Story 1: President Trumps Declares A National Emergency — Unleashes Full Power of United States Government — $50 Billion in New Funding To Deal With COVID-19 Pandemic — Videos
BREAKING: Donald Trump declares a national emergency
Trump declares National Emergency over coronavirus
Trump declares national emergency over coronavirus pandemic
Tucker: Regular life is all but suspended
Hannity: Major businesses working with Trump on coronavirus
Trump declares virus emergency; Pelosi announces aid deal
By LISA MASCARO, ZEKE MILLER, ANDREW TAYLOR and JILL COLVIN
President Donald Trump on Friday declared the coronavirus pandemic a national emergency in order to free up more money and resources. But he denied any responsibility for delays in making testing available for the new virus, whose spread has roiled markets and disrupted the lives of everyday Americans.
Speaking from the Rose Garden, Trump said, “I am officially declaring a national emergency,” unleashing as much as $50 billion for state and local governments to respond to the outbreak.
Trump also announced a range of executive actions, including a new public-private partnership to expand coronavirus testing capabilities with drive-through locations, as his administration has come under fire for being too slow in making the test available.
Trump said, “I don’t take responsibility at all” for the slow rollout of testing.
Late Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a deal with the Trump administration for an aid package from Congress that aims at direct relief to Americans — free testing, two weeks of sick pay for workers, enhanced unemployment benefits and bolstered food programs.
“We are proud to have reached an agreement with the Administration to resolve outstanding challenges, and now will soon pass the Families First Coronavirus Response Act,” Pelosi announced in a letter to colleagues. The House was poised to vote.
The crush of late-day activity capped a tumultuous week in Washington as the fast-moving virus shuttered the capital’s power centers, roiled financial markets and left ordinary Americans suddenly navigating through self-quarantines, school closures and a changed way of life.
The White House was under enormous pressure, dealing with the crisis on multiple fronts as it encroached ever closer on the president.
Trump has been known to flout public health advice — eagerly shaking hands during the more than hour-long afternoon event — but acknowledged he “most likely” will be tested now after having been in contact with several officials who have tested positive for the virus. “Fairly soon,” he said.
Still, Trump said officials don’t want people taking the test unless they have certain symptoms. “We don’t want people without symptoms to go and do that test,” Trump said, adding, “It’s totally unnecessary.”
Additionally, Trump took a number of other actions to bolster energy markets, ease the financial burden for Americans with student loans and give medical professionals additional “flexibility” in treating patients during the public health crisis.
“Through a very collective action and shared sacrifice, national determination, we will overcome the threat of the virus,” Trump said.
Central to the aid package from Congress, which builds on an emergency $8.3 billion measure approved last week, is the free testing and sick pay provisions.
Providing sick pay for workers is a crucial element of federal efforts to stop the rapid spread of the infection. Officials warn that the nation’s healthcare system could quickly become overwhelmed with gravely sick patients, as suddenly happened in Italy, one of the countries hardest hit by the virus.
The ability to ensure paychecks will keep flowing — for people who stay home as a preventative measure or because they’re feeling ill or caring for others — can help assure Americans they will not fall into financial hardship.
Hopes for swiftly passing the package seemed to be fading throughout the day as talks dragged on and Trump dismissed it during as “not doing enough.”
Ahead of Trump’s new conference, Pelosi delivered a statement from the speaker’s balcony at the Capitol imploring the Trump administration and congressional Republicans to “put families first” by backing the effort to provide Americans with relief.
“Our great nation has faced crisis before,” Pelosi said. “And every time, thanks to the courage and optimism of the American people, we have prevailed. Now, working together, we will once again prevail.”
Pelosi and Mnuchin engaged in days of around-the-clock negotiations with cross-town phone calls that continued even as Trump was speaking, both indicating earlier they were close to a deal.
They both promised a third coronavirus package will follow soon, with more aggressive steps to boost the U.S. economy, which economists fear has already slipped into recession.
The financial markets closed on an upswing after one of the worst nosedives since the 1987 downturn.
For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia.
The vast majority of people recover. According to the World Health Organization, people with mild illness recover in about two weeks, while those with more severe illness may take three to six weeks to be over it.
Trump said he was gratified that Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro tested negative for the virus, after the pair sat next to each other for an extended period of time last weekend at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. A senior aide to Bolsonaro tested positive.
Trump’s daugher, Ivanka Trump, worked from home Friday after meeting with Australian Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, now in isolation at a hospital after testing positive for the coronavirus. White House spokesman Judd Deere said she was evaluated by the White House Medical Unit and it was determined that because she was exhibiting no symptoms she does not need to self-quarantine.
Attorney General William Barr, who also met with the Australian official, was staying home Friday, though he “felt great and wasn’t showing any symptoms,” according to his spokeswoman Kerri Kupec.
Several lawmakers, including some close to Trump, have also been exposed to people who tested positive for the virus, and are self-isolating.
Among them are Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Rick Scott, who were at Trump’s club on the weekend. Graham announced Friday that he also met with the Australian official who has now tested positive. And GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who had previously isolated himself after a potential exposure at a conservative conference in Washington, said Friday he met with a Spanish official and is now self-quarantining.
Hospitals welcomed Trump’s emergency declaration, which they and lawmakers in Congress had been requesting. It allows the Health and Human Services Department to temporarily waive certain federal rules that can make it harder for hospitals and other health care facilities to respond to an emergency.
The American Medical Association said the emergency declaration would help ensure America’s health care system has sufficient resources to properly respond to the ongoing outbreak.
Trump has struggled to show he’s on top of the crisis, after giving conflicting descriptions of what the U.S. is doing to combat the virus. On Wednesday he announced he would ban travel to the U.S. from Europe, and on Friday he suggested extending that to the U.K. because of a recent rise in cases.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious disease chief at the National Institutes of Health, said more tests would be available over the next week, but warned, “We still have a long way to go.”
Fauci said Friday, “There will be many more cases. But we’ll take care of that, and ultimately, as the president said, this will end.”
___
Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani, Alan Fram, Lauran Neergaard, Martin Crutsinger, Laurie Kellman, Michael Balsamo and Kevin Freking in Washington and Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.
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Dow plunges 10% from peak and enters correction after largest one-day point drop in HISTORY as coronavirus fears fuel the worst week on Wall Street since the Great Recession
US major stock indexes closed down more than 4% for the day on Thursday
Markets have now entered correction, or declines from peak of more than 10%
Dow dropped 1,190.95 points, the index’s largest one-day point drop in history
Follows report of first US community transmission of coronavirus in California
Netflix and other ‘stay at home’ companies saw shares rise, however
U.S. stock indexes plunged dramatically yet again on Thursday, as the rapid spread of the coronavirus outside China deepens investor worries about growth and corporate earnings.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 1,190.95 points, or 4.42 percent, to 25,766.64, the largest one-day point drop in history. It comes during the quickest market plunge on a percentage basis since the financial crisis of October 2008.
The Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq all closed more than 10 percent below their recent highs. That means the market is officially in a correction, which is a normal phenomenon that analysts have said was long overdue. T
At their heart, stock prices rise and fall with the profits that companies expect to make — and Wall Street’s expectations for profit growth are sinking as more companies warn that the virus outbreak will hit their bottom lines.
Trader Peter Tuchman reacts at the opening bell on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday as the Dow opens down another 500 points and the market enters correction territory
Adding to worries, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed an infection in California in a person who reportedly did not have relevant travel history or exposure to another known patient.
‘In the recent week, markets have come to realize that the outbreak is much worse and are now realistically pricing in the impact of the virus on the economy,’ said Philip Marey, senior U.S. strategist at Rabobank.
‘In that sense it’s a bit of a catching up from the relative optimism that was there in the beginning when markets thought (the virus) will be contained to China with some minor outbreak outside.’
Rising fears of a pandemic, which U.S. health authorities have warned is likely, have erased about $1.84 trillion off the benchmark S&P 500 this week alone.
Industry analysts and economists continued to sound the alarm as they assessed the impact of the coronavirus, with Goldman Sachs saying U.S. companies will generate no earnings growth in 2020.
Apple and Microsoft, two of the world´s biggest companies, have already said their sales this quarter will feel the economic effects of the virus.
Microsoft’s stock lost 2.8 percent after it told investors that the virus will hurt revenue from its Windows licenses and its Surface devices.
A one-day view of the Dow Jones Industrial Average shows Thursday’s punishing losses
A five-day view of the Dow Jones Industrial Average shows the cumulative declines this week
Traders work during the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday. About five minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1.8 percent
Budweiser maker AB InBev projects 10% hit to profits in first quarter due to decline in Chinese sales
The world’s largest brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev forecast a 10 percent decline in first-quarter profit on Thursday after the coronavirus outbreak hit beer sales during the Chinese New Year, sending its shares skidding.
The maker of Budweiser, Corona and Stella Artois said the virus had led to a significant decline in demand in China – both at bars and drinking at home, notably during the Chinese New Year.
AB InBev stock plunged on Thursday after the beer maker said that it expected profits to be down 10% for the first quarter due to slumping Chinese sales
The outbreak, along with an expected weaker Brazilian market, could lead to a 10 percent drop in first-quarter core profit (EBITDA) on-year, AB InBev said, adding that it expected 2020 core profit growth of between 2 percent and 5 percent, with most expansion occurring in the second half.
The Belgium-based company, which sells more Budweiser in China than in the lager’s key U.S. market, said the disease shaved up to $285 million off its revenue in China in the first two months of this year, 2.3 percent of its first-quarter group revenue last year.
American Airlines plunged 8.5 percent as airlines continue to feel pain from disrupted travel plans and suspended routes.
Delta Airlines, which is reducing flights to South Korea because of the outbreak in that nation, fell 4.5 percent.
Bank of America slashed its world growth forecast to the lowest level since the peak of the global financial crisis.
Financial warnings also came from Budweiser maker InBev and cloud-computing company Nutanix.
The virus has now infected more than 82,000 people globally and is worrying governments with its rapid spread beyond the epicenter of China.
The price of crude oil fell 4.7 percent. The price has been falling sharply as investors anticipate that demand for energy will wane as the economy slows.
Bond yields continued sliding as investors shifted money into lower-risk assets. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell further into record low territory, to 1.28% from 1.31% late Wednesday. Gold prices edged higher.
Medical mask makers and ‘stay at home’ companies see shares rise as investors anticipate high demand
A number of companies that could see their business jump if coronavirus reaches epidemic levels in the U.S. saw their shares rise in mid-morning trading on Thursday.
Shares of 3M, which counts surgical masks among its many products, rose 1.5 percent.
Canadian company Alpha Pro Tech, which makes medical protective garments, saw shares skyrocket 57 percent on Thursday.
Chlorox, which makes the popular bleach brand that can be used to sterilize surfaces, was up 2.8 percent. 7
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York on Thursday
Netflix stock was up on Thursday, with investors betting that binge-watching at home could become more appealing than going out during an outbreak
Chlorox, which makes bleach that can be used to sterilize surfaces, was also up Thursday
Gilead Sciences jumped 6.4 percent, as the drugmaker said it had started two late-stage trials to test its experimental antiviral drug, remdesivir, in patients with cases of illness caused by coronavirus.
While travel stocks were punished, companies that focus on ‘stay at home’ products also saw shares rise, as investors anticipated that consumers will be more likely to avoid crowds and remain indoors.
Netflix was up 1.6 percent, with investors betting that binge-watching at home could become more appealing during an outbreak.
Teleconferencing company Teladoc, which offers remote medical consultations with doctors over the internet, surged 19.8 percent.
Story 2: Chinese Communist Cough Containment Crisis Crashes Capitalism or Communism? — Are You Scared Yet — Not One Bit — Buy On The Correction and Hold On — Government Not The Answer — Government Is The Problem — Videos —
Outbreak starts to look more like worldwide economic crisis
By ADAM GELLER, PAUL WISEMAN and CHRISTOPHER RUGABER11 minutes ago
The coronavirus outbreak began to look more like a worldwide economic crisis Friday as anxiety about the infection emptied shops and amusement parks, canceled events, cut trade and travel and dragged already slumping financial markets even lower.
More employers told their workers to stay home, and officials locked down neighborhoods and closed schools. The wide-ranging efforts to halt the spread of the illness threatened jobs, paychecks and profits.
“This is a case where in economic terms the cure is almost worse than the disease,″ said Jacob Kirkegaard, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “When you quarantine cities … you lose economic activity that you’re not going to get back.′
The list of countries touched by the illness climbed to nearly 60 as Mexico, Belarus, Lithuania, New Zealand, Nigeria, Azerbaijan, Iceland and the Netherlands reported their first cases. More than 83,000 people worldwide have contracted the illness, with deaths topping 2,800.
China, where the outbreak began in December, has seen a slowdown in new infections and on Saturday morning reported 427 new cases over the past 24 hours along with 47 additional deaths. The city at the epicenter of the outbreak, Wuhan, accounted for the bulk of both.
New cases in mainland China have held steady at under 500 for past four days, with almost all of them in Wuhan and its surrounding Hubei province.
With the number of discharged patients now greatly exceeding those of new arrivals, Wuhan now has more than 5,000 spare beds in 16 temporary treatment centers, Ma Xiaowei, director of the National Health Commission, told a news conference in Wuhan on Friday.
South Korea, the second hardest hit country, on Saturday morning reported 571 new cases, the highest daily jump since confirming its first patient in late January. Emerging clusters in Italy and in Iran, which has had 34 deaths and 388 cases, have led to infections of people in other countries. France and Germany were also seeing increases, with dozens of infections.
The head of the World Health Organization on Friday announced that the risk of the virus spreading worldwide was “very high,” citing the “continued increase in the number of cases and the number of affected countries.”
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged all governments to “do everything possible to contain the disease.”
“We know containment is possible, but the window of opportunity is narrowing,” the U.N. chief told reporters in New York.
The economic ripples have already reached around the globe.
Stock markets around the world plunged again Friday. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones index took yet another hit, closing down nearly 360 points. The index has dropped more than 14% from a recent high, making this the market’s worst week since 2008, during the global financial crisis.
The effects were just as evident in the hush that settled in over places where throngs of people ordinarily work and play and buy and sell.
“There’s almost no one coming here,” said Kim Yun-ok, who sells doughnuts and seaweed rolls at Seoul’s Gwangjang Market, where crowds were thin as South Korea counted 571 new cases — more than in China, where the virus emerged. “I am just hoping that the outbreak will come under control soon.”
In Asia, Tokyo Disneyland and Universal Studios Japan announced they would close, and events that were expected to attract tens of thousands of people were called off, including a concert series by the K-pop group BTS. The state-run Export-Import Bank of Korea shut down its headquarters in Seoul after a worker tested positive for the virus, telling 800 others to work from home. Japanese officials prepared to shutter all schools until early April.
In Italy — which has reported 888 cases, the most of any country outside of Asia — hotel bookings are falling, and Premier Giuseppe Conte raised the specter of recession. Shopkeepers like Flavio Gastaldi, who has sold souvenirs in Venice for three decades, wondered if they could survive the blow.
“We will return the keys to the landlords soon,” he said.
The Swiss government banned events with more than 1,000 people, while at the Cologne Cathedral in Germany, basins of holy water were emptied for fear of spreading germs.
In a report published Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine, Chinese health officials said the death rate from the illness known as COVID-19 was 1.4%, based on 1,099 patients at more than 500 hospitals throughout China.
Assuming there are many more cases with no or very mild symptoms, the rate “may be considerably less than 1%,” U.S. health officials wrote in an editorial in the journal. That would make the virus more like a severe seasonal flu than a disease similar to its genetic cousins SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome, or MERS, Middle East respiratory syndrome.
Given the ease of spread, however, the virus could gain footholds around the world and many could die.
“It’s not cholera or the black plague,” said Simone Venturini, the city councilor for economic development in Venice, Italy, where tourism already hurt by historic flooding last year has sunk with news of virus cases. “The damage that worries us even more is the damage to the economy.”
Europe’s economy is already teetering on the edge of recession. A measure of business sentiment in Germany fell sharply last week, suggesting that some companies could postpone investment and expansion plans. China is a huge export market for German manufacturers.
In the U.S., online retail giant Amazon said Friday that it has asked all of its 800,000 employees to postpone any non-essential travel, both within the country and internationally.
The chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, said that the U.S. economy remains strong and that policymakers would “use our tools” to support it if necessary.
Larry Kudlow, the top economic advisor to President Donald Trump, told reporters that the selloff in financial markets may be an overreaction to an epidemic with uncertain long-term effects.
“We don’t see any evidence of major supply chain disruptions. I’m not trying to say nothing’s happening. I think there will be impacts, but to be honest with you, at the moment, I don’t see much,” Kudlow said.
The pain was already taking hold in places like Bangkok, where merchants at the Platinum Fashion Mall staged a flash mob, shouting “Reduce the rent!” and holding signs that said “Tourists don’t come, shops suffer.”
Tourist arrivals in Thailand are down 50% compared with a year ago, according Capital Economics, a consulting firm.
Kanya Yontararak, a clothing store owner, said her sales have sunk as low as 1,000 baht ($32) some days, making it a struggle to pay back a loan for her lease. The situation is more severe than the floods and political crises her store has braved in the past.
“Coronavirus is the worst situation they have ever seen,” she said of her fellow merchants.
Economists have forecast global growth will slip to 2.4% this year, the slowest since the Great Recession in 2009, and down from earlier expectations closer to 3%. For the United States, estimates are falling to as low as 1.7% growth this year, down from 2.3% in 2019.
But if COVID-19 becomes a global pandemic, economists expect the impact could be much worse, with the U.S. and other global economies falling into recession.
“If we start to see more cases in the United States, if we start to see people not traveling domestically, if we start to see people stay home from work and from stores, then I think the hit is going to get substantially worse,” said Gus Faucher, an economist at PNC Financial.
After the WHO raised its alert level, the agency’s Emergencies Program Director Michael Ryan called the situation “a reality check for every government on the planet.” Friday. “Wake up, get ready. This virus may be on its way.”
Expansionary monetary policy constitutes a transfer of purchasing power away from those who hold old money to whoever gets new money. This is known as the Cantillon Effect, after 18th Century economist Richard Cantillon who first proposed it. In the immediate term, as more dollars are created, each one translates to a smaller slice of all goods and services produced.
How we measure this phenomenon and its size depends how we define money. This is illustrated below.
What is clear is that the dramatic expansion of the monetary base that we saw after 2008 is merely catching up with the more gradual growth of debt that took place in the 90s and 00s.
While it is my hunch that overblown credit bubbles are better liquidated than reflated (not least because the reflation of a corrupt and dysfunctional financial sector entails huge moral hazard), it is true the Fed’s efforts to inflate the money supply have so far prevented a default cascade. We should expect that such initiatives will continue, not least because Bernanke has a deep intellectual investment in reflationism.
This focus on reflationary money supply expansion was fully expected by those familiar with Ben Bernanke’s academic record. What I find more surprising, though, is the Fed’s focus on banks and financial institutions rather than the wider population.
It’s not just the banks that are struggling to deleverage. The overwhelming majority of nongovernment debt is held by households and nonfinancials:
The nonfinancial sectors need debt relief much, much more than the financial sector. Yet the Fed shoots off new money solely into the financial system, to Wall Street and the TBTF banks. It is the financial institutions that have gained the most from these transfers of purchasing power, building up huge hoards of excess reserves:
There is a way to counteract the Cantillon Effect, and expand the money supply without transferring purchasing power to the financial sector (or any other sector). This is to directly distribute the new money uniformly to individuals for the purpose of debt relief; those with debt have to use the new money to pay it down (thus reducing the debt load), those without debt are free to invest it or spend it as they like.
