Reply Private New

Replies (1) Next 10 Prev Next

Send PM Follow Ignore

Followers	59
Posts	34538
Boards Moderated	2
Alias Born	01/02/2003

Re: F6 post# 270977

Monday, 07/17/2017 10:15:32 PM

Monday, July 17, 2017 10:15:32 PM

President Trump's enemies list
The president remembers every political slight — and the politicians who abandoned him during the 'Access Hollywood' scandal.
07/10/2017
Donald Trump is less than six months into his presidency, yet one of the organizing principles of his political operation is already becoming clear: payback.
In private, Trump has spoken of spending $10 million of his own money to defeat an incumbent senator of his own party, Jeff Flake of Arizona, according to two sources familiar with the conversation last fall. More recently, the president celebrated the attacks orchestrated by a White House-sanctioned outside group against another Republican senator, Dean Heller of Nevada, who has also been openly critical of him.
[...]
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/10/president-trump-enemies-list-240344 [with comments]

--

Jared Kushner Tried and Failed to Get a Half-Billion-Dollar Bailout From Qatar

A businessman walks by the 666 Fifth Avenue skyscraper owned by Kushner Companies in New York on March 29, 2017.
Richard Drew/AP

By Ben Walsh, Ryan Grim, Clayton Swisher
July 10 2017, 10:25 a.m.

Not long before a major crisis ripped through the Middle East, pitting the United States and a bloc of Gulf countries against Qatar, Jared Kushner’s real estate company had unsuccessfully sought a critical half-billion-dollar investment from one of the richest and most influential men in the tiny nation, according to three well-placed sources with knowledge of the near transaction.

Kushner is a senior adviser to President Trump, and also his son-in-law, and also the scion of a New York real estate empire that faces an extreme risk from an investment made by Kushner in the building at 666 Fifth Avenue, where the family is now severely underwater.

Qatar is facing an ongoing blockade led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and joined by Egypt and Bahrain, which President Trump has taken credit for sparking. Kushner, meanwhile, has reportedly played a key behind-the-scenes role in hardening the U.S. posture toward the embattled nation.

That hard line comes in the wake of the previously unreported half-billion-dollar deal that was never consummated. Throughout 2015 and 2016, Jared Kushner and his father, Charles, negotiated directly with a major investor in Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, known as HBJ for short, in an effort to refinance the property on Fifth Avenue, the sources said.

Trump himself has unsuccessfully sought financing [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-says-qatar-funds-terror-heres-his-record-of-trying-to-get-it-to-fund-him_us_593d6691e4b0c5a35ca06118 ] in recent years from the Qataris, but it is difficult to overstate just how important the investment at 666 Fifth Avenue is for Kushner, his company, and his family’s legacy in real estate. Without some outside intervention or unforeseen turnaround in the market, the investment could become an embarrassing half-billion-dollar loss. It’s unclear precisely how much peril such a loss would put Jared’s or his family’s finances in, given the opacity of their private holdings.

HBJ, a former prime minister of Qatar who ran the country’s $250 billion sovereign wealth fund, is a billionaire and one of the world’s richest men. He owns a yacht worth $300 million [ https://www.forbes.com/profile/hamad-bin-jassim-bin-jaber-al-thani/ ] called Al Mirqab, the same name he gave to the private investment firm that Kushner pitched. The former emir of Qatar summed up HBJ’s power with a quip [ https://www.ft.com/content/40daa8a6-4472-11dd-b151-0000779fd2ac ]: “I may run this country, but he owns it.”

HBJ ultimately agreed to invest at least $500 million through Al Mirqab, on the condition that Kushner Companies could raise the rest of a multibillion refinancing elsewhere. The negotiations continued long after the election, carried out as recently as this spring by Charles Kushner. “HBJ basically told them, we’re good for 500, subject to a lot of things, but mainly subject to you being able to raise the rest,” said one source in the region with knowledge of the deal. The talks were confirmed by two additional sources with knowledge of the talks. One of those sources claimed that the potential deal was not contingent on the rest of the money being raised and that the HBJ investment was on hold as the overall structure of the financing was reconsidered. None of the sources would agree to talk on the record about a private financial transaction that has until now remained a secret.

After the election, Kushner Companies found many more suitors interested in doing business, one of the sources, who is U.S.-based, said. One of the investors taking the deal more seriously in late 2016 and early 2017, the U.S. source said, was “Hamid bin what’s-his-name,” referring to HBJ. Top executives at Kushner Companies, the source said, “are dumb enough to not know that why they want to deal with them has nothing to do with the real estate. Around the New Year they were like, ‘LPs” — industry slang for limited partners, or investors — “are engaging more!’ It’s like, I wonder why?”

Or, perhaps, they know quite well what’s going on. The $500 million still left the Kushners far short, and to try to fill the financing hole, the company turned to China. An insurance firm there with close ties to the country’s ruling elite had been pursued for months, but, like the other investors, wasn’t truly interested in the deal until after the election. (A source familiar with the dealmaking said that the Kushners had been in discussions with HBJ since before Trump announced his candidacy in June 2015. When a potential deal with Anbang was first reported by the New York Times [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/07/us/politics/jared-kushner-trump-business.html ] in January 2017, company spokeswoman Risa Heller said the talks began “well before the president-elect’s victory,” right around when he officially sealed the Republican nomination.)

White House spokeswoman Hope Hicks referred questions to Kushner Companies; a spokesman there declined The Intercept’s request for comment. HBJ declined to comment.

In March, the details of the talks between Kushner and the firm, Anbang, became public [ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-13/kushners-set-to-get-400-million-from-chinese-on-marquee-tower ]. Anbang would invest $400 million in the project and the Kushners would put up $750 million, and additional investors, of which The Intercept’s sources say HBJ was to be one, would contribute a total of almost $2 billion more, according to a document being shown to investors that was shared with Bloomberg. The investment would have fit a trend of increasing Qatari investment in New York City real estate: Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, which HBJ used to run, has increased [ http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20170510/REAL_ESTATE/170519993/qatar-becomes-one-of-the-new-york-citys-biggest-commercial-owners ] its investment in New York City real estate in recent years, and HBJ has a number of property investments in London and New York.

