SPOILER: Het Kabinet-Trump

Het kabinet:
Secretary of State - Mike Pompeo
Secretary of Treasury - Steven Mnuchin
Secretary of Defense - Patrick M. Shanahan (Acting)
Attorney General - William Barr
Secretary of the Interior - David Bernhardt (Acting)
Secretary of Agriculture - Sonny Perdue
Secretary of Commerce - Wilbur Ross
Secretary of Labor - Alexander Acosta
Secretary of Health and Human Services - Alex Azar
Secretary of Housing & Urban Development - Ben Carson
Secretary of Transportation - Elaine Chao
Secretary of Energy - Rick Perry
Secretary of Education - Betsy DeVos
Secretary of Veterans Affairs - Robert Wilkie
Secretary of Homeland Security - Kirstjen Nielsen

Cabinet-level officials:
White House Chief of Staff - Mick Mulvaney (Acting)
Trade Representative - Robert Lighthizer
Director of National Intelligence - Dan Coats
Ambassador to the UN - Jonathan Cohen (Acting)
Director of the Office of Management & Budget - Mick Mulvaney
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency - Gina Haspel
Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency - Andrew R. Wheeler (Acting)
Administrator of the Small Business Administration - Linda McMahon

Andere kopstukken:
Ivanka Trump (Advisor to the President), Jared Kushner (Senior Adviser Strategic Planning), Stephen Miller (Senior Adviser Policy), John Bolton (National Security Adviser), Kellyanne Conway (Counselor), Donald McGahn (White House Counsel), Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Press Secretary), Christopher Wray (Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation), Robert Mueller (Special Counsel), Rod Rosenstein (United States Deputy Attorney General).

Verdwenen of voormalige kopstukken:
Kabinet: Tom Price (HHS), David Shulkin (VA), Rex Tillerson (State)
DOJ/FBI: Sally Yates, James Comey, Preet Bharara, Andrew McCabe
Communicatie WH: Mike Dubke, Sean Spicer, Anthony Scaramucci, Hope Hicks
Adviseurs enzo: Michael Flynn, Herbert McMaster, Reince Priebus, Rob Porter, Gary Cohn, Steve Bannon, John McEntee, General Jim 'Mad Dog' Mattis, Jeff Sessions. John F. Kelly, Ryan Zinke, Nikki Haley, Scott Pruitt

SPOILER: Overzicht van lopende onderzoeken

Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (2017)
Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (2018)
Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (2019)

twitter:

NBCPolitics twitterde op maandag 18-03-2019 om 12:04:19 JUST IN: Beto O'Rourke raised $6.1M in his first 24 hours as a presidential candidate, according to his campaign, surpassing Sen. Sanders and every other 2020 Democrat who has disclosed their figures. https://t.co/6ZRfpNMlZJ reageer retweet

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Op maandag 18 maart 2019 10:11 schreef xpompompomx het volgende:

[..]

Ben wel benieuwd of de republikeinen nog campagne gaan voeren over beleidsvraagstukken die zij belangrijk vinden of dat de campagne niet meer inhoud heeft dan "kijk eens hoe eng en kut de Democraten zijn".

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Op maandag 18 maart 2019 12:55 schreef Knipoogje het volgende:

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Ze hoefden het eigenlijk niet zo. Iemand zwartmaken werkt in de VS beter dan je eigen standpunten uitdragen/verdedigen, zeker als die standpunten nu niet echt voordelig uitpakken voor de kiezers die je probeert te paaien.

Maar goed, 2020 gaat 'm sowieso niet worden voor de republikeinen. Democraten zijn veel enthousiaster in hun Trump-haat, dus de opkomst zal hoger liggen. Trump heeft alleen zijn eigen base van 30-35%. Als 2018 een graadmeter is van 2020 is Trump dit keer wel volstrekt kansloos. Hij won uiteindelijk ook maar op enkele tienduizenden stemmen meer in de paar staten die het verschil maakten. Dat effect wordt ongetwijfeld teniet gedaan als er ineens een paar miljoen democraten die bij Clinton niet kwamen opdagen nu wel komen opdagen (en dat komen ze).

De Bernie-fans die uit boosheid op Trump stemden doen dat nu niet nog een keer en zullen dit keer wel gewoon op de democratische kandidaat stemmen, al dan niet aangemoedigd door Bernie zelf.

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Op maandag 18 maart 2019 15:46 schreef Hexagon het volgende:
Hup Beto
https://www.nu.nl/verkiez(...)recordbedrag-op.html

Stuur Biden/Sanders/Warren naar de bejaardensoos!

quote:

Op maandag 18 maart 2019 15:57 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

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Wat mij betreft mag het. Alle politici boven de 70, weg ermee!

twitter:

JustinElliott twitterde op maandag 18-03-2019 om 12:24:40 NEW: Feds raided Trump fundraiser Elliott Broidy’s office in money laundering probe https://t.co/hVactFfjVc from @RobertFaturechi and me reageer retweet

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Federal authorities raided the office of Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy last summer, seeking records related to his dealings with foreign officials and Trump administration associates, according to a sealed search warrant obtained by ProPublica.

Agents were authorized to use the megadonor’s hands and face to unlock any phones that required fingerprint or facial scans.

The Washington Post reported in August that the Justice Department was investigating Broidy. The sealed warrant offers new details of federal authorities’ investigation of allegations that Broidy had attempted to cash in on his Trump White House connections in dealings with foreign officials. It also shows that the government took a more aggressive approach with the Trump ally than was previously known, entering his office and removing records — just as it did with Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen.

Broidy served as a major Trump campaign fundraiser and was the national deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee until he resigned in April 2018, when it was revealed he had agreed to secretly pay off a former Playboy model in exchange for her silence about their affair.

The search warrant cites three potential crimes that authorities are investigating: conspiracy, money laundering and violations of the law barring covert lobbying on behalf of foreign officials. To obtain a search warrant, authorities have to convince a judge that there’s a probable cause they will find evidence of those specific crimes.

The search warrant also for the first time links Broidy to a globe-trotting Miami Beach party promoter.

SPOILER

The warrant, filed in July 2018, targeted Broidy’s office in Los Angeles. The scope of what authorities were seeking was broad. They planned to seize any evidence related to a list of dozens of people, countries and corporate entities, according to the warrant. Among the names on the list are Rick Gates, the former Trump campaign official who has pleaded guilty in the Mueller probe; Colfax Law Office, the firm founded by Robin Rosenzweig, Broidy’s wife; and several foreign countries.

Spokespeople for the Justice Department and the FBI declined to comment for this story.

Broidy’s attorney as well as a spokesman did not answer a list of detailed questions sent by ProPublica.

Broidy, an investor based in Los Angeles, pleaded guilty in 2009 to charges connected to his role in a major New York state public corruption and bribery case. But after backing Trump for president, he saw his star rise again. After the inauguration, he played a central role in filling administration vacancies, according to reports by ProPublica and others.

However, he once again quickly became mired in controversy, amid allegations of influence peddling and his dealings with the former Playboy model.

The search warrant shows that federal authorities are interested in Broidy’s alleged work for the Malaysian financier Jho Low, who is at the center of a sprawling international scandal known as 1MDB. In November, the Justice Department unveiled a bribery and money laundering case against Low.

In a separate filing in November, the Justice Department alleged that Broidy was paid by Low to lobby Trump administration officials to ease off on U.S. investigations into Low. Broidy is not identified by name in the filings, but he is widely reported to be the person referred to as “Individual No. 1.” Broidy has not been charged with a crime, and it’s unclear what the status of the investigation is.

Pras Michel, a member of the hip-hop group The Fugees and an associate of Low’s, funnelled the money to pay Broidy into the United States, the Justice Department alleged. Asked about the Broidy search warrant, a lawyer for Michel, Barry Pollack, said: “There has been news of this Broidy investigation for many months. Mr. Michel has not been charged with any wrongdoing whatsoever related to Mr. Broidy or anyone else.”

Federal authorities were also seeking records in Broidy’s office related to the United Arab Emirates, UAE adviser George Nader, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and any travel to the Middle East.

The New York Times reported last year that Broidy worked with Nader to steer the White House toward decisions benefiting the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Documents reviewed by the Times showed that Nader tempted Broidy with the prospect of more than $1 billion in contracts for Broidy’s private security company. Hacked communications showed Nader praised Broidy for “how well you handle Chairman” — a reference to Trump.

Nader became a cooperating witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian influence in the 2016 election, according to multiple news reports.

Broidy’s attorney has in the past responded to the allegations with a statement saying Broidy “has never agreed to work for, been retained by nor been compensated by any foreign government for any interaction with the United States Government, ever. Any implication to the contrary is a lie.”

According to the warrant, federal authorities also sought to seize any records related to China and Guo Wengui, a Chinese businessman and dissident who fled to New York, where he publicly accused the Chinese government of corruption.

The Times reported that Broidy explored plans to use his influence with the White House to force Guo out of the United States, apparently as part of an effort to curry favor with the Chinese and other foreign officials, and ultimately earn a payoff.

The search warrant for Broidy’s office also lists a name and corporation not previously linked to Broidy: “Joel Rouseau” and “Intelligent Resources.” There is a company by that name incorporated in Miami Beach by a Joel Rousseau, who is a friend of Michel’s. The search warrant does not describe Rousseau or Intelligent Resources’ role in the case.

Rousseau’s Instagram account shows him bouncing from Rio to Paris to Ibiza, frequently surrounded by models. “If you want to be successful, you need the beautiful people,” he told Crain’s New York in 2007, which described him as a specialist “in bringing agency models to clubs.” In another series of pictures, he is at an oil site in Haiti with workers he describes as his drilling crew. Rousseau made a foray into politics in 2012 when he donated tens of thousands of dollars to several Democratic Party groups.

Filings in a court case over unpaid taxes describe Rousseau as an “entrepreneur” with income swinging from under $1,000 for 2009 to over $2 million in 2013. He paid a long-standing bill for back taxes and penalties of more than $700,000 in late 2017, the filings show.

The address for Intelligent Resources is a house on Miami Beach’s exclusive Hibiscus Island. The person answering the door at the house last week told a reporter he had rented the house on Airbnb. Rousseau didn’t respond to requests for comment.

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Op maandag 18 maart 2019 22:03 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:
Weer wat peilingen:

2020 National GE

Biden 48% (+5) Trump 43% .
Sanders 46% (+2) Trump 44%
Harris 44% Trump 44%
Warren 44% Trump 44%
Trump 44% (+1) O'Rourke 43% .
Trump 44% (+2) Booker 42%

@:Civiqs/@:dailykos 3/9-12

quote:

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Monday that reading the manifesto the alleged New Zealand mosque shooter wrote "in its entirety" would show he wasn't inspired by President Trump.

"Unlike most mass shootings, this man came with pre-receipts," Conway said on "Fox & Friends" while speaking about Friday's shootings at a pair of Christchurch mosques, which resulted in 50 deaths.

"He put out a 70-page manifesto, and I guess everybody scoured it, searched for Donald Trump’s name, and there it is one time," she continued. "But he also said he aligns closely with the ideology of China. He said he’s not a conservative. He’s not a Nazi. I think he referred to himself as an eco-naturalist or an eco-fascist."

Conway added that "people should read" the manifesto "in its entirety."

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 01:10:29 Cambridge Analytica has been accused of trying to liquidate the company before a full investigation into their activities could be held. https://t.co/xxRQyuxSMN reageer retweet

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British political consultants that worked for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign liked to boast that they could deploy dirty tricks and twist democracies all over the world without the risk of detection.

The High Court in London heard on Monday that Cambridge Analytica was up to its old tricks from beyond the grave—by surreptitiously trying to halt investigations that could expose allegedly nefarious tactics before the company was shut down for good.

The company filed for the British equivalent of chapter 11 bankruptcy last year after secret recordings of its boss, Alexander Nix, emerged in which he claimed that Trump’s data gurus had carried out illicit election campaigns all over the world. The company was also accused of using up to 87 million clandestinely harvested Facebook profiles to create a state of the art voter database that helped Trump win election in 2016.

A lawyer representing a New York professor, who believes his private data was misused by the notorious campaign operatives, claims Cambridge Analytica’s data secrets are being shielded from justice and exposure by administrators in the pay of a shadow company set up by a band of executives linked to the Trump campaign veterans.

The High Court heard that administrators had deliberately misled a judge during a previous hearing by obfuscating their financial links to Emerdata, a company which was set up by Nix, Rebekah Mercer, and other senior figures who were previously involved with Cambridge Analytica.

SPOILER

In Britain, court-appointed administrators are supposed to work independently on behalf of all creditors to take over running of the company, similar to chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S. But the legal team of David Carroll, an associate professor at Parsons School in New York who is fighting for access to the data compiled on him, claimed that the administrators of Cambridge Analytica has succumbed to undue influence. Emerdata appointed the administrator and subsequently committed to pay them up to $1 million in fees.

The administrators, Vincent Green and Mark Newman of Crowe U.K. LLP, were accused of trying to liquidate the company before a full investigation into the company could be held.

“It is extremely unusual, in my submission, to have the fees of an administrator underwritten effectively by the people who may themselves be the principal focus of any subsequent investigation,” said Andreas Gledhill Q.C., the lawyer representing Carroll in court.

Carroll’s team hope the High Court judge will fire the administrator and pass the case to government receivers who would then appoint a new administrator willing to investigate legal breaches at Cambridge Analytica and five other interrelated companies.

“This needs to go to the official receiver and there needs to be a whole set of investigations—someone needs to crack the vault,” Ravi Naik, a lawyer for Carroll told The Daily Beast outside court. “Without this case being successful, there cannot be an investigation because the company will liquidate. This is the dying embers.”

In documents submitted to the court, Gledhill claimed that Emerdata was due to pay the administrator up to £800,000 ($1 million) but had only handed over around £220,000 ($290,000) so far.

“With their legal fees funded by Emerdata, the administrators have treated this as hostile litigation between themselves and Mr. Carroll, making their lack of independence abundantly clear,” Gledhill said.

Rebekah and Jennifer Mercer, daughters of billionaire Trump donor Robert Mercer, are listed as directors of Emerdata. As is former Cambridge Analytica chairman Julian Wheatland, who is named on the list of people close to President Trump being probed by the House Judiciary Committee, alongside Nix, who resigned as a director of Emerdata on the same day that he was called back for further questioning by a committee in Britain’s House of Commons. Nix remains a shareholder.

The dispute between Carroll and Cambridge Analytica began when the professor read about the alleged use of data in the 2016 presidential campaign. Under British law, companies are required to disclose what information they hold on any individual who asks for it, so Carroll filed a formal request. Cambridge Analytica repeatedly refused to hand the information over until it entered administration last year.

Notionally, Carroll’s involvement in this case is due to his role as a creditor who is potentially owed around £5,000 ($6,600) for the personal data breach.

“Even if I were to get the money, it's tiny fraction of the amount of money that I'm risking,” he told The Daily Beast. “It's about searching for the answers and triggering accountability. If it wasn't for me they would just rubberstamp it—and they'd be gone.”

His contention is that there are millions of other people whose data was stolen and misused by Cambridge Analytica.

On Monday, the High Court heard that press reports following Cambridge Analytica’s bankruptcy speculated that Emerdata might take up the baton and continue the controversial company’s work under another name.

Court documents submitted by Carroll’s team claimed that the administrators had also failed in their most basic duties: “Employees have refused to return laptops to the Administrators, and others have been stolen from the Administrators’ custody. Adding to concerns that the Cambridge Analytica business continues to be carried-on under another guise, as at November 2018, former employees were apparently still accessing its cloud-based infrastructure.”

Gledhill told the court that it was vital for Mr. Justice Norris to refuse to grant Crowe’s bid to become liquidators and shut the company down permanently.

“This case has attracted exceptional public interest and in our submission the standard of independence in this case should be correspondingly high. We say that the administrators cannot meet that standard both because of the appearance of bias and because they are in fact biased,” he said.

Gledhill claimed that Emerdata’s favored administrators had gone to extremes in order to avoid complying with the regulator which ordered Cambridge Analytica to respond to a subject access request (SAR) from Carroll. He wanted to know what information had been obtained on him, where it had come from, and how it was used. The Information Commissioner's Office ended up taking the company to court, and Cambridge Analytica parent company SCL was convicted of breaking the law in January.

“It speaks volumes about the extent to which the administrators are beholden to Emerdata that, despite their status as officers of the court… they preferred to expose [SCL] Elections to criminal sanction for failure to cooperate with a regulator, rather than yield an inch to Professor Carroll’s SAR.”

Gledhill said it may have been enough to avoid the conviction if the administrators had made their best endeavors to comply. “Had they done that in any subsequent criminal proceedings they would have had a defense … They didn't even try at all.”

He said that would have been easy: “What was there to prevent the administrator from sitting down with Mr. Nix or Mr. Wheatland” and asking what they remembered about where the vast swathes of data on up to 200 million American voters had come from?

Catherine Addy QC, representing the administrators in court, said her clients had cooperated as much as they could with the regulators. She said it was impossible to track down Carroll’s personal information amid 700 terabytes of data that has been seized by the Information Commission. She also insisted that the administrators had no idea that there was an ongoing process to access that material when they were appointed.

She claimed Carroll’s legal team was “using the media and political storm cloud” to try to hold up the normal procedures of the court.

The judge has reserved his judgment on whether Crowe should be dismissed as the administrator. He is expected to rule in the coming days.

twitter:

rebeccaballhaus twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 01:09:04 NEW from @mrothfeld @joe_palazzolo: How did the National Enquirer get Bezos’s texts? Michael Sanchez, the brother of Bezos’ lover, sold them for $200,000 to the National Enquirer’s publisher. https://t.co/5s3h5ebGjg reageer retweet

twitter:

nytimes twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 05:00:08 As a developer, Donald Trump borrowed more than $2 billion from Deutsche Bank. Once he was president, the German bank shifted into damage-control mode. It issued an unusual direction to its Wall Street employees: Do not publicly utter the word “Trump.” https://t.co/A4DJOCYuBU reageer retweet

twitter:

davidenrich twitterde op maandag 18-03-2019 om 23:37:16 This is the inside story of how Deutsche Bank officials - including 2 CEOs - were so eager to do business with @realDonaldTrump that they ignored years of internal warnings about the risks. Based on interviews with 20+ bank execs with direct knowledge. https://t.co/5kD4vCXm7y reageer retweet

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op maandag 18-03-2019 om 23:29:29 While the press doesn’t like writing about it, nor do I need them to, I donate my yearly Presidential salary of $400,000.00 to different agencies throughout the year, this to Homeland Security. If I didn’t do it there would be hell to pay from the FAKE NEWS MEDIA! https://t.co/xqIGUOwh4x reageer retweet

twitter:

Stonekettle twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 01:18:35 Wait. Back up. How does this work? You CAN'T donate money directly to a particular government agency. You CAN donate money to the US government via the US Treasury, which goes into the General Fund to be used as Congress may direct via normal budgetary legislation. 1/ https://t.co/AhZALVJJzr reageer retweet

twitter:

Stonekettle twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 01:18:36 The picture of the check Trump posted is a PERSONAL check, not a government appropriation. It CAN'T be accepted by DHS, not legally, not unless Congress passed legislation to set up a special fund (as they do for certain national projects). And they didn't. 5/ reageer retweet

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Op dinsdag 19 maart 2019 08:03 schreef Ulx het volgende:

Kortom: Als het Congres besluit dat geld uit te geven aan een fonds om illegale immigrantenkinderen weer te herenigen met hun ouders kunnen ze dat gewoon doen. Hoe Trump ook zal tandenknarsen.

twitter:

KFILE twitterde op maandag 18-03-2019 om 23:46:27 Per Fox News: Rep. Devin Nunes is suing Twitter and some accounts called “Devin Nunes Mom” and “Devin Nunes Cow.”https://t.co/rP8srxu2hI https://t.co/3zywEF8Yqo reageer retweet

twitter:

DevinCow twitterde op zondag 04-02-2018 om 23:15:04 @The_Roni Nunes’ farm has over a million dollars in revenue each year, not counting the subsidies. Here’s the data: https://t.co/quwC8LeNPq reageer retweet

twitter:

DevinGrapes twitterde op donderdag 26-07-2018 om 18:15:06 I never see my owner anymore. He's so busy on Fox News, palling around with DC lobbyists, and up in Boston watching sports that he never visits me, never checks on how I'm growing, whether I'm well-enough fed, well-enough watered... I wonder if @DevinCow feels the same? reageer retweet

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Op dinsdag 19 maart 2019 08:03 schreef Ulx het volgende:

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op maandag 18-03-2019 om 23:29:29 While the press doesn’t like writing about it, nor do I need them to, I donate my yearly Presidential salary of $400,000.00 to different agencies throughout the year, this to Homeland Security. If I didn’t do it there would be hell to pay from the FAKE NEWS MEDIA! https://t.co/xqIGUOwh4x reageer retweet

Leuk verhaaltje, maar niet zonder haken en ogen.....

twitter:

Stonekettle twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 01:18:35 Wait. Back up. How does this work? You CAN'T donate money directly to a particular government agency. You CAN donate money to the US government via the US Treasury, which goes into the General Fund to be used as Congress may direct via normal budgetary legislation. 1/ https://t.co/AhZALVJJzr reageer retweet

twitter:

Stonekettle twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 01:18:36 The picture of the check Trump posted is a PERSONAL check, not a government appropriation. It CAN'T be accepted by DHS, not legally, not unless Congress passed legislation to set up a special fund (as they do for certain national projects). And they didn't. 5/ reageer retweet

Kortom: Trump kan zijn salaris wel doneren aan de VS, maar dan niet aan een ministerie naar keuze die het dan zou moeten gebruiken voor een van zijn hobbyprojecten. Als het Congres besluit dat geld uit te geven aan een fonds om illegale immigrantenkinderen weer te hetenigen met hun ouders kunnen ze dat gewoon doen. Hoe Trump ook zal tandenknarsen.

twitter:

Stonekettle twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 03:15:13 Addendum 2:Possible answer is here: https://t.co/ZA8T0Xs9eBIt appears Trump CAN make a GIFT donation to the DHS. 8/ reageer retweet

twitter:

Stonekettle twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 03:15:13 That said, even if it's legal for the average citizen, I'm not convinced it doesn't run afoul of ethics laws for the PRESIDENT to donate money to agencies under his authority. Further research is required. 9/9 reageer retweet

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Op dinsdag 19 maart 2019 10:42 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:

De wanhoop is meelijwekkend.

