JoanofArgh
JoanofArgh's JournalJared Kushner identified as senior White House official whose security clearance was denied
Jared Kushner identified as senior White House official whose security clearance was denied by career officials
By Tom Hamburger ,
Rachael Bade and
Ashley Parker
The senior White House official whose security clearance was denied last year because of concerns about foreign influence, private business interests and personal conduct is presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, according to people familiar with documents and testimony provided to the House Oversight Committee.
Kushner was identified only as “Senior White House Official 1” in committee documents released this week describing the testimony of Tricia Newbold, a whistleblower in the White House’s personnel security office who said she and another career employee determined that Kushner had too many “significant disqualifying factors” to receive a clearance.
Their decision was overruled by Carl Kline, the political appointee who then headed the office, according to Newbold’s interview with committee staff.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/jared-kushner-identified-as-senior-white-house-official-whose-security-clearance-was-denied-by-career-officials/2019/04/03/fefa8dbe-5623-11e9-814f-e2f46684196e_story.html?utm_term=.a90219db36d6
Fox News to host town hall with Bernie Sanders
Fox News' Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum will host a town hall with Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders on April 15 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, with a focus on the economy and jobs.
Why it matters: Earlier this year, the Democratic National Committee barred Fox News from hosting any of its primary debates, after a New Yorker investigation shed light on the extent of the network's ties to the Trump administration. Sanders and Hillary Clinton appeared together in one Fox News town hall during the 2016 election.
https://www.axios.com/2020-presidential-election-bernie-sanders-fox-news-town-hall-382d3b77-452b-4c5e-8073-672863350433.html
Napolitano is saying the Mueller report is 700 pages long. Reporters trying to get it confirmed
https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1110992456584179712I tried to see if I could confirm both the 700 page estimate of the length of the Mueller report and the 2 million page estimate of the volume of raw evidence that Judge Napolitano repeatedly offers in his comments here.
"We'll decline to comment, thanks," Peter Carr says.
Appearing on Fox Business Network’s Cavuto Coast to Coast Wednesday, Napolitano attempted to explain exactly where Schiff was coming from by getting inside his “head.”
“We saw on Sunday a four-page summary of a 700-page report,” the Fox analyst said. “The 700-page report is a summary of two million pages of documents, of raw evidence.
He continued: “In the 700-page summary of the two million pages of raw evidence, there is undoubtedly some evidence of a conspiracy and some evidence of obstruction of justice, just not enough evidence—I’m thinking the way I believe Congressman Schiff is thinking—according to Attorney General Barr, not enough evidence to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, which is the standard.”
Napolitano went on to note that if “there were no evidence of conspiracy and no evidence of obstruction, the attorney general would have told us so,” adding that Barr didn’t, so “there is something there” that Democrats and Trump opponents want to see. And they’ll have a “field day” with it.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/foxs-judge-napolitano-on-conspiracy-in-mueller-report-there-is-something-there?via=twitter_page
MSNBC has confirmed that the report is several hundred pages long. They had a chryon up a short time ago.
The Anti-Vaxx Movement Is More Organized and Powerful Than Ever (Thanks to Robert F. Kennedy Jr)
Experts say the anti-vaccine or vaccine choice groups, as they commonly refer to themselves, are becoming larger, better organized and funded in part because their prolific use of social media, as well as the rise of a group founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. which has helped to coordinate their efforts to push back on new laws.
“Social media has given it a national presence. It’s no longer just a collection of different states, it’s now gone across the country,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine researcher and pediatrician. “Right now you might call it a media empire—you have almost 500 anti-vaccine websites.”
The campaign has not just been online or in the statehouses, either. On Feb. 22, 2019, Kennedy’s group, Children’s Health Defense, posted a call to action on its site to get activists to show up on Capitol Hill for a set of vaccine-related hearings.“We absolutely must have representation at these hearings,” the post said. “It’s crucial that we have as many parents and advocates as possible in attendance at both.”
