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Opinion | This Is What Happened When the Authorities Put Trump Under a Microscope - The... - 0 views

  • The two highest-profile congressional investigations of Trump that followed — the 2019 report by the House Intelligence Committee on Trump’s pressuring of Ukraine as well as the recently released report by the select committee on the Jan. 6 attack — read like deliberate contrasts to the document produced by Robert Mueller and his team.
  • Their presentation is dramatic, not dense; their conclusions are blunt, not oblique; their arguments are political as much as legal. And yet, the Ukraine and Jan. 6 reports seem to follow the cues, explicit or implied, that the Mueller report left behind.
  • The Mueller report also notes in its final pages that “only a successor administration would be able to prosecute a former president,” which is what the Jan. 6 special committee, with its multiple criminal referrals, has urged the Biden administration’s Justice Department to do.
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  • ALL THREE REPORTS INCLUDE quintessentially Trumpian scenes, consistent in their depictions of the former president’s methods, and very much in keeping with numerous journalistic accounts of how he sought to manipulate people, rules and institutions.
  • The three investigations tell different stories, but the misdeeds all run together, more overlapping than sequential
  • Still, each investigation offers a slightly different theory of Trump. In the Mueller report, Trump and his aides come across as the gang that can’t cheat straight — too haphazard to effectively coordinate with a foreign government, too ignorant of campaign finance laws to purposely violate them, often comically naïve about the gravity of their plight.
  • The Ukraine report, by contrast, regards Trump as more strategic than chaotic, and it does not wallow in the netherworld between the president’s personal benefit and his public service. “The president placed his own personal and political interests above the national interests of the United States, sought to undermine the integrity of the U.S. presidential election process, and endangered U.S. national security,”
  • All three reports show Trump deploying the mechanisms of government for political gain.
  • The Mueller report argues that viewing the president’s “acts collectively can help to illuminate their significance.” The Ukraine report shows that the conversation that Trump described as “a perfect call” was not the ask; it was the confirmation. When Trump said, “I would like you to do us a favor, though,” Zelensky and his aides had already been notified of what was coming. The Ukraine scandal was never about a single call, just as the Jan. 6 report was not about a single day.
  • The Jan. 6 report takes seriously the admonition to view the president’s actions collectively, not individually; the phrase “multipart plan” appears throughout the report, with Trump as the architect.
  • Even more so than the Ukraine report, the Jan. 6 report repeatedly emphasizes how Trump knew, well, everything
  • There is no room here for the plausible deniability that the Mueller report entertained, for the notion that Trump didn’t know better, or that, in the immortal words of Attorney General William P. Barr when he creatively interpreted the Mueller report to exonerate Trump of obstruction of justice, that the president was “frustrated and angered by his sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency.”
  • This alleged sincerity underscored the president’s “noncorrupt motives,” as Barr put it. In the Jan. 6 report, any case for Trumpian sincerity is eviscerated in a six-page chart in the executive summary, which catalogs the many times the president was informed of the facts of the election yet continued to lie about them. “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen,” Trump told top Department of Justice officials in late December 2020, the report says.
  • Just announce an investigation into the Bidens. Just say the 2020 election was rigged. Trump’s most corrupt action is always the corruption of reality.
  • The studious restraint of the Mueller report came in for much criticism once the special counsel failed to deliver a dagger to the heart of the Trump presidency and once the document was so easily miscast by interested parties
  • for all its diffidence, there is power in the document’s understated prose, in its methodical collection of evidence, in its unwillingness to overstep its bounds while investigating a president who knew few bounds himself.
  • The Ukraine and Jan. 6 reports came at a time when Trump’s misconduct was better understood, when Mueller-like restraint was less in fashion and when those attempting to hold the chief executive accountable grasped every tool at hand. For all their passion and bluntness, they encountered their own constraints, limits that are probably inherent to the form
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Exclusive: Trump Media saved in 2022 by Russian-American under criminal investigation |... - 0 views

