Tag: Media

Daily Check-In 02/20/2019

Wednesday, February 20, 2019

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

Let’s all remain calm and see where this goes.  I’m not sure what’s going on here and the sourcing is a little suspect on this story, but the timing does line up with what we’ve heard over the last several months.  We’ll have to see what happens in the next few weeks.

One thing to keep in mind with the Mueller Investigation is that this is an investigation, not a prosecution.  Ken Starr’s multiyear vendetta against Bill Clinton was a prosecution.

Another thing to keep in mind is the pace of the report getting released. Mueller’s team has been working this case for 21 months.  They’ve had a long time to pull this together and perfect it.  The question becomes how long until it goes from the Department of Justice to Congress, and then from Congress to the public?  How long until we see unclassified report?  Will the new Attorney General William Barr do anything to slow that down or obstruct it?

 

 

Keep this in mind when Trump talks about Venezuela.

 

 

 

COHEN, NEW YORK, AND THE OTHER LAWSUITS

 

 

 

TRUMP THE RUSSIAN ASSET A.K.A. INDIVIDUAL-1

 

TRAITOR TOTS

 

FIGHTING BACK

 

EMERGENCIES, SHUTDOWN & IMMIGRATION

 

RIGHT WING TERRORISM & WHITE NATIONALISM

 

SCOTUS & COURTS

 

#METOO & WOMEN’S RIGHTS

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

FIXING THE INTERNET

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

TRADE WAR, HEALTH CARE, AND ECONOMY

 

STUDENT ISSUES

 

GOP: THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

PRIESTS & RELIGION

 

ENVIRONMENT & SCIENCE

 

ELECTIONS

Mark Harris’ fight for his hotly contested U.S. House seat may have just been undone by his own son.

On Wednesday afternoon, John Harris was called to testify before the North Carolina state elections board for what was the third day of hearings into the claims of election fraud coming from the Ninth Congressional District. The younger Harris, the assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, told the board that he informed his parents as early as 2016 that his father’s campaign may have been engaged with a group using unsavory and illegal electoral practices. Mark Harris did not respond to Splinter’s request for comment.

After beating sitting U.S. Rep. Robert Pittenger in last year’s May primary, Harris, a Republican and a controversial pastor, appeared to narrowly defeat Democrat Dan McCready in the November general election when all of the ballots were tallied. That was before the validity of the election victory slowly unraveled, and local reporters revealed that political consultant Leslie McCrae Dowless and the firm he contracted for, Red Dome Group, almost certainly committed widespread election fraud by collecting absentee ballots en masse and stuffing the box. The testimony and emails provided by John on Wednesday contradict Mark’s prior claims of total ignorance, and confirm a December report from the Washington Post alleging that Mark was alerted to Dowless’ tactics as early as 2016.

…

Following a ten minute break, John returned to testify that his father and Dowless spoke regularly; he added that after John raised the issue of the Red Dome Group’s methods, Mark never mentioned him again in their talks. John told lawyers that he believed Dowless was lying to his parents and that he wrongly assumed his father’s campaign was closely monitoring Red Dome Group’s actions. As the 2018 election passed and the results were heavily scrutinized, John said that he slowly whittled down contact with his parents for legal purposes. According to John, he didn’t alert them that he would be appearing at the hearing on Wednesday.

Testifying against your parents—even when it’s becoming clearer and clearer that they maybe, probably at least knew about sloppily committed election fraud—has got to be tough as hell. But given the receipts, it’s hard to deny that John did just about everything in his power to help Mark out. Maybe next time his dad will listen to reason and…not employ someone committing blatant election fraud.

 

THINKING AHEAD

Deza Campaign

 

 

RUMOR MILL

 

That’s it for Wednesday.  I’m running low on time, so I’m wrapping things up here.

I’m not sure what to make of the reports of the Mueller Investigation ‘wrapping up.’  There’s still a lot to do, like their Supreme Court case against Company A, but there’s also a lot they’ve done behind the scenes.  After the report comes out, things will now be in the hands of the courts, law enforcement, and Congress.

