US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9064

On October 26 2017 12:48 Aquanim wrote:

I think this is missing some context. For instance, when I chased down that source it said things along the lines of "the Clinton Foundation did not acknowledge money donated to it from a Canadian charity which got it from some Russians, which had something to do with the Canadian charity being unable to reveal it for legal reasons".

Frank Giustra, the Canadian billionaire mining and entertainment financier who originally financed the program that bears his name, issued a statement to rebut suspicions of shady dealings...Giustra claimed that Canadian law prevents naming donors without their permission...

However, Bloomberg and the New York Times said that Canadian law might allow disclosure, and that if the donors had wanted to give directly to the Clinton Foundation, they could have and still received the tax benefit of giving to charity.

On October 26 2017 12:54 Plansix wrote:

I call it like I see it. The Clintons suck, but so do a lot of people. I think the Clinton foundation sucks. Congress should have written laws preventing its existence while the Clinton was a senator. But no one did. Because the Republicans love the foundation and passing laws limiting it and future foundations would take away the golden goose. And limit people like Mercer or the Kosk brothers.

This new outrage will be the next thing they do to prove Clinton was dirty too. But after the dust settles, no laws will change. Just like after the email investigation. No recommendations or new rules. There is no end game with this. They will never being charges or write a law based on what they find.

I try to only get worked up over things that will result in change. This won't result in anything. The FBI didn't sit on bribery evidence for 7 years.

On October 26 2017 12:59 Nevuk wrote:
The NYT is reporting that Clinton didn't know about the dossier or its contents until it was published by Buzzfeed this year (yes, really)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/25/us/politics/steele-dossier-trump-expained.html

On October 26 2017 12:54 Plansix wrote:
I try to only get worked up over things that will result in change. This won't result in anything. The FBI didn't sit on bribery evidence for 7 years.

On October 26 2017 12:59 xDaunt wrote:


Technically, it wouldn't be the FBI that sat anything (if it happened). It would be the DOJ -- ie Holder/Lynch.

On October 26 2017 12:59 Nevuk wrote:
The NYT is reporting that Clinton didn't know about the dossier or its contents until it was published by Buzzfeed this year (yes, really)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/25/us/politics/steele-dossier-trump-expained.html

On October 26 2017 13:07 Plansix wrote:

If they sat on actionable evidence of accepted bribery for 7 years, I'll eat my shoe.



Both parties hire the same company to compile research on Trump. The company sells the same information to both parties. The DNC didn't even hire them directly.

“He reached his right hand around to my behind, and as we smiled for the photo he asked the group, ‘Do you want to know who my favorite magician is?’ As I felt his hand dig into my flesh, he said, ‘David Cop-a-Feel!’”

After telling the joke, others in the room “laughed politely and out of discomfort.” Then Barbara Bush “said something along the lines of, ‘He’s going to get himself put into jail!’ to which we laughed harder.”

