Michael Cohen’s clients busted for staging accidents in scams ruled by Russian mob: report
the rich asshole lawyer Michael Cohen (IowaPolitics.com/Flickr)
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Attorney Michael Cohen helped clients who allegedly ripped off insurance companies with staged and deliberate auto crashes, although he’s never been accused of wrongdoing in the schemes.
President some rich asshole’s longtime attorney practiced personal injury law before joining the rich asshole Organization, and Rolling Stone found that some of his clients were involved with insurance fraud rings that repeatedly staged vehicle “accidents” to exploit New York’s “no-fault” insurance law.
The law required insurers to pay up to $50,000 to victims of an auto accident, and Cohen’s first job out of law school was with Melvyn J. Estrin — who pleaded guilty to second-degree bribery in an insurance fraud scheme shortly after Cohen left his firm.
Cohen was never charged with any wrongdoing in any of the cases examined by Rolling Stone, and there’s no evidence he knowingly filed false claims — and it’s unclear whether the FBI seized any evidence related to his personal injury work during a raid last month.
But at least one of Cohen’s clients was indicted on insurance fraud while their lawsuit was pending, and he also did legal work for a medical clinic whose lead doctor later was convicted of insurance fraud related to staged auto wrecks.
“Taken together, a picture emerges that the personal attorney to the president of the United States was connected to a shadowy underworld of New York insurance fraud, a pervasive problem dominated by Russian organized crime that was costing the state’s drivers an estimated $1 billion a year,” the magazine reported.
Auto insurers brought Cohen into court nearly 100 times between 1998 and 2003 seeking to halt claims he filed for a variety of reasons — including fraud.
One of his clients, a Haitian immigrant named Marie Pierre was sued by State Farm in 2001, after investigators determined she was involved in a fraud ring that used stolen identities.
“Her account of the accident is [so] completely contradicted by the police report that it must be questioned whether she was present at the event,” the insurers lawyers wrote.
State Farm sued four other Cohen clients accused of staging at least 10 wrecks in 2000 and 2001, and the insurer was granted a default judgment after they declined to contest the charges.
WATCH LIVE: Sarah Huckabee Sanders holds first press briefing since White House Correspondents’ Dinner
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Image via screengrab.
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White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is holding a news briefing on Tuesday, which is scheduled to begin around 2:30 p.m. (ET).
The press briefing is the first to be held since Saturday night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where Sanders was the butt of comedian Michelle Wolf’s jokes.
Watch live video below:
‘It is theft’: Mueller’s former special assistant says the rich asshole’s raid on his ex-doctor looks like ‘a burglary’
Michael Zeldin appears on CNN (screen grab)
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Michael Zeldin, a former special assistant to Robert Mueller, on Tuesday said that a White House official’s raid on President some rich asshole’s former doctor was “sort of a burglary” because medical records were taken without proper authority.
Dr. Harold Bornstein told MSNBC that then-White House staffer Keith Schiller, the president’s former bodyguard, and another man entered his office recently and took all materials regarding the rich asshole without presenting any documents giving them permission to do so.
“It would seem to me that the procedure here is to say, ‘I’m changing doctors, I’d like copies off all my medical files so I can port them over to my new doctor,” Zeldin explained to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “He may have, under HIPAA or other things, an obligation to retain those files himself.”
“So, in a sense, it’s sort of a burglary,” he added. “They just sort of took out this stuff without any sort of legal process that authorized them to do that. And it’s a little bit frightening.”
Blitzer called Zeldin’s remarks “strong words.”
“I just don’t know under what authority a patient has the right to enter a medical office and retrieve folders, even though they’re folders of his own medical treatment, that they have the right to just take them without a civil procedure in a court that authorizes that in some way. I don’t know for certain, but it strikes me that it is a theft of sort."
Zeldin later noted that he was not accusing anyone of a crime.
“I’m just saying that it has sort of the appearance of an unlawful taking,” he stated. “But I’m not accusing anyone of a crime.”
Watch the video below from CNN.
Fox host derails panel’s ‘no collusion’ the rich asshole defense by reminding them of Papadopoulos and Flynn deals
Fox News contributors Katie Pavlitch, Jessica Tarlov -- screngrabs
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During a panel discussion on the questions special counsel Robert Mueller reportedly wants to ask President some rich asshole, one of the female commentators on Fox News’ Outnumbered threw cold water on the direction the conversation was going when her colleagues said there was no evidence of collusion and the investigation should be shut down.
The press has been all abuzz about the list of questions the rich asshole might face that were leaked to the New York Times, which led Outnumbered regular Katie Pavlich to question whether they were even real.
“I’m very skeptical about anything that comes out of the special counsel,” Pavlich suggested. “A couple of weeks ago a spokesperson for the special counsel, in a rare public statement, said there have been a lot of reports that have been false about what is happening wither the special counsel. What our motives are, what our intentions are.”
“You now see how this probe has gone from collusion allegedly, to obstruction of justice and there are questions about what other kinds of rabbit holes they are going to go down,” she added. “The source is interesting.”
“Even to that point, Comey’s own memos sort of blow a hole in the obstruction of justice case. They clearly point out that President the rich asshole wanted to investigate potential ties, wanted to get to the bottom of it,” panelist Lisa Boothe offered before adding that the motives of former FBI director James Comey and Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein undercut the investigation.
Asked to respond, Fox News contributor Jessica Tarlov reminded everyone that the investigation has resulted in plea deals from the rich asshole insiders George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn.
“I disagree with you, Lisa, there are so many things,” Tarlov replied. “First of all, we are leaving out the role of George Papadopoulos in all of this, and this did take off in the summer of 2016. As for who leaked it, I was listening to an analyst who used to work with Bob Mueller who said the way that the questions were written and were copies from someone who listening in on the conversation.”
“Within the questions, you do have obstruction of justice, you do have collusion questions at the very least,” she continued.
When pressed, “where?” Tarlov ticked off Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, Flynn and Papadopoulos again.
Former Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) then jumped in to change the subject, saying, “The president has the Constitutional authority to do all of this. He is the Constitutional leader of the executive branch!”
“You’re acting as if the questions have nothing to do with the probe,” Tarlov shot back.
“The probe is about three things: collusion, financial crimes and obstruction of justice. And two of these are covered in these questions” she added over the suddenly silent panel
Watch the video below via Fox News:
the rich asshole’s bodyguard raided the rich asshole doc’s office days after he admitted to prescribing him hair growth meds
Harold Bornstein, personal physician to some rich asshole (Twitter)
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Dr. Harold Bornstein, who for years served as President some rich asshole’s personal physician, says that his office was raided last year by longtime the rich asshole bodyguard Keith Schiller.