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Op dinsdag 19 maart 2019 10:42 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:
WAT TRUMP DOET KAN NIET!!!!!!
- Oh, het jan toch wel...
WE ZOEKEN GEWOON VERDER TOT WE WAT VINDEN!!!


De wanhoop is meelijwekkend.

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Op dinsdag 19 maart 2019 11:26 schreef xpompompomx het volgende:

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Als Trump zo onschuldig als een pasgeboren lammetje, zoals hij zelf bij hoog en laag volhoudt, is er voor no.1 geen enkel vuiltje aan de lucht.

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Op dinsdag 19 maart 2019 10:42 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:
WE ZOEKEN GEWOON VERDER TOT WE WAT VINDEN!!!

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Op dinsdag 19 maart 2019 11:31 schreef Ulx het volgende:

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Dit dus. Hij kan zijn financieën gewoon even laten controleren en dan blijkt hij van alle smetten vrij.

Of niet.

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Op dinsdag 19 maart 2019 12:22 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:

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Ook Trump heeft recht op zijn privacy. En ik moedig hem aan daarvoor te vechten. Het is aan hemzelf wat hij openbaart, tenzij er een gerechtelijk bevel is. En wie weet mag hij dan ook selecteren wat hij wel en niet laat zien

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Op dinsdag 19 maart 2019 11:23 schreef MangoTree het volgende:

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En dat al 2 jaar lang.

twitter:

thehill twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 03:49:05 Trump exaggerated his net worth by over $2 billion to get loans from Deutsche Bank: report https://t.co/tl9L9S0VsX https://t.co/apu27tcgpI reageer retweet

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Op dinsdag 19 maart 2019 12:53 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

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Zo wanhopig dat Manafort 7 en een half jaar in de bak gaat, Cohen drie en Richard Pinedo een half jaar. met elkaar al aardig wat wanhopige jaren

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Op dinsdag 19 maart 2019 13:39 schreef MangoTree het volgende:

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En Trump volgend jaar 4 jaar gaat bijtekenen.

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Op dinsdag 19 maart 2019 13:39 schreef MangoTree het volgende:

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En Trump volgend jaar 4 jaar gaat bijtekenen.

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Op dinsdag 19 maart 2019 14:09 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

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vanuit de bak?

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Op dinsdag 19 maart 2019 14:36 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:

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Nah, hij vraagt gewoon even aan de Clintons bij wie je moet zijn om ervoor te zorgen dat mensen zelfmoord gaan plegen

En hop, nog vier jaar extra als president en dan een leven lang een vrij man

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Op dinsdag 19 maart 2019 14:38 schreef Tweek het volgende:

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Oh je bent zo'n qanon aanhanger.

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Op dinsdag 19 maart 2019 14:52 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:

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Ik dacht dat de " " genoeg zou zeggen. Ik vergat dat linksen geek gevoel voor humor hebben.

Pro tip: Neem alles gewoon iets minder serieus, wordt het leven een stuk leuker van.

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Op dinsdag 19 maart 2019 14:36 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:

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Nah, hij vraagt gewoon even aan de Clintons bij wie je moet zijn om ervoor te zorgen dat mensen zelfmoord gaan plegen

En hop, nog vier jaar extra als president en dan een leven lang een vrij man

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Op dinsdag 19 maart 2019 15:02 schreef Ulx het volgende:

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Zijn vroegere zakenpartner van de familie Gambino is ook net overreden nadat hij per ongeluk tegen tientallen kogels aanliep.

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 14:57:04 Facebook, Google and Twitter, not to mention the Corrupt Media, are sooo on the side of the Radical Left Democrats. But fear not, we will win anyway, just like we did before! #MAGA reageer retweet

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Op dinsdag 19 maart 2019 15:07 schreef Tweek het volgende:

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Door een QAnon gekkie:
https://www.nbcnews.com/n(...)gans-written-n984611

twitter:

NatashaBertrand twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 14:41:02 Breaking: Rod Rosenstein is staying longer at DOJ, per NBC's Pete Williams. reageer retweet

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Op dinsdag 19 maart 2019 15:21 schreef Ulx het volgende:

twitter:

NatashaBertrand twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 14:41:02 Breaking: Rod Rosenstein is staying longer at DOJ, per NBC's Pete Williams. reageer retweet

Zo.....interesting

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But none of that means Rosen possesses the appropriate qualifications to serve effectively as the deputy attorney general. Unlike Rosenstein and many before him, he lacks prior Justice Department experience and—critically—has zero prosecutorial experience.

[..]

twitter:

AriMelber twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 16:25:33 It's common to compare Trump's legal problems to Nixon's, but that itself is a low legal bar. More broadly, Trump has now had *more advisers indicted* earlier in his term than *any* President in history.https://t.co/iZjxTgYHDm https://t.co/2vDsxLip3K reageer retweet

Mueller Makes History Exposing Crime Spree By Former Trump Aides | The Beat With Ari Melber | MSNBC

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kylegriffin1 twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 12:30:00 Quite a fascinating chart from @TheBeatWithAri. The Obama line really catches your eye. https://t.co/pP2OikBKOL reageer retweet

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Op dinsdag 19 maart 2019 10:42 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:
WAT TRUMP DOET KAN NIET!!!!!!
- Oh, het jan toch wel...
WE ZOEKEN GEWOON VERDER TOT WE WAT VINDEN!!!

De wanhoop is meelijwekkend.

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A federal appeals court is set to wrestle on Tuesday with the legal future of a lawsuit accusing President Donald Trump of violating the Constitution by profiting from his business dealings with foreign countries seeking to curry favor with his administration.

The arguments in the so-called foreign emoluments case test largely uncharted areas of constitutional law, but also serve as a reminder of the numerous ethical challenges Trump’s administration has faced, with a series of Cabinet members departing under clouds of scandal.

The suit that is going before a three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals Tuesday was filed jointly in 2017 by the attorneys general of Maryland and Washington, D.C.

At the outset of Trump’s presidency, many ethics experts urged him to divest himself of his far-flung business empire, but he refused. Instead, Trump turned over day-to-day control of his businesses to two of his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.

Just before taking office, Trump announced that he would donate to the U.S. Treasury all profits from foreign government-related business at his hotels and other enterprises. However, critics said the policy was vague and certain not to capture all the income Trump derived from foreign diplomats and others with ties to governments abroad.

Last March, the Trump Organization announced that it had donated just over $151,000 to the U.S. Treasury to divest what the firm said were its profits associated with foreign-government business.

However, the Trump business has said it intends to respect its guests’ privacy and not pry into who might be footing the bill for their stays at Trump hotels. As a result, it’s unclear if Trump’s firms are disgorging profits from hotel rooms booked by lobbyists or other third parties who may not disclose any connection to foreign governments.

SPOILER

During Trump’s inauguration in 2017, lobbyists working for the Saudi government paid more than $270,000 to put U.S. veterans up in hotel rooms at the Trump hotel in D.C. as part of an effort to defeat legislation that allows victims to pursue lawsuits against the Saudi regime over its alleged involvement in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S.

While the main focus of the case set to be argued Tuesday has been on the influence foreign governments could wield through their patronage of Trump businesses, the lawsuit also targets the money Trump-branded hotels and other ventures are receiving from state officials. A lesser-known clause of the Constitution prohibits the president from being separately compensated by any state.

Lawyers pressing the case against Trump have noted that some officials of other states have signaled that they’re staying at Trump’s D.C. hotel in order to cozy up to the administration. In 2017, Maine's Gov. Paul LePage stayed there during a visit to Washington. The Trump administration later eased logging restrictions Maine had objected to.

While Trump has faced at least four lawsuits alleging his illegal receipt of so-called emoluments related to his office, the one brought by the D.C. and Maryland officials appears — as of now — to be the biggest legal headache for the president. That’s because last December U.S. District Court Judge Peter Messitte gave the D.C. and Maryland attorneys general the go-ahead to begin discovery — the process of seeking documents and testimony about how much money.

The 4th Circuit put that discovery process on hold last December at the Justice Department’s request until its appeals is resolved.

Last October, a New York-based federal appeals court heard arguments in the first lawsuit filed over the emoluments issue—a case brought by the liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. That case was thrown out by a district court judge in New York in December 2017, who said that group and other plaintiffs in the hospitality industry lacked standing to pursue their claims.

The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals panel has yet to rule on the efforts to revive that suit.

Meanwhile, a suit more than 200 Democratic senators and representatives brought over the emoluments issue remains alive in a federal court in Washington. Last September, a judge found that the lawmakers did have legal standing to sue, but the case has proceeded at a glacial pace.

The Democratic House members may now have a more potent tool to explore Trump’s business dealings: congressional subpoenas. With the House having come under Democratic control in January, the chairs of various House committees could try to use their legal authority to demand more details on Trump’s business dealings.

The House Oversight and Government Reform made limited inquiries into the issue while under GOP control in 2017 and recently renewed its push to get the Trump Organization to turn over more records of its policy on foreign government-related business.

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President Trump on Tuesday called the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway “a total loser,” responding to mounting questions by George Conway about the state of Trump’s mental health.

https://www.washingtonpos(...)bcf38ba41_story.html

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Op dinsdag 19 maart 2019 10:42 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:
WAT TRUMP DOET KAN NIET!!!!!!
- Oh, het jan toch wel...
WE ZOEKEN GEWOON VERDER TOT WE WAT VINDEN!!!


De wanhoop is meelijwekkend.

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Mueller sought Michael Cohen’s emails months before FBI raid, warrants show

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III obtained court-approved warrants to search the emails of President Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen in July 2017 as his office investigated whether Cohen had illegally worked for foreign entities, according to newly unsealed documents illustrating how the investigation moved quickly and quietly to scour the digital trails of the president’s associates.

(..)

The warrants show that federal agents sought information from Cohen’s Gmail account, as well as an account he set up for his legal and consulting work. An agent noted that Cohen also used a Trump Organization email account but indicated that as of the filing of the warrant request on April 8, 2018, the FBI had “not been able to obtain the contents of that account.” The agent did not indicate why the FBI did not have access to Cohen’s Trump Organization records.

Bron: WaPo

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The real reason the Trump administration is constantly losing in court

Federal judges have ruled against the Trump administration at least 63 times over the past two years, an extraordinary record of legal defeat that has stymied large parts of the president’s agenda on the environment, immigration and other matters.

In case after case, judges have rebuked Trump officials for failing to follow the most basic rules of governance, including providing legitimate explanations for shifts in policy, supported by facts and, where required, public input.

(..)

Two-thirds of the cases accuse the Trump administration of violating the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), a 73-year-old law that forms the primary bulwark against arbitrary rule. The normal “win rate” for the government in such cases is about 70 percent, according to analysts and studies. But as of mid-January, a database maintained by the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law shows Trump’s win rate at about 6 percent.

(..)

Some errors are so basic that Jaffe said he has to wonder whether agency officials are more interested in announcing policy shifts than in actually implementing them. “It’s not just that they’re losing. But they’re being so nuts about it,” he said, adding that the losses in court have “set regulatory reform back for a period of time.”

Contributing to the losing record has been Trump himself. His reported comments about “shithole countries,” for example, helped convince U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco that the administration’s decision to end “temporary protected status” for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Central America, Haiti and Sudan was motivated by racial and ethnic bias.

At least a dozen decisions have involved Trump’s tweets or comments.

Bron: WaPo

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Op dinsdag 19 maart 2019 18:55 schreef Montov het volgende:

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ddale8 twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 19:14:10 Trump gives his second question to the Daily Caller. He rejects the idea of adding seats to the Supreme Court. He is then asked by the Caller about going after social media companies. He complains about Twitter taking followers away from him. reageer retweet

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ddale8 twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 19:14:57 Trump makes unfounded and unspecific allegations of "collusion" involving social media companies. "Something has to be going on," he says, adding, "Something's happening with those groups of folks that are running Facebook and Google and Twitter." reageer retweet

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ddale8 twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 19:15:44 Trump says he is "proud" to hear the president of Brazil use the phrase "fake news." reageer retweet

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ddale8 twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 19:16:36 The Daily Caller then asks Bolsonaro how it'd affect his relations with the US if the US elects a "socialist." Bolsonaro says it's an internal matter and he'll respect the outcome, but he believes Donald Trump will be re-elected. reageer retweet

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ddale8 twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 19:18:55 Trump says the US will, "in honour of the president," be supporting the entry of Brazil into the OECD, though the Office of the US Trade Representative has been opposed. It'd been reported this week that Brazil didn't expect the US to announce its support on this visit. reageer retweet

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Op dinsdag 19 maart 2019 19:21 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:
De persco met de president van Brazilie

twitter:

ddale8 twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 19:14:10 Trump gives his second question to the Daily Caller. He rejects the idea of adding seats to the Supreme Court. He is then asked by the Caller about going after social media companies. He complains about Twitter taking followers away from him. reageer retweet

twitter:

ddale8 twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 19:14:57 Trump makes unfounded and unspecific allegations of "collusion" involving social media companies. "Something has to be going on," he says, adding, "Something's happening with those groups of folks that are running Facebook and Google and Twitter." reageer retweet

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ddale8 twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 19:15:44 Trump says he is "proud" to hear the president of Brazil use the phrase "fake news." reageer retweet

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ddale8 twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 19:16:36 The Daily Caller then asks Bolsonaro how it'd affect his relations with the US if the US elects a "socialist." Bolsonaro says it's an internal matter and he'll respect the outcome, but he believes Donald Trump will be re-elected. reageer retweet

twitter:

ddale8 twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 19:18:55 Trump says the US will, "in honour of the president," be supporting the entry of Brazil into the OECD, though the Office of the US Trade Representative has been opposed. It'd been reported this week that Brazil didn't expect the US to announce its support on this visit. reageer retweet

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DanAlexander21 twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 16:03:11 State of our federal ethics system: Hand $10 to Trump's campaign, and you have to disclose who you are. Hand $2.9 million to Trump's business, and you don't. https://t.co/3GmCwG1NKG reageer retweet

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ddale8 twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 20:54:46 Trump falsely said again last week that he ended immigration "catch and release": "And we're catching them and we're keeping them. We're not doing release." ICE tells me today that about 84,500 people from "family units" were released between late December and early March. https://t.co/iVKWZ4EQ1D reageer retweet

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ddale8 twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 20:57:11 This number was reported by the Arizona Republic (https://t.co/UFtuVT3ztl) in early March. Breitbart, which fawns over Trump but sometimes criticizes him on immigration, then picked up the story. https://t.co/MntKTmGsGA reageer retweet

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ddale8 twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 21:00:32 It is impossible for the U.S. to not release lots of people crossing these days: it's far from a record for overall crossings, but it's an exceptional numbers of asylum seekers and family units. ICE accurately says it's severely constrained. So: no, Trump has not ended releases. reageer retweet

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Op dinsdag 19 maart 2019 18:55 schreef Montov het volgende:

[..]

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JamilSmith twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 22:01:06 The FIRST STEP Act, Trump’s supposedly prized criminal justice reform, calls for $75 million per year for five years, starting in 2019. Trump only budgeted $14 million for it. https://t.co/azaFYcmIt4 reageer retweet

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Earlier this week, President Donald Trump released his administration’s budget request for the 2020 fiscal year, asking Congress for a record $4.75 trillion in funding. Somewhat predictably, he proposed boosting military spending and allocating billions of dollars for a wall along the US-Mexico border. But the president’s request would appropriate surprisingly little to fund one of the precious few bipartisan victories of his term, a criminal justice reform law that he signed in December.

While the move will likely have little practical effect, since the budget proposal is basically dead on arrival, it’s yet another example of the Trump administration appearing to deprioritize a major piece of legislation that the president and his senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have repeatedly and vocally championed.

SPOILER

The First Step Act—the first major criminal justice reform bill to pass Congress in about eight years—includes an array of federal prison and sentencing reforms, from curbing some mandatory minimums to creating more educational, job training, and rehabilitative programs for inmates. “This will keep our communities safer, and provide hope and a second chance, to those who earn it,” Trump tweeted after it passed the Senate in December last year, and he later invited formerly incarcerated people to his State of the Union address in January to tout the reforms. But as the Marshall Project points out, the law calls for $75 million in funding per year for five years, starting in 2019. And while Trump’s proposed 2020 budget requests hundreds of millions of dollars for existing reentry programs, it only allocates $14 million to develop the First Step Act’s new programs, far short of the amount specified in the law.

Of course, the president’s budget request is just a request—Congress will still determine actual spending levels—but it’s still a strong indication of his priorities heading into the 2020 election. And for supporters of prison reform, it’s an alarming signal that his administration isn’t serious about fully implementing a law that could improve life for thousands of inmates and help many of them reduce their sentences. In the past, lawmakers have rejected Trump’s budget proposals, and they may decide to allocate more money to fund the First Step Act this year. But their track record isn’t great either: For the 2019 fiscal year, they didn’t budget any funds for the new law.

None of this necessarily means the First Step Act won’t get funded; it’s just unclear exactly how. The Justice Department could shift resources from other areas to implement the law, or it could use prison savings that result from the earlier release of certain inmates. “The Administration is committed to breaking this cycle of recidivism by better preparing individuals to reenter communities and to mitigating the collateral consequences of incarceration,” the budget request says. The White House did not respond to the Marshall Project‘s questions about funding for the law.

The budget request isn’t the only administration move raising alarm. Many of the law’s supporters, including federal inmates and prison reform advocates, believed it would allow about 4,000 people to get out of prison quickly because of their good behavior in lockup. But as I reported in February, after the law passed, the Federal Bureau of Prisons announced these well-behaved inmates could have to wait roughly seven months for the reforms to kick in, if not longer. “We know that inmates and their families are particularly interested in the changes regarding good conduct time,” the agency said in a statement to Mother Jones. But “it is not effective immediately nor is it applicable to all inmates.”

And for all Trump’s talk of helping formerly incarcerated people reenter their communities and find jobs, the federal government in some ways appears to be moving in the opposite direction—essentially ignoring the spirit of the First Step Act. Earlier this month, the Marshall Project reported that the US Office of Personnel Management wants to expand criminal background checks for applicants of federal jobs and contracting positions, requiring them to disclose not only if they’ve served prison sentences, but also if they’ve spent time in jail or gone through diversion programs. It’s just a proposal for now, and the public has until late April to submit comments on the idea. “Our pledge to hire American includes those leaving prison and looking for a very fresh start—new job, new life,” Trump said last November while announcing his support for the First Step Act, which doesn’t deal with hiring practices for ex-offenders but was advocated by lawmakers and the president as a way to help prisoners find employment after their release.

Taken along with the 2020 budget request, the administration’s proposal to expand background checks for federal job applicants is yet another reason for criminal justice reform advocates to wonder how sincere the president really is about offering a second chance to people in federal prisons.

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nytpolitics twitterde op woensdag 20-03-2019 om 00:20:06 Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whose confrontational stand on Iran has already strained ties with European allies, is leading the push for Iraq to confront its neighbor https://t.co/zrv8UUWp06 reageer retweet

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The United States’ attempts to isolate Iran, including by punishing Iraqi militias and politicians who are supported by Iranian officials, has deepened tensions not only between Washington and Baghdad but also within the Trump administration.