"During this period, I did pursue relationships with women that I worked with, including some junior to me," Halperin said in a statement to CNN Wednesday night. "I now understand from these accounts that my behavior was inappropriate and caused others pain. For that, I am deeply sorry and I apologize. Under the circumstances, I'm going to take a step back from my day-to-day work while I properly deal with this situation."
Widely considered to be one of the preeminent political journalists, Halperin, 52, has, among other career highlights, been political director at ABC News; co-authored the bestselling book "Game Change," which was made into an HBO movie starring Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin; and anchored a television show on Bloomberg TV. He currently serves as an analyst for NBC News, making frequent appearances on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," and is featured in Showtime's "The Circus," a show that chronicled the 2016 campaign cycle and the early days of the Trump presidency, and has a project in development with HBO, which, like CNN, is owned by Time Warner.
But women who spoke to CNN say he also had a dark side not made public until now. The stories of harassment shared with CNN range in nature from propositioning employees for sex to kissing and grabbing one's breasts against her will. Three of the women who spoke to CNN described Halperin as, without consent, pressing an erection against their bodies while he was clothed. Halperin denies grabbing a woman's breasts and pressing his genitals against the three women.
The women who worked with Halperin and who spoke with CNN did not report to Halperin. However, Halperin made many decisions about political coverage at ABC News, and had a voice in some critical personnel decisions. None of the women have said, though, that he ever promised anything in exchange for sex, or suggested that he would retaliate against anyone.
Still, while they no longer work with him, Halperin continues to wield influence in politics and media. The women who spoke to CNN said it was for this reason that they shared their accounts on the condition of anonymity. Others also said they still feel embarrassed about what happened to them and did not want to be publicly associated with it.
ABC News and NBC News both declined to comment.
The first woman told CNN she was invited to visit his office in the early 2000s, when he was political director at ABC News, to have a soda, and said that while she was there with him he forcibly kissed her and pressed his genitals against her body.
"I went up to have a soda and talk and -- he just kissed me and grabbed my boobs," the woman said. "I just froze. I didn't know what to do."
When she did make her way out of his office, the woman told a friend at ABC News what had happened. That friend told CNN she remembered the woman telling her about the incident and seeing her visibly shaken.
The second woman, another former ABC News employee, described a similar experience in his office during the 2004 campaign cycle. This woman said she was around 25 years old then, and wanted to be a "campaign off-air" -- ABC News' term for one of the reporters who travel embedded with presidential campaigns -- so she reached out to Halperin, who was a part of the decision-making process regarding those assignments at the time.
"The first meeting I ever had with him was in his office and he just came up from behind -- I was sitting in a chair from across his desk -- and he came up behind me and [while he was clothed] he pressed his body on mine, his penis, on my shoulder," this woman told CNN. "I was obviously completely shocked. I can't even remember how I got out of there -- [but] I got out of there and was freaked out by that whole experience. Given I was so young and new I wasn't sure if that was the sort of thing that was expected of you if you wanted something from a male figure in news."
The woman said Halperin continued to express a sexual desire for her in subsequent visits, despite being rebuffed.
"It was more like him coming up too close to me and sort of along the lines of hugging me," she explained.
She also alleged that Halperin propositioned her for sex on the campaign trail.
"He would say, 'Why don't you meet me upstairs?' And I would say, 'That's not a good idea.' And he would push the request further," the person said. "Eventually I would just ignore him and go about my business."
One of the woman's friends has told CNN that the woman told her about the first incident, in Halperin's office. She said her friend had told her some time after the incident that Halperin had pressed his genitals against her while she was seated in his office, but did not recall being told about unwanted touching during subsequent visits or the alleged propositions for sex.
A third woman, also a former ABC News employee, told CNN she was on the road with Halperin when he propositioned her.
"I excused myself to go to the bathroom and he was standing there when I opened the door propositioning [me] to go into the other bathroom to do something," she said. "It freaked me out. I came out of the ladies' room and he was just standing there. Like almost blocking the door."
A fourth woman who worked with Halperin and was junior to him told CNN he once asked her late at night on the campaign trail to go up to his hotel room with him, and that she believed him to be propositioning her. She declined.
The fifth woman who spoke to CNN was not an ABC News employee at the time of the incident she alleges. She was not comfortable sharing specifics of her story for publication, but said Halperin, while clothed, placed his erect penis against her body without consent.
The women who spoke to CNN said that they did not report Halperin's behavior to management either because they feared retribution, given the level of power Halperin had at ABC and in the industry, or because they were embarrassed. In some cases, their fear of him and the sway he holds remains to this day.
The woman in the first account, however, said she told a mentor at ABC News who said he wanted to escalate the issue to management. It is unclear if that ever occurred.
CNN's investigation found that Halperin allegedly exhibited this type of behavior from the 1990s to the mid-2000s. CNN has not learned of any incidents after Halperin left ABC News.
Halperin joined ABC News in the late 1980s. In 1997 Halperin was named political director of ABC News, and rose to prominence with the advent of The Note, a morning digest newsletter previewing the day in politics. The Note became a must-read for industry professionals, and it catapulted him to the upper echelons of the political scene.
Halperin left ABC News in 2007 for Time magazine and joined Bloomberg in 2014 for a reported salary of $1 million. At Bloomberg, he co-anchored "With All Due Respect" with journalist John Heilemann. The show was simulcast on MSNBC for a period.
Halperin also found great success writing books. In 2010, he co-authored "Game Change" with Heilemann. The duo later published "Double Down: Game Change 2012," reportedly receiving a multi-million dollar advance. Halperin and Heilemann are currently working on a third installment about the 2016 election.

