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Trump and His Associates Had More Than 100 Contacts With Russians Before the Inauguration – New York Times
Trump and His Associates Had More Than 100 Contacts With Russians Before the Inauguration – New York Times

Aras Agalarov, a Russian billionaire who hosted a Miss Universe pageant with Mr. Trump in Moscow, and the billionaire’s son, Emin, reached out to Mr. Trump several times. (Separately, both men helped arrange the now-famous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Kremlin-linked attorney about getting information that could be damaging to Hillary Clinton.) Mr. Trump was also pursuing a plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/01/26/us/politics/trump-contacts-russians-wikileaks.html

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Pompeo denounces Russia, China over support for Venezuela’s Maduro – Washington Examiner
Pompeo denounces Russia, China over support for Venezuela’s Maduro – Washington Examiner

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a sharp rebuke of Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro’s international backers on Saturday in a United Nations Security Council meeting that afforded a face-off with Russian and Chinese envoys.

“It’s not a surprise that those who rule without democracy in their own countries are trying to prop up Maduro while he is in dire straits,” Pompeo told the Security Council, in a specific reference to “our Russian and Chinese colleagues” at the meeting.

Those comments continued an argument that began earlier Saturday, when the Security Council debated the decision to hold a meeting on the Venezuela crisis. Russia kicked off the discussion by denouncing the meeting as an “gross abuse” of the Security Council by the United States, arguing that the crisis is an internal Venezuelan problem and that President Trump’s team is unjustly threatening a foreign government.

Pompeo dismissed that argument by referencing to the humanitarian crisis in the country, which is suffering from food and medicine shortages, along with the collapse of its currency.

“We’re here because scores of Venezuelan women, some of them teenagers, have fled Maduro’s madness to other countries, and in desperation turned to prostitution to survive,” he said. “Three million Venezuelans have been forced to flee their homeland, thereby flooding the region and threatening international peace and security. Maduro’s prisons are full of political prisoners unjustly behind bars, and the graveyards hold dissidents and protesters that have been killed by this regime.”

Russia’s envoy characterized the Trump administration’s actions as “unceremoniously and in breach of all norms of international law an attempt by Washington to engineer a coup d’etat” in Venezuela, an allegation that echoed Maduro’s rhetoric throughout the crisis.

“Venezuela does not represent a threat to peace and security,” Vassily Nebenzia, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, said during the council meeting. “If anything does represent a threat to peace, it is the shameless and aggressive actions of the United States and their allies in the ouster of the legitimately-elected president of Venezuela.”

Maduro took the oath of office on Jan. 10, but the Organization of American States — an international organization comprised of 35 member-states of the Western Hemisphere, from Canada to Argentina — voted that same day “to not recognize the legitimacy of Nicolas Maduro’s new term” because his victory was “the result of an illegitimate electoral process.”

Trump recognized a prominent Maduro opponent, lawmaker Juan Guaido, as interim president on Wednesday. Trump was joined in doing so by a majority of the OAS — including major Latin American democracies such as Brazil, Colombia, and Argentina. In that context, Pompeo tied Russian and Chinese decisions to the corruption of Maduro’s regime.

“China and Russia are propping up a failed regime in hopes of recovering billions of dollars in ill-considered investments and assistance made over the years,” he said. “This money was never intended to help the Venezuelan people; it lined the pockets of the Maduro regime, its cronies, and its benefactors.”

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/pompeo-denounces-russia-china-over-support-for-venezuelas-maduro

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Texas says it found 95000 non-citizens on voter rolls; 58000 have voted – Fox News
Texas says it found 95000 non-citizens on voter rolls; 58000 have voted – Fox News
Video

Allegations of North Carolina voter fraud causes controversy

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Friday that the state has discovered 95,000 non-citizens on the voter rolls going back to 1996, 58,000 of whom have voted in at least one Texas election  — an announcement likely to raise fresh concerns about the prospect of voter fraud.

Texas has some of the toughest voter ID laws in the nation and has been one of the main battlegrounds in the Republican-led fight against alleged voter fraud. The office, in a statement, said that 33 people were prosecuted for voter fraud last year, and 97 were prosecuted between 2005-17. There are 16 million people in Texas registered to vote.

POSSIBLE VOTER FRAUD PROBED IN TIGHT HOUSE CAROLINA HOUSE RACE

“Every single instance of illegal voting threatens democracy in our state and deprives individual Texans of their voice,” Paxton said in a statement.

The New York Times reported that the findings were a result of of an 11-month investigation into records at the Texas Department of Public Safety. Gov. Greg Abbott praised the findings and hinted at future legislation to crack down on voter fraud.

“I support prosecution where appropriate. The State will work on legislation to safeguard against these illegal practices,” Abbott tweeted.

TRUMP DISMANTLES VOTER FRAUD COMMISSION

The revelation is likely to have national consequences and stir debate and the role of voter fraud. President Trump created a commission in 2017 to investigate allegations of voter fraud in the 2016 election. But it was eventually dismantled by Trump after the group faced lawsuits, opposition from states and in-fighting among its members.

Trump said at the time that Democrats refused to hand over data “because they know that many people are voting illegally.” Democrats have dismissed claims of voter fraud and accused Republicans of trying to disenfranchise minority voters with tight voter ID laws.

Video

Dallas state Rep. Rafael Anchia told The Associated Press that “because we have consistently seen Texas politicians conjure the specter of voter fraud as pretext to suppress legitimate votes, we are naturally skeptical.”

Paxton’s office noted that there have been a number of convictions of voter fraud in the state in recent years, including a charge against a non-citizen this month for illegal voting in Navarro County.

Fox News’ Kaitlyn Schallhorn and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/texas-says-it-has-discovered-95000-non-citizens-on-voter-rolls-58000-have-voted

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UK paper pays damages to Melania Trump over false report – AOL
UK paper pays damages to Melania Trump over false report – AOL

LONDON (AP) — Britain’s Telegraph newspaper has apologized and paid damages to U.S. First Lady Melania Trump after publishing an article it says contains many false statements.

The newspaper said Saturday it apologizes “unreservedly” to Mrs. Trump and her family for any embarrassment caused by the content of a cover story published Jan. 19 in the newspaper’s weekly magazine supplement.

“As a mark of our regret we have agreed to pay Mrs. Trump substantial damages as well as her legal costs,” The Telegraph said. The newspaper did not disclose the size of the settlement with Mrs. Trump.

The Telegraph said it falsely characterized Mrs. Trump’s father’s personality, falsely reported the reasons she left an architecture program, and falsely reported her career as a model was unsuccessful before she met Donald Trump.

“We accept that Mrs. Trump was a successful professional model in her own right before she met her husband and obtained her own modelling work without his assistance,” the newspaper said, also acknowledging it had incorrectly reported the year when the couple first met.

“The claim that Mrs. Trump cried on election night is also false,” The Telegraph said.

It also retracted the statement that Mrs. Trump’s father, mother and sister had relocated to New York in 2005 to live in buildings owned by Trump.

Related: Melania Trump wears Celine to congressional ball:




The Telegraph is one of Britain’s leading broadsheet newspapers and is traditionally aligned with the Conservative Party.

It is not the first time Mrs. Trump has successfully challenged the British press. She received damages and an apology from the Daily Mail in 2017 after bringing a libel action against the popular tabloid.

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Source Article from https://www.aol.com/article/news/2019/01/26/uk-paper-pays-damages-to-melania-trump-over-false-report/23653378/

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Government shutdown ends: Reopening agencies may take awhile to recover – Vox.com
Government shutdown ends: Reopening agencies may take awhile to recover – Vox.com

How do you bounce back from the longest government shutdown in US history — especially when that reprieve may only be temporary?

After 35 days of sticking to his demands for $5 billion to fund his “big beautiful” border wall, President Donald Trump caved on Friday and agreed to sign a continuing resolution that will reopen the federal government through February 15.

That gives congressional leaders just over three weeks to hammer out a long-term solution, and as Vox’s Dylan Scott outlines, the four possible scenarios are daunting: Trump and congressional Democrats could reach a compromise on immigration that satisfies both parties, but that’s optimistic. More likely, the fight drags on, leading to even more shutdown possibilities, or they pass a continuing resolution that would make this entire stand-off all for nothing (with or without an emergency declaration).

And though the government is technically open again, the work now falls on federal officials to sort out the logistics to bring their agencies up to fully operational levels. Roughly a quarter of the federal government was affected directly by the shutdown. Some agencies have limped along with a skeleton staff for more than a month; other offices have been shuttered entirely.

Here’s how some of the most effected groups are starting to rebuild — even as they stare down the possibility that they may have to do this all over again.

Furloughed workers are getting paid — but that doesn’t help everyone

Roughly 800,000 federal workers received IOUs instead of actual paychecks for the last two pay periods. But if everything goes to plan, they should be getting their money as soon as possible, which will likely be sometime mid-next week.

Congress agreed on a bill to provide back pay for federal workers — both for this latest closure as well as any future government shutdowns to come — and Trump signed it into law last week.

Federal contractors, however, are being left behind. Everyone from janitors at federal buildings to the security guards and cafeteria workers are excluded from the back pay guarantee. It’s just yet another example of how low-wage workers have shouldered the heaviest burdens of the partial government shutdown, and how they have little recourse to get back the work hours and money they deserve.

Aviation workers helped spur the government reopening. They’re hopeful — but not entirely optimistic — that it will stay that way

Air traffic controllers — who went unpaid but were required to show up to work during the shutdown — were seemingly the ultimate tipping point to end the impasse after low staffing levels triggered airport delays across the country. LaGuardia Airport in New York, one of the busiest airports in the US, was forced to halt all incoming flights for 90 minutes on Friday because too many air traffic controllers had called in sick that day, and there weren’t enough employees to safely land the planes. This caused a cascade of delays throughout the East Coast; hours later Trump announced that he agreed to a temporary stop-gap for government funding.

