Jim Jordan just laid out one of his most convoluted conspiracy theories to date.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) is known for spouting off some pretty unhinged conspiracy theories about the Russia investigation, which he says is nothing but an anti-the rich asshole witch-hunt orchestrated by the so-called “deep state” on behalf of Hillary Clinton.
On Wednesday, Jordan added a new layer to the conspiracy theory, alleging that Rod Rosenstein — the rich asshole’s handpicked deputy Attorney General — secretly plotted to trick the rich asshole into committing obstruction of justice by firing former FBI Director James Comey as part of a grand scheme to appoint a special counsel so he could investigate the rich asshole for committing obstruction of justice.
Jordan laid out the deranged scheme during an appearance on MSNBC, when host Katy Tur asked him about the rich asshole’s controversial decision to pardon Scooter Libby, a former advisor to Dick Cheney who was convicted of four felonies in 2007 for perjury before a grand jury, lying to FBI investigators, and obstruction of justice.
Given the crimes Libby was convicted with, there has been a great deal of speculation about what the rich asshole might have been trying to signal when he granted the pardon on Friday, prompting Tur to ask Jordan if he thinks the pardon looks suspicious under the circumstances.
“Do you think it looks a little bit suspicious for the president to pardon somebody who was convicted of lying to the FBI and obstruction of justice when all this stuff is going on?” Tur asked. “As a neutral observer, do you think it looks suspicious?”
Jordan immediately dodged the question, saying, “I’ll tell you what looks strange, or to use your words, suspicious … is when Rod Rosenstein writes the memo on why you should fire James Comey; Comey leaks a document to create momentum for Bob Mueller to be the special counsel; Rod Rosenstein gets Mueller to be the special counsel; and one of the things that Mueller is looking into is, was there obstruction of justice in the firing of James Comey.”
“If that’s not the swamp and suspicious and strange, I don’t know what is,” he continued. “There is lots of strange things happening in this town. I don’t see anything more strange than that scenario I just went through.”
Well, he’s right about one thing — that was definitely strange.
Jordan is arguing that Rosenstein plotted to fire Comey so he could trick the rich asshole into committing obstruction of justice, so he could then appoint a special counsel who could then investigate the rich asshole for obstructing justice.
Besides being ridiculous, Jordan’s conspiracy theory fails to account for the fact that the rich asshole is accused of committing obstruction of justice not once, not twice, not three times, but four times.
According to a report released Thursday, Mueller is finalizing his findings on four potential acts of obstruction by the rich asshole — and only one of them involves the firing of Comey.
The other areas of potential obstruction include the rich asshole’s involvement in drafting a misleading statement about the June 2016 the rich asshole Tower meeting, the dangling of pardonsto grand jury witnesses, and the rich asshole’s role in pressuring Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from the Russia probe.
Jordan didn’t mention any of these instances, nor whether he believes the rich asshole was tricked into obstructing justice in four different situations.
He also didn’t mention whether he thinks some rich asshole Jr. was tricked into attending a meetingwith a Russian lawyer who promised to deliver dirt on Clinton, or whether Mike Flynn was tricked into lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials, or whether Jared Kushner and Jeff Sessions were tricked into concealing their contacts with Russia, or whether Rick Gates was tricked into lying to the FBI about lobbying on behalf of pro-Putin politicians in Ukraine, or whether Roger Stone was tricked into communicating with a Russian intelligence operative.
Nor did he mention whether he thinks the rich asshole was tricked into repeatedly showering praise on Putin, refusing to stand up to Russia, or revealing highly classified intelligence to Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.
But there’s one thing Jordan did make time to mention: With Paul Ryan announcing his retirement, Jordan is seriously considering a bid to replace him as speaker of the House.
the rich asshole fears Michael Cohen investigation greater ‘imminent’ threat than Mueller: report
President some rich asshole's longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen (Screen capture)
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Longtime some rich asshole lawyer Michael Cohen poses a greater “imminent” threat to the White House than special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigations into Russia interference in the 2016 election and obstruction of justice, The New York Times reported Friday.
Citing “several” people close to President the rich asshole, the times reports his “advisers have concluded that a wide-ranging corruption investigation in New York poses a greater and more imminent threat to the president than even the special counsel’s investigation.”
The president has also “found himself increasingly isolated” The Times explained.
“some rich asshole, Mr. Cohen and their teams were still scrambling on Friday to assess the damage from the raid early Monday morning,” The Times. “They remained unsure what had been taken, an uncertainty that has heightened the unease around some rich asshole.”
Read the full report by Matt Apuzzo, Michael Schmidt, Maggie Haberman and Eileen Sullivan.
‘So ordered’: Court grants the rich asshole request to intervene in Michael Cohen case
some rich asshole during CNN debate (Photo: Screen capture via video)
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A federal judge in Manhattan granted President some rich asshole’s request to intervene in the court hearing regarding longtime attorney Michael Cohen, whose offices were raided on Monday.
Erica Orden, a political reporter for The Wall Street Journal broke the news via Twitter on Friday.
“The Court GRANTS the application of President the rich asshole to intervene in this proceeding. SO ORDERED,” she tweeted.
"President Trump" was, officially, granted intervention in the Cohen case. pic.twitter.com/0fqDnOVPlj
‘What the heck is going on at the RNC?’: CNN’s Jake Tapper grills GOP chair about Cohen’s role in Republican Party
CNN's Jake Tapper (Screengrab)
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Along with being the president’s longtime personal attorney, Michael Cohen is the national deputy finance director of the Republican National Committee — a fact that CNN’s Jake Tapper drove home Friday when interviewing RNC chair Ronna Romney McDaniel.
“Minutes ago, you accepted the resignation of Elliot Broidy, the deputy finance chair of the RNC, after the Wall Street Journal broke the news that a different deputy finance director of the RNC, Michael Cohen, also president the rich asshole’s personal lawyer, negotiated a $1.6 million payout to a Playboy model that Broidy impregnated while married,” Tapper told McDaniel.
“Cohen, we learned from the Justice Department this afternoon, is also under criminal investigation on top of the fact that former finance chair Steve Wynn is being accused of sexual harassment and assault,” he continued. “My first question for you is: what the heck is going on at the RNC?”
McDaniel responded by saying that “obviously, these developments are new to me.”
Watch below, via CNN:
MSNBC host hammers Ohio Republican Jim Jordan after he tries to answer tough questions by talking about Hillary Clinton
MSNBC anchor Katy Tur
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The GOP modus operandi seems to be that each time a complicated question is asked, the answer is instead related to Hillary Clinton. When a question is asked that requires you to bash a fellow Republican, Hillary Clinton is the way out. When in doubt, Republicans using Hillary Clinton gets them out. That is, until Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) went up against MSNBC’s Katy Tur.
In a Friday conversation about the pardon of convicted former Dick Cheney chief of staff Scooter Libby, Jordan harkened back to the rich asshole’s 2016 opponent.
“Do you think the timing of pardoning somebody like Scooter Libby who is convicted of lying to federal investigators and obstructing justice is fishy at all?” Tur asked. “Because some folks think it is.”
Jordan claimed there was a “double standard” because of Hillary Clinton.
“The idea that Secretary Clinton — I asked her under oath in the Benghazi hearing if she would agree to a neutral third party examining her e-mails and deciding which ones we on the committee should receive and which ones were personal. She got an even better deal,” Jordan began. “They got to decide versus what happened to Michael Cohen earlier this week where they go grab everything.”
Tur interrupted Jordan noting Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein approved the search warrant for Cohen.
“Can you answer the question without using Hillary Clinton‘s name?” she demanded. “Do you think it looks suspicious for the president to pardon somebody who was convicted of lying to the FBI and obstruction of justice when all this stuff is going on?”
In his answer, he even brought up Clinton again. Tur stopped him.
“Secretary Clinton is not the President of the United States, she’s not running for anything any longer,” Tur said. “The president is the President of the United States and there are a lot of questions surrounding it. You can’t deny they have come up with a number of indictments that a lot of people have pleaded guilty… to crimes already.”
“I mean, it sounds like you are saying they are being strong-armed and there is a Justice Department conspiracy out to take out this president and his campaign,” she continued.
Watch the full clip below:
Michael Cohen skips court to smoke cigars, judge fumes
It's been a wild week for the rich asshole's maybe-current, maybe-former personal attorney.
Michael Cohen, President some rich asshole’s maybe-current, maybe-former personal attorney, is having a nice Friday afternoon, smoking cigars on a Manhattan bench with his friends on the first truly beautiful day in New York City in months.
According to CNN, Cohen told photographers who captured him smoking cigars with his friends to send all the great pictures they’d taken of him to his mother.
Meanwhile, his lawyers are in court, where a judge is reportedly upset that Cohen isn’t there with them.
Earlier this week, FBI agents raided Cohen’s office and residences, and the search warrants reportedly included conversations between Cohen and the rich asshole, who has been Cohen’s only client for years, though White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Friday she didn’t know whether Cohen still represented the rich asshole. The search also reportedly included, possibly among other things, documents related a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, which Cohen made just days before the 2016 election.
Daniels, an adult film actress, says she had an affair with the rich asshole in 2006.
Whatever the state of their relationship, the rich asshole and Cohen’s lawyers went to court Friday in an effort to block the Justice Department from reading seized documents, and although Cohen was not technically required to be there, a judge seemed upset that he didn’t appear.
Asked to specify how many clients shared attorney-client privilege with Cohen, his attorney said, “I need more time to really analyze that question.”
To shield "potentially innocent individuals" she cited earlier today, Judge Wood mentioned the possibility of using pseudonyms.
Will Stormy Daniels get yet another moniker?
Looping back to a detail that I missed earlier.
Judge Wood seemed miffed that Michael Cohen was not in court.
"Your inability to answer these questions suggest to me that your client Mr. Cohen should be in court with you next time," she told Harrison.
“Your inability to answer these questions suggest to me that your client, Mr. Cohen, should be in court with you next time,” the judge told his lawyer, according to reporters in the room.
According to The Wall Street Journal, a prosecutor asked the judge to deny Cohen’s emergency stay Friday, saying, “This has clearly been a delay tactic from the outset.” For now, the judge has ordered Cohen’s attorney to bring Cohen to the upcoming court hearing Monday.