The call to action was co-signed by over 50 like-minded, mostly state-based groups. Activists who attended the Feb. 27 hearing on the recent measles outbreaks could be heard jeering loudly when both Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, stated the measles vaccine was safe and rarely caused complications like brain swelling.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-anti-vaxxer-movement-is-getting-more-organized-and-powerful-than-ever-before
Pompeo's being grilled on C-Span 3 right now
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1110979333236117505Pompeo smugly tells @RepSusanWild he decided to exclude non-religious press from a recent briefing call just because he felt like it
He's a pompous s.o.b.
Barr won't be sending the actual report , he's writing another summary according to NYT.
https://twitter.com/brianbeutler/status/1110720599826018304This says Barr isn't even going to send a redacted version of the full Mueller report. He's going to write a summary of the Mueller report, and send that instead. We don't even know how long the Mueller report is.
Mueller's report has got to be bad. Why go to such lengths if it isn't? Unless the NYT just used bad wording.
You've got to be kidding me! The DOJ is fighting Trump not being allowed to block people on Twitter
https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1110634840632770567The U.S. Department of Justice was in court today to defend the right of the president to block people on Twitter, arguing that while he tweets in an official capacity he blocks people in a personal capacity.
Imagine wasting time and taxpayer money on this petty shit. Will it go all the way to the Supreme Court?
U.S. Said to Have Tapes of Alleged 9/11 Mastermind Plotting With Co-Conspirators
By Carol Rosenberg
March 25, 2019
This article was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — Military prosecutors say they have tapes of telephone calls between the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and three of his accused co-conspirators talking in code about the plot months before it took place, a defense lawyer disclosed on Monday.
The lawyer, Jay Connell, revealed the existence of the tapes as part of a protest over plans to use them as evidence at the death penalty trial of the alleged conspirators. More than 17 and a half years after the attacks — in which 19 hijackers commandeered four commercial airplanes and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, killing nearly 3,000 people — there is still no date set for the trial in the proceedings at Guantánamo Bay.
Prosecutors gave defense lawyers the original audio and transcripts of their translation on Sept. 30, 2016, Mr. Connell said, and made clear they planned to use them at trial. Defense lawyers sought to investigate their origins and later discovered that the original trial judge, Army Col. James L. Pohl, had issued a secret order preventing them from knowing about the phone call collection system or asking questions about it.
Mr. Connell, who is representing Mr. Mohammed’s nephew, Ammar al-Baluchi, said that prosecutors secretly obtained a ruling in August 2018 from Colonel Pohl forbidding defense lawyers from learning how the phone calls were collected or investigating that question. The phone calls in at least two languages were made between April and October 2001.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/25/us/politics/9-11-khalid-shaikh-mohammed.html
The Trump administration is now calling for the entire Affordable Care Act to be thrown out.
The Trump administration on Monday said it supports a federal judge's ruling that the entire Affordable Care Act should be scrapped, signaling a shift in the Justice Department's position and alarming Democrats who vowed to oppose the move.
"The Department of Justice has determined that the district court's judgment should be affirmed," three Justice Department lawyers wrote to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is now considering the case. "[T]he United States is not urging that any portion of the district court's judgment be reversed."
The GOP-led states that initially brought the lawsuit, Texas v. United States, had called for the entire law to be invalidated because Congress eliminated its individual insurance mandate penalty — an argument that swayed U.S. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor, a George W. Bush appointee.
The Trump administration had previously argued that only elements of the ACA, like its protections for patients with pre-existing conditions, should be struck down but that other parts of the law could stand.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/25/trump-obamacare-justice-department-1236116
This is so cruel! Wasn't there a blue wave in 2018 because of healthcare? For people worried about the Mueller report, don't worry, Trump is going to sabotage himself.
:large
Profile Information
Gender: FemaleHome country: USA
Current location: Charlotte, NC
Member since: Fri Sep 14, 2012, 01:15 AM
Number of posts: 14,971
