So you know

 

A list of Trump associates and their legal entanglements

By Kevin Liptak, CNN.  Updated 11:34 AM ET, Thu August 20, 2020 

(CNN) The orbit of former advisers and associates of President Donald Trump who have been indicted or found guilty grew Thursday when Steve Bannon, his former senior adviser and chief strategist, was arrested and indicted.  The crimes they have been accused of are different and stem from a constellation of alleged criminal conspiracies.

Here is a list:

• Steve Bannon - Trump's political guru and onetime chief strategist, Bannon was charged Thursday with defrauding donors of hundreds of thousands of dollars in a border wall fundraising campaign. Once among Trump's most trusted advisers -- with walk-in privileges to the Oval Office -- Bannon left the White House in 2017 on bad terms and, for a period, was on the outs with Trump. In an interview with The New York Times in February 2019, Trump said he hadn't spoken with his former campaign manager "in a year and a half." He did, however, offer praise for Bannon as a top advocate during the President's impeachment who caught his attention.  Trump has praised him more recently, including in an interview on Fox News this summer: "Steve Bannon's been much better not being involved. He says the greatest president ever. I mean, he's saying things that I said, 'Let's keep Steve out there, he's doing a good job.' But they're all being -- they're all involved."

• Michael Cohen - Trump's onetime lawyer and fixer, Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to tax fraud, lying to Congress and campaign finance violations for facilitating hush money payments to two women who alleged past affairs with the President. Trump has denied having affairs with the women.  Last week Cohen released the foreword of his upcoming book, teasing what he claims is a behind-the-scenes exposé of his acts as Trump's fixer -- from stiffing contractors on a business deal to lying about extra-marital affairs to the President's attempts to "insinuate himself into the world of President Vladimir Putin."

• Paul Manafort - Trump's onetime campaign chairman, Manafort had been in jail since June 2018 before being released to home confinement amid the coronavirus pandemic. He is serving a 7.5-year sentence after being convicted by a jury of tax and banking crimes in August 2018, then pleaded guilty to conspiracy and obstruction of justice.  As part of a plea deal cut in September 2018, Manafort admitted to money laundering, tax fraud and illegal foreign lobbying connected to his years of lucrative work for Ukrainian politicians, as well as defrauding banks to supplement his income with cash through mortgages. He also agreed to cooperate with the prosecutors from then-special counsel Robert Mueller's office -- before lying during those interview sessions.

• Rick Gates - A onetime deputy campaign chairman for Trump, Gates was sentenced to 45 days in jail and three years' probation in 2019 after admitting to helping Manafort conceal $75 million in foreign bank accounts from their years of Ukraine lobbying work. Gates shared searing details about Trump's efforts in 2016 with Mueller.

• Roger Stone - Trump's friend and political adviser, Stone was convicted of crimes that included lying to Congress in part, prosecutors said, to protect the President. Trump commuted his sentence this summer days, before Stone was set to report to a federal prison in Georgia.  Stone was convicted last year of seven charges -- including lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing a congressional committee proceeding -- as part of Mueller's Russia investigation. Among the things he misled Congress about were his communications with Trump campaign officials -- communications that prosecutors said Stone hid out of his desire to protect Trump.

• Michael Flynn- Trump's onetime national security adviser, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his talks with the then-Russian ambassador about approaches that would undermine Obama administration policy before Trump took office. The case has become a political lightning rod, with Trump and Flynn both saying he's been treated unfairly by the judge and the prosecutors who cut his plea deal. Trump has not ruled out a pardon for Flynn.

Further out of Trump's orbit

• George Papadopoulos :Former campaign aide, Papadopoulos served 12 days in prison for lying to investigators about his contact with individuals tied to Russia during the 2016 campaign.
• George Nader: An informal campaign foreign policy adviser, Nader was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a federal judge in Virginia stemming from his convictions on child sex charges.
• Chris Collins: The first member of Congress to endorse Trump, Collins was sentenced to 26 months in prison after pleading guilty to federal charges in an insider trading case.

Here's more.

Meet Ron "The Butcher" deSantis

Really unacceptable.

© 2020 Reuters. All Rights Reserved. 

March 11, 2020 / 12:29 PM /

White House told federal health agency to classify coronavirus deliberations

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-secrecy-exclusive/exclusive-white-house-told-federal-health-agency-to-classify-coronavirus-deliberations-sources-idUSKBN20Y2LM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House has ordered federal health officials to treat top-level coronavirus meetings as classified, an unusual step that has restricted information and hampered the U.S. government’s response to the contagion, according to four Trump administration officials.