While we delever, investment by American corporations will be timid, and economic growth will be faltering at best. The stimulus imparted by government deficits will attenuate the downturn — and the much larger scale of government spending now than in the 1930s explains why this far greater deleveraging process has not led to as severe a Depression — but deficits alone will not be enough. If America is to avoid two “lost decades”, the level of private debt has to be reduced by deliberate cancellation, as well as by the slow processes of deleveraging and bankruptcy.
In ancient times, this was done by a Jubilee, but the securitization of debt since the 1980s has complicated this enormously. Whereas only the moneylenders lost under an ancient Jubilee, debt cancellation today would bankrupt many pension funds, municipalities and the like who purchased securitized debt instruments from banks. I have therefore proposed that a “Modern Debt Jubilee” should take the form of “Quantitative Easing for the Public”: monetary injections by the Federal Reserve not into the reserve accounts of banks, but into the bank accounts of the public — but on condition that its first function must be to pay debts down. This would reduce debt directly, but not advantage debtors over savers, and would reduce the profitability of the financial sector while not affecting its solvency.
Without a policy of this nature, America is destined to spend up to two decades learning the truth of Michael Hudson’s simple aphorism that “Debts that can’t be repaid, won’t be repaid”.
Richard Cantillon (French: [kɑ̃tijɔ̃]; 1680s – May 1734) was an Irish-French economist and author of Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en Général (Essay on the Nature of Trade in General), a book considered by William Stanley Jevons to be the “cradle of political economy“.[4] Although little information exists on Cantillon’s life, it is known that he became a successful banker and merchant at an early age. His success was largely derived from the political and business connections he made through his family and through an early employer, James Brydges. During the late 1710s and early 1720s, Cantillon speculated in, and later helped fund, John Law‘s Mississippi Company, from which he acquired great wealth. However, his success came at a cost to his debtors, who pursued him with lawsuits, criminal charges, and even murder plots until his death in 1734.
Essai remains Cantillon’s only surviving contribution to economics. It was written around 1730 and circulated widely in manuscript form, but was not published until 1755. His work was translated into Spanish by Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, probably in the late 1770s, and considered essential reading for political economy. Despite having much influence on the early development of the physiocrat and classical schools of thought, Essai was largely forgotten until its rediscovery by Jevons in the late 19th century.[5] Cantillon was influenced by his experiences as a banker, and especially by the speculative bubble of John Law’s Mississippi Company. He was also heavily influenced by prior economists, especially William Petty.
Essai is considered the first complete treatise on economics, with numerous contributions to the science. These contributions include: his cause and effect methodology, monetary theories, his conception of the entrepreneur as a risk-bearer, and the development of spatial economics. Cantillon’s Essai had significant influence on the early development of political economy, including the works of Adam Smith, Anne Turgot, Jean-Baptiste Say, Frédéric Bastiat and François Quesnay.[6]
Biography
While details regarding Richard Cantillon’s life are scarce,[7] it is thought that he was born sometime during the 1680s in County Kerry, Ireland.[1][6] He was son to land-owner Richard Cantillon of Ballyheigue.[8] Sometime in the middle of the first decade of the 18th century Cantillon moved to France, where he attained French citizenship.[9] By 1711, Cantillon found himself in the employment of British Paymaster GeneralJames Brydges, in Spain, where he organised payments to British prisoners of war during the War of Spanish Succession.[10] Cantillon remained in Spain until 1714, cultivating a number of business and political connections, before returning to Paris.[11] Cantillon then became involved in the banking industry working for a cousin, who at that time was lead-correspondent of the Parisian branch of a family bank.[12] Two years later, thanks in large part to financial backing by James Brydges, Cantillon bought his cousin out and attained ownership of the bank.[13] Given the financial and political connections Cantillon was able to attain both through his family[14] and through James Brydges, Cantillon proved a fairly successful banker, specialising in money transfers between Paris and London.[15]
At this time, Cantillon became involved with British mercantilistJohn Law through the Mississippi Company.[16] Based on the monetary theory proposed by William Potter in his 1650 tract The Key of Wealth,[17] John Law posited that increases in the money supply would lead to the employment of unused land and labour, leading to higher productivity.[18] In 1716, the French government granted him both permission to found the Banque Générale and virtual monopoly over the right to develop French territories in North America, named the Mississippi Company. In return, Law promised the French government to finance its debt at low rates of interest.[19] Law began a financial speculative bubble by selling shares of the Mississippi Company, using the Banque Générale’s virtual monopoly on the issue of bank notes to finance his investors.[20]
Richard Cantillon amassed a great fortune from his speculation, buying Mississippi Company shares early and selling them at inflated prices.[21] Cantillon’s financial success and growing influence caused friction in his relationship with John Law, and sometime thereafter Law threatened to imprison Cantillon if the latter did not leave France within twenty-four hours.[22] Cantillon replied: “I shall not go away; but I will make your system succeed.”[22] To that end, in 1718 Law, Cantillon, and wealthy speculator Joseph Gage formed a private company centred on financing further speculation in North American real estate.[23]
In 1719, Cantillon left Paris for Amsterdam, returning briefly in early 1720. Lending in Paris, Cantillon had outlying debt repaid to him in London and Amsterdam.[24] With the collapse of the “Mississippi bubble”, Cantillon was able to collect on debt accruing high rates of interest.[25] Most of his debtors had suffered financial damage in the bubble collapse and blamed Cantillon—until his death, Cantillon was involved in countless lawsuits filed by his debtors, leading to a number of murder plots and criminal accusations.[26]
On 16 February 1722, Cantillon married Mary Mahony, daughter of Count Daniel O’Mahony [fr]—a wealthy merchant and former Irish general—spending much of the remainder of the 1720s travelling throughout Europe with his wife.[27] Cantillon and Mary had two children, a son who died at an early age and a daughter, Henrietta,[28] wife successively of the 3rd Earl of Stafford and the 1st Earl of Farnham. Although he frequently returned to Paris between 1729 and 1733, his permanent residence was in London.[29] In May 1734, his residence in London was burned to the ground, and it is generally assumed that Cantillon died in the fire.[2] While the fire’s causes are unclear, the most widely accepted theory is that Cantillon was murdered.[30] One of Cantillon’s biographers, Antoine Murphy, has advanced the alternative theory that Cantillon staged his own death to escape the harassment of his debtors, appearing in Suriname under the name Chevalier de Louvigny.[31]
Contributions to economics
Although there is evidence that Richard Cantillon wrote a wide variety of manuscripts, only his Essai Sur La Nature Du Commerce En Général (abbreviated Essai) survives.[6][32] Written in 1730,[33] it was published in French in 1755,[34] and was translated into English by Henry Higgs in 1932.[35] Evidence suggests that Essaihad tremendous influence on the early development of economic science. However, Cantillon’s treatise was largely neglected during the 19th century.[5] In the late 19th century and it was “rediscovered” by William Stanley Jevons, who considered it the “cradle of political economy”.[4] Since then, Cantillon’s Essai has received growing attention. Essai is considered the first complete treatise on economic theory,[36] and Cantillon has been called the “father of enterprise economics”.[6][37]
William Petty is considered to be one of Richard Cantillon’s greatest influences.[38]
One of the greatest influences on Cantillon’s writing was English economist William Petty and his 1662 tract Treatise on Taxes.[39] Although Petty provided much of the groundwork for Cantillon’s Essai,[38] Anthony Brewer argues that Petty’s influence has been overstated.[40] Apart from Petty, other possible influences on Cantillon include John Locke,[41]Cicero, Livy, Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Younger, Charles Davenant, Edmond Halley, Isaac Newton, Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, and Jean Boisard.[3] Cantillon’s involvement in John Law’s speculative bubble proved invaluable and likely heavily influenced his insight on the relationship between increases in the supply of money, price, and production.[42]
Methodology
Cantillon’s Essai is written using a distinctive causal methodology, separating Cantillon from his mercantilist predecessors.[6][43]Essai is peppered with the word “natural”, which in the case of Cantillon’s treatise is meant to imply a cause and effect relationship between economic actions and phenomena.[44] Economist Murray Rothbard credits Cantillon with being one of the first theorists to isolate economic phenomena with simple models, where otherwise uncontrollable variables can be fixed.[45] Cantillon made frequent use of the concept of ceteris paribus throughout Essai in an attempt to neutralise independent variables.[46] Furthermore, he is credited with employing a methodology similar to Carl Menger‘s methodological individualism,[47] by deducing complex phenomena from simple observations.[48]
A cause and effect methodology led to a relatively value-free approach to economic science, in which Cantillon was uninterested in the merit of any particular economic action or phenomenon, focusing rather on the explanation of relationships.[49] This led Cantillon to separate economic science from politics and ethics to a greater degree than previous mercantilist writers.[45] This has led to disputes on whether Cantillon can justly be considered a mercantilist or one of the first anti-mercantilists,[50] given that Cantillon often cited government-manipulated trade surpluses and specie accumulation as positive economic stimuli.[51] Others argue that in instances where Cantillon is thought to have supported certain mercantilist policies, he actually provided a more neutral analysis by explicitly stating possible limitations of mercantilist policies.[52]
Monetary theory
Differences between prior mercantilists and Cantillon arise early in Essai, regarding the origins of wealth and price formation on the market.[53] Cantillon distinguishes between wealth and money, considering wealth in itself “nothing but the food, conveniences, and pleasures of life.”[54] While Cantillon advocated an “intrinsic” theory of value, based on the input of land and labour (cost of production),[55] he is considered to have touched upon a subjective theory of value.[56] Cantillon held that market prices are not immediately decided by intrinsic value, but are derived from supply and demand.[57] He considered market prices to be derived by comparing supply, the quantity of a particular good in a particular market, to demand, the quantity of money brought to be exchanged.[58] Believing market prices to tend towards the intrinsic value of a good, Cantillon may have also originated the uniformity-of-profit principle—changes in the market price of a good may lead to changes in supply, reflecting a rise or fall in profit.[59]
Rendition of Cantillon’s primitive circular flow model[60]
In Essai, Cantillon provided an advanced version of John Locke’s quantity theory of money, focusing on relative inflation and the velocity of money.[61] Cantillon suggested that inflation occurs gradually and that the new supply of money has a localised effect on inflation, effectively originating the concept of non-neutral money.[62] Furthermore, he posited that the original recipients of new money enjoy higher standards of living at the expense of later recipients.[63] The concept of relative inflation, or a disproportionate rise in prices among different goods in an economy, is now known as the Cantillon Effect.[64] Cantillon also considered changes in the velocity of money (quantity of exchanges made within a specific amount of time) influential on prices, although not to the same degree as changes in the quantity of money.[65] While he believed that the money supply consisted only of specie, he conceded that increases in money substitutes—or bank notes—could affect prices by effectively increasing the velocity of circulating of deposited specie.[66] Apart from distinguishing money from money substitute, he also distinguished between bank notes offered as receipts for specie deposits and bank notes circulating beyond the quantity of specie—or fiduciary media—suggesting that the volume of fiduciary media is strictly limited by people’s confidence in its redeemability.[67] He considered fiduciary media a useful tool to abate the downward pressure that hoarding of specie has on the velocity of money.[68]
Addressing the mercantilist belief that monetary intervention could cause a perpetually favourable balance of trade, Cantillon developed a specie-flow mechanism foreshadowing future international monetary equilibrium theories.[69] He suggested that in countries with a high quantity of money in circulation, prices will increase and therefore become less competitive in relation to countries where there is a relative scarcity of money.[70] Thus, Cantillon also held that increases in the supply of money, regardless of the source, cause increases in the price level and therefore reduce the competitiveness of a particular nation’s industry in relation to a nation with lower prices.[71] However, Cantillon did not believe that international markets tended toward equilibrium, and instead suggested that government hoard specie to avoid rising prices and falling competitiveness.[69] Furthermore, he suggested that a favourable balance of trade can be maintained by offering a better product and retaining qualitative competitiveness.[72] Cantillon’s preference towards a favourable balance of trade possibly stemmed from the mercantilist belief in exchange being a zero-sum game, in which one party gains at the expense of another.[73]
A relatively advanced theory of interest is also presented.[74] Cantillon believed that interest originates from the need of borrowers for capital and from the fear of loss of the lenders, meaning that borrowers have to recompense lenders for the risk of the possible insolvency of the debtor.[75] In turn, interest is paid out of earned profits originating from the return on invested capital.[76] While previously it was believed that the rate of interest varied inversely to the quantity of money, Cantillon posited that the rate of interest was determined by the supply and demand on the loanable funds market[77]—an insight usually attributed to Scottish philosopher David Hume.[78] As such, while saved money impacts the rate of interest, new money that is instead used for consumption does not; Cantillon’s theory of interest is therefore similar to John Maynard Keynes‘s liquidity preference theory.[79]
Traditionally, it is Jean-Baptiste Say who is credited for coining the word and advancing the concept of the entrepreneur, but in fact it was Cantillon who first introduced the term in Essai.[6][80] Cantillon divided society into two principal classes—fixed income wage-earners and non-fixed income earners.[81] Entrepreneurs, according to Cantillon, are non-fixed income earners who pay known costs of production but earn uncertain incomes,[82] due to the speculative nature of pandering to an unknown demand for their product.[83] Cantillon, while providing the foundations, did not develop a dedicated theory of uncertainty—the topic was not revisited until the 20th century, by Ludwig von Mises, Frank Knight, and John Maynard Keynes, among others.[84] Furthermore, unlike later theories of entrepreneurship which saw the entrepreneur as a disruptive force, Cantillon anticipated the belief that the entrepreneur brought equilibrium to a market by correctly predicting consumer preferences.[85]
Spatial economics deal with distance and area, and how these may affect a market through transportation costs and geographical limitations. The development of spatial economics is usually ascribed to German economist Johann Heinrich von Thünen; however, Cantillon addressed spatial economics nearly a century earlier.[86] Cantillon integrated his advancements in spatial economic theory into his microeconomic analysis of the market, describing how transportation costs influence the location of factories, markets and population centres—that is, individuals strive to lower transportation costs.[87] Conclusions on spatial economics were derived from three premises: cost of raw materials of equal quality will always be higher near the capital city, due to transportation costs; transportation costs vary on transportation type (for example, water transportation was considered cheaper than land-based transportation); and larger goods that are more difficult to transport will always be cheaper closer to their area of production.[88] For example, Cantillon believed markets were designed as they were to decrease costs to both merchants and villagers in terms of time and transportation.[89] Similarly, Cantillon posited that the locations of cities were the result in large part of the wealth of inhabiting property owners and their ability to afford transportation costs—wealthier property owners tended to live farther from their property, because they could afford the transportation costs.[90] In Essai, spatial economic theory was used to derive why markets occupied the geographical area they did and why costs varied across different markets.[91]
Cover of the Ludwig von Mises Institute’s edition of Cantillon’s Essai
Apart from originating theories on the entrepreneur and spatial economics, Cantillon also provided a dedicated theory on population growth. Unlike William Petty, who believed there always existed a considerable amount of unused land and economic opportunity to support economic growth, Cantillon theorised that population grows only as long as there are economic opportunities present.[92] Specifically, Cantillon cited three determining variables for population size: natural resources, technology, and culture.[93] Therefore, populations grow only as far as the three aforementioned variables allowed.[94] Furthermore, Cantillon’s population theory was more modern than that of Malthus in the sense that Cantillon recognised a much broader category of factors which affect population growth, including the tendency for population growth to fall to zero as a society becomes more industrialised.[95]
Influence
While Essai was not published until 1755 as a result of heavy censorship in France, it did widely circulate in the form of an unpublished manuscript between its completion and its publication.[96] It notably influenced many direct forerunners of the classical school of thought, including Turgot and other physiocrats.[97] Cantillon was a major influence on physiocrat François Quesnay, who may have learned of Cantillon’s work through Marquis of Mirabeau.[98] While it is evident that Essai influenced Quesnay, to what degree remains controversial. There is evidence that Quesnay did not fully understand, or was not completely aware of, Cantillon’s theories.[99] Many of Quesnay’s economic beliefs were elucidated previously in Essai,[100] but Quesnay did reject a number of Cantillon’s premises, including the scarcity of land and Cantillon’s population theory.[101] Also, Quesnay recognised the scarcity of capital and capital accumulation as a prerequisite for investment.[99] Nevertheless, Cantillon was considered the “father of physiocracy” by Henry Higgs, due to his influence on Quesnay.[102] It is also possible that Cantillon influenced Scottish economist James Steuart, both directly and indirectly.[103]
Cantillon is one of the few economists cited by Adam Smith, who directly borrows Cantillon’s subsistence theory of wages.[6][104] Large sections of Smith’s economic theory were possibly directly influenced by Cantillon, although in many respects Adam Smith advanced well beyond the scope of Cantillon.[105] Some economic historians have argued that Adam Smith provided little of value from his own intellect, notably Schumpeter[6][106] and Rothbard.[107] In any case, through his influence on Adam Smith and the physiocrats, Cantillon was quite possibly the pre-classical economist who contributed most to the ideas of the classical school.[108] Illustrative of this was Cantillon’s influence on Jean-Baptiste Say, which is noticeable in the methodology employed in the latter’s Treatise on Political Economy.[6][109]
Story 3: Coronavirus or COVID-19 Exposed America’s Heavy Reliance On China For Medicines — Trump Administration May Use Defense Production Act To Manufacture Protective Gear — What About Replacing Medicine, Drug and Ingredients Imported From Communist China By Establishing American Producers in United States As In The Past? — Videos
New information on finding a coronavirus treatment
HOW DOES COVID-19 AFFECT THE BODY?
Coronaviruses (CoV) are a family of viruses that cause sicknesses like the common cold, as well as more severe diseases, such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. A novel coronavirus (nCoV) is a new strain – one that hasn’t previously been recognized in humans. Coronaviruses cause diseases in mammals and birds. A zoonotic virus is one that is transmitted between animals and people. When a virus circulating in animal populations infects people, this is termed a “spillover event”.
How does CoVID-19 affect the body? The virus is fitted with protein spikes sticking out of the envelope that forms the surface and houses a core of genetic material. Any virus that enters your body looks for cells with compatible receptors – ones that allow it to invade the cell. Once they find the right cell, they enter and use the cell’s replication machinery to create copies of themselves. It is likely that COVID-19 uses the same receptor as SARS – found in both lungs and small intestines. It is thought that CoVID-19 shares many similarities with SARS, which has three phases of attack: viral replication, hyper-reactivity of the immune system, and finally pulmonary destruction.
Early on in infection, the coronavirus invades two types of cells in the lungs – mucus and cilia cells.
Mucus keeps your lungs from drying out and protects them from pathogens. Cilia beat the mucus towards the exterior of your body, clearing debris – including viruses! – out of your lungs. Cilia cells were the preferred hosts of SARS-CoV, and are likely the preferred hosts of the new coronavirus. When these cells die, they slough off into your airways, filling them with debris and fluid. Symptoms include a fever, cough, and breathing difficulties.
