Sunday, June 27, 2021
And So the Trump Org Gets charged.
This is been a very bad week for Donald Trump. Rudy Giuliani lost his license to practice law in New York. the Trump organization is about to be indicted under criminal charges in Manhattan and Trump has been reduced to I like people he'll be reinstated as president and still he has a group of Hardcore supporters that believed every word he says and that I find unbelievable how can these people be so gullible or is it not their hatred a people that are different stronger than their belief system that their hatred can override their rational thinking and suspend disbelief. About one-third of the American people believe Trump won the election and he's going to be reinstated as president as soon as all the votes are counted or something.
Monday, June 1, 2020
Americans “favor taxing the wealthy to expand aid to the poor,”
The 2011 ideological poll showed that of the five ideological orientations that were named, the one with the highest net-favorability — the ratio of “positive” to “negative” ratings — by the American public, was “Progressive,” at 67%/22%, or 3.05; and the second-highest was “Conservative,” at 62%/30%, or 2.07. Like Senator Warren, Senator Sanders is one of the U.S. Senate’s three leading (if not the Senate’s only three) progressives. He clearly represents the most-widely-shared ideology: progressivism. If he wins the Democratic nomination, then the nation will be in for its first clear ideological choice since 1932 in a two-major-Party contest between a progressive Democrat versus a conservative Republican. That time it was FDR versus Herbert Hoover.
Of course, FDR won. Back in 1932, the conservative’s deadweight load, which the Republican had to overcome but couldn’t, was the crash of 1929. In 2016, the conservative’s deadweight load, which he’ll have to overcome but won’t be able to, will be his record of supporting or opposing George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003. Everyone but Republicans already knows that that was a catastrophic decision in every way, and was never justifiable; so: no candidate who is even on the fence about this important matter can stand even a chance of winning the Presidency if his or her chief opponent has always been clearly opposed to it, as Sanders has been, in both words and actions. Sanders, then a member of the U.S. House, was one of the small minority who voted in 2002 against it. And, unlike Barack Obama, who wasn’t even a national politician then and who spoke in 2002 about the Iraq question only briefly and in passing (in a video-clip that became famous in 2008), Bernie Sanders spoke against it passionately and repeatedly — and then he actually voted against authorizing the invasion. (And here’s the final vote, in both the Senate and the House.) By contrast, every current Republican Presidential candidate, except Rand Paul, says that GWB made the right decision “based on what was known then” (referring to the selective release by Bush’s Administration of faked evidence supporting the decision to invade). Marco Rubio contradicts himself about the matter, but basically he says that in the final analysis, “The world is a better place because Saddam Hussein does not run Iraq.” Even that statement would hurt him a lot in the general election (unless the Democrat is Clinton, since she actually voted to invade), because most Americans aren’t that stupid, to think that there’s any excuse whatsoever for Bush’s choice to fake evidence and then to invade Iraq on the basis of it — it was clearly a rigged deal from the get-go, to invade Iraq. Rubio is betting that the only way to win the Republican nomination is to support that rigged invasion; but Paul is betting that, by the time of the primaries, enough even of Republicans will have come to the (long overdue) realization that this issue could kill the Party’s chances in the general election, and that they’ll therefore get in line behind Paul’s candidacy as the Party’s only hope to get this issue off the backs of the Republican Party. The other leading Republican candidate, Scott Walker, is a pure mainstream Republican on the matter, saying that the decision was based on bad intelligence, “but knowing what we know now, we should not have gone into Iraq.” This line might suffice for him to be able to win the Republican nomination, but, if Bernie Sanders will be the Democrat he’ll be running against, then the Democrat will win, no matter how much money Republican billionaires pour into supporting their nominee. (Again, if Hillary becomes the Democratic nominee, the Republican nominee might win the Presidency — and probably will win if that Republican happens to be Rand Paul.)
