December 23, 2018

The Special Counsel Is Bearing Down on Roger Stone

The Special Counsel Is Bearing Down on Roger Stone

The longtime Trump adviser appears to have asked an associate to obtain anti-Clinton emails from WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/12/mueller-appears-close-indicting-stone-alleged-lies/578794/?utm_term=2018-12-21T11%3A00%3A22&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=edit-promo&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter


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Roger Stone, a longtime adviser to President Donald Trump, appears to be at the center of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into a potential conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia because of his uncanny predictions throughout 2016 about WikiLeaks, which published Democratic documents stolen by Russia during the election.

The self-proclaimed “dirty trickster” said several times in 2016 that he was directly in touch with Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. But he has since walked that back, drawing more scrutiny from congressional and federal investigators and ensnaring several of his contacts in the process. “I had no contact with Assange,” Stone told ABC earlier this month, despite the fact that he exchanged private messages with WikiLeaks on Twitter in October 2016. He also said he would never turn on the president. “There’s no circumstance under which I would testify against the president, because I’d have to bear false witness against him,” Stone said. “I’d have to make things up, and I’m not going to do that.”


Now it could soon be Roger Stone’s time in the barrel. The House Intelligence Committee voted unanimously on Thursday to release the official transcript of his testimony to Mueller, days after Mueller formally requested it—the last step necessary for prosecutors to bring a charge of lying to Congress, according to The Washington Post.

Mueller’s team has proved highly successful so far in getting even Trump’s most loyal associates to “flip” on the president using criminal charges as leverage. Just this month, Mueller struck a formal cooperation deal with Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen after charging him with lying to Congress about a Russian real-estate deal he and Trump were pursuing in 2016. If Stone is charged by Mueller with a similar crime and decides to cooperate rather than face jail time, it could spell danger for the president. Stone reportedly spoke to Trump regularly during the election, and could be in a position to fill in missing details about the campaign’s ties to WikiLeaks.


MUCH more on the link-

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/12/mueller-appears-close-indicting-stone-alleged-lies/578794/?utm_term=2018-12-21T11%3A00%3A22&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=edit-promo&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter


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December 19, 2018

Another Migrant Girl Nearly Died After She Was Detained In New Mexico By The Border Patrol

Another Migrant Girl Nearly Died After She Was Detained In New Mexico By The Border Patrol


The girl went into cardiac arrest in November, though she survived, raising more questions about what happened to Jakelin Caal, who died Dec. 8.


https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnstanton/another-migrant-girl-nearly-died-after-she-was-detained-in

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A highway marker directs traffic to the Antelope Wells Port of Entry in New Mexico.


LORDSBURG, NEW MEXICO — A young girl who was in the custody of US Customs and Border Protection went into cardiac arrest in November at a hospital in El Paso where she was resuscitated, a US Customs and Border Protection official told members of Congress on Tuesday. The incident occurred in the same CBP sector where a 7-year-old Guatemalan asylum seeker, Jakelin Caal, fell ill earlier this month. Caal was airlifted to El Paso, but died in the early hours of Dec. 8.

According to members of a congressional delegation that toured the CBP facilities where Caal had been held before her death, El Paso Sector Chief Aaron Hull acknowledged the earlier incident, but declined to discuss the specifics of the case — or of several other alleged health crises involving children in the sector that were raised by the lawmakers. According to a source present at the meeting, Hull said that while he’d have to review files on the case, he told the lawmakers that it was “lucky” doctors were able to save the girl’s life in November.

Following the tour, incoming Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chairman Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas said “it’s clear that for quite a while this sector has not been prepared to provide proper medical attention to people … like Jakelin. A lot of us left there wondering if there’re other cases of people who were close to death that we just haven’t found out about.”


Caal’s death has renewed focus on the administration’s increasingly heavy handed immigration policies, including the use of so-called “metering” tactics at Ports of Entry that slow the processing of asylum request to a crawl, forcing thousands of families and children to wait for weeks to request asylum. On Tuesday, Castro called for CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan to resign.


