Daily Check-In 06/05/2018

Daily Check-In

Tuesday, June 5th.

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

Once again, Paul Manafort shows that he’s an old man.  Just like how he got busted committing fraud by asking for Rick Gates to make a PDF for him (Daily Check-In 02/23/2018), Paul is up shit creek because he doesn’t understand technology.

Paul used WhatsApp’s encrypted text feature to communicate with former employees to suborn them to commit perjury.  WhatsApp includes a lot of features, including automatic backups to iCloud.

That’s right.  Paulie Walnuts was unknowingly uploading his encrypted, illegal communications to the cloud.  That’s where the FBI, literally, read his texts and mails.

We thus respectfully request that the Department of Justice confirm, in writing, by no later than 5 p.m. on Monday, June 11:

(1) that the following parties have not been given access to the classified information, which executive branch agencies briefed to the “Gang of 8” on May 24, 2018:

  • Rudy Giuliani, Jay Sekulow, or any other attorney who represents or has represented President Trump in his personal capacity;
  • White House staff, including attorneys from the White House Counsel’s office;
  • President Donald J. Trump;

(2) that DOJ and FBI have no plans to convey such information in the future to the President and his attorneys outside of an appropriate judicial proceeding; and

(3) that going forward, DOJ and FBI will not brief additional Members of Congress who are not part of the “Gang of 8” on these matters.

The stakes for McCabe’s appearance, however, are particularly high. The former No. 2 at the FBI is entangled in a separate criminal investigation stemming from an earlier report from the inspector general’s office that concluded he lied to internal investigators. McCabe has steadfastly denied wrongdoing, but any congressional testimony he provides could have serious implications for his criminal case.

“Mr. McCabe is willing to testify, but because of the criminal referral, he must be afforded suitable legal protection,” Bromwich wrote to Grassley. “This is a textbook case for granting use immunity. . . . If this Committee is unwilling or unable to obtain such an order, then Mr. McCabe will have to no choice but to invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.”

 

IMMIGRATION

WASHINGTON — Border agents and child welfare workers are running out of space to shelter children who have been separated from their parents at the U.S. border as part of the Trump administration’s new “zero tolerance” policy, according to two U.S. officials and a document obtained by NBC News.

As of Sunday, nearly 300 of the 550 children currently in custody at U.S. border stations had spent more than 72 hours there, the time limit for immigrants of any age to be held in the government’s temporary facilities. Almost half of those 300 children are younger than 12, according to the document, meaning they are classified by the Department of Homeland Security as “tender age children.”

 

#NEVERAGAIN

The family of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student David Hogg was “swatted” Tuesday morning, causing police to respond to their Parkland home.

A call came into the Broward Sheriff’s Office claiming a hostage situation at the home.

…

Swatting is the action of making a prank emergency call to bring about a response of armed law enforcement officers.

Since the shootings at Stoneman Douglas, Hogg has been a prominent advocate for gun safety. However, Hogg has been a lightning rod for controversy as some do not approve of his methods, such as holding a “die in” at a Coral Springs Publix last week.

 

NFL AND TRUMP’S FASCIST ‘CELEBRATION’

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

 

SCOTT PRUITT

Three months after Scott Pruitt was sworn in as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, his executive scheduler emailed Dan Cathy, chairman and president of the fast food company Chick-fil-A, with an unusual request: Would Cathy meet with Pruitt to discuss “a potential business opportunity”?

A call was arranged, then canceled, and Pruitt eventually spoke with someone from the company’s legal department. Only then did he reveal the “opportunity” on his mind was a job for his wife, Marlyn.

“The subject of that phone call was an expression of interest in his wife becoming a Chick-fil-A franchisee,” company representative Carrie Kurlander told The Washington Post via email.

Marlyn Pruitt never opened a restaurant. “Administrator Pruitt’s wife started, but did not complete, the Chick-fil-A franchisee application,” Kurlander said. But the revelation that Pruitt used his official position and EPA staff to try to line up work for his wife appears to open a new chapter in the ongoing saga of his questionable spending and management decisions, which so far have spawned a dozen federal probes.

Pruitt’s efforts on his wife’s behalf — revealed in emails recently released under a Freedom of Information Act request by the Sierra Club — did not end with Chick-fil-A. Pruitt also approached the chief executive of Concordia, a New York nonprofit organization. The executive, Matthew Swift, said he ultimately paid Marlyn Pruitt $2,000 plus travel expenses to help organize the group’s annual conference last September.

Multiple current and former EPA aides, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations, said Pruitt told them he was eager for his wife to start receiving a salary. Two said Pruitt was frustrated in part by the high cost of maintaining homes in both Washington and Oklahoma.

EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox declined to comment on Pruitt’s overtures on his wife’s behalf to Concordia and Chick-fil-A.

 

In any normal universe, not only would Scott Pruitt have been fired by this point, but his criminal corruption trial would have already started.

In today’s episode of “How corrupt is Scott Pruitt?”, he used his office and staff to try to get his wife a job as a Chik-Fil-A franchisee.  This violates several federal statutes, including a few felonies.

What I really don’t like about him is that he’s not even the most corrupt member of the cabinet, but he’s taking the brunt of the attacks from the press, letting the rest of those crooks rob us blind.

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

MITCH McCONNELL

 

GOP:  THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

FIXING THE INTERNET

 

TARIFFS AND CORRUPTION

 

PUERTO RICO

 

#METOO

 

ELECTION 2018

James Allsup, 22, attended the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville,Virginia, where white supremacists chanted anti-Semitic slogans and one allegedly drove a car into a crowd, killing a protester and injuring more. Allsup was filmed marching with Identity Evropa, an anti-immigrant alt-right group. Fallout over the rally led to Allsup stepping down as president of the Washington State University College Republicans, a group he once boasted of taking over. Now he claims he’s on the way to taking over the local GOP.

 

RUMOR MILL

 

How does one say “Daughter Fucker” in Russian?

 

That’s it for today.  This is me taking it light.  It’s been a long day, and the days are only going to get longer from here.  I’m not burning out, but I’m in a bit of a rut.  This is what my weekend writings are usually used for, but I’ve missed the last couple to freshen my style up.  Unfortunately, I have no clue when I’ll get back to that rhythm.

June is going to be nuts, both personally and in the news.  We’re a couple days in, and so far we’ve seen a blatant attempt at becoming a despot, a former campaign manager about to get charged with even more crimes, and a fixer getting bitchslapped by the court.  It’s only Tuesday of the first full week.

I might need to skip a night or two in the next couple weeks.  I’ll have to play things by ear.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Published by noneofthisisnormal

Published

One thought on “Daily Check-In 06/05/2018”

  1. Pingback: Daily Check-In 08/03/2018 – None of this is Normal

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s