Many of those infected get pneumonia in both their lungs. Enter the immune system. Immune cells recognize the virus and flood into the lungs. The lung tissue becomes inflamed. During normal immune function, the inflammatory process is highly regulated and is confined to infected areas.
However, sometimes the immune system overreacts, and this results in damage to healthy tissue. More cells die and slough off into the lungs, further clogging them and worsening the pneumonia. As damage to the lungs increases, stage three begins, potentially resulting in respiratory failure. Patients that reach this stage of infection can incur permanent lung damage or even die. We see the same lesions in the lungs of those infected by the novel coronavirus as those with SARS. SARS creates holes in the lungs, so they look honeycomb-like. This is probably due to the aforementioned over-reactive immune response, which affects tissue both infected and healthy and creates scars that stiffen the lungs. As such, some patients may require ventilators to aid breathing.
The inflammation also results in more permeable alveoli. This is the location of the thin interface of gas exchange, where your lungs replace carbon dioxide in your blood with fresh oxygen you just inhaled. Increased permeability causes fluid to leak into the lungs. This decreases the lungs’ ability to oxygenate blood, and in severe cases, floods them so that you become unable to breathe. Sometimes, this can be fatal. The immune system’s over-reaction can also cause another kind of damage.
Proteins called cytokines are the immune system’s alarm system, recruiting immune cells to the infection site. Over-production of cytokines can result in a cytokine storm, where there is large-scale inflammation in the body. Blood vessels become more permeable and fluid seeps out. This makes it difficult for blood and oxygen to reach the rest of the body and can result in multi-organ failure. This has happened in the most severe cases of CoVid-19.
Although there are no specific treatments for coronaviruses, symptoms can be treated through supportive care. Also, vaccines are currently in development. What can you do to protect yourself from CoVid-19? Basic protocol comes down to regular hand washing, avoiding close contact with anyone coughing or sneezing, avoiding unnecessary contact with animals, washing hands after contact with animals, thoroughly cooking meat and eggs prior to consumption, and covering your mouth and nose while coughing or sneezing. Respiratory viruses are typically transmitted via droplets in sneezes or coughs of those infected, so preventing their travel stops the spread of disease.
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Coronavirus Exposed America’s Heavy Reliance On China For Medicines
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UPDATED February 29, 2020
Coronavirus outbreak: President Donald Trump confirms 1st death in U.S., talks virus response
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Supply Chain Update
For Immediate Release:Statement From:
Commissioner of Food and Drugs – Food and Drug Administration
Stephen M. Hahn M.D.
As I have previously communicated, the FDA has been closely monitoring the supply chain with the expectation that the COVID-19 outbreak would likely impact the medical product supply chain, including potential disruptions to supply or shortages of critical medical products in the U.S.
A manufacturer has alerted us to a shortage of a human drug that was recently added to the drug shortages list. The manufacturer just notified us that this shortage is related to a site affected by coronavirus. The shortage is due to an issue with manufacturing of an active pharmaceutical ingredient used in the drug. It is important to note that there are other alternatives that can be used by patients. We are working with the manufacturer as well as other manufacturers to mitigate the shortage. We will do everything possible to mitigate the shortage.
Additional Information on Human Drugs
Since January 24, the FDA has been in touch with more than 180 manufacturers of human drugs, not only to remind them of applicable legal requirements for notifying the FDA of any anticipated supply disruptions, but also asking them to evaluate their entire supply chain, including active pharmaceutical ingredients (the main ingredient in the drug and part that produces the intended effects, e.g., acetaminophen) and other components manufactured in China.
Also, as part of our efforts, the FDA has identified about 20 other drugs, which solely source their active pharmaceutical ingredients or finished drug products from China. We have been in contact with those firms to assess whether they face any drug shortage risks due to the outbreak. None of these firms have reported any shortage to date. Also, these drugs are considered non-critical drugs.
We will remain in contact with manufacturers so that we can continue to assist them with any potential issues in the fastest way.
Medical Devices
We are aware of 63 manufacturers which represent 72 facilities in China that produce essential medical devices; we have contacted all of them. Essential devices are those that may be prone to potential shortage if there is a supply disruption. We are aware that several of these facilities in China are adversely affected by COVID-19, citing workforce challenges, including the necessary quarantine of workers. While the FDA continues to assess whether manufacturing disruptions will affect overall market availability of these products, there are currently no reported shortages for these types of medical devices within the U.S. market.
Regarding personal protective equipment—surgical gowns, gloves, masks, respirator protective devices, or other medical equipment designed to protect the wearer from injury or the spread of infection or illness—the FDA has heard reports of increased market demand and supply challenges for some of these products. However, the FDA is currently not aware of specific widespread shortages of medical devices, but we are aware of reports from CDC and other U.S. partners of increased ordering of a range of human medical products through distributors as some healthcare facilities in the U.S. are preparing for potential needs if the outbreak becomes severe.
It is important to note that no law exists requiring medical device manufacturers to notify the FDA when they become aware of a circumstance, including discontinuation of a product, that could lead to a potential shortage, and manufacturers are not required to respond when the FDA requests information about potential supply chain disruption. As with prior emergencies, the FDA has taken proactive steps to establish and remain in contact with medical device manufacturers and others in the supply chain, including hospitals and group purchasing organizations. The agency also encourages manufacturers and healthcare facilities to report any supply disruptions to the device shortages mailbox, deviceshortages@fda.hhs.gov. This mailbox is closely monitored and has proven to be a valuable surveillance resource to augment FDA efforts to detect and mitigate potential supply chain disruption.
Biologics and Blood Supply
The FDA is not aware of any cellular or gene therapies that are made in China for the U.S. market. There are no shortages of biologics to report at this time.
The potential for transmission of COVID-19 by blood and blood components is unknown at this time; however, respiratory viruses, in general, are not known to be transmitted by blood transfusion. Further, there have been no reported cases of transfusion-transmitted COVID-19.
The FDA has made information available to blood establishments and to establishments that manufacture human cells, tissues, or cellular or tissue-based products that may wish to consider additional donor screening measures in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Food
We are not aware of any reports at this time of human illnesses that suggest COVID-19 can be transmitted by food or food packaging. However, it is always important to follow good hygiene practices (i.e., wash hands and surfaces often, separate raw meat from other foods, cook to the right temperature, and refrigerate foods promptly) when handling or preparing foods.
Animal Drugs
There are 32 animal drug firms that make finished drugs or source active pharmaceutical ingredients in China for the U.S. The FDA has contacted all 32 firms and no shortages have been reported at this time. However, six of those firms have indicated that they are seeing disruptions in the supply chain that soon could lead to shortages. The FDA is working with these firms to help identify interventions to mitigate potential shortages.
Additional Resources
The FDA is using all our existing authorities to address COVID-19, and we welcome the opportunity to work with Congress to further strengthen our response capabilities and emergency preparedness. There are four specific proposals included in the President’s budget that would better equip the FDA to prevent or mitigate medical product shortages.
Lengthen Expiration Dates to Mitigate Critical Human Drug Shortages: Shortages of certain critical drugs can be exacerbated when drugs must be discarded because they exceed a labeled shelf-life due to unnecessarily short expiration dates. By expanding the FDA’s authority to require, when likely to help prevent or mitigate a shortage, that an applicant evaluate, submit studies to the FDA, and label a product with the longest possible expiration date that the FDA agrees is scientifically justified, there could be more supply available to alleviate the drug shortage or the severity of a shortage.
Improve Critical Infrastructure by Requiring Risk Management Plans: Enabling the FDA to require application holders of certain drugs to conduct periodic risk assessments to identify the vulnerabilities in their manufacturing supply chain (inclusive of contract manufacturing facilities), and develop plans to mitigate the risks associated with the identified vulnerabilities would enable the FDA to strengthen the supply chain by integrating contingencies for emergency situations. Currently, many medical product manufacturers lack plans to assess and address vulnerabilities in their manufacturing supply chain, putting them, and American patients, at risk for drug supply disruptions following disasters (e.g., hurricanes) or in other circumstances.
Improve Critical Infrastructure through Improved Data Sharing and Require More Accurate Supply Chain Information: Empowering the FDA to require information to assess critical infrastructure, as well as manufacturing quality and capacity, would facilitate more accurate and timely supply chain monitoring and improve our ability to recognize shortage signals.
Establish Reporting Requirements for Device Manufacturers: The FDA does not have the same authorities for medical device shortages as it does for drugs and biological products. For instance, medical device manufacturers are not required to notify the FDA when they become aware of a circumstance that could lead to a device shortage or meaningful disruption in the supply of that device in the U.S., nor are they required to respond to inquiries from the FDA about the availability of devices. Enabling the FDA to have timely and accurate information about likely or confirmed national shortages of essential devices would allow the agency to take steps to promote the continued availability of devices of public health importance. Among other things, the FDA proposes to require that firms notify the agency of an anticipated meaningful interruption in the supply of an essential device; require all manufacturers of devices determined to be essential to periodically provide the FDA with information about the manufacturing capacity of the essential devices they manufacture; and authorize the temporary importation of devices where the benefits of the device in mitigating a shortage outweigh the risks presented by the device that could otherwise result in denial of importation of the device into the U.S.
Overall, this remains an evolving and very dynamic issue. We are committed to continuing to communicate with the public as we have further updates.
We also continue to aggressively monitor the market for any firms marketing products with fraudulent COVID-19 diagnosis, prevention or treatment claims. The FDA can and will use every authority at our disposal to protect consumers from bad actors who take advantage of a crisis to deceive the public, including pursuing warning letters, seizures or injunctions against products on the market that are not in compliance with the law, or against firms or individuals who violate the law.
We know the public may have questions or concerns for the FDA as a result of this outbreak, including you and your family’s risk of exposure, or whether your critical medical products are safe and will continue to be available in the future. The FDA is working around the clock to monitor and mitigate emerging coronavirus issues through collaborative efforts with federal partners, international regulators and medical product developers and manufacturers to help advance response efforts to combat the COVID-19 outbreak.
The FDA, an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, protects the public health by assuring the safety, effectiveness, and security of human and veterinary drugs, vaccines and other biological products for human use, and medical devices. The agency also is responsible for the safety and security of our nation’s food supply, cosmetics, dietary supplements, products that give off electronic radiation, and for regulating tobacco products.
Story 1: Real Abuse of Power — 17 Major Errors, Mistakes and Omissions — Mislead The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court — Clinton Obama Democrat Criminal Conspiracy Revealed — Big Lie Media Lied to American People and Still Lying — Videos
FISA ISSUES: IG Michael Horowitz Outlines BIAS Against President Trump
Lindsey Graham rips FBI over Russia probe: full video
FBI EXPOSED: Lindsey Graham DETAILS Massive FBI Bias Against President Trump
Full Interview: Barr Criticizes Inspector General Report On The Russia Investigation | NBC News
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IG report hearing part 1: Lindsey Graham’s opening statement
IG report hearing part 2: Dianne Feinstein’s opening statement
IG report hearing part 3: Michael Horowitz’s opening statement
IG report hearing part 4: Lindsey Graham questions Michael Horowitz
IG report hearing part 5: Dianne Feinstein, Patrick Leahy question Michael Horowitz
IG report hearing part 6: Chuck Grassley, Patrick Leahy question Michael Horowitz
IG report hearing part 7: Senators question Michael Horowitz
IG report hearing part 8: Senators continue to question Michael Horowitz
PART 1: Inspector General FISA Investigation President Trump – Senate Hearing
PART 2: Inspector General FISA Investigation President Trump – Senate Hearing
Justice Department Inspector General Horowitz Testifies to Senate | NowThis
3 of the spies Obama used to set up Trump!
Obama’s CIA chief and FBI director used spies (Joseph Mifsud, Alexander Downer, Stefan Halper) in an attempt to infiltrate Trump’s campaign through Papadopoulos and others to help set up the Russian collusion probe. Why wasn’t any of this mentioned in the Mueller Report?
Spy vs. Spy: Operation Boomerang has begun! 🕵 Pt 2 of 2 (5/3/2019)
Key source in Russia probe has Clinton connection
Australian diplomat that prompted Russia probe linked to Clintons
Mark Humphries reveals the Alexander Downer plot to bring down Donald Trump | 7.30
Alexander Downer has put Australia in a diabolical position’
IG’s Report Reveals 4 Spurious Allegations as Basis for FBI Spying on Trump Campaign Aide
Senior Legal Fellow & Manager, National Security Law Program
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Horowitz’s report exposes 17 flagrant errors, omissions, and misstatements in the four FISA applications related to Page, any one of which is inexcusable.
The fact that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was apparently misused to target a presidential campaign is shocking.
It seems reasonable to conclude that this unprecedented FBI intelligence operation against a presidential campaign should never have been opened in the first place.
A shocking report by the Justice Department’s inspector general lays bare the FBI’s “serious performance failures” in conducting a counterintelligence operation in 2016 against the Trump campaign.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s 434-page report details numerous mistakes, errors, and omissions by FBI personnel in four applications for special warrants to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Horowitz released his long-awaited report Monday on the FBI’s four applications for the FISA warrants to conduct electronic eavesdropping on Page as part of the bureau’s investigation into potential collusion between the Russian government and members of the Trump campaign.
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Horowitz’s report says he did not find any “documentary or testimonial evidence” that political bias influenced the FBI’s decision to seek authority to surveil Page in Operation Crossfire Hurricane, the code name the FBI gave to the investigation.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court considers applications by the U.S. government for approval of electronic surveillance, physical search, and other forms of investigative actions for foreign intelligence purposes. The court’s proceedings are secret, and the federal judges that sit on the court are appointed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court.
Because the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is such a powerful tool and given the potential for abuse, FBI policy mandates that case agents ensure that all factual statements in an application for a FISA warrant be “scrupulously accurate”—an understandably high bar.
Yet Horowitz’s report exposes 17 flagrant errors, omissions, and misstatements in the four FISA applications related to Page, any one of which is inexcusable.
In fact, those mistakes, errors, and omissions were so serious that we have serious doubts as to whether any of the four FISA court judges would have approved any of the warrant applications in the first place, had they been provided the full and complete information in the hands of the FBI.
Flashback to Russia’s Meddling in 2016 Campaign
Before getting into the devastating findings of the IG report, it is important to step back and think about what was happening in 2016.
According to special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, the Russian government “interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systemic fashion.” By mid-2016, the Russian operations began to surface.
That June, the Democratic National Committee announced that Russian hackers had compromised the party’s computer network. Releases of hacked materials via WikiLeaks began that same month. WikiLeaks released additional materials in July, October, and November.
In July 2016, an official with a foreign government, reported to be Alexander Downer, the Australian high commissioner to the United Kingdom at the time, contacted the FBI about a conversation he had at a bar two months beforehand with Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos.
Downer claimed that Papadopoulos “suggested” that the Trump campaign had received “some kind of suggestions” from the Russian government that it could assist the Trump campaign by releasing damaging information against rival Hillary Clinton. Pretty vague stuff.
So in 2016, our government and our FBI knew that Russia was trying to interfere with our presidential election, and that, quite possibly, the Russians were in contact with a member of the Trump campaign. Rather than providing a defensive briefing to high-level members of the Trump campaign about this innuendo of an innuendo, the FBI opted to initiate a full-blown investigation of members of the campaign whom it thought might be implicated, including Page, who has said he never met Donald Trump.
Embarking down the path of investigating the campaign of a major party’s candidate for president is, of course, a momentous and potentially perilous undertaking. If there were ever a time for the FBI director, and senior members of his inner circle, to take personal ownership of a case and abide by and exceed the “scrupulously accurate” standard for FISA applications, that was the time.
But that didn’t happen. In fact, the opposite happened, as Horowitz makes clear in his report. This was a monumental failure by then-FBI Director James Comey and his subordinates.
The 4 Disputed ‘Facts’ in the Steele ‘Dossier’ Targeting Trump
At the center of the four FISA applications targeting Page was opposition research work done by Christopher Steele—a former British intelligence officer who had previously provided information to the FBI—at the behest of Fusion GPS, a research and intelligence company that was acting on behalf of the Clinton campaign.
The so-called Steele dossier was actually a series of reports provided directly to the FBI by Steele beginning in September 2016. After the FBI officially terminated Steele as an approved “confidential source,” the reports were provided through Bruce Ohr, a high-ranking Justice Department official, whose wife worked for Fusion GPS. Ohr continued to meet with Steele and pass along information from him to the FBI, in violation of departmental policy.
The information that Steele provided clearly implicated the Trump campaign in illegal activity with the Russians to interfere in the 2016 election. But was it accurate? According to the inspector general, the Steele dossier played a “central and essential role in the FBI’s and [Justice] Department’s decision to seek the FISA order.” And it’s easy to see how.
Although the FBI considered filing an application after receiving the information from Downer in July, FBI attorneys declined to do so because they did not believe that the requisite “probable cause” existed to justify issuing a FISA warrant. According to FBI officials, the information they received from Steele in September “pushed [the FISA proposal] over the line,” and they applied for the warrant.
Critical to the application was the explosive allegation that Page was coordinating with the Russian government on 2016 presidential election activities, and was, therefore, acting as a foreign agent. For this, the FBI “relied entirely” on four “facts” that Steele had reported:
1. The Russians had been compiling information about Hillary Clinton for years and had been feeding that information to the Trump campaign for an extended period of time.
2. During a trip to Moscow in July 2016, Page met with the head of a Russian energy conglomerate (Igor Sechin) and a highly placed Russian official (Igor Divyekin) to discuss sharing derogatory information about Clinton with the Trump campaign in exchange for future cooperation and the lifting of Ukraine-related U.S. sanctions against Russia.
3. Page was an intermediary between Russia and Paul Manafort, chairman of the Trump campaign from June to August 2016, as part of a “well-developed conspiracy” of cooperation that led to Russia disclosing hacked Democratic National Committee emails via WikiLeaks and to the campaign’s decision to “sideline” Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue.
4. Russia’s release of the DNC emails was designed to help the Trump campaign and was “an objective conceived and promoted by Page.”
As it is, the FBI had in its possession, or would shortly obtain, information undercutting all four of these allegations, which the FBI never brought to the attention of the FISA court in its original application against Page or in any of the three applications to renew surveillance.
IG Identifies 7 ‘Significant Inaccuracies and Omissions’ by FBI
Horowitz’s report says he found seven “significant inaccuracies and omissions”—glaring errors, really—in the first FISA application to surveil Page.
First, the FBI failed to inform the FISA court that it had been notified by another government agency (presumably within the intelligence community) that Page had provided information to that agency (and to the FBI) about some of his contacts with Russian intelligence agents and had been approved to have “operational contact” with those Russian agents.
In other words, the very contacts that the FBI cited in the FISA application to establish that Page was really a clandestine foreign agent were known to and had been approved by another U.S. intelligence agency. The IG report also states that an FBI lawyer—reported to be Kevin Clinesmith—subsequently altered a document he received from the other agency to indicate, falsely, that Page was not a source for that other agency.
Second, to bolster Steele’s credibility, the application stated that his prior reporting had been “corroborated and used in criminal proceedings.” But in fact, most of that information had not been corroborated, and none of it had been used in a criminal proceeding.
Third, while Steele informed the FBI that the critical information he was reporting about Page came from a “sub-source,” the FISA application left out the fact that Steele described this source as a “boaster” and an “egoist” who “may engage in some embellishment.”
