[AMV] Amerikaanse politiek #494 Cohen might flip!

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TRUMP FUNDRAISER OFFERED RUSSIAN GAS COMPANY PLAN TO GET SANCTIONS LIFTED FOR $26 MILLION (The Intercept)

SHORTLY AFTER PRESIDENT Donald Trump was inaugurated last year, top Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy offered Russian gas giant Novatek a $26 million lobbying plan aimed at removing the company from a U.S. sanctions list, according to documents obtained by The Intercept.

Broidy is a Trump associate who was deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee until he resigned last week amid reports that he had agreed to pay $1.6 million to a former Playboy model with whom he had an affair. But in February 2017, when he laid out his lobbying proposal for Novatek, he was acting as a well-connected businessman and longtime Republican donor in a bid to help the Russian company avoid sanctions imposed by the Obama administration. The 2014 sanctions were aimed at punishing Russia for annexing Crimea and supporting pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine.

In February 2017, Broidy sent a draft of the plan by email to attorney Andrei Baev, then a Moscow- and London-based lawyer who represented major Russian energy companies for the firm Chadbourne & Parke LLP. Baev had already been communicating with Novatek about finding a way to lift U.S. sanctions.

Broidy proposed arranging meetings with key White House and congressional leaders and generating op-eds and other articles favorable to the Russian company, along with a full suite of lobbying activities to be undertaken by consultants brought on board. Yet even as he offered those services, Broidy was adamant that his company, Fieldcrest Advisors LLC, would not perform lobbying services but would hire others to do it. He suggested that parties to the deal sign a sweeping non-disclosure agreement that would shield their work from public scrutiny.

The plan is outlined in a series of emails and other documents obtained by The Intercept. Broidy and Baev did not dispute the authenticity of the exchanges but said the deal was never consummated.

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Op zaterdag 21 april 2018 00:35 schreef Evertjan het volgende:
Heeft Trump toch maar goed geregeld

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Sessions told White House that Rosenstein’s firing could prompt his departure, too

Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently told the White House he might have to leave his job if President Trump fired his deputy, Rod J. Rosenstein, who oversees the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to people familiar with the exchange.

Sessions made his position known in a phone call to White House counsel Donald McGahn last weekend, as Trump’s fury at Rosenstein peaked after the deputy attorney general approved the FBI’s raid April 9 on the president’s personal attorney Michael Cohen.

Sessions’s message to the White House, which has not previously been reported, underscores the political firestorm that Trump would invite should he attempt to remove the deputy attorney general. While Trump also has railed against Sessions at times, the protest resignation of an attorney general — which would be likely to incite other departures within the administration — would create a moment of profound crisis for the White House.

In the phone call with McGahn, Sessions wanted details of a meeting Trump and Rosenstein held at the White House on April 12, according to a person with knowledge of the call. Sessions expressed relief to learn that their meeting was largely cordial. Sessions said he would have had to consider leaving as the attorney general had Trump ousted Rosenstein, this person said.

Another person familiar with the exchange said Sessions did not intend to threaten the White House but rather wanted to convey the untenable position that Rosenstein’s firing would put him in.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

Rosenstein’s status remains uncertain, but the pressure he is facing seemed to subside after last week.

Last summer, when it appeared Trump was going to fire Sessions or pressure him to resign, Republican lawmakers and conservative advocacy groups rallied to Sessions’s side and warned the president not to move against him.

Trump had told senior officials last week that he was considering firing Rosenstein, who was confirmed by the Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support last year. Since then, alumni of the Justice Department have rallied to Rosenstein’s defense.

As of Friday afternoon, more than 800 former Justice Department employees had signed an open letter calling on Congress to “swiftly and forcefully respond to protect the founding principles of our Republic and the rule of law” if Trump were to fire the deputy attorney general, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III or other senior Justice Department officials. The group MoveOn.org has sought to organize nationwide protests if such an event were to occur.

Rosenstein, on behalf of the Justice Department, is set to argue a sentencing case, Chavez-Meza v. United States, before the Supreme Court on Monday. Appearing before the high court has long been a professional goal, people close to Rosenstein say.

A senior administration official said Sessions does not like the way Rosenstein has been treated by the president and had expressed such concerns for months. He has regularly sought guidance from the White House about Rosenstein’s standing with the president and asked about his interactions with Trump, this official said.

But Sessions has had little ability to do anything about it, given his own shaky standing with Trump for recusing himself from the Russia investigation, this official said. Trump has, at times, referred to Sessions as “Mr. Magoo” and Rosenstein as “Mr. Peepers,” a character from a 1950s sitcom, according to people with whom the president has spoken.

The relationship between Sessions and Rosenstein — and their staffs — has been strained at times over the first year of the Trump administration. But people familiar with Sessions’s thinking say that he has said several times that he would find it difficult to remain as attorney general if Trump fired for no good reason the veteran prosecutor in Baltimore that Sessions chose to be his deputy. The two men, along with Solicitor General Noel Francisco, were spotted in February dining together at a restaurant near the Justice Department, generating some speculation that they were attempting a display of solidarity.