Cohen’s afternoon smoking cigars with his apparently denim-loving friends comes just one day after his lawyers confirmed that Cohen will invoke his Fifth Amendment rights and will not answer any questions about the Daniels’ case in an effort to avoid self-incrimination. On Friday, the DOJ also confirmed that Cohen has been under criminal investigation in New York for months because of his business dealings.
the rich asshole called Cohen to ‘check in’ on him — and it might make his legal problems even worse
President some rich asshole and Michael Cohen, composite image. (Photo of the rich asshole by Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
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Donald the rich asshole reportedly called his recently-raided attorney Michael Cohen Friday — and according to some legal experts, it may make the president’s legal issues even worse.
The New York Times reported Friday that the rich asshole called his longtime personal attorney to “check in” on him after the FBI raided the lawyer’s office and residences Monday. It’s unclear what else was discussed on the call, but the report noted that attorneys often “advise their clients not to talk to each other during investigations.” The Times also reported that both the rich asshole and Cohen “still were trying to determine what exactly was seized.”
The Times reported on the call soon after news broke that the Southern District of New York’s warrant to search Cohen indicates that he’s “under criminal investigation.” The call from the president came as Cohen, along with his own attorney, went to federal court to halt the FBI from reviewing the documents they seized from him.
POLITICS
Joe Wilson Reacts To Scooter Libby Pardon: ‘the rich asshole Is A Vile And Despicable Individual’
The former ambassador and his wife, former CIA agent Valerie Plame, were at the center of the Libby case. She says the rich asshole’s basis for the pardon is “simply false.”
WASHINGTON ― Former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson, a man whose family was turned upside down by Scooter Libby and other President George W. Bush administration officials, sharply criticized President some rich asshole for pardoning Libby, saying it showed his disregard for America’s national security.
“It has nothing to do with Libby, and it has nothing to do with me,” Wilson told HuffPost Friday. “Libby’s problem was with the Justice Department. He was indicted, tried and convicted on obstruction of justice and perjury charges for basically violating the national security of the United States of America.”
“Now he’s being pardoned for it, which suggests of course that some rich asshole is willing to allow people to violate the essence of our defense structure, our national security, our intelligence apparatus and essentially get away with it,” he added.
Wilson was a key figure in questioning whether the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to invade Iraq. His 2003 New York Times op-ed undermined Bush’s claim that Iraq’s former President Saddam Hussein had purchased materials needed for a nuclear weapon from Africa. He came to his conclusion after traveling to Niger in 2002, on behalf of the CIA, to investigate whether Saddam had purchased uranium yellowcake.
The Bush administration leaked the name of Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, a covert CIA agent, to the press in its attempts to undercut Wilson. That move effectively ended her career with the agency.
Plame similarly told MSNBC on Friday that the rich asshole’s actions show “you can commit crimes against national security and you will be pardoned.”
In 2007, a federal jury found Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, guilty of lying about his role in the leak of Plame’s identity and of obstructing the probe into the leak.
“I don’t know Mr. Libby, but for years I have heard that he has been treated unfairly,” the rich asshole said in a statement Friday. “Hopefully, this full pardon will help rectify a very sad portion of his life.”
In a statement later, Plame said the rich asshole’s comments were not based on the truth, noting that a jury heard the evidence and convicted him, and even Bush refused to pardon him.
Bush did commute Libby’s sentence, sparing him from serving in prison.
Wilson also said he finds the rich asshole to be a “vile and despicable individual” who is “utterly unacceptable as president.”
Wilson’s full comments to HuffPost below:
It has nothing to do with Libby, and it has nothing to do with me. Libby’s problem was with the Justice Department. He was indicted, tried and convicted on obstruction of justice and perjury charges for basically violating the national security of the United States of America.Now he’s being pardoned for it, which suggests of course that some rich asshole is willing to allow people to violate the essence of our defense structure, our national security, our intelligence apparatus and essentially get away with it.Tactically, I think it was a very interesting political move because he’s suddenly rallied all the neoconservatives to come out of their rocks and once again be at the forefront of American military adventurism. To wit, the reappearance of John Bolton as national security adviser. As to Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing, I think they just demonstrate once again what comedians they are on the stage that is now Washington D.C.Finally, as to the rich asshole, he is a vile and despicable individual. He represents the repudiation of everything that my generation has worked to secure for our nation and its people. I find him utterly unacceptable as president.
Plame’s statement:
President some rich asshole has granted a pardon to I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby on the basis that he was “treated unfairly.” That is simply false. Libby was convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury in a fair trial. President George W. Bush closely reviewed the facts in the case at the behest of Vice President Dick Cheney, who urged a pardon. Both the President and the Vice President willingly testified themselves. President Bush declined to issue a pardon, stating “I respect the jury’s verdict.” He added, “And if a person does not tell the truth, particularly if he serves in government and holds the public trust, he must be held accountable.” President’s the rich asshole’s pardon is not based on the truth.
This story has been updated with Valerie Plame’s comments.
Sarah Sanders flips out on ‘disgraced partisan hack’ James Comey during White House press briefing
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Screenshot)
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White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Friday berated former FBI director James Comey as “a liar and a leaker.”
President some rich asshole’s top spokesperson insisted firing Comey was the right thing to do. She said his new book “belongs in the bargain bin of the fiction section.”
“Comey will forever be known as a disgraced partisan hack that broke his sacred trust with the president of the United States,” Sanders said. “One of the president’s great achievements will go down as firing James Comey.”
She later insisted the rich asshole had respect for law enforcement and the rule of law, despite the president making public criticisms of his own Department of Justice nominees.
Sanders also attacked the media for allegedly “praising” Comey and “propping him up.”
“We shouldn’t be praising him we should be putting him down,” she added. “We should be taking him off of air.”
Before the press briefing, the rich asshole had attacked Comey as an “untruthful slime ball” over his new book. Comey compared the rich asshole to a mob boss and said the rich asshole asked him whether Russians did have a video tape of him in a hotel room with prostitutes.
POLITICS
the rich asshole Lawyer Arranged Payoff To Playboy Playmate For Republican Fundraiser
Michael Cohen handled the matter on behalf of Elliott Broidy.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President some rich asshole’s personal lawyer arranged for a $1.6 million payment to a Playboy Playmate to keep secret her sexual relationship with a top Republican fundraiser and ally of the rich asshole, a person familiar with the matter said.
Michael Cohen, whose home and office were raided this week by FBI agents searching in part for information about payoffs to women alleging sexual encounters with the rich asshole, handled the matter on behalf of the fundraiser, Elliott Broidy, the person said.
The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity, was confirming a report by the Wall Street Journal.
In a statement on Friday, Broidy acknowledged that he had a relationship with a Playboy Playmate and offered to help her financially after she told him she was pregnant. The woman’s name has not been made public and the source declined to disclose it.
“She alone decided that she did not want to continue with the pregnancy and I offered to help her financially during this difficult period. We have not spoken since that time,” Broidy said in the statement.
Broidy said Cohen contacted him after being contacted by the woman’s attorney, Keith Davidson.Broidy said he retained Cohen because Cohen had a prior relationship with Davidson.
Cohen and Davidson did not immediate respond to requests for comment.
A source familiar with the situation said Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel has accepted Broidy’s resignation.
(Reporting by Karen Freifeld, Nathan Layne and Steve Holland in Washington; Editing by Leslie Adler and David Gregorio)
POLITICS
Comey Memoir: Hiding Clinton Email News Would’ve Made Her Presidency ‘Illegitimate’
The former FBI director writes that he assumed the rich asshole would lose and that his wife and daughters voted for Clinton and participated in the Women’s March.
WASHINGTON ― Former FBI Director James Comey ― whom Hillary Clinton blames for her 2016 Electoral College loss ― writes in his upcoming book that he thought the former secretary of state would defeat some rich asshole and concedes that assumption might have affected the way he handled the Clinton email probe.
HuffPost obtained a chapter of the book, A Higher Loyalty, which is set to be released Tuesday, that focuses on Comey’s handling of the Clinton email probe. In the book, Comey writes that he’s replayed the way he handled the Clinton email investigation in his mind “hundreds of times” and that he understands Democrats were “baffled” and “outraged” at the actions he took.
Comey details the decision he made in the final days of the 2016 campaign to send a letter informing Congress that the FBI was examining newly discovered emails ― found on former Rep. Anthony Weiner’s laptop ― that may have been relevant to the Clinton email investigation that had been closed months earlier.
The letter to Congress made its way to the media “in about ten minutes, which in Washington was about nine minutes later than I expected,” Comey writes. His world, he says, “caught back on fire.”
Comey concedes that, unconsciously, the near-universal consensus at that point that Clinton would roundly defeat the rich asshole could have affected his decision-making:
I was surprised when some rich asshole was elected president. I had assumed from media polling that Hillary Clinton was going to win. I have asked myself many times since if I was influenced by that assumption. I don’t know. Certainly not consciously, but I would be a fool to say it couldn’t have had an impact on me. It is entirely possible that, because I was making decisions in an environment where Hillary Clinton was sure to be the next president, my concern about making her an illegitimate president by concealing the restarted investigation bore greater weight than it would have if the election appeared closer or if some rich asshole were ahead in all polls. But I don’t know.
Debates within the FBI about the decision, Comey writes, “kept coming back to the same place: the credibility of the institutions of justice was at stake.”
He writes:
Assuming, as nearly everyone did, that Hillary Clinton would be elected president of the United States in less than two weeks, what would happen to the FBI, the Justice Department, or her own presidency if it later was revealed, after the fact, that she was still a subject of an FBI investigation? What if, after the election, we actually found information that demonstrated prosecutable criminal activity? No matter what we found, that act of concealment would be catastrophic to the integrity of the FBI and the Department of Justice.
Comey writes that he was also concerned there could be leaks out of the FBI’s New York field office, although he said he didn’t base his decision on the prospect of the news leaking out. He writes that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch also suggested the news might have leaked out before the election anyway if Comey hadn’t sent his letter.
His wife had wanted Clinton to be the first woman president, Comey writes, and he’s still haunted by the notion that decisions in the final days of the election could have swayed things.
“I hope very much that what we did ― what I did ― wasn’t a deciding factor in the election. I say that with a wife and daughters who voted for Hillary Clinton and walked in the 2017 Women’s March in D.C. the day after some rich asshole’s inauguration,” Comey writes.
Comey’s wife, he said, understood what he did, but “resented the fact that I had to stand out front and take another hit.” She said it was like he was “stepping in front of the institution to get shot.”