The Federal Aviation Administration reports that flights are now departing on schedule at airports across the country. And though unions representing air traffic controllers and flight crews have expressed relief that their members will get paid once again, they’re putting pressure on lawmakers to come up with a long-term solution that extends beyond the funding deadline next month.

“The constant funding crises that arise from stop-and-go funding continue to wreak havoc on our system and perpetuate the current staffing crisis, which has resulted in a 30-year low of certified professional controllers,” Paul Rinaldi, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the controllers’ union, said in statement.

IRS backlogs may delay tax refunds

Tax season officially kicks off on Monday, but it’s unclear whether the IRS will be able to make up for 35 days of preparation time that was lost to Trump’s border wall gambit.

As Vox’s German Lopez reported during the shutdown, the IRS retained around 46,000 workers, or 57.4 percent its workforce. This allowed employees to prepare for sending out tax refunds, even as they worked without pay, with the hope that federal closures wouldn’t cause significant delays.

Now it appears there is quite a backlog for IRS employees to wade through. The American Institute of CPAs, which represents tax preparers, wrote in a letter to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig that their members are concerned about the ripple effect of delays to online services.

“Without a shutdown, it often takes multiple contacts with the IRS to resolve a situation,” the letter read. “We expect tremendous additional time to work with the IRS on correspondence once the shutdown ends.”

Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo are taking a few days to open their doors again

Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo will begin accepting new visitors on Tuesday. All 21 institutions under the Smithsonian umbrella, along with the National Zoo, have been closed since New Years, when reserve funding ran out. This meant the museums were closed during what’s typically a busy holiday season.

According to the Washington Post, the Smithsonian reported losing about $1.5 million in revenue during the first 10 days of closures. And for every additional week after that, the institutions reportedly lost $1 million from side income, for everything from food and beverage sales to Imax theater tickets to parking fees.

The shutdown has already had lasting damage

As some agencies scramble to bring operation levels back up to 100 percent, others must deal with ill-effects that may linger for weeks, if not indefinitely.

Civil and immigrant courts were frozen on ice; cases that were postponed may not be addressed for weeks, and in some instances, for years. National parks in some regions were destroyed, with human waste overflowing trash cans, and outright vandalism that will only add to an $11 billion maintenance backlog. The shutdown significantly hindered economic growth, undercut basic needs for Native American tribes, jeopardized food safety and made life unnecessarily difficult for America’s most vulnerable communities.

The list of damages goes on and on. Vox’s Nicole Fallert found at least 35 different ways the shutdown adversely affected everyday Americans.

But despite the real-world consequences, there’s a chance we might find ourselves the exact same bind in just three weeks. Only this time, each agency’s funding lapse would just be compounding on the laundry list of damages they’re just beginning to fix.

Source Article from https://www.vox.com/2019/1/26/18198630/government-shutdown-recovery

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Trump renews call to ‘build the wall’ after reopening government, warns ‘both parties very dug in’ – Fox News
Trump renews call to ‘build the wall’ after reopening government, warns ‘both parties very dug in’ – Fox News
Video

Trump compromises over shutdown but Democrats still refuse to negotiate on border wall

President Trump on Saturday promised supporters that the wall on the southern border will be built, a day after he agreed to temporarily reopen the government for three weeks without funding for a wall — but warned that “both parties [are] very dug in.”

“21 days goes very quickly. Negotiations with Democrats will start immediately. Will not be easy to make a deal, both parties very dug in,” he tweeted. “The case for National Security has been greatly enhanced by what has been happening at the Border & through dialogue.

TRUMP SIGNS BILL TO END PARTIAL GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

“We will build the Wall!” he added.

Trump signed a short-term spending bill Friday night reopening the government, which has been partially shut down for 35 days in a fight over Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion in funding for the border wall. Democrats had balked at that number, instead offering $1.3 billion for more general border security. Trump had announced that he would sign such a bill earlier Friday, and Congress passed the measure hours later, sending it to Trump’s desk.

Trump said Friday that he wanted negotiations for border security to continue ahead of the Feb. 15 deadline, and threatened to use the “very powerful weapon” of declaring a national emergency if negotiations came to naught. That move would give him extra powers to build the wall via executive power.

Trump has floated the idea of a national emergency before, something that would receive opposition from Democrats and some Republicans. But some Republicans backed Trump Friday, noting that he has agreed a week earlier to extensions of protections for illegal immigrants who came to the country as children and those from unsafe countries.

ANN COULTER RIPS TRUMP OVER BORDER WALL ON BILL MAHER’S SHOW

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told Fox News Friday that Trump had made concessions, and that if Democrats won’t negotiate then Trump would be right to declare a national emergency.

“Here’s what I think come February 15th, if the Democrats still say ‘Go to hell on the wall you get a dollar. That’s it.’ They basically tell Trump ‘I’m not going to do with you what I did with Bush and Obama’ then I hope he will go the emergency route. We don’t need to shut the government down.” he said.

Trump has faced criticism from some conservatives for backing down, for now, in the stalemate and on Friday he responded by saying that it was “in no way a concession.”

Video

“It was taking care of millions of people who were getting badly hurt by the Shutdown with the understanding that in 21 days, if no deal is done, it’s off to the races!” he tweeted/

However, prospects for a deal looked bleak. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. said Friday that Democrats “remain fully against a wall” but also said that Democrats would approach the negotiations in good faith.

On Friday, Trump spent much of an address in a Rose Garden talking about the dangers that illegal immigration poses, namely the influx of drugs and criminals into the country. On Saturday morning, Trump was back to issuing those warnings, particularly about a caravan of migrants heading toward the border.

“If we had a powerful Wall, they wouldn’t even try to make the long and dangerous journey. Build the Wall and Crime will Fall!” he tweeted.

Fox News’ Elizabeth Zwirz and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-renews-call-to-build-the-wall-after-reopening-government-warns-both-parties-very-dug-in

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Trump tries to bounce back after horrible day damages presidency – CNN
Trump tries to bounce back after horrible day damages presidency – CNN

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Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN

Updated 10:34 AM ET, Sat January 26, 2019

Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what’s happening in the world as it unfolds.