Anbang’s $400 million, plus $100 million from other investors, would flow to the Kushners, meaning the family would recoup the entirety of their initial $500 million investment, a startling turnaround given that the New York Times’s detailed analysis [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/03/nyregion/kushner-companies-666-fifth-avenue.html ] of the building’s woes found the Kushners’ investment was now essentially worthless.

Crucially, in addition to the cash investment, the deal called for Anbang to take out a $4 billion loan to finance the demolition of the current building and the construction of an 80-story Zaha Hadid-designed residential and retail tower in its place. (The total cost for the project would be around $7.5 billion.) Only a handful of companies in the real estate business, such as Blackstone and Brookfield, are big enough to secure a loan of that size, and to date they appear unwilling to take on the level of scrutiny the deal would bring, never mind offer terms as favorable as Anbang’s. Additionally, any borrower would have to get their loan from somewhere, and one dynamic stymying the deal may be that any bank that underwrote such a loan would face just as much scrutiny for their financial and political judgment as the investor they gave it to.

Anbang pulled out after the deal was criticized [ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-29/anbang-kushner-end-talks-on-redeveloping-manhattan-office-tower ] as a conflict of interest, given Kushner’s role in the White House. With Anbang, and its ability to secure a $4 billion construction loan, out, the Qatari condition wasn’t met, and the Gulf deal fizzled, according to a source in the region. That chain of events was disputed by a source who said the deal between HBJ and the Kushners wasn’t dead, but on hold as the deal’s mix of loans and equity was reconsidered.

The revelation of the half-billion-dollar deal raises thorny and unprecedented ethical questions. If the deal is not entirely dead, that means Jared Kushner is on the one hand pushing to use the power of American diplomacy to pummel a small nation, while on the other his firm is hoping to extract an extraordinary amount of capital from there for a failing investment. If, however, the deal is entirely dead, the pummeling may be seen as intimidating to other investors on the end of a Kushner Companies pitch.

* * *

The crisis dates to May, when President Trump visited Saudi Arabia and met with regional leaders there, laying his hands on the now-famous orb. The Emir of Qatar met with Saudi King Salman, a high-level Qatari source told The Intercept, and it went well. “The Emir was in Jeddah before the summit, had a meeting with King Salman. King Salman did not bring up any subject about differences with Qatar,” he said. “After the summit, the Saudis and the Emirates, they thought, after signing all these contracts, they can have the upper hand in the region and they don’t want any country not to be in the same line.”

Whatever the reasoning, on June 5, a diplomatic crisis broke out, as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, along with Egypt and Bahrain, downgraded ties with Qatar, citing Qatar’s funding of terrorist organizations. Weeks earlier, the same countries blocked a number Qatari-backed media outlets citing derogatory public comments by the Emir, which Qatar insisted were fabricated and the result of a hack.

On June 6, President Trump took sides [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/world/middleeast/trump-qatar-saudi-arabia.html ], taking credit for the moves by the Gulf nations.

During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar - look!
7:06 AM - 6 Jun 2017
[ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/872062159789985792 ]

So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding...
8:36 AM - 6 Jun 2017
[ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/872084870620520448 ]

...extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!
8:44 AM - 6 Jun 2017
[ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/872086906804240384 ]

On June 9 [ https://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2017/06/271672.htm ], after Saudi Arabia and the UAE had begun to blockade Qatar, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sought to calm nerves, calling for mediation and an immediate end to the blockade.

Within hours, Trump, at a White House ceremony, contradicted Tillerson, slamming Qatar again and claiming it had “historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level.”

Trump’s White House remarks, Tillerson came to believe, had been written by UAE Ambassador Yousef Al-Otaiba and delivered to Trump by Jared Kushner [ http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/tillerson-and-mattis-cleaning-up-kushners-middle-east-mess/ ].

The blockade continued. At a private fundraiser in late June, he aimed at Qatar again, this time mocking the pronunciation of the country’s name. “We’re having a dispute with Qatar — we’re supposed to say Qatar. It’s Qatar, they prefer. I prefer that they don’t fund terrorism,” he quipped, according to an audio recording of his speech obtained by The Intercept [ https://theintercept.com/2017/06/30/heres-the-audio-of-donald-trumps-private-rnc-fundraiser-at-his-own-hotel/ ].

* * *

The Kushners’ purchase of 666 Fifth Avenue for a record-breaking $1.8 billion in 2007 was a capstone to an era marked by high prices and reckless amounts of debt. The Kushners invested $500 million in the building, and took out debt to cover the rest. But even at the height of a bubbling New York real estate market, there were clear signs that the price was too high and the debt was too much. The Kushners paid $1,200 a square foot, twice the previous per square foot record of $600, while records show that even with the building initially almost fully rented out, revenue only covered about two-thirds of the family’s debt costs.

When the financial crisis hit, rents went down, vacancies went up, and the Kushners were short on cash to pay their debts. They sold off the Fifth Avenue retail space for $525 million [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/03/nyregion/kushner-companies-666-fifth-avenue.html ] and used the proceeds to pay off non-mortgage debt on the building. Then, in 2011, the Kushners sold off just under 50 percent [ http://www.vno.com/press-release/v1xqmhzsbc/vornado-and-the-kushner-companies-announce-the-recapitalization-of-666-fifth-avenue ] of the building’s office space to Vornado, as part of a refinancing deal with the publicly traded real estate giant.

The $1.2 billion interest-only mortgage is due in February 2019 [ http://www.vno.com/press-release/v1xqmhzsbc/vornado-and-the-kushner-companies-announce-the-recapitalization-of-666-fifth-avenue ]. The office space is worth less than its mortgage and “there is no equity value” left in the office section of the building, Jed Reagan of Green Street Advisors told the New York Times [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/03/nyregion/kushner-companies-666-fifth-avenue.html ] in April. (Because they sold the retail space to make payments on other debt tied to the building, the office space is the only part of the tower the Kushners still have a stake in.) As a result, the family’s initial $500 million investment, once heralded as an example of Jared’s emergence as a brash real estate star, has for now effectively been wiped out. A massive refinancing and construction of a new tower that dramatically increases the building’s value is one way to try to get out of that hole.