The former FBI director writes that he’s “sorry that I couldn’t do a better job explaining to her and her supporters why I made the decisions I made.”
Comey did get some private support from Democrats. He writes that Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) tearfully told Comey he knew he was “in an impossible position.”
But Lynch, Comey says, didn’t offer any direct endorsement of his decision during a meeting right before the election, on Oct. 31. Comey describes an awkward hug between himself and Lynch, who is roughly 18 inches shorter than he is, in great detail.
I want you to know that nothing ― nothing ― has happened in the last year to change my view.President Barack Obama to James Comey, according to Comey’s book
“When our bodies came together, her face went into my solar plexus as she wrapped her arms around me. I reached down and pressed both forearms, also awkwardly, against her back,” he writes.
Lynch, Comey says, didn’t tell Comey he’d done the right thing or thank him for taking the heat. And when the meeting ended, Lynch told him to “try to look beat up.”
“She had told somebody she was going to chew me out for what I had done. What a world,” he writes.
Ultimately, Comey says that he wouldn’t have done things differently, even with what he knows now, but that he “can imagine good and principled people in my shoes making different choices about some things.” He thinks “different choices would have resulted in greater damage to our country’s institutions of justice, but I’m not certain of that. I pray no future FBI director is forced to find out.”
Comey also recounts meeting with Obama in the Oval Office in late November, after the rich asshole was elected. He says when the meeting broke up, Obama asked him to stay behind.
“I picked you to be FBI director because of your integrity and your ability,” Comey says Obama told him. “I want you to know that nothing ― nothing ― has happened in the last year to change my view.”
Comey said those were the words he “needed to hear” and that even though Obama wasn’t necessarily saying he agreed with Comey’s decisions, he was indicating he knew where they came from. Comey said hearing Obama’s words brought on “a wave of emotion” and left Comey almost on the verge of tears.
“That means a lot to me, Mr. President,” Comey says he told Obama. “I have hated the last year. The last thing we want is to be involved in an election. I’m just trying to do the right thing.”
Comey writes that while he didn’t support Obama when he first ran, by November 2016 Comey had “developed great respect for him as a leader and a person” and realized at that moment the “full weight of his imminent departure” and what that meant.
“Mr. President, my wife would kill me if I didn’t take the opportunity to thank you and to tell you how much I’m going to miss you,” Comey says he told Obama. “I dread the next four years, but in some ways, I feel more pressure to stay now.”
Comey says Obama didn’t respond. “Instead he patted me on the arm, then we rose and shook hands, and I walked out of the Oval Office,” Comey writes. “Soon that same office would have a new and very different occupant.”
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.
POLITICS
the rich asshole Pardons Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney’s Former Chief Of Staff
Libby was convicted of lying about how he learned of a CIA agent’s identity.
President some rich asshole pardoned I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby Friday, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney who was convicted in 2007 of perjury and obstruction of justice after a leak that disclosed a CIA agent’s name.
“I don’t know Mr. Libby, but for years I have heard that he has been treated unfairly,” the rich asshole said in a statement from the White House. “Hopefully, this full pardon will help rectify a very sad portion of his life.”
Cheney issued a statement about the pardon.
“Scooter Libby is one of the most capable, principled, and honorable men I have ever known. He is innocent, and he and his family have suffered for years because of his wrongful conviction,” the former vice president said.
ABC News and The Washington Post both reported this week that the rich asshole had been considering the pardon for a few months, but there was no clear timeline for when it might happen.
The chief prosecutor in Libby’s case, Patrick Fitzgerald, also happens to be friends with former FBI Director James Comey. The pardon comes as the rich asshole has been railing against Comey as a “liar” and a “leaker” for writing about his interactions with the president in his new memoir.
Libby was charged in 2005 with lying to the FBI, perjury and obstruction of justice following an investigation into who leaked the identity of Valerie Plame, a covert CIA operative at the time, to various journalists. Libby, according to prosecutors, lied about where he learned of her identity and what he discussed with reporters.
He pleaded not guilty but resigned from his position and was disbarred until 2016. He was also sentenced in 2007 to 30 months in prison and fined $250,000 for his role in the leak case.
President George W. Bush refused to grant a pardon to Libby, despite Cheney pushing for it, although the former president did commute Libby’s 30-month prison sentence.
Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage eventually admitted in 2006 that he was the one who inadvertently revealed Plame’s identity.
Plame released the following statement on Libby’s pardon:
President some rich asshole has granted a pardon to I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby on the basis that he was “treated unfairly”. That is simply false. Libby was convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury in a fair trial. President George W. Bush closely reviewed the facts in the case at the behest of Vice President Dick Cheney, who urged a pardon. Both the President and the Vice President willingly testified themselves. President Bush declined to issue a pardon, stating “I respect the jury’s verdict.” He added, “And if a person does not tell the truth, particularly if he serves in government and holds the public trust, he must be held accountable.” President’s the rich asshole’s pardon is not based on the truth.
the rich asshole’s most controversial pardon to date was that of former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio last August. Arpaio had been convicted of criminal contempt for violating a federal judge’s order to stop detaining individuals the sheriff believed were in the country illegally. Arpaio had a long history of discrimination and unlawful policing toward Hispanics. He’s now running for Senate.
This article has been updated with a statement from Plame.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story indicated that Libby was convicted in 2005 instead of 2007.
POLITICS
Comey Memoir: Hiding Clinton Email News Would’ve Made Her Presidency ‘Illegitimate’
The former FBI director writes that he assumed the rich asshole would lose and that his wife and daughters voted for Clinton and participated in the Women’s March.
WASHINGTON ― Former FBI Director James Comey ― whom Hillary Clinton blames for her 2016 Electoral College loss ― writes in his upcoming book that he thought the former secretary of state would defeat some rich asshole and concedes that assumption might have affected the way he handled the Clinton email probe.
HuffPost obtained a chapter of the book, A Higher Loyalty, which is set to be released Tuesday, that focuses on Comey’s handling of the Clinton email probe. In the book, Comey writes that he’s replayed the way he handled the Clinton email investigation in his mind “hundreds of times” and that he understands Democrats were “baffled” and “outraged” at the actions he took.
Comey details the decision he made in the final days of the 2016 campaign to send a letter informing Congress that the FBI was examining newly discovered emails ― found on former Rep. Anthony Weiner’s laptop ― that may have been relevant to the Clinton email investigation that had been closed months earlier.
The letter to Congress made its way to the media “in about ten minutes, which in Washington was about nine minutes later than I expected,” Comey writes. His world, he says, “caught back on fire.”
Comey concedes that, unconsciously, the near-universal consensus at that point that Clinton would roundly defeat the rich asshole could have affected his decision-making:
I was surprised when some rich asshole was elected president. I had assumed from media polling that Hillary Clinton was going to win. I have asked myself many times since if I was influenced by that assumption. I don’t know. Certainly not consciously, but I would be a fool to say it couldn’t have had an impact on me. It is entirely possible that, because I was making decisions in an environment where Hillary Clinton was sure to be the next president, my concern about making her an illegitimate president by concealing the restarted investigation bore greater weight than it would have if the election appeared closer or if some rich asshole were ahead in all polls. But I don’t know.
Debates within the FBI about the decision, Comey writes, “kept coming back to the same place: the credibility of the institutions of justice was at stake.”
He writes:
Assuming, as nearly everyone did, that Hillary Clinton would be elected president of the United States in less than two weeks, what would happen to the FBI, the Justice Department, or her own presidency if it later was revealed, after the fact, that she was still a subject of an FBI investigation? What if, after the election, we actually found information that demonstrated prosecutable criminal activity? No matter what we found, that act of concealment would be catastrophic to the integrity of the FBI and the Department of Justice.
Comey writes that he was also concerned there could be leaks out of the FBI’s New York field office, although he said he didn’t base his decision on the prospect of the news leaking out. He writes that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch also suggested the news might have leaked out before the election anyway if Comey hadn’t sent his letter.
His wife had wanted Clinton to be the first woman president, Comey writes, and he’s still haunted by the notion that decisions in the final days of the election could have swayed things.
“I hope very much that what we did ― what I did ― wasn’t a deciding factor in the election. I say that with a wife and daughters who voted for Hillary Clinton and walked in the 2017 Women’s March in D.C. the day after some rich asshole’s inauguration,” Comey writes.
Comey’s wife, he said, understood what he did, but “resented the fact that I had to stand out front and take another hit.” She said it was like he was “stepping in front of the institution to get shot.”
The former FBI director writes that he’s “sorry that I couldn’t do a better job explaining to her and her supporters why I made the decisions I made.”
Comey did get some private support from Democrats. He writes that Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) tearfully told Comey he knew he was “in an impossible position.”
But Lynch, Comey says, didn’t offer any direct endorsement of his decision during a meeting right before the election, on Oct. 31. Comey describes an awkward hug between himself and Lynch, who is roughly 18 inches shorter than he is, in great detail.
I want you to know that nothing ― nothing ― has happened in the last year to change my view.President Barack Obama to James Comey, according to Comey’s book
“When our bodies came together, her face went into my solar plexus as she wrapped her arms around me. I reached down and pressed both forearms, also awkwardly, against her back,” he writes.
Lynch, Comey says, didn’t tell Comey he’d done the right thing or thank him for taking the heat. And when the meeting ended, Lynch told him to “try to look beat up.”
“She had told somebody she was going to chew me out for what I had done. What a world,” he writes.
Ultimately, Comey says that he wouldn’t have done things differently, even with what he knows now, but that he “can imagine good and principled people in my shoes making different choices about some things.” He thinks “different choices would have resulted in greater damage to our country’s institutions of justice, but I’m not certain of that. I pray no future FBI director is forced to find out.”
Comey also recounts meeting with Obama in the Oval Office in late November, after the rich asshole was elected. He says when the meeting broke up, Obama asked him to stay behind.
“I picked you to be FBI director because of your integrity and your ability,” Comey says Obama told him. “I want you to know that nothing ― nothing ― has happened in the last year to change my view.”
Comey said those were the words he “needed to hear” and that even though Obama wasn’t necessarily saying he agreed with Comey’s decisions, he was indicating he knew where they came from. Comey said hearing Obama’s words brought on “a wave of emotion” and left Comey almost on the verge of tears.
