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Axios @axios Unpublished research indicates that the Delta variant causes more severe illness and spreads as easily as chickenpox, and that vaccinated people may transmit the strain as easily as those who are unvaccinated, according to an internal CDC presentation.
Internal CDC presentation warns: "The war has changed"
https://www.axios.com/cdc-delta-variant-masking-b2b12c7a-d52f-4d45-84e1-02ae8a233438.html
12:47 PM · Jul 30, 2021·SocialFlow
THREAD
Unpublished research indicates that the Delta variant causes more severe illness and spreads as easily as chickenpox, and that vaccinated people may transmit the strain as easily as those who are unvaccinated, according to an internal CDC presentation. https://t.co/j3M8lj81tr
— Axios (@axios) July 30, 2021
Scammers targeting families of missing people, Hamilton police say
Police say people should call them if they receive suspicious text messages
Bobby Hristova · CBC News · Posted: Jul 26, 2021 3:00 PM ET | Last Updated: July 26
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/missing-person-scam-1.6117758
Allison General said she was wondering where her 28-year-old daughter June was when she received a chilling text message on her phone.
It was from someone who claimed they'd kidnapped June.
"I am not releasing Her until I have a ransom of 7,000$. am sure you know what to do if you don't want me to make today Horrible for you by killing your daughter," read the text message sent on the evening of July 21.
General said she called Six Nations police right away,
"I dropped my phone. I started crying, I called her kids in … I just freaked out a bit," General said.
June was reported missing the next day. Hamilton police led the search efforts and she was found on Monday afternoon, Staff Sgt. Dave Oleniuk said.
He said the text wasn't a factor in June's case because the message appeared to be a scam.
You're preying on vulnerable people at their worst moment.
- Staff Sgt. Dave Oleniuk, Hamilton Police Service
But he also said General isn't the only one to have received that kind of message.
"Somebody is seeing [online] posts like, 'Oh my God, my daughter is missing,' and this troll just kind of jumps on that," he said.
"You're preying on vulnerable people at their worst moment ... It's unfortunate that it's out there like the CRA scams, the senior scams, the CEO scam. This is just another one."
Oleniuk said if someone does receive a message like that or any suspicious message, they should contact police.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/missing-person-scam-1.6117758
Jack Posobiec @JackPosobiec BREAKING: Biden Admin now discussing calling Mike Lindell to testify at J6 Commission following today’s Atlantic article, per WH official
2:53 AM · Jul 30, 2021·Twitter for iPhone
THREAD
BREAKING: Biden Admin now discussing calling Mike Lindell to testify at J6 Commission following today’s Atlantic article, per WH official
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) July 30, 2021
Will Trump ever be held accountable? The Justice Department just increased the odds.
Opinion by Laurence H. Tribe
Yesterday at 5:09 p.m. EDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/29/will-trump-ever-be-held-accountable-justice-department-just-increased-odds/
Laurence H. Tribe is Carl M. Loeb University Professor emeritus and a professor of constitutional law emeritus at Harvard Law School.
Donald Trump managed to evade legal accountability throughout his presidency. That might be about to change — and the newest sign comes in a brief filed by the Justice Department. It doesn’t directly address the former president, yet has ominous implications for his ability to avoid responsibility for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection.
The Justice filing came in a lawsuit in which Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) and a number of Capitol Police officers have sued Trump and others for their roles in the insurrection. One of those named in the suit, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), claimed that he is immune from personal liability under a law known as the Westfall Act, which shields federal officials acting within the scope of their employment.
U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta asked for the Justice Department’s position, and, in a filing Tuesday, the department resoundingly rejected Brooks’s view. This is a correct — indeed, an unavoidable — interpretation of the law. It is a view that is directly relevant to Trump’s potential liability in the Swalwell lawsuit and other pending litigation, and a welcome departure from the position endorsed by the Justice Department in the defamation lawsuit filed against Trump by writer E. Jean Carrol.
In the Carroll case, the department accepted Trump’s argument that his disparaging comments about Carroll while he was president were within the broad scope of his responsibilities. Even recognizing the department’s legal duty to defend federal officials and to consider the implications of its actions for future presidents facing charges of wrongdoing, I strongly disagreed with that decision: Accusing someone of lying about your actions before you became president, as Trump did with Carroll’s rape accusation, cannot automatically fall within the scope of your presidential employment.
In the Swalwell suit, the department adopted a narrower and, I believe, more legally defensible, stance about when federal employees are immune from suit.
The department first invoked Brooks’s own “defense” that his appearance at Trump’s Jan. 6 rally before the insurrection was “campaign activity,” not part of his official position: He was trying to get Trump declared the winner of the 2020 election and to promote GOP wins in 2022 and 2024. That was, the department properly concluded, political activity, not remotely covered by any immunity.
Even if Brooks’s appearance was not deemed campaign-related, the department added, he still is not entitled to immunity because he was accused of violating federal law — by definition, not part of his job. “Instigat[ing] a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol … plainly could not be within the scope of federal employment,” the brief said.
Where does that leave Trump, who is also a defendant in the lawsuit and has also asked that it be dismissed? Not in great legal shape, in my view.
Granted, the distinction between campaign and official duties could be harder to make in the case of a president, whose role inextricably combines both aspects of the job.
Nonetheless, the department’s forceful conclusion was that Brooks’s alleged actions — conspiring to “injure members of Congress and Vice President Pence,” “disrupt the peaceful transfer of power,” or otherwise ensure Trump’s installation as the next president — cannot qualify as part of Brooks’s official job. That irrefutable logic is equally applicable to Trump.
Tellingly, the department’s brief said, “Inciting or conspiring to foment a violent attack on the United States Congress is not within the scope of employment of a Representative — or any federal employee,” a category manifestly including the president himself.
Trump, in asking the judge to dismiss the case against him, referred to the Westfall Act in a footnote, arguing that “the allegations arose out of his [exercise] of political speech, clearly within the scope of his employment (i.e., ensuring the faithful execution of the laws and carrying out his other Constitutional duties).” Then he made an even more jaw-dropping claim: “The Constitution Forecloses This Court from Exercising Jurisdiction Over President Trump for Actions Taken During His Presidency.”
In defense of this audacious assertion, Trump’s lawyers cite the Supreme Court’s 1982 decision in Nixon v. Fitzgerald, which held that presidents are immune from civil suit for most official actions. But the court in that case made clear it wasn’t addressing civil suits based on specific federal statutes, as the Swalwell suit is. It also articulated a vital limiting principle: actions that do not fall “within the outer perimeter of [the president’s] duties of office” can subject the president to liability.
“A political speech by the President is not at the ‘outer perimeter’ of his duties — it is at the dead center,” the Trump lawyers claim. “It is well recognized that rousing and controversial speeches are a key function of the presidency.”
But, as Swalwell and other plaintiffs argue, Trump went far beyond giving a controversial speech. He insisted that he had won reelection regardless of what anyone said and stirred up a violent, partly armed and visibly angry mob and aimed it at the Capitol to disrupt the official counting of electoral votes. He stood by and even praised the mob as it grew violent, rejecting requests to help those under assault.
Inciting an attack on Congress “is not within the scope of employment of … any federal employee,” the department reminded us, and Trump, in its brief. That single word, “any,” marks the difference between a president and a dictator.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/29/will-trump-ever-be-held-accountable-justice-department-just-increased-odds/
First UK space launch due next year as government introduces new rules
People will be able to visit space for a holiday and hypersonic flights - which are faster than the speed of sound - will eventually launch from the UK, the Department for Transport claimed.
Thursday 29 July 2021 18:55, UK
https://news.sky.com/story/first-uk-space-launch-due-next-year-as-government-introduces-new-rules-12367082
Space flights and satellite launches can now take place in the UK, with the first expected next year, after new regulations came into force.
The Department of Transport (DfT) announced a framework of rules to regulate the space industry and said it has "a potential £4bn of market opportunities over the next decade".
The first launch of a spacecraft or satellite from UK soil is expected to take place next year and will mark the first one ever from a European country, according to the DfT.
Currently, many European companies launch from a site in French Guiana, South America.
Spaceport sites have been planned across the UK, including in Scotland and Cornwall, with the hope of cementing the country as Europe's most attractive destination for commercial spaceflight activities.
It is hoped the industry will launch satellites to improve satnav systems and boost the monitoring of weather patterns and climate change.
Space tourism trips and hypersonic flights - which are faster than the speed of sound - will eventually launch from the UK, the DfT claimed
https://news.sky.com/story/first-uk-space-launch-due-next-year-as-government-introduces-new-rules-12367082
The Recount @therecount TRESPASSING: GOP Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Louie Gohmert, and Matt Gaetz are denied entry to a corrections facility holding January 6th prisoners.
VIDEO
TRESPASSING: GOP Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Louie Gohmert, and Matt Gaetz are denied entry to a corrections facility holding January 6th prisoners. pic.twitter.com/DCxUkvamzC
— The Recount (@therecount) July 29, 2021
TRESPASSING: GOP Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Louie Gohmert, and Matt Gaetz are denied entry to a corrections facility holding January 6th prisoners. pic.twitter.com/DCxUkvamzC
— The Recount (@therecount) July 29, 2021
DaisyRose @DaisyRo33871707 “I don’t want to say this because I’ll be arrested. Alright I’ll say it, tomorrow we’re going *in*!”
the cameraman, in a whisper, “shut the fuck up”.
January 5
#January6thSelectCommittee #January6thInsurrection #jan6commission #Jan6committee #Jan6thCommission #jan6
Miss N0b0dy
@MissN0b0dy1
Disagreement between trump supporters in #dc
VIDEO https://twitter.com/i/status/1346660587636477954
3:31 AM · Jan 6, 2021·Twitter for iPhone
https://twitter.com/MissN0b0dy1/status/1346660587636477954
THREAD
https://twitter.com/DaisyRo33871707/status/1419622622539796480
Erik Halvorsen @erikhalvorsen18 ·5h Replying to @tribelaw What did Steve Bannon know and who did he learn it from?
THREAD
Body armor?! What did Mo Brooks know . . . and from whom did he learn it?https://t.co/ebpspA6flb
— Laurence Tribe 🇺🇦 ⚖️ (@tribelaw) July 29, 2021
I mean...the 1/6 Committee needs to investigate the bullet proof barrier too. Why that day compared to his multiple rallies w/o even protection from the spread of a deadly virus. What intel did they have going into 1/6 that prompted such proactive defensive measures?
Katie K! @JustInCaseKate ·7h Replying to @tribelaw and @TheDemCoalition
THREAD
Body armor?! What did Mo Brooks know . . . and from whom did he learn it?https://t.co/ebpspA6flb
— Laurence Tribe 🇺🇦 ⚖️ (@tribelaw) July 29, 2021
Katie K!
@JustInCaseKate
·
7h
Replying to
@tribelaw
and
@TheDemCoalition
I mean...the 1/6 Committee needs to investigate the bullet proof barrier too. Why that day compared to his multiple rallies w/o even protection from the spread of a deadly virus. What intel did they have going into 1/6 that prompted such proactive defensive measures?
Coronavirus latest news: Covid vaccines have prevented 60,000 deaths in England, PHE says
By Poppie Platt and Gareth Davies, breaking news editor
29 JULY 2021 • 7:02PM
Follow
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-news-self-isolation-quarantine-covid-vaccine-uk/
The Covid-19 vaccination programme in England has prevented an estimated 22 million infections and 60,000 deaths, according to new figures from Public Health England.
Vaccines are also estimated to have prevented more than 52,600 hospital admissions.
The deputy chief medical officer Professor Jonathan Van-Tam said that it marked the “truly massive” success of the vaccination programme and urged more young people to come forward for their jabs.
The figures apply to the period up to 23 July and are based on modelling by PHE and Cambridge University.
Previous estimates, for the period up to 9 July, had suggested around 37,000 deaths and 11 million infections had been prevented by the success of the vaccine rollout.
The data comes as the UK today surpassed 84.5 million administered vaccine doses, while the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab reached its own milestone of one billion doses distributed across the world.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-news-self-isolation-quarantine-covid-vaccine-uk/
Turns Out Mo Brooks Was Wearing Body Armor to Trump’s Very Peaceful Jan. 6 Rally
BY JIM NEWELL
JULY 28, 20216:12 PM
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/07/mo-brooks-body-armor-jan-6-rally.html
Rep. Mo Brooks may be done with Jan. 6, but Jan. 6 isn’t done with him.
The Alabama representative, notorious for his speaking role at the Jan. 6 rally leading up to the invasion of the Capitol, did not watch Tuesday’s first hearing of the House select committee investigating said invasion.
“I was in the House Armed Services Committee, Science, Space, Technology Committee, and had at least one Zoom meeting, and all sorts of other things,” he told me Wednesday when I encountered him outside the House chamber. “Busy day.” Not that a clear schedule would have made a difference.
“The purpose of that committee is not to discern the truth,” he said. “The purpose is to create political propaganda that may be used in the elections in 2022 and perhaps 2024.”
But whether he’s able to continue to avoid the committee altogether may not be up to him.
Back in December, Brooks was the first House Republican to say ahead of the congressional Electoral College certification that he would object to certain states’ electors. On the day of the certification, Jan. 6, he then gave a fiery speech at President Donald Trump’s rally at the Ellipse where he told the assembled crowd that “today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass!” Months later, he still argues that Trump would have won the election if only “lawful votes” were counted.
Brooks’ support of Trump’s efforts to overturn the election successfully earned him the former president’s endorsement in the 2022 Alabama Senate race. But it’s also earned him legal issues. California Rep. Eric Swalwell sued Brooks and others earlier this year for fomenting the Jan. 6 riot. The Justice Department this week refused Brooks’ request to shield him from the lawsuit, in part because he’d basically admitted he was thinking about winning elections—not doing his job—when he started his rally chant. And though Brooks is claiming to dismiss the select committee hearings as a political stunt, the committee could seek to bring him in for questioning about what he knew, or didn’t know, ahead of the riot.
When I asked him whether he could be subpoenaed, he said, “I have no clue.”
Brooks, like Republican leaders who tried to counterprogram the hearing with a press conference yesterday, thinks a proper investigation would look at why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office wasn’t “doing a better job with respect to the Capitol Police and their level of preparation.”
Then, to prove his point about preparation, he revealed a new detail to me: that because of a tip he’d received about potential violence, he’d been wearing body armor at the very same Ellipse speech in which he encouraged rally attendees to “start taking down names and kicking ass.”
“I was warned on Monday that there might be risks associated with the next few days,” he said. “And as a consequence of those warnings, I did not go to my condo. Instead, I slept on the floor of my office. And when I gave my speech at the Ellipse, I was wearing body armor.
“That’s why I was wearing that nice little windbreaker,” he told me with a grin. “To cover up the body armor.”