Something else to keep in mind is the timing of things.  Trump and Pence are both out of the country next week at the same time.  The tin-foil hat part of me thinks they’ll try to make a run for it, but that’s pretty absurd.

Then again, we have a failed Reality TV host with a long criminal past as President.  Nothing is too absurd anymore.  We live in the timeline of weaponized craziness.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Daily Check-In 02/19/2019

Tuesday, February 19, 2019

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

Saudi Nuclear Deal

Several current and former Trump administration appointees promoted sales of nuclear power plants to Saudi Arabia despite repeated objections from members of the National Security Council and other senior White House officials, according to a new report from congressional Democrats.

The officials who objected included White House lawyers and H.R. McMaster, then the chief of the National Security Council. They called for a halt in the nuclear sales discussions in 2017, citing potential conflicts of interest, national security risks and legal hurdles.

Yet the effort to promote nuclear sales persisted, led by retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who served briefly as President Trump’s national security adviser, and more recently by Energy Secretary Rick Perry. The possible nuclear power sale was discussed in the Oval Office as recently as last week.

Details about these internal White House battles are contained in a 24-page report released Tuesday morning by Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee. The report is based on documents obtained by the committee and the account of unnamed whistleblowers inside the White House who said they were distressed at the continual effort to sell the power plants.

Committee Republicans said Tuesday they were not included in the drafting of the detailed report and had not received a copy until Monday night. They said they had not had a chance to fully assess it.

The report includes a wide range of allegations and suggests the involvement of a long list of high-profile people in Trump’s orbit.

Neither the White House nor individuals named in the report immediately responded to requests for comment Tuesday.

The Cummings report notes that one of the power plant manufacturers that could benefit from a nuclear deal, Westinghouse Electric, is a subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management, the company that provided financial relief to the family of Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and adviser. Brookfield Asset Management took a 99-year lease on the family’s deeply indebted New York City property at 666 Fifth Avenue.

“Multiple whistleblowers came forward to warn about efforts inside the White House to rush the transfer of highly sensitive U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia in potential violation of the Atomic Energy Act and without review by Congress as required by law — efforts that may be ongoing to this day,” the report says.

The whistleblowers also “warned about a working environment inside the White House marked by chaos, dysfunction and backbiting. They noted that White House political appointees repeatedly ignored directives from top ethics advisers who repeatedly — but unsuccessfully — “ordered senior White House officials to halt their efforts.”

The Oversight Committee report, which focuses on the first three months of the Trump presidency, may have special relevance this week as Kushner begins a trip to the Middle East.

This is part of what’s being called the Grand Bargain Theory. Even though the primary focus of the investigation is Russia and their efforts to attack America, they weren’t alone. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is one of the partners in this mess.

One thing to keep in mind with this conspiracy is that not everyone involved had the same goals. KSA wants to build their own nuclear weapons. Russia wants to get rid of sanctions and the Magnitsky Act. Israel wants to keep Iran out of power in the Middle East. The Billionaire Class wants to recolonize the Middle East. (Why else did Tom Barrack name his project company Colony?) Criminal organizations want to have a place to easily launder and spend their money, and China wants to be the big player in the world.

The Saudi Nuclear Plants are just a part of this. KSA gets the tech they want to strike Tehran, the Russians get a crapton of money through building the plants, Qatar makes money through Brookfield and Westinghouse, and the U.S. makes money by providing security for the plants, and people like Erik Prince make money hand over fist providing the mercenaries for the project.

This is big.  Like Andre the Giant riding an elephant big.  Not only did several whistleblowers come forward about this, and that it helps illuminate why Trump has been so friendly to MBS, but now we know that the House Oversight Committee has opened an investigation into this.

 

Flynn

Remember, Michael Flynn spent a long time working on the Saudi Nuke Deal.  He’d been involved in this plan since before he was working with Turkey.