Of course, the 2016 Presidential campaign won’t be about only the catastrophe in Iraq and George W. Bush’s having created it; there’s a President who followed after him, and he has continued GWB’s other catastrophe, the Wall Street bailouts and non-prosecution of the mega-banksters who cheated their ways to ‘AAA’ MBS-creating-&-marketing mega-bank fortunes (and the bailout-generated $10 trillion+ increase in the U.S. federal debt that was required in order for the public to absorb those mega-banksters’ “toxic assets”); and Sanders has always been against that pro-Wall-Street, anti-Main-Street, policy, too — both in words and in deeds. (And QE “The Greatest Backdoor Wall Street Bailout of All Time” is still continuing and so the total tab cannot yet be known, and Sanders has always been against that part of the Wall Street bailout too.) He was consistently correct on both of the big issues of recent U.S. history — both of the issues that depleted America’s future for the benefit of today’s super-rich.
On 15 February 2011, after Bush’s successor had been in office already two years continuing the bailouts, Rassmussen Reports bannered their poll, “57% Still Believe Bailouts Were Bad for US,” and also reported, “68% say bank bailout money went to those who caused meltdown.” Those overwhelming public views against the bailouts have also been not only Sanders’s own views throughout the period, but they’ve consistently been Sanders’s votes in the U.S. Senate, too, even at the start; so, on the two signature Bush catastrophes, Sanders would be in a perfect position to maul any Republican nominee, unless it turns out to be Rand Paul. However, unlike Scott Walker, whose net favorability rating is only modestly negative (i.e, it’s less than 1; it’s 73%, to be precise), Rand Paul’s is like almost all of the Republican field’s: it’s extremely negative (i.e., his ratio of strongly favorable to strongly unfavorable is much less than 1: it’s 56%). (Clinton’s, for comparison, is 69%. Elizabeth Warren’s was the only polled name that was positive: 1.08. As was previously mentioned, Sanders’s name wasn’t polled, and Warren was the only named candidate whose ratio was net-positive.)
In an earlier article, I stated the case “Why Hillary Clinton Would Be a Weak Presidential Nominee for Democrats,” and I explained why Ms. Clinton will never be able to rise from her present poor net favorability ratings. All the good publicity about her is past (from her flaks), while her support (being based purely on PR, sheer fluff) was a mile wide and an inch deep. The more that voters get to see her actual record, the more they’ll distrust her words. That reason she’d be a weak general-election candidate is: she’s not at all a trustworthy person (except by her financial backers), and there’s nothing she’ll be able to do at this late date to convince general-election voters that she is. The trust issue is so bad for her, that no matter how much money is spent on her campaigns, it’ll be like trying to paddle a boat not in water but in air — there won’t be the traction that’s needed to get her to being the first person past the finish-line in the boat-race. That boat has already been sold to the highest bidder, even before the race begins. She can evade, but she cannot hide, now that the contest has actually started. As more Democrats learn about this, they’ll turn away. Too many Democrats will avoid voting in the final, the general-election contest, or else will protest-vote for some third-party nominee; whereas the Republican nominee, whomever he is, will clearly be Republican in more than just his official designation. By contrast to Clinton: if Sanders is the Democrat, then voter-turnout on Election Day on the Democratic line will be enormous. And turnout in a Presidential election is crucial also in a much broader sense: it largely determines which of the two Parties will control both the Senate and especially the House (where everybody is up for election every two years). Even if Clinton were to win (which is unlikely), she would then be dealing in 2017 with a strongly Republican Congress, because of 2016’s resulting depressed Democratic voter-turnout. By contrast: if Sanders is the nominee, then not only will he win, but he will possibly (maybe even likely) be dealing with a Democratic Congress in 2017, by virtue of his drawing so many Democrats to the polls on Election Day 2016.
In other words: after having been a popular celebrity since at least January 2009, Hillary Clinton has now become, again, a mere politician, but this time with the heavier-than-ever baggage of her actual record (and especially of her having destroyed crucial evidence of that record, which she had secreted on her own private server), so that her evasive behaviors, verbal and otherwise, have now become her message; and what she says or does from here on can only collapse the house-of-cards that she had long been creating.