The Kushners are also looking for loans totaling $250 million [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/05/business/kushner-companies-trump-bay-street-eb5-visa.html ] to pay off debt used to build an apartment building in Jersey City, Bloomberg first reported in June [ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-05/kushners-hunting-hard-for-a-loan-to-pay-back-chinese-investors ]. The tower, called Trump Bay Street, was financed in part by Chinese investors. Those investments were made through the E5-B visa program, which gives green cards to wealthy foreigners in exchange for investments in the U.S. The family also owes CIT Group $140 million, which it must repay by September. A company spokesman later confirmed [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/05/business/kushner-companies-trump-bay-street-eb5-visa.html ] to the New York Times that it was indeed seeking the $250 million loan.

The Kushners came under fire in May [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/06/world/asia/jared-kushner-sister-nicole-meyer-china-investors.html ] when the New York Times reported that Jared’s sister Nicole Meyer had pitched her family’s ties as part of a roadshow to raise money for another Jersey City building under the same pay-for-residency visa program. After the report, the family backtracked and said they would not take part in the roadshow going forward [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/business/kushner-china-real-estate.html ].

Meanwhile, the water is rising on the Fifth Avenue investment. And the blockade continues.

Had the Qataris known where things were heading diplomatically, said the source in the region, they’d have happily ponied up the money, even knowing that it was a losing investment. “It would have been much cheaper,” he said.

Copyright 2017 The Intercept

https://theintercept.com/2017/07/10/jared-kushner-tried-and-failed-to-get-a-half-billion-dollar-bailout-from-qatar/ [with comments]

--

Sharp Partisan Divisions in Views of National Institutions

Republicans increasingly say colleges have negative impact on U.S.
July 10, 2017
http://www.people-press.org/2017/07/10/sharp-partisan-divisions-in-views-of-national-institutions/ [and see also in particular (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=132855605 (and any future following)]

Most Republicans Think College Is Ruining America

A new Pew Research Center survey found 58 percent of right-leaning Americans think colleges and universities are harming the country—up 13 percent from last year.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmvz4x/most-republicans-think-college-is-ruining-america-vgtrn [id.]

The new culture war targeting American universities appears to be working

July 10, 2017
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/07/10/the-new-culture-war-targeting-american-universities-appears-to-be-working/ [with comments] [id.]

--

Full Show - Black Lives Matter Attacks First And Second Amendments / G20 Rocked by Riots - 07/10/2017

Published on Jul 10, 2017 by The Alex Jones Channel

Monday, July 10th 2017[, with an appearance by Mike Cernovich]: Trump: Comey Leaked Classified Info - President Trump accused former FBI Director James Comey of leaking classified information to the media. We'll discuss the failed New York Times hit piece on Donald Trump Jr. and the ongoing fight to repeal ObamaCare. Also, another hearing has been set to determine the fate of Charlie Gard, the baby at the center of a legal dispute over his medical care in England.

Trump accuses James Comey of breaking the law — based on a misleading Fox News report

President Trump shakes hands with James Comey, then director of the FBI, at the White House on Jan. 22.

July 10, 2017
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/07/10/trump-accuses-james-comey-of-breaking-the-law-based-on-a-misleading-fox-news-report/ [with embedded videos, and comments]

Ohio Cop Who Fatally Shot Walmart Shopper John Crawford III Won’t Be Charged
The Justice Department said it can’t prove the officer violated the slain man’s civil rights.

Tressa Sherrod cries after telling the story of her son, 22-year-old John Crawford III, who was shot and killed by police in an Ohio Walmart, Dec. 10, 2014.
07/11/2017
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/justice-department-police-walmart-shooting_us_59653af7e4b03f144e2ecfa3 [with comments]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOFh8uelsPQ [with comments] [also at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMWYxCR_RRM (additional text adapted from; with comments)]

*

Trump's Trolls Are Waging War on America's Civil Servants

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

Alt-right bloggers are singling out government employees deemed hostile to the president’s agenda.

By Kate Brannen, Dan De Luce, Jenna McLaughlin
July 10, 2017

On June 11, alt-right blogger Mike Cernovich published an article attacking an assistant to National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, claiming the previously low-profile civil servant wanted to “sabotage” President Donald Trump.

The piece described Eric Ciaramella as “pro-Ukraine and anti-Russia” and alleged, with no evidence, that he was possibly responsible for high-level leaks. The response to the piece included online threats of violence against Ciaramella, which contributed to his decision to leave his job at the National Security Council a few weeks early, according to two sources familiar with the situation.

Although the harassment was not the only factor, one of the two sources said they “distinctly got the impression” that the departure was premature, partially because of “right-wing” harassment.

Ciaramella is not alone. Cernovich, who claims his Twitter feed receives over 100 million views every month, has been relentless in his criticism of McMaster and those around him. Cernovich’s writings and tweets have included false information, but sometimes they include details that only someone on the inside could know. For example, his tweets about Ciaramella were so specific that they documented meetings and lunches the NSC staffer had with certain people.

After Ciaramella left the NSC, Cernovich turned his attacks on Twitter against his prospective successor, who has not been publicly announced.

Career civil servants often endure stressful working conditions, but in the Trump White House, some of them face online trolling from alt-right bloggers who seek to portray them as clandestine partisans plotting to sabotage the president’s agenda. The online attacks often cite information that appears to be provided by unnamed White House officials or Trump loyalists.

The trend has unnerved the career intelligence analysts, diplomats, security experts, and military officers who are accustomed to operating outside the political arena. Coupled with White House talking points accusing government employees of jeopardizing the country’s security through leaks to the media, the online abuse threatens to damage morale and politicize institutions long seen as impartial and above partisan combat.

“It’s singling people out and then publicly engaging in character assassination,” said Bruce Riedel, a former career CIA officer who served in the agency for over 30 years and is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution. “It will certainly send an intimidating effect throughout the bureaucracy.”

Federal law is designed to shield career government employees from political or other retaliation unrelated to their performance on the job, but the administration has significant leeway to sideline them. Some previous presidents, most notably Richard Nixon, sought to undercut perceived political opponents in and outside of government, but the public harassment of civil servants by the current White House or its allies is something new, according to former government officials.

Charles Kupchan, who served as senior director for European Affairs on the NSC during the Obama administration, and was Ciaramella’s boss for two years there, said he’s never seen a time of such attacks against civil servants. “In my professional recollection,” he said, “it’s unprecedented.”

