Thursday, August 25, 2022

JARED KUSHNER: DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU READ MY FATHER-IN-LAW HAD MORE THAN 300 CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS AT MAR-A-LAGO

 https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/08/jared-kushner-donald-trump-classified-documents

 Do you a) tell anyone asking that this is an ongoing investigation and we should allow the FBI and Justice Department the space to do their jobs; b) urge your father-in-law’s supporters to cease any and all attacks on law enforcement immediately; or c) claim that the government and the media are a bunch of snakes whose lies will soon be revealed? If you’re Jared Kushner, you apparently gotta go with C.

Jared Kushner Squirms After ‘Fox & Friends’ Host Asks One Tough Question

 https://www.thedailybeast.com/jared-kushner-squirms-after-fox-and-friends-host-steve-doocy-asks-one-tough-question

Kushner seemed taken aback by Doocy’s simple, legitimate question: “Why would the former president have that many classified things at Mar-a-Lago?”

“So I’m not familiar with what exactly the contents were,” Kushner replied, distancing himself from his father-in-law before turning around to defend him. Then, continuing to dodge Doocy’s question, he embarked on an extended tangent about the “secret backchannel” he denies trying to set up with Russia during the transition period following the 2016 election and acknowledged that this is not the first time his family has been accused of committing “treason.”

COVID-19 Vaccination Doesn’t Increase Miscarriage Risk, Contrary to Naomi Wolf’s Spurious Stat

https://www.factcheck.org/2022/08/scicheck-covid-19-vaccination-doesnt-increase-miscarriage-risk-contrary-to-naomi-wolfs-spurious-stat/ 

And yet, social media has been abuzz with the false claim that during Pfizer’s main clinical trial, 44% of the pregnant women who were vaccinated miscarried.

“Massacre: Nearly Half of Pregnant Women in Pfizer Trial Miscarried,” reads an incorrect headline from an Aug. 16 story from the conservative website the Florida Standard. A screenshot of the article was shared on Instagram and received more than 12,000 likes in two days.

False accusations of election fraud prompt some election workers across the US to quit ahead of Election Day

 https://abcnews.go.com/US/us-false-accusations-election-fraud-prompt-election-workers/story?id=88739763

Since the 2020 election, states across the country have seen a slow exodus of election officials prompted by an unprecedented level of misinformation, harassment and threats, according to election experts and officials.

And now, with only three months until Election Day, election offices in at least nine states including Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, Texas and New Jersey have seen a new wave of departures and early retirements, ABC News has learned.

Archives says documents were not returned even though White House lawyer said Trump should hand them over

 https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/24/politics/national-archives-email-cipollone-trump-documents/index.html

Trump-era records were not returned to the government during the waning days of Donald Trump's presidency despite a determination by one of his lawyers that they should be, an attorney at the National Archives said in an email reviewed by The Washington Post.
"It is also our understanding that roughly two dozen boxes of original presidential records were kept in the Residence of the White House over the course of President Trump's last year in office and have not been transferred to NARA, despite a determination by Pat Cipollone in the final days of the administration that they need to be," Gary Stern, the National Archives and Records Administration's chief counsel, wrote in an email to members of Trump's legal team in May 2021, according to the Post.

GOP's Midterm 'Red Wave' Risks Becoming Ripple, Post-Dobbs Voting Suggests

 https://www.newsweek.com/gop-midterm-red-wave-post-dobbs-voting-suggests-1736658

But the bigger story, the data suggests, is increasingly anemic turnout among the rural Republican base in a number of key races around the country, signaling potential a potential enthusiasm gap among Republicans entering the final months of the midterm elections.

Justice Department releases unredacted Barr memo detailing decision not to charge Trump with obstructing Russia probe

 https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/24/politics/barr-mueller-report/index.html

Mueller concluded that there were several incidents with strong evidence of obstruction by Trump. But Barr's deputies argued that Trump mostly "attempted to modify the process under with the Special Counsel investigation progressed," but didn't try to "intentionally alter evidence," which would be more serious and could be criminal.