As of May 26th, her net favorability rating, shown at Huffington Post, had finally switched from positive to negative (47.8% negative versus 45.9% positive). This measure shown at HuffPo isn’t as accurate a measure, however, as the figures that I had linked to at the first link in the present article, because instead of building the net ratios there on favorables versus unfavorables, I built it on strong favorables versus strong unfavorables; and, especially at this early phase in a political campaign, that’s actually a far more accurate predictive measure, because the few people in the public who have strong feelings about a given candidate are the ones who will likeliest become the volunteers who will then serve as the core of the get-out-the-vote effort and who will consequently build the candidate’s volunteer campaign, if there is any. (If there isn’t any, then the Democratic candidate will surely lose, because the big-money campaign will likely go overwhelmingly to the Republican regardless.) So: the net favorability-ratios that were shown in my first-linked-to article are far more accurate indicators than are the ratios that are graphed at HuffPo; and what these ratios show is a far higher net unfavorability regarding all of the candidates.
However, the most important decision that American voters will be making in the 2016 elections will be the decision that Democratic voters collectively will be making in their Democratic primaries. That decision, in the primaries, rather than in the general election, will be the key to deciding America’s future. The decision that Republican voters will be making in their Party’s primaries, might not matter much, although, in the final analysis, if they choose Rand Paul, then that could change: there could be a real contest in the final election, against Sanders. (Furthermore, if Clinton does win the Democratic contest, then the final race will instead be between two candidates both of whom will have net negative favorability ratings — both Clinton and Paul — but turnout will almost certainly be higher on the Republican than on the Democratic side; so, Paul would probably win that contest.)
All of the pundits have been saying, all along, that Clinton is the most-likely candidate to win the White House, but they’re looking at the wrong indicators. Often, these same pundits were also saying that Jeb Bush would be the likeliest Republican to be able to win the White House, or that Christ Christie would be. I don’t pay attention to what the pundits say. Of course, the political bettors do; and, so, as of today, the betting odds heavily favor Clinton as by far the #1 likeliest person to become America’s next President. The public read the pundits. And the pundits make the arguments that their bosses, who are chosen by the media-owners, want to be published. (The media-owners want the final contest to be between two candidates who are both owned by the billionaire class, because a billionaire decides which media will receive his corporation’s advertising dollars and other favors; and that’s what keeps the media going.)
The pundits aren’t published — they’re fired — if they don’t serve their bosses. I don’t serve any boss; I serve only the truth as I see it, and I always explain and document what I am seeing. And when what I see changes, I report and explain that change, just as I had reported what was before it which has changed. My opinion isn’t ever set in stone. I might change it at any time. But all I can ever report is what I see, when I see it.
What I am seeing right now, which is the first time that things have looked clear enough for me to make a prediction in the U.S. Presidential contest, is the likelihood that the next President of the United States will be Bernie Sanders. The reasons for that prediction have been summarized here, based on the documentation that’s in the sources that have been linked-to here. Those linked articles contain the basic data that I consider, on my standard best-evidence basis, to be determinative, at this stage in the development of the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaign.
Tuesday, April 9, 2019
To all of the Trump supporters.
I get my news from real news journalism sources like the New York times The Washington Post BBC NPR MSNBC and yes CNN. What I fail to comprehend is that Fox news is a blatant propaganda arm of the Republican national committee. Russian state-run television Pravda and now RT are just The Same. It's state-run pure propaganda.
The Trump administration is the most corrupt criminal organization I have ever witnessed in my entire life. No hate just the facts just look at how many of his top lieutenants are in prison or indicted or plead guilty.all for lying to the FBI and committing perjury because of their conversations with Russians. What's the big secret that they're trying to hide? So if you think Fox is fair and balanced, I have a bridge in San Francisco I'd like to sell you.
These are the facts. Fox can spin it however they like, but this is what's happened so far. Here is a news flash from that "liberal" "fake news" organization, The Associated Press:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Five people from President Donald Trump’s political team have now pleaded guilty to federal charges. Four of those pleas are part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign.The latest is former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who pleaded guilty to federal charges.
GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS
George Papadopoulos, who served as a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, was sentenced last week to 14 days in prison for lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian intermediaries.
:
MICHAEL FLYNN
Trump’s former national security adviser, a retired general who had led the Defense Intelligence Agency, was the first White House official charged in Mueller’s probe. His plea in December to one count of lying to the FBI requires Flynn to cooperate with prosecutors.
RICK GATES
Gates, Manafort’s longtime business associate and a former Trump campaign adviser, pleaded guilty in February to federal conspiracy and false-statements charges.
MICHAEL COHEN
Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer pleaded guilty in federal court last month to campaign-finance violations and other charges.