Rosenstein, the Justice Department’s No. 2 official, is tasked with running the day-to-day operations of the sprawling agency of 113,000 employees who work for the FBI; the Drug Enforcement Administration; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the Bureau of Prisons; U.S. attorneys offices; and Main Justice, the agency’s headquarters. But from the time he was confirmed in May of last year, the investigation into possible coordination during the 2016 presidential campaign between Trump associates and agents of the Russian government has overshadowed everything he has done.

James M. Trusty, a partner at Ifrah Law and a friend of Rosenstein’s, said the deputy attorney general “went into the job with a pretty fatalistic view,” but he “probably didn’t know it was going to be this much of a storm.”

“I remember him joking at his going-away party that nine months was the average tenure for the deputy attorney general,” Trusty said.

A wall of photographs outside Rosenstein’s fourth-floor office at the Justice Department illustrates the high-stress and political nature of the deputy attorney general’s position. President Barack Obama’s first deputy attorney general, David Ogden, stepped down from the job after less than a year. One of President Bill Clinton’s deputy attorneys general, Philip B. Heymann, lasted 10 months.

Trusty, who said he had spoken with Rosenstein about three weeks ago, said Rosenstein had kept his views on the situation largely private and had not sought surrogates or anyone else to press his case.

“I think he tends to view things in a very long-range way, kind of a this-too-shall-pass philosophy about the slings and arrows that will come at you,” Trusty said.

A month after Rosenstein became deputy attorney general, he was criticized for his role in the firing of FBI Director James B. Comey. Rosenstein authored a critical memo lambasting Comey for his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, and the White House later used the document as a pretext to remove the FBI director. After a few days, though, Trump said he was thinking about the Russia investigation when he fired Comey. Comey has said in recent days he believed Rosenstein “acted dishonorably” and could not be trusted.

At that point, Rosenstein was overseeing the Russia investigation because Sessions had recused himself. On May 17, about a week after the Comey firing, Rosenstein announced that he had appointed Mueller as special counsel to conduct the Russia investigation.

Rosenstein took the action without first consulting Sessions and notified him when he was at the White House meeting with Trump. The decision took Trump by surprise and greatly angered him.

A person close to the White House and the Justice Department said Sessions has “vacillated, I think, from being concerned about the deputy leaving or being fired and recognizing that Rosenstein has not been a friend of either him or the department.”

During the past year, Rosenstein has been involved in several policy issues in the Justice Department, as well as complex prosecutions involving cybercrimes and the first charges against Chinese-based fentanyl manufacturers and distributors.

But Russia continues to consume his days. This week, two of Trump’s top legislative allies and leading members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus met with Rosenstein and pressed him for more documents about the conduct of law enforcement officials involved in the Russia probe. They warned him that he could face impeachment proceedings or an effort to hold him in contempt of Congress if he did not satisfy Republican demands for more documents.

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zaterdag 21-04-2018 om 00:34:26 Just heard the Campaign was sued by the Obstructionist Democrats. This can be good news in that we will now counter for the DNC Server that they refused to give to the FBI, the Wendy Wasserman Schultz Servers and Documents held by the Pakistani mystery man and Clinton Emails. reageer retweet

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Op zaterdag 21 april 2018 01:00 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:
Die rechtszaak van de democraten, is dat niet gewoon een publiciteitsstunt? Wat hopen ze hiermee te gaan bereiken? Er is nog onvoldoende bewijs om een rechtszaak te winnen, toch?

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Op zaterdag 21 april 2018 01:02 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:

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Ze willen net als de vorige keer, een schadevergoeding.

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Op zaterdag 21 april 2018 01:02 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zaterdag 21-04-2018 om 00:34:26 Just heard the Campaign was sued by the Obstructionist Democrats. This can be good news in that we will now counter for the DNC Server that they refused to give to the FBI, the Wendy Wasserman Schultz Servers and Documents held by the Pakistani mystery man and Clinton Emails. reageer retweet

Wendy

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The Trump administration will shift federal funding aimed at reducing teen pregnancy rates to programs that teach abstinence.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Friday the availability of grants through the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, (TPPP) a grant program created under former President Obama that funds organizations and programs working to reduce teen pregnancy rates.

Trump's HHS announced, however, that unlike under the Obama administration, grants will be geared toward organizations that teach abstinence education to teens instead of the comprehensive sex ed approach the previous administration supported.

One of the programs uses a "sexual risk reduction model," which is designed to reduce sexual risk behaviors.

The other program uses a "sexual risk avoidance model," which teaches teens to avoid sex completely.

"Projects will clearly communicate that teen sex is a risk behavior for both the physical consequences of pregnancy and sexual transmitted infections; as well as sociological, economic and other related risks," the funding announcement reads. "Both risk avoidance and risk reduction approaches can and should include skills associated with helping youth delay sex as well as skills to help those youth already engaged in sexual risk to return toward risk-free choices in the future."