  • The concern surrounding the loans to Trump Media is that ES Family Trust may have been used to complete a transaction that Paxum itself could not.
  • Paxum Bank does not offer loans in the US as it lacks a US banking license and is not regulated by the FDIC. Postolnikov appears to have used the trust to loan money to help save Trump Media – and the Truth Social platform – because his bank itself could not furnish the loan.
  • Postolnikov, the nephew of Aleksandr Smirnov, an ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has not been charged with a crime. In response to an email to Postolnikov seeking comment, a lawyer in Dominica representing Paxum Bank warned of legal action for reporting the contents of the leaked documents.
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  • Postolnikov has been under increasing scrutiny in the criminal investigation into the Trump Media merger. Most recently, he has been listed on search warrant affidavits alongside several associates – one of whom was indicted last month for money laundering on top of earlier insider-trading charges.
  • Trump Media then received the loans from ES Family Trust: $2m on 23 December 2021, and $6m on 17 February 2022.
  • Part of the problem was that Trump Media struggled to get financing because traditional banks were reluctant to lend millions to Trump’s social media company in the wake of the January 6 Capitol attack, Wilkerson said.Trump Media eventually found some lenders, including ES Family Trust, but the sequence of events was curious.
  • S Family Trust was established on 18 May 2021, its creation papers show. Postolnikov’s “user” access to the account was “verified” on 30 November 2021 by a Paxum Bank manager in Dominica. The trust was funded for the first time on 2 December 2021
  • In late 2021, Trump Media was facing financial trouble after the original planned merger with Digital World was delayed indefinitely when the Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into the merger, Trump Media’s since-ousted co-founder-turned-whistleblower Will Wilkerson recounted in an interview.
  • The loans came in the form of convertible promissory notes, meaning ES Family Trust would gain a major stake in Trump Media because it was offering the money in exchange for Trump Media agreeing to convert the loan principal into “shares of Company Stock”.
  • Oddly, the notes were never signed. But the investment in Trump Media proved to be huge: while precise figures can only be known by Trump Media, ES Family Trust’s stake in Trump Media is worth between $20m and $40m even after the sharp decline of the company’s share price in the wake of a poor earnings report
  • The ES Family Trust account also appears to have benefited Postolnikov personally. As the criminal investigation into the Trump Media deal intensified towards the end of last year, the trust recorded several transfers to Postolnikov with the subject line “Partial Loan Return”.In total, the documents showed that the trust transferred $4.8m to Postolnikov’s account, although $3m was inexplicably “reversed”.
  • The reason for the trust’s creation remains unknown. Aside from the money that went to Trump Media, the trust’s statements show the trust has directly invested money with only two other companies: $10.8m to Eleven Ventures LLC, a venture capital firm, and $1m to Wedbush Securities, a wealth management firm.
  • The creation papers also contained something notable: a declaration that, if the original trustee – a Paxum employee named Angel Pacheco – stepped down from the role, his successor would be a certain individual named Michael Shvartsman.
  • Last month, federal prosecutors charged Michael Shvartsman, a close associate of Postolnikov, with money laundering in a superseding indictment after previously charging him and two others in July with insider-trading Digital World shares. Shvartsman and his co-defendants pleaded not guilty.
  • nformant for the DHS, court filings show: in one March 2023 meeting with the informant and an associate, Shvartsman mentioned a friend who owned a bank in Dominica and made bridge loans to Trump Media.
  • “[Shvartsman’s associate] told the [confidential informant] that he does not think the SEC would be able to go after [Shvartsman] for his part in the investment but mentioned that [Shvartsman] essentially provided ‘bridge financing’ for the firm behind the Truth Social media platform,” it said.
  • The investigation into potential money laundering appears to have started after Wilkerson’s lawyers Phil Brewster, Stephen Bell and Patrick Mincey alerted the US attorney’s office in the southern district of New York to the ES Family Trust loans in October 2022.
  • Months later, in June 2023, the FBI expanded its investigation to work jointly with the Department of Homeland Security’s El Dorado taskforce, which specializes in money laundering, and its Illicit Proceeds and Foreign Corruption group, which targets corrupt foreign officials who use US entities to launder illicit funds.
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The FBI will re-open the investigation into Hillary Clinton's email server - 0 views

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    In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Friday, FBI Director James Comey wrote that the agency is investigating additional emails that were discovered as part of a separate investigation. "In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation ...
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FBI reopens Clinton email investigation after new messages found | Fox News - 0 views