Talking with NBC News, Bornstein says that Schiller came into his office and seized all the rich asshole-related medical records.
Although Schiller never explained why he was taking the records, Bornstein notes that the raid occurred just two days after he told a newspaper that he had prescribed hair growth medication for the president.
“They must have been here for 25 or 30 minutes,” Bornstein tells NBC News. “It created a lot of chaos.”
Bornstein also tells NBC that the raid on his office left him feeling “raped, frightened and sad.”
At the time of the raid, Schiller was actually a White House employee who was serving as the director of Oval Office operations.
NBC News also notes that the raid on Bornstein’s office might have violated privacy protections that are part of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996.
“Bornstein said he was not given a form authorizing the release of the records and signed by the president — known as a HIPAA release — which is a violation of patient privacy law,” reports NBC News. “A person familiar with the matter said there was a letter to Bornstein from then-White House doctor Ronny Jackson, but didn’t know if there was a release form attached.”
‘Ludicrous’: Ali Velshi opens can of whoop ass on the rich asshole for claiming ‘collusion never existed’
Ali Velshi and Stephanie Ruhle (MSNBC/screen grab)
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MSNBC host Ali Velshi on Tuesday asserted that it is “ludicrous” for President some rich asshole to deny that his presidential campaign colluded with Russia in an effort to win the 2016 election.
During Tuesday’s Velshi & Ruhle program, Velshi ran down the list of known contacts between the rich asshole campaign and Russian assets, agents and oligarchs.
“There’s a lot of stuff in the president’s [Tuesday morning] tweet that’s not true, but let’s actually run through the one in which he says, ‘Oh, there’s no collusion,'” Velshi said.
The MSNBC host began his list by noting that special counsel Robert Mueller reportedly wants to ask the rich asshole about former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s phone conversation with former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and “whether or not these two guys discussed sanctions during the transition.”
“Mr. President, that would actually be collusion,” Velshi explained. “And in more recent memory, the alleged offer of a pardon by [former the rich asshole lawyer] John Dowd to Mike Flynn.”
“Mueller will also want to know about the president’s claim that firing Comey too pressure off during the meeting with Russian government officials in the Oval Office,” the MSNBC host continued. “It’s all about Russia. The special counsel will want to know everything the president knows about that June 2016 the rich asshole Tower meeting [with Russians] and the president’s role in some rich asshole Jr.’s response to the news of that meeting, the president’s contact with Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov and his son Emin Agalarov, who set up that meeting.”
“And the president contacts with Michael Cohen, Felix Slater and others about real estate efforts on the rich asshole organization side in Moscow. Was the president involved, by the way, in the GOP platform change, removing language regarding Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine? And former campaign manager Paul Manafort’s outreach to Russia during the campaign; Roger Stone’s contact with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange; and Erik Prince’s alleged meeting [with Russians] in the Seychelles… set up by George Nader, who is now a cooperating witness.”
Velshi added: “So the idea that President the rich asshole says that the leaked questions [from the special counsel] suggests that there’s no question about collusion is about as ludicrous as me saying that I’m often mistaken for Brad Pitt while walking down Fifth Avenue.”
“I want to tell you, when you were going through [the evidence of collusion], it upset my stomach,” co-host Stephanie Ruhle told Velshi. “It makes me anxious.”
Watch the video below from MSNBC.
Democratic senators call on the rich asshole to address the problem of offshoring jobs
"Taxpayer funds should go to companies that hire American workers."
In a letter on this week, a group of Democratic senators urged President the rich asshole to take executive action on the issue of off-shoring jobs — specifically call center jobs.
The letter, provided to ThinkProgress on Tuesday, was signed by Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) along with nine of his Democratic colleagues, Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-MI), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Joe Donnelly (D-IN), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Heidie Heitkamp (D-ND), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), and Jon Tester (D-MT).
“By issuing an Executive Order, you can take an immediate step to prevent federal government contracts from being awarded to companies that offshore U.S. call center jobs by utilizing call centers in foreign countries. Taxpayer funds should go to companies that hire American workers,” the senators wrote.
A number of the senators who signed Tuesday’s letter also wrote the rich asshole last year with the same concerns. After recent reports revealed call center jobs remain at risk of being shipped overseas, they said they thought it best to reiterate their initial demands.
In March, the Communications Workers of America (CWA), which represents nearly 600,000 workers in the telecommunication industry, released a report that revealed the banking industry as one of the leading practitioners of offshoring call center and customer service jobs to low wage countries.
“The nation’s largest banks cut (at least 8,000) jobs over the second half of 2017,” the report states.
The number of support staff in India for four U.S. investment banks — Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citi — also rose 50 percent between 2008 and 2015 to more than 12,500.
The revelation comes as big banks are expected to receive a huge tax windfall from the GOP tax bill, which was passed in December. Financial institutions like Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, and Goldman Sachs saved roughly $3.6 billion in the most recent quarter because of that legislation.
A Congressional Budget Office report released last month also suggests corporations may be incentivized to offshore “tangible assets” like factories and offices. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities similarly found that the plan is “likely to lead to more outsourcing of U.S. jobs and a larger trade deficit” due to its tax cuts for overseas profits.
At the moment, there are several proposed legislative fixes in the House and Senate that would directly address the loss of call center jobs to other countries. The “No Tax Breaks for Outsourcing Act,” for instance, was recently introduced by in the House of Representatives by Reps. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) and Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), and in the Senate by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). The legislation is aimed at reversing the offshore incentives in the GOP tax bill.
Additionally, Sens. Casey and Brown have sponsored legislation, called the “United States Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act,” which would make U.S. companies that send call center jobs offshore ineligible for certain taxpayer-funded grants and loans. The bill would give U.S. customers a right to know where they are calling and the ability to be transferred to a U.S.-based location.
In their letter on Tuesday letter, the 10 senators lobbying President the rich asshole to act on offshoring jobs also urged him to support their efforts to pass the latter legislation.
“We are all cosponsors of the United States Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act, which would address this problem legislatively […],” they wrote.
Here are 6 times Republicans have accidentally told the ugly truth about their tax cuts
Paul Ryan, some rich asshole and Mitch McConnell
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Congressional Republicans are panicking because their signature legislative accomplishment — the tax cut bill they jammed through the legislature late last year — isn’t even very impressive to many of their own voters.
As Seth Hanlon of the Center for American Progress documents on Twitter, Republicans seem to know that their tax cut is a bust with voters — and they’ve even admitted as such on a handful of occasions.
Here are six times, per Hanlon, that Republicans have accidentally told the ugly truth about their tax cuts.
1.) Marco Rubio admits the corporate tax cut isn’t “trickling down” to workers. In an interview with the Economist this week, Rubio said that much of the windfall from the corporate tax cuts has gone to share buybacks — with comparatively little set aside for workers.