American military and intelligence officials said the increasing pressure on Iraq risks infuriating its Parliament, including politicians linked to Iran, which could limit the movements of the 5,200 United States troops based in Iraq.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whose confrontational stand on Iran has already strained ties with European allies, is leading the push for Iraq to confront its fellow Shiite-majority neighbor. He arrived in the Middle East on Tuesday to speak with officials in Kuwait, Israel and Lebanon about containing Iran.

Under plans recommended by Mr. Pompeo and some White House officials, the State Department would designate Iran’s military Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a foreign terrorist organization. It would be a first instance of the United States designating a unit of another government’s military as a terrorist group; American officials said it could put United States troops and intelligence officers at risk of similar actions by foreign governments.

The plans also would designate some Iraqi Shiite militias as foreign terrorist organizations. As a result, the Iranian-trained militias — and Iraqi officials who support them — would be subject to new economic sanctions and travel restrictions.

The proposal was described to The New York Times on condition of anonymity by a half-dozen American and Iraqi officials and experts familiar with the sensitive diplomatic plans but not authorized to discuss them by name.

Mr. Pompeo confirmed Monday night that he was looking at various groups, including the Revolutionary Guards in Iran, after he was asked by The Times on the flight to Kuwait about the proposed designations.

“There may well be other organizations that we designate,” he said. The State Department designated an Iraqi group as a terrorist organization earlier this month, despite opposition from the Pentagon.

SPOILER

The Iraqi militias — some of which were trained by the Revolutionary Guards — operate with Baghdad’s approval or financial support. Several are legitimate players in Iraqi politics. They are part of the Popular Mobilization Forces, an umbrella organization of about 50 paramilitary groups that fought against the Islamic State, a radical Sunni group, and are paid by the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government.

“The Americans can make the decisions they want, but what the Americans see is different than what we see,” Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi of Iraq said last week. “Our position on the Popular Mobilization Forces is very clear and well known.”

Officials at the Pentagon and the C.I.A. — which Mr. Pompeo ran in the Trump administration’s first year — oppose designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guards or the Iraqi militias as terrorist groups, fearing a backlash that could constrain American troops. Qassim Suleimani, commander of the corps’ elite Quds Force and a regular visitor to Iraq, has already been designated a terrorist by the United States.

Iraqi leaders were already irate over the Trump administration’s insistence that they comply with American sanctions imposed against Iran after President Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal with Tehran.

Tensions between Washington and Baghdad have only risen through the winter.

In February, Iraqi politicians bristled after Mr. Trump said American troops in Iraq would monitor and pressure Iran. Iraqi leaders are resisting demands by Mr. Pompeo to stop buying energy from Iran — another issue on which Pentagon officials have sided with Baghdad. Iraq officials also remain unhappy by the closing of the United States Consulate in Basra, the country’s second-largest city, where a temporary halt of electricity exports from Iran led to violent rioting last summer.

On Friday, a senior State Department official said Mr. Pompeo’s visit to the Middle East this week was part of the goal of rolling back Iran’s forces and linked Shiite militias. As with Iraq, the pressure campaign has angered leaders in Lebanon, where Iran-backed Hezbollah is a major military force, holds parliamentary seats and runs the health ministry.

Analysts said Mr. Pompeo’s trip and its focus on Iran is an attempt to lend Trump administration support to embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel before national elections set for April 9. Iran and Israel are longtime enemies. Mr. Pompeo has denied such intentions.

Mr. Pompeo has told the leaders of power-starved Iraq that they must stop buying Iranian natural gas and electricity. But on Tuesday, following recommendations by senior Pentagon officials, he agreed to extend a waiver of the sanctions to allow Iraq to buy electricity from Iran. The new waiver will expire in 90 days, in the middle of Iraq’s scorching summer.

If they are forced to stop buying electricity from Iran, Iraqi officials warned, protests could destabilize the government of Mr. Abdul Mahdi, who was named prime minister in October. In February, he said Iraq would not comply with the sanctions, citing the 13 years of United Nations sanctions against the government of Saddam Hussein that took a bruising toll on Iraqis throughout the country.

Iraqi officials now are exploring how to buy natural gas from Iran but still protect Iraqi banks from American penalties.

Earlier this month, and against the advice of officials at the Pentagon, the State Department announced that it was designating an Iraqi militia, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, and its leader, Akram Abbas al-Kaabi, as “specially designated global terrorists.” The group is funded by the Iraqi government, but the State Department said its loyalty was to Iran.

Mr. Pompeo also is seeking to designate a more significant group, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, as a terrorist organization. Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq won 15 seats in Iraq’s Parliament last year. Though its officials now say they tolerate the United States military presence in Iraq, the militia fought American troops at the height of the Iraq war. The militia is led by Qais al-Khazali, a former American detainee who is accused of masterminding an ambush in the holy Shiite city of Karbala that killed five American soldiers in 2007.

After Mr. Trump announced in December that he would withdraw United States forces from the fight against the Islamic State in Syria, American officials began quietly negotiating with Iraqi counterparts to shift hundreds of commandos and support troops to Iraq. The initial urgency for the shift has cooled, however, now that Mr. Trump has agreed to leave 400 American troops in Syria rather than withdraw all 2,000. But many Iraqi lawmakers are reluctant to give the 5,200 American troops already in Baghdad and at a handful of other bases much freedom to move or operate.

The terrorist designations could complicate talks over those issues and a range of diplomatic matters by fueling animosity toward the United States. One senior American official said the designations could lead to barring members of the Iraqi and Iranian governments from traveling to the United States — including to the United Nations in New York.

Administration lawyers have been poring over the proposed language for the terrorist designations and their possible consequences. So far, that has kept Mr. Pompeo from issuing them, two senior American officials said. One official said that trying to enforce the sanctions that the terrorist designations would prompt would be a nightmare.

US Atty: I Considered Taping Trump, DOJ Was Right To Consider It | The Beat With Ari Melber | MSNBC

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In a news-making interview, former Chief prosecutor at the Southern District of New York, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who was fired by President Trump in 2017, reveals to Ari Melber that he backs Mueller’s boss, Rod Rosenstein, who reportedly talked about secretly taping Pres. Trump. Bharara recounts new details about how his office also considered taping Trump when the President took the unusual step of personally calling Bharara, who concluded there was reason to have “mistrust” towards Trump. The interview is Bharara’s first day on MSNBC since he last spoke with Melber, in 2015.

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President Donald Trump's personal lawyers and attorneys from the Justice Department argued Tuesday that no one should be able to sue Trump for profiting from his businesses while he's in office -- and for the first time in more than a year, things went well for the president in the case.

The US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit heard arguments in a lawsuit brought by Maryland and the District of Columbia accusing Trump of violating the foreign and domestic emoluments clauses of the US Constitution by refusing to give up his interest in the Trump International Hotel in Washington. To date, a federal judge in Maryland has repeatedly ruled against Trump.

But the three-judge 4th Circuit panel expressed deep skepticism Tuesday about DC's and Maryland's positions on a host of issues, including what exactly they wanted a judge to order Trump to do, whether claims that Trump's hotel had an unfair competitive advantage were too speculative, and whether DC and Maryland -- or anyone, for that matter -- could bring a lawsuit against a president under the emoluments clauses.

[..]

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Prosecutors with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team on Tuesday cited the “press of other work” in asking a judge to give them until April 1 to respond to the court about a request from The Washington Post to unseal records in Paul Manafort’s criminal case.

In a two-page filing, Deputy Solicitor General Michael R. Dreeben and prosecutor Adam C. Jed wrote, “Counsel responsible for preparing the response face the press of other work and require additional time to consult within the government.”

A response had been due March 21. The filing did not detail the nature of the consultation.

The Post has objected to the abundance of sealed and redacted records in Manafort’s Washington case and petitioned the judge in his case, Amy Berman Jackson, to open them to public view.

The news outlet’s motion, filed on the eve of Manafort’s recent sentencings in the District and Virginia, cited “the profound public interest in these proceedings,” arguing that the integrity of the country’s elections “goes to the core of the interests protected by the First Amendment.”

The special-counsel filing seeking the extension comes amid several public signs that the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election is winding down and heightened speculation that Mueller could any day transmit his final report to Attorney General William P. Barr.

SPOILER

Mueller’s team, once filled with 17 lawyers, will soon be down to 10. The special counsel’s office confirmed in recent days that Zainab Ahmad’s detail has ended, and Andrew Weissmann will soon be leaving for the private sector. No one has been charged by the special counsel since longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone was indicted in January for allegedly lying to Congress.

Lawmakers, meanwhile, have been taking steps to urge the Justice Department to make Mueller’s findings public, although it is unclear whether and to what extent that will happen. The House last week voted overwhelmingly to urge the Justice Department to publicly release Mueller’s entire report, with 420 Democrats and Republicans supporting the measure and not a single person voting no.

The special-counsel regulations do not require Barr to release Mueller’s report, and in most circumstances the Justice Department does not make public information about those it investigates and does not charge. But the political pressure on the attorney general is expected to be enormous, and legal analysts say the Justice Department might be hard-pressed to resist lawmakers’ demands for transparency.

Barr has vowed to be as open as possible while also noting that department policies generally do not support his telling all.

Manafort, 69, was sentenced to a combined 7½ years in prison earlier this month after being convicted in August at trial in Alexandria on bank- and tax-fraud charges and pleading guilty in September in Washington to two conspiracy counts of hiding millions he earned as an unregistered lobbyist for Ukrainian politicians over a decade and attempting to tamper with witnesses.

The Post asked Jackson to unseal or unredact records after giving the government 10 days to respond, specifying filings, sentencing memos, hearing transcripts and more than 800 pages of exhibits submitted after the special counsel’s office alleged in November that Manafort voided his cooperation agreement by lying to prosecutors.

Prosecutors at the time said the materials were under seal or blacked out to shield the privacy of uncharged individuals and because of a need to keep secret ongoing criminal investigations, including grand-jury matters.

The Post has asked that Jackson require prosecutors to notify the court within seven days once any related pending investigation ends to consider further unsealing of materials, and that prosecutors tell the court every four weeks their justifications for continuing to keep remaining material sealed.

Prosecutors in their filing said attorneys for The Post did not oppose the request for an extension beyond the original March 21 deadline. The Post’s attorney, Laura R. Handman of the Davis Wright Tremaine law firm, said the government’s filing spoke for itself.

A spokesman for the special counsel’s office declined to comment.

FULL The Rachel Maddow Show 3/19/19 | The Rachel MSNBC News Today Mar 19, 2019

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Lawyers for former national security adviser Michael Flynn are fighting an effort by his former business partner to subpoena records of legal advice Flynn received as his foreign lobbying work came under federal investigation.

Earlier this month, Flynn's ex-partner, Bijan Kian, issued subpoenas to seek files and correspondence for use in a trial Kian is facing on charges of lying to authorities and conspiring to evade the Foreign Agents Registration Act in connection with work Flynn and Kian allegedly did on behalf of Turkey.

Now, Flynn's lawyers are asking a judge to block the request for records of legal advice provided to Flynn or his now-defunct firm, Flynn Intelligence Group.

Flynn pleaded guilty in 2017 to a felony false-statement charge brought by special counsel Robert Mueller's office and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

One potential flash point in the legal dispute could come if Kian's legal team tries to argue that Flynn is resisting the subpoena because of his cooperation deal. Efforts by prosecutors to interfere with a defendant's access to witnesses or evidence can result in strong action by the courts, in some instances including dismissal of the case.

The motions filed Friday and made public Monday acknowledge that as part of Flynn's cooperation, his lawyers shared "certain factual information" with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Alexandria, Va., relating to the foreign-lobbying investigation. A former in-house lawyer for Flynn's firm, Robert Kelley, also submitted to an interview, court papers say.

Flynn's attorneys say prosecutors agreed that Flynn wasn't waiving his attorney-client privilege by sharing that information with prosecutors. Alexandria-based U.S. District Court Judge Anthony Trenga has set a hearing on the issue for March 29.

One of the subpoenas issued at Kian's request went to Covington & Burling, the law firm representing Flynn in his dealings with Mueller's office. The other went to a former attorney for Flynn's business, Kristen Verderame.

Kian's trial is set to open July 15. Flynn is expected to be the key witness at the trial. His own sentencing on the false statement charge has been postponed twice to allow him to get credit for any testimony he winds up offering against his former colleague.

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- Newly released documents that were used to get search warrants for former Trump attorney Michael Cohen include a lengthy section related to an "illegal campaign contribution scheme" that is completely redacted.

- The obscured material could underscore the president's legal peril in the investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, according to some legal experts.

- Trump should be "utterly terrified" about the lengthy redacted section, national security lawyer Bradley Moss said.

[..]

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AaronBlake twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 02:57:18 Last Congress, Devin Nunes cosponsored a bill called the “Discouraging Frivolous Lawsuits Act”https://t.co/muQ0FhmUO7 reageer retweet

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Op dinsdag 19 maart 2019 17:50 schreef Montov het volgende:

[..]

Ik was bezorgd dat Trump mentale capaciteiten beperkt zijn, maar hij pareert dat met een volwassen en constructieve reactie.

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Op woensdag 20 maart 2019 04:56 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:
Mueller team cites ‘press of other work’ in seeking delay until April 1 over request to open Manafort records
[..]

[ afbeelding ]

Rachel Maddow ging ook hierover...

FULL The Rachel Maddow Show 3/19/19 | The Rachel MSNBC News Today Mar 19, 2019

.... en over Bijan Kian, wiens proces wsl deze zomer is met Flynn als getuige...

Legal battle between Michael Flynn and former business partner heats up
[..]

... en last but not last over de Cohen search warrants:

19 blacked-out pages of Cohen search warrant suggest legal peril for Trump
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twitter:

funder twitterde op woensdag 20-03-2019 om 02:37:53 Exclusive Video: Devin Nunes whining about The Resistance: “It's such a pain now to go to these political events—it makes it very difficult to even move around the valley—cuz everywhere you go you have this Resistance movement.” Dug up by @TheDemCoalition https://t.co/OXWLw0L7tE reageer retweet

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Op dinsdag 19 maart 2019 15:21 schreef Ulx het volgende:

twitter:

NatashaBertrand twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 14:41:02 Breaking: Rod Rosenstein is staying longer at DOJ, per NBC's Pete Williams. reageer retweet

Zo.....interesting

quote:

Op woensdag 20 maart 2019 09:54 schreef Ulx het volgende:

[..]

Dat laatste ging voornamelijk over de "illegal Campaign Contribution Scheme". Met andere woorden: Stormygate is far from over.

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Op woensdag 20 maart 2019 10:31 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

[..]

Je zal het zien, een "vijand" van Trump die eigenlijk geen macht heeft, haalt hem op gegeven moment onderuit.

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Op woensdag 20 maart 2019 11:18 schreef Ulx het volgende:

[..]

Ik zeg al een tijdje dat Stormy Daniels zijn ondergang gaat worden.

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Op woensdag 20 maart 2019 13:20 schreef Knipoogje het volgende:

[..]

Niet zozeer Stormy. Dat is slechts een patroon. Het is zijn hele schimmige financiele handel en wandel die door en door corrupt en crimineel is. Dat wordt nu beetje bij beetje door onderzoeksjournalistiek blootgelegd. En door de onderzoekers bij de FBI.

Ik ga er van uit dat de GOP hem beschermt tot de verkiezingen als het Mueller rapport echt ernstig is, maar daarna wordt het echt open season voor alle illegale financiele fraude die hij heeft gepleegd. Daar is inmiddels zoveel bewijs voor. Dat kan niemand meer ontkennen. Of je het ideologisch nu met hem eens bent of niet en of je het collusion verhaal nu gelooft of niet.

En mocht het allemaal indirect zijn, dan kan hij een in ieder geval een enorm hoge claim van de IRS verwachten voor alle belastingfraude (asset-waarde te hoog/te laag beoordelen op je formulier enzo).

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Op woensdag 20 maart 2019 13:30 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

[..]

Niet tijdens zijn presidentschap. Maar je kunt er gif op in nemen dat hij NA die periode in grote problemen komt.

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Op woensdag 20 maart 2019 15:07 schreef MangoTree het volgende:

[..]

'Je kunt er gif op innemen', lekker feitelijk weer.

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Op woensdag 20 maart 2019 15:08 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

[..]

https://www.bloomberg.com(...)s-a-warning-to-trump

ja.

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Op woensdag 20 maart 2019 15:20 schreef MangoTree het volgende:

[..]

Aha, geduld dus..is dat ergens eind 2020 of eind 2024?

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Op woensdag 20 maart 2019 15:34 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:
En ook nog eens een Ier die doet alsof hij Mexicaans is, en Warren die doet alsof zij een native is.

2020 wordt een topshow!

quote:

Op woensdag 20 maart 2019 15:34 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:
Mwah, met extreemlinkse heksenjagers zal het aantal Trump-supporters moeilijk vast te stellen zijn, aangezien zwijgen ervoor zorgt dat je niet aan de schandpaal wordt genageld.

Ik kijk hoopvol naar de verkiezingen, aangezien tot nu toe de Democraten een debielenparade presenteren. Al die kandidaten die de green new deal steunen, zijn gevaarlijke gekken, en niemand wil hen. Dan zijn er nog de racisten/anti-semieten. En ook nog eens een Ier die doet alsof hij Mexicaans is, en Warren die doet alsof zij een native is.

2020 wordt een topshow!

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Op woensdag 20 maart 2019 15:45 schreef Monolith het volgende:

[..]

Het blijft me verbazen dat mensen hun eigen voorkeuren denken te moeten projecteren op het Amerikaanse electoraat. Dat jij dergelijke ideeën niet ziet zitten, betekent niet dat Amerikanen ze afwijzen, zie bijvoorbeeld:
https://www.businessinsid(...)ernational=true&r=US
https://www.motherjones.c(...)cerns-over-the-cost/
https://morningconsult.co(...)-broadened-platform/

De trend in de VS laat duidelijk zien dat de popular vote steeds steviger in handen van de Democraten komt. Zelfs als ze zoals in 2016 verliezen is dat met een ruime winst in de PV en dan hebben de (lean) reps ook nog een hogere opkomst. De GOP lijkt steeds meer te bestaan bij gratie van een systeem waarin verre van sprake van proportionele representatie is. Je ziet bijvoorbeeld ook weer dat de Republikeinen in Florida de uitslag van het referendum omtrent stemrecht voor ex-gedetineerden met eigen wetgeving weer om zeep proberen te helpen.

Het deelnemersveld bij de Democraten is ook gewoon heel breed. Doen alsof het allemaal gekken zijn met extremistische ideeën slaat gewoon nergens op.

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Op woensdag 20 maart 2019 15:52 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

[..]

de Populair Vote hoeft niet te betekenen dat je het presidentschap binnen kan slepen. Vandaar dat Warren van het systeem van de kiesmannen af wil. Maar dit gaat niet zomaar.

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Op woensdag 20 maart 2019 15:53 schreef Monolith het volgende:
FiveThirtyEight had overigens ook nog wat mooie visuals over gerrrymandering:
https://projects.fivethir(...)ring-north-carolina/

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Op woensdag 20 maart 2019 16:31 schreef ATuin-hek het volgende:

[..]

Depressing einde eigenlijk...
"Previous attempts to use metrics to persuade the court have not seen much success. Whether it will prove persuasive this time around remains to be seen."

Want waarom zou de data er toe doen om een dergelijk belangrijk besluit te maken

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Op woensdag 20 maart 2019 16:47 schreef Monolith het volgende:

[..]

Mja, juristen en data / statistiek zijn best vaak een ongelukkige combinatie gebleken. Het is natuurlijk ook best lastig en er zit altijd wel wat nuance / achtergrond in 'data', maar hier lijkt het me wel vrij helder eerlijk gezegd.
Uiteindelijk is er maar één manier om echt wat te doen aan dit soort vertekende districten en dat is simpelweg proportionele representatie invoeren. Maar ja dat gaat natuurlijk niet zonder slag of stoot.

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Op woensdag 20 maart 2019 16:50 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Of onafhankelijke commissies. In landen als VK, Canada, Australië etc. Komt geen gerrymandering voor omdat het tekenen van districten niet gepolitiseerd is.

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Op woensdag 20 maart 2019 17:21 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:
Het EC is juist bijzonder intelligent. Het is een extra beveiliging tegen het importeren van stemmen. Het is de natte droom van menig Democraat om illegalen stemrecht te geven.

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Op woensdag 20 maart 2019 17:21 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:
Het EC is juist bijzonder intelligent. Het is een extra beveiliging tegen het importeren van stemmen. Het is de natte droom van menig Democraat om illegalen stemrecht te geven.

quote:

Fox kiest voormalig Republikeins politicus Paul Ryan als bestuurslid

Voormalig Republikeins politicus Paul Ryan sluit zich aan bij het bestuur van mediabedrijf Fox Corp. Ryan was lange tijd voorzitter van het Amerikaanse Huis van Afgevaardigden, en werd vanwege die positie vaak geïnterviewd op Fox News, dat een belangrijk onderdeel uitmaakt van het bedrijf.