 

McCabe

Okay, there’s a lot to unpack here, but the biggest piece of news coming out from this today is that while serving as Acting FBI Director after James Comey’s firing, Andrew McCabe briefed the Gang of 8 on Trump’s Counterintelligence Investigation.

The Gang of 8 are the Senate Majority Leader, Senate Minority Leader, Speaker of the House, House Minority Leader, and the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Intelligence Committee.  Here’s who we know that were in the room:

  • Mitch McConnell
  • Paul Ryan
  • Nancy Pelosi
  • Chuck Schumer
  • Devin Nunes
  • Adam Schiff
  • Richard Burr
  • Mark Warner

I’ve gone into extensive detail about McConnell, Ryan, and Nunes helping Trump pull off attacking the United States, and I’ve also talked about this meeting or a meeting like this before, but here’s confirmation that this meeting took place, the Republican leadership knew, and that all of their actions they’ve taken to attack the FBI are not based in fact.  All of the maneuvers and tricks the Republicans have pulled in the last two years have been to derail an investigation that they were briefed on during its infancy, so all of the cries about it being unfair or a witch hunt are not only bullshit, but known bullshit.

McCabe wanted to keep news of this from getting to Trump, but as soon as he saw Devin Nunes walk in, he knew that the chance of that was less than zero.  Nunes was Trump’s mole in the House, and did everything he could over the last two years to trip up and derail any investigation into Trump.

 

Roger Stone

That happened faster than I expected.  Roger has a court date on Thursday.  His best case scenario is a complete and total gag order from the judge without jail time.  I’m expecting him to have his bail revoked and be remanded to prison.

 

Rosenstein and Rosen

I hope to have more information on this over the next few days.

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI developed a backup plan to protect evidence in its Russia investigation soon after the firing of FBI Director James Comey in the event that other senior officials were dismissed as well, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions.

The plan was crafted in the chaotic days after Comey was fired, when the FBI began investigating whether President Donald Trump had obstructed justice and whether he might be, wittingly or not, in league with the Russians.

The goal was to ensure that the information collected under the investigations, which included probes of Trump associates and possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign, would survive the firings or reassignments of top law enforcement officials. Those officials included special counsel Robert Mueller, who was appointed eight days after Trump fired Comey in May 2017.

…

“I wanted to make sure that our case was on solid ground and if somebody came in behind me and closed it and tried to walk away from it, they would not be able to do that without creating a record of why they made that decision.”

It’ll be a long time before we find out the details of this plan, but I have a feeling this will be covered in history books of the future.  The Comey Firing and the days immediately following were the catalyst for the Special Counselor’s investigation, and everything that’s happened since.

 

COHEN, NEW YORK, AND THE OTHER LAWSUITS

Former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker was unequivocal when he told lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee that he did not discuss any investigations with President Donald Trump.

“At no time has the White House asked for, nor have I provided, any promises or commitments concerning the special counsel [Robert Mueller’s] investigation or any other investigation,” Whitaker said while testifying about his oversight of the Justice Department earlier this month.

But a bombshell report from The New York Times published on Tuesday raises questions about whether Whitaker was entirely forthcoming when he denied having any conversations with the president about ongoing investigations into him.

According to The Times, as federal prosecutors in New York investigated Trump’s role in several hush-money payments during the 2016 campaign to women who say they had affairs with him, Trump called Whitaker in an effort to exert control over the probe.

During the call, Trump reportedly asked Whitaker whether Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, could be put in charge of the rapidly expanding investigation. Berman is an ally of Trump and has recused himself from the investigation because of his ties to the president.

It’s unclear what Whitaker did after the phone call, but there is no indication that he took any concrete steps to exert control over the investigation. But The Times reported that he did tell associates at the Justice Department that the Manhattan US attorney’s office needed “adult supervision.”

“Adult supervision”?  That’s rich, coming from Mr. Big Dick Toilet Scammer.  Also, nice way to lie to Congress.  Ask Roger Stone how well that worked out for him.