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December 19, 2018

Trump DID sign letter of intent for Trump Tower Moscow project despite Giuliani insisting he didn't

Trump signed letter of intent for Trump Tower Moscow project despite Giuliani insisting he didn't

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/18/politics/trump-signed-letter-of-intent-rudy-giuliani-moscow/index.html


(CNN)A newly obtained document shows President Donald Trump signed a letter of intent to move forward with negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Russia, despite his attorney Rudy Giuliani claiming on Sunday the document was never signed.

CNN's Chris Cuomo obtained a copy of the signed letter of intent that set the stage for negotiations for Trump condominiums, a hotel and commercial property in the heart of Moscow. The letter is dated October 28, 2015, and bears the President's signature.
When asked on Sunday about the letter, Giuliani incorrectly told CNN's Dana Bash that it had not been signed. "It was a real estate project. There was a letter of intent to go forward, but no one signed it," Giuliani told Bash.


-snip-


Trump did not tell the public during the 2016 presidential campaign that his company explored the business deal with Russia and instead repeatedly claimed he had "nothing to do with Russia." But the project, which was ultimately scrapped, would've given Trump's company a $4 million upfront fee, no upfront costs, a percentage of the sales and control over marketing and design. The deal also included an opportunity to name the hotel spa after Trump's daughter Ivanka.

The special counsel's team investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election alleges the deal could have been lucrative for the Trump Organization. While the potential Trump Tower Moscow deal was on the table, then-candidate Trump was speaking positively about working with Russian President Vladimir Putin and minimizing Russia's aggressive military moves around the world.



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December 17, 2018

Trump's History of Campaign Finance Wrongdoing Destroys His New Defense

Trump’s History of Campaign Finance Wrongdoing Destroys His New Defense

Trump says today that he doesn’t know campaign finance law. But he became acquainted with it years ago as a donor— by breaking it.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-history-of-campaign-finance-wrongdoing-destroys-his-new-defense?via=twitter_page


Donald Trump, the man who once bragged on national television in 2015 about his remarkable knowledge surrounding campaign donations, declaring, “I know more about contributions than anybody,” now has a brand new defense to his alleged federal election crimes: He suddenly claims to know nothing about how campaign donations work. The problem with this defense, though, is this thing called “Google,” which details Trump’s long history of being investigated and even fined for violating campaign laws.

We heard this new defense on Thursday in response to Trump’s long-time lawyer Michael Cohen telling prosecutors that Trump directed him to violate federal campaign laws. Trump stated via Twitter, “I never directed Michael Cohen to break the law. He was a lawyer and he is supposed to know the law. It is called ‘advice of counsel.’” (It’s like the end of an episode of Law & Order when both suspects claim the other is the real ring leader.)

This may come as a surprise to some, but “advice of counsel” is an actual legal defense that people have utilized effectively to shield themselves from criminal liability, although it’s a longshot. But if Trump were to have any chance with this defense in a courtroom, he must show that in good faith he relied on his lawyer’s advice and had no idea that the conduct may have been criminal.

The reality is that Trump can’t in good faith claim he was oblivious to the rigors of campaign finance laws, because he was personally investigated from 2011 through 2013 for possible campaign violations by the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Add to that, in 2000, Trump paid a then-record fine for violating New York lobbying laws for failing to report that he was the person secretly financing a campaign. These experiences would clearly seem to put Trump on notice that any effort to undermine transparency when it comes to campaigns is not only wrong but could result in civil or criminal penalties.


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December 17, 2018

The EPA Is Planning to Jeopardize the Water Quality for 117 Million Americans

The EPA Is Planning to Jeopardize the Water Quality for 117 Million Americans

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/12/the-epa-is-planning-to-jeopardize-the-water-quality-for-117-million-americans/

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The Cuyahoga River fire in 1952, near downtown Cleveland sparked national alarm about water quality.


