Diario de Noticias

Kamala Harris tells business leaders: Success shouldn’t be vilified – Washington Examiner

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., on Tuesday told a business-orientated crowd at a breakfast in New Hampshire that success should be celebrated rather than scorned.

“So this discussion from my perspective is not about saying, you know, people who have worked hard and gained success should be vilified. I don’t believe that, I applaud that, that’s pursuit of the American Dream,” Harris said in New Hampshire. “But I also recognize, and if we’re having an honest conversation we must all recognize, that the rules aren’t applying equally to all people in our country, that not all people in our country have equal access to a path toward success.”

The first-term senator and former California attorney general on Tuesday said some of her ideas to address inequality included repealing the tax reforms introduced by President Trump and congressional Republicans, instead rolling out a tax credit aimed at alleviating some housing costs for eligible recipients.

Harris, who spent President’s Day in New Hampshire, made the comments at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics’ “Politics and Eggs” speaker series, an event frequently attended by business leaders. The trip is her first to the early-voting state since she announced her White House bid last month. Her remarks come after many Democratic presidential contenders have criticized billionaires, specifically Howard Schultz and Michael Bloomberg, who are considering 2020 runs.

Harris promised she would compete in the state against other Democratic candidates.

“One of the first questions I was asked, and so I’m bringing this up because I just want to get this off the table, do you plan on spending any time here? Are you going to compete here?’ Harris said Tuesday. “And I want to let everybody know I plan on competing hard in New Hampshire, and plan on doing well here.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, who vied for the Democratic 2016 presidential nomination, bested Hillary Clinton in the state that year by more than 20 percentage points. Sanders entered the 2020 race on Tuesday morning, vowing this time would be different because he’s “going to win.”

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/kamala-harris-tells-business-leaders-success-shouldnt-be-vilified

30 views no comments

Uranium Ore Stored At Grand Canyon Park Museum Unlikely To Have Been Dangerous – NPR

The safety director at Grand Canyon National Park says people may have been exposed to radiation from three buckets of uranium ore that sat for years in a museum collection building. Whether the amount of exposure was unsafe has not been determined.

Rhona Wise/AFP/Getty Images

hide caption

toggle caption

Rhona Wise/AFP/Getty Images

The safety director at Grand Canyon National Park says people may have been exposed to radiation from three buckets of uranium ore that sat for years in a museum collection building. Whether the amount of exposure was unsafe has not been determined.

Rhona Wise/AFP/Getty Images

For many years, three buckets full of uranium ore sat in a museum building at Grand Canyon National Park. Tours often visited the museum collection building, with children on tours sitting next to the buckets for a half-hour.

Recently, the park’s safety, health and wellness manager, Elston “Swede” Stephenson, sent out an email to National Park Service employees and approached the Arizona Republic to warn that people in the building were “exposed” to radiation.

Whether that proximity was unsafe has not been determined. Simply being near uranium ore is unlikely to result in an unsafe dose of radiation.

“Uranium can be harmful to people’s health depending on the amount and grade of ore, how people interact with it and the exposure time,” Jani Ingram, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Northern Arizona University, tells the Associated Press.

But, she says, “You can’t say, ‘Oh my gosh, all those kids are going to develop cancer in five years’ because you just don’t know how close they were, how long they were there,” she said. “But that open bucket was probably the most concerning. It seemed that maybe whoever it was didn’t understand what they had.”

Stephenson sent an email to employees on Feb. 4, warning that if they had gone in the museum collections building between 2000 and June 18, 2018, “you were ‘exposed’ to uranium by OSHA’s definition.”

How was the uranium discovered after all that time? In March 2018, the teenage son of a park service employee had a Geiger counter that detected radiation in the collection room, Stephenson said. The buckets had apparently been in a basement for decades before being moved to the museum.

Stephenson told the Republic that he immediately contacted a park service specialist to report the uranium ore. A few days later, technicians arrived.

Photos provided to the newspaper by Stephenson show technicians arriving in June 2018 to take away the buckets of uranium ore. The technicians reportedly dumped the buckets at an old uranium mine 2 miles away, then for some reason brought the buckets back to the building.

Stephenson said the park didn’t do anything to warn workers or tourists that they had perhaps been exposed to unsafe levels of radiation, despite a Right to Know law that he said requires disclosing the incident.

“My first interest is the safety of the workers and the people,” he told the Republic. He is especially concerned about kids who were potentially exposed to radiation, at levels he calculated to be 1,400 times the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s safe level for children.

Dennis Wagner, the Republic reporter who broke the story, said that Stephenson approached the newspaper to get the word out to the public after his efforts to get the park service to warn the public went nowhere.

Grand Canyon National Park Public Affairs Officer Emily Davis said that the park service is coordinating an investigation with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

“A recent survey of the Grand Canyon National Park’s museum collection facility found radiation levels at background levels — the amount always present in the environment — and below levels of concern for public health and safety,” Davis said in a statement to NPR. “There is no current risk to the public or park employees. The museum collection facility is open and work routines have continued as normal. The NPS takes public and employee safety and the response to allegations seriously. We will share additional information about this matter as the investigation continues.”

OSHA confirms to NPR that it has opened an investigation into the matter.

This isn’t Stephenson’s first time raising alarms about a dangerous working environment, the Republic reports:

“Stephenson, a military veteran who is certified as an occupational safety and health technician, was in a similar controversy during his time in the Navy. According to court records, he began calling for action to prevent falls after a series of accidents in 2016.

“As complaints escalated, Stephenson was fired. He turned to the Office of Special Counsel, a federal agency that protects whistleblowers, and his termination was stayed. It is unclear how that case was resolved, but within months, Stephenson had a new job with the National Park Service.

“Stephenson said the uranium exposure saga developed while he was pursuing a racial-discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity office. Stephenson is African-American.”

Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2019/02/19/696001017/grand-canyon-museum-reportedly-had-buckets-of-uranium-sitting-around-for-18-year

40 views no comments

Dan Bongino: Like Comey and Brennan, McCabe finds impetus of Trump probe ‘inarticulable’ – Fox News

Video

McCabe says he briefed Congress on Trump probe with no objections

Did you notice how, during the Andrew McCabe interview with “60 Minutes,” the former FBI acting director kept talking about “articulable facts?”

Like ex-CIA boss John Brennan and disgraced former FBI Director James Comey, McCabe was coining his own phrase to explain why the intelligence community started spying the Trump team. But the justification for mounting a probe should not lie in weasel words. It belongs in something known in law enforcement circles as “Paragraph One.”

Paragraph One in federal investigations lays out precisely why the investigation began and how. You can’t skip over it with fanciful phrases or empty verbiage. Yet, in the case of the counter-intelligence probe that targeted Team Trump, it has been two years and we are still waiting for someone to articulate a clear reason why the program began.

MCCABE: ‘NO ONE’ IN CONGRESSIONAL LEADERSHIP OBJECTED WHEN TOLD OF FBI’S TRUMP PROBE

McCabe told Scott Pelley the FBI had a bunch of “articulable facts,” but he didn’t bother to articulate them. Earlier, Comey told Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier the investigation was justified by a “mosaic of facts.” The impetus was described by Brennan in still another interview as the “corpus of intelligence.”

Is anybody ever going to describe what this is? Put yourself in Trump’s shoes. He is being investigated as a potential traitor to the United States for colluding with a foreign power and no one has yet described why they were investigating the Trump team during the campaign.

Here’s why they can’t say what the “articulable facts,” “mosaic,” or “corpus” really are. Because it was the dossier, commissioned and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and later thoroughly discredited that prompted the never-ending probe. It was compiled by Trump-hating ex-British spy Christopher Steele, on behalf of Fusion GPS, which was hired by a law firm which in turn contracted with Clinton to get dirt – real or fake – on Trump. The dossier was the “predicate crime,” but now that it has been debunked, it is pretty hard to acknowledge what a house of cards this whole investigation has been.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

McCabe has already admitted the Justice Department would never have gotten a FISA warrant to investigate Trump, which gave them the power to monitor him, without the dossier. But you won’t hear him, Brennan or Comey say that anymore.

When the truth is no longer “articulable,” you have to get creative.

CLICK HERE TO HEAR MORE FROM THE DAN BONGINO SHOW

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/dan-bongino-like-comey-and-brennan-mccabe-finds-impetus-of-trump-probe-inarticulable

27 views no comments

Ahead of second summit, Trump says he’s in ‘no rush whatsoever’ on North Korean denuclearization – The Washington Post

February 19 at 4:23 PM

President Trump said Tuesday that he is in “no rush whatsoever” on North Korean denuclearization, setting low expectations for his summit next week with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Trump and Kim will meet on Feb. 27 and 28 in Hanoi, following on their meeting in Singapore last June.

Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he had a “great conversation” about the trip with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Tuesday morning. Moon’s administration has said it is hopeful that Trump and Kim can achieve “specific” progress toward denuclearization, although some observers have voiced skepticism about the effectiveness of Trump’s approach.

Trump said that while he would “ultimately” like to see North Korea denuclearize, he has “no pressing time schedule” because “the sanctions are on.”

“We’re in no rush whatsoever,” the president told reporters. “We’re going to have our meeting . . . As long as there’s no testing, I’m in no rush. If there’s testing, that’s another deal.”

He added that he will be speaking with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday and that he expects next week’s summit with Kim to be “very exciting.”

Trump had long mocked Kim as “Little Rocket Man.” But he took a different tone after their summit last year. In a tweet this month, Trump predicted that “North Korea will become a different kind of Rocket — an Economic one!”

Trump has repeatedly argued that if he had not been elected president, the United States would “be in a major war” with North Korea, a claim that some experts have criticized as overblown.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ahead-of-second-summit-with-kim-trump-says-hes-in-no-rush-whatsoever-on-north-korean-denuclearization/2019/02/19/a72b9d20-3487-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e9_story.html

29 views no comments

Trump to nominate Jeffrey Rosen to replace Rod Rosenstein as deputy attorney general – CBS News

In this image provided by the Department of Transportation, deputy transportation secretary Jeffrey Rosen is shown in his official portrait in Washington. President Trump has nominated Rosen to be the next deputy attorney general.

Department of Transportation via AP

President Trump intends to nominate Jeffrey A. Rosen as deputy attorney general, the White House said Tuesday. Rosen, who is currently deputy transportation secretary, will replace Rod Rosenstein, who is expected to leave his post in mid-March, CBS News reported earlier Tuesday.

Rosesntein was expected to leave after Attorney General William Barr was confirmed and was to stay on for a few weeks after Barr was confirmed by the Senate, in order to ensure a smooth transition, CBS News’ Paula Reid reported. Rosenstein always saw his post as a two-year position, Reid was also told previously.

It’s unclear what Rosenstein’s departure means for the special counsel’s investigation. He was tasked with oversight of the probe after Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself. It was Rosenstein who appointed Robert Mueller special counsel. Once Matthew Whitaker was named acting attorney general, he assumed oversight of the special counsel investigation. Barr, who has been confirmed as attorney general, is expected to assume oversight of the investigation.

Before joining the Transportation Department, Rosen was a senior partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, according to the White House.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to leave post at Justice Department

Source Article from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jeffrey-rosen-replacing-rod-rosenstein-deputy-attorney-general-donald-trump-2019-02-19/

26 views no comments

GOP threatens retaliation against Dems probing ‘ridiculous conspiracy theory’ on White House-Saudi nuclear tie – Fox News

Video

House Democrats open inquiry into proposed deal for US to help build nuclear power facilities in Saudi Arabia

House Republicans are pushing back against a new Democratic-led probe into an alleged plot by White House officials to share nuclear-power technology with Saudi Arabia, saying it amounts to a defamatory “conspiracy theory” and warning of consequences.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee opened the investigation on Tuesday amid claims by several unnamed whistleblowers who said they witnessed “abnormal acts” in the White House regarding a proposal to build dozens of nuclear reactors across the Middle Eastern kingdom.