Fourth, to bolster Steele’s credibility, the FISA application stated that some of the information that Steele reported had appeared in an article in Yahoo News, and that Steele was not the source for that story. This implied that somebody else had the same information Steele had and could serve as independent corroboration. However, it turns out that Steele was the source for that story, and that the FBI either knew it or easily could have learned it.
Fifth, the FISA application included the information that the FBI had received from Downer about his conversation with Papadopoulos. But it did not include the fact that during a subsequent secretly recorded conversation in September with an FBI confidential source, Papadopoulos explicitly denied that anyone associated with the Trump campaign was collaborating with the Russians or any other outside group, including WikiLeaks, with respect to the disclosed DNC emails.
Sixth, although the FBI included the four allegations above, it did not include the fact that during a later secretly recorded conversation in August with an FBI confidential source, Page said that he never had met or spoken to Manafort and that Manafort had not responded to any of his emails.
And seventh, in another secretly recorded conversation with an FBI source in October, Page denied meeting the Russians Sechin and Divyekin, and denied even knowing who Divyekin was.
10 More Errors in FBI Applications to Spy on Carter Page
The IG report also concludes that after the FISA court approved the first warrant application, the FBI learned more information—some of it from secretly recorded conversations by its own confidential informants—that cast serious doubt on the facts contained in that application.
Yet the FBI didn’t bring this information to the attention of the FISA court, and the errors were repeated in the three renewal applications to continue surveilling Page.
The 10 additional errors—17 in all—included these facts:
—The FBI eventually interviewed Steele’s sub-source, who undercut many factual statements that Steele had attributed to him.
—The FBI spoke to some individuals who had professional dealings with Steele who said he demonstrated “poor judgment” and “pursued people with political risk but no intelligence value.”
—The individual (Joseph Mifsud) who allegedly told Papadopoulos that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton denied having said that or having suggested that the Trump campaign received an offer of assistance from the Russians.
—Bruce Ohr, the high-ranking Justice Department official, had specifically informed the FBI that Steele’s information was being provided to the Clinton campaign, and that Steele was “desperate and passionate about [Trump] not being the U.S. President.”
Horowitz concluded that all of these “factual misstatements and omissions [when] taken together resulted in FISA applications that made it appear that the information supporting probable cause was stronger than was actually the case.”
‘Basic Errors’ Raise Questions About FBI Chain of Command
Thus, it seems reasonable to conclude that this unprecedented FBI intelligence operation against a presidential campaign should never have been opened in the first place.
The IG report paints a damning picture of everyone involved in this case, from the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team to Comey, and everyone in between. The report notes:
That so many basic and fundamental errors were made by three separate, hand-picked teams on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations that was briefed to the highest levels within the FBI … raised significant questions regarding the FBI chain of command’s management and supervision of the FISA process.
Later, the report soberly concludes: “ … this was a failure of not only the operational team, but also of the managers and supervisors, including senior officials, in the chain of command.”
Those trying to minimize the shocking findings in this report have focused on the IG’s statement that he could not “find documentary or testimonial evidence of intentional misconduct,” or that “political bias or improper motivation” influenced the decision to open the investigation. But the IG also said he “did not receive satisfactory explanations for the errors or problems” that he identified in the FBI’s work.
Moreover, this may not be the last word on the subject. Horowitz candidly admits in the report that “[b]ecause the activities of other agencies were not within the scope of this review, we did not seek to obtain records from them that the FBI never received or reviewed, except for a limited amount of State Department records relating to Steele.”
The IG says his office “did not seek to assess the actions taken by or information available to U.S. government agencies outside the Department of Justice, as those agencies are outside our jurisdiction.”
Attorney General Finds ‘Clear Abuse of the FISA Process’
Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham, who has been tasked by Attorney General William Barr to conduct a criminal investigation into the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe, is not similarly constrained.
Following release of the IG report Monday, Durham stated:
[O]ur investigation has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S. Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.
Barr also weighed in on the IG’s findings. In a press release Monday, Barr said the IG report “makes clear the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken.” In fact, from the very beginning, Barr added, “the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory.”
In the strongest condemnation of the FBI in recent memory by an attorney general, Barr said that in their “rush to obtain and maintain FISA surveillance” of individuals involved in the Trump campaign, “FBI officials misled the FISA court, omitted critical exculpatory facts from their filings, and suppressed or ignored information negating the reliability of their principal source.”
What happened, Barr said, “reflects a clear abuse of the FISA process.”
As the attorney general said, “FISA is an essential tool for the protection of the safety of the American people.” It is a tool we need for national security purposes to protect us from foreign espionage.
The fact that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was apparently misused to target a presidential campaign is shocking, and Barr promises that he will take “whatever steps are necessary to rectify the abuses that occurred and to ensure the integrity of the FISA process going forward.”
At the very least, Horowitz has uncovered a massive failure of leadership at all levels of the FBI with respect to one of the most important investigations in the agency’s history. Whether there is more to this story will depend, in part, on what Durham uncovers.
This piece originally appeared in The Daily Signal
Lindsey Graham unloads on James Comey’s FBI accusing it of a ‘vast criminal conspiracy’ for using Christopher Steele’s discredited dossier to get eavesdropping warrant during Trump-Russia probe
Sen. Lindsey Graham opened Judiciary hearing by tearing into the Dossier’s unproven claims
He says John McCain showed him the dossier after it was handed to him in 2016
Says he said ‘Oh my God’ and concluded either Russians have something on Trump or could be ‘disinformation’
Blasted FBI leadership and read through anti-Trump texts of FBI lovers
Said FBI director Wray: ‘You got a problem’
‘It is stunning it is damning it is salacious, and it’s a bunch of crap’
Sen. John Kennedy on IG report revelations: ‘It made me want to heave’
Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham opened a high-stakes hearing with the Justice Department’s inspector general by blasting ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele’s ‘golden showers’ dossier and the FBI for using it.
Graham said when he first saw the dossier during the 2016 campaign, it initially confronted him with the possibility Russians ‘have something’ on Donald Trump. Otherwise, he said, there could have been a Russian ‘disinformation campaign’ going on.
The South Carolinian Republican also revealed that the late Sen. John McCain, who obtained the dossier during the campaign after attending a security conference in Canada, shared it with him. Graham ran for president in 2016 as one of a bevy of Republicans.
He accused the FBI of a ‘vast criminal conspiracy’ for its handling of the FISA warrant to monitor Carter Page, a one-time Trump campaign staffer.
‘What has been described as a few irregularities becomes a massive criminal conspiracy over time to defraud the FISA court, to illegally surveil an American citizen and keep an operation open against a sitting president of the United States — violating every norm known to the rule of law,’ he said.
He said the code name for the FBI investigation, ‘Crossfire Hurricane,’ was an apt title ‘because that’s what we ended up with – a “Crossfire Hurricane.”‘
‘What happened here is the system failed. People in the highest levels of government took the law into their own hands,’ said Graham, a close Trump ally.
Sen. Lindsey Graham blasted what he called the ‘golden showers’ dossier, and called it a bunch of ‘crap’
He said McCain learned about the dossier while attending a December 2016 conference.
‘John McCain puts it in his safe, he gives it to me and I read it,’ Graham said in an angry speech before IG Michael Horowitz, who testified on his report Wednesday.
‘And the first thing I thought of was, ‘Oh my god,’ said Graham. ‘This could be Russia disinformation and they may have something on Trump.’
Graham, who has become one of Trump’s closest GOP allies in the Senate, used the term ‘golden showers’ to reference an unproven allegation from Steele’s dossier, which cited ‘perverted’ conduct inside a Moscow hotel room during the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) holds up the Steel dossier as Michael Horowitz, inspector general for the Justice Department, testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee
U.S. Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz arrives to testify before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing ‘Examining the Inspector General’s report on alleged abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)’ on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., December 11, 2019
Graham also tore into Christopher Steele, the former MI6 agent who wrote what became the dossier
Donald Trump and Olivia Culpo attend the red carpet at Miss Universe Pageant Competition 2013 on November 9, 2013 in Moscow, Russia. The IG found additional information that undermined Steele’s sub-source who informed him about the unproven allegations against Trump
The DOJ’s Inspector General included the information in his report
President Donald Trump tweeted out a smiling photo of himself with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday
Miss USA 2013 Erin Brady and Donald Trump (C), co-owner of the Miss Universe Organization, look on as Aras Agalarov, father of Russian singer Emin Agalarov, speaks during a news conference after the 2013 Miss USA pageant at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada June 16, 2013
The IG’s staff met with Steele this summer and obtained information that undermined the claim – including that a sub-source didn’t stand by it, said a western hotel worker couldn’t confirm it, and said the information was obtained over drinks.
Graham fumed: ‘It is stunning, it is damning, it is salacious, and it’s a bunch of crap.’
Russian President Vladimir Putin
‘This is not normal. Don’t judge the FBI and the Department of Justice by these characters,’ Graham said, referencing FBI officials involved in the ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ probe who have come under scrutiny.
Graham spent a long stretch of his opening remarks tearing into the ‘FBI lovers’ Peter Strzrok and Lisa Page. He read through their anti-Trump texts, while the witness listened and C-span cameras rolled.
He blasted the decision to probe members of Trump’s foreign policy team who had had Russia contacts, even before Horowitz testified the probe was started ‘in compliance with Department and FBI policies’ and that he didn’t uncover evidence ‘that political bias or improper motivation’ influenced the decision.
‘This national security team was literally picked up off the street,’ Graham thundered.
He wanted to know why Trump didn’t get informed about the use of investigative techniques against his campaign. ‘Why didn’t they tell Trump? We’ll figure that out later. But I think it’s a question that needs to be asked,’ Graham said.
In addition to testifying that that probe was properly predicated under FBI procedures, Horowitz testified that the Russia probe team obtained information from Steele’s primary sub-source in January 2017 ‘that raised significant questions about the reliability of the Steele reporting that was used in the Carter Page’ surveillance warrant.
Graham accused James Comey’s FBI of a ‘vast criminal conspiracy’
Horowitz’s testimony came during a political charged hearing, with lawmakers spit upon party lines on the same day the House Judiciary committee was taking up articles of impeachment against President Trump accusing him of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
‘I think the activities we found don´t vindicate anybody,’ said Horowitz.
Horowitz defended the need to keep whistle-blowers anonymous under questioning by Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
‘Whistle-blowers have a right to expect complete full confidentiality in all circumstances … and it’s a very important provision’, Horowitz said. He said it was a legal obligation set in statute.
Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana used his usual home-spun language to express astonishment about what was uncovered about FBI conduct.
‘After about 15 per cent of the way through, it made me want to heave. After about 20 percent of the way through I thought I’d dropped acid. It’s surreal,’ he said.
Graham issued his pronouncements even while acknowledging the reality of Russian interference to hurt Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016.
‘We know the Russians were screwing around with the Democrats, right?’ Graham said.
Democrats tried to get Horowitz to defend his 480-page probe from criticism by Attorney General Bill Barr, who blasted its conclusions in TV interviews but failed to take the traditional route of attaching written objections.
Horowitz tried not to play along. Asked about Barr’s trips abroad to assist a separate probe by prosecutor John Durham, he said: ‘I think you’d have to ask the attorney general about those meetings.’
Federal prosecutor John Durham told Horowitz his view that the FBI should have opened a limited probe than the one it did open. Horowitz told lawmakers. he didn’t agree.
‘None of the discussions changed our findings,’ he said.
Republicans bashed the FBI for having a Crossfire Hurricane agent participate in a security briefing provided to the Trump campaign – then file notes on what participants including Mike Flynn said. Flynn, Trump’s national security advisor, later pleaded guilty to lying to investigators.
Sen. John Cornyn brought up Comey’s post-election briefing of Trump about the dossier in Trump tower, and asked if he told the president ‘anything he said can be used against him.’
Sen. Sheldon White House (D-R.I.) addressed one reason why the FBI resisted telling Trump officials. He said investigators ‘did not then now how far Russian penetration into the Trump campaign went.’
‘We are deeply concerned that so many basic and fundamental errors were made by three separate, hand-picked investigative teams, on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations, after the matter had been briefed to the highest levels within the FBI,’ Horowitz said.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz slams ‘failure’ by FBI leaders who used Christopher Steele’s anti-Trump dossier and tells Senate of ‘basic and fundamental errors’ in Russia probe
The Justice Department’s internal watchdog told Congress on Wednesday that he is concerned that ‘so many basic and fundamental errors’ were made by the FBI as it investigated ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Michael Horowitz’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee comes two days after the release of a report that identified significant problems with applications to receive and renew warrants to eavesdrop on a former Trump campaign aide in 2016 and 2017.
Despite those problems, the report also found that the FBI’s actions were not motivated by partisan bias and that the investigation was opened for a proper cause.
Horowitz will tell senators that the FBI failed to follow its own standards for accuracy and completeness when it sought a warrant to monitor the communications of ex-campaign aide Carter Page.
Scathing: Michael Horowitz, the Judiciary Inspector General, outlined a series of criticisms of the FBI as he gave evidence on his report into the Trump-Russia probe, which was codenamed Crossfire Hurricane
Team: Michael Horowitz was flanked by investigators from the 18-month probe, which resulted in Monday’s report, which ran to more than 400 pages
Concern: Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Lindsey Graham brandishes the Steele dossier, which Horowitz said FBI leaders relied on despite knowing about concerns over it
Horowitz’s statement largely echoed his scathing Monday report on the FBI’s handling of the Trump-Russia probe.
He told the committee that the FBI relied on Christopher Steele’s dossier to get a FISA warrant to monitor Carter Page, a one-time Donald Trump campaign aide.
But when it found out that the dossier was flawed and were advised of some of the flaws by a Department of Justice attorney, it did not tell the FISA court which issued the warrant.
‘We found that members of the Crossfire Hurricane team failed to meet the basic obligation to ensure that the Carter Page FISA applications were ”scrupulously accurate,” he said.
There were four applications for a warrant on Page.
But Horowitz said: ‘We identified significant inaccuracies and omissions in each of the four applications: 7 in the first FISA application and a total of 17 by the final renewal application.
‘For example, the Crossfire Hurricane team obtained information from Steele’s Primary Sub-source in January 2017 that raised significant questions about the reliability of the Steele reporting that was used in the Carter Page FISA applications.
‘This was particularly noteworthy because the FISA applications relied entirely on information from the Steele reporting to support the allegation that Page was coordinating with the Russian government on 2016 U.S. presidential election activities.
‘However, members of the Crossfire Hurricane team failed to share the information about the Primary Sub-source’s information with the Department, and it was therefore omitted from the three renewal applications.’
Horowitz did not name any FBI leaders in his statement to senators, but had already outlined in his report that James Comey, the FBI director, Andrew McCabe, his deputy, and other senior FBI leaders were involved in supervising the Crossfire Hurricane probe
Key figures: James Comey’s FBI opened the probe into one-time Trump campaign aide Carter Page. The FBI obtained a FISA warrant which relied on the Steele dossier
‘FBI leadership supported relying on Steele’s reporting to seek a FISA order targeting Page after being advised of, and giving consideration to, concerns expressed by a Department attorney that Steele may have been hired by someone associated with a rival candidate or campaign,’ he said.
Horowitz also raised questions over the FBI’s policies on FISA use generally.
‘We also identified what we believe is an absence of sufficient policies to ensure appropriate Department oversight of significant investigative decisions that could affect constitutionally protected activity,’ Horowitz said, according to his prepared remarks as released by the committee before the hearing.
The report has produced sharp partisan divisions. Democrats seized on the finding that the probe was not tainted by political motivations. But Republicans say the findings show the investigation was fatally flawed. Attorney General William Barr, a vocal defender of President Donald Trump, said the FBI investigation was based on a ‘bogus narrative.’
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the top Republican on the committee and another ally of Trump, echoed that sentiment in his opening statement. He said the code name for the FBI investigation, ‘Crossfire Hurricane,’ was an apt title ‘because that’s what we ended up with – a `Crossfire Hurricane.”
‘What happened here is the system failed. People in the highest levels of government took the law into their own hands,’ Graham said.
MICHAEL HOROWITZ’S FULL SENATE STATEMENT ON HIS TRUMP-RUSSIA PROBE
Mr. Chairman, Senator Feinstein, and Members of the Committee
Thank you for inviting me to testify at today’s hearing to examine the report that my office issued yesterday entitled, ‘Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation.’
In July 2016, three weeks after then FBI Director James Comey announced the conclusion of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) ‘Midyear Exam’ investigation into presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s handling of government emails during her tenure as Secretary of State, the FBI received reporting from a Friendly Foreign Government (FFG) that, in a May 2016 meeting with the FFG, Trump campaign foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos ‘suggested the Trump team had received some kind of a suggestion’ from Russia that it could assist in the election process with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to candidate Clinton and President Obama.
Days later, on July 31, the FBI initiated the Crossfire Hurricane investigation that is the subject of our report.
As we noted last year in our review of the Midyear investigation, the FBI has developed and earned a reputation as one of the world’s premier law enforcement agencies in significant part because of its tradition of professionalism, impartiality, non-political enforcement of the law, and adherence to detailed policies, practices, and norms.
It was precisely these qualities that were required as the FBI initiated and conducted Crossfire Hurricane.
However, as we describe in this report, our review identified significant concerns with how certain aspects of the investigation were conducted and supervised, particularly the FBI’s failure to adhere to its own standards of accuracy and completeness when filing applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) authority to surveil Carter Page, a U.S. person who was connected to the Donald J. Trump for President Campaign.
We also identified what we believe is an absence of sufficient policies to ensure appropriate Department oversight of significant investigative decisions that could affect constitutionally protected activity.
In my statement today, I highlight some of the most significant findings in our report.
A more detailed overview of our findings can be found in the report’s Executive Summary.
Our findings are the product of a comprehensive review that examined more than one million documents in the Department’s and FBI’s possession, including documents that other U.S. and foreign government agencies provided the FBI during the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
Our team conducted over 170 interviews involving more than 100 witnesses, and we documented all of our findings in a 417-page report.
I want to commend the work of our review team for conducting rigorous and effective oversight, and for producing a report and recommendations that we believe will improve the FBI’s ability to most effectively utilize the national security authorities analyzed in this review, while also striving to safeguard the civil liberties and privacy of impacted U.S. persons.
The Opening of Crossfire Hurricane and the Use of Confidential Human Sources Following receipt of the FFG information, a decision was made by the FBI’s then Counterintelligence Division (CD) Assistant Director (AD), E.W. ‘Bill’ Priestap, to open Crossfire Hurricane and reflected a consensus reached after multiple days of discussions and meetings among senior FBI officials.
We concluded that AD Priestap’s exercise of discretion in opening the investigation was in compliance with Department and FBI policies, and we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced his decision.
While the information in the FBI’s possession at the time was limited, in light of the low threshold established by Department and FBI predication policy, we found that Crossfire Hurricane was opened for an authorized investigative purpose and with sufficient factual predication.
However, we also determined that, under Department and FBI policy, the decision whether to open the Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence investigation, which involved the activities of individuals associated with a national major party campaign for president, was a discretionary judgment call left to the FBI.
There was no requirement that Department officials be consulted, or even notified, prior to the FBI making that decision.
We further found that, consistent with this policy, the FBI advised supervisors in the Department’s National Security Division (NSD) of the investigation after it had been initiated.
As we detail in Chapter Two, high level Department notice and approval is required in other circumstances where investigative activity could substantially impact certain civil liberties, and that notice allows senior Department officials to consider the potential constitutional and prudential implications in advance of these activities.