2.) Former the rich asshole HHS Secretary Tom Price admits the tax cuts will lead to a spike in Americans’ insurance premiums. In particular, Price singles out the repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s individual insurance mandate as a major driver behind coming premium hikes.
3.) Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) admit that cutting taxes last year was the only way to prevent a revolt of wealthy donors. “My donors are basically saying, ‘Get it done or don’t ever call me again,'” Collins admitted last year. Similarly, Graham said that “the financial contributions will stop” if the GOP failed to pass its tax cuts.
4.) Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC) admits that the tax cuts are primarily targeted toward corporate America — and says that middle-class American families are not the prime beneficiaries. “Fundamentally the bill has been mislabeled,” Sanford admitted to the Washington Post. “From a truth in advertising standpoint it would have been a lot simpler if we just acknowledged really on this bill, which is it’s fundamentally a corporate tax reduction and restructuring bill, period.”
5.) the rich asshole budget director Mick Mulvaney admits that the tax cut won’t pay for itself — and instead will boost national debt by nearly $2 trillion. Even though Republicans have long said that tax cuts pay for themselves by generating higher economic growth — and thus higher revenues for the government — Mulvaney acknowledged to Congress this year that the administration’s lowered its revenue projections by $1.8 trillion over the next ten years due solely to the effects of the tax cut.
6.) the rich asshole economic adviser Stephen Moore proudly says that the tax bill is really an attack on blue states that didn’t vote for the president. “They go after state and local taxes, which weakens public employee unions,” Moore crowed last year. “And getting rid of the mandate is to eventually dismantle Obamacare.”
Believe it or not, Hanlon has even more examples of Republicans admitting the ugly truth about their tax cuts — check them out at this link.
Two top officials close to Pruitt resign in EPA ‘exodus’
Pruitt's head of security and his Superfund site manager both stepped down amidst growing scandals.
Two top officials at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have announced they are resigning as numerous investigations into Administrator Scott Pruitt ramp up: Pasquale “Nino” Perrotta, who led Pruitt’s 24-hour security detail, and Albert “Kell” Kelly, who was in charge of Superfund sites at the agency. Both men were close allies of the EPA administrator.
In a phone interview with ABC News, Perrotta said he resigned from his post at the EPA on Monday. This comes as the House Oversight Committee is expected to interview the former head of security on Wednesday. Perrotta said he plans to “fully cooperate and answer any and all questions.”
Meanwhile, Axios reported on Tuesday that Kelly, a longtime Pruitt ally, has also decided to resign. Kelly — who had no previous experience in managing environmental issues or Superfund sites — had been facing calls from lawmakers for the EPA’s internal watchdog to investigate whether Kelly was properly vetted before being hired into the high-level position, and whether he has violated any federal rules since joining the EPA.
In an EPA statement emailed to ThinkProgress Tuesday, Pruitt said, “Kell Kelly’s service at the EPA will be sorely missed.”
The news of Kelly’s resignation comes amidst growing concerns about his past history as a banking executive — last year he was banned for life from the industry by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
It was also recently reported that in 2003, Kelly’s bank helped Pruitt get a mortgage for an Oklahoma City house purchased through a shell company.
In Kelly’s defense, the EPA emailed a statement to media from Frank Keating, former Oklahoma governor and former chief executive of the American Bankers Association, which said, “Kell Kelly is a man of high integrity. During my time as CEO of the American Bankers Association, Mr. Kelly served as my chairman and helped lead the association through a difficult period following 2008 financial crisis.”
Meanwhile, as Pruitt’s head of security, Perrotta traveled with Pruitt on several trips as part of the administrator’s round-the-clock security detail. He has also been named in several recent allegations against Pruitt. This includes reports that he helped to steer a bug-sweeping contract to a colleague at an outside security firm, a claim he has denied. According to Politico, Perrotta has also been a “driving force” behind the ever-increasing costs for Pruitt’s security.
And according to former EPA deputy chief of staff Kevin Chmielewski, Perrotta tried to have Chmielewski’s EPA credentials confiscated, and threatened to go to Chmielewski’s home and forcibly retrieve his EPA parking pass in the lead-up to Chmielewski’s dismissal from the agency.
Perrotta told ABC he resigned for personal reasons. “All of this press is taking a toll on my family,” he said. “I decided to move on and it’s been an honor to serve.”
In a separate statement to the media, the EPA also confirmed Perrotta’s resignation. “I want to thank him for his service and wish him the very best in retirement,” Pruitt said in the statement.
The two resignations come as Pruitt faces numerous ongoing ethics scandals about his spending habits and the way he has run the agency. As a result, the administrator is currently facing at least 10 different ethics investigations.
In addition to getting a sweetheart deal last year on a Capitol Hill condo linked to an energy lobbyist, the Government Accountability Office found recently that the EPA broke the law when Pruitt’s office spent $43,000 on a soundproof phone booth.
Questions remain about the significant raises given to close Pruitt aides, while separately, it has been reported that Pruitt retaliated against staff who raised concerns about his spending and management practices — a claim Pruitt denied last Thursday during two hearings.
In a statement reacting to the news, Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) said, “Scott Pruitt should be the next to go.” Beyer is among the lawmakers who have been calling for investigations into the allegations against Pruitt.
“The exodus of Pruitt’s closest aides shows just how toxic his reign at EPA has become,” Beyer added. “Albert Kelly was never qualified to run Superfund, his banking ban was a huge red flag, and his resignation is a positive development. The EPA needs new leadership from public servants committed to its mission of protecting the environment and putting Americans’ public health first.”
Two top US EPA staffers resign amid ongoing ethics probes
Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Scott Pruitt stands after the swearing-in ceremony for US Ambassador to Canada Kelly Knight Craft in Washington, U.S., September 26, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
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Two high-level Environmental Protection Agency employees whose names have come up in ongoing probes into Administrator Scott Pruitt’s ethics and travel have resigned from the agency, the EPA confirmed on Tuesday.
Pasquale “Nino” Perrotta, a former Secret Service agent who served as the head of Pruitt’s security team, resigned on Monday, but said he will continue to cooperate in a U.S. House of Representatives investigation into his role in costly decisions around Pruitt’s security. ABC News first reported the resignation on Tuesday.
Albert “Kell” Kelly, who ran the agency’s Superfund cleanup program, also announced his resignation, the EPA confirmed. Kelly was barred by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation from working at any U.S. financial institution after unspecified violations while working at a bank in Oklahoma.
The resignations come just days after lawmakers grilled Pruitt in back-to-back hearings on reports of ethics violations, excessive spending on travel and security, close industry ties and the reassignment of agency whistleblowers who flagged concerns about high spending.