According to an interim congressional report citing whistleblowers within the Trump administration, the nuclear effort was pushed by former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was fired in early 2017 for lying to Vice President Mike Pence and FBI agents. Derek Harvey, a National Security Council official brought in by Flynn, purportedly continued work on the proposal.

Now, congressional Republican officials are warning that Democrats — including Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the chairman of the House oversight panel — could face ethics referrals.

“The attack on Mr. Harvey is a ridiculous conspiracy theory floated by media partisans and now, shamefully, championed by Democrats in Congress,” House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence communications director Jack Langer told Fox News. “Members of Congress who defame staff members for political purposes will be reported to the Ethics Committee.”

Michael Flynn at a 2017 news briefing in the White House. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Lawmakers from both parties have expressed concerns that Saudi Arabia could develop nuclear weapons if the U.S. technology is transferred without proper safeguards.

FATEFUL CALL: ONETIME FBI DEPUTY DIRECTOR REVEALS THE ‘ONE THING’ THAT STOOD OUT TO HIM ABOUT CONVERSATION WITH FLYNN

The congressional report comes as Trump has made the Saudi kingdom a centerpiece of his foreign policy in the Middle East. This, as he tries to further isolate Iran, which is backing rebels against Saudi Arabia in a deadly proxy war in Yemen. In the process, Trump has brushed off criticism over the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and the Saudis’ role in the war in Yemen.

At the same time, Trump son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner is developing a Middle East peace plan that could include economic proposals for Saudi Arabia.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the congressional report.

Relying on the whistleblower accounts, email communications and other documents, the committee’s report details how National Security Council (NSC) and ethics officials supposedly warned that the actions of Flynn and a senior aide could run afoul of federal conflict-of-interest law and statutes governing the transfer of nuclear tech to foreign powers.

Flynn is awaiting sentencing for lying to the FBI in the ongoing probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 elections.

A status conference is set in his case for Mar. 13.

On Tuesday, a person close to Flynn’s legal team told The Associated Press that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team has reviewed the matters raised in the congressional report, and that no charges related to it have been filed. The person spoke on condition of anonymity, for lack of authorization to publicly discuss the ongoing investigation.

Congressional investigators are also probing the role of Tom Barrack, a proponent of the nuclear proposal who ran Trump’s presidential inaugural committee, which is under separate investigation by federal prosecutors in New York. Rick Gates, a former Barrack employee and cooperator in Mueller’s investigation, was also involved in advocating for the nuclear proposal.

A spokesman for Barrack said in a statement that he will cooperate with the House probe.

“Mr. Barrack’s engagement in investment and business development throughout the Middle East for the purpose of better aligned Middle East and U.S. objectives are well known, as are his more than four decades of respected relationships throughout the region,” the statement said, noting that Barrack never joined the Trump administration.

Pakistani protesters rally to condemn a visit of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince to Pakistan, in Lahore, Pakistan, Friday, Feb. 15, 2019. Pakistan said Wednesday that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will arrive in Islamabad later this week on an official visit that is expected to include the signing of agreements for billions of dollars of investment in Pakistan. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)

Harvey did not immediately return a request for comment.

According to the congressional report, the whistleblowers came to the committee because they had concerns “about efforts inside the White House to rush the transfer of highly sensitive U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia in potential violation of the Atomic Energy Act and without review by Congress as required by law — efforts that may be ongoing to this day.”

A 2017 article by the nonprofit news outlet ProPublica detailed some of the concerns raised inside the National Security Council about the nuclear proposal — known as the “Marshall Plan for the Middle East” — advocated by a company called IP3 International.

DEM REP CALLS TRUMP SAUDI ARABIA’S ‘B—-‘

IP3 is led by a group of retired U.S. military officers and national security officials, including retired Rear Adm. Michael Hewitt, retired Army Gen. Jack Keane and former Reagan National Security Adviser Bud McFarlane.

IP3 and other proponents of nuclear power in the Middle East argue that the U.S. needs to be involved because otherwise it will lose out to Russia, China and others on billions of dollars in business. They also say that U.S. involvement — and the limits on nuclear fuel that come with it— are essential to stem an arms race in the region.

“The only way to address concerns over development of weapons of mass destruction is for the U.S. to participate in the introduction and secure operation of international nuclear power plants,” the company said in a statement Tuesday. It also said it “looks forward to sharing what we know” with the House committee.

Up until the month before he joined the Trump administration, Flynn listed himself on public documents as an adviser to an iteration of Hewitt’s company advocating for the nuclear power proposal.

Last year, IP3 told The Washington Post that Flynn was offered a role in the company but never formally came aboard. On Tuesday, the company said Flynn “was never an advisor to IP3 or its affiliate, he had no stake in the company and was never compensated or reimbursed for expenses by IP3.”

FILE – In this file photo of Nov. 2, 2006, cooling towers of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant are reflected in the Susquehanna River in this time exposure photograph in Middletown, Pa. Forty years after Three Mile Island became synonymous with America’s worst commercial nuclear power accident, the prospect of bailing out nuclear power plants is stirring debate at the highest levels of Pennsylvania and the federal government. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

Still, according to the report, Flynn served as a conduit for IP3 inside the White House.

Just days after Trump’s inauguration, the company sent Flynn a draft memo for the president’s signature that would have appointed Barrack as a “special representative” in charge of carrying out the nuclear power proposal and called on the director of the CIA and the secretaries of State, Energy, Treasury and Defense to lend him support. The report also quotes former Deputy National Security Adviser K.T. McFarland as saying Trump personally told Barrack he could lead the plan’s implementation.