A data-mining firm that worked for Donald Trump’s election campaign made an approach to WikiLeaks, founder Julian Assange said on Wednesday.

The statement followed a report in the Daily Beast that Cambridge Analytica chief executive Alexander Nix made contact with Assange about the possible release of 33,000 of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s missing emails.

“I can confirm an approach by Cambridge Analytica [prior to November last year] and can confirm that it was rejected by WikiLeaks,” Assange tweeted. He did not elaborate on the content of the request.

The Daily Beast report said: “Nix, who heads Cambridge Analytica, told a third party that he reached out to Assange about his firm somehow helping the WikiLeaks founder release Clinton’s missing emails, according to two sources familiar with a Congressional investigation into interactions between Trump associates and the Kremlin.

“Those sources also relayed that, according to Nix’s email, Assange told the Cambridge Analytica CEO that he didn’t want his help, and preferred to do the work on his own. If the claims Nix made in that email are true, this would be the closest known connection between Trump’s campaign and Assange.”

Another report by CNN, citing two unnamed sources, said Nix wrote to several people including Trump mega-donor Rebekah Mercer, explaining that he had emailed Assange seeking access to the Clinton emails to turn them into a searchable database for the campaign or a pro-Trump political action committee.

Mercer and her father Robert, a hedge fund billionaire, are major investors in Cambridge Analytica. Steve Bannon was a vice-president of the company – he reportedly had holdings valued at between $1m and $5m – before joining the Trump campaign and becoming the White House chief strategist, a post he left in August.

Cambridge Analytica’s website claims it holds up to 5,000 data points on more than 230 million American voters. It promises to help clients “gain the advantage over your opponents by adding our blend of big data analytics and behavioral psychology to your campaign arsenal.” It is believed to analyse social media, such as Facebook likes, to build a “psychographic” picture of target voters.

The company was hired as part of the Trump campaign’s data operation, led by Brad Parscale and overseen by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Between 29 July and 12 December the Trump campaign paid Cambridge Analytica $5.9m, according to the Federal Election Commission. Soon after the election Forbes magazine reported that Kushner turned to it “to map voter universes and identify which parts of the Trump platform mattered most”.

But on Wednesday afternoon Michael Glassner, executive director of the Trump campaign, released a statement that did not mention Cambridge Analytica or WikiLeaks by name. “We as a campaign made the choice to rely on the voter data of the Republican National Committee to help elect President Donald J Trump,” he said. “Any claims that voter data from any other source played a key role in the victory are false.”

The Trump campaign is under federal investigation over alleged collusion with Russia. Parscale was interviewed on Tuesday by the House intelligence committee and, according to CNN, many of the committee’s questions were about the campaign’s work with Cambridge Analytica, which Parscale downplayed.

The committee has also requested information from Cambridge Analytica about its work for the Trump campaign. The company has said it is complying but is not under investigation and there is “no suggestion of wrongdoing”.

The 33,000 emails deleted from Clinton’s personal email server have never come to light and there is no evidence that WikiLeaks possessed them. In July last year Trump told a press conference: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

He made Clinton’s emails a central focus of the campaign – in which his supporters chanted, “Lock her up!” – and regularly lavished praise on WikiLeaks. In October he declared: “I love WikiLeaks!”