Roger Stone just got charged as well, another long time partner of Trump. He is fighting his case, and it's a doozy. Roger Stone is set to stand trial on Nov. 5 in connection with the Russia investigation.
Stone faces seven charges involving lying to the House Intelligence Committee about his conversations involving WikiLeaks, the organization that released thousands of hacked Democratic Party emails during the 2016 presidential campaign. He has pleaded not guilty to ALL SEVEN COUNTS!
How much more do you need to see that Trump was directly involved in this. His top advisers and campaign chairman have pleaded GUILTY!
The deal with the Russians was: We lift sanctions of them, in exchange for their help with the 2016 election. And they did, and it worked. That has been established so far. They hacked the DNC email server and passed it on to Wikileaks. Roger Stone and Trump knew about it in advance.
We are in the first quarter of this game, and Team Trump has been throwing sand in the umpire's eyes the whole game.
1: Trump fires James Comey, the FBI director because of the "Russia Thing". That's obstruction of Justice.
2: Bob Mueller get appointed, and Trump tries to get him fired. That's count two.
3: Trump tries to get Rosenstien to quit. That's count number 3.
Shall I go on? It should be painfully obvious to anyone without an pro-Trump agenda.
Again, these are facts we KNOW. It's not "fake news". It's fact.
I'm reporting the facts, kids. The Russians DID hack the DNC. That's been proven. Wikileaks got the emails and Roger Stone and Trump knew about it in advance. Trump didn't fire Mueller because he couldn't. But he did try. He also couldn't fire Rosenstien because he couldn't. But he tried, many times. Manafort and Rick Gates met with a Russian Intelligence officer and handed him internal RNC polling data. In exchange for what? We don't know yet because Barr is sitting on the report.
I suggest you get your information from somewhere other than Fox News. It's not going to go well for Donny. Reality has a funny way of doing that. The House Intel committee is checking into this. The SDNY is looking into his finances. Trump's days are numbered. He's guilty as hell.
We KNOW that Russian GRU hacked the DNC server. The forensics proved it beyond any doubt. (I do know a bit about that, but I'll save it for later). Wikileaks released them for whatever reason, and yes, Bernie got screwed. The DNC had a finger on the scale to get Hillary nominated. We know that too. But it does nothing to absolve Team Trump. Different issue altogether.
As far as Trump being a democratically elected president, I have my doubts. I consider him a disgrace to our country. The sooner he leaves, our country can start healing and repair the damage he has done. Later. These are legal matters and the Congress and the courts will have the last word. Peace.
Monday, February 25, 2019
The seven most important things Noam Chomsky said about Donald Trump
Noam Chomsky gave an interview in which he gave his views on Donald Trump.
In conversation with his interviewer C.J. Polychroniou, Chomsky said Trump's environmental policy would accelerate humanity's 'race to disaster'.
The philosopher, public speaker, and author of several popular books had some other choice words for Trump.
And his words carry weight, if not for the quality then their ubiquity.
According to a study by MIT, Chomsky once held the title of most cited living person in academic papers, and the eighth most cited person ever.
Here are seven of his important quotes on Trump from his interview with Truth Out, and from before the election was called for Trump on 9 November.
Climate Change
The winning candidate, now the president-elect, calls for rapid increase in use of fossil fuels, including coal; dismantling of regulations; rejection of help to developing countries that are seeking to move to sustainable energy; and in general, racing to the cliff as fast as possible.
Chomsky had previously criticised Trump in May, in an interview with the Guardian
But there are some pretty stable elements of his ideology, if you can even grant him that concept. One of them is: “Climate change is not taking place.” As he puts it: “Forget it.” And that’s almost a death knell for the species – not tomorrow, but the decisions we take now are going to affect things in a couple of decades, and in a couple of generations it could be catastrophic
Trump is what the GOP gets for building a coalition of extremists
[Republicans] have turned to mobilizing sectors of the population that have always been there, but not as an organized coalitional political force: evangelicals, nativists, racists and the victims of the forms of globalization...Every candidate that has emerged from the base -- such as [Michele] Bachmann, [Herman] Cain or [Rick] Santorum -- has been so extreme that the Republican establishment had to use its ample resources to beat them down. The difference in 2016 is that the establishment failed, much to its chagrin, as we have seen.