The report also catalogs the actions of Harvey, the Flynn confidant who was put in charge of the NSC’s Middle East and North African affairs.

CLICK TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

According to the report, upon entering the White House in January 2017, Harvey saw his mission as getting Trump to adopt the nuclear proposal despite the objections of ethics and national security officials.

Even when H.R. McMaster, who replaced Flynn as national security adviser, and NSC lawyer John Eisenberg directed that work stop on the proposal because of concerns about its legality, Harvey continued pursuing the proposal, according to the report.

Harvey was fired from the NSC in July 2017. He then joined the staff of GOP Rep. Devin Nunes of California, a Trump ally and the former hairman of the House intelligence committee.

Fox News’ Catherine Herridge and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gop-threatens-retaliation-against-dems-probing-ridiculous-conspiracy-theory-on-white-house-saudi-nuclear-tie

29 views no comments

Trump administration moves to pull funding for California bullet train – NBC News

Amid a social media feud between President Trump and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, the federal government announced its intention Tuesday to cancel nearly $1 billion in pending funding for the state’s long-planned, high-speed train.

In a letter to California High-Speed Rail Authority CEO Brian P. Kelly on Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Transportation outlined the government’s reasons for pulling funding. The state has not come up with its own promised funding, will miss a 2022 completion target and has recently reconfigured the project outside the bounds of a federal pact for funding, railroad chief Ronald L. Batory wrote.

The federal department will “de-obligate” $928,620,000 in promised cash, but California will be given a chance to argue its case, Batory said in the letter. He also said the Trump administration is “exploring all available legal options” to recover $2.5 billion in past federal grants for the project.

An illustration of California’s high-speed rail project.CA.gov

Newsom last week announced plans to scale back the $77 billion project. Rather than taking travelers between Los Angeles and San Francisco as originally envisioned, the train will now seek to bridge the Central Valley cities of Bakersfield and Merced.

Construction of that 160-mile stretch is underway.

Trump reacted to Newsom’s announcement on Twitter last week: “California has been forced to cancel the massive bullet train project after having spent and wasted many billions of dollars. They owe the Federal Government three and a half billion dollars. We want that money back now. Whole project is a ‘green’ disaster!”

The governor responded by noting that the project had not been scrapped and that the president was “desperately searching” for money to fund his proposed border wall.

Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-administration-moves-pull-funding-california-bullet-train-n973396

37 views no comments

2 American Wives of ISIS Militants Want to Return Home – The New York Times

They began talking about making a run for it, and they said they shared their growing horror over the choices they had made.

“It’s hard to change your mind-set when you have lost everything and sacrificed everything. Even if you feel a tug that tells you something’s not right here, this isn’t O.K., and that there’s too many holes here, something’s wrong, I think it’s very, very difficult when you feel like you have burned bridges, to know how to shift,” Ms. Polman said.

ISIS forbade anyone to leave, planting land mines and using snipers to shoot down anyone who tried. But last month, Ms. Muthana said, she decided to give it a try by latching on to a Syrian family who left Shafa at dusk.

All she took was her baby and his stroller, she said. When darkness fell, the group got lost and spent the night in the frigid cold, she said.

The next day, Jan. 10, she completed the journey and surrendered to American troops in the Syrian desert, who fingerprinted her.

Days later, Ms. Polman followed the same route and surrendered as well. Weeks later, after having no contact from the American or Canadian authorities, she and Ms. Muthana reached out to the Red Cross to get help. They are also in touch with a lawyer who is trying to help navigate their return to North America.

Ms. Muthana gave a handwritten note to the lawyer.

“I realized how I didn’t appreciate or maybe even really understand how important the freedoms that we have in America are. I do now,” she wrote. “To say that I regret my past words, any pain that I caused my family and any concerns I would cause my country would be hard for me to really express properly.”

Mr. Hughes, the deputy director of the George Washington University Program on Extremism, said the United States had an obligation to bring her home — “albeit in handcuffs.”

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/19/us/islamic-state-american-women.html

35 views no comments

New York Times makes ‘obstruction of justice’ case against Trump while admitting there’s ‘no evidence’ in long report – Washington Examiner

An extensive New York Times story published Tuesday purports to take you “inside” President Trump’s “Two-Year War on the Investigations Encircling Him.” But save yourself the precious time and read Trump’s tweets instead.

The news out of the lengthy piece is an allegation that Trump late last year asked then-acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker if it was possible to appoint U.S. Attorney General for Southern New York Geoffrey Berman, a White House ally, to lead the district’s investigation into Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty in November to charges of perjury, tax evasion, and campaign finance violations.

The Times reported that Whitaker “knew he could not put Mr. Berman in charge, since Mr. Berman had already recused himself from the investigation” and admitted that “there is no evidence that he took any direct steps to intervene in the Manhattan investigation.”

That’s the extent of news in the story, which otherwise recounts everything Trump has said on Twitter or in news interviews — that he was disappointed with former Attorney General Jeff Sessions recusing himself from the Russia probe, that he thought ridding himself of former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former FBI Director James Comey would quell the investigation, and that he believes there are conflicted elements at the highest levels of the DOJ working against his presidency.

The Times report asserts that Trump’s conduct has “exposed him to accusations of obstruction of justice,” but Trump has made all of his thoughts on all of his actions public over the course of more than a year, and the Times didn’t change anything by repeating it.

The article is an excellent source of information, however, if you want to know what mood Trump was in during any number of private conversations with his advisers.

[Also read: Why Trump doesn’t like Ann Coulter anymore]

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/new-york-times-makes-obstruction-of-justice-case-against-trump-while-admitting-theres-no-evidence-in-long-report

28 views no comments

McCabe says ‘it’s possible’ Trump’s a Russian asset – Fox News

Video

Andrew McCabe believes ‘it’s possible’ President Trump is a Russia asset

Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe makes sensational new claim on his book tour; reaction from former National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton and Isaac Wright, partner at Forward Solution Strategy Group.