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Mueller.”,”descriptionText”:”In an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo, Kristin Davis, the woman famously known as the \”Manhattan Madam,\” defends her long-time friend and colleague Roger Stone by stating that she never doubts Stone and doesn’t believe he will cut a deal after his indictment by special counsel Robert Mueller.”},{“title”:”Burnett on Trump: No wall, just a cave”,”duration”:”03:29″,”sourceName”:”CNN”,”sourceLink”:”https://www.cnn.com/”,”videoCMSUrl”:”/video/data/3.0/video/politics/2019/01/26/trump-shutdown-cave-burnett-monologue-ebof-vpx.cnn/index.xml”,”videoId”:”politics/2019/01/26/trump-shutdown-cave-burnett-monologue-ebof-vpx.cnn”,”videoImage”:”http://www.noticiasdodia.onlinenewsbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/190125191244-erin-burnett-1-25-2019-large-169.jpg”,”videoUrl”:”/videos/politics/2019/01/26/trump-shutdown-cave-burnett-monologue-ebof-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/this-week-in-politics/”,”description”:”CNN’s Erin Burnett criticizes President Trump for reaching 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President Donald Trump after he reached a deal with Democrats to temporarily reopen the government.”,”descriptionText”:”Conservative writer Bill Kristol and GOP strategist Kevin Madden criticized President Donald Trump after he reached a deal with Democrats to temporarily reopen the government.”},{“title”:”Trump: Deal reached to reopen government”,”duration”:”02:19″,”sourceName”:”CNN”,”sourceLink”:”https://www.cnn.com/”,”videoCMSUrl”:”/video/data/3.0/video/politics/2019/01/25/trump-government-shutdown-remarks-rose-garden-sot-nr-vpx.cnn/index.xml”,”videoId”:”politics/2019/01/25/trump-government-shutdown-remarks-rose-garden-sot-nr-vpx.cnn”,”videoImage”:”http://www.noticiasdodia.onlinenewsbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/190125142142-trump-1-rose-garden-large-169.jpg”,”videoUrl”:”/videos/politics/2019/01/25/trump-government-shutdown-remarks-rose-garden-sot-nr-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/this-week-in-politics/”,”description”:”President Trump announces that a deal has been reached to 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Ron DeSantis’ office confirmed, on the same day that photos of him in blackface at a party nearly 15 years ago were publicly revealed.”,”descriptionText”:”Florida Secretary of State Michael Ertel resigned, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office confirmed, on the same day that photos of him in blackface at a party nearly 15 years ago were publicly revealed.”},{“title”:”Collins: Not sure Trump gets living payday to payday”,”duration”:”00:42″,”sourceName”:”CNN”,”sourceLink”:”http://www.cnn.com”,”videoCMSUrl”:”/video/data/3.0/video/politics/2019/01/25/susan-collins-trump-doesnt-get-living-paycheck-to-paycheck-cpt-vpx.cnn/index.xml”,”videoId”:”politics/2019/01/25/susan-collins-trump-doesnt-get-living-paycheck-to-paycheck-cpt-vpx.cnn”,”videoImage”:”http://www.noticiasdodia.onlinenewsbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/190124222233-susan-collins-01242019-large-169-1.jpg”,”videoUrl”:”/videos/politics/2019/01/25/susan-collins-trump-doesnt-get-living-paycheck-to-paycheck-cpt-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/this-week-in-politics/”,”description”:”Sen. 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Sarah Sanders discusses the arrest of President Donald Trump’s longtime associate Roger Stone. “},{“title”:”Sanders: President isn’t hung up on the wall”,”duration”:”02:11″,”sourceName”:”CNN”,”sourceLink”:”http://www.cnn.com”,”videoCMSUrl”:”/video/data/3.0/video/politics/2019/01/25/sarah-sanders-government-shutdown-sot-vpx-newday.cnn/index.xml”,”videoId”:”politics/2019/01/25/sarah-sanders-government-shutdown-sot-vpx-newday.cnn”,”videoImage”:”http://www.noticiasdodia.onlinenewsbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/190125155801-sarah-sanders-government-shutdown-sot-vpx-newday-00001713-large-169.jpg”,”videoUrl”:”/videos/politics/2019/01/25/sarah-sanders-government-shutdown-sot-vpx-newday.cnn/video/playlists/this-week-in-politics/”,”description”:”White House press secretary Sarah Sanders says Democrats are playing politics instead of putting the American people first.”,”descriptionText”:”White House press secretary Sarah Sanders says Democrats are playing politics instead of putting the American people first.”},{“title”:”CNN reporter watched Stone’s arrest. Here’s what happened “,”duration”:”02:13″,”sourceName”:”CNN”,”sourceLink”:”https://www.cnn.com”,”videoCMSUrl”:”/video/data/3.0/video/politics/2019/01/25/roger-stone-arrest-play-by-play-shortell-vpx.cnn/index.xml”,”videoId”:”politics/2019/01/25/roger-stone-arrest-play-by-play-shortell-vpx.cnn”,”videoImage”:”http://www.noticiasdodia.onlinenewsbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/190125092107-cnn-shortell-large-169.jpg”,”videoUrl”:”/videos/politics/2019/01/25/roger-stone-arrest-play-by-play-shortell-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/this-week-in-politics/”,”description”:”CNN’s David Shortell describes the scene as Roger Stone was being arrested. “,”descriptionText”:”CNN’s David Shortell describes the scene as Roger Stone was being arrested. “},{“title”:”Toobin: Stone arrest is shocking, but not surprising”,”duration”:”00:51″,”sourceName”:”CNN”,”sourceLink”:”https://www.cnn.com/”,”videoCMSUrl”:”/video/data/3.0/video/politics/2019/01/25/roger-stone-arrested-vpx.cnn/index.xml”,”videoId”:”politics/2019/01/25/roger-stone-arrested-vpx.cnn”,”videoImage”:”http://www.noticiasdodia.onlinenewsbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/190125072347-jeffrey-toobin-1-25-19-large-169.jpg”,”videoUrl”:”/videos/politics/2019/01/25/roger-stone-arrested-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/this-week-in-politics/”,”description”:”CNN’s \u003ca href=\”http://www.cnn.com/profiles/jeffrey-toobin-profile\” target=\”_blank\”>Jeffrey Toobin\u003c/a> says it’s shocking, but not surprising, to hear that the FBI has arrested longtime Donald Trump associate Roger Stone.”,”descriptionText”:”CNN’s \u003ca href=\”http://www.cnn.com/profiles/jeffrey-toobin-profile\” target=\”_blank\”>Jeffrey Toobin\u003c/a> says it’s shocking, but not surprising, to hear that the FBI has arrested longtime Donald Trump associate Roger Stone.”},{“title”:”Official resigns over blackface photo controversy”,”duration”:”00:42″,”sourceName”:”CNN”,”sourceLink”:”http://www.cnn.com”,”videoCMSUrl”:”/video/data/3.0/video/politics/2019/01/25/michael-ertel-resignation-blackface-photo-ctn-vpx.cnn/index.xml”,”videoId”:”politics/2019/01/25/michael-ertel-resignation-blackface-photo-ctn-vpx.cnn”,”videoImage”:”http://www.noticiasdodia.onlinenewsbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/190124180150-blackface-florida-state-secretary-large-169.jpg”,”videoUrl”:”/videos/politics/2019/01/25/michael-ertel-resignation-blackface-photo-ctn-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/this-week-in-politics/”,”description”:”Florida Secretary of State Michael Ertel resigned, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office confirmed, on the same day that photos of him in blackface at a party nearly 15 years ago were publicly revealed.”,”descriptionText”:”Florida Secretary of State Michael Ertel resigned, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office confirmed, on the same day that photos of him in blackface at a party nearly 15 years ago were publicly revealed.”},{“title”:”Collins: Not sure Trump gets living payday to payday”,”duration”:”00:42″,”sourceName”:”CNN”,”sourceLink”:”http://www.cnn.com”,”videoCMSUrl”:”/video/data/3.0/video/politics/2019/01/25/susan-collins-trump-doesnt-get-living-paycheck-to-paycheck-cpt-vpx.cnn/index.xml”,”videoId”:”politics/2019/01/25/susan-collins-trump-doesnt-get-living-paycheck-to-paycheck-cpt-vpx.cnn”,”videoImage”:”http://www.noticiasdodia.onlinenewsbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/190124222233-susan-collins-01242019-large-169-1.jpg”,”videoUrl”:”/videos/politics/2019/01/25/susan-collins-trump-doesnt-get-living-paycheck-to-paycheck-cpt-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/this-week-in-politics/”,”description”:”Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) says she isn’t sure if President Donald Trump understands what federal workers living paycheck to paycheck are experiencing during the partial government shutdown.”,”descriptionText”:”Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) says she isn’t sure if President Donald Trump understands what federal workers living paycheck to paycheck are experiencing during the partial government shutdown.”}],’js-video_headline-featured-1tc1t2w’,”,”js-video_source-featured-1tc1t2w”,true,true,’this-week-in-politics’);if (typeof configObj.context !== ‘string’ || configObj.context.length

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Washington (CNN)For a few hours, it looked like the foundations of Donald Trump’s presidency were crumbling in plain sight.

    Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/26/politics/trump-presidency-tough-day-shutdown-wall-roger-stone-mueller-investigation/index.html

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    Coulter: ‘No question’ Pelosi outplayed Trump – The Hill
    Coulter: ‘No question’ Pelosi outplayed Trump – The Hill

    Conservative firebrand Ann Coulter late Friday continued to blast President TrumpDonald John TrumpStone: ‘I’ve never had any discussion’ with Trump about a pardon White House: Trump will move forward on wall ‘with or without’ Dems Pelosi after Stone indictment: ‘What does Putin have on the president’? MORE‘s decision to end the 35-day partial government shutdown without securing funds for a border wall, saying he was outmaneuvered by Speaker Nancy PelosiNancy Patricia D’Alesandro PelosiPelosi after Stone indictment: ‘What does Putin have on the president’? Lou Dobbs slams Trump’s move to end shutdown: ‘Illegal immigrants are surely pleased’ Cardi B on calls for her deliver Dems’ response to State of the Union: ‘Why not’ MORE (D-Calif.).

    “We thought, ‘Hey, maybe this guy’s wacky enough, he won’t care what the elite say, and he’ll build the wall.’ That was what put him in the White House. He has got to build the wall,” Coulter said on Los Angeles radio station KNX.

    “There’s no question but that Nancy Pelosi got the better of Donald Trump.”

    Coulter on Friday afternoon called Trump “the biggest wimp ever to serve as President of the United States” after he announced that he would support reopening the government with obtaining funds for a border wall.

    The immigration hard-liner has repeatedly pushed Trump to immediately start construction on a wall and she said shortly before the shutdown began in December that she would not vote for Trump again in 2020 without a border wall.

    Trump garnered attention last month for unfollowing Coulter on Twitter after she made remarks about a “joke presidency.”

    The president has maintained that his decision to allow the government to fully reopen for three weeks without funding for a wall was not a concession on his part.

    The deal includes lawmakers forming a bipartisan conference committee to begin negotiating border security. Trump has maintained that if the committee doesn’t provide funds for a wall, he will declare a national emergency to circumvent Congress and move to build one.

    “This was in no way a concession. It was taking care of millions of people who were getting badly hurt by the Shutdown with the understanding that in 21 days, if no deal is done, it’s off to the races!” he tweeted Friday.

    “We’ll work with the Democrats and negotiate and if we can’t do that, then we’ll do — obviously we’ll do the emergency because that’s what it is. It’s a national emergency,” he told reporters at the White House earlier in the day.

    Trump had previously rejected proposals to reopen shuttered agencies for three weeks specifically over border wall funding. His demand for more than $5 billion for a wall remained the primary sticking point in negotiations for weeks before he reversed course Friday.

    Source Article from https://thehill.com/homenews/media/427094-coulter-no-question-pelosi-outplayed-trump

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    It Was Scary and Seemingly Unending. Then the Longest Government Shutdown Ever Was Over. – The New York Times
    It Was Scary and Seemingly Unending. Then the Longest Government Shutdown Ever Was Over. – The New York Times

    Because of the shutdown, the park was “hanging by a thread,” said Ken Yager, 59, a professional climber who came to Yosemite more than four decades ago and never left the area.

    All but a skeleton crew of rangers at the park were furloughed, the visitor center was closed and no one answered the phone at the park headquarters. Nearby, the towns that rely on Yosemite tourism for their livelihoods were hurting. Mr. Yager, who runs a cleaning service, laid off most of his employees.

    Every day the shutdown stretched on, Mr. Yager said, people were “more and more desperate.”

    It has been more than six weeks since the blustery Oval Office confrontation on Dec. 11 between Mr. Trump and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, and Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader.

    Mr. Trump, reiterating his campaign pledge to build a border wall, had said he would take the blame for shutting down the government if Democrats rebuffed his effort. “I will take the mantle,” he said in a vow that was replayed on cable news countless times. “I will be the one to shut it down.”

    And it did shut down, in the early morning of Dec. 22. The shuttered departments included Treasury, Agriculture, Homeland Security, Interior, State, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Commerce and Justice. More than 420,000 federal employees began to work without pay; another 380,000 were furloughed to wait for a resolution from home.

    Yet the notion of a government shutdown still felt to many like a familiar political ritual rather than a fear-inducing event, at least at first. This shutdown marked at least the 21st time in the last four decades that the government has not passed some form of a spending bill on time.

    In the first days and weeks, a tangle of complications began to emerge.

    Sheila Bailey, 73, had set her retirement for Dec. 31, after working for 34 years as a scientist at NASA’s John H. Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. And indeed, the date came and went, and Ms. Bailey is spending her days at home.

    Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/26/us/government-shutdown-over.html

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    Foreign troops to quit Afghanistan in 18 months under draft deal:… – Reuters
    Foreign troops to quit Afghanistan in 18 months under draft deal:… – Reuters

    KABUL/PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – Taliban officials said U.S. negotiators on Saturday agreed a draft peace deal stipulating the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan within 18 months of the agreement being signed.