If someone asks for an example of Obstruction of Justice, tell them the tale of the President who tried to get his buddy to take over an investigation into his other buddy.  And if Trump was asking this of Whitaker, it’s a godddamned certainty that he did this with Sessions, too.  How many times did he ask Comey to make the the Flynn investigation “go away”?

 

EMERGENCIES, SHUTDOWN & IMMIGRATION

 

TRUMP THE RUSSIAN ASSET A.K.A. INDIVIDUAL-1

 

TRAITOR TOTS

 

FIGHTING BACK

 

CONGRESS

 

RIGHT WING TERRORISM & WHITE NATIONALISM

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

TRADE WAR, HEALTH CARE, AND ECONOMY

 

GOP: THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

ENVIRONMENT & SCIENCE

 

ELECTIONS

 

THINKING AHEAD

Bernie Sanders

Fuck. Bernie. Sanders.  Need a reminder why? Trump vs. Bernie is a good place to start, but since then the Independent senator voted against the Global Magnitsky Act and enacting sanctions against Russia.  He also readily accepts money from the NRA, and his online presence is fueled by Russian bots.

 

IN OTHER NEWS…

 

RUMOR MILL

 

That’s it for Tuesday.  Damn, that’s a lot of shit.  And it will keep accelerating over the next couple months.  Especially now that the Saudi Nuclear Deal is out in the public eye.

Like I said yesterday (Daily Check-In 02/18/2019) I think I’ll start working on the Grand Bargain page.  I should also update the Russian Hypothesis as well.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Daily Check-In 02/18/2019

Monday, February 18, 2019

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

McCabe

 

Stone

The countdown to Stone getting sent to prison is on.  Judges don’t take kindly to death threats.

 

Cambridge Analytica

 

Rosenstein

We’ve talked about this before, and the timing of mid-March lines up with previous reports, but it also lines up with the rumors about part of the Mueller report being released, and Rod’s statement that he wouldn’t leave until it was released.

 

 

COHEN, NEW YORK, AND THE OTHER LAWSUITS

 

SHUTDOWN & IMMIGRATION & EMERGENCIES

 

TRUMP THE RUSSIAN ASSET A.K.A INDIVIDUAL-1

 

TRAITOR TOTS

 

FIGHTING BACK

 

RIGHT WING TERRORISM & WHITE NATIONALISM

 

#METOO & WOMEN’S RIGHTS

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

TRADE WAR, HEALTH CARE, & ECONOMY

 

STUDENT ISSUES

 

GOP: THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

ENVIRONMENT & SCIENCE

 

ELECTIONS

Republican Mark Harris initially appeared to have defeated Democrat Dan McCready by a razor-thin 905-vote margin on election night last November. That apparent victory was never certified, however, due to allegations that the GOP cobbled together their win through the use of absentee ballot fraud. At the center of those allegations is GOP campaign operative McCrae Dowless.

At a Monday evidentiary hearing conducted by the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE), a campaign worker employed by Dowless detailed several  aspects of the Republican campaign’s alleged efforts to steal the election for Harris in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District. The same woman also said that when the alleged scheme was discovered, Dowless instructed her to lie about their efforts.

Lisa Britt was the first witness to give testimony at the NCSBE hearing. In her opening statement, Britt admitted that she did not tell the truth to a local news station about unlawfully collecting absentee ballots in violation of state law. During this interview–which was conducted in Dowless’ kitchen–Britt said that she and others employed by Dowless did nothing illegal during the 2018 midterm election. During Monday’s hearing, Britt walked all of that back.

Britt began working for Dowless in June or July of 2018 and said that she was paid according to the number of people she registered for absentee ballot request forms–and when she picked up absentee ballots. For every 50 ballots requested or obtained, Dowless would pay Britt and others between $125-175, she said.

“I took the signed, sealed ballot,” Britt said during her testimony about one specific ballot entered into evidence. “That ballot was turned back in with the other ballots I had collected that day.”