There may have been times when one person was singled out, but the “systemic hostility to what the alt-right calls the ‘deep state’ is misplaced,” Kupchan said, “and it’s dangerous.”

Attacking the worker bees

Before the 2016 election, Cernovich wrote self-help books for men who wanted to discover their inner “alpha male.” He found a larger audience, however, with his fervent pro-Trump, Hillary Clinton-bashing online blogs, tweets, and memes. Tweeting from his home in Southern California, he helped spread [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/05/04/leading-conspiracy-theorists-are-joining-forces-that-could-be-good-for-trump-or-really-bad/ ] the Pizzagate conspiracy theory and has threatened to smear members of the Trump White House if Stephen Bannon is ever removed [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/14/alt-right-ringleader-mike-cernovich-threatens-to-drop-motherlode-if-steve-bannon-is-ousted ].

Those whom Cernovich targets often face a barrage of online threats and harassment from his followers. Last week, for example, he focused on Andrew Kaczynski, an investigative journalist at CNN. Kaczynski had written about the anonymous Reddit user who created a video of Trump wrestling a figure with CNN’s logo superimposed on his head.

Cernovich doctored a photo so it appeared that Kaczynski was wearing a Nazi SS uniform. The Daily Beast reported [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/high-anxiety-at-cnn-amid-attacks-from-trump-and-his-trolls ] that Kaczynski’s parents and wife “had received around 50 harassing phone calls each by Wednesday.”

Still, members of Trump’s inner circle, and even his family members, have endorsed [ http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/can-mike-cernovich-a-pro-trump-meme-maker-get-a-real-news-scoop ] Cernovich’s posts. The White House has given him press credentials and he says he gets his information from West Wing officials, a claim supported by what he’s able to report and when he’s able to report it. For example, he warned his followers on April 6 that the White House had decided to launch military action against Syria, following the chemical weapons attack by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, before the U.S. missile strikes occurred. “We do have time to stop it,” Cernovich told his audience at 7:40 p.m.

In June, Cernovich turned his attention to Ciaramella, the NSC staffer. “Nothing in his résumé indicates that Ciaramella will put America First. His entire life arc indicates he will sabotage Trump and leak information to the press whenever possible,” Cernovich wrote, in an unsubstantiated allegation.

Though he concedes it’s “unproven,” Cernovich said that “some suspect” Ciaramella leaked the details of Trump’s Oval Office meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. During the meeting, the president said [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/us/politics/trump-russia-comey.html ] firing FBI Director James Comey had relieved “great pressure” on him and that Comey was a “real nut job.” Trump also reportedly disclosed [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-revealed-highly-classified-information-to-russian-foreign-minister-and-ambassador/2017/05/15/530c172a-3960-11e7-9e48-c4f199710b69_story.html ] to Lavrov classified intelligence about the Islamic State provided by Israel. Both stories sent the White House into a tailspin.

On Twitter, Cernovich’s followers and Trump loyalists responded to the piece about Ciaramella by calling for Trump to fire McMaster. Cernovich’s followers made death threats against Ciaramella, with calls for him to be shot between the eyes, as well as demands for his imprisonment.

Shortly after Cernovich made the allegations, Ciaramella gave notice at the NSC.

After his departure, Ciaramella, who was on loan to the White House, returned to his parent agency. Career civil servants from the Pentagon, the State Department, or one of the intelligence agencies routinely serve tours on the NSC.

Ciaramella’s NSC stint started during the Obama administration. Following Trump’s inauguration, he stayed on at the request of the Trump transition team, working as acting senior director for European and Russian affairs. After McMaster picked Russia expert Fiona Hill to permanently fill that position, he asked Ciaramella to join the front office staff for the remainder of his NSC tour, which was scheduled to end in late June.

Officials who worked closely with Ciaramella adamantly defend his professionalism and nonpartisan stance. He’s a “seasoned pro” and “one of the best that the civil service has,” said Kupchan, his former boss at the NSC.

Now a professor at Georgetown University, Kupchan described civil servants, like Ciaramella, as “the worker bees of the federal government. They want to serve the nation, and they care deeply about the issues they’re working on.”

Kupchan said he brought Ciaramella on board in 2015 to work on Ukraine. “He did such an impressive job, I asked him to help share the burden on the counter-ISIL portfolio,” and specifically Turkey’s role in that fight, he said.

Yet Cernovich falsely tweeted on June 14 that Ciaramella had been “fired” because it was revealed that he had been leaking to the press, a statement that colleagues deny and that Cernovich corrected. On July 2, he tweeted that Ciaramella had quit because of his article.

NSC spokesman Michael Anton said Ciaramella did not leave earlier than planned. “He left when his scheduled detail was up,” he wrote in an email.

A senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the fact that Ciaramella was made acting director for European and Russian affairs and later brought up to serve as McMaster’s executive assistant demonstrates how well he performed.

“H.R. thought he did a good job. Everybody was happy with his performance,” the official said. Referring to Ciaramella’s stint in the sensitive post of executive assistant to McMaster, the official said, “He wouldn’t have been there if he weren’t trusted.”

But the official said there was no evidence that someone in the White House was feeding material to online bloggers and that the information appearing online could easily have come from an array of sources outside the White House.

Numerous visitors to the White House pass through the West Wing, where the NSC is located and where the executive assistant to the national security advisor handles numerous phone calls, the official said. As a result, Ciaramella’s arrival or departure from the NSC would have been known to “probably hundreds if not thousands of people inside and outside the government,” the administration official said.

Cernovich acknowledges that he’s going after McMaster’s staff. “Personnel is policy,” he wrote in response to queries for this article.

“The NSC and State are the most interesting beats to cover, because the hiring and firing decisions within State and NSC will determine whether America enters another disastrous ground war, as H.R. McMaster and his mentor David Petraeus desire,” he wrote. “McMaster has stacked the NSC with pro-war globalists, some of whom came from the Obama administration and others who were ‘Never Trump’ers.’”

In response to questions about some of his statements that have proven false, and whether he allows people to respond to his allegations, Cernovich responded by saying: “You are a spokeswoman for globalist warmongers. You are the mouthpiece of death and destruction. Your fraudulent hit piece on me validates the strength of my work.”