    The details were given to Reuters by Taliban sources at the end of six days of talks with U.S. special peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad in Qatar aimed at ending the United States’ longest war.

    While neither side released an official statement, Khalilzad tweeted later that the talks had made “significant progress” and would resume shortly, adding that he planned to travel to Afghanistan to meet government officials.

    “Meetings here (in Qatar) were more productive than they have been in the past. We have made significant progress on vital issues,” he wrote, adding that numerous issues still needed work.

    “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed and everything must include an intra-Afghan dialogue and comprehensive ceasefire,” he said in the tweets.

    A U.S. State Department spokesperson declined further comment.

    It was not clear if the draft described by the Taliban sources is acceptable to both sides or when it will be completed and signed.

    According to the sources, the hardline Islamic group gave assurances that Afghanistan will not be allowed to be used by al-Qaeda and Islamic State militants to attack the United States and its allies — a key early demand of Washington.

    They said the deal included a ceasefire provision but they had yet to confirm a timeline and would only open talks with Afghan representatives once a truce was implemented.

    Up until now, the Taliban has repeatedly rejected the Afghan government’s offer of holding talks, preferring instead to talk directly to the U.S. side, which it regards as its main enemy.

    “In 18 months, if the foreign forces are withdrawn and ceasefire is implemented then other aspects of the peace process can be put into action,” a Taliban source said, quoting from a portion of the draft.

    More talks on the draft are expected in February, again in the Qatari capital Doha, the Taliban sources said.

    Related Coverage

    They expect their side to be led by new political chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the movement’s co-founder and a former military commander who was released from prison in Pakistan last year.

    While they said his appointment had boosted momentum for a deal, it was unclear if he joined the talks.

    Taliban officials believe the U.S. was keen to get Baradar — who was captured in a joint Pakistani-U.S. intelligence raid in 2010 — to the table so they could be sure of speaking to the movement’s most powerful figures.

    NEAR-DAILY ATTACKS

    Other clauses in the draft include an agreement over the exchange and release of prisoners, the removal of an international travel ban on several Taliban leaders by Washington and the prospect of an interim Afghan government after the ceasefire is struck, the Taliban sources said.

    The suggestion to appoint an interim government in Afghanistan comes at a time when top politicians including Ghani have filed their nominations for the presidential polls in July this year. Ghani has repeatedly rejected the offer to agree to the formation of an interim government.

    News of progress on a deal comes as the Taliban continues to stage near-daily attacks against the Western-backed Afghan government and its security forces.

    Despite the presence of U.S.-led foreign forces training, advising and assisting their Afghan counterparts 17 years after the U.S.-led an invasion to drive them from power, the Taliban controls nearly half of Afghanistan.

    Ghani said last week that 45,000 members of the country’s security forces had been killed since he took office in 2014.

    The United States has some 14,000 troops in Afghanistan as part of the NATO-led mission, known as Resolute Support, as well as a U.S. counter-terrorism mission directed at groups such as Islamic State and al-Qaeda.

    Despite reports in December last year that the United States was considering pulling out almost half of its forces, a White House spokesman said that U.S. President Donald Trump had not issued orders to withdraw the troops. However, the administration has not denied the reports, which have prompted fears of a fresh refugee crisis.

    The Taliban sources also confirmed provisions in the draft that have broader implications for Afghanistan’s ties with its neighbors, particularly Pakistan, India and China.

    They said the deal included provisions that Baloch separatist militants will not be allowed to use Afghan soil to target Pakistan.

    Balochistan, a resource-rich yet often-neglected province in south west Pakistan, has been the source of separatist insurgencies for more than 60 years.

    Additional reporting by Jonathan Landay in Washington; Writing by Greg Torode; Editing by William Maclean and Helen Popper

    Source Article from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-afghanistan-draft/foreign-troops-to-quit-afghanistan-in-18-months-under-draft-deal-taliban-officials-idUSKCN1PK0DG

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    EU nations give Venezuela’s Maduro eight-day ultimatum – Aljazeera.com
    EU nations give Venezuela’s Maduro eight-day ultimatum – Aljazeera.com

    Spain, France, Germany and Britain have given embattled Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro an ultimatum, saying the nations would recognise opposition leader Juan Guaido as president unless he calls elections within eight days.

    “If within eight days there are no fair, free and transparent elections called in Venezuela, Spain will recognise Juan Guaido as Venezuelan president,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a televised announcement on Saturday.

    Guaido, the 35-year-old head of the National Assembly, proclaimed himself acting president of Venezuela during massive street rallies this week.

    He is trying to remove Maduro from the economically strapped country following controversial elections that saw the socialist leader sworn in for a second term.

    Maduro’s reelection last year was contested by the opposition and criticised internationally – but he has until now retained the loyalty of the powerful military.


    The United States and its regional allies – Brazil, Argentina and other countries – had already endorsed Guaido in repudiation of Maduro.

    Left-leaning governments in the region, including Cuba and Bolivia, have thrown their weight behind Maduro. Mexico under its new president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has so far refused to take sides.

    UNSC discusses Venezuela

    Spain is closely linked to Venezuela, a former colony, as some 200,000 of its nationals live there.

    Since his self-proclamation as interim leader, Guaido has rejected an offer of talks with Maduro and called for a “major demonstration”.

    French President Emmanuel Macron echoed the Spanish ultimatum.

    “Unless elections are announced within eight days, we will be ready to recognise @jguaido as ‘President in charge’ of Venezuela in order to trigger a political process,” Macron said on his Twitter feed.

    A spokesperson of the German government issued a similar statement.

    British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said that Guaido is “the right person to take Venezuela forward”.

    “Time for a new start for the suffering ppl (people) of Venezuela,” Hunt said in a statement later on Saturday.

    EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini also called for fresh elections.

    “In the absence of an announcement on the organisation of fresh elections with the necessary guarantees over the next days, the EU will take further actions, including on the issue of recognition of the country’s leadership,” Mogherini said in a statement.

    Venezuela’s foreign minister rejected the European ultimatum, insisting that Maduro remained the legitimate president.

    “Nobody is going to give us deadlines or tell us if there are elections or not,” Jorge Arreaza told a special session of the United Nations Security Council.

    “How is it that you can issue an ultimatum to a sovereign government?” he said.

    The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on Saturday voted to discuss the situation in Venezuela at the request of the US despite opposition from Russia and China.


    Pompeo issues fresh warning

    Speaking at the special UNSC session, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that it was time now for countries to pick a side on Venezuela. 

    “Now it is time for every other nation to pick a side. No more delays, no more games. Either you stand with the forces of freedom, or you’re in league with Maduro and his mayhem,” Pompeo said.

    Despite Guaido’s international endorsements, Maduro still has the support of the military and powerful, longtime allies like Russia and China and is vowing to defend his socialist rule.

    Maduro broke off diplomatic relations with Washington and set a 72-hour deadline for US diplomats to leave the Latin American country.

    But Pompeo on Saturday warned the Venezuelan leader to protect the US embassy. “Let me be 100 percent clear – President [Donald] Trump and I fully expect that our diplomats will continue to receive protections provided under the Vienna Convention,” Pompeo said in his UNSC speech.

    Guaido on Friday vowed to remain on the streets until his country has a transitional government, while Maduro dug in and accused his opponents of orchestrating a coup.

    Guaido’s talk with reporters in a plaza in Caracas turned into a de facto rally as thousands gathered after hearing he would speak in public for the first time since taking a symbolic oath on Wednesday proclaiming himself the nation’s rightful leader.

    Source Article from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/01/eu-nations-give-venezuela-maduro-day-ultimatum-190126115807947.html

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    Julen search: Spain finds body of two-year-old in borehole – BBC News
    Julen search: Spain finds body of two-year-old in borehole – BBC News

    Image copyright
    AFP

    Image caption

    Julen’s parents José and Victoria have experienced tragedy before

    Rescuers in Spain have found the body of a two-year-old boy who fell into a borehole near the southern city of Málaga, officials say.

    The boy, named Julen, disappeared into a narrow well more than 100m (330ft) deep during a family outing on 13 January.

    Specialist teams worked day and night in a tunnel that had been dug parallel to the narrow borehole.

    The body was found in the early hours of Saturday morning.

    “At 01:25 (00:25 GMT), the rescue teams reached the area of the well where they were looking for Julen and they found the lifeless body of the little one,” said Alfonso Rodriguez Gomez de Celis, the central government representative in the region of Andalusia.

    The accident happened during a Sunday afternoon excursion in a hilly plantation near the village of Totalán.

    The borehole – only 25cm (10in) in diameter – had apparently been left uncovered, although the businessman who had originally had it dug a month earlier insisted that he had sealed it.

    Such shafts are dug in the hope of extracting water.

    Rescuers had found hair among debris removed from the well and compared it with DNA samples from the boy’s drinking bottle as well as from his family, confirming his identity.

    A camera sent down the hole found a snack bag believed to be the one Julen was holding when he fell.

    At 73m (240ft) the camera encountered an earth blockage in the shaft.

    Rescuers had not picked up any hopeful sign from the boy during the whole operation.

    Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez wrote on Twitter on Saturday: “All of Spain feels the infinite sadness of Julen’s family.”

    “We will always appreciate the tireless effort of those who searched for him during all these days.”

    ‘An unspoken pact’

    By James Badcock, Madrid

    For almost two weeks a flicker of hope kept Spaniards and the country’s media glued to the mountainside which had swallowed two-year-old Julen during a family picnic.

    Once rescue workers realised there was no safe way to break downwards through the plug of earth under which the toddler lay, meaning that another shaft would have to be made, logic dictated that the operation was more about recovering Julen’s body than saving his life.

    But an unspoken pact banished any such statements while the combined team of Guardia Civil, firemen, mine rescue workers and others worked round the clock.

    Now a court in Málaga will attempt to determine the circumstances that saw Julen buried by rubble in a borehole that, according to local authorities, lacked the necessary permit – as do many thousands of others like it around the country.