In 2018 verkocht mediamagnaat Rupert Murdoch een groot deel van zijn imperium aan Walt Disney Co., waaronder ook Fox Corp. Dat onderdeel gaat nu in afgeslankte versie door. Het nieuwe Fox komt onder leiding van Murdochs zoon Lachlan, en richt zich voornamelijk op sport en nieuws.

Dinsdag is de eerste dag dat Fox Corp. in de nieuwe vorm bestaat. Andere nieuwe bekende gezichten bij het bedrijf zijn Formule 1-voorzitter Chase Carey en Hope Hicks, de voormalige communicatiebaas van het Witte Huis.

quote:

Op woensdag 20 maart 2019 17:21 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:
Het EC is juist bijzonder intelligent. Het is een extra beveiliging tegen het importeren van stemmen. Het is de natte droom van menig Democraat om illegalen stemrecht te geven.

quote:

Op woensdag 20 maart 2019 17:21 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:
Het EC is juist bijzonder intelligent. Het is een extra beveiliging tegen het importeren van stemmen. Het is de natte droom van menig Democraat om illegalen stemrecht te geven.

quote:

Indien melding wordt gemaakt van nieuwsfeiten is deugdelijke onderbouwing een must.

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op woensdag 20-03-2019 om 17:50:03 .@DevinCow now has more followers than @DevinNunes. We live in strange, strange times. reageer retweet

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Op woensdag 20 maart 2019 18:01 schreef Barbusse het volgende:

[..]


[..]

Mooi heur.

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Op woensdag 20 maart 2019 18:47 schreef Monolith het volgende:

[..]

Het is geen nieuwsfeit, meer een hele vreemde claim. Het EC zorgt ervoor dat de verkiezingen doorgaans worden beslist in een klein aantal swingstates, feitelijk met een fractie van de stemmen. Dat maakt "de verkiezing winnen met illegale stemmen" juist heel veel makkelijker.

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Op woensdag 20 maart 2019 19:24 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:

[..]

En stel je voor dat de Democraten het EC weten af the schaffen, en vervolgens alle illegalen van stemrecht weet te voorzien door middel van naturalizatie of wat dan ook, dan is het hek toch van de dam? Nu zitten de illegalen gelukkig nog vrij geconcentreerd in bepaalde staten, en heeft een eventuele groei in het aantal Democraten-stemmers gering effect.

quote:

En, het EC zorgt ervoor dat grote deleven van het land niet worden vergeten. Is er enkel de popular vote dan wordt er alleen in de grote steden campagne gevoerd omdat er elders weinig valt te halen. Met het huidige stelsel kan het negeren van grote delen van het land tenminste nog worden afgestraft.

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Op woensdag 20 maart 2019 19:24 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:

[..]

En stel je voor dat de Democraten het EC weten af the schaffen, en vervolgens alle illegalen van stemrecht weet te voorzien door middel van naturalizatie of wat dan ook, dan is het hek toch van de dam? Nu zitten de illegalen gelukkig nog vrij geconcentreerd in bepaalde staten, en heeft een eventuele groei in het aantal Democraten-stemmers gering effect.

En, het EC zorgt ervoor dat grote deleven van het land niet worden vergeten. Is er enkel de popular vote dan wordt er alleen in de grote steden campagne gevoerd omdat er elders weinig valt te halen. Met het huidige stelsel kan het negeren van grote delen van het land tenminste nog worden afgestraft.

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op woensdag 20-03-2019 om 21:55:19 NEW: The House Judiciary Committee is planning to send a 2nd wave of doc requests to associates of Trump, including Rudy Giuliani, Rex Tillerson, Gary Cohn, and a former lawyer for Michael Cohen who last year sought a pardon on Cohen's behalf, WSJ reports.https://t.co/Plji1qciY5 reageer retweet

quote:

Op woensdag 20 maart 2019 21:21 schreef Hyperdude het volgende:
[ afbeelding ]

twitter:

joncoopertweets twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 22:20:02 BREAKING: "I do believe there are indictments waiting for this president,” Congressman @EricSwalwell just said. reageer retweet

quote:

Op donderdag 21 maart 2019 09:24 schreef Vader_Aardbei het volgende:
Deze man weet...

[ afbeelding ]

quote:

Trump spent five full minutes jabbing at McCain during an official White House event intended to highlight manufacturing in Ohio. The barbs marked the fourth time in the last five days that Trump has criticized McCain, who died from brain cancer in August.

"I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted, which as president I had to approve. I don’t care about this, I didn't get a thank you. That's OK," Trump told workers at a tank factory in Lima, Ohio.

Bron

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Op donderdag 21 maart 2019 10:25 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

[..]



Persoonlijk kan ik er wel om lachen. Het is immers zo absurd dat het bijna slapstick wordt. Snap alleen niet dat de Republikeinen dit allemaal maar laten gebeuren, dat geen van hen een keer op de rem trapt en Trump terechtwijst als hij een van de meest vooraanstaande leden - wiens lijk nota bene nog warm is - de stront in blijft trappen.

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Op donderdag 21 maart 2019 10:29 schreef AnneX het volgende:

[..]

Zoveel info.
Ergens las ik dat er blijkbaar flink wat vets werken in die fabriek.
Gewoonlijk wordt er wel geboo’d als McCain wordt genoemd bij voorgaande rally’s.
Nu bleef het stil.

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Op donderdag 21 maart 2019 10:33 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

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Ook weer vreemd moment om over McCain te beginnen.

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Op donderdag 21 maart 2019 10:44 schreef MangoTree het volgende:

[..]

Natuurlijk heb je liever dat het niet besproken wordt wat McCain gedaan heeft, duidelijk weer.

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Op donderdag 21 maart 2019 10:44 schreef MangoTree het volgende:

[..]

Natuurlijk heb je liever dat het niet besproken wordt wat McCain gedaan heeft, duidelijk weer.

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Op donderdag 21 maart 2019 10:49 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

[..]

Hij is doodgegaan aan kanker, maar heeft een korte periode voor zijn verscheiden de Obamacare repeal onderuit gehaald omdat hij er van overtuigd was dat afschaffen van obamacare een vage belofte van een idioot was . Met zijn duim. En Trump was daar niet gelukkig mee. Duidelijk nu?

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Op donderdag 21 maart 2019 10:54 schreef MangoTree het volgende:

[..]

Voor jou duidelijk, ik kijk iets verder.

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Op donderdag 21 maart 2019 10:53 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

[..]

Och, ik ben nooit een groot fan geweest van McCain. Lijkt mij alleen wat onnodig om op z'n graf te pissen, zeker als president.

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Op donderdag 21 maart 2019 10:55 schreef xpompompomx het volgende:

[..]

Vertel. Wat was er zo duivels aan McCain?

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Op donderdag 21 maart 2019 10:55 schreef xpompompomx het volgende:

[..]

Vertel. Wat was er zo duivels aan McCain?

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Op donderdag 21 maart 2019 11:05 schreef MangoTree het volgende:

[..]

Vraag het expert Koos hierboven

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Op donderdag 21 maart 2019 10:55 schreef MangoTree het volgende:

[..]

Als je doodgaat ben je zeker heilig, ga toch weg.

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Op donderdag 21 maart 2019 11:08 schreef AllesKaputt het volgende:

[..]

Loop niet zo slap om de zelfverklaarde hete brij heen te draaien en zeg zelf even wat er mis is met McCain

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Op donderdag 21 maart 2019 10:55 schreef MangoTree het volgende:

[..]

Als je doodgaat ben je zeker heilig, ga toch weg.

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Op donderdag 21 maart 2019 11:17 schreef MangoTree het volgende:

[..]

Haha, nogmaals vraag maar aan degene die over een warm lijk begint

Mocht je het echt niet weten zoek maar de Trump speech op van gister. Of wil je echt alles voorgekauwd op een presenteerblaadje? Daar kan ik in het algemeen geen touw aan vastknopen.

quote:

Op donderdag 21 maart 2019 10:44 schreef MangoTree het volgende:

[..]

Natuurlijk heb je liever dat het niet besproken wordt wat McCain gedaan heeft, duidelijk weer.

quote:

Op donderdag 21 maart 2019 11:22 schreef archito het volgende:

[..]

Heilig vs niet over zijn graf pissen. Ben je in het dagelijks leven ook zo zwart/wit?

twitter:

atrupar twitterde op woensdag 20-03-2019 om 22:51:51 Instead of saying “hi” Trump now greets people with, “no collusion, no collusion.” https://t.co/Pj70oF0DgG reageer retweet

quote:

Op donderdag 21 maart 2019 14:54 schreef Ulx het volgende:

twitter:

atrupar twitterde op woensdag 20-03-2019 om 22:51:51 Instead of saying “hi” Trump now greets people with, “no collusion, no collusion.” https://t.co/Pj70oF0DgG reageer retweet

Ook een goede no collusion allemaal!

quote:

Op donderdag 21 maart 2019 14:54 schreef Ulx het volgende:

twitter:

atrupar twitterde op woensdag 20-03-2019 om 22:51:51 Instead of saying “hi” Trump now greets people with, “no collusion, no collusion.” https://t.co/Pj70oF0DgG reageer retweet

Ook een goede no collusion allemaal!

quote:

Op donderdag 21 maart 2019 09:32 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

[..]

Het resultaat was dat ze de meeste stemmen had., ze heeft dus niet verloren!!! En DIT zou zou bepalend moeten zijn in ELKE democratie. Jij zou het ook niet leuk vinden als een eerste kamer senator mag bepalen of stemmen op de FvD bij de laatste verkiezingen toch voor een andere partij van voordeel is.

quote:

Op woensdag 20 maart 2019 23:17 schreef Ulx het volgende:

twitter:

joncoopertweets twitterde op dinsdag 19-03-2019 om 22:20:02 BREAKING: "I do believe there are indictments waiting for this president,” Congressman @:EricSwalwell just said. reageer retweet

Wow.

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op donderdag 21-03-2019 om 15:00:01 Richard Blumenthal to @MSNBC: "There are indictments in this president's future. They're coming. Whether they're after his presidency or during it." reageer retweet

quote:

Donald Trump has charged his own reelection campaign $1.3 million for rent, food, lodging and other expenses since taking office, according to a Forbes analysis of the latest campaign filings. And although outsiders have contributed more than $50 million to the campaign, the billionaire president hasn’t handed over any of his own cash. The net effect: $1.3 million of donor money has turned into $1.3 million of Trump money.

In December, Forbes reported on the first $1.1 million that President Trump moved from his campaign into his business. Since then, his campaign filed additional documentation showing that it spent another $180,000 at Trump-owned properties in the final three months of 2018.

None of this seemed likely when Donald Trump first got into politics. “I don’t need anybody’s money,” he announced on the day he launched his 2016 campaign, standing inside the marble atrium at Trump Tower. “I’m using my own money. I’m not using the lobbyists. I’m not using donors. I don’t care. I’m really rich.”

At first, he acted like it, spending $50 million of his own money from April 2015 to June 2016. But the following month, when he was officially named the Republican nominee for president, his financing model changed. From July to November of 2016, outsiders contributed $234 million while Trump put up just $16 million.

Once he became president, Trump had a chance to get some money back. The campaign put more than $800,000 into Trump Tower Commercial LLC, the holding company through which Trump owns his interest in the original Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. Trump Tower Commercial LLC took in an additional $225,000 in rent from the Republican National Committee, which coordinated those payments with the campaign. That means that, since the inauguration, Trump’s reelection effort has had a hand in funneling more than $1 million into the president’s most famous property.

SPOILER

In addition, the campaign has paid $54,000 to Trump Plaza LLC, which controls a property that includes two brownstone apartment buildings in New York City. The reason for those payments, which are listed as “rent,” remains unclear. Forbes staked out the property for 14 hours on a November day but still could not pin down what exactly the campaign was renting. A person working behind the front desk couldn’t make sense of it either. “If there was any kind of office rented out for campaigning or whatever, I would know about it.” Six residents also said they had never seen any indication of the campaign in the buildings. A 2016 campaign staffer, however, said people sometimes crashed at an apartment there when they were in town.

It is also unclear what exactly the 2020 effort is renting from Trump Restaurants LLC, which has received $60,000 in campaign funds. Trump Restaurants LLC is another holding company tied to Trump Tower. The building’s website, which features a handful of Trump-branded eateries, includes a page of legal disclaimers for Trump Restaurants LLC.

Inside the building lie clues to the purpose of the payments. Near Trump Grill and Trump’s Ice Cream Parlor, there’s a kiosk where tourists can buy T-shirts, hats and other campaign memorabilia. The fine print at the bottom of a poster next to the stand says, “Paid for by Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.”—the official name for the president’s 2020 campaign committee.

The Trump Organization did not respond to a list of questions, including whether the stand is in fact the basis for the payments and how many square feet it occupies. So a Forbes reporter paced out the space to take a rough measurement. It appears the entire stand is approximately 60 square feet. With monthly payments of $3,000, that implies that the campaign is paying $600 per square foot in annual rent. For comparison, Gucci rents prime space upstairs, along Fifth Avenue, for only $440 per square foot, according to an analysis of a debt prospectus obtained by Forbes.

Real estate experts offered varying opinions on whether $3,000 a month represented an appropriate price. “That’s robbery,” said one person familiar with the New York market, surveying the kiosk from inside the building. Two others said it seemed like a fair deal, since smaller spaces often command higher rates on a per-square-foot basis. A Trump campaign official said the 2020 effort pays market rents.

It’s a key question because federal regulations allow candidates to put campaign money into their own businesses only if they pay going rates. Given the varying opinions on whether $3,000 a month constitutes a fair price, however, it seems unlikely that the payments will spark an investigation by the Federal Election Commission. “If something is really egregious, yeah, it’s there,” says Bradley Smith, a Republican who served as a commissioner of the FEC from 2000 to 2005. “But they’re just not going to try to pick apart things on a difference of a few percentage points and try to second-guess what should be paid.”

That means Trump should be free to continue shifting his supporters’ money into his business for the rest of the election cycle.

twitter:

NickMiroff twitterde op donderdag 21-03-2019 om 13:44:51 NEW Why are Border Patrol agents in this photo opening the wall to let migrant families into the U.S.? Please allow us to explain https://t.co/E8AwwtizSO with @kdombsadof reageer retweet

twitter:

NatashaBertrand twitterde op donderdag 21-03-2019 om 14:57:17 On the House Intelligence Committee's schedule for next week: Two open hearings—one with Felix Sater, and one on "Putin’s Playbook: The Kremlin’s Use of Oligarchs, Money and Intelligence in 2016 and Beyond." https://t.co/TEJImnGt7s reageer retweet

twitter:

Fahrenthold twitterde op donderdag 21-03-2019 om 15:02:34 Trump Org now selling merch with the White House on it. Nice work by @Z_Everson. https://t.co/zCQ3WrEeaG reageer retweet

twitter:

BySteveReilly twitterde op donderdag 21-03-2019 om 15:27:20 Trump's attorneys said in January 2017 that no communications of the @Trump Organization would reference Office of the Presidency. https://t.co/rCfAY8RPyIThe company is now selling items depicting the White House under the Trump brand on https://t.co/KT6kxbjAPm (h/t @Z_Everson) https://t.co/USLmAe5SQY reageer retweet

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op donderdag 21-03-2019 om 17:20:08 MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A judge has issued a temporary injunction blocking Wisconsin Republicans’ contentious lame-duck laws limiting the powers of Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul, both Democrats. reageer retweet

twitter:

funder twitterde op donderdag 21-03-2019 om 14:30:02 BREAKING: Video of Devin Nunes defending protestors who yelled the "n-word" at Congressman John Lewis: "I think people have every right to say what they want. If they wanna smear someone, they can do it." Dug up by @TheDemCoalition. Nunes is disgusting. https://t.co/FNbhxJ9xPw reageer retweet

quote:

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under threat of indictment and fighting for re-election in just three weeks against a popular former Army chief, Benny Gantz, is getting a big boost from President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, clearly seeing foreign policy as a welcome distraction from his domestic troubles.

In Jerusalem Wednesday night, Netanyahu welcomed Pompeo enthusiastically, telling him, “I want to thank you and President Trump for everything that you’ve been doing to support this partnership which I think is exceptional.”

Pompeo replied that “the Israeli people can have confidence that President Trump will maintain this close bond. I know that you and the President have an outstanding working relationship.”

And the White House announced that Netanyahu would be visiting the president in Washington and having dinner at the White House next week, just before the April 9 election.

In March of 2015, then-President Barack Obama refused to grant Netanyahu a pre-election visit, saying, “he needs to be far away enough from the election that it doesn’t look like in some ways we’re meddling or putting our thumbs on the scale.”

Trump has no such reluctance, having a vested interest in the re-election of one of his strongest allies. And, after a series of pro-Israel foreign policy decisions, Trump is popular in Israel, with a recent poll showing his popularity at 65 percent.

Facing one of his toughest election challenges in years, the embattled Israeli leader is playing the Trump card for all it’s worth: In recent months, he has been promoting their relationship on a billboard and airing a campaign ad showing Trump saying, “Today we officially opened the United States Embassy in Jerusalem. Congratulations!”

SPOILER

The embassy move alone was an enormous political coup for the Israeli Prime Minister. For decades, U.S. presidents of both parties have refused to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s sole capital, to preserve Palestinian hopes for a share of the city they also claim for a future capital.

After President Trump reversed that policy in December of 2017, the Palestinians have refused to meet with any U.S. officials, and Trump's long-awaited Middle East peace plan is stuck on the drawing board. On Thursday morning, Pompeo will be the first Secretary of State to visit that relocated embassy, a ceremonial validation of Netanyahu’s extraordinary leverage with this White House.

Even more important to the prime minister was Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, against the advice of his entire national security cabinet at the time, with the exception of then-CIA director Pompeo. Now, as America’s top diplomat, Pompeo is promising even harsher actions against Iran in close coordination with Netanyahu, to the distress of America’s closest European allies who are abiding by the agreement.

In a notable recent policy change, the State Department no longer refers to the West Bank and Golan Heights as “occupied” by Israel. The Israeli government is also pushing for the U.S. to recognize its annexation of the Golan Heights, seized by Israel at the end of the 1967 Six-Day War, which is of huge strategic importance to the Jewish state.

The two men are close, sharing strategy and political supporters, notably Las Vegas casino and Trump contributor Sheldon Adelson. There are also signs in this campaign that Netanyahu is modeling himself after Trump’s style — accusing the media of “fake news,” and aligning himself with ultra-nationalist anti-Arab factions to energize his base.

Whether becoming a “mini-Trump” will be enough to win him a fifth term is an open question.

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op donderdag 21-03-2019 om 19:00:38 The White House has rejected congressional Democrats' demands for documents relating to Trump's private discussions with Vladimir Putin, according to Politico.https://t.co/fZ2LLk4EEy reageer retweet

quote:

Op donderdag 21 maart 2019 11:13 schreef xpompompomx het volgende:
Stel je toch voor dat Rutte keer op keer op Fortuins graf zou pissen. Nederlandse maga-fanboys zouden ontploffen van woede.

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op donderdag 21-03-2019 om 22:10:10 Although Jared Kushner severed his ties with his bro's biz and divested his interest in his bro's funds, he was still discussing U.S. policy with rulers of Saudi Arabia at virtually the same time his bro was talking biz with their top aides, NYT reports.https://t.co/a1hdZ4aLFr reageer retweet

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In late October 2017, Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and Middle East adviser, dropped into Saudi Arabia for an unannounced visit to the desert retreat of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was in the process of consolidating his power. The two men talked privately late into the night.

Just a day earlier, Mr. Kushner’s younger brother, Josh, then 32, was flying out of the kingdom.

Jared came to talk policy, but Josh was there on business.

The founder of an eight-year-old venture capital firm, Josh Kushner had spent the three days before his brother’s arrival at an investor conference, where Prince Mohammed had promised to spend billions of dollars on a high-tech future for Saudi Arabia.

As others sat through speeches in a gilded conference hall, several participants said, the younger Mr. Kushner frequently ducked out for more exclusive conversations with Saudi officials.

Some government ethics lawyers say those conversations — never hidden, but not previously reported — create the appearance of a potential conflict of interest. Although Jared Kushner severed his ties with his brother’s company and divested his interest in his brother’s funds around the time he entered the White House, he was nonetheless discussing American policy with the rulers of the kingdom at virtually the same time that his brother was talking business with their top aides.

A spokesman for Josh Kushner’s firm, Thrive Capital, said that it was not in a formal fund-raising period at the time of the conference. A year later, however, the company raised $1 billion. And two people who spoke with Josh Kushner at the conference said he had been actively promoting a health insurance start-up he founded in 2012, Oscar Health, which five months later announced a fresh $165 million round of financing.