The Trump administration unveiled a proposal on Tuesday weakening federal water protections for millions of acres of streams, wetlands, and waterways that will likely affect the drinking water for more than one-third of Americans. While the Trump administration specifically targeted the 2015 Obama-era rule known as the Clean Water Rule, or Waters of the United States, the proposal goes further in rolling back environmental oversight than has occurred with any president since Ronald Reagan.

Inside the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday, the focus of a celebratory 90-minute event was not on water quality. Some two-dozen speakers from the Trump administration, including Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler, were joined by some members of Congress, to criticize the Obama-era rule as federal overreach. Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) declared he was “nervous” when he finally entered the EPA for the first time in his four decades in Congress, claiming the EPA is usually a “four-letter word,” but now the agency can be renamed, the “Environmental Farm Protection Agency,” because of the new rule’s deference to agricultural interests. He was only one of the agency’s fiercest critics who spoke to the audience, many of whom were members of the American Farm Bureau Federation, a powerful agricultural lobbying arm.

The EPA and the US Army Corps of Engineers proposal, now open to 60 days of public comment, dramatically restricts which bodies of water fall under the 1972 Clean Water Act regulations. The 2015 Obama rule expanded the definition to include 2 million more acres of streams and 20 million more acres of wetlands, triggering years of backlash and lawsuits led by agriculture, real estate developers, and other industries. The proposal announced today will limit Clean Water Act regulations to major waterways, their tributaries, and adjacent wetland, but will exempt other wetlands and streams that flow seasonally during heavy rainfall. These would be subject to wide-ranging state and local oversight, if any. Today’s proposal also replaces a Bush-era rule that subjected some of these streams to regulations if they are significantly connected to navigable waters—a rule that has been in place for half the country.

Conservative critics have waged a proxy fight against the Clean Water Rule by framing it as government overreach undermining the rights of farmers and local government. A common talking point was to claim the EPA wanted to regulate “puddles” after it rained on farmland. But in some areas, the so-called puddles—now exempt from the Clean Water Act—involved over half the water flowing into major rivers, explains Blan Holman, managing attorney in Southern Environmental Law Center. “When you shrink that definition, you’ve now reduced the universe of waters that are protected,” Holman tells Mother Jones. “If you’re concerned about drinking water sources, you need to be concerned about what’s flowing into those reservoirs and those rivers.”


More on the link-
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/12/the-epa-is-planning-to-jeopardize-the-water-quality-for-117-million-americans/


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December 16, 2018

US-Mex border areas Trump admin said need more security, troops remove barbed wire at locals request

As Trump argues for a wall, a border security measure gets pulled back


https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-argues-wall-border-security-measure-pulled-back/story?id=59830679


U.S. Army soldiers have removed barbed wire along the US-Mexico border in areas where the Trump administration has said more border security measures are needed after local community leaders raised concerns.

About 2 miles of military-grade wire was removed from city land in Laredo, Texas, according to Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officials. The agency ordered the removals after hearing from local elected officials who raised environmental and public safety concerns with the wire running near community parks.

Laredo Mayor Pete Saenz, who leads the Texas Border Commission, said the Trump administration has, in part, used his community to fabricate the threat of migrants traveling north. “They want to be overly protective,” Saenz told ABC News. “But at what cost? The cost to the local economy. The cost to our livelihoods here at the border area.” “By all means we want security, but it’s got to be done properly and weighed carefully,” the mayor said.

Razor wire has also been removed in Hidalgo, Texas, where the Rio Grande River valley acts as a natural impediment to crossing as it does throughout much of south Texas. Even though some border communities like Hidalgo haven’t seen the direct impact from the military fortifications, City Councilman Rudy Franz says the extra measures are excessive. “This is blown out of proportion,” Franz told ABC News. “I don’t think it’s necessary. I think it puts fear in people.”


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December 16, 2018

Bombshell- Michael Flynn proposed a sanctions relief deal to Russians BEFORE the 2016 election

Did Michael Flynn Try to Strike a Grand Bargain With Moscow as It Attacked the 2016 Election?