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said in an interview Tuesday that he believes it is possible that President Trump is a Russian asset and thinks “that’s why we started our investigation.”

McCabe has said in the past that the FBI had a good reason to launch a counterintelligence investigation into whether Trump was working with Russia and was a possible national security threat.

Video

The former official was asked on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” if he believes Trump may still be a Russian asset. He said he’s “anxious” to see the conclusion of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Kellyanne Conway, the White House counselor, told the network that McCabe’s comment is “hardly [worth] dignifying with a response.”

“He’s a liar and a leaker,” she said.

GET THE FOX NEWS APP

McCabe was also asked if he believes Trump is fit to serve. He said it was not up to him to make the determination.

On Sunday, McCabe told CBS News’ “60 Minutes” that he met with investigators after ex-FBI Director James Comey’s firing.

“I was very concerned that I was able to put the Russia case on absolutely solid ground, in an indelible fashion,” McCabe said. “That were I removed quickly, or reassigned or fired, that the case could not be closed or vanish in the night without a trace.”

He added, “I wanted to make sure that our case was on solid ground and if somebody came in behind me and closed it and tried to walk away from it, they would not be able to do that without creating a record of why they made that decision.”

McCabe was fired from the Justice Department last year after being accused of misleading investigators during an internal probe into a news media disclosure. Trump has slammed McCabe over Twitter, accusing the ex-official of plotting a coup with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mccabe-says-its-possible-trumps-a-russian-asset

29 views no comments

Covington High student’s legal team sues Washington Post – Fox News

Video

Attorney for Covington Catholic High School student sues Washington Post for $250 million

The 22-page lawsuit claims the Washington Post ignored journalistic standards and bullied Nick Sandman for three days.

Attorneys representing the Kentucky high school student involved in a confrontation that went viral on social media last month announced Tuesday that they were suing The Washington Post for $250 million in compensatory and punitive damages.

The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Kentucky, accused The Post of practicing “a modern-day form of McCarthyism” by targeting Nicholas Sandmann and “using its vast financial resources to enter the bully pulpit by publishing a series of false and defamatory print and online articles … to smear a young boy who was in its view an acceptable casualty in their war against the president.”

Washington Post spokesperson Kris Coratti told Fox News in an email that the paper was “reviewing a copy of the lawsuit, and we plan to mount a vigorous defense.”

COLORADO TEACHER FACES TERMINATION AFTER MISIDENTIFYING COVINGTON STUDENT, CALLING HIM ‘HITLER YOUTH’

Sandmann, a junior at Covington Catholic High School, became a target for outrage after a video of him standing face-to-face with a Native American man, Nathan Phillips, while wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat surfaced in January. Sandmann was one of a group of students from Covington attending the anti-abortion March for Life in Washington, D.C., while Phillips was attending the Indigenous Peoples’ March on the same day.

Sandmann and the Covington students were initially accused of initiating the confrontation, but other videos and the students’ own statements showed that they were verbally accosted by a group of black street preachers who were shouting insults both at them and a group of Native Americans. Sandmann and Phillips have both said they were trying to defuse the situation.

CONSERVATIVE LEADERS DEMAND APOLOGY FOR MEDIA TREATMENT OF COVINGTON STUDENTS

The lawsuit claims The Post “ignored the truth” about the incident and says the paper “falsely accused Nicholas of … ‘accost[ing]’ Phillips by ‘suddenly swarm[ing]’ him in a ‘threaten[ing]’ and ‘physically intimidat[ing]’ manner … ‘block[ing]’ Phillips path, refusing to allow Phillips ‘to retreat,’ ‘taunting the dispersing indigenous crowd,’ [and] chanting, ‘Build that wall,’ ‘Trump2020,’ or ‘Go back to Africa,’ and otherwise engaging in racist and improper conduct. …”Sandmann’s attorneys accuse The Post of publishing seven “false and defamatory” articles about the incident between Jan. 19 and 21 and claim the paper “knew and intended that its false and defamatory accusations would be republished by others, including media outlets and others on social media.”

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Earlier this month, Sandmann’s attorneys sent preservation letters to more than 50 media organizations, celebrities and politicians — including The Post, The New York Times, CNN, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and actors Alyssa Milano and Jim Carrey — the first step in possible libel and defamation lawsuits.

Last week, investigators hired by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Covington concluded that the students did not instigate the confrontation with Phillips. Bishop Roger Foys, who initially condemned the students’ behavior, wrote in a letter to parents that they had been “placed in a situation that was at once bizarre and even threatening.”

Fox News’ Lucia I. Suarez Sang and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/us/covington-high-students-legal-team-sues-washington-post

61 views no comments

Dan Bongino: Like Comey and Brennan, McCabe finds impetus of Trump probe ‘inarticulable’ – Fox News

Video

McCabe says he briefed Congress on Trump probe with no objections

Did you notice how, during the Andrew McCabe interview with “60 Minutes,” the former FBI acting director kept talking about “articulable facts?”

Like ex-CIA boss John Brennan and disgraced former FBI Director James Comey, McCabe was coining his own phrase to explain why the intelligence community started spying the Trump team. But the justification for mounting a probe should not lie in weasel words. It belongs in something known in law enforcement circles as “Paragraph One.”

Paragraph One in federal investigations lays out precisely why the investigation began and how. You can’t skip over it with fanciful phrases or empty verbiage. Yet, in the case of the counter-intelligence probe that targeted Team Trump, it has been two years and we are still waiting for someone to articulate a clear reason why the program began.