Helping the American middle class
These are just samples of the real lives of Trump supporters, who are led to believe that Trump will do something to remedy their plight, though the merest look at his fiscal and other proposals demonstrates the opposite -- posing a task for activists who hope to fend off the worst and to advance desperately needed changes.
Mimicking Obama
One positive development might be the infrastructure program that Trump has promised while (along with much reporting and commentary) concealing the fact that it is essentially the Obama stimulus program that would have been of great benefit to the economy and to the society generally, but was killed by the Republican Congress on the pretext that it would explode the deficit.
'Friendly Fascism'
For many years, I have been writing and speaking about the danger of the rise of an honest and charismatic ideologue in the United States, someone who could exploit the fear and anger that has long been boiling in much of the society, and who could direct it away from the actual agents of malaise to vulnerable targets. That could indeed lead to what sociologist Bertram Gross called 'friendly fascism' in a perceptive study 35 years ago.
The ideology of 'Me'
But that ['friendly Fascism'] requires an honest ideologue, a Hitler type, not someone whose only detectable ideology is Me.
Monday, February 18, 2019
Team Trump
Paul John Manafort Jr.
Paul John Manafort Jr. (born April 1, 1949) is an American lobbyist, political consultant, and convicted felon. A Republican, he joined Donald Trump's presidential campaign team in March 2016, and was campaign chairman from June to August 2016. Formerly an attorney, he forfeited his license to practice in January 2019.
Manafort was an adviser to the U.S. presidential campaigns of Republicans Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bob Dole. In 1980, he co-founded the Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firm Black, Manafort & Stone, along with principals Charles R. Black Jr., and Roger J. Stone, joined by Peter G. Kelly in 1984. Manafort often lobbied on behalf of foreign leaders such as former President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych, former dictator of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos, former dictator of Zaire Mobutu Sese Seko, and Angolan guerrilla leader Jonas Savimbi. Lobbying to serve the interests of foreign governments requires registration with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA); on June 27, 2017, he retroactively registered as a foreign agent.
On October 27, 2017, Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates were indicted by a District of Columbia grand jury on multiple charges arising from his consulting work for the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine before Yanukovych's overthrow in 2014. The indictment had been requested by Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation. In June 2018, additional charges were filed against Manafort for obstruction of justice and witness tampering that are alleged to have occurred while he was under house arrest, and he was ordered to jail.
In the Eastern District of Virginia, in August 2018, Manafort was convicted on eight charges of tax and bank fraud. A mistrial was declared on ten other charges. In the District of Columbia, Manafort pleaded guilty to two charges and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. On November 26, 2018, Robert Mueller reported that Manafort violated his plea deal by repeatedly lying to investigators, and on February 13, 2019, DC District Court judge Amy Berman Jackson concurred, voiding the plea deal.
Source: Wikipedia
Jeff Sessions
Sessions was an early supporter of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, and was nominated by Trump for the post of U.S. Attorney General. He was confirmed on February 8, 2017, with a 52–47 vote in the Senate, and was sworn in on February 9, 2017.
In his Attorney General confirmation hearings, Sessions stated, while under oath, that he did not have contact with Russian officials during the 2016 presidential campaign and that he was unaware of any contacts between Trump campaign members and Russian officials. However, in March 2017, news reports revealed that Sessions had twice met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in 2016. Sessions subsequently recused himself from any investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, while some Democratic lawmakers called for his resignation. In testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in November 2017, Carter Page declared that he had notified Sessions about his contacts with Kremlin officials in July 2016, contradicting Sessions's earlier denials.
Source: Wikipedia
George Demetrios Papadopoulos
George Demetrios Papadopoulos is a former member of the foreign policy advisory panel to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.
On October 5, 2017, Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to making false statements to FBI agents about the timing and the possible significance of his contacts in 2016 relating to U.S.-Russia relations and the Donald Trump presidential campaign. He has served time in federal prison and is currently on a 12-month supervised release.