Britt said that she and other members of the Dowless team collected several unsealed ballots and opened them to ascertain who voters had selected. When voters had left certain races blank, Britt said, she and others would fill those races in for the Republican candidate. Britt also said that she was instructed to make copies of all absentee ballot request forms and that she kept them in a folder. The original forms, she said, were given to Dowless. Additional copies were also allegedly made for Bladen County Improvement Association PAC’s Lola Wooten–who Britt says was in Dowless’ office at least once a week.

 

THINKING AHEAD

 

IN OTHER NEWS…

 

RUMOR MILL

 

That’s it for Monday.  Tuesday’s got some interesting things happening.  I have another reason to not like Bernie Sanders, Roger Stone has a new court date, and the House Democrats release a report on the Saudi Nuclear Deals that Mike Flynn worked on.

Looks like I should really work on that Grand Bargain story to tie things together.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Daily Check-In 02/15/2019

Friday, February 15, 2019 and the weekend.  Remember when I tempted fate yesterday that I would like to take some time off (Daily Check-In 02/14/2019)?

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

Manafort

1/Yes, Manafort may have lied to Mueller because he wanted a pardon from Trump. But let me amplify what I told about why he may have been scared of the Russian Mafia.

2/Manafort’s story in some ways resembles that of Eduard Nektalov who I write about in . Manafort had a place in Trump Tower, and Nektalov lived in Trump World Tower. Nektalov was being investigated by the Treasury Dept for money-laundering…

3/Manafort was also involved in money-laundering and, among other vehicles, used a company called Lucicle that was in the name of an associate of Russian crime boss Semion Mogilevich

4/But in May 2004, word got around that Nektalov was cooperating with the feds(just as Manafort seemed to be cooperating w Mueller), and look what happened…

5/ Manafort must have known about this. Yes, he wants a pardon from Trump, but he also knows there are worse fates than spending the rest of your life in prison.

Paul Manafort is Manafucked.  On Friday, the Special Counselor’s Office recommended a sentence on the higher end of the spectrum for his lifetime of being an unrepentant criminal.  That would place his sentence in the 19.5-24 year range, at least.  This is before his sentencing in March for his tax fraud trial, where he’s looking at another 10-20 years.  The big question coming out of there is where or not that sentence will be served concurrently or consecutively.

What’s the difference?  Concurrent sentences are served at once, where the prisoner is in jail for the time of the longest sentence.  Consecutive sentences are served one after the other.

Paul Manafort is 69 years old.  Even a ten year sentence makes his odds of living to the end pretty small.  A 20 year sentence means he’s 89 years old at the end of it.  Two maximum sentences served consecutively puts Paul Manafort at 113 years old when he gets out.

In other words, if he’s lucky, he dies of old age in federal prison.

“But wait,” I hear yelled from Social Media, “What about pardons?”  Manafort is more fucked that way.  I’ve talked about pardons before at GTKYG-Pardon Limitations, but the short version is that if he gets pardoned (won’t be surprised if Trump tries it) and if it gets upheld (highly doubt it), Manafort will be charged with state charges from Virginia, New York, Illinois, and California.

 

Roger Stone’s Gag Order

This is a partial gag order, so Roger Stone gets to talk on television and the internet, but not in front of the courthouse.  This almost seems like a setup, since everything he says can be used against him in court.

Also, Mueller responded to Stone’s request to not have his case linked to the Russian hackers.

 

Roger Stone’s Russian Communications

The reason they linked Roger Stone’s case to the Russian GRU hackers was because THEY FOUND HIS TEXTS, DM’S, AND EMAILS IN THEIR ACCOUNTS!!!  That’s like getting your hands on some dude’s phone and finding your girlfriends naked selfies on it.  Kind of hard for her to deny that she isn’t talking to that douche canoe.

So, let’s recap…

During the investigation, Mueller’s team found evidence of the GRU hacking the DNC and trying to get into Hilary Clinton’s emails.  The GRU used Gmail and Hotmail accounts to communicate with people and to set up fake Twitter accounts.  While searching through that evidence, Mueller’s team found communications with Julian Assange and Wikileaks, which was used to release the mails to the world.  Mueller also found email conversations with Roger Stone.  Seeing as Roger probably doesn’t have his own mail server hosted out of his home, Mueller subpoenaed either his ISP, mail hosting service, cloud service, and/or search engine history.