MCCABE: ‘NO ONE’ IN CONGRESSIONAL LEADERSHIP OBJECTED WHEN TOLD OF FBI’S TRUMP PROBE

McCabe told Scott Pelley the FBI had a bunch of “articulable facts,” but he didn’t bother to articulate them. Earlier, Comey told Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier the investigation was justified by a “mosaic of facts.” The impetus was described by Brennan in still another interview as the “corpus of intelligence.”

Is anybody ever going to describe what this is? Put yourself in Trump’s shoes. He is being investigated as a potential traitor to the United States for colluding with a foreign power and no one has yet described why they were investigating the Trump team during the campaign.

Here’s why they can’t say what the “articulable facts,” “mosaic,” or “corpus” really are. Because it was the dossier, commissioned and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and later thoroughly discredited that prompted the never-ending probe. It was compiled by Trump-hating ex-British spy Christopher Steele, on behalf of Fusion GPS, which was hired by a law firm which in turn contracted with Clinton to get dirt – real or fake – on Trump. The dossier was the “predicate crime,” but now that it has been debunked, it is pretty hard to acknowledge what a house of cards this whole investigation has been.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

McCabe has already admitted the Justice Department would never have gotten a FISA warrant to investigate Trump, which gave them the power to monitor him, without the dossier. But you won’t hear him, Brennan or Comey say that anymore.

When the truth is no longer “articulable,” you have to get creative.

CLICK HERE TO HEAR MORE FROM THE DAN BONGINO SHOW

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/dan-bongino-like-comey-and-brennan-mccabe-finds-impetus-of-trump-probe-inarticulable

30 views no comments

Thanks to Trump’s national emergency, Congress might actually do its job – Washington Examiner

With these simple, pro-forma words, a national emergency was declared on Friday, February 15, to fund President Trump’s most important pet project, a wall (or should it be called a “barrier?”) along the southwestern U.S.-Mexico border: “NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America…hereby declare that a national emergency exists at the southern border of the United States.” Enter another political bombshell into the Washington, D.C., maelstrom — one certain to end up on the dockets of the black-robed justices of the Supreme Court.

With this emergency declaration, Trump will have the power to tap billions of dollars in the Pentagon budget ordinarily off-limits without congressional approval: $600 million will be taken from the Treasury Department’s forfeiture funds account, $2.5 billion will be swiped from the Pentagon’s counter-drug programs, and $3.6 billion will be re-appropriated from military construction projects. In addition to the roughly $1.3 billion in the latest government funding bill, Trump will have a total of $8 billion at his disposal to expand physical border barriers west of the Rio Grande.

More interesting than where the money is coming from and how the inevitable lawsuits will turn out is the irony of this entire affair. By a single stroke of his pen, Trump managed to shock lawmakers out of their coma with respect to emergency powers. It’s as if Congress suddenly discovered that it actually possessed the ability to block a president from exercising the extensive authorities granted to him during a national emergency.

The National Emergencies Act is one of those laws presidents have used to increase their power during extraordinary circumstances. Except extraordinary has now become ordinary. The Brennan Center of Justice has documented 59 national emergencies (Trump’s border emergency will be the 60th) in the 42 years the NEA has been in effect. Not including Trump’s recent declaration, 32 of those 59 emergencies are still germane. The only time a national emergency has been declared over was when a president no longer found them to be useful. It’s perfectly understandable if one believed that Congress has no say in the matter at all.

This, however, couldn’t be further from the truth. Congress is actually given tremendous power under the NEA, including the ability to end a national emergency the president invokes. In fact, Congress is supposed to meet every six months to review an emergency and determine whether a vote to terminate it is appropriate. Not once has Congress done what the law requires it to do. Not once has Congress met to review an emergency on the books, let alone voted to kill one.

This nauseating history may now come to an end thanks to Trump. Congressional Democrats are already drafting a resolution of disapproval to put on the House floor. Given the Democratic majority in the House, the resolution would most definitely pass if it’s introduced. There seem to be enough Senate Republicans nervous about the precedent Trump’s declaration would set for the willingness of future presidents to levy emergency authority that it could even pass the upper chamber.

Trump would veto any resolution of disapproval that comes to his desk, and his veto would likely be sustained courtesy of loyal Senate Republicans. But the bigger point stands: lawmakers, after four decades of sitting in the peanut gallery and twiddling their thumbs, will actually go through the trouble of following a law Congress itself passed.

Democrats will be reluctant to admit it, but Trump will deserve a big share of the credit for getting the legislative branch to do the job its members were elected to do: abide by the law. That would be no small accomplishment in an era when budgets are late, the government is constantly at risk of shutting down, committee hearings are exercises in partisan warfare, and Senate confirmations languish.

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/thanks-to-trumps-national-emergency-congress-might-actually-do-its-job

31 views no comments

Bernie Sanders: ‘I’m not crazy about getting rid of the filibuster’ – Washington Examiner

Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who on Tuesday announced he was running for president, surprisingly said, “I’m not crazy about getting rid of the filibuster.”

In reality, maintaining the requirement that major legislation needs 60 votes to pass makes it effectively impossible that his sweeping proposals will ever get enacted.

In an interview with CBS This Morning, host John Dickerson asked Sanders, “Is it possible to have bipartisan ‘Let’s reason together’ in Washington, or do you need to do things like get rid of the filibuster to get through some of the systemic things that block Republicans and Democrats?”

“No, I’m not crazy about getting rid of the filibuster,” Sanders replied. He went on to say, “the problem is, people often talk about the lack of comity, but the real issue is you have a system in Washington that is dominated by wealthy campaign contributors.”

Eliminating the filibuster would seem to be a prerequisite for passing items such as free college, free healthcare, job guarantees, and many other of the massive proposals that Sanders is known for championing. It will be hard enough to get to 51 votes for any of them, but 60 Senate votes would mean getting Republicans to vote for the most radically Left agenda in the history of the U.S.