  • The move comes after Comey and the Justice Department decided in July not to pursue charges over Clinton's email practices, saying at the time that the investigation was finished. 
  • Comey has since come under criticism from Donald Trump, lawmakers and others who claim the investigation downplayed the mishandling of classified information during Clinton's tenure. 
  • “Hillary Clinton’s corruption is on a scale we have never seen before,” Trump said. “We must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office.”
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  • “The FBI’s decision to reopen its investigation into Secretary Clinton reinforces what the House Judiciary Committee has been saying for months: the more we learn about Secretary Clinton’s use of a private email server, the clearer it becomes that she and her associates committed wrongdoing and jeopardized national security," House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said in a statement. 
  • The development comes 11 days before the general election, and is the latest shockwave to hit the race. Clinton had been gaining in the polls over Trump in the wake of the release of footage showing Trump talking about groping women and subsequent allegations of sexual assault and harassment against him. 
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    The FBI re-opened Clinton's because they found new emailss
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Missing Mexican Students Suffered a Night of 'Terror,' Investigators Say - The New York... - 1 views

  • Missing Mexican Students Suffered a Night of ‘Terror,’ Investigators Say
  • With a military intelligence official looking on and state and federal police officers in the immediate vicinity, witnesses said, the students were put into police vehicles and taken away.
  • Despite apparent stonewalling by the Mexican government in recent months, the panel’s two reports on the case, the most recent of which was released on Sunday, provide the fullest accounting of the events surrounding the students’ disappearance, which also left six other people dead, including three students, and scores wounded.
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  • The plan for the outing that evening was to secure several buses to carry students to a march in Mexico City several days later to commemorate a student massacre that had occurred in 1968.
  • At another point, a student sneaked up behind a police officer and tried to disarm him
  • The police had left by then, and the students sought to record the evidence of the attack while trying to communicate with their classmates in the other buses.
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Investigators searching for cause of deadly explosion inside World War II-era tank | Fo... - 0 views

  • Investigators searching for cause of deadly explosion inside World War II-era tank
  • The blast occurred Tuesday afternoon at a public gun range east of Bend.
  • There was no word on what caused the explosion, but Nelson says video was being shot around when the blast occurred that could help investigators learn more about what happened.
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  • Detectives from the sheriff's office and the Oregon State Police Arson and Explosives Section are investigating.
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FBI investigating Philadelphia cop shooting as terrorism - CBS News - 0 views

  • FBI investigating Philadelphia cop shooting as terrorism
  • FBI Director James Comey said on Wednesday that last week's shooting of a Philadelphia police officer was being investigated as "a terrorist attack."
  • Late last Thursday, police said Edward Archer approached Officer Jesse Hartnett's patrol car and fired a hail of bullets at close range.
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  • Hartnett, 33, was shot three times in the arm and will require multiple surgeries.
  • Archer confessed to the shooting and told investigators he was following Allah, and had pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS
  • The 30-year-old is being held without bail.
  • The tip said Archer is "part of a group that consists of three others." She went on to say that Archer "is not the most radical of the four" and that "the threat to police is not over."
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Top US general stresses patience in Niger investigation: 'We want to make sure we have ... - 0 views

  • Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday that he wants to wait for the results of the full investigation into the ambush in Niger that killed four U.S. soldiers before commenting on what may or may not have happened on Oct. 4. That includes questions on whether the soldiers’ mission had been changed to include a capture or kill mission of a high-value target, as was reported Monday evening by ABC News.
  • Did the Niger mission change? Dunford described anything to that effect as speculation and said that he preferred to withhold comment until the investigation is completed to gather all the facts about the mission. Though he acknowledged it is a legitimate question to ask, Dunford said, “Anything you’ve seen to that regard is speculation and once the investigation is complete we'll have the facts and we'll share them." He described the “bits and pieces of information coming out" as "some speculation, some bits of fact." "We want to make sure we have the whole story in context that we can provide to the families. That's my primary target audience right now," said Dunford. "They have legitimate questions, they've lost their loved ones and they have legitimate questions about what happened."
  • ISIS in Africa? As for the ISIS groups in Africa, Dunford explained how ISIS is “leveraging” local insurgencies.
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Death of investigative journalist sparks mass protests in Slovakia | World news | The G... - 0 views

