canpakes wrote:I’m going with the idea that Trump and Pruitt both agreed upon the resignation a while back, but strategically held out for a moment when releasing that news could shift attention away from something else that Trump was embroiled within. As the whole ‘family separation’ thing has ended up causing a bit more damage to the Cartman Administration than expected - and has persisted longer than Trump found useful - he gave Pruitt the go-ahead to step down now in the hopes that the press will follow this new Shiny Object.
Whether this was planned out so precisely or not remains to be seen. That is definitely a prevailing theme of this administration though, through so much crap at the fan that hopefully none of it sticks (to mix a metaphor or two).
This week hasn't been much different; Pruitt stepping down, tariffs kicking in, admin officials requesting more time to reunite families, Trump's dog-whistly rally... it is a deluge of BS that is hard to focus on any one thing.
"If you consider what are called the virtues in mankind, you will find their growth is assisted by education and cultivation." -Xenophon of Athens
Goebbels 'There was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals would never be converted and would anyway always yield to the **er, and this will always be "the man in the street." Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology." Intellectuals in Trump's mind would be climate scientists many who have left the EPA. Watch Trumps crude clear and forcible and appeal to the emotions and instincts not the intellec" in Montana.
Hilary Clinton " I won the places that represent two-thirds of America's GDP.I won in places are optimistic diverse, dynamic, moving forward"
The MCC has now been engulfed by The Trump Swamp ...
The White House has assumed control over hiring at a small federal agency that promotes economic growth in poor countries, installing political allies and loyalists in appointed jobs intended for development experts, according to documents and interviews.
Until the Trump administration, only the chief executive and several other top officials of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) were selected by the White House, former agency officials said. The chief executive, in turn, used authority granted to the agency by Congress to appoint about two dozen other staffers, primarily for their technical expertise.
But starting last year, the White House began naming political appointees to the lower-level positions, according to internal rosters obtained by The Washington Post and interviews with former employees and other knowledgeable people. The employees were warned by an agency leader they could lose their jobs to make way for the new political appointees, the former employees said.
Fourteen allies and Trump loyalists have been placed at the agency as political appointees so far — more than double the number of political staff on the day the president took office, the rosters show. Among them are a 2016 college graduate with a degree in English literature whose grandmother is a senior personnel official in the White House and a recent congressional intern who graduated in May with a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
...
The MCC has about 300 employees and an $800 million annual budget. It has supported programs in dozens of developing countries.
After Trump’s inauguration, agency leaders did not initially hear from the White House, according to MCC employees at the time. In the spring of 2017, a senior official from the Presidential Personnel Office (PPO) asked several members of the leadership team to send over their résumés for review, people familiar with the matter said. Before long, a PPO official began making claims on the 30 appointed positions authorized by Congress.
The PPO is a White House organization responsible for selecting and placing 4,000 political appointees who carry out the president’s policies and run federal agencies. It has been a source of controversy over its vetting of nominees and the pace of appointments. PPO director Sean Doocey and a senior official in the PPO office, Katja Bullock, have been involved in lining up the political jobs at MCC, according to documents and interviews with people with knowledge of the office.
In a previous interview, a White House official acknowledged that Doocey and Bullock are former Bush administration colleagues and longtime friends, who with others traveled to Germany on vacation last year.
Several months after the trip to Germany, Doocey appointed Bullock’s grandson, Dillon Seamus Bullock, to MCC as a “staff assistant,” the Dec. 5 memo shows. Dillon Seamus Bullock, who was given a $50,000 salary, had no professional experience after graduating with an English degree from Belmont Abbey College in December 2016, according to his résumé and the Doocey memo.
As The Post has previously reported, Dillon Seamus Bullock is one of four of Katja Bullock’s relatives who have received political appointments in the Trump administration.
Doocey and Katja Bullock declined requests for interviews. During a brief phone call, Dillon Seamus Bullock also declined to comment.
Doocey’s office also arranged for the agency to hire Adrienne Spero as White House liaison. Though she was paid by MCC, she reported to Doocey, according to interviews with current and former employees. Spero is a 2013 graduate of Ohio Northern University’s Pettit College of Law who worked as a law clerk at the Justice Department in 2015 and 2016. She and her husband, Casin Spero, a political appointee at Veterans Affairs, are social friends of Doocey’s, according to current and former Trump administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution
Would you agree with Clapper here even if it had been the Hillary Campaign? Is it not the job of intelligence community to keep tabs on Russian officials?
As it turns out, it was Hillary Clinton who colluded with Russia.
The secret orders used to bypass the need for a warrant need to be more limited.
If you have any delusions about Putin supporting Hillary Clinton, please check out this documenary: The Most Powerful Man in the World. Putin bitterly hated Clinton, and his interference with the 2016 election was largely motivated witn Putin's obseession to get revenge on Clinton for pointing out his corruption election frauds in his own country.
But of course, you won't look at it or seriously consider any source that undermines your delusional positions.
No precept or claim is more likely to be false than one that can only be supported by invoking the claim of Divine authority for it--no matter who or what claims such authority.
“If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.”
― Harlan Ellison
Rick Gates, the former deputy campaign manager for President Donald Trump, testified Monday that he committed crimes with his onetime business partner Paul Manafort.
Kevin Graham wrote:Rick Gates, the former deputy campaign manager for President Donald Trump, testified Monday that he committed crimes with his onetime business partner Paul Manafort.
Rick Gates, the star witness in special counsel Robert Mueller's fraud and conspiracy trial against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, took the stand Monday to testify that he committed crimes with his former business partner.
In a blow to the case being laid out by Manafort's defense team, Gates then told prosecutors that he had been directed by Manafort to report overseas income as loans as a way to lower his taxable income.
Since their opening statement last week, Manafort's lawyers have sought to blame Gates for breaking finance laws, framing him as a liar who abused Manafort's trust and embezzled millions of dollars from him.
Gates, clad in a blue suit and sporting an uncharacteristically clean-shaven face, did admit in court that he stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from Manafort by filing false expense reports.
But while sitting just a few feet from Manafort, Gates testified that Manafort had worked with him to commit financial crimes, including filing false tax returns. Manafort had directed him to commit other crimes, Gates said, such as not disclosing foreign bank accounts and omitting information from a court deposition.
Gates pleaded guilty in February to lying to investigators and conspiracy against the United States, and struck a plea deal to fully cooperate with the special counsel. His potential sentence was drastically reduced to nearly six years, and the special counsel holds the power to petition the court to further reduce his sentencing time based on his cooperation.
In court on Monday, Gates said that under sentencing guidelines he could face as few as 57 months for his crimes.
Manafort has pleaded not guilty to the 18 criminal counts against him in the Virginia federal criminal case, as well as similar charges in a case set to go to trial in September in Washington district court. Mueller's team lodged charges against Manafort in both cases, though neither are directly related to the special counsel's ongoing probe of potential coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Gates follows more than a dozen witnesses brought in by the U.S. attorney to testify against Manafort. Prosecutors have highlighted dozens of invoices, email threads and financial statements to bolster their accusations that Manafort filed false tax returns and committed bank fraud to maintain his lavish spending habits.
While Gates' testimony had almost always been expected, it was unclear precisely when he would be called into the courtroom. The Washington Post reported that defense lawyer Kevin Downing revealed Monday that Gates was on deck while cross-examining Manafort's accountant, Cindy Laporta, who returned to testify for a second day under the protection of immunity.
The government instead initially called Liss to testify on Monday afternoon, according to reports, but Gates ended up taking the stand shortly after.
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