WikiLeaks published emails hacked from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta just hours after the release of a potentially campaign-ending Access Hollywood tape in which Trump could be heard boasting about groping women. Assange has denied receiving help from Russian hackers.

During the election campaign, the veteran political operative Roger Stone, who is close to Trump, told Boston Herald Radio that he expected “Julian Assange and the Wikileaks people to drop a payload of new documents on a weekly basis fairly soon. And that of course will answer the question of exactly what was erased on that email server.”

The work of President Trump's commission studying voter fraud and other voting problems has been stalled by the eight lawsuits filed against it, according to one commission member.

Indiana's Republican Secretary of State Connie Lawson says the suits, which seek release of all of the commission's correspondence, among other things, have had a "chilling" effect.

Some Democrats on the 11-member panel have complained in recent weeks that they're being kept in the dark about its activities and plans.

But Lawson says she doesn't think anybody's being shut out because "right now, there's nothing going on."

Speaking to reporters after testifying about voting matters on Capitol Hill, Lawson says her understanding is "that they wanted to get some of these lawsuits settled and then move forward."

"It's very chilling to know that you can't really work without somebody suing over something that you've done," she adds. "We're not emailing each other. We're not conversing with each other."

Liberal advocacy groups have sued the commission, arguing that it is not complying with federal open records laws. The groups believe that the panel, which was formed after Trump alleged without evidence that up to five million people voted illegally last year, has been set up to justify policies such as requiring voters to show documents proving that they're U.S. citizens.

The commission's chair and vice chair, Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, both Republicans, have denied they have preconceived ideas about what the commission will recommend.

But actions by Kobach and others on the panel have fueled the suspicions. One lawsuit revealed that Kobach had proposed tightening proof-of-citizenship laws to the Trump presidential transition team. Kobach's first act as vice chair was to send letters to all 50 states requesting detailed voter records, which Kobach says can be used to help identify illegal voting.

This week, one of the groups suing the panel, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, filed Freedom of Information Act requests with three agencies, seeking all communications with the presidential commission. Documents released earlier in court indicate that the panel has communicated with the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security, both of which have databases that could be used to help identify illegal or outdated registrations.

"The lack of transparency of this commission is ominous," Lawyers' Committee president Kristen Clarke said in a statement. She noted that two Democratic members have sent letters to the panel's staff complaining that they don't know what's going on and asking that they be sent copies of all communications.

One of those members, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, says he received an email Wednesday from the commission's executive director, Andrew Kossack, acknowledging receipt of his letter. But Kossack added that due to pending lawsuits, he was "consulting with counsel regarding a response to your request to ensure any response accords with all applicable law."

"I don't think I'm asking for something unreasonable," says Dunlap, adding that the fact that the commission staff has to consult with lawyers before sharing information about the commission with one of the commissioners is a sign the panel is "in more trouble than we thought."

The commission has held two public meetings so far, the last on September 12th. The tentative plan had been to meet again in November, but nothing has been scheduled.

Kobach told the PBS NewsHour Monday that there will be another meeting "in the next few months." Kossack said in a statement to the NewsHour that "members of the commission have been consistently kept abreast of its work."

The panel had planned to issue a report early next year, but Lawson think that's now unlikely and it will complete its work later next year.

The commission's stated purpose is to recommend ways to boost confidence in the integrity of U.S. elections.

On October 26 2017 17:32 Danglars wrote:
https://twitter.com/mitchellreports/status/923355077112467456
Not the MSNBC veteran I was expecting to pipe up in defense of HWB.

On October 26 2017 21:50 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:
So the hundreds of thousands of dollars Harvey Weinstein donated to the Clinton Foundation in recent years, a foundation which says it "Supports and empowers women", there is a twisted irony there no?

Personally I'd be interested to know what favours Weinstein wanted in return for the donations.After what I've read about the creep i can't see him giving it for nothing.