“That means a lot to me, Mr. President,” Comey says he told Obama. “I have hated the last year. The last thing we want is to be involved in an election. I’m just trying to do the right thing.”
Comey writes that while he didn’t support Obama when he first ran, by November 2016 Comey had “developed great respect for him as a leader and a person” and realized at that moment the “full weight of his imminent departure” and what that meant.
“Mr. President, my wife would kill me if I didn’t take the opportunity to thank you and to tell you how much I’m going to miss you,” Comey says he told Obama. “I dread the next four years, but in some ways, I feel more pressure to stay now.”
Comey says Obama didn’t respond. “Instead he patted me on the arm, then we rose and shook hands, and I walked out of the Oval Office,” Comey writes. “Soon that same office would have a new and very different occupant.”
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.
POLITICS
the rich asshole Floated Rejoining Trans-Pacific Partnership, Walked It Back Hours Later: Report
He withdrew from the TPP three days after entering office.
President some rich asshole reportedly asked top administration officials on Thursday to look into rejoining the Trans-Pacific Partnership, only to make it sound like the prospect was unlikely hours later.
He made the request to Larry Kudlow, his new National Economic Council director, and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, after meeting with Republican lawmakers and governors from agricultural states, The New York Times reported. They said they were worried about farmers being negatively affected by the added tariffs that the rich asshole administration has threatened to place on several countries in the pact, including China, Japan, Canada and Mexico.
Shortly before midnight on Thursday, however, the rich asshole tweeted that he would only rejoin the TPP if he could negotiate a “substantially better” deal than the pre-existing one.
the rich asshole was “bullish” about his request, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), who attended the meeting, told The Washington Post.
Kudlow said he was taken aback by the abruptness of the request.
“This whole trade thing has exploded,” Kudlow told The New York Times on Thursday. “There’s no deadline. We’ll pull a team together, but we haven’t even done — I mean, it just happened a couple hours ago.”
Members of the trade pact, meanwhile, showed little enthusiasm for the possible shift in stance.
“We’ve got a deal” already, Steven Ciobo, Australia’s trade minister, said Friday. “I can’t see that all being thrown open to appease the United States.” Yoshihide Suga, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, also warned of the difficulties associated with renegotiating.
the rich asshole withdrew from the deal ― which he said was “pushed by special interests who want to rape our country” ― three days after entering office. He floated the possibility of re-entering under the right conditions earlier this year at the World Economic Forum.
POLITICS
James Comey: Discussing ‘Pee Tape’ Dossier With the rich asshole Was ‘Out Of Body Experience’
In his first TV interview promoting his new book, the fired FBI director repeatedly said he was stunned by his interactions with the rich asshole.
WASHINGTON ― Former FBI Director James Comey, in his first television interview promoting his new memoir, described a January 2017 meeting with then-incoming president some rich asshole as “really weird” and “almost an out of body experience.”
“I was floating above myself, looking down, saying, ‘You’re sitting here, briefing the incoming president of the United States about prostitutes in Moscow,’” Comey told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, describing the meeting with the president-elect at the rich asshole Tower.
Comey, in a clip of the interview that aired Friday, said he briefed the rich asshole on the so-called pee tape allegations contained in an unverified dossier from former British spy Christopher Steele.
“I started to tell him about the allegation was that he had been involved with prostitutes in a hotel in Moscow in 2013 during the visit for the Miss Universe pageant and that the Russians had filmed the episode, and he interrupted very defensively and started talking about it, you know, ‘Do I look like a guy who needs hookers?’” Comey said. “And I assumed he was asking that rhetorically. I didn’t answer that, and I just moved on.”
Former FBI Director James Comey tells @GStephanopoulos President Trump asked him to investigate the salacious allegations from the so-called “dossier” to "prove that it didn't happen." abcn.ws/2qvKnUb
Comey repeatedly said he was flabbergasted that the conversation was even happening. When Stephanopoulos asked if he believed the rich asshole’s denials, Comey said he wasn’t sure.
“I honestly never thought these words would come out of my mouth, but I don’t know whether the current president of the United States was with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow in 2013,” Comey said. “It’s possible, but I don’t know.”
The interview was taped earlier this week, and the full version is set to air on Sunday, ahead of the book’s release on Tuesday.
Excerpts of the book began to leak on Thursday, revealing no major new bombshells. Comey testified before Congress in June, a month after the rich asshole abruptly fired him amid the FBI investigation into whether his campaign colluded with Russia.
But the book appears to contain vivid new details of Comey’s interactions with the rich asshole, and searing criticisms of the president’s demeanor and fitness for office.
The excerpts reported on Thursday included Comey’s description of the rich asshole’s obsession with disproving the pee tape allegations, which came up in several conversations.
In the clip of his ABC interview aired Friday, Comey said he was stunned that the rich asshole and his team were focused on what he called “a PR conversation” rather than concerns about Russian meddling in the election and “what’s coming next.” He said the rich asshole’s team started discussing “drafting a press release” before he left the meeting.
“That’s just not done,” the former FBI boss said. “The intelligence community does intelligence, the White House does PR and spin.”
POLITICS
the rich asshole Reportedly Plans To Pardon Scooter Libby
Libby was charged in an investigation into who leaked a covert CIA agent’s identity to journalists.
President some rich asshole reportedly plans to pardon I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney who was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice after a leak that disclosed a CIA agent’s name.
Sources told ABC News and The Washington Post that the rich asshole has been considering the pardon for a few months, but there was no clear timeline for when it might happen.
While there was also no sense of the president’s motive for a pardon, John Bolton, the rich asshole’s new national security adviser, was among those who advocated for Libby’s exoneration, The New York Times reported.
The chief prosecutor in Libby’s case, Patrick Fitzgerald, also happens to be friends with former FBI Director James Comey.
Libby was charged in 2005 with lying to the FBI, lying to investigators and obstruction of justice in an investigation of who leaked the identity of Valerie Plame, who at the time worked as a covert CIA operative, to various journalists. He was sentenced in 2007 to 30 months in prison and fined $250,000 for his role in the leak case.
President George W. Bush refused to grant a pardon to Libby, despite Cheney pushing for it, although he did commute Libby’s 30-month prison sentence.
the rich asshole’s most controversial pardon to date was that of former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio last August. Arpaio has a long history of discrimination and unlawful policing towards Latinos. He’s now running for Senate.
CORRECTION: The subheadline and text in a previous version of this story indicated Libby was charged with leaking Plame’s identity. In fact, he was charged with lying to the FBI, lying to investigators and obstruction of justice in the course of the investigation into who leaked Plame’s identity.
POLITICS
the rich asshole Orders Review Of U.S. Postal Service After Complaining That Amazon Was Taking Advantage
The order’s language will likely encourage the task force to see if USPS can charge companies like Amazon more for parcel delivery.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President some rich asshole on Thursday ordered the creation of a task force to study the U.S. Postal Service and its financial difficulties, after recently claiming without evidence that deliveries for Amazon.com Inc were costing the service money.
The task force will look into the post office’s business model, similar to a commission set up by U.S. President George Bush in 2002.
“The USPS is on an unsustainable financial path and must be restructured to prevent a taxpayer-funded bailout,” said the order, signed by the rich asshole. It said the Postal Service had lost $65 billion since the 2007-2009 recession.
The Postal Service, which is supposed to be self-sustaining, must ask Congress for permission to raise rates and must pre-fund decades worth of retiree health benefits.
The order did not mention Amazon, which the rich asshole has regularly criticized in recent weeks.
However, the order asked the task force to evaluate “the expansion and pricing of the package delivery market and the USPS’s role in competitive markets,” among other issues.
Deliveries for Amazon and other online retailers have been the fastest-growing part of the U.S. Postal Service business, helping offset a sharp decline in regular first-class mail.
Details of Amazon’s payments to USPS are not publicly known.
Wall Street analysts have estimated it pays USPS roughly half what it would to United Parcel Service Inc or FedEx Corp to deliver a package.
The order’s language will likely encourage the task force to see if USPS can charge companies like Amazon more for parcel delivery, a person who previously worked at the Postal Regulatory Commission said on condition of anonymity.
Amazon declined to comment. Though the company is one of the Postal Service’s biggest customers, it is increasingly growing its own delivery capacity, which could help it stem any impact from changes to USPS.
The task force will be chaired by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin or his designee, and it will consult with the Postmaster General and the Chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission, among others, the executive order said.
Updated
the rich asshole’s ICE Chief Loves His Deportation Force — And Thinks You Should Too
Thomas Homan is unlike anyone who has run Immigration and Customs Enforcement before. What happens when you put a cop in charge of deporting people?
By Roque Planas
The day Thomas Homan turned the immigration debate on its head, he could have just presented his agency’s budget request like he was asked.
The first nine people to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency President some rich asshole picked Homan to lead last January, rarely courted controversy. Most of them were lawyers, adept at the art of bipartisan doublespeak and content to leave policy fights to politicians. They generally described ICE as a national security agency, emphasizing its investigative work and the number of criminals removed, while downplaying its core function: deporting people who pose little or no threat.
But last June, when Homan was supposed to be explaining to a House subcommittee why ICE needed a 29 percent budget increase to $7.9 billion, he pierced the bubble of diplomacy that has surrounded the agency since its founding — with a threat.
“If you’re in this country illegally and you committed a crime by entering this country, you should be uncomfortable,” Homan said. “You should look over your shoulder, and you need to be worried.”
Those words transformed Homan from a career law enforcement official into the face of the rich asshole’s deportation agenda. In the months that followed, he continued to defend the fact that, under the rich asshole, the crushing weight of immigration law can fall as heavily upon an undocumented parent of American children as it can on a convicted murderer. This January, he went the farthest yet, telling Fox News that the Justice Department should consider prosecuting mayors and city council members who pass so-called “sanctuary” policies that limit local cooperation with ICE.
That comment invited sharp criticism from legal groups.
“Homan would be a great mid-level functionary in any right-wing totalitarian government you can name,” Thomas Saenz, the president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, told HuffPost.
Now Homan, who is serving as acting director while awaiting confirmation by the U.S. Senate, is on a mission to glorify the men and women who deport people ― something he sees as one of the most thankless tasks in federal law enforcement. ICE officers, he told Congress in June, “are unfairly vilified for simply doing their job.”