Source: Wikipedia
Felix Sater
Felix Henry Sater (born Felix Mikhailovich Sheferovsky; Russian: Фе́ликс Миха́йлович Шеферовский; March 2, 1966) is an American former mobster, real estate developer and former managing director of Bayrock Group LLC, a real estate conglomerate based out of Trump Tower in New York City. Sater has been an advisor to many corporations, including The Trump Organization, Rixos Hotels and Resorts, Sembol Construction, Potok (formerly the Mirax Group), and TxOil.
In 1998, Sater pleaded guilty to his involvement in a $40 million stock fraud scheme orchestrated by the Russian Mafia, and became an informant for the FBI and federal prosecutors, assisting with organized crime investigations. In 2017, Sater agreed to cooperate with investigators into international money laundering schemes.
Sater joined Bayrock Group as a senior advisor in 2003 at the behest of the company's owner and founder, Tevfik Arif. As a senior advisor, he assisted with several projects, including executive decisions in the Trump SoHo project.
Trump SoHo
Felix Sater was a managing director of Bayrock Group LLC, as well as a senior advisor to Donald Trump and The Trump Organization when construction of the Trump SoHo began in 2006.
He played a major role throughout the process of the building's construction, and remained managing director of Bayrock Group when the Trump SoHo project was completed in 2010. The building is a $450 million, 46-story, 391-unit hotel condominium located at 246 Spring Street in SoHo, New York City. The project was a collaboration between The Trump Organization, Bayrock Group LLC and Tamir Sapir.
Source: Wikipedia
Yuri Milner
Yuri Milner, a Russian businessman who was a major investor in Facebook. Mr. Milner had received hundreds of millions of dollars from the Russian government, which he invested in Facebook and Twitter. He has also invested in a real-estate investment company run by Jared Kushner.
On June 29, Facebook revealed to congressional investigators that it granted Mail.ru, a Russian internet company with close ties to the Kremlin, a special extension of the Facebook policy that allowed thousands of application developers access to massive amounts of user data.
Mail.ru ran applications on Facebook for years before 2015, allowing it to delve into Facebook profiles and activity from millions of users around the world. This was standard Facebook policy. Thousands of companies that built applications on the Facebook platform had access to potentially millions of users’ information.
Mail.ru, a Russian company was founded by Yuri Milner. While Americans have been justifiably appalled that an obscure political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, had rich behavioral data on at least 87 million voters, we should be more concerned that companies like Mail.ru had access to the same data.
Sergei Millian
Sergei Millian arrived in the early 2000s as a young, single professional in Atlanta, which has a large Russian-speaking community. Friends there said he worked in real estate, and, according to one résumé posted online, he opened a translating business whose clients included the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Friends said that Millian founded the Russian American Chamber of Commerce as a way to forge business ties between the United States and Russia and as a personal networking opportunity.
Papadopoulos is approached via LinkedIn by American-Belarussian Sergei Millian of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce. They meet repeatedly in Manhattan. Millian offers to start an energy business together, to be financed by Russian billionaires "who are not under sanctions". Millian also claims that one Russian billionaire would consider the possibility of opening a Trump hotel in Moscow.
Sergei Millian shared some tantalizing claims about Donald Trump.
Trump had a long-standing relationship with Russian officials, Millian told an associate, and those officials were now feeding Trump damaging information about his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. Millian said that the information provided to Trump had been “very helpful.”
Unbeknownst to Millian, however, his conversation was not confidential. His associate passed on what he had heard to a former British intelligence officer who had been hired by Trump’s political opponents to gather information about the Republican’s ties to Russia.
The allegations by Millian — whose role was first reported by the Wall Street Journal and has been confirmed by The Washington Post — were central to the dossier compiled by the former spy, Christopher Steele. While the dossier has not been verified and its claims have been denied by Trump, Steele’s document said that Millian’s assertions had been corroborated by other sources, including in the Russian government and former intelligence sources.
Millian told several people that during the campaign and presidential transition he was in touch with George Papadopoulos, a campaign foreign policy adviser, according to a person familiar with the matter. Millian is among Papadopoulos’s nearly 240 Facebook friends.
Trump aides vehemently reject Millian’s claims to have had close contact with Trump or high-level access to the president’s company.
Millian did not answer a list of detailed questions about his interactions with Trump and his role in the Steele dossier, instead responding by email with lengthy general defenses of Trump’s election as “God’s will” and complaining that inquiries about his role are evidence of a “witch hunt” and “McCarthyism.”