    Julen’s parents José and Victoria have experienced tragedy before.

    Residents of El Palo, a nearby district, say the couple’s three-year-old son, Oliver, died suddenly less than two years ago because of a heart problem.

    Image copyright
    EPA

    Image caption

    The borehole into which Julen fell is only 25cm (10in) in diameter

    Source Article from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47012276

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    Trump’s border wall drama isn’t over. This is just intermission – Washington Examiner
    Trump’s border wall drama isn’t over. This is just intermission – Washington Examiner

    With airports jammed with angry passengers, Republican senators blaming each other behind closed doors for the government shutdown, and President Trump’s poll numbers tanking, the writing was on the wall. Feeling pressure from his fellow Republicans to reopen the government, Trump announced Friday afternoon that a deal was reached for federal employees to come back to work as negotiations on border security are given a little more time.

    A week ago, the White House was firm on its demand: Parts of the government will remain shuttered until Democratic lawmakers write a $5.7 billion check for a border wall. Trump’s capitulation (and make no mistake, it was a capitulation) is a complete reversal of the White House position and a blowout win for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in her first month back on the job.

    Trump, however, remained defiant. At the same time he asked lawmakers to work in unison for the benefit of the nation, he threatened to use the nuclear option if Congress can’t come up with a solution. “I have a very powerful alternative, but I did not want to use it at this time,” Trump said in the White House Rose Garden. “Hopefully, it will be unnecessary.”

    That “very powerful alternative” Trump is referring to is a declaration of national emergency, a proclamation that would provide him with a way to get his border wall money without having to go through the normal legislative process. Ordinarily, the executive branch is constitutionally barred from spending any taxpayer money on any program unless Congress explicitly authorizes and appropriates the funds. Outside of declaring war or authorizing the use of military force, the ability to appropriate funds, or not, is the legislative branch’s most coveted power.

    Lawmakers from both political parties protect the power of the purse with every fiber of their being because it’s one of the few tactics Congress can employ to pressure the president. Trump’s declaring of a national emergency would rip that power away. If lawyers in the executive branch can argue that there is indeed a dire national emergency along the southwestern border with Mexico, billions of dollars in the military construction budget will be made available for the border structure Trump so desperately wants. Trump could task the Army Corps of Engineers to start building right away.

    Democrats, who are as strongly opposed to a border wall as Trump is enamored by it, would not be powerless bystanders if the president tried to do an end-run around Congress. They could technically prohibit any money from being used for construction of a border barrier through legislation, although GOP opposition would likely kill it. They could file a lawsuit against Trump, arguing that his emergency declaration is not, in fact, an emergency, but rather an instigation of an artificial crisis in order to justify an unjustifiable project.

    A lawsuit would work itself through the court system and wind up in the Supreme Court, where the case could prove to be one of the most important trials of executive power since the fight over military commissions in the George W. Bush era. The border wall could become a proxy war between the executive and legislative branches, a classic battle over constitutional power that the judiciary would have to arbitrate. If Trump loses that fight, the precedent it would set would impact the flexibility of presidents in the future to tap into their emergency powers.

    Trump may decide that a national emergency is too big of a step. The House Freedom Caucus, Trump’s most reliable support base on Capitol Hill, has already questioned whether an emergency proclamation is a smart idea. Lawmakers such as Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows are concerned that a declaration now could provide a future Democratic president with the power to do something similar on progressive priorities like climate change. The White House may gamble on another government shutdown, perhaps believing that the public would blame Democrats for being too obstructionist this time around.

    Either way, the three-week government reopening shouldn’t be celebrated as a major breakthrough. The end of the longest shutdown in history may turn out to be the intermission to the meatier second act.

    Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.

    Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/trumps-border-wall-drama-isnt-over-this-is-just-intermission

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    In Venezuela, socialism has succeeded the way it always does – Washington Examiner
    In Venezuela, socialism has succeeded the way it always does – Washington Examiner

    A writer for the leftist Nation magazine opined in 2013, “Yes, the Venezuelan president could be a strongman,” upon the Venezuelan dictator’s death. “But he leaves behind what might be called the most democratic country in the Western Hemisphere.”

    Such are the delusions of socialism. Chavez, having been legitimately elected in 1998, quickly set out to destroy Venezuela’s democratic institutions. Taking advantage of a weak and too-easily-altered national constitution, he neutered the elected legislature and destroyed the independence of its judiciary. He thus augmented his own power at home. Abroad, he began the work of subverting democratic governments of other countries in his neighborhood and subsidizing Cuba’s repressive regime with cheap oil.

    Under Chavez, Venezuela’s profitable industries were systematically expropriated by the state. As a consequence, they rapidly failed. Oil production, a mainstay of what had been South America’s strongest economy, plummeted. Soon enough, the sky-high prices of oil from the last decade receded as well. This meant that in order to keep up the stream of benefits for the poor that had until then kept him in power — to hold up the mask of a smiley, happy-faced socialism — Chavez began inflating the currency, destroying his citizens’ savings and driving international investment out of the country.

    Chavez died before the final collapse he had set in motion. As Venezuela descended into lawlessness, political violence, and dire scarcity, his successor, Nicolas Maduro, took over the reins of ruin. Venezuelans are now literally losing weight and dying from starvation, and they have a socialism that was democratic (at least, up until 2015) to thank for their immiseration. Children are dying from lack of nutrition and going without medical care because Maduro refuses to scrap his state-run economic model that produced the disaster.

    Price controls have made basic everyday goods impossible to buy at any price. People critical of Maduro can expect to be held as political prisoners. If they gather in numbers, they can expect a violent response from government-backed Red-Shirts, who have beaten and murdered anti-government protesters with impunity.

    Unable or unwilling to accept responsibility for destroying his nation’s economy, Maduro has periodically arrested and prosecuted business owners — store owners who failed to stock goods they could not obtain and bakers for failing to make bread at a loss. Like the economic problems it always creates, another essential characteristic of socialism is this inability to accept blame for creating the problems.

    This is how South America’s once-wealthiest nation, with greater proven oil reserves than Norway or Saudi Arabia, has been turned into a failed state. Its democracy has been subverted, its military and police corrupted, its money worthless, and its people unable to receive basic necessities. Venezuela used to produce exports, but its only export today is its people.

    This is how socialism always works out everywhere it is tried. From that point of view, it has been a stunning success in Venezuela.

    In 2015, Venezuelan voters finally took away Maduro’s power, or thought they had, by electing an opposition supermajority to the National Assembly. In response, Maduro created an illegitimate parallel legislature that would allow him to ignore the constitutional one. His fraudulent election last spring led directly to today’s crisis.

    Juan Guaido, the president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, declared himself interim president this week, at the end of Maduro’s term. He is wisely offering amnesty for the corrupt military officials who have propped up Maduro’s regime until now. With official U.S. support, he has a realistic chance of saving his country from further ravages by socialism.

    Or perhaps he will fail, and the unfolding tragedy will continue. Either way, the lesson of Venezuela is one that American voters should take to heart. Chavez destroyed his country’s prosperity very quickly, and unlike most socialists, he did it while winning democratic elections.

    Never forget this when you hear American politicians today refer to themselves as socialists, even when they modify that by calling themselves “democratic socialists.” Eventually, socialism inevitably produces coercion and ends freedom. These politicians are owning up to supporting a system that worked its miracle of destruction in Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, and in so many other nations before.

    Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/in-venezuela-socialism-has-succeeded-the-way-it-always-does

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    Gregg Jarrett: Stone indictment shows no evidence of Trump-Russia ‘collusion’ – Fox News
    Gregg Jarrett: Stone indictment shows no evidence of Trump-Russia ‘collusion’ – Fox News
    Video

    Jarrett: Roger Stone indictment doesn’t show Trump-Russia ‘collusion’

    Roger Stone arrested by FBI in early morning raid; where were the raids for Hillary Clinton and others? Panel reaction on ‘Hannity.’

    The indictment of President Trump’s former political adviser Roger Stone – who was arrested Friday on charges of obstruction of an official proceeding, making false statements and witness tampering – demonstrates yet again that there is no known evidence of Trump-Russia “collusion.”

    Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been investigating allegations since May 2017 that Donald Trump or people on his presidential campaign may have worked with Russia to win the 2016 election. There’s no question that if Mueller believed he had proof of such activity the special counsel would have charged Stone with some collusion-related offense involving a conspiracy.

    Significantly, Stone wasn’t charged with anything involving collusion. In fact, not a single person has been charged with the alleged crime Mueller was appointed to investigate.

    FBI’S SHOW OF FORCE IN ROGER STONE ARREST SPURS CRITICISM OF MUELLER TACTICS

    Instead, in his indictment of Stone, Mueller chose to do what he has done so often – bring charges that were generated by his own investigation. These are commonly referred to as “process crimes.” That is, they are offenses against the legal process. Such offenses typically occur when someone interferes with the procedures of an investigation.

    Nowhere in Mueller’s indictment is it alleged that Stone conspired, coordinated or colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election.

    This is not to minimize “process crimes.” They are serious violations of the law. No person should ever lie, mislead or obstruct a legitimate law enforcement investigation.

    However, the distinction between a principle crime and a process crime is significant. The former is an independent criminal act. The latter is derived from the investigation into whether such an act ever occurred.

    “I will plead not guilty to these charges,” Stone told reporters after his arrest and appearance in federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “I will defeat them in court. This is a politically motivated investigation.”

    So far, Mueller’s exhaustive probe has produced no evidence and no indictments in support of his original mandate. The special counsel has little to show for his efforts that have cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars and hobbled the president with unfounded accusations from the moment he took office.

    So far, Mueller’s exhaustive probe has produced no evidence and no indictments in support of his original mandate. The special counsel has little to show for his efforts that have cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars and hobbled the president with unfounded accusations from the moment he took office. 

    The inexorable truth is that a nefarious plot supposedly hatched between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in the bowels of the Kremlin was a hoax all along – it simply never happened.

    As President Trump has said many times, “there was no collusion.”