We concluded that similar advance notice should be required in circumstances such as those that were present here.
Shortly after the FBI opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, the FBI conducted several consensually monitored meetings between FBI confidential human sources (CHS) and individuals affiliated with the Trump campaign, including a high-level campaign official who was not a subject of the investigation.
We found that the CHS operations received the necessary approvals under FBI policy; that an Assistant Director knew about and approved of each operation, even in circumstances where a first-level supervisory special agent could have approved the operations; and that the operations were permitted under Department and FBI policy because their use was not for the sole purpose of monitoring activities protected by the First Amendment or the lawful exercise of other rights secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States.
We did not find any documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the FBI’s decision to conduct these operations.
Additionally, we found no evidence that the FBI attempted to place any CHSs within the Trump campaign, recruit members of the Trump campaign as CHSs, or task CHSs to report on the Trump campaign.
However, we are concerned that, under applicable Department and FBI policy, it would have been sufficient for a first-level FBI supervisor to authorize the sensitive domestic CHS operations undertaken in Crossfire Hurricane, and that there is no applicable Department or FBI policy requiring the FBI to notify Department officials of a decision to task CHSs to consensually monitor conversations with members of a presidential campaign.
Specifically, in Crossfire Hurricane, where one of the CHS operations involved consensually monitoring a high-level official on the Trump campaign who was not a subject of the investigation, and all of the operations had the potential to gather sensitive information of the campaign about protected First Amendment activity, we found no evidence that the FBI consulted with any Department officials before conducting the CHS operations—and no policy requiring the FBI to do so.
We therefore believe that current Department and FBI policies are not sufficient to ensure appropriate oversight and accountability when such operations potentially implicate sensitive, constitutionally protected activity, and that requiring Department consultation, at a minimum, would be appropriate.
The FISA Applications to Conduct Surveillance of Carter Page One investigative tool for which Department and FBI policy expressly require advance approval by a senior Department official is the seeking of a court order under the FISA.
When the Crossfire Hurricane team first proposed seeking a FISA order targeting Carter Page in midAugust 2016, FBI attorneys assisting the investigation considered it a ‘close call’ whether they had developed the probable cause necessary to obtain the order, and a FISA order was not requested at that time.
However, in September 2016, immediately after the Crossfire Hurricane team received reporting from Christopher Steele concerning Page’s alleged recent activities with Russian officials, FBI attorneys advised the Department that the team was ready to move forward with a request to obtain FISA authority to surveil Page.
FBI and Department officials told us the Steele reporting ‘pushed [the FISA proposal] over the line’ in terms of establishing probable cause, and we concluded that the Steele reporting played a central and essential role in the decision to seek a FISA order.
FBI leadership supported relying on Steele’s reporting to seek a FISA order targeting Page after being advised of, and giving consideration to, concerns expressed by a Department attorney that Steele may have been hired by someone associated with a rival candidate or campaign.
The authority under FISA to conduct electronic surveillance and physical searches targeting individuals significantly assists the government’s efforts to combat terrorism, clandestine intelligence activity, and other threats to the national security.
At the same time, the use of this authority unavoidably raises civil liberties concerns.
FISA orders can be used to surveil U.S. persons, like Carter Page, and in some cases the surveillance will foreseeably collect information about the individual’s constitutionally protected activities, such as Page’s legitimate activities on behalf of a presidential campaign.
Moreover, proceedings before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC)—which is responsible for ruling on applications for FISA orders—are ex parte, meaning that unlike most court proceedings, the government is the only party present for the proceedings.
In addition, unlike the use of other intrusive investigative techniques (such as wiretaps under Title III and traditional criminal search warrants) that are granted in ex parte hearings but can potentially be subject to later court challenge, FISA orders have not been subject to scrutiny through subsequent adversarial proceedings.
In light of these concerns, Congress through the FISA statute, and the Department and FBI through policies and procedures, have established important safeguards to protect the FISA application process from irregularities and abuse.
Among the most important are the requirements in FBI policy that every FISA application must contain a ‘full and accurate’ presentation of the facts, and that agents must ensure that all factual statements in FISA applications are ‘scrupulously accurate.’
These are the standards for all FISA applications, regardless of the investigation’s sensitivity, and it is incumbent upon the FBI to meet them in every application.
That said, in the context of an investigation involving persons associated with a presidential campaign, where the target of the FISA is a former campaign official and the goal of the FISA is to uncover, among other things, information about the individual’s allegedly illegal campaignrelated activities, members of the Crossfire Hurricane investigative team should have anticipated, and told us they in fact did anticipate, that these FISA applications would be subjected to especially close scrutiny.
Nevertheless, we found that members of the Crossfire Hurricane team failed to meet the basic obligation to ensure that the Carter Page FISA applications were ‘scrupulously accurate.’
We identified significant inaccuracies and omissions in each of the four applications: 7 in the first FISA application and a total of 17 by the final renewal application.
For example, the Crossfire Hurricane team obtained information from Steele’s Primary Sub-source in January 2017 that raised significant questions about the reliability of the Steele reporting that was used in the Carter Page FISA applications.
This was particularly noteworthy because the FISA applications relied entirely on information from the Steele reporting to support the allegation that Page was coordinating with the Russian government on 2016 U.S. presidential election activities.
However, members of the Crossfire Hurricane team failed to share the information about the Primary Sub-source’s information with the Department, and it was therefore omitted from the three renewal applications.
All of the applications also omitted information the FBI had obtained from another U.S. government agency detailing its prior relationship with Page, including that Page had been approved as an operational contact for the other agency from 2008 to 2013, that Page had provided information to the other agency concerning his prior contacts with certain Russian intelligence officers (one of which overlapped with facts asserted in the FISA application), and that an employee of the other agency assessed that Page had been candid.
As a result of the 17 significant inaccuracies and omissions we identified, relevant information was not shared with, and consequently not considered by, important Department decision makers and the court, and the FISA applications made it appear as though the evidence supporting probable cause was stronger than was actually the case.
We also found basic, fundamental, and serious errors during the completion of the FBl’s factual accuracy reviews, known as the Woods Procedures, which are designed to ensure that FISA applications contain a full and accurate presentation of the facts.
We do not speculate whether the correction of any particular misstatement or omission, or some combination thereof, would have resulted in a different outcome.
Nevertheless, the Department’s decision makers and the court should have been given complete and accurate information so that they could meaningfully evaluate probable cause before authorizing the surveillance of a U.S. person associated with a presidential campaign.
That did not occur, and as a result, the surveillance of Carter Page continued even as the FBI gathered information that weakened the assessment of probable cause and made the FISA applications less accurate.
We determined that the inaccuracies and omissions we identified in the applications resulted from case agents providing wrong or incomplete information to Department attorneys and failing to identify important issues for discussion.
Moreover, we concluded that case agents and Supervisory Special Agents (SSA) did not give appropriate attention to facts that cut against probable cause, and that as the investigation progressed and more information tended to undermine or weaken the assertions in the FISA applications, the agents and SSAs did not reassess the information supporting probable cause.
Further, the agents and SSAs did not follow, or even appear to know, certain basic requirements in the Woods Procedures.
Although we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence of intentional misconduct on the part of the case agents who assisted NSD’s Office of Intelligence (OI) in preparing the applications, or the agents and supervisors who performed the Woods Procedures, we also did not receive satisfactory explanations for the errors or missing information.
We found that the offered explanations for these serious errors did not excuse them, or the repeated failures to ensure the accuracy of information presented to the FISC.
We are deeply concerned that so many basic and fundamental errors were made by three separate, hand-picked investigative teams; on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations; after the matter had been briefed to the highest levels within the FBI; even though the information sought through use of FISA authority related so closely to an ongoing presidential campaign; and even though those involved with the investigation knew that their actions were likely to be subjected to close scrutiny.
We believe this circumstance reflects a failure not just by those who prepared the FISA applications, but also by the managers and supervisors in the Crossfire Hurricane chain of command, including FBI senior officials who were briefed as the investigation progressed.
We do not expect managers and supervisors to know every fact about an investigation, or senior leaders to know all the details of cases about which they are briefed.
However, especially in the FBl’s most sensitive and high-priority matters, and especially when seeking court permission to use an intrusive tool such as a FISA order, it is incumbent upon the entire chain of command, including senior officials, to take the necessary steps to ensure that they are sufficiently familiar with the facts and circumstances supporting and potentially undermining a FISA application in order to provide effective oversight consistent with their level of supervisory responsibility.
Such oversight requires greater familiarity with the facts than we saw in this review, where time and again during OIG interviews FBI managers, supervisors, and senior officials displayed a lack of understanding or awareness of important information concerning many of the problems we identified.
In the preparation of the FISA applications to surveil Carter Page, the Crossfire Hurricane team failed to comply with FBI policies, and in so doing fell short of what is rightfully expected from a premier law enforcement agency entrusted with such an intrusive surveillance tool.
In light of the significant concerns identified with the Carter Page FISA applications and the other issues described in this report, the OIG has initiated an audit that will further examine the FBI’s compliance with the Woods Procedures in FISA applications that target U.S. persons in both counterintelligence and counterterrorism investigations.
We also made the following recommendations to assist the Department and the FBI in avoiding similar failures in future investigations.
Recommendations
For the reasons fully described in our report, we recommend the following:
1. The Department and the FBI should ensure that adequate procedures are in place for the Office of Intelligence (OI) to obtain all relevant and accurate information, including access to Confidential Human Source (CHS) information, needed to prepare FISA applications and renewal applications. This effort should include revising:
a. the FISA Request Form: to ensure information is identified for OI: (i) that tends to disprove, does not support, or is inconsistent with a finding or an allegation that the target is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power, or
(ii) that bears on the reliability of every CHS whose information is relied upon in the FISA application, including all information from the derogatory information sub-file, recommended below;
b. the Woods Form: (i) to emphasize to agents and their supervisors the obligation to re-verify factual assertions repeated from prior applications and to obtain written approval from CHS handling agents of all CHS source characterization statements in applications, and
(ii) to specify what steps must be taken and documented during the legal review performed by an FBI Office of General Counsel (OGC) line attorney and SES level supervisor before submitting the FISA application package to the FBI Director for certification;
c. the FISA Procedures: to clarify which positions may serve as the supervisory reviewer for OGC; and d. taking any other steps deemed appropriate to ensure the accuracy and completeness of information provided to OI.
2. The Department and FBI should evaluate which types of Sensitive Investigative Matters (SIM) require advance notification to a senior Department official, such as the Deputy Attorney General, in addition to the notifications currently required for SIMs, especially for case openings that implicate core First Amendment activity and raise policy considerations or heighten enterprise risk, and establish implementing policies and guidance, as necessary.
3. The FBI should develop protocols and guidelines for staffing and administrating any future sensitive investigative matters from FBI Headquarters.
4. The FBI should address the problems with the administration and assessment of CHS
s identified in this report and, at a minimum, should: a. revise its standard CHS admonishment form to include a prohibition on the disclosure of the CHS’s relationship with the FBI to third parties absent the FBI’s permission, and assess the need to include other admonishments in the standard CHS admonishments;
b. develop enhanced procedures to ensure that CHS information is documented in Delta, including information generated from Headquarters- led investigations, substantive contacts with closed CHSs (directly or through third parties), and derogatory information. We renew our recommendation that the FBI create a derogatory information sub-file in Delta;
c. assess VMU’s practices regarding reporting source validation findings and non-findings;
d. establish guidance for sharing sensitive information with CHSs;
e. establish guidance to handling agents for inquiring whether their CHS participates in the types of groups or activities that would bring the CHS within the definition of a ‘sensitive source,’ and ensure handling agents document (and update as needed) those affiliations and any others voluntarily provided to them by the CHS in the Source Opening Communication, the ‘Sensitive Categories’ portion of each CHS’s Quarterly Supervisory Source Report, the ‘Life Changes’ portion of CHS Contact Reports, or as otherwise directed by the FBI so that the FBI can assess whether active CHSs are engaged in activities (such as political campaigns) at a level that might require re-designation as a ‘sensitive source’ or necessitate closure of the CHS; and
f. revise its CHS policy to address the considerations that should be taken into account and the steps that should be followed before and after accepting information from a closed CHS indirectly through a third party.
5. The Department and FBI should clarify the following terms in their policies: a. assess the definition of a ‘Sensitive Monitoring Circumstance’ in the AG Guidelines and the FBI’s DIOG to determine whether to expand its scope to include consensual monitoring of a domestic political candidate or an individual prominent within a domestic political organization, or a subset of these persons, so that consensual monitoring of such individuals would require consultation with or advance notification to a senior Department official, such as the Deputy Attorney General; and
b. establish guidance, and include examples in the DIOG, to better define the meaning of the phrase ‘prominent in a domestic political organization’ so that agents understand which campaign officials fall within that definition as it relates to ‘Sensitive Investigative Matters,’ ‘Sensitive UDP,’ and the designation of ‘sensitive sources.’ Further, if the Department expands the scope of ‘Sensitive Monitoring Circumstance,’ as recommended above, the FBI should apply the guidance on ‘prominent in a domestic political organization’ to ‘Sensitive Monitoring Circumstance’ as well.
6. The FBI should ensure that appropriate training on DIOG § 4 is provided to emphasize the constitutional implications of certain monitoring situations and to ensure that agents account for these concerns, both in the tasking of CHSs and in the way they document interactions with and tasking of CHSs.
7. The FBI should establish a policy regarding the use of defensive and transition briefings for investigative purposes, including the factors to be considered and approval by senior leaders at the FBI with notice to a senior Department official, such as the Deputy Attorney General.
8. The Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility should review our findings related to the conduct of Department attorney Bruce Ohr for any action it deems appropriate. Ohr’s current supervisors in the Department’s Criminal Division should also review our findings related to Ohr’s performance for any action they deem appropriate.
9. The FBI should review the performance of all employees who had responsibility for the preparation, Woods review, or approval of the FISA applications, as well as the managers, supervisors, and senior officials in the chain of command of the Carter Page investigation, for any action deemed appropriate.
After reviewing a draft of this report and its recommendations, FBI Director Christopher Wray accepted each of the recommendations above, and we were told ordered more than 40 corrective actions to date to address our recommendations.
However, more work remains to be done by both the FBI and the Department.
As I noted above, we believe that implementation of these recommendations, including those that seek individual accountability for the failures identified in our report, will improve the FBI’s ability to more carefully and effectively utilize its important national security authorities like FISA, while also striving to safeguard the civil liberties and privacy of impacted U.S. persons.
The OIG will continue to conduct independent oversight on these matters in the months and years ahead. This concludes my prepared statement, and I am pleased to answer any questions the Committee may have.
At Wednesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on investigative abuses in the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation (codenamed “Crossfire Hurricane”), Democrats continued an effort begun ten days ago to hoodwink the public into believing Horowitz is in a bitter dispute with Attorney General William Barr over a key finding in the report.
The dispute allegedly stems from what is portrayed as Barr’s dissent from the IG’s conclusion that the probe was properly predicated – i.e., that there were sufficient factual grounds to open an investigation of whether the Trump campaign was complicit in the Kremlin’s cyberespionage attack on Democratic party email accounts.
In point of fact, as discussed in my Fox News Opinion column on Wednesday, the two men have less a difference of opinion than a difference in focus – the distinction between what may be done and what should be done.
I’m tempted to say there is no real dispute, but let’s leave it at saying the dispute is wildly overstated.
A cautionary note: People should be suspicious about media coverage of the attorney general. For decades, Bill Barr has enjoyed a well-earned reputation for legal acumen and personal integrity. But he is now working for Donald Trump.
Hence, there has for months been an energetic media-Democrat effort to discredit him – in particular, to undermine the investigation he has appointed Connecticut U.S. attorney John Durham to conduct into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe (not just Crossfire Hurricane, but the related investigations involving other domestic and foreign government agencies).
A transparent motivation fuels this effort: The Mueller probe found no evidence of a Trump-Russia conspiracy, notwithstanding the indefatigable “collusion” narrative (explored at length in my book “Ball of Collusion“).
Now the Horowitz IG report has found major abuses in the FBI’s investigation of Trump. The question naturally arises: Why did the Obama administration use the intelligence and law-enforcement apparatus of the government to investigate its political opposition?
Democrats and their media confederates are determined to protect Obama’s legacy from Nixonian taint. Barr, therefore, must be subjected to character assassination.
The specter of political spying, that bane of the Watergate era, is manifest. That is what Barr and Durham are exploring.
Democrats and their media confederates are determined to protect Obama’s legacy from Nixonian taint. Barr, therefore, must be subjected to character assassination.
You know the drill: He is Trump’s lawyer, not America’s. His investigation is politicized, not in good faith and so on.
Yes, the same people who lionized Mueller’s team of partisan Democrats, now feign outraged disbelief at the suggestion that the FBI could possibly have been just a tad political.
That would be the same Bureau that helped whitewash the Clinton emails caper; scorched the earth to find a non-existent conspiracy against Trump; brought us the charming Strzok-Page texts; and has, in just the last two years, been the subject of not one but two voluminous IG reports examining the anti-Trump animus of top investigators.
That is why the Barr-Horowitz contretemps must be exaggerated.
Typical of IG reports, Horowitz’s latest features admirably comprehensive fact-finding but conclusions framed in lawyerly gobbledygook that lend themselves to easy distortion.
As night follows day, the anti-Trump forces pounced: We’re to believe the IG concluded that the Trump-Russia investigation’s commencement was unimpeachable and that there was no political bias in the FBI’s decision-making.
That is not what Horowitz actually said. Since it is important that the public be given accurate information about the Justice Department’s position, the AG has spoken out to clarify what the IG concluded and how DOJ regards these conclusions.
In press coverage, this has been portrayed as a blistering attack on Horowitz.
At Wednesday’s hearing, Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats picked up the theme: Horowitz heroically struggles to uphold the rule of law and standards of impartial fact-finding, but Barr, that diabolical Trumpkin, is determined to bring him down for refusing to brand Crossfire Hurricane a hoax.
Even as this narrative first took wing, there was a clue that it was deceptive, though you had to dig a little to find it.
On December 2, a week before the IG report became public, the Washington Post kicked off the Barr vs. Horowitz tale with a story claiming, based on anonymous sources, that the AG was disputing the IG’s “key” finding that the FBI had enough information to justify launching the probe.
Seven paragraphs in, though, there was an on-the-record statement from a named official: Kerri Kupec, Barr’s spokeswoman. Far from conveying rancor, Ms. Kupec issued a gushing tribute to Horowitz. His investigation, she said: “Is a credit to the Department of Justice. His excellent work has uncovered significant information that the American people will soon be able to read for themselves. Rather than speculating, people should read the report for themselves next week, watch the Inspector General’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and draw their own conclusions about these important matters.”
Yes, that’s right. In relating the supposedly intense infighting over the report between Barr and Horowitz, the Post was compelled to note that the only statement traceable to Barr was an enthusiastic endorsement of Horowitz’s work and an encouragement to Americans to read the report and watch the testimony.
What a scurrilous attack!
When Horowitz finally released the report on Monday, Barr himself made a statement. Relying on the IG’s work, rather than contradicting it, the AG observed that the FBI had, “launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken. [Emphasis added.]