He didn’t say who warned him, or what the “risk” was that he’d been warned about. There were probably a “half-dozen different motivations that affected people in varying degrees” to engage in insurrection. He named, for example, “financial losses suffered because of the government’s reaction to COVID-19,” “the belief that there was significant voter fraud and election theft activity,” or “a great love and respect for President Trump.”
“It might be,” too, he added, “that some of them were just militant anarchists and saw this as an opportunity to infiltrate an otherwise peaceful protest and turn it into a riot.”
In Brooks’ affidavit asking the Justice Department to shield him from liability, his lawyers emphasize the parts of his speech where he encouraged peaceful protest, not physical violence. “Once again, Brooks makes no call for a physical attack on the Capitol,” a typical footnote reads. “To the contrary, Brooks calls on Ellipse Speech attendees to do one thing: ‘utter words’!” The affidavit argues that the “taking down names and kicking ass!” remark was really about taking the names of Republicans who wouldn’t support Trump’s Electoral College objections, and punishing them in future elections.
But if he was so sure the mob would understand the peaceful intent of his words, why’d he need the Kevlar?
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/07/mo-brooks-body-armor-jan-6-rally.html
Laurence Tribe @tribelaw·7h Body armor?! What did Mo Brooks know . . . and from whom did he learn it?
Turns Out Mo Brooks Was Wearing Body Armor to Trump’s Very Peaceful Jan. 6 Rally
BY JIM NEWELL
JULY 28, 20216:12 PM
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/07/mo-brooks-body-armor-jan-6-rally.html
12:18 PM · Jul 29, 2021·Twitter for iPhone
THREAD
Body armor?! What did Mo Brooks know . . . and from whom did he learn it?https://t.co/ebpspA6flb
— Laurence Tribe 🇺🇦 ⚖️ (@tribelaw) July 29, 2021
Disinformation for Hire, a Shadow Industry, Is Quietly Booming
Back-alley firms meddle in elections and promote falsehoods on behalf of clients who can claim deniability, escalating our era of unreality.
July 25, 2021
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/25/world/europe/disinformation-social-media.html?referringSource=articleShare
In May, several French and German social media influencers received a strange proposal.
A London-based public relations agency wanted to pay them to promote messages on behalf of a client. A polished three-page document detailed what to say and on which platforms to say it.
But it asked the influencers to push not beauty products or vacation packages, as is typical, but falsehoods tarring Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine. Stranger still, the agency, Fazze, claimed a London address where there is no evidence any such company exists.
Some recipients posted screenshots of the offer. Exposed, Fazze scrubbed its social media accounts. That same week, Brazilian and Indian influencers posted videos echoing Fazze’s script to hundreds of thousands of viewers.
The scheme appears to be part of a secretive industry that security analysts and American officials say is exploding in scale: disinformation for hire.
Private firms, straddling traditional marketing and the shadow world of geopolitical influence operations, are selling services once conducted principally by intelligence agencies.
They sow discord, meddle in elections, seed false narratives and push viral conspiracies, mostly on social media. And they offer clients something precious: deniability.
“Disinfo-for-hire actors being employed by government or government-adjacent actors is growing and serious,” said Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, calling it “a boom industry.”
Similar campaigns have been recently found promoting India’s ruling party, Egyptian foreign policy aims and political figures in Bolivia and Venezuela.
Mr. Brookie’s organization tracked one operating amid a mayoral race in Serra, a small city in Brazil. An ideologically promiscuous Ukrainian firm boosted several competing political parties.
In the Central African Republic, two separate operations flooded social media with dueling pro-French and pro-Russian disinformation. Both powers are vying for influence in the country.
A wave of anti-American posts in Iraq, seemingly organic, were tracked to a public relations company that was separately accused of faking anti-government sentiment in Israel.
Most trace to back-alley firms whose legitimate services resemble those of a bottom-rate marketer or email spammer.
Job postings and employee LinkedIn profiles associated with Fazze describe it as a subsidiary of a Moscow-based company called Adnow. Some Fazze web domains are registered as owned by Adnow, as first reported by the German outlets Netzpolitik and ARD Kontraste. Third-party reviews portray Adnow as a struggling ad service provider.
European officials say they are investigating who hired Adnow. Sections of Fazze’s anti-Pfizer talking points resemble promotional materials for Russia’s Sputnik-V vaccine.
For-hire disinformation, though only sometimes effective, is growing more sophisticated as practitioners iterate and learn. Experts say it is becoming more common in every part of the world, outpacing operations conducted directly by governments.
The result is an accelerating rise in polarizing conspiracies, phony citizen groups and fabricated public sentiment, deteriorating our shared reality beyond even the depths of recent years.
An Open Frontier
The trend emerged after the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, experts say. Cambridge, a political consulting firm linked to members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, was found to have harvested data on millions of Facebook users.
The controversy drew attention to methods common among social media marketers. Cambridge used its data to target hyper-specific audiences with tailored messages. It tested what resonated by tracking likes and shares.
The episode taught a generation of consultants and opportunists that there was big money in social media marketing for political causes, all disguised as organic activity.
Some newcomers eventually reached the same conclusion as Russian operatives had in 2016: Disinformation performs especially well on social platforms.
At the same time, backlash to Russia’s influence-peddling appeared to have left governments wary of being caught — while also demonstrating the power of such operations.
“There is, unfortunately, a huge market demand for disinformation,” Mr. Brookie said, “and a lot of places across the ecosystem that are more than willing to fill that demand.”
Commercial firms conducted for-hire disinformation in at least 48 countries last year — nearly double from the year before, according to an Oxford University study. The researchers identified 65 companies offering such services.
Last summer, Facebook removed a network of Bolivian citizen groups and journalistic fact-checking organizations. It said the pages, which had promoted falsehoods supporting the country’s right-wing government, were fake.
Stanford University researchers traced the content to CLS Strategies, a Washington-based communications firm that had registered as a consultant with the Bolivian government. The firm had done similar work in Venezuela and Mexico.
A spokesman referred to the company’s statement last year saying its regional chief had been placed on leave but disputed Facebook’s accusation that the work qualified as foreign interference.
Eroding Reality
New technology enables nearly anyone to get involved. Programs batch generate fake accounts with hard-to-trace profile photos. Instant metrics help to hone effective messaging. So does access to users’ personal data, which is easily purchased in bulk.
The campaigns are rarely as sophisticated as those by government hackers or specialized firms like the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency.
But they appear to be cheap. In countries that mandate campaign finance transparency, firms report billing tens of thousands of dollars for campaigns that also include traditional consulting services.
The layer of deniability frees governments to sow disinformation more aggressively, at home and abroad, than might otherwise be worth the risk. Some contractors, when caught, have claimed they acted without their client’s knowledge or only to win future business.
Platforms have stepped up efforts to root out coordinated disinformation. Analysts especially credit Facebook, which publishes detailed reports on campaigns it disrupts.
Still, some argue that social media companies also play a role in worsening the threat. Engagement-boosting algorithms and design elements, research finds, often privilege divisive and conspiratorial content.
Political norms have also shifted. A generation of populist leaders, like Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, has risen in part through social media manipulation. Once in office, many institutionalize those methods as tools of governance and foreign relations.
In India, dozens of government-run Twitter accounts have shared posts from India Vs Disinformation, a website and set of social media feeds that purport to fact-check news stories on India.
India Vs Disinformation is, in reality, the product of a Canadian communications firm called Press Monitor.
Nearly all the posts seek to discredit or muddy reports unfavorable to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, including on the country’s severe Covid-19 toll. An associated site promotes pro-Modi narratives under the guise of news articles.
A Digital Forensic Research Lab report investigating the network called it “an important case study” in the rise of “disinformation campaigns in democracies.”
A representative of Press Monitor, who would identify himself only as Abhay, called the report completely false.
He specified only that it incorrectly identified his firm as Canada-based. Asked why the company lists a Toronto address, a Canadian tax registration and identifies as “part of Toronto’s thriving tech ecosystem,” or why he had been reached on a Toronto phone number, he said that he had business in many countries. He did not respond to an email asking for clarification.
A LinkedIn profile for Abhay Aggarwal identifies him as the Toronto-based chief executive of Press Monitor and says that the company’s services are used by the Indian government.
‘Spamouflage’
A set of pro-Beijing operations hint at the field’s capacity for rapid evolution.
Since 2019, Graphika, a digital research firm, has tracked a network it nicknamed “Spamouflage” for its early reliance on spamming social platforms with content echoing Beijing’s line on geopolitical issues. Most posts received little or no engagement.
In recent months, however, the network has developed hundreds of accounts with elaborate personas. Each has its own profile and posting history that can seem authentic. They appeared to come from many different countries and walks of life.
Graphika traced the accounts back to a Bangladeshi content farm that created them in bulk and probably sold them to a third party.
The network pushes strident criticism of Hong Kong democracy activists and American foreign policy. By coordinating without seeming to, it created an appearance of organic shifts in public opinion — and often won attention.
The accounts were amplified by a major media network in Panama, prominent politicians in Pakistan and Chile, Chinese-language YouTube pages, the left-wing British commentator George Galloway and a number of Chinese diplomatic accounts.
A separate pro-Beijing network, uncovered by a Taiwanese investigative outlet called The Reporter, operated hundreds of Chinese-language websites and social media accounts.
Disguised as news sites and citizen groups, they promoted Taiwanese reunification with mainland China and denigrated Hong Kong’s protesters. The report found links between the pages and a Malaysia-based start-up that offered web users Singapore dollars to promote the content.
But governments may find that outsourcing such shadowy work also carries risks, Mr. Brookie said. For one, the firms are harder to control and might veer into undesired messages or tactics.
For another, firms organized around deceit may be just as likely to turn those energies toward their clients, bloating budgets and billing for work that never gets done.
“The bottom line is that grifters are going to grift online,” he said.
Max Fisher is a New York-based international reporter and columnist. He has reported from five continents on conflict, diplomacy, social change and other topics. He writes The Interpreter, a column exploring the ideas and context behind major world events. @Max_Fisher • Facebook
A version of this article appears in print on July 26, 2021, Section A, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: Disinformation for Hire, a Shadow Industry, Is Booming Around the World. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/25/world/europe/disinformation-social-media.html?referringSource=articleShare
M. Mendoza Ferrer @m_mendozaferrer ·2h Steve Bannon actually stated on his broadcast on the morning of January 6th just hours before the Capitol insurrection that "today's not just a rally... at one o'clock that starts and there's going to be some pretty controversial things going on."
VIDEO
Steve Bannon actually stated on his broadcast on the morning of January 6th just hours before the Capitol insurrection that "today's not just a rally... at one o'clock that starts and there's going to be some pretty controversial things going on." https://t.co/gbllhHicUC pic.twitter.com/5V9jFT5kRP
— Receipt Maven (@receiptmaven) July 29, 2021
Steve Bannon actually stated on his broadcast on the morning of January 6th just hours before the Capitol insurrection that "today's not just a rally... at one o'clock that starts and there's going to be some pretty controversial things going on." https://t.co/gbllhHicUC pic.twitter.com/5V9jFT5kRP
— Receipt Maven (@receiptmaven) July 29, 2021
Steve Bannon actually stated on his broadcast on the morning of January 6th just hours before the Capitol insurrection that "today's not just a rally... at one o'clock that starts and there's going to be some pretty controversial things going on." https://t.co/gbllhHicUC pic.twitter.com/5V9jFT5kRP
— Receipt Maven (@receiptmaven) July 29, 2021
Seth Abramson @SethAbramson This is how far behind most of the country is: the picture below has gone viral today as Americans "discover" that all of Trumpworld knew violence was coming January 6. The investigation of January 6 by independent journalists has moved so far beyond "What did Steve Bannon know?"
3:43 PM · Jul 29, 2021·Twitter for Android
THREAD
https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1420756926304976905
Replying to
@SethAbramson
Prior to January 6, Trump was provided with a security assessment for the Capitol by the Secret Service, per Reuters. Bannon was Trump's top political advisor post-election according to numerous media outlets. His minions Stockton and Lawrence were working with the Oath Keepers.
Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
·
17m
Every attendee at a Trump "war room" event on January 5 either fled the city or fled the Capitol area either before Trump's speech or just after it. None went to the Capitol. The reason is that all of Trump's inner circle knew violence was coming. And that includes Trump himself.
Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
·
15m
We have video of Proud Boys and even regular Trump voters speaking—on January 5—of storming the Capitol the next day. It was well known amongst those Trump radicals who traveled to DC that the point of the trip was to overrun the Capitol. The idea Bannon alone knew is laughable.
Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
·
13m
I'm not even getting into the chatter the FBI had picked up—all the FBI informants who were actually at the center of the planning of the attack, like Enrique Tarrio and Joe Biggs—I'm just talking about what rank-and-file Trumpists knew, and what was *widely known* in Trumpworld.
Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
·
8m
Obviously I'm glad people are talking about who knew what prior to January 6. I just hope major media understands that—more than 6 months after a domestic terror attack on our Capitol—the fact that *so many* Americans know virtually nothing about it is an indictment of our media.
Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
·
7m
Last night Chris Cuomo of CNN brought on a GOP Tennessee congressman—who spent his time on air arguing in favor of the Big Lie. This is so far removed from major media investigating the meetings of powerful Republicans that preceded January 6 that it's apocalyptically hilarious.
Replying to
@SethAbramson
Seth, can you explain to me how Steve Bannon's intel was vastly superior to law enforcement's intel?
How is that even possible UNLESS the law enforcement power structure was in on it?
Jackie S
@KaysGramma
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18m
Replying to
@SethAbramson
When I first saw the “What did Bannon know” tweet this morning, I thought it was a RT from months ago. How is it possible that MSM is just now reporting on this? Does that mean they haven’t reported on the Alex Jones & Ali vids from the days leading up to it ether?
A REUTERS SPECIAL REPORT - THE RECYCLING MYTH
BIG OIL’S SOLUTION FOR PLASTIC WASTE LITTERED WITH FAILURE
Bales of plastic waste piled up at advanced recycling firm Renewlogy in Salt Lake City, Utah on May 18, 2021. The company said its technology could turn hard-to-recycle plastic garbage into diesel fuel.
REUTERS/George Frey
By JOE BROCK, VALERIE VOLCOVICI and JOHN GEDDIE
Filed July 29, 2021, 11 a.m. GMT
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/environment-plastic-oil-recycling/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=twitter
In early 2018, residents of Boise, Idaho were told by city officials that a breakthrough technology could transform their hard-to-recycle plastic waste into low-polluting fuel. The program, backed by Dow Inc, one of the world’s biggest plastics producers, was hailed locally as a greener alternative to burying it in the county landfill.
A few months later, residents of Boise and its suburbs began stuffing their yogurt containers, cereal-box liners and other plastic waste into special orange garbage bags, which were then trucked more than 300 miles (483 kilometers) away, across the state line to Salt Lake City, Utah.