SPOILER

A spokesman for Josh Kushner said the management of Oscar Health knew of no direct investment by Saudis. But the spokesman, Jesse Derris, declined to disclose whether Saudis had invested in any Thrive funds. Mr. Derris said only that Thrive had received no money since the presidential election from any Saudi who had not previously invested in its funds.

“Out of an abundance of caution, Thrive instituted a policy shortly after the 2016 election to prohibit investments from new foreign investors with business in front of the current administration,” Mr. Derris said in a statement. “It has abided by that prohibition.”

But he declined to answer whether Thrive has continued to receive money from Saudis who began investing before November 2016.

Jared Kushner appears to have been closely involved in Josh’s venture capital firm, having sat on the board and investment committees of Thrive Capital until January 2017, his financial disclosure forms show.

He also received at least $8.2 million in capital gains from various Thrive funds while working in the White House, according to a financial disclosure form filed in May 2018.

Whether Jared Kushner was aware of his brother’s visit to Riyadh or of any Saudi investment in his brother’s funds could not be determined. Spokesmen for the White House and for Jared Kushner’s lawyers declined to address those questions publicly.

Jan Baran, a Republican lawyer specializing in government ethics, said an investment in a fund run by Thrive Capital did not appear to pose legal problems for Jared Kushner, unless his role in the White House gave him oversight over matters related to the Saudi investment.

But Kathleen Clark, an expert on government ethics and a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said Saudi discussions with Josh Kushner raised issues for his brother.

“The timing looks bad, O.K., but the bigger issue is his brother’s business,” she said. “It is reasonable to question Jared Kushner’s ability to be impartial in dealing with the Saudis.”

At the time of the conference, Prince Mohammed was basking in favorable attention from many in the West for having taken preliminary steps to open up the kingdom’s economy and relax its social codes. The New York Times was one of several media companies that co-sponsored the 2017 investment conference. Several Times journalists attended, and one spoke briefly with Josh Kushner.

But the bond between Jared Kushner, 38, and Prince Mohammed, 33, has drawn more scrutiny as the crown prince has displayed more aggression.

A week after the Kushners left the Saudi capital, Riyadh, Prince Mohammed ordered the extrajudicial detention of about 200 businessmen and former officials in a Ritz-Carlton hotel, some of whom were evidently tortured. He was also behind the bizarre kidnapping of Lebanon’s prime minister. And months later, he directed the arrests and, according to relatives, torture of prominent women’s rights advocates.

Then, last October, his agents killed and dismembered the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi inside a consulate in Istanbul — on the orders of Prince Mohammed, American intelligence agencies concluded.

The crown prince has led a four-year military intervention in Yemen that has brought on a humanitarian catastrophe with no end in sight. At the same time, he has sown division among American allies in the region by trying to isolate Qatar over policy disagreements.

Jared Kushner, though, has steadfastly supported the prince.

From the start of the administration, Mr. Kushner has argued persistently that Prince Mohammed can become a vital ally, especially in bringing the Palestinians into agreement with a promised American peace plan. He pushed past the objections of cabinet members and senior officials to persuade Mr. Trump to visit Saudi Arabia on his first trip abroad as president.

And even after a bipartisan backlash over the killing of Mr. Khashoggi, Mr. Kushner argued successfully that Mr. Trump should stand by the prince. Last month, the White House defied a congressional deadline for a report from Mr. Trump about who directed the killing, sidestepping pressure to acknowledge the intelligence findings about Prince Mohammed’s role.

Professor Clark said that ethics laws could require Jared Kushner to recuse himself from White House deliberations about the response to those congressional demands or other specific proceedings involving the Saudis.

Not long after the congressional deadline expired, Jared Kushner flew to Riyadh for his first face-to-face meeting with Prince Mohammed since Mr. Khashoggi’s death.

Critics of Mr. Trump have often argued that a tacit financial interest hovers over his administration’s dealings with the oil-rich rulers of the Persian Gulf, if only because they are major investors in American real estate. Both Mr. Trump and Jared Kushner are expected to go back into the business of selling real estate investments when they leave the White House.

Josh Kushner, however, has largely escaped the scrutiny that has fallen on the Trump administration, in part because he kept his distance. He stepped away from the family business to found his venture capital firm, and he is a Democrat who has said he voted against Mr. Trump despite the family connection.

Supporters of Josh Kushner note that his young firm has scored early wins — like a timely investment in the photo-sharing app Instagram — and that he was regularly invited to major tech investment conferences before 2016.

But the Riyadh conference drew Wall Street titans, and some attendees questioned how a relatively small player enjoyed high-level access to Saudi officials. On a list of the top 100 venture capitalists compiled by the trade publication CB Insights in collaboration with The New York Times, Josh Kushner appeared for the first time in 2018, entering at 99.

One of those he met, during an opening night party for V.I.P. guests, was Yasir Al-Rumayyan, an aide to the crown prince and the managing director of the kingdom’s vast Public Investment Fund. Another was Mr. Al-Rumayyan’s son Faisal, a student at New York University, and two of his associates said that after returning from Riyadh, they socialized together. (A person close to Josh Kushner said the two met face to face only once after the conference.)

ISIS WILL BE GONE BY TONIGHT: President Trump Says After Showing Map

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On Jan. 30, he tweeted that the caliphate would be destroyed “soon.”

On Jan. 31, he told reporters that “you’ll be seeing something next week” about “what’s happened in Syria with respect to ISIS and the caliphate.” (“We’ve done tremendous in the last couple of weeks,” he said.)

On Feb. 1, it was back to “soon” in a tweet.

On Feb. 3, Trump said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that “we will be announcing in the not-too-distant future 100 percent of the caliphate which is the area — the land — the area — 100.”

“We’re at 99 percent right now,” he added. “We’ll be at 100.”

On Feb. 6, Trump pledged in a speech that it “should be formally announced sometime probably next week that we will have 100 percent of the caliphate.”

On Feb. 10, it was back to “soon.”

On Feb. 11, Trump told a rally in El Paso that “in the Middle East, our brave warriors have liberated virtually 100 percent of ISIS in Iraq and Syria.”

“Now, you don’t hear that from these people,” he added, pointing to the news media. “Now, we’ve taken back — soon it’ll be announced soon, maybe over the next week, maybe less, but it’ll be announced very soon — we’ll have 100 percent.”

On Feb. 15, during his news conference announcing his border-wall emergency declaration, he promised good news imminently.

“We have a lot of great announcements having to do with Syria and our success with the eradication of the caliphate,” he said. “And that will be announced over the next 24 hours. And many other things.”

On Feb. 16, he claimed that the caliphate had been “100%” defeated already, so he was removing troops from Syria.

On Feb. 22, it was again not 100 percent defeated.

“In another short period of time, like hours — you’ll be hearing hours and days — you’ll be hearing about the caliphate. It will — it’s 100 percent defeated,” Trump said. “Nobody has been able to say that.”

On Feb. 28, the caliphate was back to being entirely defeated.

“We just took over — you know, you kept hearing it was 90 percent, 92 percent — the caliphate in Syria,” he said at an Air Force base in Alaska. “Now it’s 100 percent. We just took over. A hundred percent caliphate. That means the area of the land. We just have 100 percent, so that’s good.”

On March 2, speaking to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump said that “as of probably today or tomorrow, we will actually have 100 percent of the caliphate in Syria. One hundred percent. One hundred percent.”

And then, March 20: Complete eradication within 24 hours.

It does seem likely that the caliphate will soon be completely destroyed, though, as Trump has also noted at times, that doesn’t mean the risk of attacks by members of the Islamic State or its sympathizers has vanished. (“You’re always going to have that,” he told the New York Times. “Somebody is going to walk into a store, unfortunately.”)

All we’re saying is that you might take the “gone by tonight” prediction with a grain of salt.

twitter:

markberman twitterde op donderdag 21-03-2019 om 21:48:48 JUST IN: Cesar Sayoc just pleaded guilty to mailing explosive devices to Trump critics. The Florida man had been accused of sending devices to more than a dozen politicians and others who criticized Trump https://t.co/6zrdnEEeI9 reageer retweet

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that doesn’t mean the risk of attacks by members of the Islamic State or its sympathizers has vanished. (“You’re always going to have that,” he told the New York Times. “Somebody is going to walk into a store, unfortunately.”)

twitter:

yashar twitterde op donderdag 21-03-2019 om 21:36:49 1. @MariaBartiromo's interview with Trump airs on Fox Business tomorrow morning. Here he is on McCain (cont) https://t.co/nfyB04320z reageer retweet

SPOILER

Trump begon zelf met twitteren over McCain

twitter:

abbydphillip twitterde op donderdag 21-03-2019 om 21:44:26 I repeat: Trump sent a series of tweets attacking McCain over the weekend. No one asked him about those. https://t.co/lDtEnm9thI reageer retweet

Over Trump's bewering dat hij nooit bedankt is:

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op vrijdag 22-03-2019 om 01:25:50 For the record: McCain family spokesman Rick Davis. August 27, 2018."The combined efforts of the Trump administration, the White House ... We really thank them for coming together very quickly and pulling together all the federal resources that we have." https://t.co/fN9FyifjYI reageer retweet

twitter:

yashar twitterde op donderdag 21-03-2019 om 21:36:49 2. President Trump to @MariaBartiromo on his Golan Heights tweet and whether it had to do with the April 9th elections in Israel. https://t.co/1JgnzQuzsn reageer retweet

SPOILER

twitter:

DanielBShapiro twitterde op vrijdag 22-03-2019 om 00:51:20 Bizarre claim that other Presidents campaigned on recognizing Israeli sovereignty on the Golan Heights. None ever did. https://t.co/x44pWJloX3 reageer retweet

twitter:

latimes twitterde op donderdag 21-03-2019 om 19:21:28 Breaking: The commandant of the Marine Corps is warning that deployments to the U.S.-Mexico border and funding transfers under the president's emergency declaration are contributing to an “unacceptable risk” to the Corps’ combat readiness. https://t.co/guKDSr1MqD reageer retweet

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The commandant of the Marines has warned the Pentagon that deployments to the southwest border and funding transfers under the president's emergency declaration, among other unexpected demands, have posed “unacceptable risk to Marine Corps combat readiness and solvency.”

In two internal memos, Marine Corps Gen. Robert Neller said the “unplanned/unbudgeted” deployment along the border that President Trump ordered last fall, and shifts of other funds to support border security, had forced him to cancel or reduce planned military training in at least five countries, and delay urgent repairs at bases.

The border deployment and funding transfers, as well as recovery costs from hurricanes Florence and Michael, new housing allowances and civilian pay raises, are taking a toll on combat readiness, Neller wrote to Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan and Navy Secretary Richard Spencer.

The Times obtained copies of the memos, dated Feb. 19 and March 18.

SPOILER

Neller, a four-star general, said because of the problems, Marines will not participate in planned training exercises in Indonesia, Scotland and Mongolia, and will reduce their participation in joint exercises with Australia and South Korea.

Marines “rely on the hard, realistic training” of the training exercises “to develop the individual and collective skills necessary to prepare for high-end combat,” said Neller, who has been commandant since September 2015.

He complained about canceling or shrinking the Marines’ participation “at a time where we are attempting to double down on strengthening alliances and attracting new partners.”

Shanahan and Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are scheduled to testify Tuesday before the House Armed Services Committee. Members are likely to ask about Neller’s concerns.

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), vice chairman of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee, said Neller’s memos showed the danger in diverting Pentagon funds to build Trump’s border wall.

“If the president won’t listen to the American people or Congress, then listen to the commandant of the Marine Corps,” Durbin said in a statement.

While the armed services chiefs often warn of budget shortfalls, independent experts who reviewed Neller’s memos described the language as unusually strong, in particular because it cites the president’s highest-profile political priorities.

“It’s pretty unusual for the commandant to be raising concerns that... a top political priority for the president is undermining the ability of the Marine Corps to do the training they need,” said Mandy Smithberger, a defense expert at the Project for Government Oversight, a nonpartisan independent watchdog group.

“It looks like from Commandant Neller’s perspective, he does think these policies are undermining readiness,” she added.

“This is a pretty strongly worded memo,” said Todd Harrison, director of defense budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington.

Hurricane recovery efforts, increases in civilian pay and the military housing allowance are probably the biggest factors in the budget shortfall, he added.

“The incremental cost of the border deployment is likely small compared to these other factors,” he said. “It sounds like there are some bureaucratic politics at work here.”

The border deployment is adding to the strain after hurricanes severely damaged Marine Corps facilities and housing in North Carolina and Georgia, Neller wrote.

Citing limits on his ability to transfer money because of the planned reprogramming under the border emergency, Neller said the Marines already are short $1.3 billion for recovery operations this year with another hurricane season approaching.

“The hurricane season is only three months away,” Neller wrote, “and we have Marines, Sailors, and civilians working in compromised structures.”

The memos are likely to revive uneasiness on Capitol Hill about the border deployment, which reportedly chafed some military leaders, including James N. Mattis, then secretary of Defense, when Trump first ordered it shortly before the Nov. 6 midterm election.

While the White House insisted that active-duty troops were needed to stave off so-called caravans of migrants from Central America, critics accused him of using the military as props for his political agenda, not for security purposes.

On Oct. 29, Trump tweeted, “This is an invasion of our country and our military is waiting for you!”

He later expanded the deployment to roughly 6,000 troops, drawn from the Marines, Army, Air Force and Navy, and extended their stay through September 2019.

They have assisted the Border Patrol by erecting barricades, flying helicopter support and maintaining vehicles. They are not allowed to detain migrants, seize drugs or carry out law enforcement duties.

The White House and Defense Department have sought to reassure wary lawmakers that the deployment, and the president’s declaration of a national emergency on the border, have not hampered military readiness or effectiveness.

During a visit to a Border Patrol station Thursday in McAllen, Texas, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said she talked to Shanahan on a regular basis.

“We continue to work together to find ways to support the border mission,” Nielsen said. “Border security is national security. We shouldn't pretend that it's something else, because it's not — it's a national security issue.”

She directed questions about Neller’s concerns to the Defense Department. Spokesmen for the Pentagon and Shanahan did not respond to requests for comment.

In an email, a Marine Corps spokesman, Capt. Joseph Butterfield, said Neller’s memos made clear that damage from hurricanes, and not the border deployments, caused “by the far the most significant budgetary pressure.”

Border operations cost about $230 million by the end of January, according to the Pentagon. The cost could grow to about $850 million this year, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington.

The White House has asked Congress to appropriate a record $718 billion for the Pentagon in 2020, including $9 billion for hurricane relief, border security and backfilling military construction projects whose funding could be raided under the national emergency Trump declared on Feb. 15.

Lawmakers have pressed to learn which military construction projects would be deferred or canceled to divert money that could be used to build Trump’s long-promised border wall under the emergency.

On Monday, the Pentagon sent Congress a list of more than 400 military construction projects around the country and worldwide that could be affected.

The 21-page document cites more than $12.8 billion in projects that could be delayed or canceled under the emergency, including 31 projects totaling $1.1 billion in California.

Congressional approval of the administration’s budget request and backfill is far from assured, given the recent border funding fight that led to a 35-day partial government shutdown, and bipartisan votes in both chambers to block Trump’s use of executive action to get around the congressional appropriations process. Trump vetoed the resolution last week.

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Several Democratic presidential candidates will skip the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's policy conference this year after a prominent progressive group called on them to boycott the event.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., will all ditch the conference, the Associated Press reported, and a spokesman for former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, told NBC News that he also will not attend.

Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, will not be going, The Jewish Week reported, and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro also won't show, according to HuffPost.

Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, who is considering running for president as an independent, will also skip the conference, the Associated Press reported.

Josh Orton, a policy director for Sanders, told NBC News that the senator is "concerned about the platform AIPAC is providing for leaders who have expressed bigotry and oppose a two-state solution.”

Sanders didn't attend the 2016 conference while he was running in the Democratic presidential primary, but addressed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at length during a speech around the time of the event.

The candidates' decisions to skip the prominent pro-Israel lobbying group’s conference come one day after liberal group MoveOn.org called on all 2020 presidential candidates to steer clear of the event.

SPOILER

“It’s no secret that that AIPAC has worked to hinder diplomatic efforts like the Iran deal, is undermining Palestinian self-determination, and inviting figures actively involved in human rights violations to its stage,” Iram Ali, campaign director for MoveOn's political action committee, said in a post on the group's website. “We asked our members what they think so that we can make more informed decisions — and over 74% agreed that progressive presidential candidates should skip the AIPAC conference. This should also give a clear insight to 2020 candidates on where their base stands instead of prioritizing lobbying groups and policy people who rarely step outside of D.C.”

AIPAC spokesman Marshall Whittmann said the "focus for the conference has always been Congress."

"We are proud that the bipartisan leadership of the House and the Senate will be speaking," Whittmann told NBC News.

Headliners at this year’s conference, which will kick off Sunday, include Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a number of prominent Democrats, such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

AIPAC has been at the center of headlines about the Democratic Party in recent weeks, after Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., tweeted several controversial claims about Israel, including the claim that AIPAC was paying politicians to support Israel.

She was accused by some lawmakers and prominent Jewish groups of anti-Semitism and playing on toxic anti-Jewish stereotypes.

AIPAC, a nonprofit that does not donate directly to candidates but works to promote a staunchly pro-Israel message in Washington, responded to Omar, tweeting that it is "proud that we are engaged in the democratic process to strengthen the US-Israel relationship."

Omar later apologized after her comments were denounced by House Democratic leaders as "anti-Semitic tropes."

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A top Interior Department official told oil industry leaders the Trump administration is seeking to sign contracts leasing new coastal waters for oil drilling under favorable terms that will be difficult for future presidents to revoke or rewrite.

Joe Balash, the assistant secretary for land and minerals management, outlined that approach to oil industry leaders attending an International Association of Geophysical Contractors conference in Houston last month, according to audio obtained by Bloomberg News.

“When it comes to our specific royalty terms -- anything that’s under contract -- we still enjoy the sanctity of contracts in this country and I expect that’s going to last for some time,” Balash told the IAGC conference. “So getting our leases out -- and out on terms that are competitive and have the ability to sustain the long life of a property once it goes into production -- is also key.”

The Interior Department is already developing a new five-year plan of offshore oil and gas leases that could give energy companies opportunities to vie for virgin territory in the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans. But at the conference, Balash was pressed to describe how the Interior Department also is pursuing policy changes that would make the U.S. more attractive to oil companies eyeing cheaper prospects in South America -- and ensure they will endure whenever a new president enters the White House.

That could include lowering royalty rates that energy companies pay the U.S. government on any oil and gas extracted from federal waters. An Interior Department advisory committee has recommended slashing royalty rates for offshore oil and gas production, but so far, the Trump administration has not followed the advice.

Leases set terms for royalty payments that can govern oil production at some offshore sites for decades to come.

Balash also stressed the importance of taking “advantage of the opportunities to open up some of our own areas that have not yet been fully explored” and signaled those areas included the Atlantic Ocean, where the government has given geophysical companies initial authorizations to conduct seismic surveys designed to help seek out potential oil and gas reserves. At least some of those firms were present at the IAGC conference, according to meeting documents.

Representatives of the Interior Department did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op donderdag 21-03-2019 om 17:50:46 After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel’s Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability! reageer retweet

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President Trump declared on Thursday that the United States should recognize Israel’s authority over the long disputed Golan Heights, delivering a valuable election-eve gift to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but jettisoning decades of American policy in the Middle East.

Mr. Trump’s announcement, in a midday Twitter post, came after persistent pressure from Mr. Netanyahu, a close political ally who is fighting for his survival in the election scheduled for April 9, and has invoked his friendship with the American president as a prime argument for staying in office.

But Mr. Trump’s move, while popular in Israel and among some lawmakers in Congress, is likely to be condemned almost everywhere else. The United Nations has rejected Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights since 1967, when Israeli troops seized the 400 square miles of rocky highlands from Syria during the Arab-Israeli war.

It will also reverberate throughout the Middle East and could undermine Mr. Trump’s long anticipated peace proposal for Israel and the Palestinians. The White House has been enlisting support for the plan among Arab leaders who now face the prospect of acquiescing in the loss of land they had long claimed as Arab.

As a practical matter, Mr. Trump’s announcement changes little. There is no negotiation underway on the status of the Golan Heights, nor any expectation that Israel is going to withdraw from it. The United States could veto any United Nations Security Council resolution condemning the move.

But as a symbolic step, the decision is momentous — underlining Mr. Trump’s willingness to flout diplomatic orthodoxy and shake up a debate over the Middle East that has changed little since the 1970s.

“I’ve been thinking about doing that for a long time,” Mr. Trump said to Fox Business Network in an interview scheduled to air on Friday. “Every president has said ‘do that,’” he said, “I’m the one that gets it done.”

Mr. Trump brushed aside suggestions that he was trying to help Mr. Netanyahu in the election, professing to be only vaguely aware of the Israeli leader’s political challenges. He plans to welcome Mr. Netanyahu to the White House next Monday.

