LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Fri Jul 09, 2021 6:37 pm Also, #1 is like the underpants gnomes' famous ???? line item.
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon/biggrin.gif)
That was the first thing that popped into my mind, too. As soon as they figure out what #1 is, profit!
Moderators: LawBeefaroni, $iljanus
LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Fri Jul 09, 2021 6:37 pm Also, #1 is like the underpants gnomes' famous ???? line item.
NEW: Trump charged the Secret Service another $18,699 in June for rooms that agents used while protecting him in Bedminster, receipts show.
In six months as an ex-POTUS, Trump has already charged his protectors more than $72,000.
We elected him and this is what we get. He's a former American President forever.malchior wrote: ↑Thu Jul 15, 2021 6:17 pm This is so sleazy. Congress should bundle a provision into the reconciliation package to only authorize prevailing room rates for Secret Service protection details -- for Trump specifically. He and his family have been abusing it since day 1. Time to turn off the graft tap.
They stay while he is there and part of the detail is there before and after. So if he's there a week, they may be there 14 days or something. Don't know the exact numbers.
This would not be complete without a trump staff reaction:Vladimir Putin personally authorised a secret spy agency operation to support a “mentally unstable” Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election during a closed session of Russia’s national security council, according to what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents.
The key meeting took place on 22 January 2016, the papers suggest, with the Russian president, his spy chiefs and senior ministers all present.
They agreed a Trump White House would help secure Moscow’s strategic objectives, among them “social turmoil” in the US and a weakening of the American president’s negotiating position.
Russia’s three spy agencies were ordered to find practical ways to support Trump, in a decree appearing to bear Putin’s signature.
By this point Trump was the frontrunner in the Republican party’s nomination race. A report prepared by Putin’s expert department recommended Moscow use “all possible force” to ensure a Trump victory.
...
There is a brief psychological assessment of Trump, who is described as an “impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual who suffers from an inferiority complex”.
There is also apparent confirmation that the Kremlin possesses kompromat, or potentially compromising material, on the future president, collected – the document says – from Trump’s earlier “non-official visits to Russian Federation territory”.
The paper refers to “certain events” that happened during Trump’s trips to Moscow. Security council members are invited to find details in appendix five, at paragraph five, the document states. It is unclear what the appendix contains.
...
Putin has repeatedly denied accusations of interfering in western democracy. The documents seem to contradict this claim. They suggest the president, his spy officers and senior ministers were all intimately involved in one of the most important and audacious espionage operations of the 21st century: a plot to help put the “mentally unstable” Trump in the White House.
The papers appear to set out a route map for what actually happened in 2016.
So basically an admission of guilt.“This is disgusting. It’s fake news, just like RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA was fake news. It’s just the Radical Left crazies doing whatever they can to demean everybody on the right.
“It’s fiction, and nobody was tougher on Russia than me, including on the pipeline, and sanctions. At the same time we got along with Russia. Russia respected us, China respected us, Iran respected us, North Korea respected us.
“And the world was a much safer place than it is now with mentally unstable leadership.”
Care to expand on that claim? I haven't seen anything disputing the authenticity yet.
Totally agree that is the risk they are worried about. That's the interesting part to me that I'm getting out. They are so cowed by the #fakenews narrative that they are afraid to even remark on a 'peer' publication.hepcat wrote: ↑Fri Jul 16, 2021 9:11 am Count me amongst those who believe this is too good to be true. The worst thing those who oppose Trump and his cult can do is jump on the bandwagon for this. If (well...in my opinion, when) it blows up in our faces and is revealed as fake, it's just going to give the Trump universe even more ammo in their bid to discredit any negative news item that comes up.
He isn't this clever.Hell, I'm not even convinced Trump himself hasn't released this in order to pull back the curtain later and yell "I GOT YOU!".
Yeah anyone who thinks Trump is behind that fan fic needs to buy a totally still structurally intact bridge in Georgia from me.
There are many reasons to be skeptical of this “leak,” but, in the end, whether true or not, it doesn’t tell us much that we don't already know. There is ample evidence, articulated most clearly in the Senate Intelligence Report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, that Russia worked hard to get Trump elected in 2016.
What is interesting about this story is, if you will pardon this fan of Sherlock Holmes, “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” In that old Arthur Conan Doyle tale, the key to the mystery was that the family dog didn’t bark at an intruder in the night and therefore must have known the villain.