Barr did not disagree with Horowitz on the commencement of the investigation. Horowitz had found that the FBI’s written procedures provide a very low bar in terms of the suspicion that may justify the opening of an investigation.
Barr did not dispute this; he said the investigation was opened “on the thinnest of suspicions.” That is both true and, as Horowitz points out, sufficient.
Barr thinks it was unwise to open so significant an investigation on such thin evidence. Horowitz is not claiming it was prudent; he is saying the regulations permitted it.
More to the point, Barr’s beef was less with the opening of the investigation than with “the steps taken” after the investigation was opened.
This, plainly, is a reference to the use of intrusive investigative techniques – in particular, confidential informants and FISA surveillance warrants.
Barr’s point is that, given the norm against permitting the incumbent government’s investigative powers to intrude on our political process, it was wrong to use such aggressive tactics given the threadbare basis for suspicion.
Horowitz is not disputing that. He is saying that it is not his place to second-guess discretionary judgment calls about investigative tactics as long as the probe is legitimately opened. And clearly, the IG report is a testament to the abuse of those tactics: the misrepresentations to the FISA court, and the fact that, although the use of informants generated exculpatory evidence, the Bureau inexplicably continued investigating a U.S. political campaign.
“Fake News” is an overused and oft-abused term. In the case of the reported Barr vs. Horowitz controversy, however, it might just be apt.
There are many things to be said about the 476-page FISA abuse report filed by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz – too many to say in a single column. So we’ll try to take them in small bites. Let’s start with an IG’s finding that the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation was properly “predicated.”
To understand what (as in how little) the report actually says on predication, Horowitz’s two baseline assumptions must be considered.
First, regarding the quantum of fact-based suspicion necessary before an investigation may properly be opened, the FBI sets the bar so low it is illusory.
Essentially, a hunch will do for purposes of opening a preliminary investigation. Something only slightly less nebulous, such as a suspicion that can be articulated reasonably (though not convincingly), will do for a full-blown investigation.
The idea is that, **legally,** the FBI must be given the widest of berths to enforce the law and protect national security. Practically, the expectation is that the agency’s focus will be confined to serious cases, not bogus ones, due to the guidance of its supervisors.
Second, it is not the IG’s job to review discretionary judgments by government officials, only to determine if laws, rules, policies, or procedures have been violated.
The interplay between these two assumptions renders meaningless the IG’s determination that the investigation was properly predicated.
Essentially, the IG is saying that, underwritten procedures rather than day-to-day common sense, there are no significant impediments to the FBI’s opening of any investigation.
Sure, there are a few obvious no-nos. A probe may not be opened, even preliminarily, based on invidious discrimination (race, ethnicity, religion, sexual preference, etc.). It must not be opened for a non-law-enforcement or national security reason – e.g., an agent may not snoop around financial institutions because he’s curious about how much money his neighbors make.
But there’s not much more to it than that. If a person of no known background, or even a track record of deception, tips an FBI agent that Donald Trump is an agent of the Kremlin, the IG is not going to say it would be improper for the FBI to poke around.
He is apt to accept the Bureau’s self-serving claim that, even if the grounds of suspicion were not strong, the nature of the allegation was so disturbing that it would have been irresponsible not to investigate.
Logically, of course, that means no allegation, no matter how thinly supported, is beyond the pale if it sounds sensational enough.
Add to that the IG’s caveat that reviewing discretionary decisions is not in his purview. In other words, as long as judgment calls are made within the context of a case that has been opened legitimately (as that concept is forgivingly defined in FBI regs), it is not the IG’s function to assess those judgment calls – including the decision to open the investigation in the first place.
The IG is not there to tell us whether a decision was appropriate, much less prudent, or at least carefully considered. If the predication is adequate, then the IG tells us he cannot second-guess the investigation’s commencement.
As a result, the IG may not (or at least does not) tell us the only thing that matters: Was it appropriate under the circumstances to open an investigation of the Trump campaign?
This is the nub of Attorney General William Barr’s disagreement with the report.
We have a norm in the United States against the incumbent administration’s use of the government’s intelligence and law-enforcement apparatus in the service of domestic politics.
Moreover, counterintelligence powers, which are vital to protecting our nation from terrorist attacks, hinge on public and congressional support. They will lose that support if they are exploited for political purposes.
Consequently, if the FBI is going to breach that norm, it must have strong evidence to believe a political campaign is conspiring with a foreign power.
That is Barr’s point. He is not talking about what the FBI may do in a run-of-the-mill case under its ever-elastic predication guidelines. He is talking about what it must do in order to make responsible decisions in light of the stakes involved.
The Horowitz review does not account for that. It simply says the investigation was properly predicated under the FBI’s low-bar standards for opening cases.
It does not say it was appropriate for the FBI to open a case on sparse evidence in light of the possibility that the Bureau would interfere in, and potentially even swing, an American election.
The Horowitz report confirms that the bureau deceived FISA judges with the Steele dossier.
By The Editorial Board
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz in June 2018.PHOTO: MANUEL BALCE CENETA/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The press corps is portraying Monday’s report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz as absolution for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but don’t believe it. The report relates a trail of terrible judgment and violations of process that should shock Americans who thought better of their premier law-enforcement agency.
Readers can look at the detailed executive summary and decide for themselves. But our own initial reading confirms the worst of what we feared about the bureau when it was run by James Comey. The FBI corrupted the secret court process for obtaining warrants to spy on former Trump aide Carter Page. And it did so by supplying the court with false information produced by Christopher Steele, an agent of the Hillary Clinton campaign.
***
How can anyone, most of all civil libertarians, pass this off as no big deal? The absolution is supposedly that Mr. Horowitz concludes that the FBI decision to open a counter-intelligence probe against the Trump campaign in July 2016 “was sufficient to predicate the investigation” under current FBI rules.
Yet Mr. Horowitz also notes that these rules amount to a “low threshold for predication.” John Durham, the U.S. Attorney investigating these matters for Attorney General William Barr, said Monday he disagrees with Mr. Horowitz’s conclusions on predication, albeit without elaboration for now.
Mr. Horowitz confirms what the FBI had already leaked to friendly reporters, which is that the bureau’s alarm in July 2016 was triggered by a conversation that former Trump aide George Papadopoulos had with Australian Alexander Downer. But we learn for the first time that the FBI immediately ramped up its counter-intelligence probe to include four Trump campaign officials: Messrs. Page and Papadopoulos, then campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency Michael Flynn.
The bureau quickly moved to a full-scale investigation it called Crossfire Hurricane. The FBI’s justification, as related to Mr. Horowitz, is that the risk of Russian disruption of the 2016 election was too great to ignore.
Yet the bureau never told anyone in the Trump campaign, or even Donald Trump, whom or what it was investigating so he could reduce the danger or distance himself from those advisers. The FBI was investigating the campaign but wouldn’t tell the candidate who would soon be elected.
***
The FBI abuses escalated when it was presented with the now infamous Steele dossier. Mr. Steele was hired by Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS, the oppo-research outfit hired by a law firm for the Clinton campaign. Mr. Horowitz confirms that the FBI then used the Steele dossier to trigger its application to the FISA court to spy on Mr. Page.
“We determined that the Crossfire Hurricane team’s receipt of Steele’s election reporting on September 19, 2016 played a central and essential role in the FBI’s and Department’s decision to seek the FISA order,” Mr. Horowitz says. This confirms what Rep. Devin Nunes and House Republicans first disclosed in February 2018, which was denied by Rep. Adam Schiff and sneered at by the press at the time.
Mr. Horowitz also finds that the FBI told the FISA court that Mr. Steele was credible without having tried to confirm the details or verify his sources. Mr. Horowitz found no fewer than seven key “errors or omissions” in the FBI’s original FISA application, and 10 more in the three subsequent applications. The latter were especially egregious because they ignored information that the FBI’s own Crossfire Hurricane team had later gathered that cast doubt on the Steele claims.
The omissions include the stunner that Mr. Page had been working as an “operational contact” for what Mr. Horowitz calls another U.S. agency from 2008-2013. Mr. Page has said this is the CIA, which Mr. Horowitz doesn’t confirm, though he does say that Mr. Page was reporting on his Russian contacts, which the agency deemed credible.
In other words, the FBI was using Mr. Page’s Russian contacts as evidence against him to the FISA court even as the other agency considered his reports on those Russians to be helpful to the U.S. Mr. Horowitz says the FBI never disclosed this information to the FISA judges.
“Much of that information was inconsistent with, or undercut, the assertions contained in the FISA applications that were used to support probable cause and, in some instances, resulted in inaccurate information being included in the [FISA] applications,” the report says. This is the Inspector General’s bland way of saying that the FBI deceived four FISA judges.
Democrats and the press are making much of Mr. Horowitz’s conclusion that he “did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation” influenced FBI decisions. But his report does show that political bias was conveyed to the FISA court from the Clinton campaign via the Steele dossier through the FBI.
It was conveyed by Bruce Ohr, a senior Justice Department official whose wife, Nellie Ohr, worked for Fusion GPS. Mr. Horowitz may not have found a memo with the words “let’s get Trump,” but his evidence shows that getting Mr. Trump was the goal of Mr. Steele and Fusion GPS. Mr. Ohr met 13 times with the FBI to discuss the Steele findings.
Even if you buy the “no bias” line, all of this had major political consequences. Fusion GPS used its media contacts to spread word of the Steele dossier’s accusations, and news of the FBI’s use of that dossier became a media hook to suggest the accusations were credible. This became another part of the false Russia collusion narrative played up by the press and the likes of former CIA director John Brennan.
r. Horowitz says Crossfire Hurricane investigators never verified any of the Steele dossier allegations against Mr. Page. Even a year after the first FISA warrant, in September 2017, the report says the FBI had only “corroborated limited information in the Steele election reporting.” Robert Mueller later spent two years looking for proof of collusion and found nothing, while the Trump Presidency was besieged.
The Horowitz report should not be the end of this tawdry tale. Whether or not there are prosecutions, Messrs. Barr and Durham should release the entire FISA record to the public. The GOP Senate also needs to call the FISA judges to tell their story under oath.
The FISA process was established in the 1970s as a check on FBI abuse, though we and others warned that it would hurt accountability instead. So it has played out in this case. The U.S. doesn’t need a process that uses Article III judges as political cover to justify abusive wiretaps on innocent Americans, much less on presidential campaigns.
Story 2: House Judiciary Committee Passes Two Articles of Impeachment Against President Trump — Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress in Partisan 23 Democrats Vote Yes and 17 Republican Vote No — No Crime — No Evidence — No Sense — Not Guilty Videos —
WATCH: Articles of impeachment against Trump approved by House Judiciary Committee
House Judiciary passes two articles of impeachment against Trump
House Judiciary Committee passes articles of impeachment against President Trump
Democrats admit they expect more defections from vulnerable House members who will vote AGAINST impeaching Donald Trump
As many as a half dozen Democrats could break rank and vote alongside Republicans during next weeks expected full House impeachment vote
Earlier this week a group of moderate Democrats floated censuring President Trump instead of impeaching him
A number of moderate Democrats have yet to reveal how they plan to vote, with Democratic leadership vowing not to whip votes beforehand
Democrats anticipate several more moderate members may break rank and vote against President Trump‘s impeachment.
One source told DailyMail.com that as many as six Democrats could vote no during the expected full House impeachment vote next week. The Hill aide would be ‘shocked’ if more than 10 voted alongside Republicans.
On Halloween, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi first had the House vote on impeachment Reps. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey and Collin Peterson of Minnesota voted against the resolution.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is likely to see several more Democrats break rank and vote against impeachment. She’s said she doesn’t plan to whip the caucus for votes prior to the expected full House floor vote next week
The Democrats who have the most to lose are ones who won seats in districts that voted for President Trump, pictured at his Pennsylvania rally Tuesday night, in 2016, and could face tough re-election bids if they vote to impeach the president
Reps. Collin Peterson (left) and Jeff Van Drew (right) were the only two Democrats to vote alongside Republicans during House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s first impeachment vote, which took place on Halloween
Democrats reveal two articles of impeachment against Trump
All the Republicans voted together – against it – while former Republican-turned-independent Rep. Justin Amash voted alongside Democrats to proceed.
Now with impeachment proceedings nearing a conclusion in the House there have been some tells that moderates have the jitters.
For one, Politico reported that a number of moderate Democrats gathered Monday night to talk about censuring the president as opposed to impeachment.
That effort didn’t get off the ground.
‘It never had life to begin with,’ quipped the Hill aide. ‘I can’t tell how sincere the push for censure is,’ remarked another who works for a moderate Democratic member.
Politico named just four members in the story – Reps. Josh Gottheimer, Kurt Schrader, Anthony Brindisi and Ben McAdams – but said as many as 10 participated in the gathering.
A lot of moderates simply aren’t showing their hand yet.
Peterson’s spokesperson told the Star Tribune that he’s undecided – despite being one of those two Democratic no votes.
Another moderate Democrat from Minnesota, Rep. Angie Craig, told the paper she also hasn’t made a decision.
‘This has really been a somber time to me,’ Craig told reporters, according to the Star Tribune. ‘No one runs for Congress wanting to ever have to face the question of whether to vote on articles of impeachment. But at the same time, you know, I have to weigh the evidence and the facts and fulfill my Constitutional duty and I will certainly be very thoughtful and deliberate as I make that decision.’
A spokesman for Rep. Max Rose, a Democrat from New York, who was formerly a hold-out said ‘he hasn’t made an announcement either way yet.’
Brindisi, another New York Democrat and an attendee of the censure meeting, hasn’t responded to requests for comment about his position.
They’ve had the benefit of not being a member of the House Judiciary Committee, where members announced their positions publicly Wednesday night.
Moderate member Rep. Lucy McBath, a Democrat who represents a previously red Georgia district, split the difference in her speech.
‘I promised I would work with the president when his policies were right for Georgia, and stand up to him when they are not. And I am proud of our progress … I am proud to have written a bill that was signed into law by President Trump,’ she said.
‘But I am not proud of the president’s actions that bring us here tonight,’ she added, telling the crowd she backed impeachment.
The Hill aide told DailyMail.com that it helped that Pelosi kept the impeachment narrowly focused. Moderate Democrats wanted impeachment to be about Ukraine and Ukraine only.
Other members of the caucus, including even House Judiciary Committee Jerry Nadler, had advocated widening the scope to include articles related to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference.
Liberals, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, had even suggested that the articles stretch as wide as Trump violating the Emoluments Clause.
And Democratic leadership has vowed not to whip the vote prior to next week’s big decision.
‘This is one of those issues where members have to come to their own conclusions, it’s just too consequential,’ Rep. Dan Kildee, a Democrat from Michigan, told the Washington Post. Kildee is a deputy whip. ‘I think this is one of those votes where people are going to be remembered for a long time for how they voted on it.’
‘High crimes and misdemeanors:’ Trump impeachment charges read out
Story 3: House Minority Leader McCarthy on Impeachment — Videos
Rep. McCarthy on impeachment: We wouldn’t be here if we had a fair process
Donald Trump claims ‘the people are DISGUSTED’ and his fundraising is ‘through the roof’ as Democrats pass two articles of impeachment in just seven minutes and set up full House vote next week
Donald Trump praised the fiery Republicans lawmakers who defended him during Thursday’s marathon 14-hour impeachment hearing
Two articles passed on party-line votes of 23 to 17
Impeachment articles are on abuse of power and obstruction of Congress
‘The unity & sheer brilliance of these Republican warriors, all of them, was a beautiful sight to see,’ the president tweeted
Move sets up a likely House floor vote on Wednesday
That would bring an impeachment trial in the Senate in January
Angry Republican lawmakers were hopping mad at Jerry Nadler when he scheduled vote on articles of impeachment for Friday morning
Nadler did not hold it Thursday night when the hearing wrapped
President Donald Trump teed off on the Democratic impeachment effort Friday, claiming Americans are ‘disgusted’ and showing no evidence of being constrained by the effort to move ahead with his potential removal from office.
‘The people are disgusted,’ the president said, soon after the House Judiciary voted out two articles against him. He called the impeachment a ‘scam’ – even as he said it had a political upside for himself.
‘It’s a very sad thing for our country but it seems to be very good for me politically … The polls have gone through the roof for Trump,’ Trump said.
‘This has been a wild week,’ the president said. ‘It’s a witch hunt, it’s a sham, it’s a hoax. Nothing was done wrong, zero was done wrong,’ he said of his conduct toward Ukraine, which earned him an ‘abuse of power’ vote in the Democratic-controlled Judiciary panel.
President Donald Trump called impeachment a ‘scam’ not long after the House Judiciary Committee voted two articles against him
‘I think it’s a horrible thing to be using the tool of impeachment, which is supposed to be used in an emergency and it would seem many many many years apart. They’re using this for a perfect phone call,’ Trump said. He was referencing his July 25 phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a push that was at the heart of the Democratic impeachment push.
He also unloaded on the FBI following the release of an inspector general’s report that both found the Russia probe was sufficiently predicated but also found agents acted improperly when pushing for surveillance of Trump campaign officials over Russia.
‘When you look at the IG report and these horrible FBI people,’ Trump told reporters inside the Oval Office soon after the impeachment vote.
As for his preferences for his looming Senate trial, where his senior legal aides are already huddling with Senate leadership, Trump said: ‘I’ll do whatever I want.’
‘We did nothing wrong. So I’ll do long, or short. I’ve heard Mitch, I’ve heard Lindsey. I think they are very much in agreement on some concept. I’ll do whatever they want to do. It doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t mind the long process, because I’d like to see the whistleblower, who’s a fraud.’
The House Judiciary Committee voted out two articles of impeachment against President Donald J. Trump on Friday in a brief early morning session following angry marathon debates this week.
Momet of history: Jerry Nadler became only fourth House Judiciary committee chairman to oversee articles of impeachment being adopted against a president
Both articles – on abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, passed on party-line votes of 23 to 17 – keeping an impeachment effort now being orchestrated by Democratic party leaders on its brisk schedule, with a House floor vote set for Wednesday.
Judiciary Chairman Jerold Nadler announced the decision in an ornate House hearing room after a process that took less than seven minutes Friday morning.
In a procedure that was free of the theatrics that characterized Thursday’s 14-hour session, the presidential impeachment vote – just the fourth in U.S. history in the committee – the committee voted out both articles and immediately adjourned.
The votes sets up a House floor vote next week, where a handful of Democrats have signaled they will defect but passage is considered likely. The White House has already turned its attention to the Senate, where an impeachment trial will follow.
Members were solemn as they shouted out their votes – aye or nay – one at a time, in a cavernous Ways & Means Committee hearing room that has been specially outfitted with seven TV cameras for the occasion.
Split: Jerry Nadler, the Democratic chairman, and Doug Collins, the Republican ranking member, each saw their sides united in voting on party lines
Brief: It took just seven minutes for the two articles of impeachment to be approved Friday morning, ending three days of debate
History in the making: The Democratic side as the House Judiciary Committee votes for two articles of impeachment
Moment of history: Martha Roby, an Alabama Republican, brought her son George with her as she voted against the articles of impeacment
What it’s all about: The clerk’s copy of the articles of impeachment were left on her desk after the vote
How they voted: The clerks’ copies of the vote tally show how the vote went through on party lines 23-17
Defeat: Republican ranking member heads for the door after the Democratic majority vote through through the two articles of impeachment
House Judiciary Committee approves two articles of impeachment
Most simply stated their preference. Some, like retiring Rep. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, barked out their ‘No’ votes with force.
