[AMV] Amerikaanse politiek #532 Donald John Zoidberg

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When Michael D. Cohen needed $17 million to buy a Manhattan apartment building in 2015, he went to Signature Bank.

Signature had existed for less than two decades, and compared with some of its New York rivals, it was a small player occupying unglamorous niches.

Yet it was a natural place to go for Mr. Cohen, who was Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer. Years earlier, he had helped initiate a relationship between Signature and Mr. Trump, and the bank became an unlikely go-to lender for the future president and his extended family.

The bank lent money to Mr. Trump’s Florida golf course. It lent money to Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, and to Mr. Kushner’s father, Charles. It provided Mr. Trump and his business with checking accounts. And Ivanka Trump sat on Signature’s board of directors while the bank was lending to her father and her husband, Mr. Kushner.

Signature provides a window into the intersecting financial interests of Mr. Cohen and the Trump and Kushner families. With Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner working in the White House, and Mr. Cohen under criminal investigation, Signature’s interactions with some of its most famous clients are attracting attention from regulators.

New York’s Department of Financial Services this year requested information from Signature about its credit lines to the Kushners, according to people familiar with the requests. They said regulators were reviewing whether Mr. Kushner’s White House role could compromise Signature’s ability to collect on the loans.

That review of Mr. Kushner’s loan documents led the New York regulators to broaden their inquiry, said one person, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the regulator’s activities. The agency is now looking into whether Signature lent money to real estate developers — including the Kushner family’s business, Kushner Companies — knowing they planned to use abusive tactics to push out low-rent tenants and then charge more, according to two people familiar with the review. It is focused on whether Signature’s loans were overly risky and violated laws intended to prevent predatory behavior.

The inquiry is at an early stage and might include banks other than Signature, the person said.

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The Endangered Species Act, which for 45 years has safeguarded fragile wildlife while blocking ranching, logging and oil drilling on protected habitats, is coming under attack from lawmakers, the White House and industry on a scale not seen in decades, driven partly by fears that the Republicans will lose ground in November’s midterm elections.

In the past two weeks, more than two dozen pieces of legislation, policy initiatives and amendments designed to weaken the law have been either introduced or voted on in Congress or proposed by the Trump administration.

The actions included a bill to strip protections from the gray wolf in Wyoming and along the western Great Lakes; a plan to keep the sage grouse, a chicken-size bird that inhabits millions of oil-rich acres in the West, from being listed as endangered for the next decade; and a measure to remove from the endangered list the American burying beetle, an orange-flecked insect that has long been the bane of oil companies that would like to drill on the land where it lives.

“It’s probably the best chance that we have had in 25 years to actually make any substantial changes,” said Richard Pombo, a former congressman from California who more than a decade ago led an attempt to rethink the act and is now a lobbyist whose clients include mining and water management companies.

He and others argue that the act has become skewed toward restricting economic development and Americans’ livelihoods rather than protecting threatened animals.

The new push to undo the wildlife protection law comes as Republicans control the White House and both chambers of Congress, and is led by a president who has made deregulation — the loosening of not only environmental protections but banking rules, car fuel efficiency standards and fair housing enforcement — a centerpiece of his administration.

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Op maandag 23 juli 2018 18:20 schreef vigen98 het volgende:

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En terecht, die man is niet meer in dienst van de VS en zou niet zulk informatie moeten krijgen.

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The Trump administration will seek to revoke California’s authority to regulate automobile emissions -- including its mandate for electric car sales -- in a proposed revision of Obama-era standards, according to three people familiar with the plan.

The proposal, expected to be released this week, amounts to a frontal assault on one of former President Barack Obama’s signature regulatory programs to curb greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. It also sets up a high-stakes battle over California’s unique ability to combat air pollution and, if finalized, is sure to set off a protracted courtroom battle.