The destination was a company called Renewlogy. The startup marketed itself as an “advanced recycling” company capable of handling hard-to-recycle plastics such as plastic bags or takeout containers – stuff most traditional recyclers won’t touch. Renewlogy’s technology, company founder Priyanka Bakaya told local media at the time, would heat plastic in a special oxygen-starved chamber, transforming the trash into diesel fuel.
Within a year, however, that effort ground to a halt. The project’s failure, detailed for the first time by Reuters, shows the enormous obstacles confronting advanced recycling, a set of reprocessing technologies that the plastics industry is touting as an environmental savior – and sees as key to its own continued growth amid mounting global pressure to curb the use of plastic.
Renewlogy’s equipment could not process plastic “films” such as cling wrap, as promised, Boise’s Materials Management Program Manager Peter McCullough told Reuters. The city remains in the recycling program, he said, but its plastic now meets a low-tech end: It’s being trucked to a cement plant northeast of Salt Lake City that burns it for fuel.
Renewlogy said in an emailed response to Reuters’ questions that it could recycle plastic films. The trouble, it said, was that Boise’s waste was contaminated with other garbage at 10 times the level it was told to expect.
Boise spokesperson Colin Hickman said the city was not aware of any statements or assurances made to Renewlogy about specific levels of contamination.
Hefty EnergyBag, as the recycling program in Boise is known, is a collaboration between Dow and U.S. packaging firm Reynolds Consumer Products Inc, maker of the program’s orange garbage sacks and popular household goods such as Hefty trash bags, plastic food wrap and aluminum foil. Hefty EnergyBag said in an emailed response to questions that it “continues to work with companies to help advance technologies that enable other end uses for the collected plastics.” It declined to answer questions about Renewlogy’s operations, as did Dow spokesperson Kyle Bandlow. Reynolds did not respond to requests for comment.
The collapse of Boise’s advanced recycling plan is not an isolated case. In the past two years, Reuters has learned, three separate advanced recycling projects backed by other major companies – in the Netherlands, Indonesia and the United States – have been dropped or indefinitely delayed because they were not commercially viable.
In all, Reuters examined 30 projects by two-dozen advanced recycling companies across three continents and interviewed more than 40 people with direct knowledge of this industry, including plastics industry officials, recycling executives, scientists, policymakers and analysts.
Most of those endeavors are agreements between small advanced recycling firms and big oil and chemicals companies or consumer brands, including ExxonMobil Corp, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Procter & Gamble Co (P&G). All are still operating on a modest scale or have closed down, and more than half are years behind schedule on previously announced commercial plans, according to the Reuters review. Three advanced recycling companies that have gone public in the last year have seen their stock prices decline since their market debuts.
...
MUCH MORE
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/environment-plastic-oil-recycling/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=twitter
Jared Kushner cuts and runs
Bill Palmer | 6:00 pm EDT July 28, 2021
https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/jared-kushner-cuts-and-runs/40489/
Last week Tom Barrack – who has deep financial ties to Donald Trump and Jared Kushner – was indicted and arrested for allegedly being essentially a spy for a Middle Eastern government. It raised widespread questions about whether Barrack’s indictment is going to lead back to Trump and Kushner. It even led Michael Cohen to suspect that Kushner may already be cooperating with investigators, which would explain why his name hasn’t popped up in any of the mounting number of known criminal probes into the Trump orbit.
Now, in a curious fit of timing, Jared Kushner has suddenly fed Reuters a story about how he’s quitting politics in order to launch an investment firm instead. This is almost hilarious on its face. To be clear, Kushner quit being a part of politics the minute Donald Trump left office. For him to belatedly announce now that he’s “quitting” politics, it serves no purpose other than to try to get headlines out there about how he’s quitting politics.
So why is Jared Kushner suddenly making a point right now of announcing that he’s cutting and running from politics? Given the Barrack indictment last week, the timing can’t be ignored. Is Kushner hoping that this announcement is somehow going to shield him from criminal indictment? Has he flipped? Something is afoot here.
https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/jared-kushner-cuts-and-runs/40489/
Three Americans create enough carbon emissions to kill one person, study finds
The analysis draws on public health studies that conclude that for every 4,434 metric tons of CO2 produced, one person globally will die
Oliver Milman
@olliemilman
Thu 29 Jul 2021 05.00 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/29/carbon-emissions-americans-social-cost
The lifestyles of around three average Americans will create enough planet-heating emissions to kill one person, and the emissions from a single coal-fired power plant is likely to result in more than 900 deaths, according to the first analysis to calculate the mortal cost of carbon emissions.
The new research builds upon what is known as the “social cost of carbon”, a monetary figure placed upon the damage caused by each ton of carbon dioxide emissions, by assigning an expected death toll from the emissions that cause the climate crisis.
The analysis draws upon several public health studies to conclude that for every 4,434 metric tons of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere beyond the 2020 rate of emissions, one person globally will die prematurely from the increased temperature. This additional CO2 is equivalent to the current lifetime emissions of 3.5 Americans.
Adding a further 4m metric tons above last year’s level, produced by the average US coal plant, will cost 904 lives worldwide by the end of the century, the research found. On a grander scale, eliminating planet-heating emissions by 2050 would save an expected 74 million lives around the world this century.
The figures for expected deaths from the release of emissions aren’t definitive and may well be “a vast underestimate” as they only account for heat-related mortality rather than deaths from flooding, storms, crop failures and other impacts that flow from the climate crisis, according to Daniel Bressler of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, who wrote the paper.
Air pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels is also directly killing people, with a landmark Harvard University study published in February finding that more than 8 million globally are dying each year from the health effects of toxic air.
“There are a significant number of lives that can be saved if you pursue climate policies that are more aggressive than the business as usual scenario,” Bressler said. “I was surprised at how large the number of deaths are. There is some uncertainty over this, the number could be lower but it could also be a lot higher.”
The research, published in Nature Communications, illustrates the vast disparities in the emissions generated by people’s consumption in different countries around the world. While it takes just 3.5 Americans to create enough emissions in a lifetime to kill one person, it would take 25 Brazilians or 146 Nigerians to do the same, the paper found.
The social, or financial, cost of carbon has become a widely-used metric after its creation by economist William Nordhaus, who subsequently won a Nobel prize, in the 1990s. The measurement calculates the damage caused by a ton of emissions, factored with the ability to adapt to the changing climate.
Under Nordhaus’ DICE model the 2020 social cost of carbon is $37 a metric ton but Bressler’s addition of the mortality cost brings this figure up to $258 a ton. This change to the model would imply that an economically optimal policy would be to radically reduce emissions to reach full decarbonization by 2050, a scenario that has also been backed by climate scientists as one that would avoid the worst ravages of global heating.
“Nordhaus came up with a fantastic model but he didn’t take in the latest literature on climate change’s damage upon mortality, there’s been an explosion of research on that topic in recent years,” said Bressler.
Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at New York University who was not involved in the research, said that the social cost of carbon is a “crucial policy tool” but is also “very abstract”.
“That makes attempts to translate our climate impact into more relatable terms so important,” he said, adding that the new research on the mortality cost shows the “results are certainly dramatic”.
A series of heatwaves has swept the globe over the past month, including the dramatic heat and wildfires in the US Pacific north-west, where temperature records in Seattle and Portland were shattered and caused hundreds of people to die from heat stroke and other related conditions. Scientists say the climate crisis, driven by carbon emissions, is making heatwaves far more frequent and severe.
Bressler said that while his paper looked at the emissions caused by individual activity, the focus should instead be on policies that impact businesses and governments that influence carbon pollution on a societal scale.
“My view is that people shouldn’t take their per-person mortality emissions too personally,” he said. “Our emissions are very much a function of the technology and culture of the place that we live.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/29/carbon-emissions-americans-social-cost
How the Head of the N.R.A. and His Wife Secretly Shipped Their Elephant Trophies Home
The couple had their names removed from the shipment, and placed an order for the animals’ feet to be turned into “stools,” an “umbrella stand,” and a “trash can.”
After Susan LaPierre killed an elephant in Botswana, video shows, she touched the creature’s feet and said, “A podiatrist would love working on him.”
By Mike Spies
July 29, 2021
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-the-head-of-the-nra-and-his-wife-secretly-shipped-their-elephant-trophies-home
After Susan LaPierre killed an elephant in Botswana, video shows, she touched the creature’s feet and said, “A podiatrist would love working on him.”
This story was published in partnership with The Trace, a nonprofit news organization covering guns in America.
In the early fall of 2013, an export company in Botswana prepared a shipment of animal parts for Wayne LaPierre, the head of the National Rifle Association, and his wife, Susan. One of the business’s managers e-mailed the couple a list of trophies from their recent hunt and asked them to confirm its accuracy: one cape-buffalo skull, two sheets of elephant skin, two elephant ears, four elephant tusks, and four front elephant feet. Once the inventory was confirmed, the e-mail stated, “we will be able to start the dipping and packing process.” Ten days later, Susan wrote back with a request: the shipment should have no clear links to the LaPierres. She told the shipping company to use the name of an American taxidermist as “the consignee” for the items, and further requested that the company “not use our names anywhere if at all possible.” Susan noted that the couple also expected to receive, along with the elephant trophies, an assortment of skulls and skins from warthogs, impalas, a zebra, and a hyena. Once the animal parts arrived in the States, the taxidermist would turn them into decorations for the couple’s home in Virginia, and prepare the elephant skins so they could be used to make personal accessories, such as handbags.
The LaPierres felt secrecy was needed, the e-mails show, because of a public uproar over an episode of the hunting show “Under Wild Skies,” in which the host, Tony Makris, had fatally shot an elephant. The N.R.A. sponsored the program, and the couple feared potential blowback if the details of their Botswana hunt became public. Footage of their safari, which was filmed for “Under Wild Skies” and recently published by The Trace and The New Yorker, shows that Wayne had struggled to kill an elephant at close range, while Susan felled hers with a single shot and cut off its tail in jubilation. Plans to air an episode featuring the LaPierres’ hunt were cancelled.
Records obtained by The Trace and The New Yorker show that Susan leveraged the LaPierres’ status to secretly ship animal trophies from their safari to the U.S., where the couple received free taxidermy work. New York Attorney General Letitia James, who has regulatory authority over the N.R.A., is currently seeking to dissolve the nonprofit for a range of alleged abuses, including a disregard for internal controls designed to prevent self-dealing and corruption by its executives. In a complaint filed last August, James’s office asserted that trophy fees and taxidermy work “constituted private benefits and gifts in excess of authorized amounts pursuant to NRA policy to LaPierre and his wife.” The new records appear to confirm those allegations. The N.R.A.’s rules explicitly state that gifts from contractors cannot exceed two hundred and fifty dollars. The shipping and taxidermy of the Botswana trophies cost thousands, and provided no benefit to the N.R.A.—only to the LaPierres. In the complaint, James’s office alleged that the LaPierres also received improper benefits related to big-game hunting trips in countries including Tanzania, South Africa, and Argentina. The attorney general declined to comment further on the details of the case.
Taxidermy work orders containing the LaPierres’ names called for the elephants’ four front feet to be turned into “stools,” an “umbrella stand,” and a “trash can.” At their request, tusks were mounted, skulls were preserved, and the hyena became a rug. The episode represents a rare instance in which the gun group’s embattled chief executive is captured, on paper, unambiguously violating N.R.A. rules; the e-mails show that Susan directed the process while Makris’s company, Under Wild Skies Inc., which received millions of dollars from the N.R.A., picked up the tab.
Andrew Arulanandam, the N.R.A.’s managing director of public affairs, said, over e-mail, that the LaPierres’ “activity in Botswana—from more than seven years ago—was legal and fully permitted.” The couple’s safari trips, he added, were meant to “extol the benefits of hunting and promote the brand of the N.R.A. with one of its core audiences.” Moreover, he claimed, “Many of the most notable hunting trophies in question are at the N.R.A. museum or have been donated by the N.R.A. to other public attractions.”
The LaPierres’ effort to keep their taxidermy work secret spanned four months and involved multiple individuals, companies, and countries. On September 27, 2013, the shipping company in Botswana sent its first e-mail to the LaPierres and informed them that the animal parts would be sent to a different company, in Johannesburg, South Africa, before making their way to the United States. “We will be keeping you advised on the progress of this shipment as it moves along these processes,” the message said. In early October, after multiple phone calls with Susan, the American taxidermist wrote to one of the shipping agents involved in the exportation process. He explained that there had been a recent controversy involving Makris, and that the LaPierres “can not afford bad publicity and a out cry.” The taxidermist added, “That is why they are trying not to have there names show up on these shipments so the information does not fall into the wrong hands.” Two months later, the taxidermist checked in with Makris, and asked what he should do with the items once he received them. “W and Susan will tell you how they want theirs mounted,” Makris replied, before reminding the taxidermist that “they said you could handle the import discreetly.” Makris then informed the taxidermist that he would pick up the couple’s tab.
Throughout December, 2013, e-mails show that the taxidermist negotiated with both export companies on the couple’s behalf, with Susan, and also others, copied. “AS requested by the LaPierre’s in a earlier email there name and contact information is to be replaced with my name and contact information,” one note to the Botswana company read. The organization replied that trophies “can only be exported from Botswana in the name of the licensee,” and that “it’s been that way for years, and the export regulations stipulate this.” The taxidermist replied, “This request was only made by Susan and Wayne LaPierre and understand you need to follow the law were applicable.”
The taxidermist then turned his attention to the company in South Africa. On December 10th, the taxidermist told Susan that, once the hunting trophies arrived in Johannesburg, an agent would generate a new air waybill to attach to the shipment and enter the taxidermist’s name on it as the consignee, instead of the LaPierres’. When the trophies arrived in the United States and were cleared through government agencies, it would look as though they belonged to the taxidermist. “Awesome,” Susan replied.
Once the shipping crates landed in Johannesburg, another contact of the taxidermist’s drove two hours to check if the LaPierres’ names were written on the containers. When the friend discovered that they were, he scrubbed them off. In late January, 2014, the taxidermist told Susan that the shipment had arrived. “Looks like everything is here and no protestors,” he wrote.
After Susan killed the elephant in Botswana, video shows, she was fixated on the creature’s feet. As she touched them, she said, “He’s so wrinkly. . . . Wow. A podiatrist would love working on him.” Photographs of the taxidermied appendages show that the animal’s wrinkled gray skin, the light coating of hair, and the massive, cracked toenails are all preserved, and, in the case of the stools, topped with wooden rings and black leather seating pads.
The taxidermist had successfully completed a highly sensitive, laborious project. Two years later, in 2016, he reached out to Susan because he was trying to buy a boat from someone she and Wayne knew, and he hoped that Wayne could connect them. In an e-mail, the taxidermist said it was fine if she could not help, noting that “life will go on.” Still, he asked for the courtesy of a reply, one way or the other. He did not receive one.