  • Tens of thousands of Slovaks have rallied to demand the resignation of prime minister Robert Fico’s government following the murder of a journalist that has shocked the central European nation and stoked anger over sleaze in public life.
  • Organisers demanded a thorough investigation of Kuciak’s death and a “new trustworthy government”. “Politicians in power have lost our trust,” said protester Maria Kuliovska, a 30-year-old mother on maternity leave. “We don’t trust them to guarantee an independent investigation. They have failed to investigate all previous scandals.”
  • Kiska, Fico and parliamentary speaker Andrej Danko – the country’s three highest officials – failed to agree a planned written declaration to help defuse tensions in talks on Friday.
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'A presidency of one': Key federal agencies increasingly compelled to benefit Trump - T... - 1 views

  • “I’m not sure there are many, if any, left who view as their responsibility trying to help educate, moderate, enlighten and persuade — or even advise in many cases,” the former senior official said. “There’s a new ethos: This is a presidency of one.”
  • “It’s Trump unleashed, unchained, unhinged,” this official added. “He continues to go further and further and further, and now I don’t think there’s anybody telling him, ‘No.’ 
  • Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign adviser, said the president has long wanted to be the sole driver of his message, with everyone else playing supporting roles
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  • “He wants to be the one adjusting and taking the lead on where it goes, not adjusting to others,” Nunberg said. “It goes back to how he navigated network TV, the tabloids and business publicity. That’s his playbook.
  • Trump’s moves represent a fundamental reorientation of American democracy, said Timothy Snyder, a Yale history professor and author of “On Tyranny
  • “Rather than having the boring system we take for granted, where you have laws based on facts, instead you have a personality who makes up his own reality,” Snyder said. “At first, that reality is just confusing and seems to gum up the works, but after a while, the leader starts to draw people into that reality by making them defend it or making them prove it. This is what’s happening here.
  • The implicit day-to-day charge for many Trump advisers is simple, according to aides and other officials familiar with the president’s Cabinet and West Wing staff: Figure out how to handle or even polish Trump’s whims and statements, but do not have any illusion that you can temper his relentless personality, heavy consumption of cable news or thirst for political combat.
  • Acquiescence is central to survival. Trump has bonded with aides who take his running complaints about the “deep state” and “fake news” seriously, along with his embrace of people and positions outside of the mainstream
  • Barr’s role in the investigation into the Russia probe’s origins, which is being conducted by U.S. Attorney John Durham in Connecticut, is extraordinary in part because the probe seeks evidence of misconduct within his own Justice Department to support the conspiracy theory — embraced by Trump and advanced on Fox News — that the Russia inquiry was corrupt and predicated on undermining Trump.
  • Snyder said the investigation Trump sought and Barr is pursuing fits a pattern of behavior in which leaders try to disprove or undermine facts — in this case, the conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump win — with other investigations.
  • “The idea of investigating the investigation is that you cast doubt on the boring factual staff,” he said. “Even if you don’t win with your adventurous fiction, you also win if your adventurous fiction casts doubt on the boring facts.”
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Comey Tried to Shield the F.B.I. From Politics. Then He Shaped an Election. - The New Y... - 0 views

  • WASHINGTON — The day before he upended the 2016 election, James B. Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, summoned agents and lawyers to his conference room. They had been debating all day, and it was time for a decision
  • But with polls showing Mrs. Clinton holding a comfortable lead, Mr. Comey ended up plunging the F.B.I. into the molten center of a bitter election. Fearing the backlash that would come if it were revealed after the election that the F.B.I. had been investigating the next president and had kept it a secret, Mr. Comey sent a letter informing Congress that the case was reopened.
  • An examination by The New York Times, based on interviews with more than 30 current and former law enforcement, congressional and other government officials, found that while partisanship was not a factor in Mr. Comey’s approach to the two investigations, he handled them in starkly different ways. In the case of Mrs. Clinton, he rewrote the script, partly based on the F.B.I.’s expectation that she would win and fearing the bureau would be accused of helping her. In the case of Mr. Trump, he conducted the investigation by the book, with the F.B.I.’s traditional secrecy. Many of the officials discussed the investigations on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters.
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  • he examination also showed that at one point, President Obama himself was reluctant to disclose the suspected Russian influence in the election last summer, for fear his administration would be accused of meddling.
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Special counsel appointed in Russia probe - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