The country had just observed National Police Week, which honors officers whose lose their lives in the line of duty. “Too often that respect does not seem to extend to the honorable men and women of ICE,” Homan complained, noting that two of his officers had died while serving the year before. Unlike virtually every other local, state and federal law enforcement agency, he said, ICE officers go about their work in the face of a “constant deluge of biased attacks against ICE personnel by those who disagree with the laws we enforce.”
Homan’s celebration of ICE’s core mission and the people who carry it out is admirably frank. But chipping away at the pretense that ICE’s role is to keep the U.S. safe from terrorists and criminals risks exposing the brutal reality of our deportation system — the crushed hopes, the separated families; the people who die in the desert and the ones who are sent home to their deaths. It’s a reality Homan can stomach, not least because he has seen the violence of human smuggling at the border. He is betting that if Americans see the deportation machine through his eyes, they’ll consider his agency’s work as necessary and just.
Will they?
Born To Serve
Thomas Douglas Homan, who has a thinning crop of strawberry blond hair, a penchant for speaking in aphorisms that slice through policy jargon, and a preference for baggy suits often graced by an American flag lapel pin, describes himself with great pride as a “cop.”
Policing is in Homan’s blood. His grandfather served as a police officer in West Carthage, the 2,000-person village in upstate New York where Homan was born. So did his father, who went on to become a magistrate judge. Homan grew up watching law enforcement officers come to the house with offenders to arraign. Each of his six siblings became a police officer, firefighter or nurse.
“I’m one of the lucky guys — I always knew since I was a kid that I wanted to be in law enforcement,” Homan told HuffPost. “We were raised to serve.”
After earning a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from the state university system at Utica, Homan became a West Carthage police officer in 1983. He worked the evening patrol shift in the quiet community surrounded by dairy farmers, rarely responding to anything more nefarious than an abandoned car or local kids pelting rocks at a street light.
Homan wanted more. While out fishing one day later that year, he met a Border Patrol agent — they were a common sight in West Carthage, which is just 35 miles from the Canadian border — and the conversation piqued his interest enough to apply.
A few months later, Homan’s parents took him to the airport to catch a plane bound for San Diego so he could join Border Patrol. When he arrived in California, helicopters were flying overhead. A group of Border Patrol agents was tracking unauthorized immigrants near the Motel 6 where he was staying the night.
“This is different,” he thought. “I’m not in upstate New York anymore.”
Homan would be a great mid-level functionary in any right-wing totalitarian government you can name.Thomas Saenz, executive director of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund
Homan distinguished himself at the training academy as an enthusiastic recruit and strong strategic thinker. Stationed in Campo, an outpost about 40 miles from San Diego, he spent his days “sign cutting” — tracking the physical marks left behind by people crossing illegally through the brush. In the isolated station with about three dozen other agents, Homan discovered a sense of camaraderie. Today, he recalls the four years that he “wore the green,” a reference to Border Patrol’s uniforms, as some of the best of his life.
After Homan left the Border Patrol, he became an investigator with the now-defunct Immigration and Naturalization Services, and eventually oversaw major operations to break up human smuggling networks.
On May 14, 2003, 19 years into Homan’s career in immigration enforcement, police discovered an abandoned tractor-trailer at a truck stop in Victoria, Texas. The driver had attempted to smuggle more than 70 migrants who had recently crossed into the United States past a Border Patrol checkpoint in the unventilated trailer. Seventeen of them had suffocated to death inside, and two others died later. Homan was scheduled to give a speech in Dallas that morning, but instead flew to Victoria, where a Texas Ranger walked him through the crime scene and into the trailer that held the bodies. Among them was a man whose 5-year-old child had died in his arms.
Homan, now part of the newly created ICE, led the investigation. Under his direction, ICE special agents broke up four smuggling organizations involved in the tragedy, and put a dozen people behind bars. A jury convicted the truck driver, Tyrone Williams, in 2006; he was ultimately sentenced to 34 years in prison. But the episode stuck with Homan. He still mentions it in speeches, partly to refute the notion that immigration enforcement officials like him are heartless.
“This is something I can’t forget,” Homan told HuffPost. “At the time, I had a 5-year-old boy. As a parent, you look at it and you think, ‘That could be your child.’”
In the years that followed, Homan continued to rise through ICE’s ranks, landing a job in the Washington bureaucracy the year Barack Obama took office. He took over Enforcement and Removal Operations, the part of the agency that handles deportations, in 2013. The timing meant that it fell to Homan to implement the Obama administration’s “prosecutorial discretion” policy, which required ICE to prioritize the removal of people who posed threats to national security or public safety, had been caught while crossing the border or had prior deportations on their records. Under the new policy, the agency would often postpone deporting unauthorized immigrants who had established themselves in the United States without seriously running afoul of the law.
I know what it’s like to arrest an alien and feel bad about it. I know what it’s like to see a dead alien on the trail.Thomas Homan
To judge from Homan’s public remarks since taking control of ICE, carrying out prosecutorial discretion grated on him. But regardless of his personal views of the Obama policy, Homan was well-suited to communicate the new orders down the chain of command. The changes were planned by Washington bureaucrats and signed by then-ICE Director John Morton, a former federal prosecutor who had served in the Peace Corps. Condensing Morton’s six-page, heavily bulleted memo into the two-word motto “worst first,” Homan gave the policy an air of legitimacy within the agency that it might otherwise have lacked.
The Obama administration was thrilled with Homan’s performance, and honored him with the Presidential Rank Award for his service in 2015. That year, 98 percent of people ICE deported from within the country met one of the three priority categories, a record Homan described as “pretty close to perfect.” (ICE uses separate statistics to track people deported after trying to cross the border illegally.)
But Homan’s roots in the rank-and-file also give him a rough edge. As a Washington bureaucrat, he continued to refer to unauthorized immigrants as “tonks,” according to two former DHS officials who have worked with him. (Homan denied using the term, saying he hasn’t heard it in years.) The epithet has an uncertain origin, but those familiar with the term say it’s Border Patrol slang that derives from the sound of bashing an immigrant over the head with a flashlight or a baton.
As Obama prepared to leave office, Homan prepared to retire. A week after the rich asshole’s inauguration, he stood before a crowd of colleagues at ICE’s headquarters in Washington, toasting the end of a 33-year career. Having risen nearly to the top of the immigration enforcement system, Homan had lined up a job in the private sector and was ready to leave. He had already cleaned out his desk.
But as he was shaking the hand of the last guest to leave the celebration, he received a call from then-Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly, who said the rich asshole himself had asked that Homan come back to head ICE. Homan returned the gifts. He was back in the office the following week.
‘ICE Isn’t Going Anywhere’
By the time it was announced on Jan. 27, 2017, that Homan had been selected to lead ICE, he had already received a new set of instructions from the rich asshole. The president had issued an executive order that scrapped Obama’s prosecutorial discretion policy. Within two weeks, ICE began summarily deporting people — including some who had received stays of deportation — who came in for routine check-ins with the agency. And officers once again began detaining unauthorized immigrants they encountered during operations targeting other people. These once-common detentions, known as “collateral arrests,” had been largely phased out during Obama’s second term.
The aggressive tactics sparked a furious backlash from immigrant rights leaders and legal groups. But rather than defuse the tensions created by ICE’s increasingly indiscriminate arrests, Homan heightened them.
On March 28, the ICE director attended an unusual town hall meeting called by Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones, a Republican. Jones hoped to dispel misconceptions about the way ICE carries out its operations. The agency has long disputed the idea that ICE conducts “raids” or “sweeps,” contending instead that its officers specifically target people with criminal records or prior deportations.
In the state with the country’s largest undocumented population and firm Democratic control of the government, Homan was greeted by an angry crowd. “Fuck you!” someone yelled. “Piece of shit!” another person shouted. The hecklers visibly unnerved Jones, who repeatedly threatened to toss them out. But Homan, stone-faced, stood up and told his critics exactly what they didn’t want to hear: He had a duty to enforce the law. If California sheriffs wouldn’t let him into a jail, the safest place for his officers to make an arrest, then he’d have no choice but to go after his targets at their homes or places of employment. With no classes of unauthorized immigrants left untouchable under the rich asshole’s executive order, the implied threat meant that sanctuary policies would backfire, spurring more arrests of bystanders without legal status.
Someone shouted that ICE should “get out of California.”
“Let’s be clear on one thing: ICE isn’t going anywhere,” Homan shot back. “We’re going to enforce the laws that are on the books.”
This combative attitude hasn’t undermined Homan’s reputation among his contemporaries. “Tom Homan would not be doing what he’s doing today if he did not believe it is in the interest of this nation,” David Aguilar, a former acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, told HuffPost. “But there’s probably no bigger target in the media as it relates to law enforcement than Director Homan right now.”
And despite facing periodic criticism from the officers union, Homan remains widely respected within ICE and among the agency’s former leadership. Both supporters and critics of the direction ICE is moving under the rich asshole are likely to cite the same qualities that elevated him to the top job: a strong work ethic, a dry wit, a deep sense of mission and, above all, his devotion to the common officer.
“Tom is even-tempered,” Gary Mead, the former head of ERO, told HuffPost. “He has a good sense of humor. He gets along with a wide variety of people both up and down the chain of command. He’s a team player. He’s totally committed to three things. That’s the mission of ICE, looking out for his employees, and looking out for the public he serves. I don’t see him as being contentious, I see him as being committed to those three things.”
Homan’s frontline experience sets him apart from his predecessors. Of the nine people who led ICE before him, six were lawyers and two began their careers as customs investigators ― a prestigious criminal law enforcement position that has as much to do with routine deportations as a police detective’s work has to do with traffic stops. The only other ICE director to serve in a rank-and-file immigration enforcement position was former Border Patrol officer John Clark, who led ICE for five months as an acting director more than a decade ago.
“I’m sitting in this chair right now, and I know what a Border Patrol agent feels like,” Homan said. “I know what it’s like to arrest an alien and feel bad about it. I know what it’s like to see a dead alien on the trail.”
But Homan’s unrelenting boosterism of the rich asshole’s deportation agenda has some former colleagues saying they don’t recognize the man they see puffing his chest on Fox News. Having been plucked from retirement at the end of a long career, Homan bears little burden to preserve appearance of non-partisanship. His most confrontational comments ― particularly the threat to prosecute local officials who embrace sanctuary policies or his warning that unauthorized immigrants should be afraid ― have widely alienated Democrats and critics “on the left,” as Homan puts it. But some suspect Homan’s over-the-top public pronouncements don’t reflect his personal views as much as his desire to please a White House beset by infighting and historically high turnover.