Arulanandam, the N.R.A spokesman, alleged that “communications” with the taxidermist stopped after he “appeared to make threats against members of an N.R.A. delegation that participated in the Botswana excursion. He also sought benefits and payments to which he was not entitled.”
The taxidermist wrote a parting e-mail three months later, expressing his frustration at the lack of response. It wasn’t so long ago, he said, that Susan had “begged” him over the phone to remove the LaPierres’ names from their “harvested Elephants” and promised him “ ‘A BIG FAVOR’ ” in return. In case she had forgotten, he reminded her, “you could not afford protesters” and a “media shit storm.”
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-the-head-of-the-nra-and-his-wife-secretly-shipped-their-elephant-trophies-home
A Saudi official’s harrowing account of torture reveals the regime’s brutality
Opinion by David Ignatius
Columnist
Yesterday at 2:29 p.m. EDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/28/salem-almuzaini-torture-saudi-arabia-mbs/
Held captive by Saudi agents, Salem Almuzaini, once an official of the regime, was beaten repeatedly on the soles of his feet, his back and his genitals, according to a harrowing account of his torture and captivity filed in a Canadian court. He says he was whipped, starved, battered with iron bars and electrocuted; he also describes being ordered to crawl on all fours and bark like a dog. Accompanying his report are graphic photos of Almuzaini’s extensive scars from injuries he said were inflicted by operatives of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
As set out in the court papers, Almuzaini was first seized in Dubai on Sept. 26, 2017, by United Arab Emirates security officials and sent to the kingdom; he vanished on Aug. 24, 2020, after visiting a senior Saudi state security official, and has not been seen since. His description of his treatment in the intervening years — at two Saudi prisons, and at Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton hotel, where suspected opponents of the regime were detained in 2017 — offers a horrifying view of the lengths to which the regime under the crown prince, known as MBS, has gone to punish its perceived enemies.
His narrative, translated from Arabic and filed in June in an Ontario court, was sent via text message to the cellphone of his wife, Hissah, in September 2019, according to her family, with instructions that she release it if he were to disappear again. The chilling description, reminiscent of memoirs of suffering by political prisoners in Iran, Chile, South Africa and the Soviet Union, offers the most extensive personal account to date of the alleged brutal conduct of the Saudi regime.
“The days passed, and I continued to fear hearing the keys and the door opening,” Almuzaini writes at one point. “I didn’t know what was in store for me, whether torture or elimination.” He describes how one interrogator ordered him to kiss his shoe, then struck his head. “The sad irony is that there was no other agency I had helped more than the Mabahith and Special Affairs, and now I was under their arrest and subject to their torture,” Almuzaini writes of the Saudi secret police.
The degree of psychological torture and attempted dehumanization that Almuzaini describes is as horrifying as the physical abuse. At one point, his interrogator told him to reach into a box and choose a whip for his next beating; when he hesitated, the interrogator chose one and used it to lash Almuzaini while urinating. Almuzaini was instructed not to say his name, and instead refer to himself as “9,” At another point, he was ordered to eat his dinner off the floor, like a dog.
“I was beset with worry on all sides,” Almuzaini recounts. “I worried for my mother, wife, children, sisters, uncle, companies, employees, my future, the pain in my body, the humiliation, and the fear. In reality, feelings cannot describe it. All I’ll say is that the injustice and repression of mankind were intense. I felt weak and powerless.”
The Saudi Embassy in Washington, informed about the allegations of torture by Almuzaini and his wife, declined to comment, as did the embassy of the UAE.
Almuzaini, a graduate of the Saudi police academy, joined the Interior Ministry and supervised airline projects for Mohammed bin Nayef, who was then in charge of the ministry’s counterterrorism projects and later interior minister and crown prince. According to Almuzaini’s account, when MBN decided to create a private airline company called Alpha Star Aviation Services, he asked Almuzaini to run it. Later, when MBN formed his own commercial private airline company, Sky Prime Aviation, he asked Almuzaini to oversee it in Dubai.
Lawyers for Saad Aljabri, a former Saudi intelligence official, have argued in legal documents that these air operations were initially created to shield Saudi and U.S. covert intelligence operations against terrorist groups.
Almuzaini’s alleged crime, judging from the questions he says he was asked by his torturers, was that he aided in a plot to skim money from the two airlines — something he says he denied throughout the torture sessions. Aljabri has similarly denied any involvement in misusing funds. Companies controlled by the Saudi government have sued Aljabri in Canada, where he now lives, to recover money they claim he stole.
But Almuzaini’s real offense, as outlined in the court documents, may have been that he married Hissah, the daughter of Aljabri. MBS, a rival of MBN, has been pursuing Aljabri since 2017, when he deposed MBN as crown prince and Aljabri fled the kingdom. MBS has been trying to force him to return to the kingdom since then.
Almuzaini’s wife described one gruesome moment that her husband had confided. “He said that once, before he was struck a hundred times without pause, he was told ‘this is on behalf of Saad Aljabri,’ and ‘this is what you get for marrying his daughter,’” she wrote. “Sometimes, the interrogators told Salem while beating him that ‘we are adding extra lashes and beatings because your father-in-law is not here, so you can take his portion.’”
The Almuzaini affidavit was filed to support Aljabri’s claim that, as his lawyers argue in a recent court filing, MBS has “sought to consolidate his power by persecuting his perceived rivals under the guise of an ‘anti-corruption’ campaign” and that payments to Aljabri “were fully authorized and approved” by MBN and other Saudi authorities.
The alleged treatment of Almuzaini is just one example of MBS’s seeming obsession with Aljabri’s family. The crown prince blocked two of Aljabri’s then-teenage children, Omar and Sarah, from leaving the country in 2017, when he began his internal putsch to consolidate power and has used them as seeming hostages to try to force their father to return to the kingdom. Omar and Sarah are now imprisoned. I described their plight in The Post in June 2020, and it was featured in a recent report by Human Rights Watch. Aljabri’s friends, relatives and business associates have also been detained.
After Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in Istanbul in October 2018 on what the CIA says were the orders of MBS, Almuzaini had a flash of recognition. He told his wife that the people who were interrogating him included Maher Mutreb, publicly identified as the leader of the Istanbul hit team, and seven of its other members, according to his wife’s affidavit. Among those present during his torture was MBS’s close assistant, Saud al-Qahtani, the affidavit alleges.
In a bizarre irony, two planes owned by Sky Prime, the airline Almuzaini helped run for MBN, were used to transport to Istanbul the hit team that killed Khashoggi, after MBS had appropriated the company, according to court documents filed by Aljabri’s lawyers.
When Almuzaini was held at the Ritz-Carlton for about six weeks starting in late 2017, the torture stopped, according to his wife’s affidavit. The shakedown was now about getting money — as was the case with about 400 other prominent Saudis, including princes and global financiers, who were rounded up at the Ritz-Carlton in November 2017 and forced by MBS’s operatives to hand over assets.
“We’re going to take all of your money,” Almuzaini writes that he was told at the Ritz-Carlton. “We don’t recognize the contracts or any of your nonsense. We’re going to return the money to the state.” He eventually agreed to sign over 400 million Saudi riyals, about $106 million at current exchange rates.
Almuzaini wrote to his wife: “It wasn’t enough for them to torture and imprison me, but they had to take my money, too. Why was all of this happening? Why all the injustice? I didn’t do anything wrong or commit any sin.… I had offered my services and accomplished many things for the nation. I had helped keep it safe.”
Concluding his searing narrative, Almuzaini says of his captors, “In all honesty, the only words I have to describe them were hypocrites who corrupted the earth.”
Opinion by David Ignatius
David Ignatius writes a twice-a-week foreign affairs column for The Washington Post. His latest novel is “The Paladin.” Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/28/salem-almuzaini-torture-saudi-arabia-mbs/
Gregg Nunziata @greggnunziata·10h This is hilarious. The once important @club4growth has thoroughly dishonored itself and abandoned its supposed core principles out of craven servitude to Trump. And of course now he throws them under the bus.
1:39 AM · Jul 29, 2021·Twitter for Android
THREAD
https://twitter.com/greggnunziata/status/1420544556790059008
Meanwhile, a new paper from the Climate Crisis Advisory Group, founded by the former UK chief scientist Prof Sir David King, asks whether rapid heating in the Arctic region is driving changes in the jet stream in a way that influenced the recent weather extremes.
The jet stream is a core of strong winds travelling west to east about five to seven miles above the Earth.
The new paper said: "We are simultaneously witnessing weather disaster in Germany, the highest temperatures for June in Finland and the US, the catastrophic heatwave in British Columbia, and extreme heat in Siberia.
"These are all outlier events that exceed what one would expect if it were 'only' a 1.2C warming impact (that's the amount the Earth has already warmed since pre-industrial times).
"Greenhouse gas levels are already too high for a manageable future for humanity."
The paper, which has not been peer-reviewed, urges governments to start removing greenhouse gases at scale from the atmosphere.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-57988023
Scoop: Trump team blames conservative for loser endorsement
Jonathan Swan
17 hours ago - Politics & Policy
https://www.axios.com/trump-team-blames-conservative-failed-endorsment-17aa2dd1-b4be-4ca7-beeb-c74d1d472a09.html
Donald Trump's advisers are angry at David McIntosh, president of the conservative Club for Growth, for persuading the former president to endorse a losing candidate in the special election for Texas' 6th District.
Why it matters: Susan Wright's defeat Tuesday in a Republican runoff with Navy veteran Jake Ellzey dealt a blow to Trump's aura of invincibility as a Republican kingmaker. It's critical to his 2022 midterm endorsements and continued hold on the GOP.
Trump advisers and allies have been ambivalent about the Club's advice and thought he should stay out of this Republican-on-Republican contest.
They take the long view and are protective of his successful record — so far — in GOP primary endorsements.
McIntosh did not respond to repeated requests for comment from Axios.
Trump himself disputed the result had dented his power. In a phone call with Axios on Wednesday, the former president conceded McIntosh had pushed him to support Wright but blamed Democrats — not the Club for Growth — for Ellzey's victory.
He also said he actually "won" because Wright had bested Ellzey in the initial primary and the runoff came down to two Republicans he liked.
"I think this is the only race we've lost together," Trump said of McIntosh and the Club for Growth, before catching himself mid-sentence on the word "lost."
"This is the only race we've ... this is not a loss, again, I don't want to claim it is a loss, this was a win. …The big thing is, we had two very good people running that were both Republicans. That was the win."
Trump is notorious for shifting or refusing to accept blame for any failure, whether as a businessman or a politician.
The Club for Growth spent more than $1 million on the run-off, making it easily the top outside spender.
Behind the scenes: In private conversations with Trump, McIntosh pushed the former president hard to throw his weight behind Wright.
She's the widow of Rep. Ron Wright (R-Texas), whose death from COVID-19 vacated the seat.
In these conversations with Trump, McIntosh painted Ellzey as non-conservative and anti-Trump, according to sources familiar with their conversations.
McIntosh appealed to Trump's vendetta-streak by telling him that the Never-Trumper Bill Kristol had previously donated money to Ellzey (it was a paltry $250 in 2018).
McIntosh also mentioned to Trump that Ellzey didn't want to join the Freedom Caucus — a group of ultra-conservative House Republicans who are fervently pro-Trump.
Between the lines: The Wright campaign and the Club for Growth also cited internal polling to reassure Team Trump of Wright's strength. The polling proved to be way off.
An early June survey from the Wright campaign had her up by 15 points and a survey last week — by the American Viewpoint research company used by the Wright campaign — had her leading Ellzey by 10 points, 44%-34%, according to a source with direct knowledge of the results.
The Club for Growth's own polling also had Wright up by double digits, said a source familiar.
What we're hearing: Trump advisers and allies, including former Texas governor and Trump administration Energy secretary Rick Perry, remain furious at McIntosh.
"He [Trump] totally was taken to the cleaners by the Club for Growth," said Perry, who has a long and close relationship with Ellzey. "There has to be a reckoning for the Club for Growth. …This whole debacle for the president can be centered on the Club for Growth and David McIntosh."
Perry said he called Trump a few months ago — before he'd endorsed Wright — and told him to stay out of the race because he had a great candidate called Ellzey down in Texas. Trump ignored his advice.
"For the Club for Growth to have actively tried to destroyed this guy's reputation, …you've gotta be shi—ing me," said Perry, who called Ellzey an "American hero."
"That's what I've come to understand about David McIntosh and the Club for Growth," Perry said. "They will say anything, do anything. And they put Donald J. Trump in jeopardy.”
"In the state of Texas, Mr. McIntosh, we care about character and we care about the truth," Perry added, "and we would just as soon the Club for Growth never darken the state of Texas again."
Bottom line: A source close to the situation said they think Trump will be more cautious about whose advice he listens to when it comes to intervening in Republican primaries.
Other Trump advisers said the episode has damaged the Club for Growth's credibility.
They also acknowledged the former president can't afford too many more losses if he wants to preserve his power inside the Republican Party.
https://www.axios.com/trump-team-blames-conservative-failed-endorsment-17aa2dd1-b4be-4ca7-beeb-c74d1d472a09.html
The Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom
Patrick Moore, PhD –
August 2018 pmoore@ecosense.me
https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Fake-Invisible-Catastrophes-and-Threats-of-Doom-Small.pdf
Some time ago it struck me that the majority of alleged environmental catastrophes and threats are
invisible or very remote, thus making it virtually impossible for the average person to validate them
through observation. Observations, along with replications of those observations, are the very
foundation of the scientific method. Seeing is believing, and seeing the same result again and again
under similar circumstances reinforces the belief. Is it possible that activist groups and the media
choose to cite supposed catastrophes and threats that are invisible, very remote or both because the
majority of people cannot verify them in person and therefore must rely on the activists, the media,
and other third parties to tell them the truth? At the conclusion of this essay, the reader may judge.
Here’s a list of some of the alleged invisible catastrophes and threats of doom, beginning with one of
the former.
...
The Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom Patrick Moore, PhD – August 2018
https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Fake-Invisible-Catastrophes-and-Threats-of-Doom-Small.pdf
There is a “sea of plastic” the size of Texas in the North Pacific Gyre north of Hawaii
First question: have you ever seen an aerial or satellite photograph of the “sea of plastic”?
Probably not, because it doesn’t really exist. But it makes a good wordpicture and after all plastic is full of deadly poisons and is killing seabirds and marine mammals by the thousands. This is also fake news and gives rise to calls for bans on plastic and other drastic measures. Silly people are banning plastic straws as if they were a dire threat to the environment. The fact is a piece of plastic floating in the ocean is no more toxic than a piece of wood. Wood has been entering the sea in vast quantities for millions of years. And in the same way that floating woody debris provides habitat for barnacles, seaweeds, crabs, and many other species of marine life, so does floating plastic. That’s why seabirds and fish eat the bits of plastic, to get the food that is growing on them. While it is true that some individual birds and animals are harmed by plastic debris, discarded fishnets in particular, this is far outweighed by the additional food supply it provides. Plastic is not poison or pollution, it is litter.