    In fact, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign paid for unverified Russian information and then fed it to the FBI and Justice Department in a scheme to damage Trump, her political opponent.

    Hence, Trump-Russian “collusion” was nothing more than a clever and devious invention. Clinton-Russian “collusion” was authentic and one of the dirtiest tricks in modern American politics.

    The FBI became complicit in the scheme to frame Trump in a series of wrongful, if not corrupt, decisions.

    First, the bureau should never have launched its initial investigation in July 2016 that later developed into the Mueller probe. It had no probable cause and no credible evidence to justify its probe.

    Second, the FBI should never have misused an unverified anti-Trump “dossier” composed by a discredited and biased source in order to get a warrant to spy on a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser. In the process, the FBI and Justice Department withheld evidence from an intelligence court and deceived the judges who issued the wiretap warrants.

    And finally, a special counsel should never have been appointed. Under federal regulations there must first be some evidence of a crime to appoint a special counsel. No such evidence existed.

    Had it not been for the misconduct of the FBI and the Justice Department, there would never have been an investigation for Stone to allegedly obstruct – meaning that no indictment would have been handed down against him.

    The plain truth is that the improper existence of Mueller’s investigation created the crimes Stone stands accused of committing.

    The indictment against Stone suggests he may have had some advance knowledge or inside information about the content of hacked Clinton campaign emails that were released by WikiLeaks in the summer of 2016.

    WikiLeaks has never said how it obtained the emails. It has been reported that Russian intelligence operatives were responsible for the hacks.

    While Stone’s efforts to garner details about the emails and pass them along to the Trump campaign surely makes for a tantalizing story, this activity is not a crime. At the time, hundreds of journalists – including me – were contacting sources or attempting to elicit further information directly from WikiLeaks. None of us has been accused of a crime.

    Stone appears to have speculated or projected that the hacked emails would be highly damaging to Clinton’s campaign. This, of course, was stating the obvious.

    An examination of Stone’s emails shows that he offered little more than the same information that WikiLeaks had already stated publicly. Stone’s mistake, if any, is that he created the appearance that he knew more than he actually did.

    But millions of people exaggerate their knowledge about all sorts of things every day to make themselves seem smarter or more important than they really are. They don’t wind up getting charged with committing any crimes.

    Unless it can be shown that Stone was somehow involved in the actual hacking of the Clinton emails, he violated no felony laws. This is why he was not charged with a conspiracy crime.

    Five of the charges against Stone are for making false statements during the Mueller investigation. These will be exceedingly difficult for the special counsel to prove. The statute governing these offenses (18 U.S.C. 1001) requires proof that the false statements be made “knowingly and willfully.”

    A faulty memory or a diminished recollection is not sufficient to sustain the specific intent requirement of the criminal charge. If Stone recalled events differently than Mueller interprets them it is not a crime.

    Moreover, Stone amended some of his testimony with corrected statements. These this will be introduced as evidence in his defense.

    The charges of witness tampering and obstruction of an investigation may be more problematic for Stone. Much will depend on the facts as they are developed.

    For now, Mueller’s indictment of Stone should be read through a skeptical lens. Prosecutors only present their own slanted version of events. At trial, Stone’s defense attorneys will present his countervailing evidence and arguments. Like all defendants, Stone must be presumed innocent unless prosecutors can prove him guilty.

    Sadly, Mueller’s “process charges” against Stone and others in the Trump orbit represent selective and unequal prosecution when compared with their treatment of allies of Clinton.

    Neither top Clinton aides Huma Abedin nor Cheryl Mills were charged with giving false statements to the FBI during their 2016 interviews about Clinton’s email scandal, in which Clinton improperly used a private email server instead of the required State Department secure email system when she was secretary of state.

    Abedin and Mills both insisted they knew nothing about Clinton’s private email server until after she departed the State Department. Yet email exchanges proved their statements were clearly false.

    Former FBI Director James Comey said that no prosecutions of Abedin and Mills were justified, dismissively telling the House Judiciary Committee: “There’s always conflicting recollections of facts.”

    This from the same guy who twisted the facts and contorted the law to clear Clinton from the felony statutes she so flagrantly violated. Comey misconstrued the law in a manner that could only have been deliberate. He then weaponized the law to investigate Trump without legal justification or credible evidence.

     CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

    The same double-standard of justice is now being applied by Comey’s long-time friend and ally, Robert Mueller.

    President Trump’s enemies are desperate to find something – anything – in the Mueller investigation that points to wrongdoing by Trump because they want to see the president impeached and forced from office. So far, nothing that has been made public is the “smoking gun” they fantasize about that could show Trump engaged in any criminal activity.

    CLICK HERE TO READ MORE BY GREGG JARRETT

    Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/gregg-jarrett-stone-indictment-shows-no-evidence-of-trump-russia-collusion

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    Mexico rebukes — but accepts — ‘unilateral’ U.S. move to return asylum seekers pending hearing – The Washington Post
    Mexico rebukes — but accepts — ‘unilateral’ U.S. move to return asylum seekers pending hearing – The Washington Post

    TIJUANA, Mexico — Mexico’s government said Friday it would not impede U.S. plans to send ­asylum-seeking migrants back across the southern border while they await a hearing in U.S. courts.

    Mexican authorities made it clear they did not support the Trump administration’s program, but they appeared reluctant to pick a new fight with the White House less than two months into the term of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

    The decision appeared to clear the way for U.S. agents to begin the new protocols even as many migrants remained bottlenecked in Tijuana — just steps from the border — and officials in the teeming border city said resources were strained to the limit.

    “We are not saying we will open any kind of refugee camps or something like that,” Roberto Velasco, spokesman for the Mexican Foreign Ministry, told The Washington Post.

    “We simply do not have the resources for that,” he added. “What we are saying is, we will open the door for the aid to come.”

    The new policy could also face swift legal challenges in the United States.


    Central American migrants walk to the San Ysidro border crossing south of San Diego to attempt to enter the United States in April 2018. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

    Velasco told reporters in Mexico City that the United States was prepared to send back the first group: up to 20 migrants across the footbridge at the San Ysidro border crossing near San Diego.

    Velasco, however, also outlined some ground rules. He said Mexico would not accept migrants appealing a denial of asylum, unaccompanied children or people with serious health problems. The Department of Homeland Security said unaccompanied minors would be exempt from the U.S. policy.

    “The Mexican government does not agree with the unilateral measure implemented by the U.S. government,” Velasco said. “Nonetheless, and in line with our new migration policy, we reiterate our commitment to migrants and to human rights. Migration should be a choice, not a necessity.”

    The returned migrants would be the first group of people to have been affected by the U.S. policy, originally called “Remain in Mexico” and formally announced in December.

    Immigrants in the United States currently wait months or years for their cases to be resolved, partly a result of an 800,000-plus-case backlog in the immigration courts. But a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security said the asylum cases of those sent back to Mexico should be decided within a year, with an initial hearing within 45 days.

    [More than 10,000 migrants request visas as caravan hits Mexico]

    Critics say Trump’s new policy will have little impact unless Mexico agrees to extend it throughout the nearly 2,000-mile border, since the largest number of U.S. border apprehensions is in Texas. Yet it’s unclear whether Mexico will be willing to absorb tens of thousands of asylum seekers a year, and many migrants are wary of high-crime border cities there. Two Honduran teens traveling with a caravan were killed in Tijuana late last year.

    On Friday, even municipal officials in Tijuana said they remained in the dark about the details.

    Cesar Palencia, chief of migrant affairs in Tijuana, said he did not believe the city would be capable of attending to all of the asylum seekers, and that no new space had been set up to receive them.

    “We don’t see a strategy to attend to them,” he said. “It’s not in keeping with the law, and I consider it a violation of migrants’ rights.”

    Palencia was also concerned that the strategy would cause more people to be forced to remain in Mexico for the long term, and further limit their options to reenter the United States.

    “What happens if someone from Honduras goes in front of a judge and says, ‘My life is at risk, but I’ve been living in Mexico for three years’?” he said. “It seems like a method of denying them.”

    Leopoldo Guerrero Díaz, the secretary general of Tijuana, said that it was the responsibility of the Mexican government to prepare spaces for the migrants.

    He said El Barretal — a shelter established for 6,000 migrants who arrived en masse in November — had the space for more migrants, but that other shelters in the city were already at capacity.

    “Tijuana has traditionally received thousands of migrants, but not in the manner they’re arriving now. No city in the country has the capacity,” Guerrero Diaz said.

    Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, said it appears that the “various parts of the Mexican government aren’t on the same page” about cooperating with the United States.

    “My sense is that this is still in negotiation,” Selee said. “You get the sense the Mexican government is making up its collective mind.”

    “Since there’s nothing written down, there’s no actual formal agreement, all of this is going to be in flux for a while,” he said.

    Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, the agency’s union, and a vocal Trump supporter, said the president’s initiative will work only if it is rolled out across the entire southern border. If it is limited to legal ports of entry, he said, the plan will only spur migrants to cross illegally.

    “If it’s border-wide, it will be an absolute game changer,” Judd said. “It will drive illegal immigration down.”

    The top Democrats on the Senate and House Judiciary panels said Friday that the program was evidence that “the Trump administration is on a mission to take apart the asylum system,” founded upon the principle “that people fleeing for their lives cannot be turned away without a chance to make their case.”

    “Asylum seekers are easy prey for criminals and gangs in Mexico, but the Trump plan forces people to remain in harm’s way,” they wrote in a statement, accusing Trump of pursuing “nativist policies” that create “more chaos at the border, harming refugees instead of protecting them.”

    On its southern border, meanwhile, Mexico has been dealing with a different immigration issue: 13,000 people who left in a new caravan from Honduras last week are in line to enter legally. Though authorities have promised them they can stay anywhere in the country for at least one year, it has encouraged them to seek jobs in the country’s southern states.

    Yet many could attempt to make the trek north toward the U.S. border to request asylum.

    Muzaffar Chishti, the director of the Migration Policy Institute’s Office at the New York University School of Law, said the U.S. policy change is “intended to create a certain amount of order.”