The proposed revamp would also put the brakes on federal rules to boost fuel efficiency into the next decade, said the people, who asked to not be identified discussing the proposals before they are public. Instead it will cap federal fuel economy requirements at the 2020 level, which under federal law must be at least a 35-mile-per-gallon fleet average, rather than letting them rise to roughly 50 mpg by 2025 as envisioned in the plan left behind by Obama, according to the people.

As part of the effort, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will propose revoking the Clean Air Act waiver granted to California that has allowed the state to regulate carbon emissions from vehicle tailpipes and force carmakers to sell electric vehicles in the state in higher numbers, according to three people familiar with the plan.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will likewise assert that California is barred from regulating greenhouse gas emissions from autos under the 1975 law that established the first federal fuel-efficiency requirements, the people said.

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twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op maandag 23-07-2018 om 18:49:32 Judge T.S. Ellis has approved Mueller's request to grant immunity to five witnesses so that they can testify against Paul Manafort; Ellis said that he planned to make public their identities, TPM reports. https://t.co/rzq70cfSPn reageer retweet

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Op maandag 23 juli 2018 18:13 schreef xpompompomx het volgende:
Kijk onze Paul eens even een wit voetje proberen te halen.

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Op maandag 23 juli 2018 19:09 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:
Wat is trouwens gewoonte nadat mensen met zulke posities hun post verlaten? Behouden ze hun clearance?

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Op maandag 23 juli 2018 19:09 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:
Wat is trouwens gewoonte nadat mensen met zulke posities hun post verlaten? Behouden ze hun clearance?

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Former CIA directors typically hold on to their clearance for several years after leaving office in part so that they can share insights with current directors.

Bron

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Op maandag 23 juli 2018 19:16 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

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Rand Paul is one of a handful of senators who'll determine whether Brett Kavanaugh lands on the Supreme Court — and the Kentucky Republican has every intention of maximizing his leverage.

Paul is again inviting fellow senators to play the will-he-or-won’t-he guessing game when it comes to his decision — expressing grave concerns about Kavanaugh’s approach to personal privacy while insisting his vote could go either way, depending on what the judge says in the coming weeks and months.

“I am honestly undecided. I am very concerned about his position on privacy and the Fourth Amendment. This is not a small deal for me. This is a big deal,” Paul said in an interview last week. “Kavanaugh’s position is basically that national security trumps privacy. And he said it very strongly and explicitly. And that worries me.”

The calculation, of course, isn’t that straightforward. GOP senators and strategists are skeptical that Paul would be willing to buck President Donald Trump, with whom he’s close, on such a monumental vote. For senators, it doesn’t get much bigger than a vote to confirm or reject a Supreme Court justice in waiting.

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twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op maandag 23-07-2018 om 19:25:22 Senior Interior Department officials dismissed evidence (and tried to keep it out of public view) that national monuments boosted tourism and spurred archaeological discoveries, according to docs accidentally released this month and retracted a day later. https://t.co/30h0nPRv3Z reageer retweet

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In a quest to shrink national monuments last year, senior Interior Department officials dismissed evidence these public lands boosted tourism and spurred archaeological discoveries, according to documents the department released this month and retracted a day later.

The thousands of pages of email correspondence chart how Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and his aides instead tailored their survey of protected sites to emphasize the value of logging, ranching and energy development that would be unlocked if they were not designated as national monuments.

Comments the department’s Freedom of Information Act officers made in the documents show they sought to keep some of the references out of public view because they were “revealing [the] strategy” behind the review.

Presidents can establish national monuments in federal land or waters if they determine cultural, historical or natural resources are imperiled. In April, President Trump signed an executive order instructing Zinke to review 27 national monuments established over a period of 21 years, arguing his predecessors had overstepped their authority in placing these large sites off-limits to development.

Trump has already massively reduced two of Utah’s largest national monuments, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, and has not ruled out altering others.

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Op maandag 23 juli 2018 15:51 schreef Black_Baron het volgende:
Zijn er nog podcasts die jullie aanraden?

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Meat is piling up in U.S. cold-storage warehouses, fueled by a surge in supplies and trade disputes that are eroding demand.