The officials said that dozens of classified discussions about such topics as the scope of infections, quarantines and travel restrictions have been held since mid-January in a high-security meeting room at the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), a key player in the fight against the coronavirus.

Staffers without security clearances, including government experts, were excluded from the interagency meetings, which included video conference calls, the sources said.

“We had some very critical people who did not have security clearances who could not go,” one official said. “These should not be classified meetings. It was unnecessary.”

The sources said the National Security Council (NSC), which advises the president on security issues, ordered the classification.”This came directly from the White House,” one official said.

The White House insistence on secrecy at the nation’s premier public health organization, which has not been previously disclosed, has put a lid on certain information - and potentially delayed the response to the crisis. COVID19, the disease caused by the virus, has killed about 30 people in the United States and infected more than 1,000 people.

HHS oversees a broad range of health agencies, including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which among other things is responsible for tracking cases and providing guidance nationally on the outbreaks.

The administration officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said they could not describe the interactions in the meeting room because they were classified.

An NSC spokesman did not respond to questions about the meetings at HHS. But he defended the administration’s transparency across federal agencies and noted that meetings of the administration’s task force on the coronavirus all are unclassified. It was not immediately clear which meetings he was referring to.

“From day one of the response to the coronavirus, NSC has insisted on the principle of radical transparency,” said the spokesman, John Ullyot. He added that the administration “has cut red tape and set the global standard in protecting the American people under President Trump’s leadership.”

A spokeswoman for the HHS, Katherine McKeogh, issued a statement that did not address questions about classified meetings. Using language that echoed the NSC’s, the department said it that it agreed task-force meetings should be unclassified.

Critics have hammered the Trump administration for what they see as a delayed response to coronavirus outbreaks and a lack of transparency, including sidelining experts and providing misleading or incomplete information to the public. State and local officials also have complained of being kept in the dark about essential federal response information.

U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence, the administration’s point person on coronavirus, vowed on March 3 to offer “real-time information in a steady pace and be fully transparent.” The vice president, appointed by President Donald Trump in late February, is holding regular news briefings and also has pledged to rely on expert guidance.

The meetings at HHS were held in a secure area called a “Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility,” or SCIF, according to the administration officials.

SCIFs are usually reserved for intelligence and military operations. Ordinary cell phones and computers can’t be brought into the chambers. HHS has SCIFs because theoretically it would play a major role in biowarfare or chemical attacks.

A high-level former official who helped address public health outbreaks in the George W. Bush administration said “it’s not normal to classify discussions about a response to a public health crisis.”

Attendees at the meetings included HHS Secretary Alex Azar and his chief of staff Brian Harrison, the officials said. Azar and Harrison resisted the classification of the meetings, the sources said.

HHS did not make Azar or Harrison available for comment.

One of the administration officials told Reuters that when complex issues about a quarantine came up, a high-ranking HHS lawyer with expertise on the issue was not admitted because he did not have the proper security clearance. His input was delayed and offered at an unclassified meeting, the official said.
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Vice President Mike Pence addresses reporters during his daily Coronavirus Task Force news briefing at the White House in Washington, U.S. March 10, 2020. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

A fifth source familiar with the meetings said HHS staffers often weren’t informed about coronavirus developments because they didn’t have adequate clearance. He said he was told that the matters were classified “because it had to do with China.”

The coronavirus epidemic originated in China and the administration’s main focus to prevent spread early on was to restrict travel by non-U.S. citizens coming from China and to authorize the quarantine of people entering the United States who may have been exposed to the virus.

One of the administration officials suggested the security clearances for meetings at HHS were imposed not to protect national security but to keep the information within a tight circle, to prevent leaks.

“It seemed to be a tool for the White House - for the NSC - to keep participation in these meetings low,” the official said.

Roston and Taylor reported from Washington, D.C.; Editing by Julie Marquis
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

© 2020 Reuters. All Rights Reserved.

New Help from an Old Guy

Looking for a way out?? Click here.

=============================
 
As tyrants take control of democracies, they typically follow 10 steps:



Robert Reich‏ Verified @RBReich 8/13/17 

I practice this.

How to Shop without Amazon

REUTERS/Neil Hall – LR1EBBP1CLPUC

Finally, writers are getting mad & shareholders getting sad...

at Amazon. See this letter.
And more.

You, too, can write to jeff@amazon.com to tell him what you think of his "business practices." Bully.

UPDATE 7/25/14:  Oh, goody, more bad news for the wannabe ceo of Earth.
And more good news for writers -- and readers -- who care.

Almost deleted my blogs today....