    But it could have the opposite result.

    “You need the infrastructure in place to house and feed people,” he said. “If that’s not provided, it’s going to be a humanitarian crisis, or it’s going to be an incentive for people to give up entering at ports of entry.”

    The Center for Constitutional Rights, a nonprofit that has filed lawsuits against previous efforts by Trump to restrict migrants from seeking asylum, called the new policy “inhumane and unlawful.”

    “Rates of violence in U.S.-Mexico border towns are often as high or higher than they are in the countries asylum seekers are fleeing,” the group said in a statement. “People will die. They will die on both sides of the border, whether in Mexico because of organized crime, en route because of increased trafficking, or, because they will be forced to cross ­between ports of entry, on the U.S. side from exposure to the ­elements.”

    Mary Beth Sheridan in Mexico City and Maria Sacchetti and Karoun Demirjian in Washington contributed to this report.

    Read more

    For migrants in Tijuana, seeking asylum in U.S. starts with a worn notebook  

    While Washington focuses on the wall, Mexico fears its own border crisis  

    For Central Americans, children open a path to the U.S. — and bring a discount 

    Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

    Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news

    Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/mexico-rebukes–but-accepts–unilateral-us-move-to-return-asylum-seekers-pending-hearing/2019/01/25/52062470-202b-11e9-a759-2b8541bbbe20_story.html

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    Trump Repeats Unfounded Arguments in New Appeal for a Border Wall – The New York Times
    Trump Repeats Unfounded Arguments in New Appeal for a Border Wall – The New York Times

    The essence of Mr. Trump’s pitch for a border wall — that a porous border had led to a crime and drug epidemic — remained unchanged.

    Last year, he said, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement “removed 10,000 known or suspected gang members like MS-13 and members as bad as them.” (This is exaggerated; the agency reported it had removed 5,872 “known or suspected” gang members in the 2018 fiscal year.)

    In addition, Mr. Trump repeated the statistic that in the past two years, ICE “arrested a total of 266,000 criminal aliens inside of the United States, including those charged or convicted of nearly 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sex crimes and 4,000 homicides or, as you would call them, violent, vicious killings.” The figures include both charges and convictions, and each arrest may represent multiple offenses. The most common charges were traffic violations and drug and immigration offenses.

    “Drugs kill much more than 70,000 Americans a year and cost our society in excess of $700 billion,” the president said. The figures are accurate for overdose deaths and the economic costs of addiction. But a border wall would do little to prevent the 35 percent of overdose deaths involving prescription opioids or the $627.5 billion in costs incurred because of tobacco, alcohol and prescription drug addiction.

    Still, the president pressed the case.

    “I believe that crime in this country can go down by a massive percentage if we have great security on our southern border,” Mr. Trump said. “I believe drugs, large percentages of which come through the southern border, will be cut by a number that nobody will believe.”

    Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/25/us/politics/trump-shutdown-border-wall-fact-check.html

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    Tragic end to search for Spanish boy trapped in hole for 13 days – New York Post
    Tragic end to search for Spanish boy trapped in hole for 13 days – New York Post

    MADRID — Rescue crews in Spain early Saturday found the body of a 2-year-old boy, whose fall into a deep borehole 13 days earlier prompted a complex and heart-wrenching search-and-rescue operation that had the country holding its breath.

    Julen Rosello fell down the narrow 360-foot-deep borehole on Jan. 13 while his family was preparing a countryside Sunday lunch. Adding to the family’s tragedy, Spanish media had reported that his parents had another young son who died of a heart attack in 2017.

    Julen’s remains were found in the early hours of Saturday by rescuers digging a tunnel to reach him, said Alfonso Rodriguez, the Spanish government’s representative for the southern region of Andalusia. They were accompanied by a member of the Civil Guard, which then took charge of removing the body.

    Rodriguez said that the results of the boy’s autopsy would remain secret under a judicial commission following up with the accident’s investigation. The Civil Guard was investigating if the borehole had been made illegally.

    The tragedy had gripped Spaniards from day one and the country had followed closely every turn of an extremely complex operation, frequently hampered by layers of hard rock.

    Spain’s King Felipe VI and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez both offered their condolences to the family.

    “All of Spain shares in the infinite sadness of Julen’s family,” Sanchez wrote on Twitter. “We have followed each step taken to reach him. We will always be grateful for the tireless effort of those who worked to find him during these days. My support and warmth to his parents and loved ones.”

    Julen RoselloFacebook

    The dry waterhole, only 10 inches in diameter, was too narrow for an adult to get into and hardened soil and rock blocked equipment from progressing to the place two-thirds of the way down where the toddler was trapped.

    During the nearly two weeks of the ordeal, officials came up with several alternative routes to the toddler. A series of small explosions set off since Thursday afternoon, including a fourth one late on Friday, helped the crews make their way through a 12 ½-foot-long horizontal tunnel to the cavity.

    Before that tunnel could be dug some 230 feet underground, a vertical shaft was drilled during days of painstaking engineering to bring miners and rescue experts up and down.

    The difficulty of the operation had prompted Jorge Martin, a spokesman with the Malaga province Civil Guard, to say: “We have to be very careful, here the mountain is in control.”

    Only hair that matched Julen’s DNA was found in the borehole and no other verbal or visual contact had been established with him. Despite that, officials had refused to speculate over whether the boy could have survived so long.

    In one of the few media interviews the child’s parents gave before the body was found, father Jose Rosello said the family was “heartbroken” by the long wait but hoping for “a miracle.”

    El Pais reported that the couple had lost Julen’s older brother, Oliver, when the 3-year-old suffered a heart attack during a walk on the beach two years ago.

    Source Article from https://nypost.com/2019/01/26/tragic-end-to-search-for-spanish-boy-trapped-in-hole-for-13-days/

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    How to stop a Covington Catholic screw-up from happening again – Washington Examiner
    How to stop a Covington Catholic screw-up from happening again – Washington Examiner

    Last Friday, during the March for Life at the Lincoln Memorial, a junior in high school became the target of society’s collective hatred. Nick Sandmann was quickly dubbed a racist who embodied everything wrong in Trump’s America, and became the subject of online vitriol and rage, from death threats to calls to dox him and his classmates.

    The initial story fell apart by Monday. The narrative that pushed Sandmann and his fellow high schoolers as the bigots who’d mobbed an elderly Native American man was proven false, and the mea culpas began rolling in from outlets like The Atlantic and the New York Times. As The Atlantic’s Caitlin Flanagan put it, “The Media Botched the Covington Catholic Story.”

    So why did so many commentators, including elite journalists, jump to attack Sandmann armed with nothing more than an out-of-context video clip?

    The traditional argument is that when we’re online, we can be anonymous, and that encourages our worst impulses. As Likeable, a social media marketing agency, put it, “If you could steal from a bank and you knew no one could identify you, would you? Our identity helps keep our actions in check because we must be responsible for those actions afterward.” Anonymity removes that check. But this explanation falls short. Most of Sandmann’s attackers were loud and proud, not hiding behind anonymous profiles.

    The truth behind these online pile-ons is almost completely the opposite. Online pile-ons are a very public form of virtue signaling, aided by the unique psychological triggers of social media. Social media platforms designed their products to trigger a neurological response when someone engages with your post. Sean Parker, founding president of Facebook, says, “Whenever someone likes or comments on a post or photograph, we give you a little dopamine hit.” Dopamine is associated with feelings of euphoria and bliss, and we’re hardwired to seek out hits of the chemical.

    Unfortunately, an effective way to get dopamine-inducing likes and retweets on social media is to tweet savagely about your political opponents, because it gets your fans fired up. You also get points for being early — social media rewards trend-setters, not followers. When college professor Reza Aslan tweeted about Sandmann’s “punchable face,” he was rewarded with more than 23,000 dopamine-inducing likes.

    By contrast, calm and moderate posts rarely go viral. “Let’s wait and see what all the facts are” takes may age well, but they don’t viscerally engage fans’ emotions. Getting the story right matters, and not just because getting it wrong reduces the credibility of journalists and news organizations. There are real victims to these online pile-ons. In the case of Nick Sandmann, powerful elites with hundreds of thousands of followers publicly attacked a high schooler whose ability to fight back was limited.

    How can we stop our collective rush to judgment?

    A good place to start would be to adopt the following policy when we’re evaluating something our political opponents did that looks very bad: If the situation were reversed and it were my political allies under fire, would I rush to judgment, or would I look for additional context? If we’d do so when our allies were at risk of looking bad, then we have a moral obligation to do the same when it’s our opponents.

    When we’re savagely tweeting about a breaking controversy, we should also take a moment and ask ourselves how our tweets will age if we’re wrong. Tweeting about a high schooler’s “punchable” face, as Aslan did, wouldn’t look great even if Aslan was right that the high-schooler in question was racist. But as details emerged that contradicted Aslan’s assumptions, his tweet began to look worse and worse. A few moments of humility (“What if my analysis of the situation is wrong?”) could have saved a lot of journalists from looking bad while also preventing a lot of trauma for innocent high schoolers.

    We’re living in a brave new world where social media incentivizes savagery and a rush to judgment. A little cultivated empathy and humility could help.

    Julian Adorney (@Julian_Liberty) is a Young Voices contributor.

    Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/how-to-stop-a-covington-catholic-screw-up-from-happening-again

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    Trump’s border wall drama isn’t over. This is just intermission – Washington Examiner
    Trump’s border wall drama isn’t over. This is just intermission – Washington Examiner

    With airports jammed with angry passengers, Republican senators blaming each other behind closed doors for the government shutdown, and President Trump’s poll numbers tanking, the writing was on the wall. Feeling pressure from his fellow Republicans to reopen the government, Trump announced Friday afternoon that a deal was reached for federal employees to come back to work as negotiations on border security are given a little more time.

    A week ago, the White House was firm on its demand: Parts of the government will remain shuttered until Democratic lawmakers write a $5.7 billion check for a border wall. Trump’s capitulation (and make no mistake, it was a capitulation) is a complete reversal of the White House position and a blowout win for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in her first month back on the job.