The White House quickly mocked the effort in a blistering statement. ‘This desperate charade of an impeachment inquiry in the House Judiciary Committee has reached its shameful end. The President looks forward to receiving in the Senate the fair treatment and due process which continues to be disgracefully denied to him by the House,’ said White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham.
In a further show of defiance, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani – a central player in the impeachment who Democrats describe as a key figure in the ‘shakedown’ effort of Ukraine – was pictured heading into the White House Friday.
During the vote, one lawmaker, Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert, asked after the abuse of power vote whether his own preference had been properly recorded. ‘Yeah want to make sure,’ he quipped to chuckles in the room.
Hearings that started out as the hottest ticket in political Washington ended with a fizzle. A bank of two rows of leather seats reserved for lawmakers had not a single elected occupant. Staff could be heard telling a few ordinary citizens to grab any seat they liked form the bloc.
Republicans were the first to race to the microphones outside the hearing room when it was over.
‘Everybody got dressed up, really no place to go. We voted on a provision, an allegation of abuse of power. There was an abuse of power at the Department of justice,’ said Gohmert.
‘There was an abuse of power at the FBI. There was an abuse of power at the FISA court. There was an abuse of power in our intel community. There was an abuse of power, even DOD was paying money to help set up the president,’ he said, echoing Trump’s defenses. The president had fired off more than 100 tweets Thursday in his own defense.
‘I have never in my entire life seen such an unfair, rigger, railroad job against the President of the United States,’ fumed Rep. Debbie Lesko of Arizona.
Said Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana: ‘I think the American people are going to militate against this. … I think there’s going to be a huge political price paid by the Democrats next year.’
Rep. Matt Gaetz – who on Thursday stunned onlookers by bringing up Hunter Biden’s cocaine use, prompting calls for civility by Democrats, compared impeachment to a ‘drug’ for Democrats.
‘For Democrats, impeachment is their drug. It is their obsession. It is their total focus. And it is deeply disappointing that they failed to meet the standard that they set for themselves.’
How they voted: Pramila Jayapal, a Washington Democrat, held up a copy of the Constitution as she voted ‘aye’
Aftermath: Texas Republican Louie Gohmert, a Trump ultra-loyalist, voiced anger at the outcome of the hearing after Republicans lost a 23-17 party lines vote
In the spotlight: Florida Republican Matt Gaetz used the debate Thursday to highlight Hunter Biden’s history of drug abuse to fury from Democrats
Gaetz had offered an amendment mentioning Hunter Biden and Ukrainian energy company Burisma, then read from an article about how Vice President Joe Biden’s son crashed a rental car where drug paraphernalia was later discovered. Gaetz himself was arrested for Driving Under the Influence as a younger man, although charges were dropped.
House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jerold Nadler was brief in his public remarks after the votes were over. ‘Today is a solemn and sad day. For the third time in a little over a century and a half, the House Judiciary Committee has voted articles of impeachment against the president, for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The House will act expeditiously,’ Nadler said. ‘Thank you, he added, without taking questions from reporters.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer released a statement confirming next week’s vote expressing the solemnity of the occasion.
‘This is a solemn and somber day for our country. For only the fourth time in our nation’s history, the House Judiciary Committee has recommended articles of impeachment against the President of the United States,’ he said.
‘The responsibility of impeaching the president for ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ is one the House takes very seriously; it is a responsibility that must not be avoided when demanded by the overwhelming evidence presented.,’ he continued.
‘Over the course of the past several weeks, the House and the American people have heard overwhelming evidence that President Donald Trump attempted to bribe a foreign government to interfere in the 2020 election on his behalf, thereby abusing his power for personal and political gain. In addition, he harmed America’s national security and undermined Americans’ right to a free and fair election next year,’ Hoyer said.
At the microphones: Jerry Nadler speaks after the history house vote
Frenzy of interest: Jerry Nadler is the center of attention for reports after the historic House vote
We’re off: Democrats Sylvia Garcia and Lou Correa pack up and head for the exits after the rapid vote on the articles of impeachment
He said Republicans ‘argued against President Trump’s impeachment not because they deny his wrongdoing but because they contend that it is not impeachable unless the President effectively declares that he is committing a crime while being caught in the act.’
‘Next week, these two articles of impeachment – on abuse of power and obstruction of Congress – will come to the House Floor for consideration. The representatives of the American people will then vote on whether to send this case against the President to the Senate for trial,’ he said.
The president, in a continuation of his effort to demonstrate he can work through the impeachment, Tweeted immediately after the vote that ‘We have agreed to a very large Phase One Deal with China.’
Trump had blasted Democrats for tying a U.S.-Canada-Mexico trade deal to impeachment timing, which they denied.
‘Take note @SpeakerPelosi – this is what real leadership looks like. President @realDonaldTrump never stops working and continues to make successful deals that benefit this country,’ wrote White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham.
The action will soon head to the Senate, where Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told Fox News host Sean Hannity he is cooperating with the White House on the trial set-up.
McConnell says there is ‘zero chance’ Trumpwill be removed from office following the impeachment trial – and said he is in ‘total coordination’ with Trump’s White House lawyers.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally who was a House manager during the impeachment of Bill Clinton, called the House impeachment a ‘sad, ridiculous sham in the U.S. House of Representatives. This needs to come to a quick end.’
Said Rep. Eric Swalwell in a statement: ‘Today, I voted to send articles of impeachment to the House of Representatives that will hold President Donald Trump accountable for his ongoing abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Fortunately, America’s Founders did not leave the people helpless to an executive’s abuses. Our Constitution provides the power of impeachment and removal. President Trump is on a constitutional crime spree, jeopardizing our national security and the integrity of our elections. We have no choice but to act.’
Top Judiciary Republican Doug Collins of Georgia accused Swalwell of conducting a tryout to be one of his party’s impeachment managers in the Senate trial.
Collins in his own statement accused Democrats of abuse of power for how they conducted the impeachment inquiry. Republicans have bashed it for being conducted ‘in secret’ in a ‘basement’ Capitol room where the House Intelligence Committee meets.
‘This abuse of power doesn’t just undermine the integrity of our chamber or the independence of future presidencies. Democrats have sacrificed core American tenets of due process, fairness and the presumption of innocence on the altar of a 2016 election that they lost three years ago,’ said Collins, who also fumed that Nadler postponed the vote from late Thursday night to Friday morning.
‘Rather than help Americans move into the future with confidence, Democrats are attempting to knee-cap our democracy. They’re telling millions of voters that Democrats will work to overturn the will of the people whenever it conflicts with the will of liberal elites,’ Collins said.
Trump on Friday morning praised the fiery Republicans lawmakers who defended him during Thursday’s marathon 14-hour impeachment hearing and touted his strong position among voters ahead of Friday’s morning’s vote.
Angry Republican lawmakers were hopping mad at Jerry Nadler when the Judiciary Committee chairman closed out Thursday night’s hearing without holding a vote on the formal articles of impeachment against the president.
Trump praised his loyalists for their defense of him.
‘The Republicans House members were fantastic yesterday. It always helps to have a much better case, in fact the Dems have no case at all, but the unity & sheer brilliance of these Republican warriors, all of them, was a beautiful sight to see. Dems had no answers and wanted out!,’ the president wrote in an early morning tweet on Friday.
He returned to Twitter later in the morning to ponder the upcoming vote against him.
‘How do you get Impeached when you have done NOTHING wrong (a perfect call), have created the best economy in the history of our Country, rebuilt our Military, fixed the V.A. (Choice!), cut Taxes & Regs, protected your 2nd A, created Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, and soooo much more? Crazy!,’ he mused.
Donald Trump praised the fiery Republicans lawmakers who defended him during Thursday’s marathon 14-hour impeachment hearing
Nadler shocked the panel on Thursday night when he closed out the hearing without calling for a vote on the impeachment articles, opting to bring lawmakers back at 10 am on Friday to decide the matter.
‘It is now very late at night,’ Nadler said. ‘I want the members on both sides of the aisle to think about what has happened over these past two days and to search their consciences before they cast their final votes.”
The Republicans called Nadler’s move a stunt and accused him of wanting to get television time by scheduling the vote for Friday morning instead of holding it near midnight when the committee session wrapped up.
Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, the top Republican on the panel, accused Nadler of running a ‘kangaroo court’ and said it was ‘the most bush league stunt I’ve ever seen in my entire life.’
Democrats, in return, charged Republicans with dragging out the proceedings well into the night with amendment after amendment, all of which were doomed to fail in the Democratic-controlled panel.
The committee members will reconvene to vote on the two charges against Trump – abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
Both are expected to pass the Democratically-controlled panel.
The Judiciary panel is stacked with partisan warriors on both sides, and when Democrats pushed through procedures on impeachment in the full House, only two party members defected.
The vote will guarantee that Trump will become the third president in U.S. history to be impeached and sets up a vote in the full House for next week.
The president fired off five tweets in quick succession Friday morning to slam the ‘do nothing Democrats’ for their ‘hoax’ of an impeachment and argue the move won’t play well among voters in the crucial swing states during next year’s election.
Trump has been unusually active on Twitter – his favorite method of communication – in the past week, some days sending out up to a hundred retweets of people supporting him.
‘The Do Nothing Democrats have become the Party of lies and deception! The Republicans are the Party of the American Dream!,’ Trump wrote in an attack on Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her party Friday morning.
‘Poll numbers have gone through the roof in favor of No Impeachment, especially with Swing States and Independents in Swing States. People have figured out that the Democrats have no case, it is a total Hoax. Even Pelosi admitted yesterday that she began this scam 2 1/2 years ago!,’ he noted.
Polls show Americans to be divided on impeachment – a divisive topic that has caused fury on both sides of the political aisle, one of the reasons Democratic leadership is teeing up a vote for early next week to get the issue done by the end of the year.
Republicans are expected to hold the line and vote not to impeach the president.
‘My Approval Rating in the Republican Party is 95%, a Record. Thank you! #2020Election,’ Trump tweeted Friday morning.
‘The Republican Party is more united now than at any time in its history – by far!,’ he added.
Democratic lawmakers are also expected to by and large vote in favor of the formal articles of impeachment. A few moderates who won their House seats in districts carried by Trump in the 2016 election could waver.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, stunned Republicans by abruptly ending Thursday’s 14-plus-hour impeachment hearing and announcing that the panel would vote on two impeachment articles Friday morning
But Pelosi said Thursday that she is not lobbying those lawmakers to toe the party line.
‘People have to come to their own conclusions,’ the speaker said.
But Thursday’s hearing was the longest and one of the most cantankerous to date in the impeachment process.
Its purpose was to allow amendments to the nine-page resolution outlining the charges against Trump.
But it saw Republican lawmakers leveling angry charges against the Democrats, who swatting away attempts to amend the impeachment road map in a hearing that ran throughout the day and closed out near midnight.
Democrats uniformly tore into Trump while Republicans loyally defended him, in a day-long confrontation that ultimately would come to encompass such topics as the 2020 elections, Stormy Daniels, Trump University, Rudy Giuliani, Michael Cohen, Hunter Biden, the Steele dossier, and the energy company Burisma – along with the meaning of the Constitution’s ‘high crimes and misdemeanors.’
By late Thursday, the squabbles had lasted beyond lunch, dinner, and an event for lawmakers at the White House. Some members had had enough.
‘Dare I state the obvious: I have not heard a new point or an original thought from either side in the last three hours,’ said Rep. Tom McClintock, a California Republican.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler and top Republican Doug Collins during opening statements that kicked off Thursday’s 14-hour hearing
Judiciary Committee Democrats expect a party-line vote that will pass the impeachment articles to the full House of Representatives next week
A furious Rep. Doug Collins (above) railed against Nadler after the hearing Friday night, saying Democrats had railroaded them by blocking their witnesses and steamrolling the process forward to get it over with before Christmas
President Donald Trump, pictured at the Congressional Ball held at the White House while the rancorous hearing proceeded, is unlikely to be removed from office since Republicans hold a Senate majority and two-thirds of senators would have to vote against him
The debate centered on a series of amendments by Republicans, which all were voted down on party-line votes, clearly establishing that the Democrats would prevail on the larger vote to come.
In the most explosive moment of the long day, Republicans turned the second day of Judiciary impeachment hearings into a direct attack on Joe Biden’s son Hunter—citing his cocaine use and ugly public divorce as they tried to amend the Democrats’ articles of impeachment.
Just minutes after the panel voted down a GOP amendment to strike down an abuse of power article, Trump loyalist Rep. Matt Gaetz introduced a three-line amendment that explicitly mentioned Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma.
The amendment would have changed the articles of impeachment to allege that Trump’s call to Ukraine’s president was seeking information on Hunter Biden, not his father Joe – which would undermine the allegation that it was an abuse of power. It would mention a ‘well-known corrupt company, Burisma, and its corrupt hiring of Hunter Biden.’
‘Hunter Biden and Burisma, that’s an interesting story. And I think just about every American knows there’s something up with that,’ Gaetz, one of Trump’s most prominent defenders on Capitol Hill, said.
‘$86,000 a month, no experience, working for some foreign government while your dad is the Vice President of the United States? Is there anyone who believes this is okay?’
Impeachment hearing turns into MARATHON clash over Donald Trump
But it was not just the complex Ukraine dealings of the former vice president’s son that Gaetz raised – he immediately referenced Hunter’s struggles with cocaine use, a problem that got him kicked out of the U.S. Navy.
The Florida Republican referenced a New Yorker magazine article that cataloged how a Hertz rental agent had told a reporter of finding drug paraphernalia after a Hunter Biden rental car wreck.
‘It’s a little hard to believe that Burisma would hire Hunter Biden to resolve their international disputes when he could not resolve his own dispute with Hertz rental car over leaving cocaine and a crack pipe in the car,’ said Gaetz.
After Gaetz spoke, Democratic Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia condemned the effort.
‘Pot calling the kettle black is not something that should do,’ Johnson said.
‘I don’t know what members, if any, have any problem with substance abuse,’ he He continued. But he cautioned against ‘character assassination.’
Gaetz was himself arrested for Driving Under the Influence in 2008 when he was 26 years old. According to the Tampa Bay Times, Gaetz admitted drinking two beers, refused a field sobriety test. However the charges were dropped. At the time his father Don was a Republican state senator in Florida.
Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a Donald Trump loyalist, introduced an amendment inserting Hunter Biden’s name into an impeachment article – then brought up his past cocaine use
Rebuke: Hank Johnson, a Georgia Democrat, told Gaetz: ‘I don’t know what members, if any, have any problem with substance abuse,’ he continued. But he cautioned against ‘character assassination.’ Gaetz was arrested for a DUI but charges were dropped. At the time of the arrest, Gaetz’s father, Don, was a Republican member of the Florida state senate
Republicans introduced an amendment that would name Hunter Biden (above) and Burisma in an impeachment article Democrats brought against President Donald Trump
The full-frontal attack on Hunter Biden came as House Republicans repeatedly sought to undermine the Democratic effort to impeach Trump by mocking the charges leveled against him and denying he tried to foist a ‘quid pro quo’ on the president of Ukraine.
Thursday’s bitterness is expected to set off another round of partisan rambling when lawmakers return on Friday morning.
But Trump is expected to be formally impeached when the full House votes next week.
Then the matter moves to trial in the Senate. The Republican-led chamber is unlikely to vote to find the president guilty and remove him from office.
White House counsel Pat Cipollone and legislative liaison Eric Ueland met on Thursday afternoon with Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader to discuss the potential for a Senate trial.
McConnell has said an impeachment trial would not happen until January.
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Alternate Unemployment Charts
The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers.
The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.
Series Id: LNS11000000
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Seas) Civilian Labor Force Level
Labor force status: Civilian labor force
Type of data: Number in thousands
Age: 16 years and over
Download:
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
2000
142267(1)
142456
142434
142751
142388
142591
142278
142514
142518
142622
142962
143248
2001
143800
143701
143924
143569
143318
143357
143654
143284
143989
144086
144240
144305
2002
143883
144653
144481
144725
144938
144808
144803
145009
145552
145314
145041
145066
2003
145937(1)
146100
146022
146474
146500
147056
146485
146445
146530
146716
147000
146729
2004
146842(1)
146709
146944
146850
147065
147460
147692
147564
147415
147793
148162
148059
2005
148029(1)
148364
148391
148926
149261
149238
149432
149779
149954
150001
150065
150030
2006
150214(1)
150641
150813
150881
151069
151354
151377
151716
151662
152041
152406
152732
2007
153144(1)
152983
153051
152435
152670
153041
153054
152749
153414
153183
153835
153918
2008
154063(1)
153653
153908
153769
154303
154313
154469
154641
154570
154876
154639
154655
2009
154210(1)
154538
154133
154509
154747
154716
154502
154307
153827
153784
153878
153111
2010
153484(1)
153694
153954
154622
154091
153616
153691
154086
153975
153635
154125
153650
2011
153263(1)
153214
153376
153543
153479
153346
153288
153760
154131
153961
154128
153995
2012
154381(1)
154671
154749
154545
154866
155083
154948
154763
155160
155554
155338
155628
2013
155763(1)
155312
155005
155394
155536
155749
155599
155605
155687
154673
155265
155182
2014
155352(1)
155483
156028
155369
155684
155707
156007
156130
156040
156417
156494
156332
2015
157053(1)
156663
156626
157017
157616
157014
157008
157165
156745
157188
157502
158080
2016
158371(1)
158705
159079
158891
158700
158899
159150
159582
159810
159768
159629
159779
2017
159693(1)
159854
160036
160169
159910
160124
160383
160706
161190
160436
160626
160636
2018
161123(1)
161900
161646
161551
161667
162129
162209
161802
162055
162694
162821
163240
2019
163229(1)
163184
162960
162470
162646
162981
163351
163922
164039
164364
164404
1 : Data affected by changes in population controls.