Yet unlike the president’s earlier decision to move the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which was mandated by Congress and fulfilled a promise he made during the 2016 presidential campaign — one made by previous presidential candidates — this latest move was both a first for an American president and almost purely a gesture to Mr. Netanyahu.

The Israeli leader welcomed it as such during a meeting in Jerusalem with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

“President Trump has just made history,” said a beaming Mr. Netanyahu, who said he called the president to thank him on behalf of the Israeli people after his tweet. “He did it again.”

SPOILER

Praising Mr. Trump for moving the embassy and for withdrawing the United States from the Iran nuclear deal, which Mr. Netanyahu stridently opposed, the prime minister said, “The message that President Trump has given the world is that America stands by Israel.”

Mr. Netanyahu called it “a miracle of Purim,” referring to an ancient Jewish holiday being celebrated this week.

Palestinian officials, who have been alienated from the Trump administration since it moved the American Embassy to Jerusalem, predicted that the latest move would ignite a new wave of violence in the region.

“What shall tomorrow bring?” Saeb Erekat, a veteran Palestinian Authority peace negotiator, said in a tweet. “Certain destabilisation and bloodshed in our region.”



The announcement was the latest in a series of steps that have radically reshaped the United States’ role in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians — overwhelmingly to the benefit of Israel’s right-wing government.

The president cast his decision as being of “critical and strategic importance to the State of Israel.” Other administration officials and defenders of the policy, including Republican senators, said that Israel’s control of the Golan Heights was critical, with Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed militants threatening it from inside war-torn Syria.

In Jerusalem, Mr. Pompeo appeared caught off guard by the timing of Mr. Trump’s tweet. Hours earlier, Mr. Pompeo told journalists that the United States’ longstanding policy on the Golan Heights had not changed. He then visited the Western Wall with Mr. Netanyahu — the first time that an American cabinet official had done so with an Israeli prime minister.

After the announcement, the two showed up nearly an hour late for a news conference, during which Mr. Pompeo called Mr. Trump’s decision to recognize Israeli sovereignty a tribute to Israel’s warriors. The tank battle that opened the way to Israel’s seizure of the Golan Heights was a testament to “amazing Israeli bravery,” Mr. Pompeo said, adding that he had studied it as a West Point cadet.

Still, Mr. Trump’s announcement puts him at odds with international law and decades of American policy.

The United Nations and the United States have steadfastly refused to recognize Israel’s seizure of the Golan Heights or the West Bank, arguing that the contours of Israel and a new Palestinian state must be negotiated diplomatically. In 1981, when Israel effectively annexed the Golan Heights, the Reagan administration retaliated by suspending a strategic cooperation agreement between the United States and Israel.

Israel, however, has continued to administer the territory as part of its country, and the Jewish population there has grown with the expansion of Israeli settlements. Since the outbreak of war in Syria in 2011, and the intervention of Iran and Russia, there was little international pressure on Israel to pull out of land widely viewed as critical to its security.

Former diplomats said Mr. Trump’s action was unnecessary and would inflame an issue that had been largely dormant. They also said it would embolden other world leaders who seized territory in violation of international norms.

“Putin will use this as a pretext to justify Russia’s annexation of Crimea,” said Martin S. Indyk, a former peace negotiator and American ambassador to Israel. “The Israeli right will use it as a pretext for Israel’s annexation of the West Bank. It is a truly gratuitous move by Trump.”

Dennis B. Ross, another former Middle East negotiator, said the move would make it more difficult for Arab leaders to support the plan being drafted by Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. The White House is expected to table the plan sometime after the Israeli election.

“If it looks like they’re acquiescing to the giving up of Arab land, that makes it harder for them to support a plan that will require other compromises,” Mr. Ross said. “If what you wanted to do was to present a plan that is likely to succeed, this is not a step you would take.”

When he is in Washington, Mr. Netanyahu is expected to speak at the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group that has wide support among American politicians.

Mr. Trump is playing host to Mr. Netanyahu at both an Oval Office meeting and dinner. The president is weighing other gestures to the Israeli leader, people familiar with the deliberations said, including allowing Jonathan J. Pollard, an American intelligence analyst and convicted spy, to travel to Israel.

Mr. Pollard, who was convicted of spying for Israel, was paroled in 2015 but his travel has been restricted. He remains a heroic figure in Israel, and Mr. Netanyahu lobbied for his release from prison.

There had been signs that the administration was moving in the direction of recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. A recent State Department report on human rights issues used the phrase “Israeli-controlled” instead of “Israeli-occupied” to describe the territories of the Golan Heights, the West Bank and Gaza.

And late last year, the United States voted against a symbolic United Nations resolution that annually condemns Israel’s presence in the Golan Heights, the first time the United States had done so.

As they did after the embassy announcement, Trump administration officials said the Golan Heights decision merely recognized reality — something that is necessary for the Israelis and Palestinians to achieve peace.

“Under any conceivable circumstance, Israel could not give up the Golan,” said Jason D. Greenblatt, Mr. Trump’s envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. “To do so would endanger Israel’s very existence. What President Trump did today was to recognize this.”

“No one who understands the region would think that Israel would allow the Golan to be controlled by the failed-state of Syria or by rogue actors operating in the area, including Iran,” he added. “Postponing that realization does nothing to advance the cause of peace or regional stability.”

The Arab League condemned the decision, describing it as “completely beyond international law.”

“The Arab League stands fully behind the Syrian right to its occupied land,” the secretary general of the league, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, said in a statement carried by Egypt’s state news agency MENA.

Before Mr. Trump’s statement, Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Hussam el-Din Ala, warned against Israel’s “malicious attempts to exploit the situation and the latest developments in Syria and the region to consolidate the occupation” of the Golan Heights.

Critics of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria have noted that for as much as he and his government have talked about “liberating” the Golan Heights, they have taken little action to do so in decades.

During the early years of the Obama administration, American diplomats tried to broker a peace deal between Israel and Syria. It called for Israel to agree to return the Golan Heights if Syria pledged to stop funneling rockets to Hamas and Hezbollah.

The talks broke down after Mr. Assad’s government cracked down on antigovernment protesters.

Fred Hof, a former State Department official who led those talks, said Thursday’s announcement would “be welcomed by Israel’s bitterest enemies — Iran and Hezbollah — who would see annexation as additional justification for terror operations.” He also said it would allow Mr. Assad to change the subject from his war crimes to Israel’s unlawful occupation.

Some analysts pointed out that Mr. Trump’s gesture amounted to a form of compensation to Israel, since he has ordered American troops to withdraw from Syria — leaving Israel more vulnerable to attacks.

For Mr. Pompeo, the timing of Mr. Trump’s tweet was awkward. He was in Jerusalem as part of a Middle East tour that will take him next to Lebanon, where he said he would talk to officials in Beirut about the threat posed by Hezbollah, a military group that is a major political player in the government.

Lebanon also claims a small sliver of territory that Israel occupies and administers as part of the Golan Heights.

In Washington, however, Mr. Trump’s move found support among Republican supporters of Israel, several of whom had pushed legislation that recognized Israel’s sovereignty.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, applauded Mr. Trump’s decision, calling it “strategically wise and overall awesome.”

But Hussein Ibish, a scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, described the move as “blatant electioneering.”

“It is the deployment of U.S. foreign policy — and an extremely radical move at that — to aid a specific foreign politician who is close to Trump and his family personally and politically,” he said.

In Israel, the popularity of the move was evident in expressions of support from Mr. Netanyahu’s main rivals.

Yair Lapid, the leader of the Blue and White coalition, called Mr. Trump’s move a “dream come true.” In a statement, Mr. Lapid said, “the Golan is an inseparable part of Israel, and we call on the rest of the world to follow President Trump and recognize our sovereignty over the Golan Heights.”

quote:

Op donderdag 21 maart 2019 23:09 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

ISIS WILL BE GONE BY TONIGHT: President Trump Says After Showing Map

Trump says the Islamic State’s defeat is imminent — as he has for months
[..]

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op vrijdag 22-03-2019 om 01:00:10 Eric Swalwell this AM on Hope Hicks: "She also told me when I interviewed her that she had told lies for the president, and when I asked her what she had lied about, she refused to testify. And then the Republicans did not force her to actually give us an answer." @MSNBC reageer retweet

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op donderdag 21-03-2019 om 21:12:40 We are here today to take historic action to defend American Students and American Values. In a few moments, I will be signing an Executive Order to protect FREE SPEECH on College Campuses.https://t.co/gFFnSl1bEF reageer retweet

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 12:55 schreef EipNiC het volgende:

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op donderdag 21-03-2019 om 21:12:40 We are here today to take historic action to defend American Students and American Values. In a few moments, I will be signing an Executive Order to protect FREE SPEECH on College Campuses.https://t.co/gFFnSl1bEF reageer retweet

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 13:02 schreef xpompompomx het volgende:

[..]

Totaal onnodige onzin want dat valt al onder het 1e amendement.

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op vrijdag 22-03-2019 om 13:00:01 Cindy Yang helped Chinese tech stars get $50K photos with Trump. Who paid? Yang isn't saying—but she and 3 associates donated $135,500 to Trump Victory before an event. Selling tix to campaign fundraisers without disclosing the buyer to the FEC is illegal. https://t.co/74zngfaZui reageer retweet

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 13:05 schreef EipNiC het volgende:

[..]

Blijkbaar niet afdoende.

quote:

“We’re losing a lot of people because of the Internet, and we have to do something. We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what’s happening. And we have to talk to them. Maybe in certain areas closing that Internet up in some way [audience member cheers]… Somebody will say, ‘oh, freedom of speech, freedom of speech.’ These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people. We have a LOT of foolish people.”

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op dinsdag 29-11-2016 om 12:55:13 Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag - if they do, there must be consequences - perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail! reageer retweet

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 13:12 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:

Ik zie ook niet in waarom het dan "blijkbaar" nodig zou zijn.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 13:14 schreef EipNiC het volgende:

[..]

Wat een randdebiel die man . Maar ik zie niet waarom Trump z'n achterlijkheid de nood verminderd?

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 13:25 schreef EipNiC het volgende:
Ah, je doet alsof je neus bloed. Dan ga ik maar naar de kapper.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 13:14 schreef EipNiC het volgende:
Maar wat vinden jullie van Andrew Yang?

quote:

Nobody Knows Anything About ‘Electability’
When pundits anoint Biden—or Sanders or O’Rourke—as the likeliest to beat Trump, they’re making lots of dubious assumptions.

Have we learned nothing? In 2016, very few political writers, myself emphatically included, thought Donald Trump would win the Republican nomination, let alone the presidency. Very few thought Bernie Sanders would win 23 states and 13 million votes in his Democratic-primary battle with Hillary Clinton.

The voters were lousy prognosticators too. Although polls generally suggested that Sanders would fare better against Trump, voters overwhelmingly believed Hillary Clinton had a better chance of winning the general election. And in the closing weeks of the 2016 campaign, they overwhelmingly predicted that Clinton, not Trump, would triumph.

The point is that we, and they, simply don’t know. Electability is extremely hard to predict. And when pundits discuss it, they often rely on unstated and dubious assumptions—which usually lead them to predict that the most centrist candidate with the most establishment support is the person general-election voters will like best.

All this glib talk about electability has a cost. It leads commentators, often implicitly, to give “electable” candidates a pass when their policy views are fuzzy or flat-out wrong. So what should journalists do? It’s simple: Spend less time discussing which candidates can win the presidency and more time discussing what they’d do if they actually did.

To grasp how questionable much of the discourse surrounding “electability” is, consider the two candidates who, according to conventional wisdom, are considered best able to defeat Trump in 2020. The first is Joe Biden. The reason: As a Washington Post headline put it last fall, “Biden Appeals to Working-Class Whites Who Defected to Trump.”

But does he really? The evidence suggests that most of the voters who supported Barack Obama and then Trump are not Democrats who “defected” to Trump. They’re Republicans or Republican-leaning independents who “defected” to Obama and in the years since have grown ever more ensconced in the GOP. So it’s not clear that any Democratic candidate could lure many of them away from Trump next year.

Nor is it obvious that Biden would be best suited to doing so. Yes, his race and gender might prove an advantage. Yes, he might be harder to tar as a socialist radical. But Biden supported NAFTA and the Iraq War, and he’s been a Washington insider for almost a half century. In 2016, Trump voters expressed their deep pessimism about the state of the country by voting for radical disruption. If some have now lost faith in Trump, and thus grown even more disillusioned with politics than they were before, wouldn’t they look for a different species of disrupter, perhaps an anti-establishment populist such as Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren? Why go for the Democratic candidate who, more than almost any other, represents the pre-Trump status quo?

And even if Biden did prove better able to win back working-class whites than his competitors, could he rouse the Democratic Party’s African American and female base? The fact that his advisers are reportedly considering asking Stacey Abrams to be his running mate suggests that they themselves have doubts. But if choosing Abrams boosts Biden among women and people of color, why wouldn’t it hurt him among white men who backed Trump?

Do these questions mean Biden is less electable than other candidates? Not at all. What they mean is that we really don’t know.

It’s the same with Beto O’Rourke. His boosters say he’s like Obama: appealing to moderate whites because of his unifying, upbeat message, but also rousing to progressives, who find him idealistic and inspirational. As one Democratic bundler told Politico, “He’s Barack Obama, but white.” But the white part matters. You can’t assume O’Rourke is more electable than Kamala Harris or Cory Booker without explaining how O’Rourke could match the epic African American turnout numbers that Obama elicited in 2008 and 2012, but that Clinton did not match in 2016.

Moreover, saying that O’Rourke would appeal to “moderate” or “centrist” whites glosses over a critical distinction: It depends on which “moderates” we’re talking about. O’Rourke’s cultural liberalism, pro-business background, and unifying, optimistic rhetoric might serve him well among the upper-middle-class Democrats and independents who admire Michael Bloomberg. But is a candidate who has backed Trade Promotion Authority and praised NAFTA best suited to winning back working-class voters in the industrial midwestern states that gave Trump the presidency? In a recent interview with Thomas B. Edsall of The New York Times, Paul A. Sracic, a political scientist at Youngstown State University, suggested that “O’Rourke’s vague, ‘We all need to come together’ message will not resonate with people who see life as a battle. Working class voters believe in pugilistic politics.” Why is Sracic’s take less plausible than that breathless Democratic bundler’s?

Anyone can play this game. Maybe Sanders is the most electable because his pugilism can win over anti-establishment, anti-corporate Trump voters while eliciting a vast turnout among Millennials? Maybe Warren is the most electable because she’s as passionate as Bernie but more substantive and less radical, and she’ll inspire women as well? Maybe Harris is the most electable because she can replicate Obama’s massive African American numbers while pivoting to the center in a way white candidates can’t. Maybe Booker is the most electable because his message is as positive and unifying as O’Rourke’s, but he’ll do better among African Americans, and his unabashed religiosity will prove a secret weapon with evangelicals.

All these narratives are superficially plausible, and all of them could be nonsense. No one knows. And by embracing some while dismissing others, journalists—sometimes unwittingly—create a double standard for evaluating candidates. It’s fine that O’Rourke is less substantive than Warren, political handicappers imply, because he’s better able to beat Trump, which is what matters most. Let’s not credit Sanders for opposing the Iraq War, which Biden supported, because it’s better to nominate a more hawkish Democrat who can win than a dove who will lose.

The irony is that many political commentators think it’s easier to have an informed opinion about electability than about policy. It’s actually harder. If you want to know which candidate was correct about deregulation or the Iraq War, or whose health-care plan will cover the most people at the lowest cost, you can talk to experts, assemble facts, and come to a reasonable conclusion. Deciding which candidate can best beat Trump is more like looking at someone’s zodiac sign and predicting his or her future. It may be a fun hobby, but it’s a distraction from useful work.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 13:34 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:
Ben trouwens wel geïnspireerd geraakt door Pete Buttigieg. Beetje een nerdy man met een rare naam maar hij zegt wel hele rake dingen.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 15:06 schreef Vader_Aardbei het volgende:
Wat ik een tijdje geleden al zei maar nu vrijwel zeker is: het Mueller onderzoek is afgelopen en straks zal blijken dat Trump niets verkeerd heeft gedaan.

Zelfs James Comey realiseert zich dat het een Nothing Burger is en neemt afstand.

[ afbeelding ]

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 15:06 schreef Vader_Aardbei het volgende:
Wat ik een tijdje geleden al zei maar nu vrijwel zeker is: het Mueller onderzoek is afgelopen en straks zal blijken dat Trump niets verkeerd heeft gedaan.

Zelfs James Comey realiseert zich dat het een Nothing Burger is en neemt afstand.

[ afbeelding ]

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 15:06 schreef Vader_Aardbei het volgende:
Wat ik een tijdje geleden al zei maar nu vrijwel zeker is: het Mueller onderzoek is afgelopen en straks zal blijken dat Trump niets verkeerd heeft gedaan.

Zelfs James Comey realiseert zich dat het een Nothing Burger is en neemt afstand.

[ afbeelding ]

quote:

I have no idea whether the special counsel will conclude that Mr. Trump knowingly conspired with the Russians in connection with the 2016 election or that he obstructed justice with the required corrupt intent. I also don’t care. I care only that the work be done, well and completely.

https://www.nytimes.com/2(...)-mueller-report.html.

twitter:

brithume twitterde op vrijdag 22-03-2019 om 15:19:52 President Trump’s attacks on the late John McCain mark the first time in memory where a President has picked a fight with a dead man and lost. McCain was no saint, but he was a brave and patriotic man. Hitting him when he can’t hit back is repellent. reageer retweet

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 15:06 schreef Vader_Aardbei het volgende:
Wat ik een tijdje geleden al zei maar nu vrijwel zeker is: het Mueller onderzoek is afgelopen en straks zal blijken dat Trump niets verkeerd heeft gedaan.

Zelfs James Comey realiseert zich dat het een Nothing Burger is en neemt afstand.

[ afbeelding ]

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 15:58 schreef Montov het volgende:

[..]

Je hebt de op-ed in de NYT niet gelezen en neemt conclusies over van je echokamer. Wees eens kritisch op je media consumptie.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 13:28 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Wel grappig.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 16:21 schreef Ulx het volgende:
https://www.nytimes.com/2(...)ps://t.co/tgrW9vxkNk


Onder de auteurs van het economische rapport aan Trump bevinden zich grootheden als P. Parker, J. Snow, J. The Hutt en B. Wayne.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 13:34 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:
Ben trouwens wel geïnspireerd geraakt door Pete Buttigieg. Beetje een nerdy man met een rare naam maar hij zegt wel hele rake dingen.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 17:04 schreef Monolith het volgende:

[..]

Dat is wel zo'n beetje het minst interessante in de column.

twitter:

eelcobvr twitterde op woensdag 20-03-2019 om 08:57:38 Hier betoogt Nate Silver dat vroege peilingen wel degelijk iets zeggen: https://t.co/G2tXLJ2p2o reageer retweet

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 13:05 schreef EipNiC het volgende:

[..]

Blijkbaar niet afdoende.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 17:23 schreef Ulx het volgende:

[..]

Geeft ons dan duiding, oh Monolith-die-dingen-weet.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 15:54 schreef Ulx het volgende:
Goed punt.

twitter:

brithume twitterde op vrijdag 22-03-2019 om 15:19:52 President Trump’s attacks on the late John McCain mark the first time in memory where a President has picked a fight with a dead man and lost. McCain was no saint, but he was a brave and patriotic man. Hitting him when he can’t hit back is repellent. reageer retweet

Trump kan niet eens een ruzie met een dode winnen. Dan ben je wel echt een faalhaas van epische proporties.

twitter:

mcpli twitterde op vrijdag 22-03-2019 om 15:18:22 On Tuesday, partisan gerrymandering returns to SCOTUS when the high court hears arguments in cases challenging North Carolina's and Maryland's congressional maps. A thread. #fairmaps #ncpol 1/ reageer retweet

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 17:56 schreef Beathoven het volgende:

[..]

Ik vraag me af tot in hoeverre Raegan al wat aan het dementeren was tijdens zn regeerperiode maar Trump raakt hiermee wel nieuwe dieptepunten. Als hij straks in de bloembakken begint te pissen dan zal ik 't hem maar vergeven dat hij zich als een idioot presenteert.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 16:01 schreef EipNiC het volgende:

[..]

''Wel grappig'' De enige kandidaat die het over het meest prangende en alles aantastende probleem heeft, en die is wel grappig. Nee, beperk je dan maar tot de Russia-Trump conspiracy theory. En schop dit topic dan ook gewoon definitief naar BNW.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 17:21 schreef Barbusse het volgende:

[..]

Malteser afkomst die naam. Schijnt een shitload aan talen te kunnen spreken.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 15:58 schreef Montov het volgende:

[..]

Je hebt de op-ed in de NYT niet gelezen en neemt conclusies over van je echokamer. Wees eens kritisch op je media consumptie.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 19:05 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:

[..]