“Those comments are just ingratiating himself with this administration,” former deputy director of ICE Alonzo Peña told HuffPost. “He knows a lot better than that. … But he’s in a hard spot. You’ve got an administration that is very direct. I don’t think in his wildest dreams he would’ve thought he’d become acting director. I’m sure he’s trying to conform as much as he can.”
Democratic critics are likely to pounce on Homan when he eventually goes before the Senate for confirmation. But some wonder whether Homan’s commentary may have soured some moderate Republicans, whose support he’ll need to cement his job title.
“He wants to get confirmed so badly that he has been willing to say things that are nothing short of outrageous and offensive,” a former DHS official told HuffPost. “I’m wondering if Tom has unintentionally screwed himself out of the job with some of this bombastic language meant to appeal to an audience of one: some rich asshole.”
A Rank-And-File Leader
Homan’s public statements may mirror the president’s hawkishness, but the campaign the ICE director is waging against sanctuary cities is at least as personal as it is political. Homan begins his days at the office by hate-reading press statements from legal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and clippings from mass media. All of it, he says, demonizes his officers. And nothing makes Homan seethe more than seeing his deportation officers take the blame for the United States’ dysfunctional immigration politics. To him, every one of them is a hero who makes the choice to strap a gun to his or her hip in the morning to carry out a solemn task that Congress has decided is not only necessary, but, at least since 2003, also a matter of national security.
“That’s the real difference — having a rank-and-file person,” one ICE employee, who declined to be named because he’s not authorized to speak on behalf of the agency, told HuffPost. “The way I see Homan is he’s a tough cop who has integrity and compassion. But he also knows what it’s like to be an officer and to be out there on the front lines and think about officers’ safety.”
If Homan’s deportation officers suffer from a lack of national prestige, it’s partly due to bureaucratic processes over which they have little control. Congress created the Department of Homeland Security after the Sept. 11 attacks by mashing together 22 agencies, including most of those that enforce immigration law. In that pivotal moment, interior immigration enforcement lept from the realm of civil procedure administered by the Justice Department to an element of national security conflated with the broader mission of fighting terrorism.
Under that arrangement, deportation officers drew the short end of the stick. The former customs agents and INS investigators evolved into ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations Unit ― the ones tasked with carrying out long investigations that have some tie to the border. That nexus is at times nebulous and routinely overlaps with agencies like the FBI or Drug Enforcement Administration; many of HSI’s targets are U.S. citizens.
ICE’s most prominent arrests ― gang leaders, child pornographers, human traffickers ― usually result from HSI investigations. Deportation officers, on the other hand, carry out the more mundane task of removing unauthorized immigrants, regardless of whether they have committed serious crimes in the United States. Unlike HSI investigators, deportation officers don’t generally make criminal arrests. It’s a well-paid job that opens the door to federal law enforcement, usually without having to move to a remote part of the southern desert, as Border Patrol positions often require. But job satisfaction at ICE consistently ranks in the bottom quartile of federal government agencies, according to the annual federal viewpoint survey, with low scores from ERO historically dragging down the average.
Today, ICE’s deportation officers have come to symbolize the most draconian aspects of immigration enforcement, without enjoying the prestige accorded to virtually every other branch of law enforcement.
It’s difficult to honestly describe the U.S. deportation system as an urgent national security function. Some of the criminal offenders ICE removes each year were convicted of violent crimes, including more than 8,000 convicted of some form of homicide since 2009. But the criminals ICE has deported in the last decade were most commonly guilty of immigration violations, DUIs, traffic violations or drug charges. Under Homan, who doesn’t think ICE should wait for a criminal court to secure a conviction before starting removal proceedings, a growing number of deportees from outside the United States’ 2,000-mile southern border region haven’t been convicted of anything at all.
Some of the agency’s prominent critics on the left, including former Hillary Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon and MSNBC host Chris Hayes, have floated the idea of abolishing ICE altogether.
the rich asshole and Homan have chosen the opposite path — boosting the power, funding and reputation of the parts of the federal government responsible for deportation. This focus on deportations also helps Homan achieve a narrower goal: shifting the blame for the injustices of the immigration enforcement system away from ICE and back to the political class. And he’s citing concerns about his officers’ safety to make that happen.
When Homan rails against so-called “sanctuary” cities, his argument is simple: Arresting someone who is already jailed is far less risky for his agents than knocking on an unknown door. It’s also more efficient. One deportation officer working in a jail can easily carry out 10 administrative arrests in a workday, according to Homan. At-large arrests, on the other hand, require several agents to arrest a single person and introduce the possibility that their target might be armed or try to fight back. Moreover, Homan says, it undermines public safety in immigrant communities when authorities release someone who has been jailed for a criminal offense and could be deported if only ICE officers had more access to the jail.
There’s no question that at-large arrests present greater risks than a custody transfer from a local jail. But in his zeal, Homan often overstates the case. Even the most generous sanctuary laws, like California’s Trust Act, allow local authorities to help ICE detain and deport people accused or convicted of serious crimes involving homicide, sexual abuse or human trafficking. And despite California’s policies of limiting cooperation with ICE, more than 80 percent of the agency’s arrests there since 2017 have taken place inside a jail, according to a declaration Homan submitted last month alongside a lawsuit filed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and aimed at overturning three of the state’s sanctuary laws.
Nor does Homan’s portrayal of the risks deportation officers face entirely square with the statistics he cites. Homan has repeatedly said in speeches that 52 names of ICE agents are inscribed on the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, and he won’t have a 53rd “because some politician put politics above public safety.” But that figure, which the ICE press office clarified is actually 51, dates back to 1915 and includes legacy INS and Customs agents, some of whom carried out jobs far riskier than administrative arrests of potential deportees. Both of the officers Homan referred to in his congressional testimony in June died in the line of duty. But Special Agent J. Scott McGuire was hit by a drunk driver, and Brian Beliso died of a heart attack during a foot chase.
Since the creation of ICE in 2003, Beliso, McGuire and three other agents ― David Wilhelm, Jaime Zapata and Lorenzo Gomez ― have died in the line of duty. But Wilhelm and Zapata were investigators, and neither died during an immigration enforcement operation. Zapata was killed outside Mexico City by a drug cartel; Wilhelm was murdered at his home by a U.S. citizen who escaped from a federal courthouse and killed three others. Gomez died of kidney failure after collapsing during a special response team training session. No deportation officers have died because of a violent altercation with an unauthorized immigrant since ICE was founded, according to the data collected by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
‘I’m Not The Devil’
Unlike deportation officers, migrants often lose their lives as a result of U.S. immigration policy. No government agency tracks the fate of migrants after their deportations, but a New Yorker investigation published in January documented 60 cases in which deportees in recent years were killed, kidnapped or sexually abused after their removal from the United States. Others suffocate in unventilated trailers, as Homan knows from personal experience. At least 175 immigrants have died in detention centers since 2003, according to Human Rights Watch data. Hundreds more die annually from trekking through remote parts of the desert.
The increase of border-crossing deaths stems partly from the unprecedented fortification of the region. In the 1980s, it was common for people to simply walk across unpatrolled stretches of the border or wade through the Rio Grande. Some used smugglers as guides, but others crossed independently. Some might cross more than a dozen times during their lives.
But over the last three decades and with bipartisan support, the United States has laid down 700 miles of border fencing, more than quadrupled the number of Border Patrol agents and dealt out increasingly harsh consequences to those who cross illegally. The result is that now people who make the crossing rely in ever greater numbers on human smugglers, paying sums as high as $7,000 a head to take their chances, pumping hundreds of millions of dollars each year into an illicit economy dominated by drug cartels and transnational gangs. For Homan, the only way to halt the deaths at the border is to dismantle that criminal economy by eliminating the possibility of crossing the border illegally.
“I’m not the devil. There’s a reason why I feel the way I feel,” Homan said. “We have to do everything we can to dismantle these smuggling organizations.”
For those who do make it past the Border Patrol, Homan’s officers will be waiting. Immigration laws won’t mean much if would-be unauthorized immigrants think they’ll gain immunity from deportation if they get past Border Patrol and have a child born in the U.S., Homan says.
That argument treads closely to a criticism of birthright citizenship. But when pressed to define his vision for the future of the immigration system in the U.S., Homan suddenly sounds more like one of the bipartisan group of lawmakers that has unsuccessfully pushed for comprehensive reform than the hardliners who control the White House.
“I’m the first one to say, I can’t arrest 11 million people,” Homan told HuffPost. “So Congress needs to make some decisions about immigration reform. The answer isn’t ‘ignore the law.’ The answer is ‘fix the law.’”
As Congress bickers, Homan is working to make the immigration enforcement system still more punitive. With 34 years of experience enforcing immigration law, he knows all the pressure points to make the United States’ sprawling detention and deportation system function more efficiently, with or without new laws.
Shortly after taking control of ICE, Homan asked the Justice Department to challenge the Supreme Court’s ruling in the case of Zadvydas v. Davis, which bars immigration authorities from detaining immigrants for more than six months unless they pose a national security or public safety threat. He set in writing a new policy allowing ICE officers to detain unauthorized immigrants at courthouses, over the objection of federal judges. And he walked back a policy he himself had signed as head of ERO in 2016 that required ICE to generally release pregnant women from immigrant detention.
For those who have a problem with any of that, Homan is happy to point them to the ballot box or their local members of Congress — anyone but the deportation officers who are doing a job that politicians of both parties have ordered them to do.
In the meantime, Homan will proudly continue to act as the face of the rich asshole’s deportation agenda. The job comes at a personal cost. He bristles at being caricatured by critics as a Nazi. He said his youngest son has been harassed at school. Authorities are investigating numerous threats against him and his wife.
And behind his bluster on national television, the job weighs on him emotionally. He knows his officers separate families on a daily basis. Then again, he says, so does every police officer who makes arrests. Homan signed up for that the day he first became a cop in 1983.
“People think I don’t feel bad about the plight of these people. Well, I do feel bad,” Homan said. “But I have a job to do.”
Comey calls the rich asshole 'untethered to truth' in upcoming book
BY MAX GREENWOOD - 04/12/18 05:45 PM EDT
Former FBI Director James Comey rips President the rich asshole as "untethered to truth" and self-interested in his upcoming memoir, according to an Associated Press report.