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The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has begun dismissing hundreds of civil rights complaints under a new protocol that allows investigators to disregard cases that are part of serial filings or that they consider burdensome to the office.

Department officials said the new policy targeted advocates who flooded the office with thousands of complaints for similar violations, jamming its investigation pipeline with cases that could be resolved without exhausting staff and resources. But civil rights advocates worry that the office’s rejection of legitimate claims is the most obvious example to date of its diminishing role in enforcing civil rights laws in the nation’s schools.

Liz Hill, a spokeswoman for the Education Department, said the new provision was part of the office’s revision of its manual that lays out procedures for processing civil rights cases. The goal of the new manual, which took effect last month, is to help the office better manage its docket, investigations and resolutions, she said.

Among the changes implemented immediately is a provision that allows the Office for Civil Rights to dismiss cases that reflect “a pattern of complaints previously filed with O.C.R. by an individual or a group against multiple recipients,” or complaints “filed for the first time against multiple recipients that” place “an unreasonable burden on O.C.R.’s resources.”

So far, the provision has resulted in the dismissal of more than 500 disability rights complaints.

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Keith Davidson, the former attorney for two women who were paid to keep quiet about their alleged affairs with Donald Trump, has been contacted by federal authorities investigating Trump attorney Michael Cohen and is cooperating with them, a spokesman for Davidson confirmed.

Davidson was asked to provide “certain limited electronic information” for the probe led by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, spokesman Dave Wedge said. “He has done so and will continue to cooperate to the fullest extent possible under the law,” Wedge said in a statement Friday.

Shortly before the 2016 election, Davidson negotiated a confidentiality agreement with Cohen under which porn star Stormy Daniels was paid $130,000.

Davidson also represented Karen McDougal, a Playboy centerfold, in the $150,000 agreement she struck in August 2016 with the National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., for the rights to her story. AMI never published the story.

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Op zaterdag 21 april 2018 00:36 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:

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Wat heeft hij goed geregeld? Noord-Korea die een test stopzet en nog met ICBMs zit?

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North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, announced early Saturday that his country no longer needed to test nuclear weapons or long-range missiles and would close a nuclear test site.

“The nuclear test site has done its job,” Mr. Kim said in a statement carried by North Korea’s state media.

Mr. Kim’s announcement came just days before a scheduled summit meeting with President Moon Jae-in of South Korea; Mr. Kim is also planning to meet with President Trump soon. It was the second time in two days that he made what appeared to be a significant concession to the United States but in reality cemented the status quo. North Korea already had stopped testing its weapons.

Mr. Kim made no mention in his latest remarks of dismantling the nuclear weapons and long-range missiles North Korea has already built. On the contrary, he suggested he was going to keep them.

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twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zaterdag 21-04-2018 om 05:13:07 James Comey illegally leaked classified documents to the press in order to generate a Special Council? Therefore, the Special Council was established based on an illegal act? Really, does everybody know what that means? reageer retweet

twitter:

SethAbramson twitterde op zaterdag 21-04-2018 om 05:21:13 "Special Council"? No. No idea what that means.Unless it's when Steve Bannon and Erik Prince get together two weeks before the 2016 presidential election and, with your blessing, hatch a plot to peddle fake Clinton emails as part of a Breitbart domestic disinformation campaign. https://t.co/1Wttb4ELKU reageer retweet

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Op zaterdag 21 april 2018 06:48 schreef Montov het volgende:
Was er een paar maanden geleden ook niet een incident waardoor de nucleaire installatie half ontploft was en daarmee onbruikbaar, dat NK nu hoopt te kunnen onderhandelen omdat ze toch al niet verder kunnen opbouwen van hun arsenaal?

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Op zaterdag 21 april 2018 03:59 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:
Trump admin announces abstinence-focused overhaul of teen pregnancy program

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Op zaterdag 21 april 2018 01:12 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

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Maar ze kunnen dat nog helemaal niet onderbouwen.. waarom gaan ze nu het onderzoek voor de voeten lopen? Ik vind het geen verstandige zet.

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Op zaterdag 21 april 2018 08:21 schreef Nibb-it het volgende:

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De witte middelbare achterban vindt dit prachtig.

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Op zaterdag 21 april 2018 04:30 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:

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Trump is impulsief, luistert niet naar z'n adviseurs, is gevoelig voor vleierij. Kim denkt misschien dat ie met Trump meer kan bereiken dan met een normale president. Kan me zelfs voorstellen dat Trump een betere relatie met Kim dan met Moon ontwikkelt: hij maakt zich meer druk over de handelsbalans dan over mensenrechten, de militaire aanwezigheid in Z Korea kost hem geld, en de Z Koreanen hebben een handelsoverschot tov de VS. N Korea daarentegen heeft economisch niets te betekenen, en als Trump bvb voedselhulp belooft in ruil voor ontwapening scoort ie meteen bij de Amerikaanse boeren...