Those issues included the installation of a $43,000 soundproof phone booth in Pruitt’s office and the routine use of first-class flights – both of which EPA has argued were important to protecting Pruitt’s safety and privacy.
Pruitt praised both men for their work at EPA.
“Kell Kelly’s service at EPA will be sorely missed,” Pruitt said in a statement. “In just over a year he has made a tremendous impact on EPA’s Superfund program.”
Pruitt said of Perrotta that he “selflessly served the American people for more than 23 years” as a Secret Service agent and under four EPA administrators. “I want to thank him for his service and wish him the very best in retirement.”
House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy said on Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that his committee had scheduled interviews with Perrotta and other senior Pruitt aides this week.
He said the panel also received documents it requested from the EPA related to Pruitt and his staff’s use of first-class flights and a condo rental agreement between Pruitt and the wife of an industry lobbyist.
President some rich asshole has not indicated whether the slew of scandals would affect Pruitt’s tenure.
Several Republicans in the House who have embraced Pruitt’s deregulatory agenda said Pruitt was unfairly grilled by Democrats regarding the scandals, but others said his answers to some key questions were vague.
Reporting By Valerie Volcovici; editing by Jonathan Oatis
The so-called ‘grownups’ in the White House won’t rescue us from unhinged ‘idiot’ the rich asshole
John Kelly addresses the USO of Metropolitan Washington-Baltimore's 35th Annual Awards Dinner, Arlington, Va., March 21, 2017. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by Sgt. 1st Class Jim Greenhill)
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President some rich asshole is running out of brass. He axed former national security advisers Michael Flynn and H.R. McMaster, two of his “generals.” Despite the rich asshole’s energetic defense of Dr. Ronny Jackson, the Navy rear admiral has now been relieved of duty as the presidential physician. We’ve been hearing for months that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly is on the outs with the rich asshole, and new reporting makes it seem likely he won’t be there much longer.
This article was originally published at Salon
Ever since Kelly said that the rich asshole was “uninformed” about policy issues and then mishandled the Rob Porter scandal by stabbing former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks in the back and letting her take the blame, the rumblings have gotten louder. Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman reported in March that the relationship with Kelly was on the skids:
With the departures of Hope Hicks and Gary Cohn, the rich asshole presidency is entering a new phase — one in which the rich asshole is feeling liberated to act on his impulses. “the rich asshole is in command. He’s been in the job more than a year now. He knows how the levers of power work. He doesn’t give a fuck,” the Republican [source] said. the rich asshole’s decision to circumvent the policy process and impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum reflects his emboldened desire to follow his impulses and defy his advisers. “It was like a fuck-you to Kelly,” a the rich asshole friend said. “the rich asshole is red-hot about Kelly trying to control him.”
It was obvious at the time that Ivanka the rich asshole and Jared Kushner were among those pushing this storyline. Ivanka was quoted complaining to a friend that Kelly had embarrassed Kushner with the security clearance issue. (Apparently she was unaware that her father can clear anyone he chooses to.)
After attorney John Dowd left the president’s legal team, stories circulated that the rich asshole was feeling so liberated that he was planning to eliminate the position of chief of staff altogether. That certainly didn’t give the impression Kelly had much job security. Kelly seemed to know he was short for the White House at the time. At a Department of Homeland Security event in Texas, Kelly said that he had loved running that department and that his move to the White House must have meant, “I did something wrong and God punished me.” One imagines the rich asshole was not pleased to hear that one.
Recently we learned that the rich asshole is no longer allowing Kelly to be on all his calls, including the one in which he congratulated Vladimir Putin on his recent re-election, despite the unanimous warning from his advisers not to do it. There has been a lot of talk that Fox News host Sean Hannity is a de facto chief of staff, advising the president with private talks by cell phone. One wonders why Kelly has stuck around this long. In answer to that, NBC News reported this week that the infighting and back-stabbing has risen to new heights and that members of the White House staff have now turned on Kelly, leaking that he arrogantly takes credit for saving the world from some rich asshole.
In one heated exchange between the two men before February’s Winter Olympics in South Korea, Kelly strongly — and successfully — dissuaded the rich asshole from ordering the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula, according to two officials.
For Kelly, the exchange underscored the reasoning behind one of his common refrains, which multiple officials described as some version of “I’m the one saving the country.”
“The strong implication being ‘if I weren’t here we would’ve entered WWIII or the president would have been impeached,'” one former senior White House official said.
He also apparently frequently refers to the rich asshole as an “idiot.”
CNN further reported that when the rich asshole abruptly announced in public, and without any discussion with advisers, that he would pull U.S. troops from Syria, Kelly referred to the president as “unhinged” in a meeting with national security officials, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
Kelly is not, of course, the first of the rich asshole’s close advisers to call him an idiot. McMaster reportedly said that too, also calling the president a “dope” with the intelligence of a “kindergartener.” Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson famously called the rich asshole a “fucking moron.” Now-disgraced Senior Adviser Steve Bannon, a true believer, said that the rich asshole was like an 11-year old. Perhaps worst of all was an email “purporting to represent the views of former economic adviser Gary Cohn” which, according to Michael Wolff’s book “Fire and Fury,” read in part:
It’s worse than you can imagine. An idiot surrounded by clowns. the rich asshole won’t read anything — not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers; nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored . . . the rich asshole is less a person than a collection of terrible traits.
You will note that none of those people still work in the White House. It stands to reason that John Kelly must be getting close to his final exit as well.
The NBC News report went to great lengths to also point out that Kelly is widely disliked for his antediluvian sexist views, absurdly suggesting that the rich asshole White House has zero tolerance for such behavior within its august halls. Kelly reportedly defended accused domestic abuser Rob Portman by saying that women are more emotional than men, which is rich considering that Porter allegedly got so angry at his former wife that he dragged her out of the shower to scream abuse at her. Then there’s Kelly himself, who reportedly blows off steam with “salty language” and constantly insults his boss in meetings with other White House staff. Obviously, the rich asshole himself is no study in grace under pressure. He watches TV for hours, works himself into a frenzy and then blurts out:
While Kelly’s sexism may sound creepy, it’s a bit much for staffers to put this out there as the reason for his demise. They are working for some rich asshole, the man who bragged about groping women’s private parts and getting away with it because he’s a star. It’s obvious they have no standards in that regard.