An Excerpt from - Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist
By 1982 Greenpeace had grown into a full-fledged international movement with offices and staff around the world.
We were bringing in $100 million a year in donations and half a dozen campaigns were occurring simultaneously.
During the early 1980s two things happened that altered my perspective on the direction in which environmentalism,
in general, and Greenpeace, in particular, were heading. The first was my introduction to the concept of sustainable
development at a global meeting of environmentalists. The second was the adoption of policies by my fellow Greenpeacers
that I considered extremist and irrational. These two developments would set the stage for my transformation from a
radical activist into a sensible environmentalist.
. .
At the same time I chose to become less militant and more diplomatic, my Greenpeace colleagues became more
extreme and intolerant of dissenting opinions from within.
The collapse of world communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall during the 1980s added to the trend toward
extremism. The Cold War was over and the peace movement was largely disbanded. The peace movement had been mainly
Western-based and anti-American in its leanings. Many of its members moved into the environmental movement, bringing
with them their neo-Marxist, far-left agendas. To a considerable extent the environmental movement was hijacked by
political and social activists who learned to use green language to cloak agendas that had more to do with anticapitalism
and antiglobalization than with science or ecology
https://www.washingtonpolicy.org/library/docLib/confessions-of-a-greenpeace-dropout.pdf
As Trump pushed for probes of 2020 election, he called acting AG Rosen almost daily
By Josh Dawsey and Devlin Barrett
Yesterday at 6:59 p.m. EDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-rosen-election-calls/2021/07/28/43106ab6-efd6-11eb-bf80-e3877d9c5f06_story.html
President Donald Trump called his acting attorney general nearly every day at the end of last year to alert him to claims of voter fraud or alleged improper vote counts in the 2020 election, according to two people familiar with the conversations.
The personal pressure campaign, which has not been previously reported, involved repeated phone calls to acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen in which Trump raised various allegations he had heard about and asked what the Justice Department was doing about the issue. The people familiar with the conversations spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive legal and political issues that are not yet public.
Rosen told few people about the phone calls, even in his inner circle. But there are notes of some of the calls that were written by a top aide to Rosen, Richard Donoghue, who was present for some of the conversations, these people said.
Donoghue’s notes could be turned over to Congress in a matter of days, they added, if Trump does not file papers in court seeking to block such a handover. In addition, both Rosen and Donoghue could be questioned about the conversations by congressional committees examining Trump’s actions in the days after the election.
The Justice Department recently notified Rosen, Donoghue and others who were serving there during the end of Trump’s presidency that the agency would not seek to invoke executive privilege if they are asked about their contacts with the president during that period.
That posture — which the letter to Rosen calls a departure from normal agency practice — means that individuals who are questioned by Congress would not have to say the conversations with the president were off-limits. They would be able to share details that give a firsthand account of Trump’s frantic attempts to overturn the 2020 election and involve the Justice Department in that effort.
Neither Rosen nor Donoghue responded to messages seeking comment, and Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley declined to comment.
A spokeswoman for Trump also did not respond to a request for comment.
In May, Rosen pointedly told Congress he did not do many of the things Trump supporters had demanded.
“During my tenure, no special prosecutors were appointed, whether for election fraud or otherwise; no public statements were made questioning the election; no letters were sent to State officials seeking to overturn the election results; [and] no DOJ court actions or filings were submitted seeking to overturn election results,” Rosen testified.
Rep. Jim Jordan acknowledges speaking with Trump on Jan. 6
The phone calls came in late 2020 and early 2021, when Trump and his supporters were furiously pressing for officials at all levels of the government to intercede in the usually routine process of certifying the election results — asking them to either launch new investigations, support unverified allegations of fraud or manipulation of vote counts, or otherwise throw up roadblocks to Democrat Joe Biden becoming president.
The calls began almost immediately after William P. Barr stepped down as attorney general in late December, and ended after the Jan. 6 insurrection at Congress, people familiar with them said.
Rosen was generally noncommittal, hearing the president out, while not promising to take any specific action in response, these people said. At times, they said, he would try to change the subject, but was usually unsuccessful. “Trump was absolutely obsessed about it,” one person with knowledge of the calls said.
One person familiar with the calls said Trump did not explicitly make any threats toward Rosen.
Trump was not the only one at the White House reaching out to the Justice Department about dubious claims of election vote tampering. Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, at times forwarded public claims of potential voter fraud to Justice Department officials, which some officials found exasperating, according to previously released emails. Meadows’s defenders have said he was just letting the department know about possible instances of illegality.
Trump’s calls to Rosen show the degree to which the president was personally involved in such efforts, however, and the ways in which Justice Department officials walked a tightrope of listening to the president while not taking any concrete actions they considered unethical or partisan.
The conversations also offer new clues into the president’s mind-set in early January, when he entertained a plan to replace Rosen with a different senior lawyer at the department — Jeffrey Clark — who was more amenable to pursuing Trump’s unfounded claims of voter fraud. That possibility nearly touched off a crisis at the highest levels of federal law enforcement, people familiar with the matter have previously said.
The president was ultimately dissuaded from moving forward after a high-stakes meeting with those involved, those people said. Clark has denied that he devised a plan to oust Rosen, or that he formed “recommendations for action based on factual inaccuracies gleaned from the Internet.”
On Monday, Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer told Rosen in a letter: “You are authorized to provide information you learned while at the Department,” including “your knowledge of attempts to involve the Department in efforts to challenge or overturn the 2020 election results. This includes your knowledge of any such attempts by Department officials or by White House officials to engage in such efforts.”
The letter noted that the Senate Judiciary Committee is examining the time period after Dec. 14, 2020, when Barr announced he would leave the attorney general position. Barr officially left the job one week later, and Rosen took over as the acting head of the Justice Department. Trump had grown increasingly frustrated with Barr for not echoing or investigating his false claims of voter fraud — and even publicly disputing them.
The Justice Department letter noted that even former officials “are obligated to protect non-public information they learned in the course of their work,” and that they generally do not allow former officials to “disclose documents relating to such internal deliberations.”
However, the letter continues, the “extraordinary events in this matter constitute exceptional circumstances warranting an accommodation to Congress in this case,” including lawmakers’ effort to determine “whether former President Trump sought to cause the Department to use its law enforcement and litigation authorities to advance his personal political interests with respect to the results of the 2020 presidential election.”
As a result, the letter said, President Biden “has decided that it would not be appropriate to assert executive privilege with respect to communications with former President Trump and his advisors and staff on matters related to the scope of the Committees’ proposed interviews, notwithstanding the view of former President Trump’s counsel that executive privilege should be asserted to prevent testimony regarding these communications.”
Similar letters were sent to Donoghue and other Justice Department officials.
People close to Trump said discussions have already occurred about whether they should move to block the testimony and records from becoming public, but no final decision had been made.
By Josh Dawsey
Josh Dawsey is a political enterprise and investigations reporter for The Washington Post. He joined the paper in 2017 and previously covered the White House. Before that, he covered the White House for Politico, and New York City Hall and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for the Wall Street Journal. Twitter
By Devlin Barrett
Devlin Barrett writes about the FBI and the Justice Department, and is the author of "October Surprise: How the FBI Tried to Save Itself and Crashed an Election." He was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for National Reporting, for coverage of Russian interference in the U.S. election. Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-rosen-election-calls/2021/07/28/43106ab6-efd6-11eb-bf80-e3877d9c5f06_story.html
Scott MacFarlane @MacFarlaneNews ALERT: Judge orders former Virginia police officer Thomas Robertson remain in jail pending trial in Jan 6 case
Feds sought Robertson be jailed, alleging he had guns on property & had purchased cache of 34 guns in June, waiting at store for pickup, violating court restrictions
6:55 PM · Jul 28, 2021·TweetDeck
THREAD
ALERT: Judge orders former Virginia police officer Thomas Robertson remain in jail pending trial in Jan 6 case
— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) July 28, 2021
Feds sought Robertson be jailed, alleging he had guns on property & had purchased cache of 34 guns in June, waiting at store for pickup, violating court restrictions pic.twitter.com/qHUFU3pnKP
Trump’s Multi-Level Marketing Telecom Endorsement Is Another Example of His Terrible Judgement
By IAN TUTTLE March 14, 2016 8:00 AM
https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/03/donald-trump-american-communications-network-multi-level-marketing-boondoggle/
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal last August on the subject of his relationship with ACN, formerly the “American Communications Network,” Donald Trump was unequivocal: “I do not know the company. I know nothing about the company other than the people who run the company,” he said. “I’m not familiar with what they do or how they go about doing that.”
That was a surprising statement, given that, from 2006 until he announced his presidential bid in 2015, Trump was easily ACN’s most famous unofficial spokesman. For nearly a decade, Trump appeared in promotional videos touting ACN’s “revolutionary products,” he devoted an episode of NBC’s The Celebrity Apprentice to ACN’s “revolutionary” videophone, and he earned millions of dollars giving speeches at ACN events as recently as early 2015. Introducing ACN executives Greg Provenzano and Mike Cupisz on The Celebrity Apprentice in 2011, Trump said: “They run a company called ACN, which I know very well.”
Why, then, after a nine-year relationship, is Donald Trump so eager to dissociate himself from ACN?
Founded in 1993 in Michigan (it moved to North Carolina in 2008), ACN is a telecommunications company that relies on multi-level marketing: An ACN sales agent — or “Independent Business Owner” — receives a commission for selling an ACN product to a new customer and recruits that customer as a new sales agent, thereby securing commissions for that person’s sales, and so on “downline.” As the company advertised in a promotional video, “The key to ACN’s remarkable business opportunity is the power of residual income. Rather than receiving a onetime commission for acquiring a new customer, you receive a percentage of your customer’s monthly bills for as long as they continue to use the services.”
But a fine line separates multi-level marketing operations from pyramid schemes, as Donald Trump well knows. From 2009 to 2011, Trump himself ran a multi-level marketing enterprise — The Trump NetworkTM — using more than 20,000 recruiters to sell dubious nutritional supplements. The Trump Network has long been accused of being a pyramid scheme.
Likewise ACN. And while ACN has enjoyed far more success than the Trump Network ever achieved — by the time Trump endorsed it in 2006, ACN had been featured in prominent business journals and had extended operations overseas — it also has raised the suspicions of regulators in three countries. In Canada and Australia, courts eventually ruled that ACN was not running a pyramid scheme. But in the United States, the situation has been more complicated.
In August 2010, Montana Securities and Insurance Commissioner Monica Lindeen issued a cease-and-desist order against ACN, on the grounds that it appeared to be operating a pyramid scheme. According to the Journal, the order alleged that “312 Montana participants in 2009 paid about $235,000 in various fees to ACN, but received less than $17,000 in compensation. According to the filing, of that $17,000, less than $900 was related to direct sales of telecom services to nonparticipants.” Lindeen eventually determined that the actions that prompted the investigation were the fault of independent ACN representatives, not the company’s business model, and ACN agreed to supply additional training to its representatives.
But while ACN disputed Lindeen’s numbers, there is reason to believe they might have been indicative. In Canada, where ACN is required to submit income figures for its sales agents, the average “active” marketer made $500 in 2010. Keep in mind: Then as now it cost $499 to become an “Independent Business Owner,” and participants are encouraged to spend $39.99 a month on the “Your Business Assistant,” an optional package of tools, but one that ACN president Provenzano says “every single person out there who is serious about winning needs.” In addition, ACN Training Events cost upwards of $149 to $189, not including food, travel, and hotel expenses. Finally, ACN representatives must renew their IBO status annually — an additional $149. It is little wonder that, as ACN attorney Bob Stephans told Los Angeles’s FOX affiliate, “The majority probably do not make a profit.”
Montana is not the only place where ACN has faced legal action. In North Carolina, ACN and its affiliate, Xoom Energy (ACN also is involved in the energy sector), are embroiled in a class-action lawsuit alleging, among other things, a violation of the North Carolina Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act. According to the suit, filed by plaintiff Oladipupo Adesina, ACN and Xoom knowingly made a “false and misleading” sales pitch, promising savings for Adesina if he switched to Xoom. When he did, Xoom raised his rate to more than 30 percent what the local utility company was charging during the same period.
The lawsuit includes the text of almost three dozen online complaints alleging similar acts of fraud against ACN and/or Xoom. And an investigation by New York City’s ABC affiliate found similar stories locally. Former ACN salesman Robert Spitzer told ABC-7 that he was unintentionally “robbing people,” adding, “I pitch to them that they can save money, but it’s the exact opposite.” ABC-7 also went undercover in an ACN recruitment meeting and “asked two salesmen the company’s boasted as its most successful to explain how they do it.” The footage showed the salesmen promising savings, which an ACN representative later said should not have happened.
The FOX investigation above was equally damning:
Trump’s sentiments were not universally shared. According to the Wall Street Journal, citing regulatory filings, even before the episode was broadcast ACN “had slashed orders for the phone from its supplier, which laid off 70 percent of its staff just before the show aired and later filed to liquidate in federal bankruptcy court,” details that Trump did not disclose to viewers.
#related#He also did not mention his lucrative speaking appearances. It’s not clear how much Trump was earning at the time from appearances at ACN events, but financial disclosures submitted to the Federal Election Commission last year show that, between May 2014 and July 2015, Trump pocketed $1.35 million from ANC for three speeches — $450,000 per appearance.
As for the videophone, Trump explained to the Journal that it was a good product, but that “technology’s rapid pace had killed it by the time the show aired five months after filming.”
COMMENTS
The explanation is ironic. In the late 2000s, in another promotional video for ACN, Trump announced proudly: “The two things I’ve mastered over the years are understanding the importance of timing in business, and the ability to recognize great opportunities and also great people.”
Well. Even Homer nods.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/03/donald-trump-american-communications-network-multi-level-marketing-boondoggle/
Asserting myriad claims including “racketeering,” conspiracy and fraud, several class action plaintiffs originally sued the Trumps in October 2018 alleging the defendants – by way of “videos, print and online media” – promoted and endorsed a sure-fire loser of a multi-level marketing, or pyramid, scheme known as ACN Opportunity, LLC.
Those endorsements came, the anonymous plaintiffs allege, even though the various Trumps at issue failed to conduct due diligence about the likelihood of economic losses and the slim probability of commercial success from such schemes. And, as it turns out, each of the plaintiffs produced evidence to show that the vast majority of people who were convinced to become “Independent Business Owners” for ACN went on to suffer losses or earned minimal profits.