In the book, "A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership," Comey describes the rich asshole's leadership as "ego driven and about personal loyalty," and accuses the president of trying to pressure him over the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 president campaign.
The former top cop also takes personal shots at the rich asshole, describing "bright white half-moons" under his eyes that he suggests are the result of wearing tanning goggles, according to the AP.
the rich asshole fired Comey in May 2017, ostensibly for his handling of the FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of State.
But the rich asshole acknowledged days after Comey's dismissal that the investigation into possible collusion between his campaign and Moscow factored into the decision.
Comey's book, which is due for release next week, offers an account of his interactions with the rich asshole similar to the one he gave in congressional testimony last year.
He acknowledged in that testimony that he had authored memos documenting his interactions with the president, including one in which the rich asshole pressed him for a pledge of loyalty and another in which he allegedly suggested that Comey drop the FBI investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
POLITICS
the rich asshole Responds To Allegations In James Comey’s Book, Calls Him ‘Untruthful Slime Ball’
“It was my great honor to fire James Comey!” the president tweeted Friday.
President some rich asshole lashed out at former FBI Director James Comey on Friday after excerpts from Comey’s book began to circulate.
He slammed Comey as an “untruthful slime ball” and a “proven LEAKER & LIAR,” claiming Comey has lied to Congress under oath.
Comey’s memoir, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, has yet to be released, but a few salacious passages have been made available that paint the rich asshole in a less-than-flattering light.
According to Comey’s book, the president was obsessed with disproving the existence of the so-called “pee tape” ― the footage that supposedly shows the rich asshole watching sex workers urinate in a Moscow hotel suite the Obamas had stayed in.
The “pee tape” allegation first surfaced in a dossier that British intelligence officer Christopher Steele compiled as opposition research about the rich asshole presidential campaign and its contacts with the Russians, and then shared with the FBI because of his concerns about the material.
the rich asshole “strongly denied the allegations, asking — rhetorically, I assumed — whether he seemed like a guy who needed the service of prostitutes,” Comey writes in his memoir, according to The Washington Post and the New York Post.
Comey, who was leading the investigation into whether the rich asshole’s campaign colluded with the Russians, was fired last May. In another book excerpt obtained by Axios, Comey reportedly describes the infamous one-on-one dinner he had with the rich asshole on Jan. 27, 2017. the rich asshole buttered him up, Comey said, and then told him he could leave his post as FBI director if he wanted to ― although it would look bad.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story indicated Steele compiled his dossier on the rich asshole for the FBI. In fact, he compiled it as opposition research and then shared it with the FBI.
the rich asshole: McCabe 'totally controlled' by Comey
BY JOSH DELK - 04/13/18 04:03 PM EDT
President the rich asshole blasted former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe on Friday as a liar who was "totally controlled by [former FBI Director James] Comey," following the release of a watchdog report that got McCabe fired.
The Justice Department's inspector general concluded in a newly released report that McCabe had acted to further his own interests by leaking information about the FBI's investigation into the Clinton Foundation. The report also found that McCabe lied to Comey about who leaked information to the press.
"DOJ just issued the McCabe report — which is a total disaster. He LIED! LIED! LIED! McCabe was totally controlled by Comey — McCabe is Comey!! No collusion, all made up by this den of thieves and lowlifes!" the rich asshole said on Twitter.
DOJ just issued the McCabe report - which is a total disaster. He LIED! LIED! LIED! McCabe was totally controlled by Comey - McCabe is Comey!! No collusion, all made up by this den of thieves and lowlifes!
McCabe had claimed after he was fired that he did not "leak" without authorization and Comey knew about his decision to discuss ongoing investigations with the press.
But the report concludes McCabe's decision to leak to the media was “designed to advance his personal interests at the expense of Department leadership."
The report also makes it clear McCabe did not act with Comey's approval.
the rich asshole has accused both Comey and McCabe of political bias in their roles at the top law enforcement agency, and attacked Comey in numerous tweets on Friday following the release of excerpts of Comey's book.
Comey's memoir, "A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership," which details his interaction with the rich asshole during his time leading the FBI, is scheduled for release Tuesday. The book attacks the rich asshole both personally and as a leader.
Updated at 4:15 p.m.
POLITICS
Scott Pruitt Uses Multiple ‘Secret’ Email Accounts, Senators Say
Democratic senators wonder if the embattled EPA chief is using the email scheme to duck open-records laws.
Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt has used four government email accounts since assuming office, and two Democratic senators are worried the complex setup may have allowed the administrator to dodge demands for public records.
Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Tom Carper (D-Del.), both members of a Senate committee with EPA oversight, sent a letter this week to the EPA inspector general asking for an investigation into Pruitt’s use of multiple emails. Aside from his standard Pruitt.Scott@epa.gov account, two others were used for scheduling and what the lawmakers call “communicating.” The Washington Post notes that a fourth email address, sooners7@epa.gov, is an apparent reference to the University of Oklahoma football team, of which Pruitt is a fan.
“We write to share our deep concern over Administrator Pruitt’s reported use of multiple email accounts,” the letter, dated April 10, reads. “It is imperative that there be an investigation into whether the agency has properly searched these email addresses for responsive documents in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.”
The lawmakers, both members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, note that the EPA has received “thousands” of public records requests since Pruitt took over the agency. Journalists and advocacy groups have turned to laws allowing them to request documents that may reveal Pruitt’s secretive agenda of dismantling environmental protections and favoring corporate interests. The disclosures have led to substantial news stories, including the public release of Pruitt’s schedule and details about a $43,000 soundproof phone booth installed in his office.
But Merkley and Carper said they worried the “secret email accounts” may be used to withhold “information from the public in violation of valid FOIA request.”
An EPA spokesman confirmed the existence of the email accounts to the Post. The agency has complied with all requests, the spokesman said, and when a FOIA request is received, “all accounts are searched before we respond.”
Pruitt and the EPA have been battling a stream of ethical issues, including his sweetheart rental of a condo co-owned by the wife of an energy lobbyist. Pruitt insisted on staying in expensive hotels and flying on specific airlines in order to accrue frequent flier miles, according to congressional investigators.
President some rich asshole has stood by the EPA chief, tweeting earlier this week that Pruitt “is doing a great job!”
This obscure lawyer pops up in every the rich asshole sex scandal
"I'm sort of in the secret business."
On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Michael Cohen, the rich asshole’s personal attorney and self-styled “fixer,” negotiated a deal to pay $1.6 million to a Playboy Playmate in exchange for her silence about an affair she had with a major the rich asshole fundraiser.
The rainmaker in question, Elliott Broidy, is a deputy finance chairman for the RNC who recently organized a fundraiser for the rich asshole in Los Angeles, acknowledged the affair. Broidy said he impregnated the woman but that she decided to terminate the pregnancy.
Cohen had never represented Broidy previously. In a statement, Broidy said that he retained Cohen after Cohen was contacted by the woman’s attorney, Keith Davidson.
If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Davidson also represented two women who say they had affairs with the rich asshole, Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal.
Both Daniels and McDougal now suggest that Davidson, under the pretense of representing their interests, was actually acting on the behalf of Cohen and the rich asshole.
The three women have no known connection. The fact that Davidson represented all of them could be a coincidence. Or, it could be evidence of a corrupt scheme to silence women.
Cohen has acknowledged that he has referred clients to Davidson. This month, CNN reported that Cohen “gave [Davidson’s] name to entertainment executive and the rich asshole associate Chuck LaBella.” At the time, Tom Arnold had tweeted that LaBella “has all the dirt” on the rich asshole. LaBella denied that Davidson ever formally represented him.
Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti, said that he found the relationship between Cohen and Davidson to be disturbing.
“As more evidence comes to light relating to his close personal relationship with Michael Cohen and his efforts to protect Mr. Cohen and some rich asshole at the expense of his clients, we grow increasingly disturbed. … Mr. Davidson has no business doing Mr. Cohen’s bidding for him,” Avenatti said.
McDougal has attacked Davidson’s conduct more directly. She alleges in her lawsuit that Davidson was secretly conspiring with the rich asshole representatives.
She hired entertainment lawyer Keith Davidson, who assured her that the rights to publish her story were worth millions. Unknown to Ms. McDougal, Mr. Davidson was working closely with representatives for some rich asshole while pretending to advocate on her behalf.
McDougal alleges that Davidson made material misrepresentations to her in order to induce her to sign the contract.
AMI and Mr. Davidson failed to tell Ms. McDougal that the contract’s fine print did not actually obligate AMI to run her columns—the central feature of AMI’s promise to create ongoing positive exposure for Ms. McDougal. AMI and Mr. Davidson also failed to mention that they were secretly negotiating deals with other women to kill negative stories for some rich asshole.
McDougal says she was ultimately pressured by Davidson “into signing the contract within hours of receiving it, even though she had made clear in emails and on Skype that she could not make sense of important aspects of the contract.”
Davidson has had his law license suspended twice for violating his legal and ethical responsibilities as a lawyer. In the most serious instance, his license was suspended for two years for a variety of infractions — including not showing up for a hearing and mismanaging client funds.
Davidson told CNN that “he was contacted in recent weeks by the rich asshole’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, who encouraged him to go out and reveal what he knew about his clients and their agreements.” Davidson he decided against it after “he consulted with an ethics attorney.”
He did acknowledge communicating with Cohen about the deal he struck on behalf of McDougal.
“I’m sort of in the secret business,” he said.
In 2012, Davidson was “he was detained by FBI agents in a sting” related to a Hulk Hogan sex tape. He was ultimately not arrested or charged.
By
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April 13, 2018
The White House is running an elaborate smear campaign on former FBI Director James Comey, and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders expects reporters to cooperate.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued marching orders to reporters Friday in response to the release of former FBI Director James Comey’s book, telling them they should join her in “putting him down.”
The angry rant from Sanders during the daily press briefing came as part of the White House’s coordinated campaign to smear and undermine Comey.
the rich asshole kicked off the day attacking Comey, describing it as his “great honor” to fire him.
At the briefing, one reporter recited a long list of federal law enforcement officials the rich asshole has attacked and undermined: “It’s his own attorney general, it’s his own deputy attorney general, it’s special counsel, it’s the FBI, it’s judges who make decisions that he doesn’t like … It’s not just people who’ve been proven to leak information.”