What’s bizarre is that even as Democrats are embracing policies that are way outside where the median Senator is, they have been so reluctant to call for the end of an enormous roadblock. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who has endorsed both “Medicare for all” and the “Green New Deal,” also recently dismissed the idea of nixing the filibuster, saying, “if you don’t have 60 votes yet, it just means you haven’t done enough advocacy and you need to work a lot harder.”

But it was somewhat more understandable in her case, given that earlier in her career she was more of a traditional liberal.

Sanders, however, has been openly fantasizing about a revolution for decades, and yet he’s somehow attached to this procedural requirement?

One wonders if the experience of the Trump presidency, while in one sense has made Democrats feel less beholden to norms, has in the other sense made them reluctant to remove institutional barriers that could be used by a future Republican president. After all, Democrats have seen how former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s nuking of the filibuster for nominations has allowed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to confirm a flood of Trump judges with relative ease, including two Supreme Court justices.

Though there’s little space to Sanders’ left, his comment has created an opening for an enterprising opponent to making killing the filibuster a central part of his or her campaign, thus demonstrating more commitment to the nuts and bolts of enacting a transformative agenda.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/bernie-sanders-im-not-crazy-about-getting-rid-of-the-filibuster

32 views no comments

Michael Flynn behind shady White House plan to sell Saudi Arabia nuclear tech – Vox.com

A new report from House Democrats reveals disturbing new details about a secretive effort by top Trump administration officials to sell sensitive nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia — in defiance of at least some of the nation’s ethics statutes.

The House Oversight and Reform Committee on Tuesday released a report — accompanied by a tranche of internal White House emails — detailing a scheme spearheaded by now-disgraced former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to sell technology for roughly 40 nuclear power plants to Saudi Arabia.

The plan was already known due to previous reporting by the Wall Street Journal, for example, but the Democrats’ report does add more insight into what was happening behind the scenes to push the proposal through.

The effort was part of a broader Middle East economic development plan Flynn began putting together before Trump’s inauguration while he was serving as an adviser to Trump’s campaign and transition team.

During that same time period, though, Flynn was also working as an adviser for a private company called IP3 International — a firm run by retired US military generals that bills itself as a “global enterprise to develop sustainable energy and security infrastructure.”

In other words, a company that had a clear financial interest in exporting US nuclear energy technology to Saudi Arabia.

Once Trump was inaugurated, Flynn, along with longtime Trump associate Thomas Barrack, worked with other senior officials in the new Trump administration to make the plan a reality.

And it seems they got pretty far: On January 27, 2017 — just seven days after the inauguration — several of the retired generals from IP3 went to the White House to meet with Derek Harvey, a senior staffer on Trump’s National Security Council at the time, to discuss the nuclear plan for Saudi Arabia.

“Immediately after the meeting,” the House report states, “Mr. Harvey directed the NSC staff to add information about IP3’s ‘plan for 40 nuclear power plants’ to the briefing package for President Trump’s call with [Saudi Arabia’s] King Salman.”

As of now it seems the proposal is still under consideration, but there’s no indication one way or the other that the president will agree to it. At a minimum, the White House is still in discussions to sell nuclear equipment to Saudi Arabia despite fierce Democratic opposition.

On the surface, the proposed nuclear deal makes sense: An American business would make a lot of money — possibly billions of dollars — selling nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia, and Riyadh would get a new energy source to power its economy.

But the problem, as some White House officials warned those involved, is that Flynn and Barrack’s scheme was potentially illegal.

What it takes for the US to sell nuclear equipment to Saudi Arabia

For the US to sell nuclear technology to a foreign country, it must sign what’s known as a “123 agreement.” That comes from Section 123 of the 1954 US Atomic Energy Act, which establishes the criteria for the US to sell nuclear materials to other countries.

If a country wants to buy nuclear equipment from the US — say, a nuclear reactor — it must meet nine conditions, including a guarantee that it will not use the technology to make nuclear weapons. Congress doesn’t have to approve the sale.

But according to the Democrats’ report, Harvey, the senior National Security Council staffer (who is also a close Flynn ally), ignored all of that “and insisted that the decision to transfer nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia had already been made.”

If true, that means Harvey tried to make the deal happen without arranging for Saudi Arabia to sign the 123 agreement. That’s potentially dangerous, as that could allow Riyadh to pursue a nuclear weapon with US-sold equipment down the line.

On top of that, there’s also the issue of Michael Flynn’s personal involvement in the deal. Flynn used to consult for IP3, ad “whistleblowers” who spoke with House Democrats were concerned about the national security adviser skirting ethics rules.

White House ethics officials apparently brought all of this up. According to the report, one senior political official apparently felt Harvey’s proposal was “not a business plan,” but rather “a scheme for these generals to make some money.” That same official then added: “Okay, you know we cannot do this.”

Clearly, their warnings were ignored — which may be why the whistleblowers spoke to congressional Democrats in the first place.

The big story here is Democrats stepping up their oversight of Trump’s foreign policy

As I said earlier, the broad outlines of this scheme have already been known for a while now, thanks to reporting from the Wall Street Journal and others.

Flynn’s history of pushing specific policies while being on the payroll of the primary beneficiaries of said policies is also well documented. And Barrack, the longtime Trump associate who worked with Flynn to make the Saudi nuclear deal happen, has been extremely vocal about his support for Saudi Arabia.

But armed with insider information and internal documents from those whistleblowers, House Democrats were able to put together a report that fills in a lot of the gaps and shines new light on how this whole Saudi nuclear deal went from being an idea cooked up by Flynn and a few retired generals to a serious policy being pursed at the highest levels of the White House.

This is exactly what Democrats promised to do when they took the House last November. Democratic Congress members and staffers told me they would oversee every aspect of Trump’s foreign policy, from his use of the military to his foreign connections.

If the report didn’t come out, it’s entirely possible that the White House would have an easier time signing the nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia. That outcome is now in doubt, and any effort to make an agreement will likely be met with stiff resistance from Democrats in Congress.