Source: Wikipedia
Additional Source: https://themoscowproject.org/players/sergeimillian/
Michael Thomas Flynn
Michael Thomas Flynn (born December 24, 1958) is a retired United States Army Lieutenant General and was National Security Advisor to President Donald Trump.
Flynn's military career included a key role in shaping U.S. counterterrorism strategy and dismantling insurgent networks in Afghanistan and Iraq, and he was given numerous combat arms, conventional, and special operations senior intelligence assignments. He served as the 18th Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, serving from July 2012 until his forced retirement from the military in August 2014. After leaving the military, he established Flynn Intel Group, which provided intelligence services for businesses and governments, including ones in Turkey. He became a senior advisor to Trump during his presidential campaign and served as the National Security Advisor from January 23 to February 13, 2017. He resigned after information surfaced that he had misled the FBI and Vice President Mike Pence about the nature and content of his communications with Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak.
On April 27, 2017, the Pentagon inspector general announced an investigation into whether Flynn had accepted money from foreign governments without the required approval. The New York Times reported on May 18, 2018, that a longtime FBI/CIA informant had met Flynn at an intelligence seminar in Britain six months earlier and became alarmed by Flynn's closeness to a Russian woman there; this concern prompted another individual to alert American authorities that Flynn may have been compromised by Russian intelligence. Flynn initially refused to hand over subpoenaed documents to the Senate Intelligence Committee, pleading the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination, but a compromise with the committee was worked out. On December 1, 2017, Flynn appeared in federal court to formalize a deal with Special Counsel Robert Mueller to plead guilty to a single felony count of "willfully and knowingly" making "false, fictitious and fraudulent statements" to the FBI. He confirmed his intention to cooperate with the Special Counsel's investigation.
Source: Wikipedia
Wednesday, February 13, 2019
Trump hates being exposed as a liar, a traitor, and a con man.
Trump hates being exposed as a liar, a traitor, and a con man. Whatever your opinion of him, facts don't lie. You can't pick and chose the facts.
To the president’s vocal frustration, federal judges have repeatedly enjoined his executive orders. Robert Mueller’s investigation has brought multiple convictions and plea deals from several key figures in his campaign as well as his administration.
General Mike Flynn - Guilty of lying to the FBI and Vice President Pence about the fact that sanctions were discussed in a December 2016 conversation with Moscow’s ambassador to the United States. He pleaded guilty last year. Flynn admitted to lying during an FBI interview about the content of his conversations with Sergey Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to the U.S.
Paul Manafort - Guilty of “multiple false statements” to federal investigators, Special Counsel Mueller, and a grand jury. Manafort lied about his contacts with Russian political consultant Konstantin Kilimnik, an individual affiliated with Russian intelligence. And he lied intentionally. If Manafort had told the truth, it would have been extremely damaging to Trump. Manafort lied about the conspiracy to break into the Democratic National Committee to steal records and lied about the conspiracy relating to the social media and the micro-targeting of voters and the use of the voter information that he provided to Kilimnik.”
Trump's former personal attourny, Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations, among other crimes last year and was sentenced to three years in prison.
George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign adviser, was sentenced to prison for lying to the F.B.I. about his contacts with Russian intermediaries during the 2016 presidential race.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team has indicted or gotten guilty pleas from 34 people and three companies.
The latest: longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has indicted him with one count of obstruction, five counts of false statements, and one count of witness tampering.
Trump has evinced little respect for the rule of law. He has attempted to have both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Special Counsel Robert Mueller fired. His efforts to mislead, impede, and shut down Mueller’s investigation have now led the special counsel to consider whether the president obstructed justice.
The Framers were concerned that a president could abuse his authority in ways that would undermine the democratic process and that could not wait to be addressed. So they created a mechanism for considering whether a president is subverting the rule of law or pursuing his own self-interest at the expense of the general welfare—in short, whether his continued tenure in office poses a threat to the republic. This mechanism is impeachment.
“The purpose of impeachment is not personal punishment; its function is primarily to maintain constitutional government.” Impeachable offenses, it found, included “undermining the integrity of office, disregard of constitutional duties and oath of office, arrogation of power, abuse of the governmental process, adverse impact on the system of government.”
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