shared by izzerios on 18 May 17 - No Cached
  • Justice Department on Wednesday appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to oversee the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election
  • Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller to the position in a letter obtained by CNN. Attorney General Jeff Sessions previously recused himself from any involvement in the Russia investigation due to his role as a prominent campaign adviser and surrogate.
  • Mueller's appointment aims to quell the wave of criticism that Trump and his administration have faced since Trump fired FBI Director James Comey
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  • "As I have stated many times, a thorough investigation will confirm what we already know -- there was no collusion between my campaign and any foreign entity. I look forward to this matter concluding quickly
  • "I think it was the right thing to do and I believe they saw it as the right thing to do otherwise they're going to have a fight and it's not worth the fight,"
  • Demands intensified from Democrats on Capitol Hill for the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel or prosecutor to oversee the case. Republicans on Tuesday night began to join those calls
  • "There's, frankly, no need for a special prosecutor. We've discussed this before," Spicer told reporters. "You have two Senate committees that are looking into this, the FBI is conducting their own review
  • Trump has called the FBI investigation into Russia a "hoax" and "taxpayer funded charade."
  • He added, "This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!"
  • Attorney General John Ashcroft to reauthorize a warrantless domestic surveillance program that the Justice Department had ruled illegal, Mueller and Comey rushed to the hospital to prevent the Bush officials from taking advantage of Ashcroft.
  • Rosenstein said he believes a special counsel "is necessary in order for the American people to have full confidence in the outcome."
  • "In my capacity as acting attorney general, I determined that it is in the public interest for me to exercise my authority and appoint a Special Counsel to assume responsibility for this matter," Rosenstein said
  • "What I have determined is that based upon the unique circumstances, the public interest requires me to place this investigation under the authority of a person who exercises a degree of independence from the normal chain of command," Rosenstein
  • Mueller was appointed FBI Director by President George W. Bush in 2001 and served until 2013
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Hopes Dim for Congressional Russia Inquiries as Parties Clash - The New York Times - 1 views

  • In a secured room in the basement of the Capitol in July, Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, fielded question after question from members of the House Intelligence Committee.
  • Though the allotted time for the grilling had expired, he offered to stick around as long as they wanted.
  • Representative Trey Gowdy, who spent nearly three years investigating Hillary Clinton’s culpability in the deadly 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, was growing frustrated after two hours.
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  • You are in an unwinnable situation, Mr. Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican, counseled Mr. Kushner. If you leave now, Democrats will say you did not answer all the questions. If you stay, they will keep you here all week.
  • The exchange, described by three people with knowledge of it, typified the political morass that is crippling the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election — and whether the Trump campaign colluded in any way.
  • But the problems extend beyond that panel. All three committees looking into Russian interference — one in the House, two in the Senate — have run into problems, from insufficient staffing to fights over when the committees should wrap up their investigations.
  • The Senate Judiciary Committee’s inquiry has barely started, delayed in part by negotiations over the scope of the investigation. Leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, while maintaining bipartisan comity, have sought to tamp down expectations about what they might find.
  • Nine months into the Trump administration, any notion that Capitol Hill would provide a comprehensive, authoritative and bipartisan accounting of the extraordinary efforts of a hostile power to disrupt American democracy appears to be dwindling.
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Oath Keepers Founder Is Said to Be Investigated in Capitol Riot - The New York Times - 0 views

  • F.B.I. agents and federal prosecutors are investigating Stewart Rhodes, the founder and leader of the Oath Keepers militia, for any role he might have played in the storming of the Capitol two months ago, according to court documents and a law enforcement official with knowledge of the matter.
  • The Oath Keepers, who largely draw their members from the ranks of former military and law enforcement personnel, have from the start been a central focus of the sprawling investigation into the Capitol riot, which has led to charges against nearly 300 people. Eleven members of the group stand accused of a variety of crimes stemming from the siege, most prominently an alleged conspiracy reaching back to shortly after Election Day to break into the Capitol and interfere with Congress’s Jan. 6 certification of the Electoral College vote.
  • In the same communiqué, Mr. Rhodes announced that the Oath Keepers would be sending “multiple volunteer security teams” to provide protection to “V.I.P.s” at events surrounding Mr. Trump’s speech and rally in Washington earlier on the day of the riot. The New York Times has identified a group of Oath Keepers who worked as security guards for Mr. Trump’s close ally and adviser Roger J. Stone Jr. at such events, and this week two of them — Roberto Minuta and Joshua A. James — were arrested in connection with the Capitol attack.
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  • Prosecutors overseeing the investigation of Mr. Rhodes, who attended Yale Law School after his military service, have nonetheless struggled to make a case against him. The official with knowledge of the matter said his activities have so far have seemed to stay within the boundaries of the First Amendment.
  • Known for his distinctive black eye patch — the result of a gun accident — Mr. Rhodes has long been known to the F.B.I. and remains under investigation for a matter separate from the riot at the Capitol, a Justice Department official said. For years, he has earned a reputation as a leader of the right-wing “Patriot” movement, often spewing incendiary rhetoric to recruit and inspire militia members.
  • Throughout the Obama years, gathering momentum as a militia group, the Oath Keepers repeatedly inserted themselves into prominent public events. They turned up, for instance, in 2014 at a cattle ranch in Nevada after its owner, Cliven Bundy, engaged in an armed standoff with federal land management officials. That same year, members of the group went to Ferguson, Mo., in a self-appointed mission to protect local businesses from riots prompted by the death of Michael Brown, a Black man who was shot by the police.
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Cuomo faces most serious allegation yet as aide says governor groped her | Andrew Cuomo... - 0 views