Federal data, coming as early as Monday, are expected to show a record level of beef, pork, poultry and turkey being stockpiled in U.S. facilities, rising above 2.5 billion pounds, agricultural analysts said.

U.S. consumers’ appetite for meat is growing, but not fast enough to keep up with record production of hogs and chickens. That leaves the U.S. meat industry increasingly reliant on exports, but Mexico and China—among the largest foreign buyers of U.S. meat—have both set tariffs on U.S. pork products in response to U.S. tariffs on steel, aluminum and other goods. U.S. hams, chops and livers have become sharply more expensive in those markets, which is starting to slow sales, industry officials said.

The meat industry’s growing production already is filling the specialized warehouses built to store meat and other goods. “We are packed full,” said Joe Rumsey, president of Arkansas-based Zero Mountain Inc. The company’s five storage facilities serve as way stations for turkeys and chicken strips between processors and retailers, holding around 250 million pounds of products on any given day.

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twitter:

KlasfeldReports twitterde op maandag 23-07-2018 om 20:42:05 BREAKING: There isn’t just one audio file in the Michael Cohen matter.There are at least 12, and prosecutors got them on Friday - when the Times story ran on one of them. reageer retweet

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kylegriffin1 twitterde op maandag 23-07-2018 om 20:50:02 Sarah Sanders says that the White House is looking into revoking the security clearances of John Brennan, James Comey, Jim Clapper, Michael Hayden, Susan Rice and Andrew McCabe. Sanders says it's because these officials have allegedly made "baseless charges" against Trump. reageer retweet

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REVEALED: Identities Of 5 Witnesses Immunized To Testify Against Manafort (TPM)

A federal judge Monday unsealed the names of five witnesses granted immunity by special counsel Robert Mueller to testify at the upcoming trial of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

The witnesses, who Mueller's team had sought to keep from public view until they were called to testify, are:

James Brennan
Donna Duggan
Conor O'Brien
Cindy Laporta
Dennis Raico
The unsealed court documents do not provide details about what the witnesses may be expected to testify about. None of the newly revealed witnesses have figured prominently in the case or the coverage of the case to this point.

Two possible prominent witnesses in the case - Washington lobbyists Tony Podesta and Vin Weber, whose firms allegedly participated with Manafort in a PR campaign campaign for Ukraine without registering a foreign agents - did not appear among the list of five immunized witnesses.

Typically under immunity deals such as this one, the witness will provide relevant testimony with the agreement that it will not be used to prosecute them.

Manafort faces charges of tax fraud and bank fraud related to his decade-plus of consulting work for pro-Russian political forces in Ukraine. He has pleaded not guilty. He faces trial on similar charges in DC later this year.

Mueller has secured five guilty pleas and dozen of indictments in his wide-ranging probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election, but Manafort's case is set to be the first to come to trial. The judge in the case has opined that Mueller is only interested in Manafort as a possible witness against President Trump, and has called the prosecution's tactic "distasteful." Manafort has shown no signs so far of being willing to cooperate with Mueller's probe.

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Op maandag 23 juli 2018 21:12 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:
De 5 namen met immuniteit in de Manafort zaak. Geen Podesta te zien:

James Brennan
Donna Duggan
Conor O’Brien
Cindy Laporta
Dennis Raico

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Op maandag 23 juli 2018 21:17 schreef clumsy_clown het volgende:

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Tucker Carlson loog? Say it ain't so!

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Op maandag 23 juli 2018 21:18 schreef Montov het volgende:

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Kan de lijst nog groter worden? Ik dacht laatst iets gelezen te hebben over 100 mogelijke getuigen.

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Op maandag 23 juli 2018 21:17 schreef clumsy_clown het volgende:

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Tucker Carlson loog? Say it ain't so!

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rachelweinerwp twitterde op maandag 23-07-2018 om 21:11:06 NEWS: Manafort trial delayed until July 31st. reageer retweet