Cernovich is not alone in going after NSC and other government staffers. Outlets, including Breitbart News and the Conservative Review, went on a rampage against government employees and so-called Obama holdovers in the early months of the Trump administration, as first documented by [ http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/government-employees-conservative-media-236321 ] Politico in March.

State Department officials took some of the hardest hits. Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, who started her career in the George W. Bush administration and who helped negotiate President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, was moved [ http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/21/sahar-nowrouzzadeh-reassigned-state-department-237466 ] from the NSC back to the State Department after critical right-wing media stories.

The Conservative Review also accused Alan Eyre, director of the Office of Middle East and Asia at the State Department and a career diplomat, of being a “leftist” who was anti-Trump. In another article, the publication said Anne Patterson, former assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, “fully embraced the policies of President Obama that aligned with radical Islamic actors and alienated Israel.” Defense Secretary James Mattis wanted to nominate Patterson to be his undersecretary for policy but faced resistance from the White House.

Conservative outlets also attacked officials who guided the White House’s Israel policy, including NSC diplomat Yael Lempert and Michael Ratney, in charge of Israeli-Palestinian issues at the State Department. Lempert was accused of undermining Trump’s positions toward Israel, despite her negotiating a $38 billion deal to supply military hardware to Israel over 10 years. Pro-Israel conservatives slammed Ratney for his ties to former Secretary of State John Kerry. Lemper departed in April, less than a month after it was reported she’d be staying.

The attacks don’t stop with career civil servants or perceived “Obama holdovers.” They also include people hired as political appointees by the Trump administration. A common theme underlying the online attacks is a perceived alignment with McMaster.

Longtime Trump confidant and former campaign advisor Roger Stone, along with Alex Jones, who pushes conspiracy theories via his site Infowars, have attacked Hill, who was hired by McMaster to be senior director for European and Russian affairs on the NSC. Before joining the administration, Hill worked at the Brookings Institution, and earlier served as a national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council.

In their video, Stone and Jones castigated Hill as a “mole” for billionaire investor George Soros. She “has been on the Soros payroll and the payroll of the Open Society Institute,” Stone said on Jones’s show.

The online trolling fits within a broader idea pushed by Trump supporters in Washington and the media — the threat of a “deep state,” or the idea that an unseen group of people inside government are working against civilian leaders. The term has often been used in countries such as Egypt or Turkey, where members of the military and others have orchestrated coups.

In Washington, the term “deep state” has been adopted in recent months to refer to the alleged threat from disloyal civil servants conspiring to harm the administration. “We are talking about the emergence of a deep state led by Barack Obama, and that is something that we should prevent,” Iowa Rep. Steve King said in March [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/us/politics/deep-state-trump.html ].

The online attacks on the reputations of particular civil servants “has a very Nixonian quality to it,” Riedel, of Brookings, said.

“What strikes me is there is another deep state that’s being fed information to wage war on the professional cadre.”

A new target for online bashing is Megan Badasch, the NSC’s deputy executive secretary. Cernovich has accused her of leaking to the press and working with McMaster to orchestrate the departure of Tera Dahl, who was serving as the NSC’s deputy chief of staff. Dahl, a former Breitbart columnist, is taking a new job [ https://www.buzzfeed.com/johnhudson/bannon-ally-leaves-white-house-as-mcmaster-consolidates ] in the Trump administration, a move that was in the works for a while.

Badasch is no Obama holdover; she has spent her career working in Republican politics, on Capitol Hill, and on presidential campaign teams. She was hired by the Trump campaign and worked on his transition team. When the White House sought to clamp down on leaks early in the administration, Badasch implemented a policy to restrict the distribution of documents within the government.

One big mark against Badasch, according to Cernovich: She was seen eating lunch with her colleague, Ciaramella.

This article was published jointly with Just Security [ https://www.justsecurity.org/42930/trumps-trolls-waging-war-americas-civil-servants/ ].

Copyright © 2017 Foreign Policy

http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/10/trumps-trolls-are-waging-war-on-americas-civil-servants/

*

This Town Melts Down

In this illustration: Sean Spicer, Kellyanne Conway, Kid Rock, Pepe the Frog and others.

In this illustration: Justin Trudeau, Melania Trump, Steve Bannon, swamp monsters and others.

Roger Stone and Steve Bannon.
A veteran political reporter takes stock of how Washington has — and hasn’t — changed in the time of Trump.
JULY 11, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/magazine/washington-dc-politics-trump-this-town-melts-down.html [with comments]

--

Guess What Else Happened on 6/9/16 | The Resistance with Keith Olbermann | GQ

Published on Jul 10, 2017 by GQ [ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsEukrAd64fqA7FjwkmZ_Dw / https://www.youtube.com/user/GQVideos , https://www.youtube.com/user/GQVideos/videos , https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0hKMB1-xkc-XWNf9VL-LxVYysdHpjyMF ]

What did Trump do the day his kid went looking for Russian dirt on Hillary?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZFX8FEpqOU [with comments]

--

Fort Drum Soldier Accused of Shooting Wife, Trooper to Death

Justin D. Walters, an active duty Army infantryman stationed at Fort Drum, charged with murdering his wife, Trooper Joel Davis
[ https://twitter.com/AaronKatersky/status/884411898615275521 (no comments yet), via https://heavy.com/news/2017/07/justin-walters-trooper-joel-davis-wife-nichole-r-d-fort-drum-theresa-new-york-army/ (with comments)]
July 10, 2017 Updated July 10, 2017
http://www.twcnews.com/nys/watertown/news/2017/07/10/new-york-state-trooper-joel-davis-shooting-theresa-jefferson-county-justin-walters.html [with embedded video, and comments]