That means Trump’s ability to conduct global affairs as he wishes is now curtailed. Tuesday’s report is at least a warning shot — but it could be a sign of bigger things to come.

Here’s the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s report.

Source Article from https://www.vox.com/world/2019/2/19/18231812/saudi-arabia-nuclear-flynn-trump-democrats

38 views no comments

Watchdog sues DOJ for any secret recordings Rod Rosenstein made in the White House – Washington Examiner

A conservative watchdog is suing the Justice Department for any recordings Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein may have made while attending meetings in the White House.

Judicial Watch announced a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit on Wednesday, which seeks all records of communications between Rosenstein, the office of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe about using the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump from office.

The lawsuit, filed last week in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, also seeks all audio or visual recordings made by any official in the Office of the Attorney General or Deputy Attorney General of meetings in the executive office of the president or vice president.

The announcement of a lawsuit comes in the midst of an explosive media tour by McCabe, who is promoting his new book, in which he has provided on-the-record corroboration of months-old reports that Rosenstein told Justice Department officials about wearing a “wire” to record conversations with Trump and that he had discussed invoking the 25th Amendment against the president to remove him from office in the days after FBI Director James Comey was fired in the spring of 2017.

The Justice Department claims his version of events was “inaccurate and factually incorrect” and that Rosenstein never authorized the use of a wire to secretly record Trump.

Meanwhile, Trump has accused McCabe and Rosenstein of planning to carry out an “illegal and treasonous” plan against him.

Judicial Watch said it filed its lawsuit after the DOJ ignored three separate FOIA requests dating back to September, around when it was first reported Rosenstein had discussed the 25th Amendment and a secret wire, seeking records from between April 1, 2017 and May 31, 2017.

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment for this report.

“It is no surprise that we are facing an immense cover-up of senior FBI and DOJ leadership discussions to pursue a seditious coup against President Trump,” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said in a statement. “This effort to overthrow President Trump is a fundamental threat to our constitutional republic so Judicial Watch will do everything it can in the courts to expose everything possible about this lawlessness.”

A DOJ source told CNN on Sunday that Rosenstein plans to leave the department by mid-March but that it has nothing to do with McCabe’s claims over the past couple days and that Rosenstein always intended to leave after helping with the transition for his successor upon the confirmation of William Barr to be attorney general.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/watchdog-sues-doj-for-any-secret-recordings-rod-rosenstein-made-in-the-white-house

30 views no comments

New York Times makes ‘obstruction of justice’ case against Trump while admitting there’s ‘no evidence’ in long report – Washington Examiner

An extensive New York Times story published Tuesday purports to take you “inside” President Trump’s “Two-Year War on the Investigations Encircling Him.” But save yourself the precious time and read Trump’s tweets instead.

The news out of the lengthy piece is an allegation that Trump late last year asked then-acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker if it was possible to appoint U.S. Attorney General for Southern New York Geoffrey Berman, a White House ally, to lead the district’s investigation into Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty in November to charges of perjury, tax evasion, and campaign finance violations.

The Times reported that Whitaker “knew he could not put Mr. Berman in charge, since Mr. Berman had already recused himself from the investigation” and admitted that “there is no evidence that he took any direct steps to intervene in the Manhattan investigation.”

That’s the extent of news in the story, which otherwise recounts everything Trump has said on Twitter or in news interviews — that he was disappointed with former Attorney General Jeff Sessions recusing himself from the Russia probe, that he thought ridding himself of former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former FBI Director James Comey would quell the investigation, and that he believes there are conflicted elements at the highest levels of the DOJ working against his presidency.

The Times report asserts that Trump’s conduct has “exposed him to accusations of obstruction of justice,” but Trump has made all of his thoughts on all of his actions public over the course of more than a year, and the Times didn’t change anything by repeating it.

The article is an excellent source of information, however, if you want to know what mood Trump was in during any number of private conversations with his advisers.

[Also read: Why Trump doesn’t like Ann Coulter anymore]

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/new-york-times-makes-obstruction-of-justice-case-against-trump-while-admitting-theres-no-evidence-in-long-report

30 views no comments

New York Times makes ‘obstruction of justice’ case against Trump while admitting there’s ‘no evidence’ in long report – Washington Examiner

An extensive New York Times story published Tuesday purports to take you “inside” President Trump’s “Two-Year War on the Investigations Encircling Him.” But save yourself the precious time and read Trump’s tweets instead.

The news out of the lengthy piece is an allegation that Trump late last year asked then-acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker if it was possible to appoint U.S. Attorney General for Southern New York Geoffrey Berman, a White House ally, to lead the district’s investigation into Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty in November to charges of perjury, tax evasion, and campaign finance violations.

The Times reported that Whitaker “knew he could not put Mr. Berman in charge, since Mr. Berman had already recused himself from the investigation” and admitted that “there is no evidence that he took any direct steps to intervene in the Manhattan investigation.”

That’s the extent of news in the story, which otherwise recounts everything Trump has said on Twitter or in news interviews — that he was disappointed with former Attorney General Jeff Sessions recusing himself from the Russia probe, that he thought ridding himself of former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former FBI Director James Comey would quell the investigation, and that he believes there are conflicted elements at the highest levels of the DOJ working against his presidency.

The Times report asserts that Trump’s conduct has “exposed him to accusations of obstruction of justice,” but Trump has made all of his thoughts on all of his actions public over the course of more than a year, and the Times didn’t change anything by repeating it.

The article is an excellent source of information, however, if you want to know what mood Trump was in during any number of private conversations with his advisers.

[Also read: Why Trump doesn’t like Ann Coulter anymore]

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/new-york-times-makes-obstruction-of-justice-case-against-trump-while-admitting-theres-no-evidence-in-long-report

41 views no comments