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BuzzFeed’s story depends on Trump being heard on tape – Washington Examiner

BuzzFeed’s extraordinary report last night suggests that President Trump conspired to induce perjury and obstruct justice. It has excited many Democrats. But even if BuzzFeed is correct in its central assertion — that two federal law enforcement sources say Trump told his former attorney, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress — I’m not convinced it’s a major problem for the president. Unless, that is, law enforcement has audio recordings of Trump or his most inner circle speaking to that effect.

The key here is the burden of proof. According to BuzzFeed, he “personally instructed [Cohen] to lie” to Congress about when the Trump organization ended its effort to build a hotel in Moscow. If this is true, Trump would appear to be guilty of at least three federal criminal offenses: obstruction of justice, perjury, and conspiracy.

But it’s not enough for prosecutors to believe this to be true; they must be able to prove it. And from BuzzFeed’s report at least, it’s not at all clear if they have the means of doing so.

BuzzFeed claims that emails and interviews from Trump organization staffers have corroborated investigators’ belief in Trump’s guilt, but that’s unlikely to be enough to prosecute. What investigators need is a forensic, unimpeachable link that ties Trump to an unlawful conspiracy.

I sincerely doubt that emails or other notes would be enough because Trump’s defense team could allege someone else sent those notes without Trump’s knowledge or without his approval. But the biggest weakness here is Cohen himself. Whether you believe Cohen’s cooperation with the government is an act of contrition or an act to save himself from even more prison time, Cohen is ultimately a weak prosecution witness. He is a proven liar with an obvious conflict of interest. Any defense team would have a field day with Cohen. They would suggest that everything he says is about saving himself by offering up a bigger fish.

A winning prosecution would need forensic evidence that someone very close to the president, such as his son-in-law Jared Kushner or son Donald Trump Jr., was engaged in a conspiracy on the president’s behalf. Indeed, prosecutors would likely decline the case on the basis that the presumptive harm to the nation would outweigh the low likelihood of conviction.

This is not to say that Trump is out of the woods. He may face significantly more damaging revelations in relation to Russia in the months ahead.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/buzzfeeds-story-depends-on-trump-being-heard-on-tape

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Nancy Pelosi has a blank check, and she’d rather spite Trump than cash it – Washington Examiner

The president and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., have made it abundantly clear that this is all a performance to them.

Trump had two years of Republican control of the House and Senate and failed to prioritize his premier campaign promise: increased border security. A GOP-controlled Congress didn’t pass so much as an e-verify expansion bill, let alone secure funding for his wall. He waited until the eleventh hour before he lost control of the House to stamp his foot and demand last-minute funding for the wall. He then shut down the government and declared it an act of bravery.

In theory, Trump handed a blank check to Pelosi. Trump owns the shutdown, and he needs to end it. For $5.7 billion in wall funding, Pelosi can ask for almost anything she wants.

But she hasn’t. Rather than secure the fates of 700,000 Dreamers and demand that the president grant them amnesty in order to achieve his beloved wall, she’s simply sneered in his face, glowing in the approval of the #Resistance for hurting Drumpf’s feelings and refusing to give him what he wants. You want your wall? Well you can’t have it, loser! Take that, President Cheeto!

Think about it. Pelosi has a blank check that costs a mere $5.7B, a drop in our multi-trillion dollar budget. Yet she’d rather spite Trump and leave hundreds of thousands of government workers without paychecks than actually cash in her potential prize.

The generous conclusion here is that we’re being ruled by children. The honest one is that we’re ruled by tyrants.

Our corrupt ruling class would rather posture to their bases than actually win anything for them. The shutdown’s economic costs aren’t just threatening our gross domestic product and stock markets. There are actual lives in financial and physical danger.

The shutdown will put the safety of the border, the very entity the president shut down the government to protect, in real jeopardy if it continues. The shutdown has effectively halted all Border Patrol training, and because most Department of Homeland Security recruiters are furloughed, the department is hemorrhaging staffers without hiring new ones.

If the shutdown continues for another week, federal district courts will run out of funds, halting civil proceedings. Federal workers will go a second pay cycle without a check.

States are clamoring to issue February food stamp funds to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients early, as the program has no proper funding past January. By March, the 38 million SNAP recipients — the majority of whom are children, elderly, or disabled — will likely receive no funding for food.

All of this ignores the businesses, from Walmart to local grocers, who rely on SNAP spending and customers who are federal employees without pay for their revenue.

And according to congressional staffers talking to McKay Coppins at the Atlantic, the politicians orchestrating the whole charade couldn’t care less. Coppins reports:

I spoke to one congressional staffer who wondered aloud whether it might take a stressed-out air-traffic controller causing a plane crash to bring an end to the shutdown. And several aides worried that some kind of terrorist incident would end up serving as the catalyst to get the government up and running again …

Even if some of their worst-case shutdown scenarios remain unlikely — there are still plenty of paths forward that don’t include body counts — the defeatism on display is revealing. It exposes the extent to which the latter-day crisis of faith in America’s core political institutions has infected even the members of the institutions themselves.

