Trump enters the stage

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Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani responds to the latest news on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigationVideo
Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani responds to the latest news on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation
Rudi Giuliani weighs in on the future of the Mueller probe.

In a wide-ranging interview Sunday on “Fox & Friends,” President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani suggested that key evidence of anti-Trump bias has been deleted in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, and charged that Democrats rejected legislation that would have “absolutely prevented” the murder of California police officer Ronil Singh by an alleged illegal immigrant early Wednesday.

The suspect in the slaying, Gustavo Perez Arriaga, had known gang affiliations as well as two past DUI arrests. Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson this weekend argued that the murder “could’ve been preventable,” saying that California law had prevented authorities from sharing information about Arriaga’s DUI arrests with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“This could’ve been prevented by just a reasonably sensible policy,” Giuliani said. “Democrats … voted against legislation that would have absolutely prevented this by focusing on gang members. He should’ve been taken in for being a drunk driver. … There was special legislation to focus on gang members. Most of the Democrats voted against it. Almost every Republican voted for it. Had that legislation been in place, this murder may very well not have happened.”

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In September 2017, the Criminal Alien Gang Member Removal Act, which would have given authorities the ability to take immigration enforcement action against suspected gang members even if they have not been convicted of a crime, passed the House along party lines but did not receive further Senate consideration.

Giuliani added that “this is going to keep happening,” and pointed to Democrats’ previous support for enhancing border wall funding.

Illegal immigrant arrested in the murder of California police officer Ronil Singh had been previously arrested for DUIVideo
“This thing about a wall is totally crazy – they all voted for it,” Giuliani said. “She [House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi] was in favor of it; now she says it’s immoral. So I hope she went to confession. I mean, she’s a Catholic.”

Fox News has learned that behind the scenes this weekend, several senators are discussing a new potential compromise to end the ongoing partial federal government shutdown. One bipartisan proposal is to provide $5.7 billion in funding for the border wall, as well as a congressional reauthorization of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program for those brought to the U.S. illegally as children, along with some other immigration provisions.

There has also been talk about a special allowance for some classes of Central American refugees to be granted a more robust asylum status.

Separately, Giuliani openly cast doubt on Mueller’s official explanation for why the phones belonging to two of his former top deputies were completely wiped just days after they were fired for their anti-Trump bias. Giuliani also reiterated his previous assertions that Trump would not sit down for a one-on-one interview with Mueller, citing what he called the “unethical or grossly negligent behavior” of special counsel prosecutors.

MUELLER RECORDS OFFICER TOTALLY WIPES ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT’S PHONE, CAN’T REMEMBER IF IT HAD TEXTS ON IT

In a comprehensive report issued earlier this month, the Department of Justice’s internal watchdog blamed a technical glitch for a swath of missing text messages between anti-Trump ex-FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page – and revealed that government phones issued by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office to Strzok and Page had been wiped completely clean after Strzok was fired from the Russia probe.

Strzok – who in August 2016 texted Page about an “insurance policy” in the event Trump won the election and who secretly discussed a “media leak strategy” concerning the Russia probe – was removed from Mueller’s team in late July 2017 after the FBI discovered he had been sending anti-Trump text messages. He sent many of those messages to Page, with whom he was engaged in an extramarital affair.

“All those texts from Strzok and Page – deleted?” Giulani asked. “After they find out that Strzok is texting that he hates Trump, that he’s going to get him and stop him – and that if he can’t stop him, he has an ‘insurance policy’ to get him out of office. I believe Mueller is the insurance policy to get him out of office. I’m not just saying that – Strzok was his first investigator.”

The DOJ’s Inspector General (IG) said that, with help from the Department of Defense, it was able to uncover thousands of missing text messages written by Strzok and Page and sent using their FBI-issued Samsung phones from December 15, 2016, through May 17, 2017, “as well as hundreds of other text messages outside the gap time period that had not been produced by the FBI due to technical problems with its text message collection tool.”

Special Counsel Robert Mueller may submit Russia investigation report to attorney general as early as February 2019Video
But when the IG went looking for the iPhones separately issued to Strzok and Page by the Mueller team, investigators were told that “[Strzok’s] iPhone had been reset to factory settings and was reconfigured for the new user to whom the device was issued.”

The records officer at the special counsel told the IG that “as part of the office’s records retention procedure, the officer reviewed Strzok’s DOJ issued iPhone” on September 6, 2017, and “determined it contained no substantive text messages” before it was wiped completely – just weeks after Strzok was fired from Mueller’s team for anti-Trump bias and sending anti-Trump text messages.

INSIDE STRZOK AND PAGE’S ‘MEDIA LEAK STRATEGY’ AT THE FBI

“The person who determined what to eliminate was Mueller’s records officer, who says there was nothing of interest there,” Giulani said. “It’s hard to believe Strzok and Page suddenly decided, ‘We’re not going to text anymore about Donald Trump.’ They seemed to be obsessively and compulsively texting about him. I don’t know what kind of lovers they were if they were texting about that all the time. It’s ridiculous.”

Still, while he questioned why Strzok and Page’s Mueller-issued phones were wiped, Giuliani did not dispute the FBI’s contention that a technical glitch had affected Strzok and Page’s separate FBI-issued Samsung phones.

“Texts only last… for a little while… not like emails,” Giuliani said. "I do this work, cybersecurity work. Texts are hard to get. That’s legitimate.”

How press botched Flynn hearing
How press botched Flynn hearing
Media expected no jail time for ex-aide.

Giuliani added that it was likely that Strzok, in fact, had been using his Mueller-issued phone to discuss topics like the FBI’s tactics in the investigation of former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Explosive court documents released earlier this month revealed that, in January 2017, then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe pushed Flynn not to have an attorney present during the questioning that ultimately led to his guilty plea on a single charge of lying to federal authorities.

“Just maybe, it would be very embarrassing if he was saying the same things while working for the holier-than-thou special counsel – ‘we’re framing Flynn, we’re not gonna tell him he has the right to counsel,’” Giuliani said.

Asked whether he expects Mueller’s final investigative report to be issued in February, Giulani suggested he isn’t holding his breath.

HOW THE FBI INCORRECTLY SUGGESTED TO FISA COURT IT HAD MORE EVIDENCE THAN IT REALLY DID TO SURVEIL TRUMP AIDE

Journalists watch as Russian President Vladimir Putin gives his annual state of the nation address in Manezh in Moscow, Russia, on March 1, 2018. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
Journalists watch as Russian President Vladimir Putin gives his annual state of the nation address in Manezh in Moscow, Russia, on March 1, 2018. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
“Oh gosh, almighty – first he was coming out in March, then in May – we’re now in fourth degree of separation from the non-crime of collusion,” Giulani said. “We went to the non-crime of obstrution of justice, that didn’t work out for them. Then he moved on to campaign contributions, which by the way are not violative of the campaign finance law. And then they’re looking at now the Russia tower. They should go to Moscow. There is no tower. It didn’t get built. It didn’t get beyond a nonbinding letter of intent, which is like a wish.”

Giuliani maintained that Trump was “as surprised as I was” about the WikiLeaks disclosures of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) during the 2016 presidential campaign, and emphasized that the underlying emails were not doctored.

What hurt the Hillary Clinton campaign, Giuliani said, was that the emails revealed that her campaign had received illicit inside information from the DNC to help her secure the nomination.

“The thing that really got Hillary, is not that it was revealed, but that it was true – she really was cheating on the debates, she really was getting the questions from Donna Brazile beforehand, she really did screw Bernie Sanders – every bit of that was true.”

He added a personal message to Mueller: “My ultimatum is ‘put up or shut up, Bob.’ I mean, what do you have? There are those who believe you don’t have anything on collusion. And, by the way, even if you did it’s not a crime – so what the heck are you doing? Do you have anything that shows the President of the United States was involved in a conspiracy to hack the DNC with Russia? Of course you don’t. If you do, put out a report, or give it to the Justice Department, let them review it, make sure it’s not classified or whatever, put out a report. We’re ready to rebut it. I’ve had the report ready for two months.”

Fox News’ Chad Pergram contributed to this report.

Joseph Goebbels would turn green with envy over the propaganda machine that the Republican right wing has built. FOX, Sinclair, Limbaugh, right-wing radio, Social Media, Preachers on TV, Republicans in Congress, talking points of the day, fake think tanks, conspiracy theories… the list goes on and on. They take their cues from each other and run with the same lies to reach as many people as possible in the shortest time possible.

The Republican party CAN NOT exist without lies, fear, and hate. When was the last time you saw a Republican run for office without, caravans coming toward the border, children with Ebola mixed with ISIS members coming, Democrats are going to take away your Medicare, Socialized medicine, Flashing red terrorist warning lights from Homeland Security…? The last time I can remember a Republican trying to run a half honest campaign was John McCain. He will be remembered for the time he pulled the microphone from that propagandized lady who called Obama a Muslim and said “No Ma’am”, and won the respect of many Americans, and lost the minds of most Republicans.

Greg Sargent has a series of tweets today that are aimed at Trump’s lies, but I think this can be applied to the propaganda the Republican party has been using for decades to build the real mindless cult of followers that allows them to attack our democracy with such ferocity.

  1. As Trump ends the year with a flood of lies about his wall, we need to recapture a core truth about this presidency. Trump isn’t “twisting the truth” or “stubbornly refusing to admit error.”Trump is engaged in *disinformation.*This is a different thing entirely.

  2. The WaPo and NYT fact-checkers have now posted their year-end pieces. They are notable.

Via @glennkesslerwp, Trump has now passed the 7,500 mark in falsehoods and distortions as president:

  1. Meanwhile, @YLindaQiu points to a pattern in which Trump regularly converts his falsehoods into “alternative facts” through “sheer force of repetition.”

This is the essence of the matter.

  1. Why does Trump lie all the time about everything, even the most trivial, easily disprovable matters? The frequency and the audacity of Trump’s disinformation is the whole point of it — to wear you down. More and more of the lies slip past, undetected and uncorrected.

  2. Others have pointed this out to great effect. See @sarahkendzior or @jayrosen_nyu or @brianbeutler or @drvox. I tried to give this topic the ambitious treatment it deserves in my book, “An Uncivil War.” I don’t know if I succeeded, but I tried.

Greg Sargent
:heavy_check_mark:
@ThePlumLineGS
· 11h
Replying to @ThePlumLineGS and 6 others
6) Once Trump’s lying is understood as concerted and deliberate disinformation, it becomes clear that the frequency and audacity of it is the whole point.

Those are features of the lying. They are central to declaring the power to say what reality is:https://www.amazon.com/Uncivil-War-Democracy-Disinformation-Thunderdome/dp/0062698451/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1546170708&sr=8-1&keywords=an+uncivil+war

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Greg Sargent
:heavy_check_mark:
@ThePlumLineGS
7) The other crucial half of this is to destroy the credibility of the institutional press.

Previous presidents have tangled with the media. But Trump’s ongoing casting of the press as the “enemy of the people” is in important respects something new:https://www.amazon.com/Uncivil-War-Democracy-Disinformation-Thunderdome/dp/0062698451/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1546170708&sr=8-1&keywords=an+uncivil+warpic.twitter.com/qX2dHIFnBF

2,607
4:15 AM - Dec 30, 2018
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:sunglasses: When people dig up old Trump tweets contradicting current claims and say “LOL there’s always a tweet,” this misses the point.

Trump is openly and unapologetically declaring that norms of consistency and standards of interplay with the institutional press do not bind him.

  1. I don’t know how conscious this is for Trump. But his background conditioned him for it. His Reality TV past (reality is created via force of personality) fused with Steve Bannon’s love of totalitarian propaganda to create what we’re seeing now:

  2. There’s a reason Bannon immediately recognized in Trump a kindred spirit.

Both are authoritarian populists and as such share devotion to the awesome possibilities of disinformation.

Greg Sargent
:heavy_check_mark:
@ThePlumLineGS
· 11h
Replying to @ThePlumLineGS and 7 others
11) All these things led @jayrosen_nyu to declare early that the media is embroiled in a “public battle," the “fight of its life.”

We’ve struggled for the right footing.

But we’ve endured situations like this before. Historically, the media has adapted: amazon.com/Uncivil-War-Demo … ncivil+war

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Greg Sargent
:heavy_check_mark:
@ThePlumLineGS
12) I believe the press is undergoing a generational institutional adjustment, and that Trump’s corruption of our politics w/disinformation is failing.

My book tries to tell this story with history/scholarship in an effort to reckon w/it seriously. FINhttps://www.amazon.com/Uncivil-War-D … ncivil+war

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An Uncivil War: Taking Back Our Democracy in an Age of Trumpian Disinformation and Thunderdome…
In An Uncivil War, the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent sounds an urgent alarm about the deeper roots of our democratic backsliding—and how we can begin to turn things around between now and 2020…

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George Orwell tried to warn future generations of the danger of propaganda.

In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

Ronald Reagan referred to nuclear-tipped missiles as “Peacekeepers”. Dick Chaney said we can’t wait until we see the mushroom clouds, exposed the identity of a CIA agent, and planted false stories in the NYT… Deception, misinformation, fear…, these have been but a few of the tools of propaganda that the Republicans have been using for decades.

During the disastrous presidency of GWB, we Democrats were screaming BUSH! BUSH! BUSH!, when I think we should have been screaming REPUBLICANS! REPUBLICANS! REPUBLICANS!. Even Republicans blamed Bush for his disaster, knowing full well he did exactly what they wanted him to do but the right wing propaganda machine could convince enough Americans that he was the exception to conservatism rather than the rule.

There are thousands of Trumps, McConnells, and Ryans rising up to manipulate the propagandized cult base and use the propaganda machine in order to gain the power that they seek to change the rules so their power can never be challenged. This is who the manipulators of the Republican party are and have been for many decades.

The members of our 4th estate, who have the biggest microphones, are failing us. The “both side-ism” and the fear of being part of the “liberal media” has made them cower in submission and become an additional tool for the propagandists to spread their lies to the masses.

We will need to walk a fine line between supporting the freedom of speech that is part of the concrete foundation of democracy and crushing the right wing propaganda machine that is replacing that foundation with the sands of authoritarianism. The path to restoring truth in America is uncertain, but the understanding of the founding fathers that, democracy can not exist without an informed public.

This is why become hyperbole cake to be a repressed idea to fool parties into an ideally fixed double entendre, the Russians getting some wrenched up idea that they are owned some thing, as ethereal to believe in some actual economic leverage to guarantee some payoffs.

Not realising the blindness of forfeiture backed up by a history of bankruptcy.

As hypo and hyper reality extend, to enclose the sensible, the what is=what is may transform that problem.

At that point the synthetic problem of changing what is to what should be, may no longer serve as a measurable contradiction between opposites, simulated as such, and/or familiar to similar.

Given the possibility that nature will up end human intentionality, the equation of the above quote may itself loose relevance.

Then interpretation itself may deemphasize personhood~identify by the variance between situation and context, by ever more largely spaced intervals.

If not, then life itself will cease to operate except by way of exclusive sophistry and propaganda.

AI will then would be neutralized as of consisting of untrusted intent, and a newer and more profound dark ages will commence.

Therefore, this evolutionary trait, of squeezing reality between hyper and hyporeality must be compensated by other means, albeit synthetic.
In this day and age, deceptive misrepresentation can only be supported within and without limited
spatial-temporal descriptipn.

AI needs to compensate by reversely engineered processes, to change its contradictory functions, to assimulate,
reductive programs.

That is the problem with Trumpism, its REDUCTIVE without a limit or a compensatory program.

It does not recognise it’s logical antithesis and tries to de- differentiate into a repressive ambiguity, leaving political dynamics in tact, hoping that the necessary reactions can be later manipulated.

We are heading incredibly toward larger perimeters of conflict.

It is then the larger concern of existential leaps, that socially consciousness will have to be concerned with.

Arminius, if he was still around would need to look at the burst of bubbles.

RUSSIA chose Donald Trump and ran him as President as Moscow thought he would be the most advantageous candidate, a former agent of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad has claimed.

VLADIMIR Putin is targeting Belarus in his bid to create a Greater Russia reminiscent of the old Soviet Union, the Belarus president warned today.

FORMER advisor to President Trump has admitted that there are genuine concerns over Russia’s shock plan to use a “doomsday device” that would create a 300-ft radiation tsunami wave - powerful enough to wipe out major US cities.

now have we a need to experience bubbles bursting from the foam to see collusion not only between national ambitions, privy to personal debt, and philosophical cynicism?
How about the Russian development of hyperweapons which can not be stopped by the latest antimissle technology? How does that fare with Reagenites and Trumpists and ideologically loaded and short sighted optimists weaned on progressive pragmatism, weighed by naustalgic isolationism and the myth of American hegemony and manifest Destiny?

central question remains unanswered, and it’s one that could hold the key to what happens over the next few months: What did FBI officials know in the summer of 2016 that dissuaded them from telling Trump they were investigating his top aides?

The world may soon know the answer. Government officials and others familiar with the situation tell NBC News that Mueller is nearing the end stages of his investigation, and a report by the special counsel is expected to be submitted to the Justice Department as early as mid-February.

Appointed in May 2017, Mueller, a Republican, Vietnam combat veteran and career public servant who led the FBI after 9/11, assembled a team of veteran prosecutors. They called upon the fruits of secret U.S. intelligence gathering to lay bare, in two indictments, how Russian intelligence officers and agents used fake social media personas and illegal hacking to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump.

Stay tuned in 2019. My prediction is, that well into his term, nothing drastic will happen.

A lot of.hanky panky happened after the JFK assassination and the lengthy investigation. And report of the Warren. commission still left very credible issues unresolved, in fact, so called conspiracy theories wrote down the report as vastly unexamined.

Political pressures have ominously bore the weight of public opinion against examined facts, which in today’s legal world can easily be ascribed to policy and security considerations.

The progressive information divide between the haves and the have nots can bring in addition the plausibility question by the mainstream.

Like it is said, ‘time heals all wounds’ and healing is pursuant to credibility factors.

The collision course here is primarily one of the economic collusion within what Gen.Dwight Eisenhower called the ‘military-industrial complex’.

Trumpism is a lite-motif between enormous , long standing policy reification.

The thought that Trump was forced to fill the role he currently suffers, at the threat of a gun, indebted as he was and still is to the various financial and political entities, may not be necessarily ruled out.

How good an actor he is, is yet to be determined, but it’s doubtful he cam measure up to Ronald Reagan , who actually was the president of the screen actor’s guild.

Now is Trump’s chance at a minor role of necoming Time’s Man of the Year, and /or, winner of the Noble Peace Prize, outgunning even Obama, whom he despises.

In one of his first tweets of the new year, President Donald Trump attacked retired four-star Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal after he criticized the President on Sunday.

“‘General’ McChrystal got fired like a dog by Obama,” Trump tweeted Tuesday morning. “Last assignment a total bust. Known for big, dumb mouth. Hillary lover!”

Trump was retweeting a post from Fox News’ Laura Ingraham sharing a story headlined “Media Didn’t Like McChrystal Until He Started Bashing Trump.”

Opinions

Mitt Romney: The president shapes the public character of the nation. Trump’s character falls short.
By Mitt Romney

January 1, 2019 at 8:00 PM

President Trump speaks during an interview with Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Josh Dawsey in the Oval Office at the White House on Nov. 27. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah and the party’s 2012 nominee for president, will be sworn into the U.S. Senate on Thursday.

The Trump presidency made a deep descent in December. The departures of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, the appointment of senior persons of lesser experience, the abandonment of allies who fight beside us, and the president’s thoughtless claim that America has long been a “sucker” in world affairs all defined his presidency down.

It is well known that Donald Trump was not my choice for the Republican presidential nomination. After he became the nominee, I hoped his campaign would refrain from resentment and name-calling. It did not. When he won the election, I hoped he would rise to the occasion. His early appointments of Rex Tillerson, Jeff Sessions, Nikki Haley, Gary Cohn, H.R. McMaster, Kelly and Mattis were encouraging. But, on balance, his conduct over the past two years, particularly his actions this month, is evidence that the president has not risen to the mantle of the office.

It is not that all of the president’s policies have been misguided. He was right to align U.S. corporate taxes with those of global competitors, to strip out excessive regulations, to crack down on China’s unfair trade practices, to reform criminal justice and to appoint conservative judges. These are policies mainstream Republicans have promoted for years. But policies and appointments are only a part of a presidency.

To a great degree, a presidency shapes the public character of the nation. A president should unite us and inspire us to follow “our better angels.” A president should demonstrate the essential qualities of honesty and integrity, and elevate the national discourse with comity and mutual respect. As a nation, we have been blessed with presidents who have called on the greatness of the American spirit. With the nation so divided, resentful and angry, presidential leadership in qualities of character is indispensable. And it is in this province where the incumbent’s shortfall has been most glaring.

Related: [The Post’s View: The last lines of defense against Trump]

The world is also watching. America has long been looked to for leadership. Our economic and military strength was part of that, of course, but our enduring commitment to principled conduct in foreign relations, and to the rights of all people to freedom and equal justice, was even more esteemed. Trump’s words and actions have caused dismay around the world. In a 2016 Pew Research Center poll, 84 percent of people in Germany, Britain, France, Canada and Sweden believed the American president would “do the right thing in world affairs.” One year later, that number had fallen to 16 percent.

This comes at a very unfortunate time. Several allies in Europe are experiencing political upheaval. Several former Soviet satellite states are rethinking their commitment to democracy. Some Asian nations, such as the Philippines, lean increasingly toward China, which advances to rival our economy and our military. The alternative to U.S. world leadership offered by China and Russia is autocratic, corrupt and brutal.

The world needs American leadership, and it is in America’s interest to provide it. A world led by authoritarian regimes is a world — and an America — with less prosperity, less freedom, less peace.

To reassume our leadership in world politics, we must repair failings in our politics at home. That project begins, of course, with the highest office once again acting to inspire and unite us. It includes political parties promoting policies that strengthen us rather than promote tribalism by exploiting fear and resentment. Our leaders must defend our vital institutions despite their inevitable failings: a free press, the rule of law, strong churches, and responsible corporations and unions.

We must repair our fiscal foundation, setting a course to a balanced budget. We must attract the best talent to America’s service and the best innovators to America’s economy.

America is strongest when our arms are linked with other nations. We want a unified and strong Europe, not a disintegrating union. We want stable relationships with the nations of Asia that strengthen our mutual security and prosperity.

Related: [Jimmy Carter: How to repair the U.S.-China relationship — and prevent a modern Cold War]

I look forward to working on these priorities with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other senators.

Furthermore, I will act as I would with any president, in or out of my party: I will support policies that I believe are in the best interest of the country and my state, and oppose those that are not. I do not intend to comment on every tweet or fault. But I will speak out against significant statements or actions that are divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or destructive to democratic institutions.

I remain optimistic about our future. In an innovation age, Americans excel. More importantly, noble instincts live in the hearts of Americans. The people of this great land will eschew the politics of anger and fear if they are summoned to the responsibility by leaders in homes, in churches, in schools, in businesses, in government — who raise our sights and respect the dignity of every child of God — the ideal that is the essence of America.

Read more:

Antony J. Blinken and Robert Kagan: ‘America First’ is only making the world worse. Here’s a better approach.

Jeff Flake: Republicans must move beyond the cult of Trump’s personality

Jennifer Rubin: A frightful portrait of a president out of control

George Will: This sad, embarrassing wreck of a man

Helaine Olen: 2018 is the year hope began to triumph over Trump’s nihilism

Attorneys Eric Dubelier, left, and Katherine Seikaly, right, representing Concord Management and Consulting LLC, leave federal court in Washington, Wednesday, May 9, 2018, after pleading not guilty on behalf of the company, which has been charged as part of a conspiracy to meddle in the 2016 US presidential election. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
7’
Attorneys Eric Dubelier, left, and Katherine Seikaly, right, representing Concord Management and Consulting LLC, leave federal court in Washington, Wednesday, May 9, 2018, after pleading not guilty on behalf of the company, which has been charged as part of a … more >
‘Real Justice Department’ veteran emerges as Mueller’s top courtroom adversary
By Rowan Scarborough
A former federal prosecutor has emerged as special counsel Robert Mueller’s most persistent courtroom critic.

It’s not Rudy Giuliani, a former U.S. attorney and now President Trump’s ubiquitous defender, or any of cable TV’s prosecutors-turned-pundits.

He is Eric A. Dubelier, a litigator for the Reed Smith law firm who knows international law and the D.C. playing field. He served eight years prosecuting cases as a Justice Department assistant U.S. attorney in Washington. He refers to his former employer as “the real Justice Department,” implying that Mr. Mueller’s team is something less.

His biting remarks have come in months of court filings and oral arguments. Mr. Dubelier has depicted Mr. Mueller as a rogue prosecutor willfully ignoring Justice Department guidelines.

He has accused Mr. Mueller of creating a “make-believe crime” against his Russian client, Concord Management and Consulting, which is accused of funding a troll farm that interfered in the 2016 election.

So far, the federal judge presiding over the case has sided with Mr. Mueller.


Mr. Dubelier charges that the Mueller team violated the confidentially of Concord’s counter evidence while hiding documents Concord needs for its defense. The prosecutor wants to “whisper secrets to the judge,” Mr. Dubelier says, as Mr. Mueller is calculating the “short-term political value of a conviction” and not worrying about an appeals court defeat years later.

An example: In a Dec. 20 motion, Mr. Dubelier resurrected a botched case spearheaded by Mr. Mueller’s top prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann.

Mr. Weissmann headed the Justice Department’s Enron task force nearly two decades ago. He won a conviction against the accounting firm Arthur Andersen for shredding the defunct energy firm’s financial documents.

Years later, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reversed the conviction. The 2005 decision effectively said that Andersen, by then out of business and its 28,000 employees gone, hadn’t committed a crime.

“Mr. Dubelier is exactly right on Mr. Mueller’s motives and tactics,” said Sidney Powell, whose book “License to Lie” exposes years of Justice Department scandals. “His lieutenant Weissmann is the poster boy for prosecutorial misconduct and has no regard for the facts or the law. He will make up whatever he wants to win, and the entire like-minded team views as an accomplishment everyone whose life they destroy in pursuit of their objective.”

‘Made up a crime to fit the facts’

Concord Management and Consulting is an unlikely client. Legal observers opined that when Mr. Mueller brought charges against various Russians who hacked computers and trolled the 2016 election, no defendant would travel the nearly 5,000 miles to show up for trial.

No defendant has personally arrived. But Concord did appear quickly after the February indictment. Of 28 Russian individuals and firms charged with election interference by Mr. Mueller, only Concord has appeared in U.S. District Court, in this instance in the person of the aggressive Mr. Dubelier.

The Washington defense attorney seemed to catch the Mueller team off guard by immediately demanding disclosure of evidence. Disclosure, Mr. Dubelier argues, is a sacred legal right in America, even for the oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, Concord’s chief with close ties to Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Concord is accused of an elaborate conspiracy with another Russian operation, the Internet Research Agency. The indictment accuses Concord of providing the troll farm $1.2 million monthly to defraud the U.S. The two firms set up fake personas and false Twitter accounts, Facebook ads and other social media posts mostly to disparage Hillary Clinton and support Donald Trump.

In a separate case, Mr. Mueller brought charges in July against 12 Russian intelligence officers for hacking Democratic computers, stealing emails and funneling them to three websites for distribution.

Mr. Dubelier argues that people are free to create fake accounts. It’s done all the time, he says.

“When it comes to political speech, one is free to pretend to be whomever he or she wants to be and to say whatever he or she wants to say,” he said at an Oct. 15 hearing.

“That’s why in this case this special counsel made up a crime to fit the facts that they have,” Mr. Dubelier said. “And that’s the fundamental danger with the entire special counsel concept: that they operate outside the parameters of the Department of Justice in a way that is absolutely inconsistent with the consistent behavior of the Department of Justice in these cases for the past 30 years.”

Mr. Dubelier lost that argument with U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich, who rejected his bid to dismiss the case.

But he wasn’t done. There is an ongoing battle over Concord’s access to “sensitive” evidence that Mr. Mueller won’t let its officers see because they are Russians with ties to Mr. Putin.

Mr. Dubelier has expressed exasperation.

“This equates to the burden of preparing for trial without any ability to discuss the evidence with the client who is to be put on trial,” he said. “This has never happened before in reported case law because the notion is too ludicrous to contemplate.”

“What Mueller has turned over is often irrelevant to mounting a defense, such as promotion emails for airlines and personal naked selfie photographs,” Mr. Dubelier said in a December filing.

The special counsel is keeping most relevant information between himself and Judge Friedrich, excluding Mr. Dubelier.

Why no probe of dossier writer?

Mr. Mueller won the argument over “sensitive” material. He now wants to hold closed sessions with the judge over classified information — again, without Mr. Dubelier.

Mr. Dubelier responded in a Dec. 27 filing: “The Special Counsel has made up a crime that has never been prosecuted before in the history of the United States, and now seeks to make up secret procedures for communicating ex parte [meaning no defense counsel present] to the court which have never been employed in any reported criminal case not involving classified discovery.”

The defense attorney admitted his motion is “likely fruitless” because Judge Friedrich previously has ruled against Concord.

Many documents are in Russian, a culturally different language than English.

One Russian word, Mr. Dubelier says, “can be translated into the English words ‘chief,’ ‘boss’ or ‘chef’ — a distinction that is critically important since international media often refers to Mr. Prigozhin as ‘Putin’s chef.’”

On another matter, Mr. Dubelier is accusing the Mueller team of skullduggery.

Judge Friedrich last summer approved the prosecutor’s request for a “firewall counsel” to review evidence for its national security implications.

Mr. Dubelier said he submitted evidence to the firewall lawyer only to see it fall into the hands of Mr. Mueller’s team, who began using it to further investigate Concord. “Surely a remarkable coincidence,” Mr. Dubelier said.

In another pre-trial argument, Mr. Dubelier is the first defense attorney to ask this question: Why isn’t British ex-spy Christopher Steele, who was paid by Democrats to obtain anti-Trump information from the Kremlin to influence 2016 voting, being investigated by the Justice Department for election interference just like the Russians?

Mr. Steele didn’t register under the Justice Department’s Foreign Agent Registration Act, under which Mr. Mueller has brought charges against a number of defendants, including the Concord team. Judge Friedrich rejected Mr. Dubelier’s argument of “selective prosecution.”

Mr. Mueller’s counter-motion boils down to this: Mr. Prigozhin is a criminal fugitive who blatantly interfered in the U.S. election and is not entitled to sensitive national security information he would share with the Kremlin intelligence.

In a new battleground, the Mueller team wants to show the judge top secret material to persuade her to keep it from the defense.

“Disclosure of such information could cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security,” the Mueller filing stated.

Judge Friedrich ruled in June that Mr. Prigozhin is prohibited from viewing non-classified sensitive information that details how the government obtained evidence.

The Mueller team argued: “Discovery in this case contains sensitive information about investigative techniques and cooperating witnesses that goes well beyond the information that will be disclosed at trial … Information within this case’s discovery identifies sources, methods, and techniques used to identify the foreign actors behind these interference operations … the government has particularized concerns about discovery in this case being disclosed to Russian intelligence services.”

Mr. Mueller says that as long as Mr. Prigozhin, whom the U.S. sanctioned and then indicted for election interference, remains in Russia, he isn’t entitled to see sensitive evidence.

Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC.

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Tomorrow is the day Donald Trump’s presidency totally changes
Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large
Updated 8:16 PM EST, Wed January 02, 2019

Washington (CNN) Donald Trump may not realize it totally yet, but today was the last easy-ish day of his presidency.

By noon (or so) Thursday, Nancy Pelosi will become the new speaker of the House of Representatives – formalizing the Democratic majority her side won in last November’s election. And that will change everything.

Trump has sought to look on the bright side of divided control of government to date – insisting that maybe he will be able to make deals with the new Democratic majority in the House. “It really could be a beautiful bipartisan situation,” he said at a press conference the day after the 2018 election.

But the early returns are not promising. The federal government has been shut down for the past 12 days – and there’s little reason to believe that will change at any point soon. Trump has dug in on his demand for $5 billion to fund construction of his border wall. Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, of New York, are equally dead-set on providing zero dollars for Trump’s wall.

View this interactive content on CNN.com
And this is only the beginning. Starting tomorrow, Democrats in the House will make Trump’s life a living hell. Efforts are already underway to bring a number of his Cabinet officials before Congress, to extricate his tax returns from his grip and to more deeply probe his business dealings both before and during his presidency.

Trump, a political neophyte prior to the 2016 race, has never had to deal with this sort of opposition before. Sure, Democrats have never been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. But he never really needed Democrats to do much of anything, either. The Republican majorities in the House and Senate ensured Trump got his tax cuts and two Supreme Court picks. There was no real political penalty for his total unwillingness and inability to work with Democrats.

Those days are now over. Democrats can now do Trump real political damage using the official means of their House majority. While they may not be able to, say, force his tax returns into public view (the jury remains out on that), they can make sure the issue is front and center and create major distractions for a White House that has already shown it can distract itself very well, thank you very much.

Trump claims to understand this, likely with his self-professed titanic intellect. To me, that’s like when people who are about to have a baby say they are totally ready for it. As evidence, they point to their nursery being all set up, the Diaper Genie being up and running, and so on and so forth. Then the baby comes – and they realize, like every parent that has gone before them, that no amount of planning or bracing could fully prepare them for their new reality.

That’s Trump and the new Democratic House majority.

The Point: Look out: It’s going to be a mess.

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© 2019 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights

Showdown

The president is demanding more than $5 billion to build a new wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. House Democrats plan to advance legislation that would reopen key parts of the government but deny Trump any additional money for a wall, as one of their first acts after they take control of the chamber on Thursday.

But Trump told congressional leaders he will not sign the measure, said incoming House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who attended the meeting.

Anderson Cooper on ‘General Trump’ :

CNN’s Anderson Cooper had some home truths for Donald Trump after the president bragged he’d have made “a good general” during Wednesday’s bizarre Cabinet meeting.

“The world will never know General Trump, in part because the president never set foot in a combat theater until last week with his trip to Iraq,” said the host of “Anderson Cooper 360°.”

“The closest he came to serving in uniform was his teen years as a student in the New York Military Academy, which was a prep school. His parents sent him there to straighten out his behavior, apparently,” Cooper added.

Moments ago: President Trump spoke to reporters in the White House briefing room. He refused to take questions.

Sanders introduced President Trump, who talked about his border wall demand, and then both Sanders and Trump left the room, taking no questions from reporters.

CNN’s Brianna Keilar called the question-less appearance a “non-briefing.”

The US government is warning Americans that if they visit China they may not be able to return home
Benjamin Zhang Jan 3, 2019, 3:05 PM

Air China plane flags
The Chinese presidential Boeing 747-400. The State Department has released a travel advisory for China.Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images
The US State Department has issued a travel advisory urging Americans to “exercise increased caution” when traveling to the People’s Republic of China.
The elevated travel advisory is out of concern that China may arbitrarily enforce local laws and detain US citizens without cause using exit bans.
Under these exit bans, US citizens may be detained or forced to stay in China for an indefinite period of time and may be subject to harassment and interrogation.
The China travel advisory is a level-two advisory, which urges increased caution.
Other countries or regions with a level-two advisory include Algeria, Antarctica, Belgium, France, Germany, Denmark, Myanmar, and the United Kingdom.
The US State Department has issued a travel advisory urging Americans to “exercise increased caution” when traveling to the People’s Republic of China.

The State Department’s elevated travel advisory is out of concern that China may arbitrarily enforce local laws and detain US citizens without cause.

The advisory also indicates that US-Chinese citizens or Americans of Chinese heritage are especially vulnerable to “additional scrutiny and harassment.”

“Chinese authorities have asserted broad authority to prohibit US citizens from leaving China by using ‘exit bans,’ sometimes keeping US citizens in China for years,” the State Department said in its advisory.

Read more: The US is warning Americans about the dangers of traveling to China. Here’s what to know before you visit the country.

According to the advisory, China tends to use these exit bans in a coercive manner to “compel US citizens to participate in Chinese government investigations, to lure individuals back to China from abroad, and to aid Chinese authorities in resolving civil disputes in favor of Chinese parties.”

In addition, the State Department said Americans find out about these exit bans only when they try to leave China, and they aren’t notified how long the bans will last.

Read more: The government shutdown could spur more flight delays making travel a nightmare, air traffic controllers claim.

The advisory also said that Americans affected by exit bans have been “harassed and threatened” by authorities.

“US citizens may be detained without access to US consular services or information about their alleged crime,” the State Department said. "US citizens may be subjected to prolonged interrogations and extended detention for reasons related to “state security.”

“Security personnel may detain and/or deport US citizens for sending private electronic messages critical of the Chinese government,” the agency added.

Read more: Here are all the countries not allowed to fly into the US

The new China travel advisory is a level-two advisory, which urges increased caution. A level-one advisory suggests travelers “exercise normal precautions,” while a level-three advisory urges Americans to “reconsider travel.” A level-four advisory recommends that Americans avoid traveling to a particular country.

Leaving for Asia tonight- Hanoi and Cebu. This may be my last correspondence. Try to write after arrival.

Safe travels.

Certain common aphorisms were never meant to be taken literally. “What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger” is a particularly risky principle by which to live. A watched pot will indeed boil. Time does not heal all wounds. “Slow and steady” does not always win the race. President Trump added a new - and, for him, potentially dangerous - aphorism on Friday, when asked about impeachment. He said he was not at all concerned because “you can’t impeach somebody that’s doing a great job.”

The president was hopefully making an aspirational, not a literal, point - because a president can be entirely successful in office yet rightfully be impeached for committing “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Indeed, no matter how successful a president may be in various policies, the commission of any impeachable offense means, by definition, that he or she is not doing a “great job.”

Trump’s statement was unnerving not only because he has said it before but because he is entering the most dangerous period of his term so far. With Democrats now controlling the House of Representatives - and some already stating their intentions, intemperately or even profanely like Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) - the White House is about to be hit with a torrent of document demands and subpoenas from a half-dozen committees.

Committee chairmen have promised to demand answers on Trump’s taxes, foreign business dealings, family charity and other areas beyond the still-ongoing Russia investigation. These moves reflect a strategy that not only targets Trump but is counting on Trump to be successful. They are relying on Trump’s self-description as a “counterpuncher” to supply the grounds of his removal. Yes, a president can counterpunch himself into impeachment.

Despite the filing of articles of impeachment on the first day of House Democratic control, there is not a strong basis for a single article at this time. Thus far, the strongest basis is the money paid to two women to silence them about alleged affairs with Trump before the election. Yet, while highly damaging, these allegations can be difficult to prosecute and occurred before Trump took office. An in-kind campaign contribution simply is not a strong stand-alone issue for impeachment.

Likewise, there still is no compelling basis to allege a crime based on obstruction or theories of collusion. That leaves Democrats with a House majority secured, at least in part, on promises of impeachment but without a clear, impeachable act.

Special counsel Robert Mueller could well supply the missing “high crime and misdemeanor,” of course, but the only other possible source is Trump himself. And, as he demonstrated during the James Comey debacle, Trump has the ability to do himself great harm by acting impulsively or angrily.

Thank You , Mowk

President Xi Jinping told a meeting of top brass China’s armed forces must strengthen their sense of urgency and do everything they can to prepare for battle. The news comes amidst escalating tensions between China and the US as well as American-backed Taiwan, with disputes between the two superpowers ranging from trade to the status of the island. Mr Jinping told a meeting of the top military authority that China faced increasing risks and challenges, and the armed forces must work to secure its security and development needs, reports the official Xinhua news agency.

Huh?

POLITICO

Supreme Court turns down mysterious Mueller subpoena fight
By JOSH GERSTEIN 01/08/2019 03:31 PM EST Updated 01/08/2019 06:08 PM EST
The U.S. Supreme Court
An unknown firm had asked the high court to block a federal judge’s contempt order and financial penalties for refusing to comply with a subpoena. | Eric Baradat/AFP/Getty Images

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The Supreme Court has declined to intervene in a mysterious subpoena fight that apparently involved an unidentified foreign-government-owned company and special counsel Robert Mueller.

Last month, the unknown firm asked the high court to block a federal judge’s contempt order and $50,000-a-day penalty for refusing to comply with the subpoena, arguing that the company is immune from U.S. grand jury subpoenas. The company also insisted that complying with the subpoena would violate the law in the firm’s home country.

Story Continued Below

But on Tuesday, the Supreme Court turned down the company’s request to step into the dispute, at least for now. The order in the case came a little more than two weeks after Chief Justice John Roberts put a temporary freeze on the contempt order and the sanctions.

The court’s order Tuesday offered no explanation for its decision and no justice publicly signaled any dissent. The high court did indicate that Roberts referred the issue to the full court and that the short-term stay he ordered last month was now dissolved.

Many details about the case have been shrouded in secrecy.

POLITICO first reported in October that the dispute appears to have links to Mueller after a POLITICO reporter at an appeals court observed a visitor request a copy of a sealed filing from the special counsel just hours after a deadline for such a submission in the ongoing legal fight.

In addition, an appeals court judge who indicated he was likely to recuse himself from any cases involving Mueller’s office stepped back from the dispute.

Although the case has traveled through three different levels of the federal court system, the publicly available court dockets do not specifically identify which prosecutors are handling the dispute or disclose whether they are attached to Mueller’s office.

An unusual degree of confidentiality continued to prevail when other appeals court judges held closed-door arguments in the grand jury fight last month. Reporters who gathered to try to spot lawyers entering or departing from the courtroom were banished from the floor where arguments were taking place.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals later released an order turning down the company’s appeal and revealing some more information about the legal dispute. The judges said the witness rebuffing the subpoena was actually a corporation owned by a foreign government, although they did not name the company, specify the country involved or say what information was being sought. It’s also unclear what records Mueller’s team might be seeking.

Story Continued Below

The three-judge panel then dismissed the company’s legal arguments for avoiding compliance with the subpoena.

The D.C. Circuit panel released an expanded but partially sealed ruling Tuesday explaining the court’s legal rationale. Most of the decision involves arcane issues related to the extent of immunity enjoyed by foreign governments and their offshoots.

However, the new opinion reveals the sanction that Chief Judge Beryl Howell imposed against the firm fighting the subpoena: $50,000 per day.

The high court’s action on Tuesday means the monetary sanctions against the firm are likely to kick in unless it complies with the demand for records. While the appeals court insisted the firm was liable for the penalty, the judges acknowledged some uncertainty about whether it could be collected.

“Whether and how that order can be enforced by execution is a question for a later day,” the D.C. Circuit opinion says.

On Monday, an unknown party that appears to be the firm filed another motion with the Supreme Court asking the justices to allow the filing of a sealed petition to grant review in the case, the high court’s docket shows.

However, it seems unlikely that the Supreme Court will accept the case for argument since no justices publicly indicated they would have granted the stay that the company requested to block the contempt order and penalties imposed by the lower court rulings.

The order the Supreme Court issued Tuesday did not indicate how or whether the court had resolved the motions the company and prosecutors filed to put their various filings in the dispute under seal.

This story tagged under:
U.S. Supreme Court Robert Mueller Supreme Court Justices Mueller Investigation

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Trump Appeals for Wall, Citing Misleading Statistics of Crisis and Crime Along Border
video
As the government shutdown grinds on, President Trump laid out his case for the border wall. Top Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer were not convinced.
IMAGE BY DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Peter Baker
Jan. 8, 2019
WASHINGTON — President Trump doubled down on one of the biggest gambles of his presidency on Tuesday night with a televised appeal to pressure Congress into paying for his long-promised border wall, even at the cost of leaving the government partly closed until lawmakers give in.

Embarking on a strategy that he himself privately disparaged as unlikely to work, Mr. Trump devoted the first prime-time Oval Office address of his presidency to his proposed barrier in hopes of enlisting public support in an ideological and political conflict that has shut the doors of many federal agencies for 18 days.

In a nine-minute speech that made no new arguments but included multiple misleading assertions, the president sought to recast the situation at the Mexican border as a “humanitarian crisis” and opted against declaring a national emergency to bypass Congress, which he had threatened to do, at least for now. But he excoriated Democrats for blocking the wall, accusing them of hypocrisy and exposing the country to criminal immigrants.

“How much more American blood must we shed before Congress does its job?” Mr. Trump asked, citing a litany of grisly crimes said to be committed by illegal immigrants. Asking Americans to call their lawmakers, he added: “This is a choice between right and wrong, justice and injustice. This is about whether we fulfill our sacred duty to the American citizens we serve.”

Democrats dismissed his talk of crisis as overstated cynicism and, with polls showing Mr. Trump bearing more of the blame since the partial shutdown began last month, betrayed no signs of giving in. The White House earlier in the day dispatched Vice President Mike Pence and others to Capitol Hill to try to shore up Senate Republicans, who are growing increasingly anxious as the standoff drags on.

In their own televised response on Tuesday night, Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, accused the president of stoking fear and mocked him for asking taxpayers to foot the bill for a wall he had long said Mexico would pay for.

“President Trump must stop holding the American people hostage, must stop manufacturing a crisis and must reopen the government,” Ms. Pelosi said.

In taking his argument to a national television audience and on a trip to the Texas border he plans to take on Thursday, Mr. Trump hoped to reframe the debate. After spending much of the first two weeks of the shutdown cloistered in the White House, he has now opted to use the powers of the presidency to focus public attention on his ominous warnings about the border.

Yet privately, Mr. Trump dismissed his own new strategy as pointless. In an off-the-record lunch with television anchors hours before the address, he made clear in blunt terms that he was not inclined to give the speech or go to Texas, but was talked into it by advisers, according to two people briefed on the discussion who asked not to be identified sharing details.

“It’s not going to change a damn thing, but I’m still doing it,” Mr. Trump said of the border visit, according to one of the people, who was in the room. The trip was merely a photo opportunity, he said. “But,” he added, gesturing at his communications aides Bill Shine, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kellyanne Conway, “these people behind you say it’s worth it.”

Mr. Trump plans to head to the Capitol on Wednesday to attend a Senate Republican lunch and later will host congressional leaders from both parties to resume negotiations that so far have made little progress. Mr. Trump has insisted on $5.7 billion for the wall, while Ms. Pelosi said she would not give him a dollar for a wall she has called “immoral.”

In a nod to Democrats, Mr. Trump spent the first half of his talk on the humanitarian situation at the border before even mentioning the wall, expressing sympathy for those victimized by human smugglers. “This is a humanitarian crisis — a crisis of the heart and a crisis of the soul,” he said.

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Even so, he directly took on Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer. “The only thing that is immoral is the politicians to do nothing and continue to allow more innocent people to be so horribly victimized,” he said.

Mr. Trump has made the wall the singular focus of his presidency as he enters his third year in office. His promise to erect a “big, beautiful wall” along the border became perhaps the most memorable promise on the campaign trail this fall, eliciting chants from supporters of “build the wall,” and he has been frustrated by his inability to deliver on it.

But his alarming description of a “crisis” at the border has raised credibility questions. While experts agree there are serious problems to address, migrant border crossings have actually been declining for nearly two decades. The majority of heroin enters the United States through legal ports of entry, not through open areas of the border. And the State Department said in a recent report that there was “no credible evidence” that terrorist groups had sent operatives to enter the United States through Mexico.

At one point in his speech, he even suggested that Democrats had signaled that they would accept his wall if redesigned. “At the request of Democrats, it will be a steel barrier rather than a concrete wall,” he said, even though Democratic leaders have made clear they oppose the barrier regardless of the material.

Even so, Democrats, many of whom like Mr. Schumer voted in 2006 for 700 miles of fencing along the border, did not want to conduct the debate on Mr. Trump’s terms. Instead, they focused attention on the damaging effects of the shutdown, already the second longest in American history. About 800,000 government employees are either furloughed or working without pay, in addition to hundreds of thousands of contractors.

House Democrats planned to approve individual spending bills this week that were intended to reopen closed departments one at a time in hopes of putting Republicans on the defensive, but Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, has said he would not put any bill on the floor without Mr. Trump’s explicit support.

Senate Democrats took to the floor on Tuesday to pressure Mr. McConnell and vowed to block consideration of other legislation until the government is reopened.

Mr. McConnell fired back, noting the 2006 legislation. “Maybe the Democratic Party was for secure borders before they were against them,” he said. “Or maybe they’re just making it up as they go along. Or maybe they are that dead-set on opposing this particular president on any issue, for any reason, just for the sake of opposing him.”

But two more Republicans, Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, spoke out on Tuesday in favor of reopening the government while negotiations over border security continue. “I think we can walk and chew gum,” Ms. Murkowski told reporters.

Ms. Capito expressed frustration with the shutdown and “how useless it is,” indicating that she might support reopening the government while wall talks continue. “I mean, I think I could live with that, but let’s see what he says tonight,” she said before the speech.

That makes five Republican senators who have expressed such a position, which if combined with a unanimous Democratic caucus would make a majority to reopen the government if Mr. McConnell were to allow a vote.

Allies of the president warned fellow Republicans to stand with Mr. Trump. “If we undercut the president, that’s the end of his presidency and the end of our party,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said on Fox News after the speech.

The political nature of the fight was hard to miss. Just hours before he went on air, Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign sent out a fund-raising email asking supporters to raise $500,000 by the time his speech began. On the other side, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a possible candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination next year, offered his own response after Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer.

For all of the pyrotechnics of competing national speeches, it seemed like a political Kabuki dance that by the end of the evening had changed no minds in Washington.

Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the No. 5 House Democrat, who perhaps most succinctly summed up his party’s response: “We are not paying a $5 billion ransom note for your medieval border wall,” he wrote on Twitter, with a castle emoji. “And nothing you just said will change that cold, hard reality.”

If Democrats do not approve money for the wall, Mr. Trump has threatened to declare a national emergency and proceed with construction without Congress, a move that could provoke a constitutional clash with the legislative branch over the power of the federal purse. While some legal experts said the president has a plausible case given current law, it would almost surely generate a court challenge.

Even some Republicans warned against it. Senator Susan Collins of Maine said that although the law provides the president with emergency powers, “the administration should not act on a claim of dubious constitutional authority.” She added, “It should get authorization from Congress before repurposing such a significant sum of money for a border wall.”

The wall is popular with Mr. Trump’s base, but the public at large holds the president responsible for the shutdown, according to polls. In a Reuters-Ipsos poll, 51 percent of respondents said that Mr. Trump “deserves most of the blame,” up four percentage points from earlier in the crisis, while 32 percent pointed the finger at congressional Democrats.

Moreover, the public seems to have grown weary of the impasse. Seventy percent of registered voters in the latest The Hill-HarrisX poll favored a compromise, while just 30 percent said sticking to principles was more important than reopening the government.

The president’s use of the Oval Office for the speech stirred some debate, with critics asserting that a setting more typically used for occasions of war or other national security crises was being turned into a partisan platform. The subsequent joint statement by Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer was the first time opposition leaders were given national airtime to respond to a president in the Oval Office.

Not counting speeches to Congress, Mr. Trump had made only five formal addresses to the nation before Tuesday night, three of them in prime time and none from the Oval Office, according to Mark Knoller, a longtime CBS News journalist who tracks recent presidential history. Mr. Trump’s previous prime-time speeches were to introduce his two Supreme Court nominations and to announce his decision to send more troops to Afghanistan.

By contrast, President Bill Clinton gave 16 addresses to the nation over eight years, 14 of them from the Oval Office. President George W. Bush gave 23 such addresses, six from the Oval Office, and President Barack Obama gave 12, with three from his office.

Reporting was contributed by Maggie Haberman, Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Michael Tackett, Emily Cochrane and Catie Edmondson from Washington, and Michael M. Grynbaum from New York.

RELATED COVERAGE
Trump Suggests Government Shutdown Could Last for ‘Months or Even Years’JAN. 4, 2019

© 2018 The New York Times Company

Donald Trump may have claimed that “I have never had so much support, as I have in the last week, over my stance for border security, for border control and for, frankly, the wall or the barrier,” but let’s put it this way: There’s a reason Trump himself keeps coming out to make the argument for his wall. That reason is that other people aren’t rushing out to defend him on the air.

A “former senior administration official” told Politico that “He’s sitting there going, ‘Why the f*#k isn’t there anybody saying good stuff about me? Why is there nobody on TV that’s defending me?” Simple answers to stupid questions: Because you and your shutdown are super unpopular, and even most anti-immigrant fanatics aren’t all that excited about a wall.

The White House pushback on the idea that Trump is frustrated by the lack of support was singularly unconvincing. “We’re doing our very best to communicate with our surrogates and get the message out. The White House and the president always enjoy looking at the screen and seeing our surrogates and our friends on camera,” an unnamed official told Politico. “We’re doing our very best” does not mean “We’re doing well,” and “The president always enjoy[s] looking at the screen and seeing our surrogates” does not mean “The president is currently looking at the screen and seeing a lot of surrogates.”

So, lacking enough surrogates to argue and bluster and bully for his wall, Trump is making the case himself. Which means he now has two things to be unhappy about: the lack of surrogates tongue-bathing him on television, and the fact that he’s having to do some work.

Trump’s team had over 100 contacts with Russian-linked officials, report shows
CHRISTAL HAYES | USA TODAY | 6 hours ago

A majority of Americans say they believe President Donald Trump has tried to obstruct the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. (Dec. 21)
AP
WASHINGTON – Members of President Donald Trump’s campaign and transition team had more than 100 contacts with Russian-linked officials, according to a new report.

The milestone illustrates the deep ties between members of Trump’s circle and the Kremlin. The findings, tracked by the Center for American Progress and its Moscow Project, come amid reports that special counsel Robert Mueller is nearing the conclusion of the two-year investigation into Russian collusion in the 2016 election and possible obstruction of justice by the president.

“This wasn’t just one email or call, or one this or that,” said Talia Dessel, a research analyst for the left-leaning organization. “Over 100 contacts is really significant because you don’t just have 100 contacts with a foreign power if there’s nothing going on there.”

The number of contacts was raised to 101 this week after it was reported that Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, a former campaign aide, shared polling data with Manafort’s former Russian business partner Konstantin Kilimnik.

Dessel noted the group’s list of contacts is on the “conservative” end and the “very minimum amount of contacts” between Russian-linked officials and those within the Trump campaign and transition.

Those within Trump’s team who had contacts with Russian-linked officials include Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen, former Trump adviser Roger Stone, the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, Trump’s former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, and Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump.

Trump has consistently denied all allegations of colluding with Russia and has repeatedly called the Mueller investigation a “witch hunt”.

A look at former FBI director Robert Mueller
Dessel said the group omitted many contacts that were seen as “intermediaries” between the members of Trump’s team and Russian-linked officials, which would include the messages between Roger Stone and WikiLeaks, which is noted as being described by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as a “hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.”

Russia’s role in the 2016 election and ties between the president and the Kremlin are all but certain to remain constant themes of 2019 with a new Democratic-led House that now has subpoena and investigative powers.

Morgan Finkelstein, a spokeswoman for the Center for American Progress and the Moscow Project, said the organization has hosted discussions with lawmakers about the Russia investigation and what areas they can focus on in the next two years.

“The fact is there is so much low-hanging fruit that Republicans simply ignored or didn’t flesh out when they had power,” Finkelstein said, noting a major area that could provide new insights is the money and financial aspect between Russia and Trump’s team. “There’s so much to explore but we’ve identified a pretty clear roadmap.”

Special counsel Robert Mueller made court filings in cases against President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on Friday. (Dec. 7)
AP

© Copyright Gannett 2019

POLITICS
FBI Agents Say the Shutdown Is a Threat to National Security
Nearly 5,000 FBI special agents, intelligence analysts, attorneys, and professional staff have been furloughed.

NATASHA BERTRAND
4:05 PM ET

FBI agents near YouTube headquarters following an active-shooter situation in San Bruno, California, in April 2018ELIJAH NOUVELAGE / REUTERS
They’ve weathered blistering attacks from the president, the exposure of sensitive sources, and the politicization of classified information. And now they’re not getting paid. “I’m not going to try to candy-coat it,” Tom O’Connor, a special agent and president of the FBI Agents Association, told me this week. “We really feel that the financial insecurities we are facing right now equate to a national-security issue.”

On Saturday, the current government shutdown will be the longest in U.S. history—and it could remain shuttered for “months or even years,” President Donald Trump warned Democrats last week. While much of the drama has centered around Trump’s demand for a wall on the southern border, thousands of FBI agents and other federal employees whose unfettered work is crucial to national security have either been furloughed or forced to work with no pay and steep budget cuts.

Morale at the FBI had already been steadily declining for months before the government shut down on December 22, according to current and recently departed agents who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity to discuss their feelings candidly. President Trump’s open warfare on the bureau has made agents’ jobs more difficult, they say, as trust in the FBI wanes among people who identify as Republicans and right-leaning independents. “Part of it is Trump’s constant attacks,” said one agent who left late last year. “Bigger than that, though, is that it seems like a portion of the population believes him. Which makes their jobs harder to do.”

Read: The Republican Party turns against the FBI

Another agent who left the bureau last year told me that certain leads that might be politically controversial were sometimes tabled indefinitely because they were not seen as worth incurring the wrath of the Trump White House. In the two and a half years since the FBI launched its counterintelligence investigation into potential coordination between members of Trump’s campaign and Russia, the president has chided the FBI, former FBI Director James Comey, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the Russia “witch hunt,” and the “deep state” in dozens of tweets, rallies, and interviews. Last April, he called the FBI and Justice Department’s desire to withhold sensitive information related to the ongoing investigation “an embarrassment to our country.” The withering morale and possibility of having to work without pay has made it increasingly difficult to recruit new agents, the agents said.

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The government shutdown, now heading into its 20th day, is the cherry on top of a galling two years. “You know the old adage that crime doesn’t pay? Well right now, agents are starting to feel like neither does the federal government,” O’Connor said. In a conference call with reporters on Thursday, O’Connor said that nearly 5,000 special agents, intelligence analysts, attorneys, and professional staff are currently furloughed, resulting in reduced staffing for “critical functions that support field operations.” None of them are being paid, he said. He wouldn’t elaborate on which investigations were being impacted, but emphasized that a lack of funding has hurt agents’ ability to do their job “completely and to the fullest ability we have.”

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O’Connor also described a mounting backlog at Quantico labs, which provide forensic-analysis support services to the FBI, and said that funds supporting drug trafficking and undercover operations have been dangerously limited. Some, particularly those who work at Quantico labs, are not even allowed to come to work because of the shutdown. “FBI headquarters is trying to make sure that the most important topics are covered,” O’Connor said. “But that will get more and more difficult as the pot of money gets smaller and is not refilled.” According to an FBIAA spokesman, FBI field offices are responsible for allocating their resources and determining which activities are most central to specific missions or operations. Which areas are prioritized—whether it’s drug trafficking, counterterrorism, etc.—is also at the discretion of field-office leadership. “However, as the pool of resources dwindles, the scope of what can be adequately funded will also shrink,” the spokesman, Paul Nathanson, said.

Read: The peril of taking on the FBI

If the issue does not get resolved within the next few weeks, however, agents in various field offices may stage a callout—a coordinated sick day to protest the shutdown. (Transportation Security Administration agents have already begun doing so, according to CNN.) O’Connor said he had not heard of any plans to strike or begin calling in sick en masse, but he emphasized that he would not support it if they did. “Whether we’re paid or not, we’re going to show up and do our jobs to protect the United States,” he said. A coordinated “sick-out” would be one way of protesting the current conditions, since the Taft-Hartley Act, enacted in 1947, prohibits public employees from overtly striking. Federal-employee unions may also find recourse in the courts—some have already filed lawsuits arguing that requiring employees to work without pay violates the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

For now, the FBI Agents Association is simply pressuring elected officials. In a petition sent to the White House, the vice president’s office, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and other House and Senate leaders on Thursday, the agents association warned of the effects of the ongoing shutdown on the bureau’s work. “The operations of the FBI require funding,” the petition reads. “As the shutdown continues, Special Agents remain at work for the American people without being paid, and FBI leadership is doing all it can to fund FBI operations with increasingly limited resources—this situation is not sustainable.” Asked what the agents’ next steps will be if the funding is not restored, O’Connor said that they’ll continue to do “the best with what we have.”

“But I think it’s the public that will have an outcry when they see things not being done because we don’t have the funding for it,” he added.

Read: The evolution of the TSA

The FBI is not the only agency whose limited budget and resources could compromise national security. More than half of the staff of the newly established Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a division of Homeland Security tasked with protecting the country’s critical infrastructure, have been furloughed, according to DHS. Nearly every employee of the Secret Service—which protects current and former government officials as well as the president—is going without pay, too, according to The New York Times, as are TSA agents and air-traffic controllers. “The growing financial insecurity may lead some agents to consider career options that provide more stability,” O’Connor said on Thursday. “The field is trying to be fully funded and staffed. But as we go forward, that’s going to change.”

NATASHA BERTRAND is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where she covers national security and the intelligence community.

Copyright © 2019 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved.

President Donald Trump has rejected a plan proposed by a bloc of GOP senators.