Clearly, Kelly is being shoved out because everyone understands the rich asshole is an idiot, and it’s only a matter of time before he finds out they are saying it out loud. He won’t have that:
Beltway pundits are all bemoaning the fact that Kelly’s impending departure will mean there is only one “grown-up” left, Defense Secretary Mattis. No one knows how long he will last either; he may be next in line.
some rich asshole thinks he’s got this now, and he doesn’t need anyone advising him to do things he doesn’t want to do. Anyway, he’s got John Bolton, Larry Kudlow and Sean Hannity to lean on. What could go wrong?
White House quietly corrects statement on Iran’s nuclear capabilities, hopes nobody will notice
The administration did not issue a formal correction or publicize the change.
The White House issued a significant correction to an earlier statement it had made regarding Iran’s nuclear capabilities on Monday night, shifting its stance dramatically, with little fanfare.
On Monday morning, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a press conference during which he laid out a trove of documents he claimed proved Iran was running a secret nuclear weapons program, in violation of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. “Iran lied, big time,” he said.
In response to that presentation, the White House issued its own statement to reporters at around 7:30 p.m., according to CNN, condemning the “new” findings.
“The United States is aware of the information just released by Israel and continues to examine it carefully,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders wrote in an official statement. “These facts are consistent with what the United States has long known: Iran has a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons program that it has tried and failed to hide from the world and from its own people.”
As the day wore on, however, it became obvious that the information Netanyahu had presented to the public was actually outdated — most of it from the period between 1993 and 2003, The Atlantic notes — and likely part of a broader scheme to convince the rich asshole to withdraw the United States from the Iran agreement. An assessment by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Thursday, as well as one he gave in October, also contradicted Netanyahu’s claim that the nuclear deal was ineffective.
The White House, perhaps hoping to avoid an incident, subsequently took stock of its situation and quietly issued a minor, but drastic correction to its initial statement at around 9:30 p.m. Monday night, posting the amended version to the WhiteHouse.gov website.
“These facts are consistent with what the United States has long known,” the new statement read. “Iran had a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons program that it has tried and failed to hide from the world and from its own people.”
The subtle swap from “has” to “had” shifted the tone of the statement substantially, pushing the administration’s accusation from the present to the past tense.
The White House, unsurprisingly, did not issue a formal correction or publicize the change.
After multiple outlets made note of the differences between the two statements, the White House on Tuesday told reporters that the original wording had simply been the result of a “clerical error.”
“The original White House statement included a clerical error, which we quickly detected and fixed. To be clear, the United States has long known that Iran had a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons program,” a National Security Council spokesman told CNN.
White House spokespersons did not elaborate on the issue or explain why the statement appeared not to have been vetted with State Department officials before it was sent to the media.
President the rich asshole has long voiced his displeasure with the Iran deal, which he views as inefficient and unfair. On April 23, during a televised press conferenceat the White House with French President Emmanuel Macron, the rich asshole called the deal “insane” and “ridiculous,” and said it should never have been made.
“Nobody knows what I’m going to do on the 12th,” the rich asshole told reporters, referring to the upcoming periodic review deadline on May 12, by which time the president must decide whether or not to renew the deal, which lifted crippling economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for a scale-back of its enrichment program. “This is a deal with decayed foundations. It’s a bad deal, it’s a bad structure, it’s falling down. It should have never, ever been made.”
However, recent analysis by the rich asshole administration’s own State Department proves that the president’s claims of a crumbling framework are largely unfounded. According to the 2018 Adherence to and Compliance With Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments report, issued on April 17, Iran has “taken significant steps to stop and roll back key elements of its ongoing civil nuclear program” since signing on to the 2015 nuclear deal, eliminating nearly its entire stockpile of enriched uranium in accordance with international mandates.
Additionally, the report noted, Iran has “allowed IAEA inspectors daily access to enrichment facilities when requested and permitted continuous monitoring of other declared key nuclear-related facilities, including uranium mines, mills, and centrifuge production and storage facilities” — in line with Defense Secretary Mattis’ earlier assertions.
Despite this, the rich asshole administration has hinted it may, at the very least, pursue a new deal regardless.
“If there’s no chance that we can fix it, I will recommend to the president that we do our level best to work with our allies to achieve a better outcome and a better deal, even after May 12,” newly minted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said during a confirmation hearing earlier in April. “Even after May 12, there’s still much diplomatic work to be done.”
‘Idiot’ ‘idiot’ ‘dope’ ‘dumb as sh*t’ — Check out MSNBC’s big list of brutal insults former staffers have for the rich asshole
President some rich asshole (left) and White House chief of staff John Kelly (right). Image via Saul Loeb/AFP.
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The president’s relationship with Chief of Staff John Kelly was the subject of a bombshell NBC report yesterday, which cataloged the dysfunction inside the White House that’s caused by deteriorating relations between the rich asshole and Kelly.
The fact that Kelly calls the rich asshole “an idiot” is what made headlines, but the reporter who broke the story said that Kelly “casting himself as the savior of the country” is causing all sorts of tensions and things may be reaching a breaking point.
“It was already shaping up to be an unsustainable situation,” said NBC reporter Carol Lee. “The president and John Kelly—based on our reporting, there’s a lot of tension there, there’s distrust. They seem to have really tired of each other.”
But the other part of the story is that the staff has also gotten sick of Kelly—partly because he bashes the president but also because of his self-righteous attitude about “saving the country.”
Some of the brutal takedowns former the rich asshole staffers have used/Screenshot
Kelly is not as organized or discreet, staffers say to reporters like Axios’ Alexi McCammond, who was also on set.
“Everyone is sort of fed up and it’s just chaos all around,” McCammond said. “John Kelly is perhaps not the disciplinarian or straight shooter he claims to be.”
When Kelly leaves—and the sources cited say it’ll be by July—it’ll add another line to a long list of bitter partings between the president and key staffers.
Many of those staffers have not been especially gracious—which you can see from NBC’s list of “insults” delivered about the rich asshole by former senior staffers like Rex Tillerson and Gary Cohn.
the rich asshole claims Mueller has ‘no questions on collusion’ despite list with 13 questions about collusion
Wishful thinking.
On Tuesday morning, President the rich asshole responded to the New York Times publishing a list of questions that special counsel Robert Mueller reportedly wants to ask him by touting that there are “[n]o questions on Collusion.”
“So disgraceful that the questions concerning the Russian Witch Hunt were ‘leaked’ to the media,” the rich asshole tweeted. “No questions on Collusion. Oh, I see…you have a made up, phony crime, Collusion, that never existed, and an investigation begun with illegally leaked classified information. Nice!”