Alleged killer of wife, trooper made a 'die list' in middle school
July 10, 2017 Updated July 10, 2017
A soldier accused of killing his wife and a New York state trooper made a "die list" in an alleged foiled plot nearly two decades ago, when he was a middle school student in Michigan.
U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Justin Walters, 32, is charged with killing his wife, Nichole Walters, 27, Sunday, July 9, at the couple's rural upstate property in New York, The Associated Press reported [ https://www.apnews.com/ad1180bd7f4249a98eb0d11735fe99d7/Afghanistan-combat-vet-charged-with-killing-wife,-trooper ].
He is also accused of fatally shooting New York State Trooper Joel Davis, 36, who responded to a report of shots fired around 8 p.m. at the home.
When Walters was 15-year-old ninth-grade student at Macatawa Bay Middle School in Holland, he pleaded guilty in Ottawa County Family Court to conspiracy to carry a dangerous weapon, after police were tipped off to his alleged plot with another classmate to kill people at the school before turning the guns on themselves.
Walters told police that he and 15-year-old John Beyrle compiled a "die or dead list," and that they had tried to get a firearm from a suspected gang member in school days earlier, according to a Grand Rapids Press article about the case.
"He just stated the plan was to come into the school cafeteria and shoot people, and then shoot themselves," according to a police report quoted in a Press article at the time.
Ottawa County sheriff's detectives began investigating a Silent Observer tip Nov. 7, 1999, records showed. Police and the school principal interviewed several students who saw the defendants over the weekend, when the list was apparently compiled.
Friends of the defendants were aware of the list, which also targeted minorities and those perceived to be homosexual, according to a Grand Rapids Press article.
[...]
http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2017/07/alleged_killer_of_wife_trooper.html [with comments]

--

Infowars Nightly News LIVE - CAUGHT ON TAPE: Paid Protesters Get Off Bus, Go To Protest

Published on Jul 10, 2017 by Ron Gibson

Alistair Williamson of Stock Board Asset recently caught raw footage of protesters getting off busses in Baltimore and going straight to a Trump protest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovhZHA3tGSo [with comments] [no official Alex Jones livestream (or other) upload remaining at https://www.youtube.com/user/TheAlexJonesChannel/videos ; text and completion of title taken from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K97d0FCQFYI (with comments)]

--

Trump Aides Recruited Businessmen to Devise Options for Afghanistan

Erik D. Prince in 2014. He was a founder of the private security firm Blackwater Worldwide.
Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

By MARK LANDLER, ERIC SCHMITT and MICHAEL R. GORDON
JULY 10, 2017

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s advisers recruited two businessmen who profited from military contracting to devise alternatives to the Pentagon’s plan to send thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan, reflecting the Trump administration’s struggle to define its strategy for dealing with a war now 16 years old.

Erik D. Prince, a founder of the private security firm Blackwater Worldwide [ https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/15/world/middleeast/blackwaters-legacy-goes-beyond-public-view.html ], and Stephen A. Feinberg [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/stephen_a_feinberg/index.html ], a billionaire financier who owns the giant military contractor DynCorp International, have developed proposals to rely on contractors instead of American troops in Afghanistan at the behest of Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, and Jared Kushner, his senior adviser and son-in-law, according to people briefed on the conversations.

On Saturday morning, Mr. Bannon sought out Defense Secretary Jim Mattis [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/james_n_mattis/index.html ] at the Pentagon to try to get a hearing for their ideas, an American official said. Mr. Mattis listened politely but declined to include the outside strategies in a review of Afghanistan policy that he is leading along with the national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster.

The highly unusual meeting dramatizes the divide between Mr. Trump’s generals and his political staff over Afghanistan, the lengths to which his aides will go to give their boss more options for dealing with it and the readiness of this White House to turn to business people for help with diplomatic and military problems.

Soliciting the views of Mr. Prince and Mr. Feinberg certainly qualifies as out-of-the-box thinking in a process dominated by military leaders in the Pentagon and the National Security Council. But it also raises a host of ethical issues, not least that both men could profit from their recommendations.

“The conflict of interest in this is transparent,” said Sean McFate, a professor at Georgetown University who wrote a book about the growth of private armies, “The Modern Mercenary.” “Most of these contractors are not even American, so there is also a lot of moral hazard.”

Last month, Mr. Trump gave the Pentagon authority to send more American troops to Afghanistan — a number believed to be about 4,000 — as a stopgap measure to stabilize the security situation there. But as the administration grapples with a longer-term strategy, Mr. Trump’s aides have expressed concern that he will be locked into policies that failed under the past two presidents.

Mr. Feinberg, whose name had previously been floated to conduct a review of the nation’s intelligence agencies, met with the president on Afghanistan, according to an official, while Mr. Prince briefed several White House officials, including General McMaster, said a second person.

Mr. Prince laid out his views in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal [ https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-macarthur-model-for-afghanistan-1496269058 ] in May. He called on the White House to appoint a viceroy to oversee the country and to use “private military units” to fill the gaps left by departed American soldiers. While he was at Blackwater [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/blackwater_usa/index.html ], the company became involved in one of the most notorious episodes of the Iraq war [ http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/world/middleeast/03firefight.html ], when its employees opened fire in a Baghdad square, killing 17 civilians.

After selling his stake in Blackwater in 2010, Mr. Prince mustered an army-for-hire for the United Arab Emirates. He has cultivated close ties to the Trump administration; his sister, Betsy DeVos, is Mr. Trump’s education secretary.

If Mr. Trump opted to use more contractors and fewer troops, it could also enrich DynCorp, which has already been paid $2.5 billion by the State Department for its work in the country, mainly training the Afghan police force. Mr. Feinberg controls DynCorp through Cerberus Capital Management, a firm he co-founded in 1992.

Mr. McFate, who used to work for DynCorp in Africa, said it could train and equip the Afghan Army, a costly, sometimes dangerous mission now handled by the American military. “The appeal to that,” he said, “is you limit your boots on the ground and you limit your casualties.” Some officials noted that under the government’s conflict-of-interest rules, DynCorp would not get a master contract to run operations in Afghanistan.

A spokesman for Mr. Feinberg declined to comment for this article, and a spokesman for Mr. Prince did not respond to a request for comment.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis; Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff; and Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s chief strategist, at a working luncheon in April.
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

The proposals Mr. Prince presented, a former American official said, hew closely to the views outlined in his Journal column — in essence, that the private sector can operate “cheaper and better than the military” in Afghanistan.

Mr. Feinberg, another official said, puts more emphasis than Mr. Prince on working with Afghanistan’s central government. But his strategy would also give the C.I.A. control over operations in Afghanistan, which would be carried out by paramilitary units and hence subject to less oversight than the military, according to a person briefed on it.