On Wednesday night, I spoke with a Democratic House aide who confessed that she was ambivalent about the shutdown. The battle had unified her party, with Democrats linking arms in defense of their ideals and in defiance of Trump. Polls suggested that a majority of Americans were with them, and that the ‘optics’ of the fight were good. ‘While it may be horrible for the country,’ she said of the shutdown, ‘it’s fine for the party.’

I’ve already made the case that the government is an unreliable employer, and the shutdown demonstrates the number of agencies, from the Transportation Security Administration to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, that must be privatized, downsized, or abolished completely. But those should be thoughtful, intentional decisions, not based on political posturing that punishes and blindsides millions of average Americans as collateral damage so our wealthy overlords can pander to their fans.

Trump needs to sit the speaker down and offer to fill that blank check with something significant enough that she can call it a win. Pelosi needs to accept the political opportunity of strong-arming Trump into a valuable concession that could help, say, 700,000 people in legal jeopardy who have already assimilated with our culture and contributed, as well as the moral cost of continuing this shutdown, all to keep a few billion bucks from the president’s hands.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/nancy-pelosi-has-a-blank-check-and-shed-rather-spite-trump-than-cash-it

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China’s proposed trade deal is a con job designed specifically for Trump – Washington Examiner

On Friday, markets jumped in response to news of a potential deal to end the ongoing trade war between the United States and China. Naturally, investors are happy just to hear that. But China’s proposal, to boost imports of U.S. goods and cut back on America’s trade deficit with China, won’t solve any of the core issues that sparked the trade war in the first place.

Does China cheat on trade? Definitely — and unfortunately, this proposal won’t stop Beijing from doing so. It merely indulges President Trump’s obsession with the trade deficit.

But trade deficits are not an economic problem. They reflect the fact that that U.S. consumers, with more buying power than their Chinese counterparts, purchase more goods. When Chinese companies profit from that spending, they look for profitable ways to invest that money. That means that they often look to the United States with its strong economy and currency, investing in companies, real estate, and industry. That investment is a good thing for the economy.

But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t real problems with Chinese trade.

As Trump has pointed out, Chinese companies have repeatedly engaged in forced technology transfer, the practice of compelling U.S. companies to hand over intellectual property to Chinese counterparts in exchange for market access. Chinese firms have also flat-out stolen technology for U.S. and other foreign companies. In addition, China confers unfair legal advantages on its own companies with state support. They exclude foreign competitors almost entirely from certain markets, such as the Internet, and they fail to uphold intellectual property protections.

Perhaps most worryingly, China has also used interactions with foreign companies for military and state security gains. Companies that obtain foreign technology have been implicated in sharing that technology with the Chinese military and government. Huawei, for example, has recently been accused of violating international sanctions, supporting rogue states such as Iran as well as acting as a state-sponsored espionage threat as it partners with countries to roll out 5G networks.

Those are very real and serious concerns, and none of them are addressed in the current proposal.

Investors, however, seem pleased that there’s a chance to end the trade war that is costing the economy at least $1.4 billion each month. But this deal, far from being an economic cure-all, might actually exacerbate some of the real problems. Indeed, the U.S. has already moved to limit what types of goods can be exported to China for fear of their use in military operations.

Even if the U.S. goes for the current deal and ends the tariffs, Washington will still eventually have to deal with real trade issues presented by China. With this proposed deal, China is playing Trump at his own game: talking up his misguided understanding of trade deficits while pitching a “fix” that solves none of the real trade problems.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/chinas-proposed-trade-deal-is-a-con-job-designed-specifically-for-trump

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President Trump, North Korean Leader Kim Agree To Second Meeting Next Month – NPR

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Trump shake hands prior to their meeting in Singapore in June 2018.

Evan Vucci/AP

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Evan Vucci/AP

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Trump shake hands prior to their meeting in Singapore in June 2018.

Evan Vucci/AP

Updated at 3:53 p.m. ET

President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have agreed to a second meeting following their initial summit last year.

“President Donald J. Trump met with Kim Yong Chol for an hour and half, to discuss denuclearization and a second summit, which will take place near the end of February. The President looks forward to meeting with Chairman Kim at a place to be announced at a later date,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders announced after Trump met Friday in the Oval Office with the North Korean envoy.

Trump first met with Kim in June 2018 in Singapore, and the two appeared to form an unlikely bond after Trump had previously criticized Kim on Twitter, slamming him as “Little Rocket Man.”

But at the summit, Trump touted securing a commitment from Kim for North Korea to move toward denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula. However, reports since then have suggested the country has continued to develop nuclear weapons and missile technology.

Sanders told reporters after the 90-minute meeting, which Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also attended, that sanctions would remain on North Korea until the White House sees the country achieve full denuclearization. However, she said the administration had seen “good steps and good faith moves” from North Korea, including releasing three American hostages just before the first summit.

The prospect of a second summit has long been talked about. South Korean President Moon Jae-in returned from a meeting last fall with Kim saying the North Korean leader wanted to meet with Trump again.