There’s just one problem — the list actually contains 13 questions directly pertaining to “campaign coordination with Russia,” as the Times puts it, including:
— When did you become aware of the rich asshole Tower meeting?— What involvement did you have in the communication strategy, including the release of some rich asshole Jr.’s emails?— During a 2013 trip to Russia, what communication and relationships did you have with the Agalarovs and Russian government officials?— What communication did you have with Michael D. Cohen, Felix Sater and others, including foreign nationals, about Russian real estate developments during the campaign?— What discussions did you have during the campaign regarding any meeting with Mr. Putin? Did you discuss it with others?— What discussions did you have during the campaign regarding Russian sanctions?— What involvement did you have concerning platform changes regarding arming Ukraine?— During the campaign, what did you know about Russian hacking, use of social media or other acts aimed at the campaign?— What knowledge did you have of any outreach by your campaign, including by Paul Manafort, to Russia about potential assistance to the campaign?— What did you know about communication between Roger Stone, his associates, Julian Assange or WikiLeaks?— What did you know during the transition about an attempt to establish back-channel communication to Russia, and Jared Kushner’s efforts?— What do you know about a 2017 meeting in Seychelles involving Erik Prince?— What do you know about a Ukrainian peace proposal provided to Mr. Cohen in 2017?
You can read the full list of the questions Mueller wants to ask the rich asshole here.
the rich asshole’s casual lie about the nature of Mueller’s questions illustrates why his legal advisers think it’s risky for the president to sit down for an interview with the special counsel.
As the Times reports, “Mueller has sought for months to question the president, who has in turn expressed a desire, at times, to be interviewed, viewing it as an avenue to end the inquiry more quickly. His lawyers have been negotiating terms of an interview out of concern that their client — whose exaggerations, half-truths and outright falsehoods are well documented — could provide false statements or easily become distracted.”
the rich asshole’s comment about how it is “disgraceful” that Mueller’s questions were leaked is ironic, given that it appears the leak came from someone in his inner circle. The Times notes that the questions were read by Mueller’s team to the rich asshole’s lawyers, who “compiled them into a list.” The document put together by the rich asshole’s lawyers was then provided to The Times “by a person outside some rich asshole’s legal team.”
Aside from collusion, Mueller also reportedly wants to ask the rich asshole a series of questions about former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former FBI director James Comey, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
In a subsequent tweet, the rich asshole claimed that “[i]t would seem very hard to obstruct justice for a crime that never happened! Witch Hunt!”
the rich asshole’s legal analysis is mistaken. While Justice Department precedent says that sitting presidents cannot be charged with a crime while they are in office, obstruction of justice is a federal offense.
‘You’re creating bad schools’: the rich asshole-backing teacher tells off Betsy DeVos to her face in closed-door meeting
Betsy DeVos (Youtube)
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An Oklahoma teacher who voted for President some rich asshole in 2016 says that he got into a heated argument with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos during a closed-door meeting this week.
Teacher Jon Hazell tells the Huffington Post that he and 49 other teachers, who had all been named teachers of the year in their individual states, met with DeVos this week to discuss their concerns about her education policies.
In particular, he took issue with DeVos’s “school choice” program, which he said drains resources out of traditional public schools and lavishes them upon private schools and charter schools.
“I said, ‘You’re the one creating the “bad” schools by taking all the kids that can afford to get out and leaving the kids who can’t behind,'” Hazell told the Huffington Post.
Brian McDaniel, California’s teacher of the year, tells the publication that Hazell’s comments received a lot of support in the room from fellow teachers.
Additionally, Huffington Post reports that DeVos sparked additional ire from teachers in the room when she expressed her opposition to teachers across the country going on strike to protest for more classroom resources and better pay.
“She basically said that teachers should be teaching and we should be able to solve our problems not at the expense of children,” said Melissa Romano, Montana’s teacher of the year. “For her to say at the ‘expense of children’ was a very profound moment and one I’ll remember forever because that is so far from what is happening.”
the rich asshole tweets about obstruction of justice, doesn’t understand criminal law
Maybe he should talk to a lawyer before he mouths off?
Let’s not beat around the bush. This interpretation of several federal criminal statutes is simply wrong:
the rich asshole appears to think that neither he nor any of his associates can be charged and convicted of an obstruction crime by Special Counsel Robert Mueller if Mueller isn’t also investigating some other crime that was actually committed (a consistent theme of the rich asshole’s Twitter oeuvre is that Mueller’s investigation is a “Witch Hunt” investigating imagined wrongs).
But the rich asshole’s latest tweet reveals that he has a very poor understanding of how the criminal law works, or what sort of actions constitute obstruction of justice. There is no one statute banning a singular crime of “obstruction,” rather, federal law prohibits a wide range of activities — from threatening or harassing witnesses, to bribing jurors, federal officials, or witnesses, to lying to federal investigators or under oath, to kidnapping the family members of a federal judge — all of which can be lumped under the broad heading “obstruction of justice.”
As a general rule, violating one of these statutes is a stand-alone crime. It is illegal, for example, for a witness at a federal criminal trial to knowingly make “any false material declaration” while under oath. Someone charged with perjury under this statute may still be convicted even if the defendant in the original trial was exonerated.
The same is true about federal laws banning witness tampering, bribery, falsification of records, false statements to investigators, and numerous other statutes governing various forms of obstruction of justice.
Imagine, for example, that a hypothetical defendant (we’ll call him “Donnie T.”) is wrongly accused of robbing a bank. In this hypothetical, Donnie T. could not have robbed the bank because he was having sex with his mistress at the time of the robbery.
Donnie T. could defend himself by asking his mistress to testify, but he does not want to reveal this tryst to his wife and to the public at large. So, instead of offering a honest defense, Donnie T. bribes an associate (we’ll call the associate “Mikey C.”) to falsely testify that he was having lunch with Donnie T. at the time of the robbery.
Again, Donnie T. did not rob the bank. He is innocent of the crime he was originally charged with. But bribing Mikey C. to offer false testimony in court is still a federal crime. The fact that Donnie T. should not have been charged with bank robbery in the first place does not give him license to use any tactic he wants, legal or illegal, in order to beat the charges against him.
Of course, none of this means that the rich asshole necessarily committed an obstruction crime. It is still possible that Mueller will wrap up his investigation and determine that charges against the rich asshole are not warranted.
But the old Washington adage that “it’s not the crime, it’s the cover up” exists for a reason. Various laws prohibit individuals from taking certain actions that interfere with federal investigations or legal proceedings. And these crimes are no less severe because the investigator might have begun their investigation with a goose chase.
‘No marriage ever lasts with the rich asshole’: CNN panel ridicules exodus of White House staffers
CNN analyst David Drucker (Photo: Screen capture)
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President some rich asshole has a tough time keeping staff around and the latest news is that he’s having trouble with chief of staff John Kelly. NBC reported Monday that Kelly called the rich asshole an “idiot” and outlined the ongoing problems in the West Wing.