The strategy has been called “the Laos option,” after America’s shadowy involvement in Laos during the war in neighboring Vietnam. C.I.A. contractors trained Laotian soldiers to fight Communist insurgents and their North Vietnamese allies until 1975, leaving the country under Communist control and with a deadly legacy of unexploded bombs. In Afghanistan until now, contractors have been used mainly for security and logistics.

Whatever the flaws in these approaches — and there are many, according to diplomats and military experts — some former officials said it made sense to open up the debate.

“The status quo is clearly not working,” said Laurel Miller, who just stepped down as the State Department’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. “If the United States is going to chart a way forward towards a sustainable way of protecting our national security interests, it is important to consider a wide range of options.”

Despite Mr. Bannon’s apparent inability to persuade Mr. Mattis, Defense Department officials said they did not underestimate his influence as a link to, and an advocate for, Mr. Trump’s populist political base. Mr. Bannon has told colleagues that sending more troops to Afghanistan is a slippery slope to the nation building that Mr. Trump ran against during the campaign.

Mr. Bannon has also questioned what the United States has gotten for the $850 billion in nonmilitary spending it has poured into the country, noting that Afghanistan confounded the neoconservatives in the George W. Bush administration and the progressives in the Obama administration.

Mr. Kushner has not staked out as strong a position, one official said. But he, too, is sharply critical of the Bush and Obama strategies, and has said he views his role as making sure the president has credible options. Mr. Mattis has promised to present Mr. Trump with a recommendation for a broader strategy this month.

Like General McMaster, Mr. Mattis is believed to support sending several thousand more American troops to bolster the effort to advise and assist Afghan forces as they seek to reverse gains made by the Taliban. But he has been extremely careful in his public statements not to tip his hand, and has not yet exercised his authority to deploy troops.

Aides and associates say that while Mr. Mattis believes that Mr. Prince’s concept of relying on private armies in Afghanistan goes too far, he supported using contractors for limited, specific tasks when he was the four-star commander of the Pentagon’s Central Command.

“No one should diminish the role that they play,” Mr. Mattis, then a general, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in March 2012. “It is expensive, but there are places and times where having a contract force works well for us, as opposed to putting uniformed military to do, whether it’s a training mission or a security guard mission.”

The Pentagon has developed options to send 3,000 to 5,000 more American troops, including hundreds of Special Operations forces, with a consensus settling on about 4,000 additional troops. NATO countries would contribute a few thousand additional forces.

“It seems likely that the new strategy in Afghanistan will look a lot like what was proposed at the end of 2013,” said James G. Stavridis, a retired admiral who served as NATO’s top military commander.

Some critics say the increase will have little effect on the fighting on the ground. In May, Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, testified that the situation in Afghanistan would probably deteriorate through 2018 despite a modest increase in American and NATO forces.

Asked in June by reporters in Brussels about that analysis, Mr. Mattis responded curtly, “They’re entitled to their assessment.”

James Risen contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.

Related Coverage:

As U.S. Adds Troops in Afghanistan, Trump’s Strategy Remains Undefined
JUNE 18, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/18/world/asia/us-troops-afghanistan-trump.html

Obama’s Dilemma on Troop Surge in Afghanistan Now Vexes Trump
JUNE 3, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/world/asia/afghanistan-war-trump.html

© 2017 The New York Times Company

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/10/world/asia/trump-afghanistan-policy-erik-prince-stephen-feinberg.html [with comments]

*

Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon reportedly pushed for Erik Prince's aggressive Afghanistan war plan
Jul. 11, 2017
http://www.businessinsider.com/kushner-bannon-reportedly-pushed-erik-princes-terrifying-afghanistan-war-plan-2017-7 [with embedded video]

--

Podesta: 'Starting to smell more & more like collusion'

All In with Chris Hayes
7/10/17

Former Hillary Clinton Campaign Chair John Podesta reacts to new revelations that Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer connected to the Kremlin after being promised damaging information about Clinton. Duration: 6:33

©2017 NBCNews.com

http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/podesta-starting-to-smell-more-more-like-collusion-991986243888

*

President Trump, the pageant, the pop star, and Putin

All In with Chris Hayes
7/10/17

How Donald Trump's relationship with a Putin-allied pop singer, Emin Agalarov, led to Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Kremlin-aligned lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton. Duration: 2:34

©2017 NBCNews.com

http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/president-trump-the-pageant-the-pop-star-and-putin-991990339742 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnO_MkRpoeI [with comments]

*

Republicans trying to rush health care bill again

All In with Chris Hayes
7/10/17

The Senate is back from recess and Mitch McConnell is back at it again, trying to rush though a new version of the Republican health care bill in just a few weeks. Duration: 1:34

©2017 NBCNews.com

http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/republicans-trying-to-rush-health-care-bill-again-991992899663

*

Donald Trump's ritual humiliation of his surrogates

All In with Chris Hayes
7/10/17

Thing 1/Thing 2: The President likes to saw the limb off the tree after his surrogates have climbed out onto it to defend him. Duration: 2:50

©2017 NBCNews.com

http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/donald-trump-s-ritual-humiliation-of-his-surrogates-991994435936

--

Questions of Trump Russia collusion gain new specificity

The Rachel Maddow Show
7/10/17

Rachel Maddow rounds up the latest reporting on connections between the Donald Trump campaign and Russian interference efforts, including breaking news that Donald Trump, Jr. was informed in an e-mail that the Russian government was behind information being delivered by a Russia lawyer at an upcoming meeting. Duration: 20:05

©2017 NBCNews.com

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/questions-of-trump-russia-collusion-gain-new-specificity-992154691858 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h8mwZUUEY0 [with comments]

*

NYT: E-mail told Trump Jr of Russian government campaign help

The Rachel Maddow Show
7/10/17

Rachel Maddow shares breaking news from the New York Times that Donald Trump, Jr. was told in an e-mail that the Russian government was behind the anti-Hillary Clinton information he would receive at a meeting with a Russian lawyer. Duration: 1:18

©2017 NBCNews.com

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/nyt-e-mail-told-trump-jr-of-russian-government-campaign-help-992040515649 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqDyq3Inw4I [with comments]

*

Rep Schiff on potential criminality in Trump Russia collusion

The Rachel Maddow Show
7/10/17

Congressman Adam Schiff, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, talks with Rachel Maddow about which aspects of the Trump Russia collusion investigation have the potential for criminality beyond mere scandal. Duration: 10:02