Het over op-eds in de NYT hebben en anderen betichten van het zich bevinden in een echokamer. Waanzinnig.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 16:01 schreef EipNiC het volgende:

[..]

''Wel grappig'' De enige kandidaat die het over het meest prangende en alles aantastende probleem heeft, en die is wel grappig. Nee, beperk je dan maar tot de Russia-Trump conspiracy theory. En schop dit topic dan ook gewoon definitief naar BNW.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 19:21 schreef Montov het volgende:

[..]

Logica is niet jouw sterkste punt zie ik.
Dat Comey een op-ed heeft in de NYT doet niets af van het feit dat Vader_Aardbei verkeerde conclusies kopieert omdat hij met een screenshot is gevoed vanuit een echokamer. Of denk jij dat V_A zelf een screenshot heeft gemaakt terwijl hij CNN leest en zelf verkeerde conclusies trekt?

twitter:

BonnieGlaser twitterde op donderdag 21-03-2019 om 23:14:38 The United States on Thursday sanctioned two Chinese shipping companies it says helped North Korea evade U.S. and international sanctions over its nuclear weapons program. https://t.co/tckYGMoFMv reageer retweet

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op vrijdag 22-03-2019 om 18:22:59 It was announced today by the U.S. Treasury that additional large scale Sanctions would be added to those already existing Sanctions on North Korea. I have today ordered the withdrawal of those additional Sanctions! reageer retweet

twitter:

karentravers twitterde op vrijdag 22-03-2019 om 18:49:27 And here is the explanation from the White House:“President Trump likes Chairman Kim and he doesn’t think these sanctions will be necessary.” @PressSec Sarah Sanders https://t.co/EmrFLiuUC3 reageer retweet

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 20:05 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:

[..]

V_A post 99% wijze dingen. En het is alleen maar logisch dat het hele Mueller rapport een natte scheet is. Als er ook maar iets was, dan was het allang naar buiten gecomen en geëxploiteerd door opportunistische Democraten. Ze claimen al jaren bewijs te hebben, maar er gebeurt niks. En Comey weet dat er niks is, Ieder weldenkend mens weet dat er niks is.

Leg eens uit waarom er WEL iets zou zijn? Waarom zouden ze bewijs hebben en er niks mee doen?

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 20:05 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:

[..]

V_A post 99% wijze dingen. En het is alleen maar logisch dat het hele Mueller rapport een natte scheet is. Als er ook maar iets was, dan was het allang naar buiten gecomen en geëxploiteerd door opportunistische Democraten. Ze claimen al jaren bewijs te hebben, maar er gebeurt niks. En Comey weet dat er niks is, Ieder weldenkend mens weet dat er niks is.

Leg eens uit waarom er WEL iets zou zijn? Waarom zouden ze bewijs hebben en er niks mee doen?

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 20:10 schreef Ulx het volgende:

[..]

Mueller is nog het minste probleem voor Trump. SDNY denkt aan een RICO zaak tegen de Trump campagne.
En dan de commissies in het Huis die gewoon alles onderzoeken.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 20:12 schreef xpompompomx het volgende:

[..]

Ik ben ook wel benieuwd waarom je er zo stellig van overtuigd bent dat er niks is.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 20:18 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:

[..]

¨

Omdat het gedrag van de betrokkenen het impliceert. Hun gedrag strookt niet met het gedrag dat ze zouden hebben als ze bewijs in handen zouden hebben.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 20:18 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:

[..]

¨
We zullen zien. Zolang we maar bewijs zien, en niet mensen die claimen het te hebben en niets laten zien
[..]

Omdat het gedrag van de betrokkenen het impliceert. Hun gedrag strookt niet met het gedrag dat ze zouden hebben als ze bewijs in handen zouden hebben.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 20:25 schreef xpompompomx het volgende:

[..]

Als we op Trump's gedrag afgaan mogen we wel aannemen dat Trump schuldig is dus.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 20:25 schreef ATuin-hek het volgende:

[..]

Hoeveel jaren gevangenisstraf is ondertussen al uitgedeeld aan de hand van het bewijs in deze 'natte scheet'?

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 20:35 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:

[..]

Hij is een narcist, maar er is geen sprake van collusion.
[..]

0, als het gaat om collusion. Het doel van het onderzoek.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 20:35 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:

[..]

Hij is een narcist, maar er is geen sprake van collusion.
[..]

0, als het gaat om collusion. Het doel van het onderzoek.

twitter:

AmbJohnBolton twitterde op donderdag 21-03-2019 om 19:31:36 Important actions today from @USTreasury; the maritime industry must do more to stop North Korea’s illicit shipping practices. Everyone should take notice and review their own activities to ensure they are not involved in North Korea’s sanctions evasion. https://t.co/AVnOPrWbH6 reageer retweet

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 20:39 schreef Ulx het volgende:

[..]

Er zijn deals gesloten met die lui.

Het is een mafia onderzoek. Je begint onderaan bij meelopers en soldaten en het stopt als de godfather opgepakt is.
En als je niet wilt laten merken wat je weet, laat je soms wat voetvolk lopen.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 20:41 schreef ATuin-hek het volgende:

[..]

Lekker met de doelpalen aan de wandel?

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 20:05 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:

[..]

V_A post 99% wijze dingen. En het is alleen maar logisch dat het hele Mueller rapport een natte scheet is. Als er ook maar iets was, dan was het allang naar buiten gecomen en geëxploiteerd door opportunistische Democraten. Ze claimen al jaren bewijs te hebben, maar er gebeurt niks. En Comey weet dat er niks is, Ieder weldenkend mens weet dat er niks is.

Leg eens uit waarom er WEL iets zou zijn? Waarom zouden ze bewijs hebben en er niks mee doen?

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 21:02 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:

[..]

Als je dat wil geloven, dan mag dat.
[..]

Dat was het oorspronkelijke doel van het onderzoek? En als er niks is dat met dat doel te maken heeft, dan heeft het Huis toch verantwoording aan het volk af te leggen voor het verspillen van tijd en geld. En de fake news media, die hun eigen waarheid maken.

Maar we zullen zien welke smoesjes er zullen komen.

quote:

Trump will remove new North Korea-related sanctions because he 'likes' Kim Jong Un

https://www.cnbc.com/2019(...)lated-sanctions.html

quote:

Robert Mueller submits special counsel's Russia probe report to Attorney General William Barr
https://www.cnbc.com/2019(...)al-william-barr.html

quote:

Mueller report sent to attorney general, signaling his Russia investigation has ended

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has submitted a confidential report to Attorney General William P. Barr, marking the end of his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible obstruction of justice by President Trump, a Justice Department spokeswoman said.

The Justice Department notified Congress late Friday that it had received Mueller’s report but did not describe its contents. Barr is expected to summarize the findings for lawmakers in coming days.

The submission of Mueller’s report marks the culmination of his closely held inquiry, a case that has engulfed the Trump administration since its inception and led to multiple guilty pleas from former advisers to the president. With the closing of his investigation, Congress and the newly empowered Democratic House majority will soon assess his findings – and determine what steps to take next.

twitter:

PressSec twitterde op vrijdag 22-03-2019 om 22:16:13 The next steps are up to Attorney General Barr, and we look forward to the process taking its course. The White House has not received or been briefed on the Special Counsel’s report. reageer retweet

twitter:

ShimonPro twitterde op vrijdag 22-03-2019 om 22:51:04 Justice official: The special counsel is not recommending any further indictments. reageer retweet

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 22:39 schreef archito het volgende:
De dag die je wist dat zou komen.
Het worden in ieder geval spannende dagen, kan alle kanten op gaan.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 23:28 schreef Arcee het volgende:

[..]

Ik verwacht er echt he-le-maal niks van.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 23:29 schreef Monolith het volgende:

[..]

In het gunstigste geval zijn jr. of Kushner de lul.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 23:32 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Het gunstigste geval is natuurlijk als blijkt dat er niks onbehoorlijks is gebeurd. Me dunkt dat iedereen dat zou verkiezen boven de conclusie dat de hele club zo corrupt als de neten is en Putin hoogstpersoonlijk Trump op die plek heeft gezet. En het feit dat Mueller verder niemand meer wil aanklagen is natuurlijk wel veelzeggend.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 23:35 schreef Monolith het volgende:

[..]

Er is natuurlijk al van alles onbehoorlijks gebeurt. Daar zijn al mensen voor veroordeeld.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 23:40 schreef AnneX het volgende:
No collusion...dus?

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 23:39 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Daar ben ik uiteraard bekend mee, maar ik snap niet zo goed waarom men teleurgesteld zou zijn als zou blijken dat buiten wat we nu al weten er klaarblijkelijk geen verdere criminele handelingen hebben plaatsgevonden en/of anderen worden aangeklaagd. Dat lijkt me voor de Amerikaanse democratie alleen maar goed nieuws, als je er vanuit gaat dat Muellers rapport de enige waarheid is.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 23:52 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:
Ik denk overigens niet dat mocht het rapport Trump volledig of grotendeels vrijpleiten, dit een aanmerkelijke invloed op zijn approval ratings of kansen op herverkiezing zal gaan hebben.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 23:58 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:
Dat dit als een verrassing komt, zegt alles over diegenen die elke Trump-scheet posten.

Maar alle anderen leven in hun rechtse bubbel

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 23:52 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:
Ik denk overigens niet dat mocht het rapport Trump volledig of grotendeels vrijpleiten, dit een aanmerkelijke invloed op zijn approval ratings of kansen op herverkiezing zal gaan hebben.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 23:59 schreef Arthur_Spooner het volgende:

[..]

Juist wel. Hij kan dit nu volledig uit gaan melken. 'Zie je nou wel dat het een politiek proces was, een witch-hunt'.

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 00:00 schreef speknek het volgende:

[..]

Je hebt het al gelezen snap ik? .

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 23:52 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:
Ik denk overigens niet dat mocht het rapport Trump volledig of grotendeels vrijpleiten, dit een aanmerkelijke invloed op zijn approval ratings of kansen op herverkiezing zal gaan hebben.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 20:08 schreef Ulx het volgende:

twitter:

BonnieGlaser twitterde op donderdag 21-03-2019 om 23:14:38 The United States on Thursday sanctioned two Chinese shipping companies it says helped North Korea evade U.S. and international sanctions over its nuclear weapons program. https://t.co/tckYGMoFMv reageer retweet

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op vrijdag 22-03-2019 om 18:22:59 It was announced today by the U.S. Treasury that additional large scale Sanctions would be added to those already existing Sanctions on North Korea. I have today ordered the withdrawal of those additional Sanctions! reageer retweet

twitter:

karentravers twitterde op vrijdag 22-03-2019 om 18:49:27 And here is the explanation from the White House:“President Trump likes Chairman Kim and he doesn’t think these sanctions will be necessary.” @:PressSec Sarah Sanders https://t.co/EmrFLiuUC3 reageer retweet

Wat is dit nou weer voor een geklungel?

twitter:

John_Hudson twitterde op vrijdag 22-03-2019 om 23:26:20 Sources say Trump did not withdraw the North Korea sanctions from Thursday, instead he’s canceling a future round of unannounced large scale sanctions expected for next week. It was a major communications failure as a result of his ambiguous tweet reageer retweet

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 23:59 schreef Arthur_Spooner het volgende:

[..]

Juist wel. Hij kan dit nu volledig uit gaan melken. 'Zie je nou wel dat het een politiek proces was, een witch-hunt'.

quote:

Op vrijdag 22 maart 2019 22:51 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

twitter:

ShimonPro twitterde op vrijdag 22-03-2019 om 22:51:04 Justice official: The special counsel is not recommending any further indictments. reageer retweet

twitter:

mimms twitterde op vrijdag 22-03-2019 om 23:00:12 "Mueller is not recommending any further indictments, according to a senior Justice Department official. The official would not comment on whether there are any sealed indictments pending related to Mueller's investigation." https://t.co/UmuVNQ8O41 via @ZoeTillman reageer retweet

twitter:

ShimonPro twitterde op vrijdag 22-03-2019 om 22:59:02 Important: No more sealed or unsealed indictments coming from Robert Mueller a DOJ officials tells @LauraAJarrett reageer retweet

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op zaterdag 23-03-2019 om 01:35:11 Statement from the six House committee chairs investigating parts of Trump world. Nadler, Cummings, Schiff, Waters, Neal, and Engel are demanding that Bill Barr make the full Mueller report public and provide Congress with Mueller's underlying evidence. https://t.co/wWm7MJxOVu reageer retweet

quote:

Attorney General William Barr now has the Mueller Report, and the world looks a heck of a lot like it did yesterday, when Barr did not have the Mueller Report. At least, it appears to. The major difference is that the mystery before us has slightly changed form. Before today, we asked what Mueller was going to do, what indictments he was going to bring, and what allegations he was going to make. Today, we ask a subtly different question: What is it that he has written? What allegations has he made? And why has he decided not to make those allegations in the form of additional cases?

We don’t, at this stage, know anything about what information the Mueller Report contains. We don’t know what form the document takes. We don’t even know how many pages comprise it. We don’t know when we will learn what Mueller has found. Speculating about these questions is not useful. A huge amount depends here on how Mueller imagines his role—and on how Barr imagines his.

But there are certain things we do know: We know, for example, that Mueller was able to finish his investigation on his own terms. We know this because Barr said so in his letter to Congress Friday evening. The special counsel regulations, writes Barr, “require that I provide [Congress] with ‘a description and explanation of incidents (if any) in which the Attorney General’” countermanded an investigative step of the special counsel. “There were no such instances during the Special Counsel’s investigation.” This is reassuring. From it, we can at least tentatively conclude that the Mueller report—whatever is in it—reflects Mueller’s best assessment of the evidence, following his having taken every investigative step he felt necessary and appropriate to reach that assessment.

We also know that Mueller is not going to indict more people. Though what precisely this means is unclear, it means at a minimum that we should not expect the major collusion indictment that ties together the earlier Russian hacking allegations and social media indictment with conduct by figures in the Trump campaign. It also means that whatever Mueller found on the obstruction prong of the investigation, it’s not resulting in criminal charges either.

SPOILER

The president should wait before popping the champagne corks over this and tweeting in triumph. Yes, in the best-case scenario for the president, Mueller is not proceeding further because he lacks the evidence to do so. But even this possibility contains multitudes: everything from what the president calls “NO COLLUSION!” to evidence that falls just short of adequate to prove criminal conduct to a reasonable jury beyond a reasonable doubt—evidence that could still prove devastating if the conduct at issue becomes public.

There are other possibilities as well. It’s possible, for example, that Mueller is not proceeding against certain defendants other than the president because he has referred them to other prosecutorial offices; some of these referrals are already public, and it’s reasonable to expect there may be other referrals too. In this iteration, what is ending here is not the investigation, merely the portion of the investigation Mueller chose to retain for himself. It’s possible also that Mueller is finished because he has determined that while the evidence would support a prosecution of the president, he is bound by the Justice Department’s long-standing position that the president is not amenable to criminal process. On the obstruction front, he may well have concluded that, while the president acted to obstruct the investigation, he cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the president’s obstructive acts were not exercises of Trump’s Article II powers. It’s also possible that Mueller has strong prudential reasons for not proceeding with otherwise viable cases.

My gut instinct is that it is some combination of these factors that explains the end of the probe. Without knowing the reasons the investigation is finished, it is impossible to know how to assess its end—and nobody should try.

Finally, we also know other one big thing: There is a report—some kind of, as Barr describes it, quoting the relevant regulation, “‘confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions’ he has reached.” About this document we admittedly know little. Barr said in his letter that he is reviewing the document and “may be in a position to advise [Congress] of the Special Counsel’s principal conclusions as soon as this weekend.” How capacious this initial accounting will be is known only to Barr himself. But Barr has also promised to make as much of Mueller’s findings public as he can consistent with the law—a promise he reiterated in his letter Friday evening. So it’s reasonable to expect, though not to be complacent in the expectation, that over time, the underlying factual findings and legal analysis will emerge.

All of which, as I say, shifts the conversation from what Mueller will do to what he has written in explaining what he has done—and what he has not done. Vindication for the president will take place only when we learn that the facts contained in the report exculpate him. The end of the Mueller probe could well prove tomorrow to be merely the creation of a factual record for the next act of this drama.

quote:

Did the Democrats put too must trust in the Mueller report? Because I don’t need the Mueller report to know he’s a traitor. I have a TV,” Maher told his panel of guests

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 10:36 schreef kladderadatsch het volgende:
En jij weet dat Trump onschuldig is want je hebt immers internet.

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 10:26 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:
Een hoop teleurgestelde gezichten in MSM-land. Een Rachel Maddow die op huilen staat, Chris Matthews die er niet mee om kan gaan. Als je twee jaar lang alleen maar leugens brengt, dan ga je er zelf teveel in geloven.


Bill Maher, die zoals een echte linkse denker de boel ontkent en dubbel inzet op de leugen.
[..]

En dat typeert de linkse denker. Het zeggen dat hij de feiten niet nodig heeft omdat hij een tv heeft, de MSM dus. Bubbeldwaasheid.

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 11:58 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

[..]

Uiteindelijk heb je natuurlijk geen schokkende onthullingen van Mueller nodig om in te zien dat Trump een waardeloze president is wiens loyaliteit je gerust in twijfel kunt trekken.

quote:

Zich openlijk achter Poetin scharen in plaats van zijn eigen inlichtingendiensten, met als gevolg dat zijn administratie weigert strenger op te treden tegen aanhoudende pogingen van Rusland om verkiezingen te beïnvloeden.

quote:

Sancties die het Congres wil opleggen aan Russen niet willen uitvoeren.

quote:

Zijn verstandhouding met Saudi-Arabië in de nasleep van de moord op die journalist, waar hij de kant kiest van de Saudi's in plaats van zijn eigen inlichtingendienst en volksvertegenwoordigers.

quote:

Zijn afkeer van internationale bondgenootschappen, zoals de NAVO en de EU, waarmee hij het westen dreigt te ontwrichten.

quote:

En zo kan ik nog wel even doorgaan. Trumps daadwerkelijke handelen is al kwalijk genoeg. Je hebt geen Mueller-rapport nodig om dat in te zien. Je hoeft alleen maar de Amerikaanse politiek te volgen.

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 12:42 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:

[..]

Je spreekt vanuit je onderbuik.
[..]

De inlichtingendiensten zijn niet feilloos. WMD's in Irak weet je nog? Niks mis met kritiek hebben op inlichtingendiensten.

quote:

Als die voortvloeien uit valse voorwendselen... tsja. Dat Rusland de grote boeman is moet wel in stand worden gehouden. Maar het echte gevaar schuilt in het socialisme/marxisme in de VS zelf. De oppressie en geweld dat uit die hoek komt.

quote:

Zo gek is het toch niet om internationale verdragen te willen herzien, als het gevoel heerst dat er niet veel voordeel uit valt te halen? Met betrekking tot de NAVO bijvoorbeeld, als landen stelselmatig weigeren de begrotingsnorm te halen, waarom zou de VS onevenredig voor ons betalen? Tijden veranderen, en daarmee het nut van verdragen. Ook met NAFTA bijvoorbeeld. Vrije handel betekent niet automatisch eerlijke handel. Kan ertoe lijden dat je jezelf kapot laat concurreren, en daar worden maar een paar mensen beter van. En dat zijn de mensen die al bovenaan staan.

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 12:47 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:
Overigens denk ik niet dat Trump per se loyaal is aan een buitenlandse mogendheid. Hij is enkel loyaal aan zichzelf. Geen goede eigenschap voor een leider.

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 12:54 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

Probleem is dat hij zijn kritiek nergens mee staaft. Trump gelooft Poetin omdat de Russische leider blijkbaar heel overtuigend was in een gesprek. 'Hij heeft het zelf gezegd', aldus Trump.

Door je eigen inlichtingendienst te negeren en beleidskeuzes te baseren op 'het woord' van de leider van een vijandige mogendheid, ondermijn je de veiligheid van je eigen land.

Rutte zou voor veel minder een unanieme motie van wantrouwen aan de broek hebben gekregen.

quote:

Welke valse voorwendselen? Sancties zijn vooral gebaseerd op het feit dat Rusland de Krim illegaal heeft geannexeerd en zich bemoeit met de burgeroorlog in dat land.

quote:

Prima om NAVO-lidstaten te vragen hun Defensie-uitgaven te verhogen. Maar Trump plaatst eveneens vraagtekens bij Artikel 15 en zelfs het nut van de NAVO. Daarmee brengt hij zowel Europa als de VS in gevaar.

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 13:02 schreef Freak188 het volgende:

[..]

Psies. Trump denkt alleen aan zn eigen portemonnee. Daarom is ie zo gevoelig voor afpersing. De man heeft geen visie of principes.

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 10:26 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:
Een hoop teleurgestelde gezichten in MSM-land. Een Rachel Maddow die op huilen staat, Chris Matthews die er niet mee om kan gaan. Als je twee jaar lang alleen maar leugens brengt, dan ga je er zelf teveel in geloven.