Notice I didn’t say computer in that list.  Even though they could have subpoenaed it, it wasn’t necessary.  I’m pretty sure I mentioned this before, but a little forgotten fact of our modern world is that no emails truly disappear, even from services like Signal or WhatsApp.  Someone has a version of it somewhere, and that someone is usually the mail hosting company, like Google or Apple.  When a mail is sent, copies are stored on each server it touches and every device involved.  If Roger sent a mail from his iPhone to a GRU officer in Russia using a Gmail account, here’s a short list of where that mail could be found.

  • Roger’s phone.
  • Roger’s laptop.
  • Roger’s iCloud account.
  • Roger’s ISP.
  • Apple’s server farm in North Carolina.
  • Apple’s servers in Europe.
  • Google’s servers in North America.
  • Google’s servers in Europe.
  • The GRU’s Android phone.
  • The GRU’s computer cache.
  • The GRU’s ISP.
  • The GRU’s local server.

That’s 12 places at least where the mail lives.  And Roger would only know about two of them being searched.  The Internet Service Provider, cloud companies, and hosting companies are under no obligation to notify their users about a search warrant being executed for their data.  In fact, depending on the type of warrant, they are prevented from notifying the users that their data was looked at by the United States government.

This is just emails.  Add in services like WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter, and the number of places a message exists grows and grows.

As far as apps that claim to delete messages once they’re read, that’s true, to a point.  If encryption is turned on between both devices AND they’re both set up to delete the messages immediately AND no backups are saved to the device AND no backups are saved to the cloud, then it would be next to impossible for law enforcement to read these messages.

Keep in mind, we’re talking about senior citizens and technology.  They probably had to ask their kids to get their computer on the internet because the “Blue E wasn’t working.”

There’s a dozen places that Robert Mueller could have found Roger Stone’s communications with the GRU.  The worst place for Roger was in the GRU’s own email accounts.  That’s exactly where they were found.

 

Welcome to SubpoenaAndInterviewLand, Population these folks…

Remember, we are always a couple months behind schedule when it comes to who is talking to Mueller and who’s been subpoenaed, but these are important for two reasons.

First, Walleye Sanders delivered the speech covering up Trump Jr.’s actions in the June 9 meeting back in July 2017.  She’s also covered up countless crimes and atrocities performed by this administration over the past year and a half as the Press Secretary.

Brittany Kaiser is the second person from Cambridge Analytica to be interviewed by Mueller’s team following Sam Patten.  Sam Patten pled guilty to FARA violations last summer. (2018 Retrospective). She was their business development manager, and was behind many of their moves coordinating with Facebook and the Trump Campaign.

Also, don’t be fooled by the claims that Cambridge Analytica has gone away.  They’ve reorganized as Emerdata.  Same shady shit, new name.

 

McCabe

Two cabinet officials back in May 2017 were on board with invoking the 25th Amendment.  My guess is Jim Mattis and John Kelly.  Mattis was SecDef and Kelly was SecDHS at the time.

 

Congress

 

 

 

COHEN, NEW YORK, AND THE OTHER LAWSUITS

Inauguration

Ohh boy, New Jersey’s joining the fun.  Remember, state charges cannot be pardoned by the President.

Stormy

 

Maine

 

 

SHUTDOWN & IMMIGRATION & FAKE EMERGENCIES

This seems like the kind of item I’d spend hours ranting about, and in any normal universe, I would.  These are the kinds of actions that lead to authoritarianism, and will if we don’t stop it.

I’m also certain that Tangerine Tojo will fuck this up in a way that has never been seen before in the multiverse.  He already said in his declaration that “I didn’t need to do this”, then spent the first days of this emergency playing golf.

This is his last desperate attempt to get his vanity project built and keep his mouth-breathing base by his side.  Instead of making bold moves on repairing this country’s infrastructure or ending the Opioid Crisis, he’s trying to get his wall built again.