Instead, the plaintiffs claim, the Trump family simply parroted ACN’s allegedly untrue claims because they were being paid millions of dollars. And those pay-for-play payments to the Trumps were not publicly disclosed at the time their endorsements were made.
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/trump-family-loses-big-appeals-court-fight-to-force-fraud-and-deceptive-practices-lawsuit-into-secret-arbitration/
Trump Family Loses Big Appeals Court Fight to Force Fraud and Deceptive Practices Lawsuit into Secret Arbitration
COLIN KALMBACHER Jul 28th, 2021, 12:33 pm 27
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/trump-family-loses-big-appeals-court-fight-to-force-fraud-and-deceptive-practices-lawsuit-into-secret-arbitration/
Former president Donald Trump, his prized family business, the Trump Organization, and three of his adult children, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump, all suffered a significant legal setback in a federal appeals court opinion issued Wednesday morning.
For years the Trump family and its namesake entity have fought to keep a potentially ugly pyramid scheme lawsuit from being litigated in the public sphere. The 45th first family’s weapon of choice to keep those details under wraps was private and compelled arbitration clauses.
In a 43-page opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied the Trump family’s request to settle the numerous complaints against them behind the veil, and with the help, of arbitrators.
“The truth or falsity of the plaintiffs’ allegations is not before us,” Circuit Judge Robert D. Sack wrote. “We neither express nor imply any views with respect to them. The only question before us is whether this case should be resolved before the district court or an arbitrator.”
An attorney for the plaintiffs praised the court’s decision via Twitter.
“We look forward to resuming discovery in this case about a fraud on hard-working Americans perpetrated by Donald Trump and three of his adult children,” Roberta Kaplan tweeted. “We’re eager to receive the documents etc. requested from ACN, MGM and the parties so that we can begin taking depositions ASAP.”
Procedural in nature, the ruling is still a solid victory for the plaintiffs. And, though the court insisted the merits were not at stake, the alleged facts and details of the case loom large in the panel’s decision here.
Asserting myriad claims including “racketeering,” conspiracy and fraud, several class action plaintiffs originally sued the Trumps in October 2018 alleging the defendants – by way of “videos, print and online media” – promoted and endorsed a sure-fire loser of a multi-level marketing, or pyramid, scheme known as ACN Opportunity, LLC.
Those endorsements came, the anonymous plaintiffs allege, even though the various Trumps at issue failed to conduct due diligence about the likelihood of economic losses and the slim probability of commercial success from such schemes. And, as it turns out, each of the plaintiffs produced evidence to show that the vast majority of people who were convinced to become “Independent Business Owners” for ACN went on to suffer losses or earned minimal profits.
Instead, the plaintiffs claim, the Trump family simply parroted ACN’s allegedly untrue claims because they were being paid millions of dollars. And those pay-for-play payments to the Trumps were not publicly disclosed at the time their endorsements were made.
From the court’s opinion:
- The four pseudonymous plaintiffs are persons of modest financial means who maintain that they fell victim to the defendants’ allegedly fraudulent scheme to induce consumers to invest in ACN by making false and misleading promotional statements about ACN’s business. The defendants allegedly concealed the fact that they were paid handsomely by ACN for what purported to be unsolicited endorsements.
More specifically, the plaintiffs allege that in exchange for millions of dollars in secret payments from ACN to the defendants between 2005 and 2015, the defendants fraudulently promoted and endorsed ACN as offering legitimate business opportunities that were likely to afford IBOs success. The defendants allegedly misled consumers, including the plaintiffs, to believe that: (1) IBOs would have a reasonable likelihood of commercial success if they invested in ACN; (2) the defendant Donald J. Trump was independently promoting and endorsing the ACN business opportunity because he thought that it offered a reasonable probability of commercial success for investors; and (3) Mr. Trump’s endorsement was predicated on the defendants’ due diligence, familiarity with ACN and its business, and personal experience with ACN. The defendants conveyed this message in various forums, including at ACN events, in ACN recruiting publications and videos, and on two episodes of “The Celebrity Apprentice” television show, where contestants seeking a job at the Trump Organization promoted ACN. The defendants’ message was critical, the plaintiffs assert, in convincing consumers – including them – to invest in ACN as IBOs.-
“This message, however, was allegedly materially false,” Sack’s opinion goes on. “Contrary to the defendants’ representations that ACN’s business opportunity was a low-risk entrepreneurial venture that offered investors a viable source of income, investigations by regulatory agencies allegedly have demonstrated that ACN’s business was high-risk and that investors had a minimal likelihood of commercial success.”
The alleged facts are only cited by the court as relevant background to explain the basis of the legal claims. And, again, the merits (or lack thereof) viz. those allegations are not really what the court relied on here. This is, at the present stage, a procedural battle. But those facts are important to note because of the case’s procedural history.
At first, the Trumps litigated the lawsuits in the court system and successfully batted away a few of the causes of action–including the headline-generating racketeering claim. After winning those victories, however, and failing to secure a motion to dismiss, the Trumps moved to have the remaining claims settled by secretive arbitration.
Last April, a district court in New York City declined to allow the arbitrators newfound purview over the matter.
“These wins and benefits on the defense side represent defeats and prejudice on the Plaintiffs’ side,” Judge Lorna G. Schofield noted. “Now that Defendants have extracted what they can from the judicial proceedings, they seek to move to a different forum. This conduct is both substantively prejudicial towards Plaintiffs and seeks to use the [Federal Arbitration Act (FAA)] as a vehicle to manipulate the rules of procedure to Defendants’ benefit and Plaintiffs’ harm.”
The next month, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York refused to stay the decision pending appeal. So, the lawsuit moved forward.
On appeal, the Trump family and business and ACN moved to have the arbitration clauses enforced based on the theory of equitable estoppel. ACN also claimed the district court lacked jurisdiction. The appeals court rejected those claims for both sets of defendants.
“[W]e conclude that the defendants are not entitled to have the district court enforce the arbitration agreement under equitable estoppel principles or otherwise and that the district court lacked an independent jurisdictional basis over ACN’s motion to compel,” the opinion notes. “We therefore affirm the district court’s orders denying the defendants’ and ACN’s motions to compel arbitration.”
Read the full opinion below:
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21018495/doe-v-trump-2ca.pdf
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/trump-family-loses-big-appeals-court-fight-to-force-fraud-and-deceptive-practices-lawsuit-into-secret-arbitration/
Man Facing Federal Charges for Allegedly Sending Threatening Emails to Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins at the National Institutes of Health
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, July 27, 2021
https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/man-facing-federal-charges-allegedly-sending-threatening-emails-dr-anthony-fauci-and-dr
Series of Emails Sent Over Seven Months Threatening to Kill the Federal Officials and their Families
Greenbelt, Maryland – A federal criminal complaint has been filed charging Thomas Patrick Connally, Jr., age 56, for the federal charges of threats against a federal official and interstate communication containing a threat to harm, specifically for sending emails threatening harm to Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins, the current Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The criminal complaint was filed on July 26, 2021, and unsealed today upon Connally’s arrest. Connally is expected to have an initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt on Wednesday, July 28, 2021 before U.S. Magistrate Judge Timothy J. Sullivan.
The criminal complaint was announced by Acting United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Jonathan F. Lenzner and Special Agent in Charge George Adams, Office of Investigations, Office of Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services.
“We will never tolerate violent threats against public officials,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Jonathan Lenzner. “Our public health officials deserve our thanks and appreciation for their tireless work, and we will not hesitate to bring charges against those individuals who seek to use fear to silence these public servants.”
According to the affidavit filed in support of the criminal complaint, from December 28, 2020 to July 21, 2021, Connally used an email account from a provider of secure, encrypted email services based in Switzerland, to send a series of emails to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the current Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (“NIAID”) and the Chief Medical Advisor to President of the United States, threatening to harm and/or kill him and members of his family. One of the emails threatened that Dr. Fauci and his family would be “dragged into the street, beaten to death, and set on fire.” On April 24, 2021 alone, seven threatening emails were sent from the encrypted account between 10:05 p.m. and 10:12 p.m.
As detailed in the affidavit, also on April 24, 2021, just 30 minutes before the seven emails were sent to Dr. Fauci, Dr. Francis Collins, the Director of the NIH, received a total of four threatening emails from the same encrypted email address associated with Connally.
Investigation revealed that the encrypted email account was associated with Connally. Pursuant to a search warrant, law enforcement obtained emails from a mail.com account which the affidavit alleges Connally used to communicate with the encrypted email address used to send the threatening emails.
According to the affidavit, Connally also used the mail.com account to communicate with another individual discussing Dr. Fauci and espousing views that Dr. Fauci was engaged in fraud regarding HIV and AIDS, which was also one of the topics of the first threatening email sent from the encrypted account to Dr. Fauci on December 28, 2020. Connally allegedly sent threatening emails to Dr. Fauci as recently as July 21, 2021.
If convicted, Connally faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison for threats against a federal official; and a maximum of five years in federal prison for interstate communication containing a threat to harm. Actual sentences for federal crimes are typically less than the maximum penalties. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after taking into account the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
A criminal complaint is not a finding of guilt. An individual charged by criminal complaint is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty at some later criminal proceedings.
Acting United States Attorney Jonathan F. Lenzner commended the HHS OIG for its work in the investigation. Mr. Lenzner thanked Assistant U.S. Attorneys Rajeev R. Raghavan and Jessica C. Collins, who are prosecuting the federal case.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/man-facing-federal-charges-allegedly-sending-threatening-emails-dr-anthony-fauci-and-dr
Christopher Miller @ChristopherJM New Jan 6 arrest: This morning the FBI arrested Daniel Christmann, 38, at his residence in Brooklyn in connection with the Capitol riot. He's a plumber and previously ran for a NY senate seat. He streamed his time inside the Capitol on his Instagram account; CCTV also caught him.
4:07 PM · Jul 28, 2021·TweetDeck
THREAD
New Jan 6 arrest: This morning the FBI arrested Daniel Christmann, 38, at his residence in Brooklyn in connection with the Capitol riot. He's a plumber and previously ran for a NY senate seat. He streamed his time inside the Capitol on his Instagram account; CCTV also caught him. pic.twitter.com/4M4Onj3Wdy
— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) July 28, 2021
'Most powerful' tidal turbine starts generating electricity off Orkney
Published 8 hours ago
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-57991351
VIDEO: World's most powerful tidal turbine device starts generating energy
A tidal-powered turbine, which its makers say is the most powerful in the world, has started to generate electricity via the grid in Orkney.
The Orbital O2 has the capacity to meet the annual electricity demand of 2,000 homes for the next 15 years.
In May, it was sailed out of Dundee, where it was assembled over 18 months.
The 680-tonne turbine is now anchored in the Fall of Warness where a subsea cable connects the 2MW offshore unit to the local onshore electricity network.
Orbital Marine Power said its first commercial turbine, which will be powered by the fast-flowing waters, is a "major milestone".
It is also providing power to an onshore electrolyser to generate green hydrogen.
Orbital chief executive Andrew Scott praised his team and the supply chain for delivering the "pioneering renewable energy project" safely and successfully.
He added: "Our vision is that this project is the trigger to the harnessing of tidal stream resources around the world to play a role in tackling climate change whilst creating a new, low-carbon industrial sector."
The turbine's superstructure floats on the surface of the water, with rotors attached to its legs which extract energy from the passing tidal flow.
It is held on station by a four-point mooring system with each mooring chain having the strength to lift over 50 double decker buses.
Electricity is transferred from the turbine via a dynamic cable to the seabed and then through a static cable to the local onshore electricity network.
The tidal turbine is 74m long and weighs 680 tonnes
The company is now aiming to commercialise its technology in a move it says will deliver a jobs boost to coastal communities.
Mr Scott said: "We believe pioneering our vision in the UK can deliver on a broad spectrum of political initiatives across net zero, levelling up and building back better at the same time as demonstrating global leadership in the area of low-carbon innovation that is essential to creating a more sustainable future for the generations to come."
The construction of the O2 turbine was enabled by public lenders through the ethical investment platform, Abundance Investment.
It also received £3.4m from the Scottish government's Saltire Tidal Energy Challenge Fund.
Energy Secretary Michael Matheson said: "With our abundant natural resources, expertise and ambition, Scotland is ideally-placed to harness the enormous global market for marine energy whilst helping deliver a net-zero economy.
"The deployment of Orbital Marine Power's O2, the world's most powerful tidal turbine, is a proud moment for Scotland and a significant milestone in our journey to net zero."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-57991351
Why Newsmax is failing
The sudden rise and precipitous fall of Newsmax, explained by an expert.
By Aaron Rupar@atrupar Jul 28, 2021, 9:50am EDT
https://www.vox.com/2021/7/28/22594550/newsmax-ratings-dive-explained
Former President Donald Trump gave a speech over the weekend, but you might not have known it even if you are a regular Fox News viewer. Instead, you would’ve had to turn to Newsmax, the right-wing cable news channel that’s sticking to its old-school strategy of being the Trumpiest channel on TV.
But with Trump now more than seven months removed from the White House, out-Trumping the competition isn’t proving to be the ratings hit these days that it was in December and January.
The wall-to-wall coverage of Trump’s speech on Saturday at a Turning Point event in Phoenix was a snapshot of how Newsmax is trying to stay relevant. While Fox News continued with its regularly scheduled programming, Newsmax carried all of Trump’s nearly two-hour speech live. Not only that, but Newsmax led into the speech with a segment that pushed the former president’s big lies about the 2020 election.
“We’re beyond the ‘conspiracy theory’ nonsense. We all know, we’re not stupid, we know something happened,” said host Rob Carson, who went on to cite long-debunked claims of election fraud in Arizona to make a case that Trump was somehow cheated out of the presidency.
Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
Remember when Newsmax was avoiding big lies about the 2020 election for fear of being sued? That's long gone
VIDEO
Remember when Newsmax was avoiding big lies about the 2020 election for fear of being sued? That's long gone pic.twitter.com/kMeffP3QOv
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 24, 2021
Remember when Newsmax was avoiding big lies about the 2020 election for fear of being sued? That's long gone pic.twitter.com/kMeffP3QOv
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 24, 2021
Laurence Tribe @tribelaw DOJ’s masterful brief rejecting Rep. Brooks’ request that Rep. Swalwell’s suit be dismissed under the Westfall Act was worthy of DOJ’s finest traditions, an impeccable piece of legal reasoning. Attorney General Garland is to be commended for brilliantly defending the rule of law.
11:00 AM · Jul 28, 2021·Twitter for iPhone
THREAD
DOJ’s masterful brief rejecting Rep. Brooks’ request that Rep. Swalwell’s suit be dismissed under the Westfall Act was worthy of DOJ’s finest traditions, an impeccable piece of legal reasoning. Attorney General Garland is to be commended for brilliantly defending the rule of law.
