Sarah Sanders keeps digging herself in deeper after Mueller showed she lied

vox

Press secretary Sarah Sanders was caught lying several times in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, and now she’s defending herself with more misdirections.

During a string of media appearances following the release of the Mueller report on Thursday, Sanders has faced questions about a claim she made during a May 2017 press briefing that she later admitted was false during testimony to Mueller’s team. In an attempt to justify President Donald Trump’s decision to fire then FBI director James Comey, Sanders told reporters that “countless members of the FBI” had contacted her to say they had lost confidence in Comey, when in fact that wasn’t the case.

On Thursday evening and Friday morning, Sanders repeatedly downplayed that lie as a mere “slip of the tongue.” But as ABC’s George Stephanopoulos pointed out to her in an interview on Friday morning, she used the line about “countless members of the FBI” multiple times in the days following Comey’s firing — a revelation undercutting her claim that she merely misspoke.

“You said it was a ‘slip of the tongue’ when you talked about ‘countless FBI members,’ yet you repeated it twice the very next day,” Stephanopoulos said. “That’s not a slip of the tongue, Sarah, that’s a deliberate false statement.”

Sanders, however, refused to own it, and bizarrely blamed her lie on Democrats.

Mueller had everything he needed to charge Trump with obstruction, but didn't

cnn

Mueller's report Thursday walked through excruciating detail of evidence in the obstruction of justice investigation and legal analysis, hitting over and over again how prosecutors had enough to meet the legal threshold for a case against Trump.

The special counsel examined multiple incidents for potential obstruction. It showed how Trump's actions crossed the threshold for a case when Trump confronted former FBI Director James Comey to "let" national security adviser Michael Flynn go; when Trump fired Comey; when Trump directed his former White House counsel Don McGahn to shut down Mueller; and when Trump tweeted about his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort's charges as he headed to trial.

In each of these situations, Mueller found evidence that Trump took steps to harm an investigation, had the ability to harm an investigation and had a personal motivation to harm the investigation.

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Mueller report

https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf

Time

Less than a month after Special Counsel Robert Mueller wrapped up a nearly two-year investigation, Americans today can read Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election — minus the portions redacted by the Attorney General William Barr’s Department of Justice, that is.

The almost 400-page report, which covers the special counsel’s findings on Russian interference and whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice, was publicly released after Barr held a press conference Thursday morning, during which he defended Trump.

There are a number of different ways to read the redacted version of the report. Here’s how you can read the findings yourself:

Directly from the Department of Justice:

The most direct way to see the Mueller report is to visit the special counsel’s website, which posted the redacted report after it was delivered to Congress on Thursday morning. The website also contains links to other documents related to the special counsel investigation, including Roger Stone’s indictment and Michael Cohen’s plea agreement.

FOX NEWS HOST SAYS WILLIAM BARR WAS ALMOST 'ACTING AS COUNSELOR FOR THE DEFENSE' OF DONALD TRUMP IN MUELLER REPORT PRESS CONFERENCE

Newsweek

Fox News host Chris Wallace suggested Thursday that Attorney General William Barr was “acting as counselor for the defense” of President Donald Trump during Barr's press conference in advance of his release of special counsel Robert Mueller's full report on Russian meddling in U.S. elections.

“Obviously, the president was very frustrated with the actions of his first attorney general, because of the fact that he felt that Jeff Sessions was not protecting him was not functioning in that role,” Wallace said, appearing as an analyst on Fox News' America’s Newsroom following the press conference. He suggested that Trump specifically chose Barr to then–former Attorney General Sessions with the expectation that he would be more loyal.

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Brooklyn measles outbreak: How a glossy booklet spread anti-vaccine messages in Orthodox Jewish communitie

nbcnews

As New York officials declared a public health emergency in parts of Brooklyn this week, establishing mandatory vaccinations in an effort to stop the city’s worst measles outbreak in almost 30 years, health advocates pointed to what they believe is a major source of vaccine misinformation in the affected neighborhoods.

The false messages that they say convinced hundreds of New Yorkers not to vaccinate their children weren’t spread in a Facebook group or on YouTube, but through a glossy magazine written by and for Orthodox Jewish parents. Copies of the magazine were shared in a way that seems old-fashioned in the age of misinformation — through family, friends and neighbors.

“The Vaccine Safety Handbook” looks legitimate but is filled with wild conspiracy theories and inaccurate data. Published by an anonymously led group called Parents Educating and Advocating for Children’s Health, or PEACH, the handbook disputes the well-established dangers of illnesses like measles and polio, challenges the effectiveness of vaccines in eradicating those illnesses, and likens the U.S. government's promotion of vaccines to the medical atrocities of Nazi Germany.

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Families sue DC synagogue preschool, alleging it ignored child sexual abuse

timesofisrael

The families of eight children who attended the preschool at a prominent Washington, D.C., synagogue have filed a lawsuit accusing the school of ignoring signs that a teacher was abusing children.

The civil suit accuses the school of failing to protect the children from “a known and avoidable risk of sexual abuse” by a teacher employed at the Washington Hebrew Congregation’s Edlavitch-Tyser Early Childhood Center from 2014 until he was suspended in 2018 over allegations that he “may have engaged in inappropriate conduct involving one or more children.”

A spokeswoman for Washington Hebrew, Amy Rotenberg, said the temple is still reviewing the lawsuit, The Washington Post reported.

“In August 2018, Washington Hebrew Congregation immediately reported the allegations to DC Metropolitan Police Department (MPDC) and Child Protective Services as soon as we learned of them,” Rotenberg said in an email. “Since that moment and for the past eight months we have continually and fully cooperated with the ongoing criminal investigation.

“We have taken this matter seriously and have kept the community regularly apprised of what we know,” she wrote.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia told CNN on Monday evening that an investigation into alleged sexual abuse of children at the school is ongoing.

Washington Hebrew, which is affiliated with the Reform movement, has about 3,000 member families and is the oldest congregation in the city. The synagogue has deep roots in Washington’s political establishment and counts among its members prominent influencers of both parties.

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Donald Trump's Changing Positions On Releasing His Taxes

time

Donald Trump said he would release his tax returns. Then he said he’d do it after an audit. Now he says the public doesn’t care.

Over the years, the president and members of his Administration have changed tactics several times on the question of whether he would follow a decades-old precedent and release his old tax returns.

In a 2014 interview, Trump said he would release the returns, without any qualifications.

“If I decide to run for office, I’ll produce my tax returns, absolutely,” he told “Ireland AM.” “And I would love to do that.”