“The president hasn’t underminded (sic) them in any capacity,” Sanders said. “Just because he calls out things that he finds to be problematic or concerning. I think that he should do that.”
Sanders then pivoted to an attack on the reporters in the room, while at the same demanding that they join her smear campaign, as if they are supposed to be working together.
“You guys spend hours upon hours every single day praising Jim Comey, propping him up, giving him the biggest platform. We shouldn’t be praising him. We should be putting him down, we should be taking him off of air, instead of giving him minute after minute.”
Earlier in the briefing, Sanders read from a prewritten statement, characterizing Comey as a “liar and a leaker.”
Yet despite the anger and venom, the campaign isn’t working.
So far, Comey’s book, which won’t be released until next week, has reportedly sold close to 200,000 copies. Additionally, the publisher has set up an initial print run of 850,000 copies. That is over eight times as many as “Fire and Fury,” the last major book that the rich asshole focused fire on.
the rich asshole and his White House want free reign to go after Comey, while remaining unaccountable themselves. Sanders, on the rich asshole’s behalf, has regularly tried to intimidate the media and dictate what they should and shouldn’t be covering.
The thrust of her demands has been that the press should be subservient to the rich asshole, with the hopes that the public also falls in line.
Meanwhile scandals and investigations continue to consume the rich asshole’s presidency, including scrutiny of his decision to fire Comey. the rich asshole cannot control these events, no matter how hard he tries.
Valerie Plame rips Scooter Libby pardon: It's 'not based on the truth'
BY JACQUELINE THOMSEN - 04/13/18 04:02 PM EDT
Former CIA agent Valerie Plame ripped President the rich asshole for pardoning I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on Friday for his conviction related to the leaking of her identity.
“President some rich asshole has granted a pardon to I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby on the basis that he was 'treated unfairly'. That is simply false,” Plame said in a statement.
Plame noted that Libby had been convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury “in a fair trial” in which both former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney had given testimony.
“President Bush declined to issue a pardon, stating 'I respect the jury’s verdict.' He added, 'And if a person does not tell the truth, particularly if he serves in government and holds the public trust, he must be held accountable,'” Plame said.
“President’s the rich asshole’s pardon is not based on the truth,” she added.
the rich asshole pardoned Libby, Cheney’s former chief of staff, earlier Friday, saying that he had "heard that [Libby] has been treated unfairly."
“Hopefully, this full pardon will help rectify a very sad portion of his life,” the rich asshole said in a statement.
Libby had been convicted in 2007 of perjury and obstruction of justice related to the investigation into the leak of Plame's identity, which came after her husband, a former ambassador, published an op-ed critical of the Bush administration.
He was sentenced to 30 months in prison and fined $250,000, but didn’t serve jail time after Bush commuted his sentence.
White House: One of the rich asshole's greatest achievements will be 'firing Comey'
BY BEN KAMISAR - 04/13/18 03:20 PM EDT
The White House's top spokeswoman blasted former FBI Director James Comey as a "disgraced partisan hack" on Friday as the administration seeks to discredit allegations he's made in a new book.
"This is nothing more than a poorly executed PR stunt by Comey to desperately rehabilitate his tattered reputation and enrich his own bank account by peddling a book that belongs in the bargain bin of the fiction section," press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters of Comey's upcoming book "A Higher Loyalty" at the White House press briefing.
"One of the president’s greatest achievements will go down as firing Director James Comey," she added.
Comey's new book, which focuses on the former FBI director's brief stint at the agency before the rich asshole fired him, is filled with significant accusations and criticisms aimed at the rich asshole.
He compares the rich asshole's need for loyalty to that of a mob boss, claims that the rich asshole repeatedly asked him to disprove lewd claims about him that surfaced in the so-called Steele dossier, and repeated the accusation that the rich asshole told him to back off an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
The book also includes some personal jabs at the rich asshole, including references to the size of his hands and calling his face "slightly orange."
When pressed about those personal comments, Huckabee Sanders took another shot at Comey.
"I don't think we are surprised by the fact that James Comey continues to spread false information. The guy is known to be a liar and a leaker so there is not a lot about James Comey that we would find to be very surprising," she said.
She also accused reporters of giving Comey too much oxygen.
"You guys spend hours upon hours every single day praising Jim Comey, propping him up, giving him the biggest platform. We shouldn’t be praising him, we should be putting him down, we should be taking him off of air instead of giving him minute after minute," she said.
“This country has a lot of real problems. We should be talking about the economy, we should be talking about Syria, we should talk about the drug crisis. Instead, we are going to talk about Jim Comey," she said.
Comey is scheduled to make numerous media appearances for his book starting Sunday. The book is released on Tuesday.
Sanders' comments are part of a concerted push by the White House and the Republican National Committee to discredit Comey ahead of his book's release.
the rich asshole on Friday morning called Comey "untruthful slime ball" in a tweet.
IG releases report faulting fired FBI official McCabe
BY KATIE BO WILLIAMS - 04/13/18 03:35 PM EDT
The Department of Justice’s inspector general concluded that fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe made a leak to the media “designed to advance his personal interests at the expense of Department leadership,” according to a copy of the report obtained by The Hill.
The report from Inspector General Michael Horowitz makes the case that McCabe authorized disclosures to the media that were designed to combat the perception that he had a conflict of interest in overseeing dual FBI investigations related to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
McCabe has disputed the charges as politically motivated. His attorney responded immediately on Friday that the report “utterly failed to support the decision to terminate Mr. McCabe.”
Michael Bromwich, McCabe’s attorney, also blasted the process by which he was terminated as “unprecedented, unseemly and cruel.”
The press disclosures in question were made to Wall Street Journal reporter Devlin Barrett shortly after he wrote a story detailing political donations from Clinton ally and former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe to the failed state Senate campaign of McCabe’s wife, Jill.
At the time, the story created a political uproar about McCabe’s impartiality.
In response to follow-up questions from Barrett, McCabe authorized two officials to discuss with Barrett “issues related to the FBI’s Clinton Foundation investigation.”
The disclosure — which was made by staff for McCabe — recounted McCabe’s version of a conversation with a Justice Department official about the investigation, in which McCabe says he pushed back on concerns about FBI agents taking “overt steps” during the presidential campaign.
“Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly-predicated investigation,” McCabe says he said.
According to the Horowitz report, the disclosures were in part designed “to rebut a narrative that … questioned McCabe’s impartiality in overseeing FBI investigations involving former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and claimed that McCabe had ordered the termination of the [Clinton Foundation] Investigation due to Department of Justice pressure.”
The disclosure to Barrett, the report states, “effectively confirmed the existence” of the Clinton Foundation investigation — something then-Director James Comey was at that point refusing to do.
According to the report, McCabe said that he did not view the disclosures to Barrett as confirming the existence of the investigation because the purpose was to demonstrate the FBI’s independence and “there really wasn’t any discussion of the case, of the merits of the case, the targets and subjects of the case.”
At the time, Republicans were concerned that the Obama-era Justice Department, led by then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, was putting pressure on the bureau to shut down the Clinton probes. Barrett, according to the report, had sources who were telling him McCabe had given an order to “stand down” on the investigation.
The IG found McCabe’s rationale for the disclosure unpersuasive.
“Had McCabe’s primary concern actually been to reassure the public that the FBI was pursuing the [Clinton Foundation] investigation despite the anonymous claims in the article, the way that the FBI and the Department would usually accomplish that goal is through a public statement reassuring the public that the FBI is investigating the matter,” it reads.
After the story ran, the report states, McCabe led Comey to believe that he had not authorized the disclosures that lead to Barrett’s story and did not know who did. He allegedly made the same statement to internal investigators when questioned under oath months later.
“I don’t remember exactly how, but I remember some form or fashion and it could have been like ‘can you believe this crap? How does this stuff get out’ kind of thing?” Comey told investigators. “But I took from whatever communication we had that he wasn’t involved in it.”
According to McCabe, he told Comey that he had authorized the phone call with Barrett — something that as deputy director, he had the inherent authority to do if it was in the public interest.
“We found it extremely unlikely, as McCabe now claims, that he not only told Comey about his decision to authorize the disclosure, but that Comey thought it was a ‘good’ idea for McCabe to have taken that action,” the report states, noting that at the time McCabe authorized the disclosure and says he informed Comey, the issue of his recusal from the investigation was being discussed internally.
According to Horowitz’s report, McCabe also gave conflicting accounts to the inspector general’s investigators, at one point correcting a testimony to say that he believed he “may have authorized” the two officials to speak to Barrett, after he learned that the IG had texts messages that would “enable the OIG to soon learn the truth.”
McCabe’s lawyer in his statement said that “at all times, [McCabe] told the truth to the best of his ability.”
“This allegation is built on the shaky foundation of the allegations that he lacked candor in his dealings with Director Comey, [the FBI’s Inspection Division], and the OIG. What is entirely missing from the OIG’s report is any evidence of a motive for Mr. McCabe to do anything but tell the truth about this matter."
The main finding in the report — lack of candor related to the Wall Street Journal disclosures — was already publicly known, although it fleshes out further details.
It reveals that McCabe on Nov. 1 — just days before the election — recused himself from both the Clinton Foundation investigation and the investigation into Clinton’s private email server, which had been effectively reopened just days before.
At that point, according to the IG report, Comey had excluded McCabe from a phone call related to a new tranche of Clinton emails found days before the election, “out of an abundance of caution because of appearance issues” following the story about McCabe’s wife.
In a separate letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), Horowitz also revealed that his investigation into McCabe’s misconduct did not originate as part of the IG’s broader review into department decision-making during the 2016 election.
Instead, Horowitz says, it arose from a referral from the FBI’s Inspection Division, an internal watchdog responsible for maintaining the integrity of its investigations.
McCabe was dismissed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in March after the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility found that the 20-year veteran made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and "lacked candor — including under oath — on multiple occasions."
President the rich asshole immediately celebrated the report on Twitter, tweeting that the findings are a “total disaster.”
“He LIED! LIED! LIED! McCabe was totally controlled by Comey - McCabe is Comey!! No collusion, all made up by this den of thieves and lowlifes!”
DOJ just issued the McCabe report - which is a total disaster. He LIED! LIED! LIED! McCabe was totally controlled by Comey - McCabe is Comey!! No collusion, all made up by this den of thieves and lowlifes!
Republican lawmakers like Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) followed suit, publicly praising Horowitz's report.
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