— Laurence Tribe 🇺🇦 ⚖️ (@tribelaw) July 28, 2021
Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham mocked the harrowing police testimony about the Capitol riot with snickers and a 'best political performance' trophy
Mia Jankowicz 2 hours ago
https://www.businessinsider.com/tucker-carlson-laura-ingraham-mock-police-testimony-capitol-riot-2021-7?r=US&IR=T
* The Fox News hosts mocked the testimony at Tuesday's January 6 committee hearing.
* Carlson snickered at one officer's testimony, while Ingraham gave out "awards" for "performances."
* Both hosts selectively used footage to exclude testimony about racial abuse and violence.
Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham had a decidedly sarcastic reaction to the harrowing Tuesday testimonies of police who defended the Capitol from pro-Trump supporters on January 6.
Officers including Harry Dunn, Aquilino Gonell, Michael Fanone, and Daniel Hodges had described racial abuse, beatings, and fears for their lives at the the first hearing of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 riot.
Fox News' leading opinion personalities had a deeply skeptical reading of the testimonies.
'Today's best performances'
On "The Ingraham Angle," Ingraham introduced "the Angle awards for today's best performances."
Earlier that day, officers had recalled disturbing experiences of the riot. Dunn, a Black man, recalled being called the N-word by rioters, while Gonell, an Iraq war veteran, said that he believed he was going to die during the attack.
Gonell also described the use of baseball bats, hockey sticks, a rebar, and a flagpole as weapons that day. He added: "No matter if it is a pen, the way they were using these items, it was to hurt officers."
Ingraham's show honed in on the pen comment alone, displaying a graphic of a trophy with "Best Exaggerated Performance" emblazoned on it.
"The winner is Aquilino Gonell, who thinks the pen is literally mightier than the sword," said Ingraham.
Ingraham also mocked Dunn with a graphic of a trophy that read "Best Political Performance," saying: "The award for blatant use of party politics when facts fail, the Angle award goes to Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn."
Dunn told the hearing that he tries to keep politics out of his job, but he mentioned his own vote when he tried to reason with rioters who said that Joe Biden had stolen the election.
"I responded, 'Well, I voted for Joe Biden. Does my vote not count? Am I nobody?'" he said. "That prompted a torrent of racial epithets."
Ingraham cut the clip before Dunn's mention of the racial abuse. She also took aim at Fanone, who at one point in his testimony slammed his hand on the podium in frustration — giving him "Best Action Performance," which can be seen here:
Laura Ingraham is giving out best performance awards to police officers from today’s hearing pic.twitter.com/NyDynIN7rP
— Acyn (@Acyn) July 28, 2021
Watch Tucker Carlson literally laugh at DC cop Michael Fanone saying he's "been left with psychological trauma and emotional anxiety" from the Capitol riots.
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) July 28, 2021
Fanone was nearly beaten to death and suffered a heart attack!
This is truly sociopathic behavior here. pic.twitter.com/VA2QN3Rk5T
George Conway @gtconway3d this was just someone dictating the first draft of the 2024 GOP platform
The Recount @therecount · 25m TW/
DC Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone shares an absolutely disgusting, vulgar voicemail filled with slurs and expletives, that he received after testifying in front of the Jan. 6th committee.
AUDIO
TW/
— The Recount (@therecount) July 28, 2021
DC Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone shares an absolutely disgusting, vulgar voicemail filled with slurs and expletives, that he received after testifying in front of the Jan. 6th committee. pic.twitter.com/cAU6oiAiVV
this was just someone dictating the first draft of the 2024 GOP platform https://t.co/LrPphvIwQp
— George Conway (@gtconway3d) July 28, 2021
What did Jim Jordan know about the insurrection and when did he know it?
- Sidney Blumenthal
I have some questions for the Republican congressman about events at the US Capitol on 6 January
From the archive: The martyrdom of Mike Pence
Tue 27 Jul 2021 06.00 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/27/jim-jordan-republican-capitol-attack-insurrection-house-select-committee
That fucking guy Jim Jordan. That son of a bitch,” Liz Cheney, a Republican congresswoman from Wyoming, told the chairman of the joint chiefs, Gen Mark Milley, about the Republican congressman from Ohio, according to I Alone Can Fix It, by Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker.
“While these maniacs are going through the place,” said Cheney, about the insurrection at the Capitol on 6 January, “I’m standing in the aisle and he said, ‘We need to get the ladies away from the aisle. Let me help you.’ I smacked his hand away and told him, ‘Get away from me. You fucking did this.’”
When the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, a congressman from California, named Jordan and Jim Banks, of Indiana, both of whom challenged the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s victory, to join the 13-member select committee on the Capitol insurrection, Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected the two men.
“With respect for the integrity of the investigation, with an insistence on the truth and with concern about statements made and actions taken by these members, I must reject the recommendations of Representatives Banks and Jordan to the select committee,” Pelosi stated.
Jordan had said: “Americans instinctively know there was something wrong with this election.”
Banks had questioned “the legality of some votes cast in the 2020 election” and charged: “Make no mistake, Nancy Pelosi created this committee solely to malign conservatives and to justify the left’s authoritarian agenda.”
McCarthy responded by withdrawing all of his five Republicans from participation in the investigation.
Jim Jordan is a wiry, hyperactive bundle of nerves who tosses off his suit jacket, coiled to leap into the ring and twist the arms of his opponents. The former college wrestling champion in the 134lb class represents the locker-room jock culture in the House of Representatives, snapping his towel in committee hearings to show off his primacy as an alpha big man on campus. Jordan’s political moves are drawn from his wrestling repertoire: the leg shot, the half-nelson and the slam.
From 1987 to 1995, Jordan was an assistant wrestling coach at the Ohio State University, where many athletes claim he knew about and turned a blind eye to Dr Richard Strauss’s sexual abuse of at least 177 students. Jordan has denied that he engaged in a cover-up. One of the abused wrestlers, Mark Coleman, who was a close friend and roommate of Jordan and became an Ultimate Fighting Champion, told the Wall Street Journal (in comments he would later retract): “There’s no way unless he’s got dementia or something that he’s got no recollection of what was going on at Ohio State.” Another abused wrestler, Dunyasha Yetts, said: “If Jordan says he didn’t know about it then he’s lying.” Jordan refused to cooperate with the university’s investigation: goodbye, Columbus.
The report on the abuse, issued in 2019 by the law firm hired by OSU to conduct the investigation, Perkins Coie, concluded that Strauss’s predatory sexual behavior was an “open secret”, according to students, and that “coaches, trainers and other team physicians were fully aware of Strauss’ activities, and yet few seemed inclined to do anything to stop it.” (Strauss killed himself in 2005.)
At a hearing held by the Ohio state legislature’s civil justice committee, in February 2020, Adam DiSabato, an OSU wrestling champion, testified that Jordan tried to get him to persuade his brother, another OSU wrestler, Mike DiSabato, who was a whistleblower about the abuse, to withdraw his statement. Every year as assistant coach, Jordan awarded a “King of Sauna” certificate to the wrestler “who talked the most smack”, reported the Columbus Dispatch. According to Mike DiSabato, Jordan was in the sauna daily, where much of the sexual molestation took place. “Jim Jordan called me crying, crying, groveling, on the Fourth of July … begging me to go against my brother, begging me, crying for half an hour,” Adam DiSabato said at the hearing. “That’s the kind of cover-up that’s going on here. He’s a coward. He’s a coward.”
After serving in the Ohio legislature, Jordan entered national politics in the interregnum of rightwing extremism between the fall of Newt Gingrich and the rise of the Tea Party. He was elected to the House in 2006, during a midterm Democratic sweep that put them into the majority, but the backbencher vaulted suddenly into prominence when the Republicans captured the House in the reaction to the Obama administration in 2010. Elected by the emboldened conservative faction to head the Republican Study Group, he sought to trip up the Republican speaker of the House, John Boehner, eventually forcing the federal government shutdown of 2013, which Boehner denounced as “fucking stupid”.
Jordan founded the House Freedom Caucus, more radical than the Republican Study Group, to push Boehner out. “Anarchists,” Boehner called them. “They want total chaos.” He singled out Jordan as “a legislative terrorist”. Boehner quit under the pressure in 2015. In an interview with CBS about his memoir published this year, On the House, Boehner remarked about Jordan: “I just never saw a guy who spent more time tearing things apart – never building anything, never putting anything together.”
Liz Cheney, who Pelosi has appointed to the select committee, and was stripped of her position as chair of the House Republican Conference in an effort led by Jordan, said McCarthy named Jordan to the committee in order to sabotage it.
“At every opportunity, the minority leader has attempted to prevent the American people from understanding what happened, to block this investigation,” she stated. Jordan, she pointed out, could also not serve on the committee because he “may well be a material witness to events that led to that day, that led to 6 January”.
The questions that Jordan may be asked if he were to testify would cover his knowledge and involvement in the planning, organization and funding of the insurrection, as well as his participation in the concerted effort to prevent the constitutional certification of the presidential election and the propagation of Trump’s “big lie” that the election was a fraud and stolen.
1) On 20 October, Jim Jordan tweeted: “Democrats are trying to steal the election, before the election.” He objected to the Pennsylvania supreme court’s decision to allow the counting of ballots postmarked on or before but received up to three days after election day, as an attempt “to steal the election”. (Pennsylvania never did count those ballots in determining certification of Biden as the winner of the state and the total votes affected by the procedure were minuscule compared with the margin of victory.)
What does Jordan know about the creation of the “stop the steal” myth? Were his statements about a fraudulent election and attacking the Pennsylvania supreme court for its role in “stealing the election” made in coordination with anyone at the White House or known to them in advance? If he got marching orders, where did he get them from?
2) Two days after the election, Jordan was a speaker of a “Stop the Steal” rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, before the state capitol. The rally was organized by Scott Presler, a former field director for the Virginia Republican party, speaker at the 2020 Conservative Political Action Conference, and activist for ACT for America, cited by the Anti-Defamation League as an anti-Muslim hate group and labeled an “extremist hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“The private Facebook page used to organize the events was full of extreme anti-Muslim and white nationalist rhetoric and went unpoliced despite the fact that new ACT hire Scott Presler was an administrator for the group,” the SPLC reported.
Presler mobilized support for the 6 January “Stop the Steal” rally. “I will 100% be in DC on January 6th to support President Trump. Who’s going?” he posted on his Facebook page on 22 December. He tweeted a video showing his presence in the crowd on 6 January before the Capitol.
Who funded the Harrisburg rally? What is Jordan’s relationship to Scott Presler? What are the communications between Jordan, his staff and Presler?
3) On 11 January, the same day an article of impeachment was filed in the House against Donald Trump for “incitement of insurrection”, Trump awarded Jordan the Presidential Medal of Freedom in a closed ceremony at the White House.
The White House cited his defense of Trump in the investigation conducted by the former FBI director Robert Mueller into Russian influence to elect Trump in the 2016 campaign and in the first impeachment of Trump for seeking to bribe the government of Ukraine in exchange for fabricated political dirt about Joe Biden.
Jordan was being honored, according to the White House statement, because he had “worked to unmask the Russia hoax and take on deep state corruption – confronting senior justice department officials for obstructing Congress and exposing the fraudulent origins of the Russia collusion lie”, and had “led the effort to confront the impeachment witch hunt”.
What conversations did Jordan have at the ceremony with Trump or others about overturning the election and how to defend Trump?
4) On 18 November, Jordan called on Congress to investigate the election “amid troubling reports of irregularities and improprieties” – though he presented no factual evidence. On 4 December, Jordan tweeted: “Over 50 million Americans think this election was stolen. That’s more than one third of the electorate. For that reason alone, we owe it to the country to investigate election integrity.”
During an interview with CNN on 7 December, Jordan was asked whether Trump should concede the election.
“No. No way, no way, no way,” he replied. He claimed there were “all kinds of crazy things happening in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, all these in Nevada.” He stated no facts. During an interview on Fox News on 9 December, Jordan said: “I don’t know how you can ever convince me that President Trump didn’t actually win this thing based on all the things you see.” He offered nothing that anyone had seen.
Did Jordan coordinate his statements with Trump, the White House staff, other Republican House members, or Trump’s legal team led by Rudy Giuliani?
5) On 21 December, Jordan attended private meetings at the White House with Trump and several other Republican House members “where they strategized over a last-ditch effort to overturn the election results”, Politico reported. “It was a back-and-forth concerning the planning and strategy for 6 January,” said Representative Mo Brooks, a Republican congressman from Alabama.
What was said at that meeting? What were those plans? Was the rally discussed? Was the idea discussed of sending Trump supporters to intimidate and interrupt members of Congress in the certification process? Was Jordan’s role on the House floor on 6 January against certification raised at that meeting? What did Jordan say?
6) On Saturday night, 2 January, Jordan participated in a call organized by the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, with Trump and 50 House members and senators “to address their goal of overturning certain states’ electoral college results on Wednesday”, according to Fox News. On Sunday morning, 3 January, Jordan and Brooks appeared together on Fox News to discuss their strategy. Jordan stated that Republican members of Congress were the “ultimate arbiter here, the ultimate check and balance”, on the “unconstitutional” certification of the election results on 6 January. Again, Jordan presented no evidence of fraud. Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah, called the actions led by Jordan and others an “egregious ploy”.
Did Jordan broadcast falsehoods in order to encourage Trump supporters to come to Washington on 6 January?
7) On 5 January, Brian Jack, the political director in the White House, called Mo Brooks to ask him to address the “Stop the Steal” rally on 6 January. “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass,” Brooks shouted at the 6 January rally “Are you willing to do what it takes to fight for America? Louder! Will you fight for America?” Subsequently, Kevin McCarthy hired Brian Jack as his political director.
What does Jordan know about Brian Jack’s role in the organization of the January rally? Did he speak with Brian Jack about the planning and the rally? Has he spoken to him since about the events of 6 January?
8) On 5 January, Adam Piper, the executive director of the Republican Attorneys General Association (Raga), participated in a call organized by the White House to help plan the rally and events of 6 January. The non-profit arm of Raga, the Rule of Law Defense Fund, promoted attendance at the rally through robocalls to Republican activists. “At 1pm, we will march to the Capitol building and call on Congress to stop the steal,” said the robocall, according to the investigative organization Documented. “We are hoping patriots like you will join us to continue to fight to protect the integrity of our elections.”
What does Jordan know about Raga’s involvement? Did Jordan speak with any donors or groups about funding or participating in the events of 6 January? Did anyone ask him to raise money or speak with anyone organizing for 6 January?
9) For several days before 6 January, Democratic members of the House said they observed a number of Republican members giving what appeared to be tours of the Capitol to groups of people who may have later participated in the insurrection. Representative Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat from New Jersey, said she witnessed Republican House members on 5 January conducting what she described as a walk-through for “reconnaissance for the next day”.