Wednesday, August 24, 2022

Russia's Ex-Chief of Human Rights Says Ukraine War Provides World Security

 https://www.newsweek.com/russia-human-rights-ukraine-war-konstantin-dolgov-state-tv-world-security-1736381

"Security guarantees for the Ukrainians, the population of Ukraine, our soldiers are creating these security guarantees as well as our officers and the militia in Donbas. " Dolgov said, according to the video's English subtitles.

"These are the security guarantees for the people of Ukraine, I am absolutely certain of everything I just said.

"These are the security guarantees from Nazism, from provocateurs, big and small, the security guarantees from atomic radiation."

Far-Right Activist Laura Loomer Refuses to Concede, Sobs About Voter Fraud

 https://www.newsweek.com/far-right-activist-laura-loomer-refuses-concede-sobs-about-voter-fraud-1736325

Far-right activist and congressional candidate Laura Loomer broke into tears as she claimed without evidence that she was illegally robbed of a Republican primary victory on Tuesday.

Loomer, a self-described "proud Islamophobe" and white nationalist who backed former President Donald Trump's false claims of a "stolen" 2020 presidential election, had been endorsed by prominent far-right figures such as conservative commentator Michelle Malkin and received an early endorsement from Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.In addition to being a political candidate, Loomer is a contributor to Alex Jones' far-right conspiracy media platform Infowars. She has previously pushed conspiracy theories that falsely claim mass shootings, including the 2018 shooting at Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, were faked.

‘Donald kept our secret’: Mar-a-Lago stay saved Giuliani from drink and depression, book says

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/aug/24/donald-trump-secret-mar-a-lago-stay-rudy-giuliani-drink-depression-wife-andrew-kirtzman-book

Giuliani has repeatedly denied having a drinking problem. But reports of his drinking while fulfilling his late-career role as Trump’s personal attorney are legion, whether regarding his behavior around reporters or in his presence at the White House on election night in 2020, when he exhorted Trump to declare victory before all results were counted.

Meet the hi-tech man who manages to combine work with his Orthodox lifestyle

https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/tech-and-start-ups/article-715385

“I think that workplaces that try to push one agenda on the opposite side are making a mistake. At the very beginning of my career I encountered such a place, and I only stayed there for two months. The secret to success is that everyone in the company understands that we share a common goal – that the business will succeed, and that’s what matters.” (Maariv)

Team Trump leaks National Archives letter, hurts its own cause

 https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/team-trump-leaks-national-archives-letter-hurts-cause-rcna44432

I have no idea why someone from Team Trump would voluntarily show this to the public. It not only bolsters damaging reporting about the Mar-a-Lago scandal, it also makes the former president look worse, not better.

Indeed, the NARA letter confirms that Trump took highly classified national security materials to his glorified country club. It confirms that the Republican’s haul was extensive and wasn’t limited to a handful of documents. It confirms that the National Archives was amazingly accommodating, accepting multiple delays in the hopes that the former president would eventually cooperate and return the secrets he wasn’t supposed to have.

Wait, Why the Hell Did Trump’s Own Buddy Release the ‘Extraordinarily Damning’ National Archivist Letter?

;https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-the-hell-did-trumps-buddy-john-solomon-release-extraordinarily-damning-letter

National security lawyer Bradley Moss said it was ironic that “Trump’s media guy shows how NARA was bending over backwards for Trump before it finally gave the FBI access to the classified records,” wondering if Solomon realizes “how bad that letter is for” the ex-president.

Trump defiance of DOJ on classified docs comes into sharper focus

 https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/3612830-trump-defiance-of-doj-on-classified-docs-comes-into-sharper-focus/

Meanwhile, the letter from Archives came into the public domain after John Solomon, one of Trump’s representatives to the National Archives and a former columnist with The Hill, released it on his conservative news site, Just The News. Archives confirmed its authenticity Tuesday afternoon.

Observers have questioned the decision to publish a letter that shows not only the breadth of classified information held by Trump, but also publicizes the extent the Trump team sought to block the FBI’s work.

“Every single piece of evidence that shows that DOJ tried literally everything they could to get these records back short of the search warrant punctures another hole in the theory that they were just on a witch hunt. They went above and beyond to accommodate an unreasonable individual.”