Still considering it, but it's all so depressing.

Another mint julep, sweetie-pie?

I don't understand why...

Target missed its own internal alarm system.  40M credit card numbers could have not been stolen. No wonder the IT Mgr resigned.  So close... and then so blown.

Way to go Joe!

You said it, dude!

Joe Biden: Allen West Rival Patrick Murphy 'Did The Country A Favor'

Catcher in the Rye dropped from US school curriculum - Telegraph

Yikes! This has got to be an April Fool's joke, right? Even the Gateses aren't so artless.

Schools in America are to drop classic books such as Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye from their curriculum in favour of 'informational texts'.

This is fukking pitiful

Edward Villella Leaving Miami City Ballet Sooner Than Expected

By JENNIFER KAY 09/04/12 11:21 AM ET AP
Edward Villella Resigns Early Miami City Ballet

MIAMI — The artistic director who founded the Miami City Ballet and built it into an internationally recognized company is leaving sooner than expected.

Edward Villella said last year he would retire after the 2012-2013 season ends in April. But ballet officials announced Tuesday that Villella has decided to leave now.

The former New York City Ballet star founded the Miami Beach-based dance company in 1986.

Officials say Villella "had given the matter a great deal of thought" and decided with the company's executive board to speed up the transition to new leadership.

The Cuban-born dancer Lourdes Lopez was set to succeed Villella as artistic director. Ballet officials say Lopez now takes over immediately.

Lopez is currently the director of the New York dance company Morphoses.

More here  I bet he's not really smiling, unless he's happy he screwed the people who screwed him. Lourdes Lopez is nobody and he's very much somebody. This is the end of Miami City Ballet and the board is too stupid and rich to know it. Wait till they can't find any dancers to come here. Wait till the school starts sucking because it's not run by his wife & daughter. Wait till the dancers leave. Wait till the audience leaves. I know I will. But first I'm going to write them all letters and tell them why I'm not buying any full-price, expensive tickets this year. Or any other year in my future. Maybe I need to move back to New York too.

Amazon = Borg

Amazon is like the Borg... it only wants itself to exist. 

2/20: No! Surely you jest. No, you don't. It's just true.  Original article at the Author's Guild blog is here.

2/24: Amazon doesn't think publishers are relevant anymore. They're trying to shave margins, so publishers will go out of business. Just like they are continuing to do with bookstores.

Fight back now if you think books and bookstores are important. Here's one way.

2/27:  Author Jim Hanas Responds To Amazon/IPG Dispute - eBookNewser

Bitter Borders Compilation: Pics, Videos, Links, News

Bitter Borders Compilation (pix, videos, links, news, the occasional giggle) {sigh}

Ommmmm.... ommmmm.....

Practicing detachment. Hard.

My new Representative is an African-American court-martialled torturer; my new Governor is a really rich bald guy convicted of Medicare fraud. Primarily self-funding their mud-slinging battering ad, one expects them to easily replenish their personal coffers, supporting Mencken's unfortunately all-too-true adage that No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people. R.I.P. sanity. You were just a day late and a dollar short, Jon Stewart. 

This creep....

I've been trying to wean myself off caring politically, but this story still pisses me off. Steve Kornacki at Salon.com writes a good recap, asks the right questions... and fails to answer one.... The wife wants an apology??? Shades of Martha Mitchell, methinks. 

Illustration from a drawing a week

GOOD GO-TO GUY

Dr. Jeff Masters at the Weather Underground website is my go-to guy during hurricane season.  Here, he has written several posts on the possible interaction of storms on oil, and oil on storms (scroll down). In the one on the effect of oil, there is also an illustration of the comparative sizes of the oil spill and a big storm, which is telling.
STORM WARNING DRAWINGS HERE.

Another global disaster...

Man-made, this time.  With any luck, this will be a deal-changer... for the better.  ("It can't get no worse...")

It was just a matter of time. My home state fronts on the Gulf, my home state depends on the Gulf, and even though they say the tides & eddies & swirls are not going to bring the oil to the west coast of Florida, I know that tides change and one day blue herons and white pelicans will be eating oil-drenched fish and will not be able to achieve liftoff due to gunk on their wings.  Feeling angry and impotent about this, and seriously considering moving. It's going to be bad. Rachel Maddow had a chilling story on it tonight....

Update: the video story got moved, but here's a link to her research and new blog. We are so toast.

Not Ready for this Disaster, Either

An old Icelandic volcano, that blew for two years two centuries ago. Unpronounceable fire burning ice, ice spewing fire.  Magmice. Glacieano.