“Those members of Congress who had groups coming through the Capitol that I saw on 5 January, a reconnaissance for the next day, those members of Congress that incited this violent crowd,” Sherrill said, “those members who attempted to help our president undermine our democracy, I’m going to see that they’re held accountable.”
On 13 January, 30 Democratic House members signed a letter calling for an investigation of these “tours” by the House and Senate sergeant-at-arms and the Capitol police. “Members of the group that attacked the Capitol seemed to have an unusually detailed knowledge of the layout of the Capitol complex. The presence of these groups within the Capitol complex was indeed suspicious,” they stated. “Given the events of 6 January, the ties between these groups inside the Capitol complex and the attacks on the Capitol need to be investigated.”
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democratic congresswoman from Florida, said: “I do know that, yes, there were members that gave tours to individuals who participated in the riot.”
Steve Cohen, a Democrat from Tennessee, stated he and John Yarmouth, a Democrat from Kentucky, saw Lauren Boebert, a Republican congresswoman from Colorado, a far-right advocate of antisemitic QAnon conspiracies who has equated vaccinations with Nazism, leading a “large group” through the Capitol complex in the days before the insurrection. She denied she had led any such “tours”.
Tim Ryan, a Democratic congressman from Ohio, disclosed that federal prosecutors are “reviewing the footage” of video taken within the Capitol to determine if any House members engaged in “reconnaissance” missions with insurrectionists.
“Today is 1776,” Boebert tweeted on the morning of 6 January. On 24 July, Jim Jordan appeared at a fundraising event with Boebert in her district at the Mesa county Republican party, which in June posted on its Facebook page a conspiracy theory that George Floyd’s murder was a hoax.
Congressman Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi and chair of the House select committee, was asked if he would depose members of the Congress about their involvement. He replied: “Absolutely. Nothing is off limits.”
Does Jordan support the select committee deposing House Republican members and others to determine whether they conducted “reconnaissance” of the Capitol with leaders of the insurrection before 6 January? Has he discussed 6 January with Boebert?
10) On the morning of 6 January, as Trump supporters gathered at the Ellipse near the White House for the “Stop the Steal” rally, Jordan rose in the House chamber to object to accepting the presidential electors certified by Arizona.
There was, he claimed, “something wrong with this election … Somehow the guy who never left his house wins the election? Sixty million Americans think it was stolen.” He rattled off a series of conspiracy theories. “All the Democrats care about is making sure that President Trump isn’t president. For four and a half years that’s all they’ve cared about.”
He mentioned a former FBI director: “Jim Comey opens an investigation on the president based on nothing.” He referred to Robert Mueller: “The Russia hoax … for nothing.” He raised the impeachment of Trump, “based on an anonymous whistleblower who worked for Joe Biden”. It was all, Jordan said, “a pattern” that “violated the constitution … an end run around the constitution”.
In conclusion, he called for the Arizona electors to be disqualified. The Republicans cheered. As the Congress began debating the objection, at 1.30pm, the mob breached police lines and invaded the Capitol. They chanted “Hang Mike Pence” and shortly after 2pm started to force their way into the House chamber.
As members raced to evacuate, Cheney states that Jordan grabbed her arm, saying: “We need to get the ladies away from the aisle. Let me help you.” After the violence was quelled and order restored, leaving five dead and many of the police injured, and when the proceeding resumed that evening with Pence presiding, Jordan voted with 138 other representatives to overturn the election results.
Did the Trump White House or his legal team review his speech before it was delivered? Did he communicate with anyone at the White House in the hours between the suspension of the certification and its resumption?
11) On 12 January, in a hearing of the House rules committee, the chair, Jim McGovern, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said to Jordan: “I’m glad that all it took for you to call for unity was for our democracy to be attacked, but the last several months the gentleman from Ohio and others have given oxygen to the president’s conspiracy theories … people came to the Capitol building to launch a coup … I’m asking you to make a statement that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won fair and square.”
Jordan replied: “He is President-elect Joe Biden … in some states the rules were changed in unconstitutional fashion.”
“You refuse to answer that question,” said McGovern. “That is not the question I asked.”
Jordan finally claimed: “I never once said that this thing was stolen.”
Why, then, did he tweet that the election was being stolen before it had occurred, appear at a “Stop the Steal” rally and claim that “crazy things” had changed the vote in swing states in addition to many other statements?
12) On 13 January, Jordan joined with Paul Gosar from Arizona to call for Cheney’s removal as chair of the House Republican conference, for supporting the impeachment of Donald Trump for inciting the insurrection. According to Ali Alexander, a far-right activist and conspiracy theorist, he, Gosar, Mo Brooks and Andy Biggs, from Arizona, conceived of the idea of the January rally.
“We four schemed up of putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting,” Alexander said.
Gosar appeared at more than a dozen “Stop the Steal” rallies and just after noon on 6 January he tweeted a photograph of the mob massed at the Capitol and this message: “Biden should concede. I want his concession on my desk tomorrow morning. Don’t make me come over there.”
On 10 March, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington, sent a letter to the Office of Congressional Ethics requesting an investigation of Boebert, Brooks and Gosar for “instigating and aiding” the insurrection.
Does Jim Jordan support this investigation and would he approve the select committee deposing Gosar, Brooks and Biggs?
13) On 9 February, Jordan posted an op-ed on the Fox News website stating: “President Trump did not incite the violence of 6 January.” He wrote: “At the end of the day, Democrats don’t want President Trump to run for office again. Hopefully, one day, he’ll get to do it again.”
Is Jordan trying to protect Trump’s political viability for the 2024 election? Does Jordan object to the select committee deposing Trump?
14) On 15 February, Jordan tweeted: “Capitol police requested national guard help prior to 6 January. That request was denied by Speaker Pelosi and her Sergeant at Arms.” His assertion was flatly false.
“Instead, public testimony shows she did not even hear about the request until two days later,” wrote Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post. He awarded Jordan’s claim “four Pinocchios”. Can Jordan explain how this misinformation was manufactured?
15) On 20 May, Liz Cheney was questioned on ABC News’s This Week about whether Kevin McCarthy should be subpoenaed by the investigating committee. “He absolutely should, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he were subpoenaed,” she said. According to Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Republican from Washington, McCarthy called Trump during the siege of the Capitol to ask him publicly to call off the rioters.
“Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are,” Trump was quoted as saying. McCarthy reportedly responded, “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” Yet, on 12 January, on the eve of Trump’s second impeachment, McCarthy told Fox News: “President Trump won this election, so everyone who’s listening, do not be quiet. We cannot allow this to happen before our very eyes … join together and let’s stop this.”
Does Jordan support the select committee deposing Beutler and McCarthy to answer questions about this incident?
16) Jim Jordan told the Washington Post that he should not testify about 6 January.
“I think this commission is ridiculous, and why would they subpoena me? I didn’t do anything wrong – I talked to the president. I talk to the president all the time. I just think that’s – you know where I’m at on this commission – this is all about going after President Trump. That seems obvious.”
Did Jordan speak with Trump on 6 January during the insurrection? Did he speak with him about it after about the event? Will Jordan cooperate with the select committee as a witness or will he stonewall it as he did the investigation into the sexual abuse at OSU? Will he honor a subpoena or force the sergeant-at-arms to wrestle with him to enforce it?
Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/27/jim-jordan-republican-capitol-attack-insurrection-house-select-committee
What the Jan. 6 Committee Could Mean for Trump
As the right wing attacks the four officers who testified in the first hearing, the new Capitol Police chief says he is proud of them.
by BRIAN KAREM JULY 28, 2021 5:30 AM
https://thebulwark.com/what-the-jan-6-committee-could-mean-for-trump/
Six months after an insurrectionist mob attacked our democracy, the U.S. Congress has taken up the cause of determining who was behind it and who should pay for it. Some consider it a study in foregone conclusions. Some don’t want it investigated at all. And others who protected members of Congress on January 6 say they can’t put the day’s events behind them until those responsible are brought to justice.
After the GOP fought tooth and nail not to investigate the riot, the committee put together by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has two Republicans on it: Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, pariahs inside the GOP because they decided to put country before their party.
Kinzinger in his opening statement was reduced to tears at several points as he explained what was at stake:
- Like all Americans, I am frustrated that six months after a deadly riot breached the United States Capitol for several hours on live television … we still don’t know exactly what happened. Why? Because many in my party have treated this as just another partisan fight. It’s toxic, and it’s a disservice to the officers and their families, to the staff and employees on the Capitol Complex, and to the American people who deserve the truth.
And it’s why I agreed to serve on this committee. I want to know what happened that day, but more importantly, I want all Americans to be able to trust the work this committee does and get the facts out there, free of conspiracy.
This cannot continue to be a partisan fight. I am a Republican, I am a conservative, but in order to heal from the damage caused that day, we need to call out the facts. It’s time to stop the outrage and conspiracies that fuel violence and division in our country, and most importantly, we need to reject those that promote it. As a country, it’s time to learn from our past mistakes, rebuild stronger so this never happens again, and move onward.
In serving on this committee, I am here to investigate January 6th—not in spite of my membership in the Republican Party, but because of it—not to win a political fight, but to learn the facts. -
“We don’t blame victims. We go after criminals,” Kinzinger proclaimed.
That sentiment was echoed by Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn. “If a hitman is hired and he kills somebody, the hitman goes to jail—but not only does the hitman go to jail, but the person who hired them does. There was an attack carried out on January 6th and a hitman sent them.” Dunn wants Congress to go after who hired the hitman.
Tuesday’s hearing was filled with emotion, as four officers who served on the front line during the insurrection testified as to the danger they faced—how they were beaten, denigrated, and threatened by as many as 9,000 insurrectionists who faced off with a few hundred officers.
When asked what he and the other officers were fighting for on January 6, D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges, who was nearly crushed between two doors during the riots, replied that “it was for democracy, it was for the men and women of the House and Senate, it was for each other, and it was for the future of the country.”
Officer Michael Fanone, beaten unconscious and nearly killed by his own weapon, appealed to the insurrectionists not to kill him, yelling “I’ve got kids.” Fanone, who is himself a conservative Republican, told the committee:
At no point that day did I ever think about the politics of that crowd. Even the things that were being said did not resonate in the midst of that chaos. But what did resonate was the fact that thousands of Americans were attacking police officers who were simply there doing their job and that they were there to disrupt members of Congress who were doing their job.
Officer Harry Dunn testified how the crowd was filled with racists hurling insults at him as they pressed forward on the Hill. “No one had ever, ever called me a ni**er while wearing a uniform of a Capitol Police officer,” he stated bluntly. Dunn said that another black officer told him that “he had never, in his entire forty years of life, been called a ni**er to his face, and that streak ended on January 6th.”
“Is this America?” Dunn asked rhetorically, only to later answer that it was—but it isn’t all that America is.
Aquilino Gonell, a Capitol Police sergeant, relayed how officers were attacked multiple times. He’s still suffering from his injuries and faces another year of surgeries and rehab because of it. Gonell is a naturalized citizen, a veteran of Iraq, and said he’d never faced anything there like he faced in January. The insurrection was “totally different—this is our own citizens,” he said.
And Gonell said he knew who was behind it all. It wasn’t Antifa. It wasn’t Black Lives Matter. It wasn’t the FBI. And it sure as hell wasn’t a bunch of friendly tourists.
According to Gonell, it was Donald Trump.
While all of the witnesses during the committee’s first day of hearings said there should be no politics behind finding who was responsible and holding them accountable, this being D.C., you cannot take the politics out of the mix.
It even extends to the current occupant of the White House, Joe Biden, who has distanced himself from the proceedings. He’s in the middle of his own mess, still dealing with a pandemic made worse by the GOP. Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s daily briefing on Tuesday dealt with a variety of questions about vaccinated adults having to put face masks back on because of the rapidly spreading Delta variant of the coronavirus. She took just one question on the insurrection hearing, and made quick work of it.
“The president has had a range of meetings and briefings and engagements this morning. I know he’s intending to catch updates and clips, and certainly staff will share with him what they’ve seen as we’ve watched the briefings, but he has not been in a position, via his schedule, to watch the hearings this morning,” she said. And she told us that Biden would have no statement to make on the hearing.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump, usually the most vocal man in the country, also said nothing about the hearings Tuesday.
But many of his supporters took to social media to attack the testimony of the four police officers and belittling them at every turn, calling them actors, liars, and worse. Some of Trump’s supporters in the media took the same tack—such as Laura Ingraham, who said the officers deserved acting awards:
Among the texts belittling the officers that I received from Trump supporters: “I heard that one of the ‘bad guys’ even called a cop a bad word. Oh the horror of it all.” Another, from a QAnon supporter who often texts me, said it was obvious that the events of January 6 were allowed to happen so the Democrats could exploit them for political reasons.
Yet at the same time, many of these very same people would have you believe the rioters were nothing more than friendly tourists—or, as Trump said earlier this month, “peaceful people” and “great people” having a “lovefest.”
“If that’s what American tourists are like I can see why foreign countries don’t like American tourists,” Officer Hodges said with a straight face.
“I watched the entire hearing,” the newly sworn-in U.S. Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger told me on Tuesday night. “Proud of all four of them. Their voices need to be heard.”
In the end, when Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) asked the officers what they wanted to see result from the committee’s work, it was Hodges who said it best:
As patrol officers, we can only deal with the crimes that happen on the streets. . . . You guys are the only ones we’ve got to deal with crimes that occur above us. I need you guys to address if anyone in power had a role in this—if anyone in power coordinated, or aided, or abetted, or tried to downplay or tried to prevent the investigation of this terrorist attack. Because we can’t do it. We’re not allowed to. And I think a majority of Americans are really looking forward to that as well.
If you want to know who was behind the insurrection, we all know it was Donald Trump.
Even Republican leaders knew that once, before their partisan amnesia kicked in.
Remember when Kevin McCarthy said “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters”?
Remember when Mitch McConnell said “The mob was fed lies. . . . They were provoked by the president and other powerful people, and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of a branch of the federal government.”
Remember when top Trump administration officials, including cabinet officers, resigned out of disgust at Trump’s incitement?
The question remains what, if anything will be done about it.
Tuesday’s hearing showed that whatever happens, it will go badly for Trump. He’s in the crosshairs. He incited the riot. And, as Raskin said, the police officers fought to hold the line on January 6—and now Congress must hold the line.
If these hearings are effective, they could mark the beginning of the end for Trump as an effective actor or credible candidate on the national stage.
If he does not run again, historians will have a variety of theories to explain why.
But it may just be that four working-class cops—the kind he claims to love—will get the credit for driving a stake through his heart.
Brian Karem
Brian Karem is the senior White House correspondent for Playboy magazine. He successfully sued Donald Trump to keep his press pass after Trump tried to suspend it. He has also gone to jail to defend a reporter's right to keep confidential sources.
https://thebulwark.com/what-the-jan-6-committee-could-mean-for-trump/