©2017 NBCNews.com

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/rep-schiff-on-potential-criminality-in-trump-russia-collusion-992187971554

*

Schiff: Trump Jr meeting key in 2016 Russian hacking timeline

The Rachel Maddow Show
7/10/17

Congressman Adam Schiff, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, talks with Rachel Maddow about the timeline of Russian hacking and the release of information to Wikileaks, and the Donald Trump Jr meeting with a Russian lawyer in that context. Duration: 7:14

©2017 NBCNews.com

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/schiff-trump-jr-meeting-key-in-2016-russian-hacking-timeline-992203843988 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ9Gy92-Pps [with comments]

*

Protests flare as GOP health care/tax bill stalls

The Rachel Maddow Show
7/10/17

Rachel Maddow reports on protests around the country and in the nation's capital to pressure Republican senators to reject the proposed Republican health care/tax bill to replace Obamacare. Duration: 3:17

©2017 NBCNews.com

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/protests-flare-as-gop-health-care-tax-bill-stalls-992216643729

--

NYT: Email to Trump Jr. shows Russian gov't sought to help Trump

The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell
7/10/17

The New York Times reports Donald Trump Jr. was told via email the Russian government wanted to aid the Trump campaign. Fmr. Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks says it looks like collusion. Ron Klain and Bill Browder, who knows the Russian lawyer involved, join. Duration: 15:37

©2017 NBCNews.com

http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/nyt-email-to-trump-jr-shows-russian-gov-t-sought-to-help-trump-992218691650 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7-Ksi8w7zc [with comments]

*

Trump's new Russia idea draws bipartisan bafflement

The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell
7/10/17

Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle introduces legislation to block funding for Trump's suggested cybersecurity unit with Russia. Trump is already backpedaling as another Russia story breaks. Rep. Boyle and Evelyn Farkas join Lawrence O'Donnell to react. Duration: 7:48

©2017 NBCNews.com

http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/trump-s-new-russia-idea-draws-bipartisan-bafflement-992217155991 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z6iPcSjmAw [with comments]

*

NYT: Trump aggravated about another Russia story in the media

The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell
7/10/17

Lawrence O'Donnell talks to Ana Marie Cox and Ron Klain about President Trump's reaction about the news about Donald Trump, Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin. Duration: 6:25

©2017 NBCNews.com

http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/nyt-trump-aggravated-about-another-russia-story-in-the-media-992220227749

--

NYT: Donald Trump Jr. was told of Russian effort to help campaign

The 11th Hour with Brian Williams
7/10/17

The New York Times reports Donald Trump Jr. was told about Moscow's effort to aid the Trump campaign before he met with a Kremlin-linked lawyer claiming to have dirt on Hillary Clinton. Duration: 8:45

©2017 NBCNews.com

http://www.msnbc.com/brian-williams/watch/nyt-donald-trump-jr-was-told-of-russian-effort-to-help-campaign-992239171600

*

Bush ethics lawyer on Trump Jr.: This may be treasonous

The 11th Hour with Brian Williams
7/10/17

The top ethics lawyer for George W. Bush Richard Painter & fmr. federal prosecutor Paul Butler discuss the legal issues surrounding reports on Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian attorney. Duration: 6:24

©2017 NBCNews.com

http://www.msnbc.com/brian-williams/watch/bush-ethics-lawyer-on-trump-jr-this-may-be-treasonous-992230979862 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZl7EGkNhTE [with comments]

*

Lawyers: Trump had no knowledge of Donald Trump Jr. meeting

The 11th Hour with Brian Williams
7/10/17

Fmr. Pentagon & CIA Chief of Staff Jeremy Bash and Associated Press White House reporter Jonathan Lemire react to the reports of Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer. Duration: 2:05

©2017 NBCNews.com

http://www.msnbc.com/brian-williams/watch/lawyers-trump-had-no-knowledge-of-donald-trump-jr-meeting-992247875515

*

House Democrat on Trump & Russia: This is unraveling fast

The 11th Hour with Brian Williams
7/10/17

House Armed Services Cmte. member Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) reacts to the latest reports about Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Kremlin-linked attorney. Duration: 2:14

©2017 NBCNews.com

http://www.msnbc.com/brian-williams/watch/house-democrat-on-trump-russia-this-is-unraveling-fast-992256067676 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiBtu_mG7dg [with comments]

--

Donald Trump Jr. Reminds Everyone How Incompetent His Dad's Administration Is: The Daily Show

Published on Jul 10, 2017 by The Daily Show with Trevor Noah [ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwWhs_6x42TyRM4Wstoq8HA , https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwWhs_6x42TyRM4Wstoq8HA/videos ]

First Son Donald Trump Jr. is accused of meeting with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 election in hopes of obtaining damaging information on Hillary Clinton.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApX8fF8Ghcs [with comments]

--

Kellyanne Conway Gives It To Stephen Straight (As In, Straight Up BS)

Published on Jul 11, 2017 by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert [ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMtFAi84ehTSYSE9XoHefig , https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMtFAi84ehTSYSE9XoHefig/videos ]

Stephen goes 'lie' to satellite with the counselor to the President of the United States.

[originally aired July 10, 2017]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1176t23Q0k [with comments]

*

Stephen Stars As Donald Trump Jr. In 'Collusion'

Published on Jul 11, 2017 by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

Featuring Stephen Colbert as Donald Trump Jr., Stephen Colbert as Paul Manafort and Stephen Colbert as Jared Kushner.

[originally aired July 10, 2017]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anAYFvvYO40 [with comments]

*

Mr. President Wasn't Mr. Popular At The G20 Summit

Published on Jul 11, 2017 by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the President needs to beef up his vocabulary to explain the photo of him sitting alone at the summit in Hamburg.

[originally aired July 10, 2017]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq2vQVBqsvA [with comments]

*

North Korea's Missiles Can Reach Alaska. Alaska Doesn't Care.

Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07

"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790

F6

Keep Last Read

Replies (1) Next 10 Prev Next

Join the InvestorsHub Community

Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.

Volume
Day Range:
Bid Price
Ask Price
Last Trade Time:

Boards:

Quotes:

Boards

News

Market Data

Markets

Discover

Discover

Boards:

Quotes:

Join the InvestorsHub Community