Kim reiterated his wish for another meeting with Trump during a New Year’s address, however he also warned he might ramp up the country’s nuclear weapons production if the U.S. does not end its economic sanctions against North Korea.

Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2019/01/18/686645247/president-trump-north-korean-leader-kim-agree-to-second-meeting-next-month

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Three Parts to This Weekend Winter Storm – LEX18 Lexington KY News

LEX 18 News is the leading news and information provider in Central Kentucky. LEX 18 News offers the most compelling and comprehensive coverage on-air, online and through mobile technologies.

P.O. Box 1457
Lexington, KY 40588-1457

Source Article from https://lex18.com/weather/2019/01/18/three-parts-to-this-weekend-winter-storm/

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U.S. regulators have met to discuss imposing a record-setting fine against Facebook for privacy violations – The Washington Post

(Richard Drew/AP)

January 18 at 4:09 PM

U.S. regulators have met to discuss imposing a record-setting fine against Facebook for violating a legally binding agreement with the government to protect the privacy of its users’ personal data, according to three people familiar with the deliberations but not authorized to speak on the record.

The fine under consideration at the Federal Trade Commission, a privacy and security watchdog that began probing Facebook last year, would mark the first major punishment levied against Facebook in the United States since reports emerged in March that Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy, accessed personal information on about 87 million Facebook users without their knowledge.

The penalty is expected to be much larger than the $22.5 million fine the agency imposed on Google in 2012. That fine set a record for the greatest penalty for violating an agreement with the FTC to improve its privacy practices.

The FTC’s exact findings in its Facebook investigation and the total amount of the fine, which the agency’s five commissioners have discussed at a private meeting in recent weeks, have not been finalized, two of the people said. Staff has briefed the commissioners about their probe, the third person said, and plan to issue a formal recommendation for a fine soon — a move that would then trigger a vote by the commissioners.

Facebook also has talked with FTC staffers about the investigation, one of the people familiar with the probe said, but it is unclear whether the company would settle with the FTC by accepting a significant financial penalty.

The FTC, which has been shut down amid the lapse in government funding, could not be reached for comment. FTC Chairman Joseph Simons did not respond to a request for comment. Facebook declined to comment.

On Friday, privacy advocates strongly urged the FTC to take aggressive action against Facebook. “The agency now has the legal authority, the evidence, and the public support to act. There can be no excuse for further delay,” said Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which helped to bring about the FTC’s 2011 charges against Facebook.

The key question for the FTC is whether Facebook’s business practices — and the protections and privacy controls it afforded consumers — violated requirements spelled out in a consent decree brokered by the agency the last time it accused the tech giant of deceiving its users. Only through such a finding could the FTC levy a fine.

The agreement requires Facebook to notify users, and seek their permission, before data is shared with third parties in a way that differs from existing privacy settings. The legally binding order also mandates that Facebook obtain users’ affirmative permission before sharing their data with third parties, and requires the tech giant to tell the FTC in the case others misuse that information. It prohibits Facebook from making deceptive statements about its privacy practices and institute outside checkups on the way it uses data.

Privacy advocates have charged that Facebook violated the terms of that agreement repeatedly, as evidenced by its entanglement with Cambridge Analytica. The data firm, which had ties to the Trump campaign, improperly harnessed personal information about the social networking site’s users to better target voters with political messages. Cambridge Analytica relied on researchers to assemble a quiz app that collected names, locations, interests and other data from those who installed it, as well as their friends.

The incident, brought to light by a former Cambridge Analytica employee, sparked an international backlash. Regulators around the world threatened to punish Facebook and rein in the data-collection practices of its Silicon Valley peers. Lawmakers in the U.S. Congress summoned Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify for the first time on Capitol Hill, where he apologized to lawmakers for the privacy violations.

Since the Cambridge Analytica probe came to light, other privacy troubles with Facebook have emerged — including details about its data-sharing agreements with smartphone and TV device-makers, banks and other major businesses and a full roster of third-party apps. More federal fines could still follow as the FTC investigates those matters, two of the people familiar with the probe said.

The penalty would mark the toughest punishment to date levied on Facebook for mishandling its users’ data. Regulators in the United Kingdom assessed a roughly $640,000 fine that Facebook is appealing. The attorney general of the District of Columbia has mounted a lawsuit against the tech giant for its missteps.

The FTC has issued large fines in recent years against companies that deceive consumers. It required Volkswagen in 2016 to spend more than $14 billion to settle charges related to its mishandling of emissions tests, for example, and it forced LifeLock, an identity-protection company, to pay more than $100 million for failing to secure its data. Some of that money was returned to LifeLock consumers.

Recommendations for fines made by FTC staff, however, are not always adopted by the five-member commission. In a 2012 investigation against Google, agency staff concluded that the search giant had abused its monopoly power and issued a formal recommendation to the commissioners challenging Google’s practices. The commissioners voted unanimously to end the investigation after Google agreed to voluntarily change some of his practices, a move that led to widespread frustration among agency staff, one of the people said.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/01/18/us-regulators-have-met-discuss-imposing-record-setting-fine-against-facebook-some-its-privacy-violations/

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