    Trump, however, remained defiant. At the same time he asked lawmakers to work in unison for the benefit of the nation, he threatened to use the nuclear option if Congress can’t come up with a solution. “I have a very powerful alternative, but I did not want to use it at this time,” Trump said in the White House Rose Garden. “Hopefully, it will be unnecessary.”

    That “very powerful alternative” Trump is referring to is a declaration of national emergency, a proclamation that would provide him with a way to get his border wall money without having to go through the normal legislative process. Ordinarily, the executive branch is constitutionally barred from spending any taxpayer money on any program unless Congress explicitly authorizes and appropriates the funds. Outside of declaring war or authorizing the use of military force, the ability to appropriate funds, or not, is the legislative branch’s most coveted power.

    Lawmakers from both political parties protect the power of the purse with every fiber of their being because it’s one of the few tactics Congress can employ to pressure the president. Trump’s declaring of a national emergency would rip that power away. If lawyers in the executive branch can argue that there is indeed a dire national emergency along the southwestern border with Mexico, billions of dollars in the military construction budget will be made available for the border structure Trump so desperately wants. Trump could task the Army Corps of Engineers to start building right away.

    Democrats, who are as strongly opposed to a border wall as Trump is enamored by it, would not be powerless bystanders if the president tried to do an end-run around Congress. They could technically prohibit any money from being used for construction of a border barrier through legislation, although GOP opposition would likely kill it. They could file a lawsuit against Trump, arguing that his emergency declaration is not, in fact, an emergency, but rather an instigation of an artificial crisis in order to justify an unjustifiable project.

    A lawsuit would work itself through the court system and wind up in the Supreme Court, where the case could prove to be one of the most important trials of executive power since the fight over military commissions in the George W. Bush era. The border wall could become a proxy war between the executive and legislative branches, a classic battle over constitutional power that the judiciary would have to arbitrate. If Trump loses that fight, the precedent it would set would impact the flexibility of presidents in the future to tap into their emergency powers.

    Trump may decide that a national emergency is too big of a step. The House Freedom Caucus, Trump’s most reliable support base on Capitol Hill, has already questioned whether an emergency proclamation is a smart idea. Lawmakers such as Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows are concerned that a declaration now could provide a future Democratic president with the power to do something similar on progressive priorities like climate change. The White House may gamble on another government shutdown, perhaps believing that the public would blame Democrats for being too obstructionist this time around.

    Either way, the three-week government reopening shouldn’t be celebrated as a major breakthrough. The end of the longest shutdown in history may turn out to be the intermission to the meatier second act.

    Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.

    Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/trumps-border-wall-drama-isnt-over-this-is-just-intermission

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    Gregg Jarrett: Stone indictment shows no evidence of Trump-Russia ‘collusion’ – Fox News
    Gregg Jarrett: Stone indictment shows no evidence of Trump-Russia ‘collusion’ – Fox News
    Video

    Jarrett: Roger Stone indictment doesn’t show Trump-Russia ‘collusion’

    Roger Stone arrested by FBI in early morning raid; where were the raids for Hillary Clinton and others? Panel reaction on ‘Hannity.’

    The indictment of President Trump’s former political adviser Roger Stone – who was arrested Friday on charges of obstruction of an official proceeding, making false statements and witness tampering – demonstrates yet again that there is no known evidence of Trump-Russia “collusion.”

    Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been investigating allegations since May 2017 that Donald Trump or people on his presidential campaign may have worked with Russia to win the 2016 election. There’s no question that if Mueller believed he had proof of such activity the special counsel would have charged Stone with some collusion-related offense involving a conspiracy.

    Significantly, Stone wasn’t charged with anything involving collusion. In fact, not a single person has been charged with the alleged crime Mueller was appointed to investigate.

    FBI’S SHOW OF FORCE IN ROGER STONE ARREST SPURS CRITICISM OF MUELLER TACTICS

    Instead, in his indictment of Stone, Mueller chose to do what he has done so often – bring charges that were generated by his own investigation. These are commonly referred to as “process crimes.” That is, they are offenses against the legal process. Such offenses typically occur when someone interferes with the procedures of an investigation.

    Nowhere in Mueller’s indictment is it alleged that Stone conspired, coordinated or colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election.

    This is not to minimize “process crimes.” They are serious violations of the law. No person should ever lie, mislead or obstruct a legitimate law enforcement investigation.

    However, the distinction between a principle crime and a process crime is significant. The former is an independent criminal act. The latter is derived from the investigation into whether such an act ever occurred.

    “I will plead not guilty to these charges,” Stone told reporters after his arrest and appearance in federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “I will defeat them in court. This is a politically motivated investigation.”

    So far, Mueller’s exhaustive probe has produced no evidence and no indictments in support of his original mandate. The special counsel has little to show for his efforts that have cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars and hobbled the president with unfounded accusations from the moment he took office.

    So far, Mueller’s exhaustive probe has produced no evidence and no indictments in support of his original mandate. The special counsel has little to show for his efforts that have cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars and hobbled the president with unfounded accusations from the moment he took office. 

    The inexorable truth is that a nefarious plot supposedly hatched between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in the bowels of the Kremlin was a hoax all along – it simply never happened.

    As President Trump has said many times, “there was no collusion.”

    In fact, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign paid for unverified Russian information and then fed it to the FBI and Justice Department in a scheme to damage Trump, her political opponent.

    Hence, Trump-Russian “collusion” was nothing more than a clever and devious invention. Clinton-Russian “collusion” was authentic and one of the dirtiest tricks in modern American politics.

    The FBI became complicit in the scheme to frame Trump in a series of wrongful, if not corrupt, decisions.

    First, the bureau should never have launched its initial investigation in July 2016 that later developed into the Mueller probe. It had no probable cause and no credible evidence to justify its probe.

    Second, the FBI should never have misused an unverified anti-Trump “dossier” composed by a discredited and biased source in order to get a warrant to spy on a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser. In the process, the FBI and Justice Department withheld evidence from an intelligence court and deceived the judges who issued the wiretap warrants.

    And finally, a special counsel should never have been appointed. Under federal regulations there must first be some evidence of a crime to appoint a special counsel. No such evidence existed.

    Had it not been for the misconduct of the FBI and the Justice Department, there would never have been an investigation for Stone to allegedly obstruct – meaning that no indictment would have been handed down against him.

    The plain truth is that the improper existence of Mueller’s investigation created the crimes Stone stands accused of committing.

    The indictment against Stone suggests he may have had some advance knowledge or inside information about the content of hacked Clinton campaign emails that were released by WikiLeaks in the summer of 2016.

    WikiLeaks has never said how it obtained the emails. It has been reported that Russian intelligence operatives were responsible for the hacks.

    While Stone’s efforts to garner details about the emails and pass them along to the Trump campaign surely makes for a tantalizing story, this activity is not a crime. At the time, hundreds of journalists – including me – were contacting sources or attempting to elicit further information directly from WikiLeaks. None of us has been accused of a crime.

    Stone appears to have speculated or projected that the hacked emails would be highly damaging to Clinton’s campaign. This, of course, was stating the obvious.

    An examination of Stone’s emails shows that he offered little more than the same information that WikiLeaks had already stated publicly. Stone’s mistake, if any, is that he created the appearance that he knew more than he actually did.

    But millions of people exaggerate their knowledge about all sorts of things every day to make themselves seem smarter or more important than they really are. They don’t wind up getting charged with committing any crimes.

    Unless it can be shown that Stone was somehow involved in the actual hacking of the Clinton emails, he violated no felony laws. This is why he was not charged with a conspiracy crime.

    Five of the charges against Stone are for making false statements during the Mueller investigation. These will be exceedingly difficult for the special counsel to prove. The statute governing these offenses (18 U.S.C. 1001) requires proof that the false statements be made “knowingly and willfully.”

    A faulty memory or a diminished recollection is not sufficient to sustain the specific intent requirement of the criminal charge. If Stone recalled events differently than Mueller interprets them it is not a crime.

    Moreover, Stone amended some of his testimony with corrected statements. These this will be introduced as evidence in his defense.

    The charges of witness tampering and obstruction of an investigation may be more problematic for Stone. Much will depend on the facts as they are developed.

    For now, Mueller’s indictment of Stone should be read through a skeptical lens. Prosecutors only present their own slanted version of events. At trial, Stone’s defense attorneys will present his countervailing evidence and arguments. Like all defendants, Stone must be presumed innocent unless prosecutors can prove him guilty.

    Sadly, Mueller’s “process charges” against Stone and others in the Trump orbit represent selective and unequal prosecution when compared with their treatment of allies of Clinton.

    Neither top Clinton aides Huma Abedin nor Cheryl Mills were charged with giving false statements to the FBI during their 2016 interviews about Clinton’s email scandal, in which Clinton improperly used a private email server instead of the required State Department secure email system when she was secretary of state.

    Abedin and Mills both insisted they knew nothing about Clinton’s private email server until after she departed the State Department. Yet email exchanges proved their statements were clearly false.

    Former FBI Director James Comey said that no prosecutions of Abedin and Mills were justified, dismissively telling the House Judiciary Committee: “There’s always conflicting recollections of facts.”

    This from the same guy who twisted the facts and contorted the law to clear Clinton from the felony statutes she so flagrantly violated. Comey misconstrued the law in a manner that could only have been deliberate. He then weaponized the law to investigate Trump without legal justification or credible evidence.

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    The same double-standard of justice is now being applied by Comey’s long-time friend and ally, Robert Mueller.

    President Trump’s enemies are desperate to find something – anything – in the Mueller investigation that points to wrongdoing by Trump because they want to see the president impeached and forced from office. So far, nothing that has been made public is the “smoking gun” they fantasize about that could show Trump engaged in any criminal activity.

    CLICK HERE TO READ MORE BY GREGG JARRETT

    Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/gregg-jarrett-stone-indictment-shows-no-evidence-of-trump-russia-collusion

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