Shortly after The Guardian story broke, Trump himself announced that he and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) were meeting over general issues, although these two big stories simply had to be on the agenda, not least because McCarthy was caught on tape in June 2016 saying: “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.” (Dana Rohrabacher was a Republican representative from California.) Later today, through his spokesperson, Trump appeared to call the story “fake news,” along with his usual descriptions of stories of his connections to Russia, but, despite a flurry of statements he issued today, these comments were not issued as a statement but were only quoted in his spokesperson’s tweets.
As near as I can tell, the former president is the only Republican who has responded to the story. Other leaders are talking about the border, masks, Cuba, and Britney Spears. Their lack of a response to a deeply damaging story about the leader of their party suggests to me that, at best, they are hoping the story will disappear and, at worst, they believe it’s true.
It could be both true and leaked intentionally.
Thomas Barrack, a private equity investor who is a close friend of former President Donald Trump, was arrested Tuesday morning in Los Angeles on federal charges of illegally lobbying Trump on behalf of the United Arab Emirates.
...
The Santa Monica, California, resident is accused with the other defendants of secretly advancing the interests of the UAE at the direction of senior officials of that country by influencing the foreign policy positions of Trump’s 2016 campaign, and then the foreign policy positions of the U.S. government during Trump’s presidency through April 2018.
The indictment noted that Barrack during that time informally advised American officials on Middle East policy, and also sought appointment to a senior role in the U.S. government, including as special envoy to the Middle East.
Charged with the 74-old Barrack are Matthew Grimes, 27, of Aspen, Colorado, and a 43-year-old UAE national, Rashid Sultan Rashid Al Malik Alshahhi. Barrack also is charged with obstruction of justice and making multiple false statements during a June 2019 interview with federal law enforcement agents.
Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Tue Jul 20, 2021 3:51 pm CNBC
Thomas Barrack, a private equity investor who is a close friend of former President Donald Trump has never ever heard of, and who is probably some nobody loser who was separate to try to glam onto the greatness of Donald Trump, was arrested Tuesday morning in Los Angeles on federal charges of illegally lobbying Trump on behalf of the United Arab Emirates. "Barrack who?" said President Trump, "I've never ever spoken to or been in the same room as the guy. You're probably thinking of Barrack Obama."
The U.S. Agency for Global Media welcomed a watchdog’s recent decision to clear six top officials targeted under the previous agency leader of any malfeasance.
The Government Accountability Project, a whistleblower advocacy organization representing one of the employees, announced on July 9 that the State Department inspector general cleared the employees of any wrongdoing after they were deemed “disloyal” by former CEO Michael Pack. Last August Pack suspended the top officials’ security clearances and then put them on indefinite suspension. He also hired an outside law firm (McGuireWoods) to conduct internal investigations that cost at least $1 million, according to GAP. The six officials filed whistleblower complaints with the State IG and Office of Special Counsel in September and five of them filed a lawsuit against the agency in October. When President Biden came into office, all were reinstated except for one who decided to retire.
The Office of Inspector General found “Pack’s suspension of their clearances was unjustified and retaliatory,” which was “unjustified partly because his political staff ordered agency employees to compile dossiers on each executive and told them to include rumors, gossip and uncorroborated statements ‘heard in the halls,’” said a press release from GAP. The IG “rejected the dossiers, saying they were ‘pretextual and were simply created to support the predetermined decision to suspend the clearances of the individuals.’”
Pack’s actions toward these top officials––the chief financial officer, general counsel, executive director, deputy director for operations, director of management services and chief strategy officer––were among many controversial actions during his tenure as CEO, which was June 2020 to January 2021. Government Executive reported in March about how the agency is working to restore morale and trust under the Biden administration.
“[The U.S. Agency for Global Media] welcomes the recent decision by the State Department's Office of Inspector General clearing six senior executives of any wrongdoing,” said Laurie Moy, agency director of public affairs, in a statement to Government Executive this week. “This decision reaffirms the need for individuals to be able to raise concerns, without fear of retaliation, about unethical management practices that might otherwise go undetected. [The agency] is fully committed to protecting the rights of whistleblowers within our agency.”
The IG also flagged other issues that happened at the agency under Pack’s leadership, said GAP. This included Pack and his political appointees having “disregard” of dangers Voice of America journalists faced, Pack’s appointees not taking the novel coronavirus pandemic seriously and agency officials refusing to cooperate with the IG in the investigation. The IG also noted that in August 2020 Pack published a full and complete Office of Personnel Management report about the agency’s personnel suitability and vetting programs. OPM had cautioned against the report’s public release, GAP noted.
Donald Trump isn’t going anywhere because he has finally found a swindle in American politics where he can quite literally just ask people for money and they simply give it to him by the millions. It’s not complicated. It never is with Trump. He’s just doing the thing he telegraphed he would do from the very beginning and stated explicitly in the small print.