Bill Maher, die zoals een echte linkse denker de boel ontkent en dubbel inzet op de leugen.
[..]

En dat typeert de linkse denker. Het zeggen dat hij de feiten niet nodig heeft omdat hij een tv heeft, de MSM dus. Bubbeldwaasheid.

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 13:25 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:

[..]

Wellicht heb je gelijk, ik weet niet wat hij achter gesloten deuren heeft besproken of gezien. Of misschien baseer ik het op de gedachte dat niemand POTUS kan worden die zo naief is (Of als de oppositie nog achterlijker is, wat niet onwaarschijnlijk lijkt gezien 2016). Het kan ook zijn dat hij zijn eigen diplomatieke spel speelt. En of Rusland nou zo vijandig is, dat weet ik niet. Stemgedrag proberen te beïnvloeden is wat alle machtsblokken doen.

quote:

Rutte is in tegenstelling tot Trump dan ook een echt lulletje. Ik zie de EU als grotere vijand voor de burger dan Rusland. En de lofzang die de EU krijgt en hoe hij hengelt naar een baantje daar, is een motie van wantrouwen waard.

quote:

Ik ging er vanuit dat je het had over zaken van na de 2016 verkiezingen. De Krim-annexatie is uit 2014, en heeft niet zoveel met Trump te maken. Ben het ermee eens dat de Russische annexaties van de laaste +/- 20 jaar extreem ongewenst zijn, maar het was vooral een zaak voor de Obama administratie. Als Trump ervoor kiest om Oekraine te laten vallen en toendadering tot de Russen zoekt, zijn daar ook geopolitische argumenten voor te vinden. Voor ons als Europeanen is het alleen vervelend omdat wij vooral slachtoffer zouden kunnen worden van Russische expansiedrift.

De EU en de VS hebben ook genoeg in Oekraine gedaan. De bitterheid is vooral omdat het Westen daar verloren heeft.

quote:

Mwah, de VS zit vrij veilig. En natuurlijk is het ook spierballentaal om de andere lidstaten over de streep te krijgen. De EU heeft militair gezien, de VS meer nodig dan andersom. Tenminste in de meest directe zin, want de VS zit vrij veilig aan de andere kant van de oceaan. De vraag is natuurlijk wat er gebeurt als de VS uit de NAVO stapt en Rusland valt Europa binnen. Zal de VS het toelaten of ondanks alles toch ingrijpen? Ik denk het laatste maar goed, dat is slechts speculatie.

Ik kan zo snel niks vinden over artikel 15, bedoel je niet artikel 5 of heb je een linkje waar ik de strekking ervan kan zien?

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 11:58 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

[..]

Uiteindelijk heb je natuurlijk geen schokkende onthullingen van Mueller nodig om in te zien dat Trump een waardeloze president is wiens loyaliteit je gerust in twijfel kunt trekken.

Zich openlijk achter Poetin scharen in plaats van zijn eigen inlichtingendiensten, met als gevolg dat zijn administratie weigert strenger op te treden tegen aanhoudende pogingen van Rusland om verkiezingen te beïnvloeden.

Sancties die het Congres wil opleggen aan Russen niet willen uitvoeren.

Zijn verstandhouding met Saudi-Arabië in de nasleep van de moord op die journalist, waar hij de kant kiest van de Saudi's in plaats van zijn eigen inlichtingendienst en volksvertegenwoordigers.

Zijn afkeer van internationale bondgenootschappen, zoals de NAVO en de EU, waarmee hij het westen dreigt te ontwrichten.

En zo kan ik nog wel even doorgaan. Trumps daadwerkelijke handelen is al kwalijk genoeg. Je hebt geen Mueller-rapport nodig om dat in te zien. Je hoeft alleen maar de Amerikaanse politiek te volgen.

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 13:43 schreef WhiteBeard het volgende:

[..]

Als ik Trump was zou ik ook erg sceptisch staan tegenover de inlichtingendiensten. De top daarvan heeft namelijk in 2016 geprobeerd om een staatsgreep te plegen door Clinton vrijuit te laten gaan en meteen achter Trump aan te gaan. Oh ja, die WMD bestonden ook niet.

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 12:42 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:

Eens, dat met Saudi Arabië is bizar. Al het handelen met dat land is absurd. Van die journalist tot de VN, waar het voorzitter van de mensenrechtencommissie is.

quote:

The intelligence community’s assessments on Iraq’s WMD stockpiles and programs turned out to be woefully wrong, largely because analysts believed that Iraq had kept on a path of building its programs rather than largely abandoning them after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Thus the stockpiles theoretically got larger as time went on.

But at the same time, the Senate report shows Bush administration officials often hyped the intelligence that supported their policy goals — while ignoring or playing down dissents or caveats from within the intelligence community. The intelligence was used for political purposes, to build public support for a war that might have been launched no matter what intelligence analysts had said about the prospect of finding WMDs in Iraq.

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 13:02 schreef Freak188 het volgende:

[..]

Psies. Trump denkt alleen aan zn eigen portemonnee. Daarom is ie zo gevoelig voor afpersing. De man heeft geen visie of principes.

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 13:43 schreef WhiteBeard het volgende:

[..]

Als ik Trump was zou ik ook erg sceptisch staan tegenover de inlichtingendiensten. De top daarvan heeft namelijk in 2016 geprobeerd om een staatsgreep te plegen door Clinton vrijuit te laten gaan en meteen achter Trump aan te gaan. Oh ja, die WMD bestonden ook niet.

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 13:51 schreef WhiteBeard het volgende:

[..]

Hij is biljonair. Die is niet te koop door de lobby, zoals zijn voorgangers. Doe mij maar biljonairs als president. Daarom kan hij voortvarend te werk gaan. Hij is niemand schatplichtig. Hij wil niet eens het salaris van de president ontvangen

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 13:47 schreef WhiteBeard het volgende:

[..]

Saoedi Arabie is een rivaal van Iran. Twee landen met kwaadaardige lui aan het roer. Dan moet je een keuze maken

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 13:49 schreef Mike het volgende:
Nog even over de inlichtingendiensten, want het ligt niet zo zwart-wit bij die WMD's. Er zat zeker verkeerde info bij, maar er werd ook over de betrouwbaarheid gesproken met toenmalig president Bush. De Bush-regering besloot dat alleen allemaal te negeren omdat het ze beter uitkwam Irak binnen te vallen.

Of zoals het senaatsonderzoek in die tijd concludeerde:
[..]

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 15:06 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:

[..]

Uiteraard. Maar zodra de oliebehoefte weg is, zal de gehele moslimwereld wel bij de "axis of evil" horen. Wat natuurlijk niet geheel onterecht is, gezien hun vijandelijkheid jegens ons.
[..]

Terechte nuance

Wellicht dat ~14 jaar later er meer politiek in de top van de inlichtingendiensten zit. Clinton had namelijk moeten winnen, en zou een hele andere geopolitieke koers varen dan Trump nu doet. Wat de inlichtingendiensten hebben gedaan kan je best een couppoging noemen. En dat kan het vertrouwen in je eigen inlichtingendiensten schaden.

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 15:09 schreef xpompompomx het volgende:

[..]

Over welke couppoging heb je het de hele tijd joh?

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 15:09 schreef xpompompomx het volgende:

[..]

Over welke couppoging heb je het de hele tijd joh?

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 15:18 schreef MangoTree het volgende:

[..]

Zo lijkt het net of je de andere topics hierover niet kent. De autopsie van een dooie coupe kan beginnen.

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 15:12 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

[..]

Voor Trumpisten is het inderdaad wat jammer dat Clinton heeft verloren.

twitter:

kaitlancollins twitterde op vrijdag 22-03-2019 om 23:22:54 President Trump is surrounded by more staff than normal in Palm Beach this weekend. Not only is he joined by Pat Cipollone & Emmet Flood, but also other members of the legal team, both press secretaries and several other West Wing officials. Usually only a handful of aides travel reageer retweet

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 15:25 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:

[..]

Waar gaat dit over?! Zelfs als Trump uit het ambt gezet zou worden, zou Pence president worden bv. Dus dat kan het niet zijn.

quote:

Even as the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, submitted his confidential report to the Justice Department on Friday, federal and state prosecutors are pursuing about a dozen other investigations that largely grew out of his work, all but ensuring that a legal threat will continue to loom over the Trump presidency.

Most of the investigations focus on President Trump or his family business or a cadre of his advisers and associates, according to court records and interviews with people briefed on the investigations. They are being conducted by officials from Los Angeles to Brooklyn, with about half of them being run by the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan.

Unlike Mr. Mueller, whose mandate was largely focused on any links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, the federal prosecutors in Manhattan take an expansive view of their jurisdiction. That authority has enabled them, along with F.B.I. agents, to scrutinize a broader orbit around the president, including his family business.

Mr. Trump told The New York Times in 2017 that any examination of his family’s finances, beyond any relationship to Russia, would cross a red line, and last year he privately asked the former acting attorney general, Matthew G. Whitaker, if someone he viewed as loyal could be put in charge of the investigations at the Manhattan office, The Times reported last month.

Some of those federal investigations in the Manhattan office, known as the Southern District of New York, grew out of its case against Michael D. Cohen, the president’s former lawyer and fixer. The inquiry into Mr. Cohen was turned over to the Manhattan federal prosecutors early last year after Mr. Mueller’s office spent months investigating him, court records unsealed this week show.

By dint of its location in Manhattan, a few miles south of the Trump Organization’s offices on Fifth Avenue, the Southern District was a natural landing spot for the Cohen case.

SPOILER

Situated in a drab, nine-story Brutalist-style building nestled among the federal courthouse, Police Headquarters and the Church of St. Andrew, the office has a history of high-profile prosecutions and personnel. From the espionage trial of the Rosenbergs in the early 1950s to the case of an Egyptian sheikh who plotted to bomb city landmarks four decades later, the office’s prosecutions have started the careers of judges, F.B.I. directors and even a New York City mayor.

Since Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty in August to helping arrange hush money payments to women who said they had affairs with Mr. Trump, the prosecutors have focused on what role the Trump Organization and its executives, including its longtime chief financial officer, may have played in the scheme, according to people briefed on the matter.

Mr. Cohen, who is scheduled to begin serving a three-year prison sentence in May, has assisted the prosecutors with that inquiry as well as a separate investigation into the president’s inaugural committee, the people said.

The prosecutors have also examined information brought by Mr. Cohen that he hopes will reduce his sentence, the people said, including whether Mr. Trump’s lawyers considered offering him a presidential pardon to keep him quiet and whether the Trump Organization possibly inflated insurance claims several years ago.

At this point, it is unclear whether anyone will be charged with a crime. Some of the investigations involve allegations that may be too old to be prosecuted. Yet taken together, the investigations show that the prosecutorial center of gravity has shifted from Mr. Mueller’s office in Washington to New York.

“The important thing to remember is that almost everything Donald Trump did was in the Southern District of New York,” said John S. Martin Jr., a retired federal judge who was the United States attorney in the Southern District during the Carter and Reagan administrations.

“He ran his business in the Southern District. He ran his campaign from the Southern District,” Judge Martin said. “He came home to New York every night.”

In an interview that aired on Friday morning, Mr. Trump told Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business Network that his lawyers were perplexed by reports that he faces multiple investigations.

“I said to my lawyers, ‘Are we being looked at here?’” Mr. Trump said, adding that his lawyers “don’t even know what people are talking about.”

James M. Margolin, a spokesman for the Southern District, declined to comment, as did the Trump Organization.

The precise number of federal investigations around the country that have grown out of the special counsel’s work remains unknown because such inquiries are conducted in secret. But the special counsel’s office farmed out strands of its inquiry to at least three other United States attorneys’ offices, including in Brooklyn, the District of Columbia and the Eastern District of Virginia.

People briefed on the federal investigations said the prosecutors in Brooklyn have raised questions about donations to the Trump inaugural committee, which was chaired by Thomas J. Barrack, a longtime friend of Mr. Trump. They have been examining Mr. Barrack’s ties to the Middle East, among other matters, according to the people briefed on the work.

Federal prosecutors in the District of Columbia will handle the prosecution of the Trump political adviser Roger J. Stone Jr., who was charged as part of Mr. Mueller’s investigation. And the Justice Department continues to investigate the business and political dealings of Elliott Broidy, a top fund-raiser for Mr. Trump’s campaign and inauguration, who tried to use his access to the Trump team to boost his businesses. Federal investigators in Los Angeles have also taken part in the inquiry and have raised questions about the inauguration, according to people briefed on the matter.

Separately, state authorities in New York are pursuing several investigations focused on the president, his associates and his business. Those matters include a mortgage fraud case against Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul J. Manafort, as well as civil inquiries into the Trump Organization’s insurance practices, real estate deals, and whether the family’s charitable foundation violated tax laws.

As for the Southern District, it is known to move aggressively — more so than some other offices — to stake a claim to new investigations based on tips from cooperating witnesses and other sources. In this instance, it appears to be leading some of the most sensitive spinoffs — ones with the potential to directly affect Mr. Trump’s business, his inaugural committee and possibly himself.

In the hush money investigation, the Southern District prosecutors have already implicated the president, claiming in a court filing that Mr. Cohen “acted in coordination with and at the direction of” Mr. Trump. While the prevailing view at the Justice Department is that a sitting president cannot be indicted, the prosecutors in Manhattan could consider charging him after he leaves office, particularly if he does not win re-election and is a private citizen before the legal deadline to file charges expires.

The investigation into the Trump inaugural committee partly grew out of a recording that F.B.I. agents seized when they raided Mr. Cohen’s home and office. On the recording, Mr. Cohen is heard discussing potential irregularities with one of the main contractors for the inauguration. The Southern District is investigating, among other things, whether the committee made false filings with the Federal Election Commission and received illegal donations from foreign nationals, a subpoena from the investigation shows.

In addition, the Southern District took on two investigations stemming from the cases against Mr. Manafort, who was prosecuted by Mr. Mueller’s office and was recently sentenced to more than seven years in prison for a litany of crimes.

In one of the investigations, the prosecutors are weighing charges against the officer of a bank that Mr. Manafort has acknowledged defrauding, according to people briefed on the matter.

In the other, Mr. Mueller’s team referred investigations involving three firms that worked with Mr. Manafort — the lobbying firms Mercury Public Affairs and Podesta Group, and the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom — to the Southern District for potential prosecution under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Since then, Skadden reached a settlement with the Justice Department. But prosecutors in Washington are weighing charges against Skadden’s lead lawyer on the firm’s work in consultation with Mr. Manafort in 2012 on behalf of the Ukrainian government, while the Southern District has retained control of the investigations of Mercury and the Podesta Group, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Southern District’s reputation for nonpartisanship — and history of autonomy from the Justice Department in Washington, giving it the nickname “Sovereign District” — may make it less vulnerable to attacks from the president and his allies. The president’s lead lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, led the office from 1983 to 1989 and later became New York’s mayor.

The Southern District’s role in Trump-related cases comes at a time of transition for the office, which is led by Geoffrey S. Berman, who was appointed in January 2018 by the Trump administration.

Mr. Berman notified Justice Department officials early last year of a possible appearance of a conflict of interest in the Cohen investigation, and officials concluded that he should be recused, for reasons that have not been disclosed.

In his stead, Mr. Berman’s handpicked deputy, Robert S. Khuzami, led the Cohen investigation. But on Friday, Mr. Berman announced that Mr. Khuzami will step down from his post next month to return home to Washington.

Mr. Berman named his senior counsel, Audrey Strauss, as Mr. Khuzami’s successor. Ms. Strauss, who had already been deeply involved in the Cohen investigation, will assume responsibility for any remaining aspects of the Cohen inquiry that were subject to Mr. Berman’s recusal.

Mr. Khuzami’s departure will not directly affect most of the other Trump-related investigations, which Mr. Berman has supervised. Mr. Berman’s name, for example, appeared on a February grand jury subpoena served on the president’s inaugural committee.

For the most part, the investigations surrounding the president and his associates have been assigned to career prosecutors in the office’s public corruption unit, which has a track record of convicting politicians on both sides of the aisle. Those prosecutors work on the eighth floor of the building, down the hall from Mr. Berman’s office.

The unit is led by two office veterans, Russell Capone and Edward B. Diskant, and although line prosecutors shift in and out — one assistant who worked on the Cohen inquiry, Rachel Maimin, recently went into private practice, and another, Andrea M. Griswold, returned to work full time on securities cases — the unit has a deep bench.

Two prosecutors who worked on the Cohen case, Thomas McKay and Nicolas Roos, remain in the unit. The investigations are overseen by the office’s criminal division, which recently got a new chief, Laura G. Birger; she succeeded Lisa Zornberg, who left the office to return to private practice.

Robert B. Fiske Jr., a former United States attorney in Manhattan who later served as the first independent counsel investigating the Whitewater matter during the Clinton administration, said the Southern District prosecutors would maintain the kind of professionalism associated with Mr. Mueller’s team.

“If the question is, should the public have confidence that there will be the same kind of integrity and independence in the Southern District of New York that there has been in the Mueller investigation, the answer is absolutely,” Mr. Fiske said.

twitter:

SethAbramson twitterde op zaterdag 23-03-2019 om 16:47:02 (THREAD) *Right now*—in the hours before we see Attorney General Barr's summary of what Mueller sent him yesterday—all Americans *must* understand the counterintelligence component of Mueller's investigation. It's vital to our national security. I hope you'll read on and retweet. https://t.co/9rHISHqI1e reageer retweet

twitter:

maddow twitterde op zaterdag 23-03-2019 om 15:38:58 LOL -- the Russia Today and conservative media news this morning that I **wept** -- I cried and cried -- through the show last night. LOLololol. reageer retweet

Nation On Edge For Next Steps As Robert Mueller Probe Runs Its Course | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC

twitter:

maggieNYT twitterde op zaterdag 23-03-2019 om 17:36:48 Paul Kamenar, a lawyer for Stone associate Andrew Miller, sent this statement yesterday: "Several days ago the Special Counsel notified us that they are still interested in having Andrew Miller testify before the grand jury regarding Roger Stone ..." 1/2 reageer retweet

twitter:

maggieNYT twitterde op zaterdag 23-03-2019 om 17:37:11 "...whose case is also being handled by the local U.S. Attorney. We are pursuing further judicial review of our challenge to Mueller's constitutional authority to issue his subpoena last June despite" notice of end of Mueller probe. 2/2 reageer retweet

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 17:06 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

twitter:

SethAbramson twitterde op zaterdag 23-03-2019 om 16:47:02 (THREAD) *Right now*—in the hours before we see Attorney General Barr's summary of what Mueller sent him yesterday—all Americans *must* understand the counterintelligence component of Mueller's investigation. It's vital to our national security. I hope you'll read on and retweet. https://t.co/9rHISHqI1e reageer retweet

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 17:58 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:

[..]

Hoe serieus moeten we de auteur van Proof of Collusion nou nemen?

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 13:57 schreef Mike het volgende:
Wellicht komen we er nog eens achter als z'n belastinggegevens boven tafel komen.

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 17:58 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:

[..]

Hoe serieus moeten we de auteur van Proof of Collusion nou nemen?

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 17:33 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

twitter:

maddow twitterde op zaterdag 23-03-2019 om 15:38:58 LOL -- the Russia Today and conservative media news this morning that I **wept** -- I cried and cried -- through the show last night. LOLololol. reageer retweet

Nation On Edge For Next Steps As Robert Mueller Probe Runs Its Course | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC

Rachel

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 18:05 schreef Montov het volgende:

[..]

Met een korrel zout of een rode pil? Anyway, op mijn lijstje van feiten van collusion heb je geen reactie gegeven.

Trey Gowdy breaks down what's next for the Mueller report

Gowdy: New House investigations of Trump are 'all about 2020'

Ken Starr on Mueller report: Trump team should be celebrating

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 18:25 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

[..]

Hij heeft iig heel veel onderzoek gedaan, heeft tot nu toe altijd gelijk gekregen en geeft voor mij vooral een heldere kijk op hoe het rechtssysteem werkt. Daarnaast is hij mij ook vaak iets te emotioneel bij de zaak betrokken en nogal promoterig wat betreft zijn boek.

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 12:42 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:
Trump is een heerlijke fuck you naar de gevestigde orde.

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 18:31 schreef Ensiferum het volgende:

[..]

Hoezo heeft hij (en prominente Democraten) wel het bewijs, maar Mueller kan het niet vinden?

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 19:15 schreef Ulx het volgende:

[..]

Waar baseer je dat op?

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 maart 2019 16:20 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

twitter:

kaitlancollins twitterde op vrijdag 22-03-2019 om 23:22:54 President Trump is surrounded by more staff than normal in Palm Beach this weekend. Not only is he joined by Pat Cipollone & Emmet Flood, but also other members of the legal team, both press secretaries and several other West Wing officials. Usually only a handful of aides travel reageer retweet

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