His associates say he claimed he was in contact with the Russian ambassador during the campaign.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/12/michael-flynn-contacts-russia-campaign-robert-mueller/


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In early December, special counsel Robert Mueller, in preparation for the upcoming sentencing of Michael Flynn, submitted two memos outlining his recommended punishment for President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser. The documents noted that Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, deserved no prison time for his felony because he had provided “substantial assistance” to Mueller’s investigation and several other ongoing criminal probes. And one of the memos tantalizingly noted that Flynn had aided Mueller’s “investigation concerning any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald J Trump.” The memo does not specify what information Flynn provided on this topic, but perhaps he told Mueller about the Russian contacts of a key Trump campaign official: himself.


In February 2017, the Washington Post reported that Flynn had “a series of contacts” with Russia’s then-ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, in 2016 that “began before the Nov. 8 election and continued during the transition.” Kislyak confirmed to the Post that he had communicated with Flynn by text, phone, and in person. But that article—and much of the Flynn coverage—focused on Flynn’s post-election contacts with Kislyak, conversations that he lied about to the FBI and that led to his indictment. There has been no public information, via the Mueller investigation or other sources, regarding Flynn’s interactions with Kislyak during the 2016 campaign when he was Trump’s top adviser on national security matters.

Yet two Flynn associates tell Mother Jones that Flynn has informed friends and colleagues that prior to Election Day he spoke with Kislyak about how Trump could work productively with Russia if he won the presidency. One of these Flynn associates, who each asked not to be identified, notes that Flynn said he discussed with Kislyak a grand bargain in which Moscow would cooperate with the Trump administration to resolve the Syrian conflict and Washington would end or ease up on the sanctions imposed on Russia for its annexation of Crimea and military intervention in Ukraine. The other Flynn associate says Flynn said he had been talking to Kislyak about Syria, Iran, and other foreign policy matters that Russia and the United States could tackle together were Trump to be elected. A third Flynn associate recalls that shortly after the election, Flynn told him he had been in contact with Kislyak about Syria—but without stating whether that was before or after Election Day.

-snip-

Had Flynn privately met or communicated with Kislyak during the summer or fall, it would mean Trump’s chief national security aide was secretly interacting with the representative of a foreign power as that government was mounting information and cyber warfare against the United States. Such an interaction could signal to the Vladimir Putin regime that Trump didn’t mind the Kremlin’s interference in the election and would be willing to work with Moscow despite its efforts to subvert the US election. And if Flynn held such conversations with the Russian ambassador, this could have bolstered the Kremlin’s preference for Trump over Hillary Clinton and provided Moscow with further incentive for intervening in the 2016 campaign to assist Trump—especially if there was any talk of a sanctions-for-Syria deal or other policy aims desired by Putin. (Then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, a top Republican supporting Trump, met with Kislyak at least twice in 2016, including in September in his Senate office.)


Much more on the link-

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/12/michael-flynn-contacts-russia-campaign-robert-mueller/


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December 16, 2018

GA Gov- Days before election SoS Brian Kemp said Dems hacked voter rolls, we now know that was a LIE

AJC INVESTIGATION: How Brian Kemp turned warning of election system vulnerability against Democrats


In a dead heat with Stacey Abrams, Brian Kemp created a diversion from computer security breakdown


https://www.myajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/ajc-investigation-how-brian-kemp-turned-warning-election-system-vulnerability-against-democrats/iLOkpHK3ea39t8Eh4PCGxM/





Brian Kemp, the Republican candidate for governor, had a problem. As did Brian Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of state. It was Nov. 3, a Saturday, 72 hours to Election Day. Virtually tied in the polls with Democrat Stacey Abrams, Kemp was in danger of becoming the first Georgia Republican to lose a statewide election since 2006. And, now, a new threat. The secretary of state’s office had left its voter-registration system exposed online, opening Kemp to criticism that he couldn’t secure an election that featured him in the dual roles of candidate and overseer.But by the next day, Kemp and his aides had devised one solution for both problems, an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows.