  • An aide to Andrew Cuomo says the New York governor groped her in the governor’s residence, marking the most serious allegation among those made by a series of women against the embattled Democrat, according to a report published in a newspaper Wednesday.
  • reported that the woman, who was not identified, was alone with Cuomo when he closed the door, reached under her shirt and fondled her. The newspaper’s reporting is based on an unidentified source with direct knowledge of the woman’s accusation.
  • The three-term governor faces harassment allegations from five other women
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  • “The governor’s sexual harassment, which Charlotte Bennett reported, was buried by his aides and never properly investigated,” Katz’s statement said. “Because of their enablement, another young woman was left in harm’s way.”
  • The woman whose account was reported by the Times Union also indicated that Cuomo had touched her and made flirtatious comments on multiple occasions.
  • In it, he denied ever touching a woman inappropriately. The aide subsequently became emotional, and told a female supervisor who approached her about her encounters with the governor. At least one supervisor reported the allegation to an attorney in the governor’s office Monday, the newspaper reported.
  • The state attorney general, Letitia James, has put together an investigative team to probe Cuomo’s workplace conduct. The governor has called on lawmakers and the public to await the results of that investigation. Federal investigators are also scrutinizing how his administration handled data concerning Covid-19 outbreaks at nursing homes.
  • Cuomo has repeatedly maintained he won’t resign.
  • The Republican assembly member Mike Lawler on Twitter called Cuomo “a sexual predator” who should be charged.
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Oath Keepers Founder Is Said to Be Investigated in Capitol Riot - The New York Times - 0 views

  • F.B.I. agents and federal prosecutors are investigating Stewart Rhodes, the founder and leader of the Oath Keepers militia, for any role he might have played in the storming of the Capitol two months ago, according to court documents and a law enforcement official with knowledge of the matter.
  • If he were ultimately charged, it could amount to a crippling blow to the militia.
  • In court papers filed on Monday night, prosecutors significantly raised the stakes against Mr. Rhodes, saying that they now have evidence that he was in direct communication with some of the plot suspects before, during and after the assault on the Capitol. Prosecutors said they have recovered messages — batched together under the title “DC OP: Jan 6 21” — from the encrypted chatting app Signal connecting Mr. Rhodes to regional Oath Keepers leaders from around the country, including two who have been charged in the conspiracy case: Jessica M. Watkins of Ohio and Kelly Meggs of Florida.
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  • Prosecutors overseeing the investigation of Mr. Rhodes, who attended Yale Law School after his military service, have nonetheless struggled to make a case against him. The official with knowledge of the matter said his activities have so far have seemed to stay within the boundaries of the First Amendment.
  • Known for his distinctive black eye patch — the result of a gun accident — Mr. Rhodes has long been known to the F.B.I. and remains under investigation for a matter separate from the riot at the Capitol, a Justice Department official said. For years, he has earned a reputation as a leader of the right-wing “Patriot” movement, often spewing incendiary rhetoric to recruit and inspire militia members.
  • At a ceremony in Lexington, Mass., the site of a famous battle of the Revolutionary War, Mr. Rhodes said his plan was for members of the Oath Keepers to disobey certain illegal orders from the government and instead uphold their oath to the Constitution.
  • Mr. Rhodes was particularly vocal in supporting the former president’s relentless lies that the 2020 elections were marred by fraud and that President Biden’s victory was illegitimate.
  • Some of the Oath Keepers charged in connection with the Capitol attack have evinced a similar devotion to Mr. Trump. According to court papers, Ms. Watkins said she was “awaiting direction” from Mr. Trump about how to handle the results of the vote only after the election took place.“POTUS has the right to activate units,” she wrote in a text message to an associate on Nov. 9, according to court documents. “If Trump asks me to come, I will.”
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Robert Mueller to help teach law school class on Russia investigation - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • Former special counsel Robert Mueller will help teach a University of Virginia Law School class on his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, the school announced Wednesday.
  • The course, titled "The Mueller Report and the Role of the Special Counsel," will be taught by three former senior members of Mueller's team and held over six sessions in the fall semester.
  • The school said the course will focus on "a key set of decisions made during the special counsel's investigation," starting with Mueller's appointment as special counsel and ending with a focus on "obstruction of justice, presidential accountability and the role of special counsel in that accountability."
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  • Ultimately, Mueller found several examples of Russian efforts to sway the election for the Trump campaign but did not find evidence that the Trump campaign knowingly took part in the allegedly criminal conspiracy, according to his 448-page report released in April 2019.
  • In all, Mueller charged 34 people and three Russian companies with crimes. That included top Trump advisers: Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Rick Gates and Michael Flynn, as well as two dozen Russians and the Russian companies.
  • Mueller, who began his career with the Department of Justice in 1976 as an assistant US attorney in San Francisco, will look to bring other prosecutors involved in his investigation into the classroom as well, the school said.
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The best way to get to the bottom of the Covid-19 lab leak theory (opinion) - CNN - 0 views