Political Analyst David Drucker cautioned that the rich asshole has a tendency to blow through people and staffers.
“No marriage lasts with the rich asshole,” he told CNN hosts John Berman and Poppy Harlow. “By the way, another piece of that NBC story, that Kelly had to almost talk the president out of withdrawing our troops from the Korean Peninsula and just calling it quits.”
Harlow cut in to fact-check Drucker, noting “this president is still married. What is it — 10 years?”
“His marriage with Kelly,” Drucker qualified.
In an earlier discussion, Drucker argued that the questions special counsel Robert Mueller wants to ask the rich asshole did not come from the president’s legal team. However, given the way the president is prone to call people or reach out for affirmation, it’s reasonable to assume the questions could be spread around “the rich asshole world.”
“the rich asshole stands the most to benefit from a leak because you can then try to attack the Mueller team for double dealing and not trying to run on aboveboard investigation and it allows the president then to get out a narrative that they’re on a fishing expedition,” Drucker explained.
the rich asshole’s former biographers outlined the problems dates back to his days as a hopeful casino mogul, and now it extends into the White House.
“At about the time the rich asshole was pursuing his casino developments, he opened the rich asshole Airways,” Michael d’Antonio recalled. “He burned through executives there.
Art of the Deal co-author Tony Schwartz witnessed the same.
“People are not people to him, they are instruments of his ego,” Schwartz, told The New York Times. “And when they serve his ego, they survive, and when they don’t, they pass into the night.”
Watch the conversation below:
Fox & Friends celebrates anniversary of Osama Bin Laden’s death without once mentioning President Obama’s name
Condoleezza Rice speaks to Fox News (screen grab)
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Fox & Friends on Tuesday celebrated the anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden but did not mention the name of the President Barack Obama, who ordered the operation that led to his killing.
During Tuesday’s program, Fox & Friends aired a montage of clips from the day that the leader of Al Qaeda was shot to death. And although the montage included a brief clip of Obama speaking, the president’s name was never uttered on the network.
Instead, Fox & Friends spoke to Navy SEAL Rob O’Neil, who has taken credit for shooting the terrorist leader, and to former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who served during the Bush administration.
“Seven years today, Navy SEALs raided the compound of Osama bin Laden and killed him in an operation that took under an hour,” Fox News host Steve Doocy said to kick off his interview with O’Neil.
Following O’Neil’s interview, the co-hosts of Fox & Friends spoke to Rice.
“That montage was thrilling,” Rice said. “That moment about Osama bin Laden — I was the national security adviser on September 11th [2001] and I just want to say on this anniversary of his death, thank you, thank you, thank you to the men and women who protected us for all of those years and especially to those brave people who got him."
Watch the video clips below.
the rich asshole’s big mouth just undercut his own administration’s defense of the Muslim Ban
Oops, he did it again.
Representing some rich asshole is a lawyer’s worst nightmare. And he just gave his own administration’s lawyers yet another reason to cringe.
The primary reason why the rich asshole’s Muslim ban has taken some occasional beatings in federal court is pretty simple: The president can’t stop making public statements that undermine his own legal arguments. As a candidate, he bragged about his intention to ban Muslims from entering the country. Then he bragged about the pretext he would use to make this ban appear legal. Then, when the ban was in hot water, legally speaking, and his lawyers were trying to convince courts that it wasn’t handed down because the rich asshole is harbors a bigoted animus toward Muslims, the rich asshole shared several anti-Muslim videos on Twitter.
And so it came to pass that the subject of the rich asshole’s Muslim ban came up during a joint press conference with Nigerian Prime Minster Muhammadu Buhari on Monday. If the rich asshole were smart, he would have kept his mouth shut.
Pres. Trump says he will not apologize for campaign rhetoric involving travel ban: "There's nothing to apologize for." abcn.ws/2hFejwL
Yes, the President of the United States is like a cartoon supervillain who, having captured the hero, decides to reveal the details of his evil plan.
To understand why the rich asshole’s statement at the joint press conference was so ill-advised, consider an exchange between Chief Justice John Roberts and attorney Neal Katyal, who argued against the Muslim ban during last week’s arguments in the rich asshole v. Hawaii.
On its face, the rich asshole’s proclamation announcing the Muslim ban is not an explicitly anti-Muslim document. It restricts foreign nationals from several majority Muslim nations from entering the country, but it also purports to do so for national security reasons — not for reasons rooted in religious bigotry. The primary evidence that the proclamation is, in fact, an attack on Muslims is that the rich asshole has repeatedly promised to implement a Muslim ban by banning people from certain parts of the world.
This led Chief Justice Roberts to wonder whether the rich asshole could save this proclamation by “disavowing all those statements” where he expressed anti-Muslim animus. Katyal struggled to answer Roberts’ question completely as he was hit with additional questions from Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, but the lawyer’s answer indicated that the rich asshole would significantly bolster his case if he were to disavow his previous anti-Muslim statements.
And yet, when the rich asshole had an opportunity to do just that at Monday’s press conference, he did the opposite.
After a reporter asked the rich asshole about this exchange between Roberts and Katyal, the rich asshole said that he would not back away from his past statements because “there’s no reason to apologize.”
“Our immigration laws in this country are a total disaster,” the rich asshole claimed. “They’re laughed at all over the world. They’re laughed at for their stupidity. So I think that if I apologize [for my past statements] it wouldn’t make ten cents worth of difference” to the Supreme Court. “There’s nothing to apologize for.”
Ironically, at the conclusion of the oral arguments in the Hawaii case, Solicitor General Noel Francisco tried to claim that the rich asshole is actually pro-Muslim. “He has made crystal-clear that Muslims in this country are great Americans,” Francisco said of the rich asshole. “And there are many, many Muslim countries who love this country, and [the rich asshole] has praised Islam as one of the great countries [sic] of the world.”
the rich asshole’s statement that he has “nothing to apologize for” regarding his past anti-Muslim statements directly contradicts Francisco’s claim.
Will this matter? Probably not. The Court’s four most conservative members appear all-but-certain to vote with the rich asshole after last week’s oral argument, and Justice Anthony Kennedy appeared to lean in that direction.
Nevertheless, the rich asshole has served up a perfect opportunity to bolster his case. Instead, he directly contradicted his own lawyer on a central matter in this case. That’s never a good plan for a litigant who hopes to prevail in court.
Legal expert methodically dismantles the rich asshole’s claim that Mueller asked ‘no questions about collusion’
some rich asshole and Vladimir Putin (MSNBC)
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Benjamin Wittes, the editor-in-chief of the Lawfare Blog and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, tore apart President some rich asshole’s early morning tweet claiming that special counsel Robert Mueller didn’t intend to ask him any questions about collusion with Russia.