By the way, it won’t cost $7 billion.  $70 billion, maybe, but nowhere near $7 billion.  And so far there’s been no location scouting, no preliminary work, no bids for contracts, nothing that shows even the slightest bit of progress.  And with less than 2 years left in this term, there’s no way it gets completed by January 2031, let alone January 2021.

 

TRUMP THE RUSSIAN ASSET A.K.A. INDIVIDUAL-1

 

Thin Skinned Pussy

 

TRAITOR TOTS

 

FIGHTING BACK

 

CONGRESS

 

AIPAC & OMAR

 

RIGHT WING TERRORISM & WHITE NATIONALISM

 

SCOTUS & COURTS

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

FIXING THE INTERNET

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

THE ULTIMATE COCKFIGHT: BEZOS’S PECKER VS. DAVID PECKER

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

 

TRADE WAR, HEALTH CARE, AND ECONOMY

 

STUDENT ISSUES

 

GOP: THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

Smollett

Chicago (CNN)Two law enforcement sources with knowledge of the investigation tell CNN that Chicago Police believe actor Jussie Smollett paid two men to orchestrate an assault on him that he reported late last month.

Smollett denies playing a role in his attack, according to a statement from his attorneys.

The men, who are brothers, were arrested Wednesday but released without charges Friday after Chicago police cited the discovery of “new evidence.”

The sources told CNN the two men are now cooperating fully with law enforcement.

Smollett told authorities he was attacked early January 29 by two men who were “yelling out racial and homophobic slurs.” He said one attacker put a rope around his neck and poured an unknown chemical substance on him.

The sources told CNN there are records that show the two brothers purchased the rope found around Smollett’s neck at a hardware store in Chicago.

Smollett’s attorneys, Todd S. Pugh and Victor P. Henderson, issued a statement to CNN Saturday night saying Smollett was angry about these latest developments.

“As a victim of a hate crime who has cooperated with the police investigation, Jussie Smollett is angered and devastated by recent reports that the perpetrators are individuals he is familiar with,” the statement read. “He has now been further victimized by claims attributed to these alleged perpetrators that Jussie played a role in his own attack. Nothing is further from the truth and anyone claiming otherwise is lying.”

Smollett’s attorneys said they expect further updates from Chicago police on the investigation and will continue cooperating with authorities.

“At the present time, Jussie and his attorneys have no inclination to respond to ‘unnamed’ sources inside of the investigation, but will continue discussions through official channels,” the statement read.

Smollett identifies as gay and since 2015 has played the gay character of Jamal on the Fox TV drama “Empire.”

As far as why I hadn’t reported on any possible hoaxes surrounding Jussie Smollet, there were no credible stories backing up the hoax story that I came across until late last week. All of the articles that I saw traced back to poorly sourced stories from RWM sites like Daily Caller or Freedom Wire.

This isn’t the first time that a hoax could have occurred, and it won’t be the last. If Jussie lied about this, he’s an asshole and caused a lot of potential problems.

 

PRIESTS & RELIGION

 

ENVIRONMENT & SCIENCE

 

ELECTIONS

 

THINKING AHEAD

Bill Weld

 

Tulsi Gabbard

 

 

PROGRESS IS PROGRESS

 

IN OTHER NEWS…

 

RUMOR MILL

 

That’s it for the last few days.  These weekend posts get a little out of hand, but that’s what happens when I roll three days of stuff into one post.

There’s something I want to see.  I want to see reports of people in MAGA hats doing good things for once.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a report about a person wearing a MAGA hat helping old women across the street or pulling over to help someone broken down on the side of the road, or volunteering at Habitat for Humanity or at a soup kitchen.  In the nearly 3 years that this has been a thing, I’ve never once seen or heard a positive story about someone wearing a MAGA hat doing anything that Makes America Great.  I’ve definitely seen stories about people wearing those hats attacking people of color, attacking reporters, committing various crimes and spewing hate.

This is why the Red Hat is the new Klan hood, or SS uniform.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur