Watch: Heads ROLL as Michael Moore predicts Trump win

 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/286316

 The Rising" talk show discussed the possibility of another come-from-behind Trump election win as radical activist Michael Moore predicted it would come to fruition.

The talk show hosts pointed out that Moore had been the only "pundit" on the left to have predicted Trump's victory in the 2016 elections.

In a call-to-action tweet, Moore questioned whether Democrats were prepared to again taste the misery of defeat and urged people to go out and vote, telling them that "[they] had to get rid of Trump."

Twitter labels Scalise tweet of Biden interview about police funding 'manipulated media' before he took it down

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/31/politics/twitter-scalise-tweet-manipulated-media/index.html

 Twitter labeled a video promoted by House Minority Whip Steve Scalise of a progressive activist interviewing Joe Biden about police funding "manipulated content," and Scalise later deleted the tweet Sunday night.

DC Circuit court rules against Flynn case dismissal

 https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dc-circuit-court-denies-doj-request-dismiss-flynn-case

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in an 8-2 decision that D.C. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan does not have to grant prosecutors' motion to dismiss the criminal case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

 The 8-2 decision restores power to a judge to question the Justice Department's moves in the politically divisive case, when Attorney General William Barr dropped charges against President Donald Trump's former national security adviser earlier this year despite twice pleading guilty to lying under oath to lying to the FBI.

 The en banc review by the full court (minus Judge Gregory Katsas, who recused himself) reverses the decision of a three-judge panel, which had issued a writ of mandamus ordering Sullivan to toss the case. Flynn had argued that Sullivan overstepped his authority by appointing a third-party amicus curiae (friend of the court) to argue against dismissal, even though Flynn and the Justice Department agreed to dispose of the case.

Appeals court denies Michael Flynn and Justice Department's effort to end his case

Fact check: Kamala Harris is “a cop whose family owned slaves in Jamaica” claim is missing context

 https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-kamalaharris-cop/fact-check-kamala-harris-is-a-cop-whose-family-owned-slaves-in-jamaica-claim-is-missing-context-idUSKBN25L1L8

 The New York Times wrote about the shift in her stance from her career in California to the summer of 2020, when Black Lives Matter protests spread across the United States and outlined her position on various high profile cases and her criminal justice work in California during career (here).  

The Atlantic argued in an op-ed that she doesn’t say enough when pressed about criticisms about her track record, “like that she fought hard to keep innocents in prison and failed to fight hard against corrupt cops.” (here) 

While it is true that Kamala Harris’ father claimed to be a descendant of a slave owner, Harris and her family’s relationship to Hamilton Brown remains unclear. 

 These in-depth Fact Checks by Snopes and Politifact (here) have determined that while there is no clear evidence to prove Kamala Harris is a descendant of slave owners, it is likely that she is a descendant of both slaves and slave owners. 

As explained by the Atlantic (here), “the overwhelming majority of African Americans have white male ancestors, largely because of white male slave owners who raped Black female slaves.” 

This dark historical fact undermines the point this claim tries to make - that having a white slave-owner in her ancestry makes Harris or any African American less Black. 

 

Sen. Harris Faces Criticism Over 'Locking Up Thousands Of Black Men' As Biden Continues VP Search

Israeli pitched covert pro-Trump plan while leading ‘nonpartisan’ iVote Israel

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-pitched-covert-pro-trump-plan-while-leading-nonpartisan-ivote-israel/

A former employee of the Israeli private intel company Psy-Group, who was cited by the US Senate Intelligence Committee in a report this month as a planner of a covert influence pitch by the firm to help Donald Trump win the 2016 elections, simultaneously headed iVote Israel, a purportedly nonpartisan group that aims to boost absentee voting in the US elections from Israel.

The former employee, Eitan Charnoff, insisted there was no connection between Psy-Group, whose pro-Trump covert plan he helped pitch to Trump officials, and the non-profit, ostensibly impartial iVote Israel, where he served at the same time as national director.

 

Republicans twice defy Leonard Cohen estate to play ‘Hallelujah’ at convention

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/republicans-twice-defy-leonard-cohen-estate-to-play-hallelujah-at-convention/

 The Republican National Committee used the late Leonard Cohen’s song “Hallelujah” on the closing night of its convention despite being denied permission, according to an attorney for his estate.

Trump tries to dance around a devastating backdrop

 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/31/trump-economy-branding-coup-405626

 In the nine weeks left in the 2020 campaign, President Donald Trump has an especially daunting task: Convince a skeptical American public that the coronavirus-ravaged U.S. economy is actually roaring back and will soon return to the status he regularly calls the greatest in world history.

He faces serious obstacles. The U.S. economy pre-coronavirus was far from the greatest in history, leaving most Americans with little cushion for the latest plunge. Now Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and other senior White House officials risk sounding out of touch cheerleading a still-struggling economy with a jobless rate over 10 percent — above its peak during the Great Recession — and close to 30 million people getting some kind of unemployment assistance.

Trump Says Biden's Numbers Are Plunging—Poll Trackers Barely Show A Change

 https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-joe-biden-polling-election-plunging-1528669

President Donald Trump has suggested Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's poll numbers are plunging despite trackers showing his lead has dipped by less than a point over the last month.

Emboldened by one recent poll which gave him a lead, in the popular vote overall and in battlegrounds, the president hit out at Biden's numbers, suggesting his return to in-person campaigning is because they are plummeting.

 However, poll trackers from FiveThirtyEight and Real Clear Politics still put Biden ahead looking at the average of results from multiple surveys—despite some surveys having shown a slight tightening of the race.

 

 

Report: Justice Department Quietly Limited Robert Mueller's Russia Investigation

 https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2020/08/30/report-justice-department-quietly-limited-robert-muellers-russia-investigation/#5f190db935e9

 While Trump and his allies have repeatedly called the Russsian investigation a hoax, a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report published on August 18 confirmed that Russian President Vladimir Putin directly ordered the hacking of the Democratic Party's servers and that Trump campaign officials sought to receive advanced notice of Russia-supplied WikiLeaks releases through Roger Stone, which the report confirmed Trump was aware of despite written answers from the president to Mueller saying otherwise.

 

New York Times: Justice Department secretly curtailed investigation into Trump's Russia ties

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/30/politics/trump-russia-investigation-rod-rosenstein/index.html

The US Justice Department in 2017 took secret steps to curtail the special counsel investigation into Russian election interference and possible coordination with the Trump campaign, former law enforcement officials told The New York Times.

According to the newspaper, former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had ordered former special counsel Robert Mueller to examine "any links and/or coordination between the Russian government" and Trump's campaign, but former law enforcement officials said that privately, Rosenstein told Mueller to conduct only a criminal investigation.

 

 

Schiff vows to 'compel' intelligence on election security after DNI head Ratcliffe ends in-person briefings

 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/08/30/adam-schiff-vows-compel-intel-after-john-ratcliffe-stops-briefings/5674373002/

 Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Sunday that Democrats will consider a subpoena for National Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe after he announced the House and Senate intelligence committees would no longer receive in-person briefings on election security. 

In a letter to the heads of those committees Friday, the nation's top intelligence official said the move was intended to ensure intelligence regarding "elections security, foreign malign influence, and election interference is not misunderstood nor politicized." 

Ratcliffe said on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures" that he would "continue to keep Congress informed" through written updates. He explained the main reason for the change was to stop "a pandemic of information being leaked out of the intelligence community."

 "Congressional oversight of intelligence activities now faces a historic crisis," Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said in a statement Saturday after Ratcliffe's announcement.

 Rubio bemoaned intelligence leaks, citing media reports that included information shared by National Counterintelligence and Security Center Director William Evanina in briefings this month. 

"Yet, this grotesque criminal misconduct does not release the intelligence community from fulfilling its legal requirements to respond to Congressional oversight committees," Rubio said. He said Ratcliffe "stated unequivocally that he will continue to fulfill these obligations" and "explicitly" said the Senate Intelligence Committee "will continue receiving briefings on all oversight topics, including election matters."

Office of the DNI to stop in-person briefings to Congress on election interference