  • On Wednesday, President Joe Biden called for an inquiry by US intelligence agencies into the true origins of Covid-19.
  • The "lab leak" explanation, which was panned and dismissed by a number of analysts, gained new life after the Wall Street Journal reported on a previously undisclosed US intelligence report revealing that three researchers from the Wuhan lab became so sick with Covid-19-like symptoms in November 2019 -- before official reports of the first outbreak -- that they had to seek hospita
  • The Biden administration should itself -- separate and apart from the World Health Organization -- lead a multilateral effort to investigate the origins of the virus.
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  • The lab leak theory has been judged by at least one US intelligence agency as the more likely explanation for Covid-19's origins, while two agencies think the virus was more likely spread to humans from an infected animal
  • An investigation into the true origins of the virus is essential not only for scientific reasons, but also because policymakers around the world need this knowledge to better prepare themselves for future pandemics.
  • It should be no surprise, then, that the WHO's own investigation into the origins of Covid-19 concluded that a lab leak was probably not the cause of the pandemic and that infection from natural sources was more likely. But investigators were only permitted to examine research conducted by Chinese state scientists and did not have full access to the data or facilities that would have allowed them to assess whether the virus that causes Covid-19 may have been present before cases of the disease were first confirmed in China in December 2019.
  • Beijing, for its part, considers the case closed and has argued that the attention should be turned to other countries for the role they may have played in the early days of the pandemic.
  • More specifically, the Biden administration is calling on the WHO to complete a second phase of its investigation in a way that allows "international experts the independence to fully assess the source of the virus and the early days of the outbreak."
  • Biden has been eager to redouble our engagement and work together with America's friends and allies around the world. Getting to the root cause of a pandemic that has already killed nearly 3.5 million people globally presents a golden opportunity to do just that.
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Rep. Mo Brooks is avoiding an insurrection lawsuit. Rep. Eric Swalwell hired a private ... - 0 views