They publicly accused the Democratic Party of Georgia of trying to hack into the voter database in a failed attempt to steal the election. The announcement added last-minute drama to an already contentious campaign. More important, it also pre-empted scrutiny of the secretary of state’s own missteps while initiating a highly unusual criminal investigation into his political rivals.


But no evidence supported the allegations against the Democrats at the time, and none has emerged in the six weeks since, the Journal-Constitution found. It appears unlikely that any crime occurred. “There was no way a reasonable person would conclude this was an attempted attack,” said Matthew Bernhard, a computer scientist at the University of Michigan who has consulted with plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging Georgia’s use of outdated touch-screen voting machines.

To reconstruct the campaign’s final weekend, the Journal-Constitution interviewed more than 15 people — computer security experts, political operatives, lawyers and others — and reviewed court filings and other public records. That examination suggests Kemp and his aides used his elected office to protect his political campaign from a potentially devastating embarrassment. Their unsubstantiated claims came at a pivotal moment, as voters were making their final decisions in an election that had attracted intense national attention.


There is MUCH more on the link, the whole disgustingly corrupt and criminal story...

https://www.myajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/ajc-investigation-how-brian-kemp-turned-warning-election-system-vulnerability-against-democrats/iLOkpHK3ea39t8Eh4PCGxM/


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December 10, 2018

Trump EPA to rollback Obama-era protections for thousands of waterways and wetlands

EPA to roll back protections in rewrite of Obama-era water rule


https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/420380-epa-to-roll-back-protections-in-rewrite-of-obama-era-water-rule


The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is expected to unveil a new proposal that would roll back major federal protections for thousands of U.S. waterways and wetlands. The Trump administration is expected to rewrite a major national water rule imposed by former President Obama in 2015, The Associated Press reported Saturday.

The outlet obtained a set of White House talking points for the proposed new water rule, which indicate that the Trump administration is stripping federal protections for waterways. The White House talking points reportedly argue that the "previous administration’s 2015 rule wasn’t about water quality," according to the AP. “It was about power - power in the hands of the federal government over farmers, developers, and landowners,” the statement indicates.

-snip-

Jan Goldman-Carter, senior director of wetlands and water resources at the National Wildlife Federation, told the AP that about 60 percent of the stream miles in the continental U.S. would no longer be protected. The proposed rollback would also strip protection for half of the U.S. wetlands, Goldman-Carter said. She called it an “an unprecedented rollback of Clean Water Act protections.”


Environmental groups say the Obama-era rule helps protect remote and sometimes dry creek and wetlands, which help protect major downstream lakes and rivers from pollutants, runoffs of fertilizer and oil spills, the AP noted. The protections helped shield humans from droughts, floods and hurricanes, according to the outlet. The 2015 measure also worked toward cleaning up larger bodies of water, like the Chesapeake Bay.


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December 10, 2018

Dem Rep. Ral Grijalva Is Going to Make Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke's Life Hell in the Next Congress

Rep. Raúl Grijalva Is Going to Make Ryan Zinke’s Life Hell in the Next Congress

A Democratic spitfire takes the helm of the House Committee on Natural Resources


https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/12/rep-raul-grijalva-is-going-to-make-ryan-zinkes-life-hell-in-the-next-congress/

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Less than a week before the midterm elections, US House Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) released a report detailing how the US House Committee on Natural Resources, on which he has served for 14 years, stacked its hearings with industry interests. “Under Republican leadership,” he wrote, “hearings have disproportionally included witnesses who pad their profits by degrading public lands.”

Now that Democrats have won a majority in the House, Grijalva will have his chance, as the committee’s new chairman, to change the direction of the governing body that oversees federal lands and energy and water resources. Grijalva’s committee will also oversee and investigate the Interior Department, employing the system of checks and balances that Grijalva thinks his predecessors neglected.

Last week, High Country News spoke with Grijalva about his priorities and what his leadership could mean for climate change policies and resource management in the West. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Interview is on the link--

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/12/rep-raul-grijalva-is-going-to-make-ryan-zinkes-life-hell-in-the-next-congress/


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