The president began his day by sending out an angry tweet about the Mueller probe, in which he falsely claimed that leaked questions purportedly from Mueller’s office contained “no questions about collusion.”
Wittes, who is also a personal friend of former FBI Director James Comey, methodically dismantled this claim by posting all the questions from the leaked list that directly related to collusion with Russian officials.
Among other things, Wittes points out, Mueller asked the rich asshole about meeting with Russian government officials during his 2013 trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant; about the rich asshole’s negotiations to build a the rich asshole Tower in Moscow while he was running for president; discussions the rich asshole might have had during the campaign regarding Russian sanctions; and even whether the rich asshole had any knowledge of “any outreach by your campaign, including by Paul Manafort, to Russia about potential assistance during the campaign.”
Read all of the questions related to the rich asshole-Russia collusion below.
"No questions on Collusion" twitter.com/realdonaldtrum…
Israel and the rich asshole administration are building a case for war against Iran
This looks an awful lot like a replay of 2007.
Israel and the United States have issued a steady volley of statements against Iran over the past few days that have built a familiar case for war against Tehran, culminating in a bizarre presentation by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday in which he used old information to argue that the Iran deal was based on lies.
A stream of news and analysis pieces cropped up Thursday about Israel’s willingness to strike back against Iran if Tehran struck first — as if Iran was seriously considering a first-strike against Israel.
Secretary of Defense James Mattis on Thursday went so far as to say that war between Iran and Israel is “very likely,” even though he wasn’t sure how this war would start. This is the beat of a drum that has been played before, most loudly in 2007, when Vice President Dick Cheney pushed for a war against Iran, Israel openly threatened Iran after bombing Syrian nuclear facilities, and Sen. John McCain sang about bombing Iran.
Following that familiar script, over the weekend, newly-minted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited U.S. allies in the Middle East and Iran was, of course, at the top of his agenda in Saudi Arabia and in Israel, where he emphasized President some rich asshole’s view of the 2015 nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and accused Iran of being a threat to regional security.
Pompeo even managed to squeeze in a shot against Iran in his meeting in Jordan.
By Monday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused the United States of waging an economic war against Iran, while encouraging other states to take military action against the country.
“Today, the war room against us is the U.S. Department of Treasury,” said Khamenei, according to the semi-official Mehr News Agency. “One way of confrontation with the Islamic Republic establishment is an economic one; another way is the provocation of certain dim-witted and ignorant states in our region [against us],” he said, referring to Saudi Arabia and Israel.
“The [Americans] seek to shift onto others the costs of confrontation with the Islamic Republic establishment and the powerful Iranian nation,” he said. “What Washington does best is cause insecurity. Everywhere they have set foot in, they caused insecurity and brought misfortune for the people,” he added.
Mehrzad Boroujerdi, professor of political science at Syracuse University told ThinkProgress he’s worried that the stage is being set for military action against Iran.
“What is happening, in light of the missile attacks [by Israel against Iranian forces] in Syria, it really seems like we are entering a stage whereby the U.S., Israel, and Saudi Arabia have really decided to take it a notch up in terms of militarily challenging Iran and making sure that the recent victories scored there can be nullified to some extent,” he added.
Boroujerdi said that what’s in play is a more orchestrated plan to provoke Iran — or the force it supports in Lebanon, Hezbollah — to retaliate against Israel in some way. This could also set the stage for further Israeli attacks on Hezbollah territories.
the rich asshole: “I’ve been 100 percent right”
A potential military action would complement the rich asshole’s likely plans to pull out of the JCPOA, as Pompeo indicated last week.
The president has until May 12 to extend sanctions waivers to Iran under the JCPOA, which, in exchange, requires that Iran continue to limit its enrichment activities and allow inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, to inspect its facilities on a regular basis.
But the president is unlikely to do so, and said as much the last time he extended the sanctions in January. He has repeatedly accused Iran of not complying with the deal, even though the IAEA has repeatedly — and consistently — said that Iran is compliance with the terms of JCPOA. So too has the U.S. State Department, and Pompeo, a vocal opponent of the deal.
On Monday, after his visit with Pompeo, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a presentation in Tel Aviv in which he alleged — as he has many times in the past — that Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon. While Israeli officials claimed the presentation was based on new intelligence, the IAEA was aware of the information Netanyahu spoke of well before the Iran deal and published material about it in 2011.
Shortly after that speech, President the rich asshole took questions from reporters on the deal. He praised Netanyahu’s presentation, and said that he remains convinced that the deal is not worth keeping.
“We’ll see what happens. But I think, if anything, what’s happening today and over the last little while and what we’ve learned has really shown that I’ve been 100 percent right,” said the rich asshole.
But there has been zero evidence of that, according to the United Nations.
Given that Iran has not actually violated the deal, the rich asshole administration has, for the past several months, taken an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to trying to dismantle the deal.
Last October, the president accused Iran of violating the “spirit” of the deal. Earlier this year, he alleged that Iran is providing missiles to Houthi rebels in Yemen, where the United States has supported the Saudi Arabia-led coalition to bomb the country for over two years, triggering a massive humanitarian crisis. During German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit last week, the rich asshole said, “Wherever there’s a problem, Iran is right there.”
President the rich asshole has asked the European partners in the deal — France, the United Kingdom, and Germany — to “fix” the deal. But they fell short of passing new sanctions against Iran, which has repeatedly indicated that it would not renegotiate the deal three years after it was struck, nor would it remain in the deal without the United States.
Regional ramifications
In October, President the rich asshole also refused to recertify Iran’s compliance with the JCPOA, as he is required to do under U.S. law every 90 days. That decertification left the door open for Congress to snap back economic sanctions on Iran with 60 days, which did not happen.
But if it does this time around, and if the banking sanctions snap back, things will become dire in Iran. And that’s not good for anyone, said Boroujerdi. To start, Iran will have to turn to China, because they’re the only country offering the no-strings-attached funds Iran will need.
Iran will also face other hard choices — and some of them might prove to be destabilizing, which, said Boroujerdi, is the rich asshole administration’s “game plan.”
“They are hoping that by pulling out of the nuclear deal, with the formidable challenges that Iran is experiencing, in terms of the water crisis, the currency situation, lack of foreign investment, etc., will lead to some sort of popular uprising,” he said.
But this will have major regional ramifications.
“This can really set the region ablaze. Having a country like Iran becoming unstable, in this situation, when the whole Middle East is imploding in one way or another, can really raise the stakes, considering Iran’s size, population, and the geopolitical position it occupies,” said Boroujerdi.
“I’m not sure Washington really wants to see that happen, but they are perhaps naively hopeful that this will be a self-contained regime change.”
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