  • Republican Rep. Mo Brooks is avoiding a lawsuit from his Democratic colleague Rep. Eric Swalwell that seeks to hold him accountable for the January 6 Capitol insurrection -- so much so that Swalwell's attorneys hired a private investigator to find him.
  • The detail comes in a court filing Wednesday in which Swalwell's attorneys describe difficulty in serving Brooks with the lawsuit. CNN has reached out to Brooks' office for comment.
  • After Swalwell -- a California Democrat -- sued in March, his attorneys tried to reach the Alabama Republican through calls to the congressman's office and by sending a letter to formally provide him notice he had been sued, a necessary step in this type of court proceeding.
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  • "Counsel spoke to two different staff members on two separate occasions, and each time was promised a return call that never came," Swalwell's attorneys wrote on Wednesday.
  • Brooks spoke at the pro-Trump rally on January 6, saying, "Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass." He then asked the rally attendees if they were willing to fight.
  • "Plaintiff had to engage the services of a private investigator to attempt to serve Brooks personally -- a difficult feat under normal circumstances that has been complicated further in the wake of the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol that Defendants incited," Swalwell's court filing continued. "Plaintiff's investigator has spent many hours over many days in April and May at locations in multiple jurisdictions attempting to locate and serve Brooks, to no avail."
  • "The problem here is that Mo Brooks' door is under lock and key ... There was just no access to the primary place that he was for much of the day," Andonian said. "It just takes persistence and luck sometimes. We're not claiming Brooks is hiding in a bunker somewhere. But it takes a lot of effort."
  • Following the Swalwell team's calls, they emailed, too. "Neither Brooks nor any member of his staff has responded to his request," their filing said.
  • "We want to know answers. We want to know what Donald Trump was saying, what he was thinking" or what others said to him on January 6, Andonian said on CNN Wednesday. He described the effort in the lawsuit as one way to find out what happened behind the scenes around the then-President since plans for a bipartisan congressional commission fell apart last week after Senate Republicans blocked its creation.
  • Following the speeches at the pro-Trump rally, many in the crowd marched to the Capitol, with several violently breaking into the building and looking for lawmakers who were certifying Biden's victory over Trump in the 2020 election.
  • Republican Rep. Mo Brooks is avoiding a lawsuit from his Democratic colleague Rep. Eric Swalwell that seeks to hold him accountable for the January 6 Capitol insurrection -- so much so that Swalwell's attorneys hired a private investigator to find him.
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ICE Meant to Capture Drug Lords. Did It Snare Duped Seniors? - The New York Times - 0 views

  • The final step to collect his millions was a good-will gesture: He needed to embark on a whirlwind tour to several countries, stopping first in São Paulo, Brazil, to pick up a small package of gifts for government officials.
  • Under the program, ICE officials share information with foreign law enforcement agencies when they learn about potential smuggling. But critics say the program does not do enough to warn unwitting drug mules that they are being duped; instead, U.S. officials in some cases are delivering vulnerable older Americans straight into the hands of investigators in foreign countries, where they can be locked up for years.
  • Since Operation Cocoon was created in 2013, information shared by ICE has led to more than 400 travelers being stopped by law enforcement at foreign airports, resulting in about 390 drug seizures. More than 180 of those stopped on suspicion of carrying narcotics were American citizens, and 70 percent of those were over age 60.
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  • he Trump administration informed some members of Congress last year that Mr. Stemberger was most likely arrested after ICE shared information with foreign authorities through Operation Cocoon, according to correspondence reviewed by The New York Times.The correspondence suggests U.S. authorities became aware of Mr. Stemberger’s plans before he left, something Vic Stemberger believes amounted to a missed opportunity to save his father. John Eisert, the assistant director of investigative programs for Homeland Security Investigations, a branch of ICE, said the agency generally became aware of such plans when it picked up on irregular travel, but declined to comment on Mr. Stemberger's case.
  • Investigators from the Southern District of New York and the Drug and Enforcement Administration, in part hoping to lighten Mr. Stemberger’s sentence, told Spanish authorities in October 2019 that he appeared to have been “pressured, cajoled and subjected to a variety of deceptive and manipulative strategies to induce him to believe that he would receive millions of dollars in inheritance funds.”
  • J. Bryon Martin, a 77-year-old retired pastor from Maine, spent nearly a year in jail in Spain after authorities found more than three pounds of cocaine hidden in an envelope he picked up in South America. He said a woman he fell in love with online had asked him to pick up the package and bring it to her.Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, pushed the State Department to work with Spanish authorities to secure Mr. Martin’s release on humanitarian grounds in 2016.
  • Mr. Wiegner said narcotics organizations used to recruit young people vacationing in South America but had turned to less obvious targets. “You probably wouldn’t suspect a grandmother or grandfather of carrying 25 kilos of cocaine,” he said. “If you have a 25-year-old European surfer, it might raise a bit more suspicion.”
  • In his email exchanges with the scammers, Mr. Stemberger occasionally expressed concern that he was entering a fraudulent agreement, a finding U.S. investigators highlighted to Spanish authorities when arguing that Mr. Stemberger thought he was pursuing a legal business opportunity.
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