Labor Force Participation Rate
63.2%
Series Id: LNS11300000
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Seas) Labor Force Participation Rate
Labor force status: Civilian labor force participation rate
Type of data: Percent or rate
Age: 16 years and over
Download:
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
2000
67.3
67.3
67.3
67.3
67.1
67.1
66.9
66.9
66.9
66.8
66.9
67.0
2001
67.2
67.1
67.2
66.9
66.7
66.7
66.8
66.5
66.8
66.7
66.7
66.7
2002
66.5
66.8
66.6
66.7
66.7
66.6
66.5
66.6
66.7
66.6
66.4
66.3
2003
66.4
66.4
66.3
66.4
66.4
66.5
66.2
66.1
66.1
66.1
66.1
65.9
2004
66.1
66.0
66.0
65.9
66.0
66.1
66.1
66.0
65.8
65.9
66.0
65.9
2005
65.8
65.9
65.9
66.1
66.1
66.1
66.1
66.2
66.1
66.1
66.0
66.0
2006
66.0
66.1
66.2
66.1
66.1
66.2
66.1
66.2
66.1
66.2
66.3
66.4
2007
66.4
66.3
66.2
65.9
66.0
66.0
66.0
65.8
66.0
65.8
66.0
66.0
2008
66.2
66.0
66.1
65.9
66.1
66.1
66.1
66.1
66.0
66.0
65.9
65.8
2009
65.7
65.8
65.6
65.7
65.7
65.7
65.5
65.4
65.1
65.0
65.0
64.6
2010
64.8
64.9
64.9
65.2
64.9
64.6
64.6
64.7
64.6
64.4
64.6
64.3
2011
64.2
64.1
64.2
64.2
64.1
64.0
64.0
64.1
64.2
64.1
64.1
64.0
2012
63.7
63.8
63.8
63.7
63.7
63.8
63.7
63.5
63.6
63.8
63.6
63.7
2013
63.7
63.4
63.3
63.4
63.4
63.4
63.3
63.3
63.2
62.8
63.0
62.9
2014
62.9
62.9
63.1
62.8
62.9
62.8
62.9
62.9
62.8
62.9
62.9
62.8
2015
62.9
62.7
62.6
62.7
62.9
62.6
62.6
62.6
62.4
62.5
62.6
62.7
2016
62.7
62.8
62.9
62.8
62.7
62.7
62.8
62.9
62.9
62.8
62.7
62.7
2017
62.9
62.9
62.9
62.9
62.8
62.8
62.9
62.9
63.1
62.7
62.8
62.7
2018
62.7
63.0
62.9
62.8
62.8
62.9
62.9
62.7
62.7
62.9
62.9
63.1
2019
63.2
63.2
63.0
62.8
62.8
62.9
63.0
63.2
63.2
63.3
63.2
Employment Level
158,593,000
Series Id: LNS12000000
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Seas) Employment Level
Labor force status: Employed
Type of data: Number in thousands
Age: 16 years and over
Download:
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
2000
136559(1)
136598
136701
137270
136630
136940
136531
136662
136893
137088
137322
137614
2001
137778
137612
137783
137299
137092
136873
137071
136241
136846
136392
136238
136047
2002
135701
136438
136177
136126
136539
136415
136413
136705
137302
137008
136521
136426
2003
137417(1)
137482
137434
137633
137544
137790
137474
137549
137609
137984
138424
138411
2004
138472(1)
138542
138453
138680
138852
139174
139556
139573
139487
139732
140231
140125
2005
140245(1)
140385
140654
141254
141609
141714
142026
142434
142401
142548
142499
142752
2006
143150(1)
143457
143741
143761
144089
144353
144202
144625
144815
145314
145534
145970
2007
146028(1)
146057
146320
145586
145903
146063
145905
145682
146244
145946
146595
146273
2008
146378(1)
146156
146086
146132
145908
145737
145532
145203
145076
144802
144100
143369
2009
142152(1)
141640
140707
140656
140248
140009
139901
139492
138818
138432
138659
138013
2010
138438(1)
138581
138751
139297
139241
139141
139179
139438
139396
139119
139044
139301
2011
139250(1)
139394
139639
139586
139624
139384
139524
139942
140183
140368
140826
140902
2012
141584(1)
141858
142036
141899
142206
142391
142292
142291
143044
143431
143333
143330
2013
143292(1)
143362
143316
143635
143882
143999
144264
144326
144418
143537
144479
144778
2014
145150(1)
145134
145648
145667
145825
146247
146399
146530
146778
147427
147404
147615
2015
148150(1)
148053
148122
148491
148802
148765
148815
149175
148853
149270
149506
150164
2016
150622(1)
150934
151146
150963
151074
151104
151450
151766
151877
151949
152150
152276
2017
152128(1)
152417
152958
153150
152920
153176
153456
153591
154399
153847
153945
154065
2018
154482(1)
155213
155160
155216
155539
155592
155964
155604
156069
156582
156803
156945
2019
156694(1)
156949
156748
156645
156758
157005
157288
157878
158269
158510
158593
1 : Data affected by changes in population controls.
U-3 Unemployment Rate
3.5%
Series Id: LNS14000000
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Seas) Unemployment Rate
Labor force status: Unemployment rate
Type of data: Percent or rate
Age: 16 years and over
Download:
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
2009
7.8
8.3
8.7
9.0
9.4
9.5
9.5
9.6
9.8
10.0
9.9
9.9
2010
9.8
9.8
9.9
9.9
9.6
9.4
9.4
9.5
9.5
9.4
9.8
9.3
2011
9.1
9.0
9.0
9.1
9.0
9.1
9.0
9.0
9.0
8.8
8.6
8.5
2012
8.3
8.3
8.2
8.2
8.2
8.2
8.2
8.1
7.8
7.8
7.7
7.9
2013
8.0
7.7
7.5
7.6
7.5
7.5
7.3
7.2
7.2
7.2
6.9
6.7
2014
6.6
6.7
6.7
6.2
6.3
6.1
6.2
6.1
5.9
5.7
5.8
5.6
2015
5.7
5.5
5.4
5.4
5.6
5.3
5.2
5.1
5.0
5.0
5.1
5.0
2016
4.9
4.9
5.0
5.0
4.8
4.9
4.8
4.9
5.0
4.9
4.7
4.7
2017
4.7
4.7
4.4
4.4
4.4
4.3
4.3
4.4
4.2
4.1
4.2
4.1
2018
4.1
4.1
4.0
3.9
3.8
4.0
3.9
3.8
3.7
3.8
3.7
3.9
2019
4.0
3.8
3.8
3.6
3.6
3.7
3.7
3.7
3.5
3.6
3.5
U-6 Unemploymen Rate
6.9%
Series Id: LNS13327709
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (seas) Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of all civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers
Labor force status: Aggregated totals unemployed
Type of data: Percent or rate
Age: 16 years and over
Percent/rates: Unemployed and mrg attached and pt for econ reas as percent of labor force plus marg attached
Download:
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
2009
14.2
15.2
15.8
15.9
16.5
16.5
16.4
16.7
16.7
17.1
17.1
17.1
2010
16.7
17.0
17.1
17.1
16.6
16.4
16.4
16.5
16.8
16.6
16.9
16.6
2011
16.2
16.0
15.9
16.1
15.8
16.1
15.9
16.1
16.4
15.8
15.5
15.2
2012
15.2
15.0
14.5
14.6
14.7
14.8
14.8
14.6
14.8
14.4
14.4
14.4
2013
14.6
14.4
13.8
14.0
13.8
14.2
13.8
13.6
13.5
13.6
13.1
13.1
2014
12.7
12.6
12.6
12.3
12.2
12.0
12.1
12.0
11.7
11.5
11.4
11.2
2015
11.3
11.0
10.8
10.8
10.9
10.4
10.3
10.2
10.0
9.8
10.0
9.9
2016
9.8
9.7
9.8
9.7
9.9
9.5
9.7
9.6
9.7
9.6
9.4
9.2
2017
9.3
9.1
8.7
8.6
8.5
8.5
8.5
8.6
8.3
8.0
8.0
8.1
2018
8.2
8.2
7.9
7.8
7.7
7.8
7.5
7.4
7.5
7.5
7.6
7.6
2019
8.1
7.3
7.3
7.3
7.1
7.2
7.0
7.2
6.9
7.0
6.9
Not In Labor Force
95,616,000
Series Id: LNS15000000
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Seas) Not in Labor Force
Labor force status: Not in labor force
Type of data: Number in thousands
Age: 16 years and over
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
2000
69142
69120
69338
69267
69853
69876
70398
70401
70645
70782
70579
70488
2001
70088
70409
70381
70956
71414
71592
71526
72136
71676
71817
71876
72010
2002
72623
72010
72343
72281
72260
72600
72827
72856
72554
73026
73508
73675
2003
73960
74015
74295
74066
74268
73958
74767
75062
75249
75324
75280
75780
2004
75319
75648
75606
75907
75903
75735
75730
76113
76526
76399
76259
76581
2005
76808
76677
76846
76514
76409
76673
76721
76642
76739
76958
77138
77394
2006
77339
77122
77161
77318
77359
77317
77535
77451
77757
77634
77499
77376
2007
77506
77851
77982
78818
78810
78671
78904
79461
79047
79532
79105
79238
2008
78554
79156
79087
79429
79102
79314
79395
79466
79790
79736
80189
80380
2009
80529
80374
80953
80762
80705
80938
81367
81780
82495
82766
82865
83813
2010
83349
83304
83206
82707
83409
84075
84199
84014
84347
84895
84590
85240
2011
85441
85637
85623
85603
85834
86144
86383
86111
85940
86308
86312
86589
2012
87888
87765
87855
88239
88100
88073
88405
88803
88613
88429
88836
88722
2013
88900
89516
89990
89780
89827
89803
90156
90355
90481
91708
91302
91563
2014
91563
91603
91230
92070
91938
92107
92016
92099
92406
92240
92350
92695
2015
92671
93237
93454
93249
92839
93649
93868
93931
94580
94353
94245
93856
2016
94026
93872
93689
94077
94475
94498
94470
94272
94281
94553
94911
94963
2017
94389
94392
94378
94419
94857
94833
94769
94651
94372
95330
95323
95473
2018
95657
95033
95451
95721
95787
95513
95633
96264
96235
95821
95886
95649
2019
95010
95208
95577
96223
96215
96057
95874
95510
95599
95481
95616
Unemployment Level
5,881,000
Series Id: LNS13000000
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Seas) Unemployment Level
Labor force status: Unemployed
Type of data: Number in thousands
Age: 16 years and over
Download:
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
2009
12058
12898
13426
13853
14499
14707
14601
14814
15009
15352
15219
15098
2010
15046
15113
15202
15325
14849
14474
14512
14648
14579
14516
15081
14348
2011
14013
13820
13737
13957
13855
13962
13763
13818
13948
13594
13302
13093
2012
12797
12813
12713
12646
12660
12692
12656
12471
12115
12124
12005
12298
2013
12471
11950
11689
11760
11654
11751
11335
11279
11270
11136
10787
10404
2014
10202
10349
10380
9702
9859
9460
9608
9599
9262
8990
9090
8717
2015
8903
8610
8504
8526
8814
8249
8194
7990
7892
7918
7995
7916
2016
7749
7771
7932
7928
7626
7795
7700
7817
7933
7819
7480
7503
2017
7565
7437
7078
7019
6991
6948
6927
7115
6791
6588
6682
6572
2018
6641
6687
6486
6335
6128
6537
6245
6197
5986
6112
6018
6294
2019
6535
6235
6211
5824
5888
5975
6063
6044
5769
5855
5811
Employment Situation Summary
Transmission of material in this news release is embargoed until USDL-19-2105
8:30 a.m. (EST) Friday, December 6, 2019
Technical information:
Household data: (202) 691-6378 * cpsinfo@bls.gov * www.bls.gov/cps
Establishment data: (202) 691-6555 * cesinfo@bls.gov * www.bls.gov/ces
Media contact: (202) 691-5902 * PressOffice@bls.gov
THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION -- NOVEMBER 2019
Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 266,000 in November, and the unemployment rate
was little changed at 3.5 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.
Notable job gains occurred in health care and in professional and technical services.
Employment rose in manufacturing, reflecting the return of workers from a strike.
This news release presents statistics from two monthly surveys. The household survey
measures labor force status, including unemployment, by demographic characteristics.
The establishment survey measures nonfarm employment, hours, and earnings by industry.
For more information about the concepts and statistical methodology used in these two
surveys, see the Technical Note.
Household Survey Data
Both the unemployment rate, at 3.5 percent, and the number of unemployed persons, at
5.8 million, changed little in November. (See table A-1.)
Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (3.2 percent),
adult women (3.2 percent), teenagers (12.0 percent), Whites (3.2 percent), Blacks
(5.5 percent), Asians (2.6 percent), and Hispanics (4.2 percent) showed little or no
change in November. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)
The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more), at 1.2 million,
was essentially unchanged in November and accounted for 20.8 percent of the unemployed.
(See table A-12.)
The labor force participation rate was little changed at 63.2 percent in November. The
employment-population ratio was 61.0 percent for the third consecutive month. (See
table A-1.)
The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons, at 4.3 million, changed
little in November. These individuals, who would have preferred full-time employment,
were working part time because their hours had been reduced or they were unable to find
full-time jobs. (See table A-8.)
In November, 1.2 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, down by
432,000 from a year earlier. (Data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were
not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job
sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had
not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. (See table A-16.)
Among the marginally attached, there were 325,000 discouraged workers in November, down
by 128,000 from a year earlier. (Data are not seasonally adjusted.) Discouraged workers
are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for
them. The remaining 921,000 persons marginally attached to the labor force in November
had not searched for work for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities.
(See table A-16.)
Establishment Survey Data
Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 266,000 in November. Job growth has averaged
180,000 per month thus far in 2019, compared with an average monthly gain of 223,000 in
2018. In November, notable job gains occurred in health care and in professional and
technical services. Employment also increased in manufacturing, reflecting the return
of workers from a strike. Employment continued to trend up in leisure and hospitality,
transportation and warehousing, and financial activities, while mining lost jobs. (See
table B-1.)
In November, health care added 45,000 jobs, following little employment change in October
(+12,000). The November job gains occurred in ambulatory health care services (+34,000)
and in hospitals (+10,000). Health care has added 414,000 jobs over the last 12 months.
Employment in professional and technical services increased by 31,000 in November and by
278,000 over the last 12 months.
Manufacturing employment rose by 54,000 in November, following a decline of 43,000 in the
prior month. Within manufacturing, employment in motor vehicles and parts was up by 41,000
in November, reflecting the return of workers who were on strike in October.
In November, employment in leisure and hospitality continued to trend up (+45,000). The
industry has added 219,000 jobs over the last 4 months.
Employment in transportation and warehousing continued on an upward trend in November
(+16,000). Within the industry, job gains occurred in warehousing and storage (+8,000)
and in couriers and messengers (+5,000).
Financial activities employment also continued to trend up in November (+13,000), with
a gain of 7,000 in credit intermediation and related activities. Financial activities
has added 116,000 jobs over the last 12 months.
Mining lost jobs in November (-7,000), largely in support activities for mining (-6,000).
Mining employment is down by 19,000 since a recent peak in May.
In November, employment in retail trade was about unchanged (+2,000). Within the industry,
employment rose in general merchandise stores (+22,000) and in motor vehicle and parts
dealers (+8,000), while clothing and clothing accessories stores lost jobs (-18,000).
Employment in other major industries--including construction, wholesale trade, information,
and government--showed little change over the month.
In November, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose
by 7 cents to $28.29. Over the last 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by
3.1 percent. In November, average hourly earnings of private-sector production and
nonsupervisory employees rose by 7 cents to $23.83. (See tables B-3 and B-8.)
The average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls was unchanged at 34.4
hours in November. In manufacturing, the average workweek increased by 0.1 hour to 40.5
hours, while overtime decreased by 0.1 hour to 3.1 hours. The average workweek of private-
sector production and nonsupervisory employees held at 33.5 hours. (See tables B-2 and B-7.)
The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for September was revised up by 13,000 from
+180,000 to +193,000, and the change for October was revised up by 28,000 from +128,000
to +156,000. With these revisions, employment gains in September and October combined were
41,000 more than previously reported. (Monthly revisions result from additional reports
received from businesses and government agencies since the last published estimates and
from the recalculation of seasonal factors.) After revisions, job gains have averaged
205,000 over the last 3 months.
_____________
The Employment Situation for December is scheduled to be released on Friday,
January 10, 2020, at 8:30 a.m. (EST).
_____________________________________________________________________________________
| |
| Revision of Seasonally Adjusted Household Survey Data |
| |
| In accordance with usual practice, The Employment Situation news release for |
| December 2019, scheduled for January 10, 2020, will incorporate annual revisions to |
| seasonally adjusted household survey data. Seasonally adjusted data for the most |
| recent 5 years are subject to revision. |
|_____________________________________________________________________________________|
_____________________________________________________________________________________
| |
| Upcoming Changes to Household Survey Data |
| |
| With the publication of The Employment Situation for January 2020 on February 7, |
| 2020, two not seasonally adjusted series currently displayed in Summary table A-- |
| persons marginally attached to the labor force and discouraged workers--will be |
| replaced with new seasonally adjusted series. The new seasonally adjusted series |
| will be available in the BLS online database back to 1994. Not seasonally adjusted |
| data for persons marginally attached to the labor force and for discouraged workers |
| will continue to be published in table A-16. These series will also be available in |
| the BLS online database back to 1994. |
| |
| Persons marginally attached to the labor force and discouraged workers are inputs |
| into three alternative measures of labor underutilization displayed in table A-15. |
| Therefore, with the publication of The Employment Situation for January 2020, data |
| for U-4, U-5, and U-6 in table A-15 will reflect the new seasonally adjusted series.|
| Revised data back to 1994 will be available in the BLS online database. Not |
| seasonally adjusted series for the alternative measures will be unaffected. |
| |
| Beginning with data for January 2020, occupation estimates in table A-13 will |
| reflect the introduction of the 2018 Census occupation classification system into |
| the household survey. This occupation classification system is derived from the |
| 2018 Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system. In addition, industry |
| estimates in table A-14 will reflect the introduction of the 2017 Census industry |
| classification system, which is derived from the 2017 North American Industry |
| Classification System (NAICS). Historical data on occupation and industry will not |
| be revised. Beginning with data for January 2020, estimates will not be strictly |
| comparable with earlier years. |
| |
| Also beginning with data for January 2020, estimates of married persons will include|
| those in opposite-sex and same-sex marriages. Prior to January 2020, these estimates|
| include only those in opposite-sex marriages. This will affect marital status |
| estimates in tables A-9 and A-10. Historical data will not be revised. |
|_____________________________________________________________________________________|
Employment Situation Summary Table A. Household data, seasonally adjusted
HOUSEHOLD DATA
Summary table A. Household data, seasonally adjusted[Numbers in thousands]
Category
Nov.
2018
Sept.
2019
Oct.
2019
Nov.
2019
Change from:
Oct.
2019-
Nov.
2019
Employment status
Civilian noninstitutional population
258,708
259,638
259,845
260,020
175
Civilian labor force
162,821
164,039
164,364
164,404
40
Participation rate
62.9
63.2
63.3
63.2
-0.1
Employed
156,803
158,269
158,510
158,593
83
Employment-population ratio
60.6
61.0
61.0
61.0
0.0
Unemployed
6,018
5,769
5,855
5,811
-44
Unemployment rate
3.7
3.5
3.6
3.5
-0.1
Not in labor force
95,886
95,599
95,481
95,616
135
Unemployment rates
Total, 16 years and over
3.7
3.5
3.6
3.5
-0.1
Adult men (20 years and over)
3.3
3.2
3.2
3.2
0.0
Adult women (20 years and over)
3.4
3.1
3.2
3.2
0.0
Teenagers (16 to 19 years)
12.0
12.5
12.3
12.0
-0.3
White
3.4
3.2
3.2
3.2
0.0
Black or African American
6.0
5.5
5.4
5.5
0.1
Asian
2.7
2.5
2.9
2.6
-0.3
Hispanic or Latino ethnicity
4.5
3.9
4.1
4.2
0.1
Total, 25 years and over
3.0
2.8
2.9
2.9
0.0
Less than a high school diploma
5.6
4.8
5.6
5.3
-0.3
High school graduates, no college
3.5
3.6
3.7
3.7
0.0
Some college or associate degree
3.1
2.9
2.9
2.9
0.0
Bachelor’s degree and higher
2.2
2.0
2.1
2.0
-0.1
Reason for unemployment
Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs
2,842
2,572
2,674
2,806
132
Job leavers
697
840
849
777
-72
Reentrants
1,880
1,669
1,703
1,664
-39
New entrants
577
677
627
586
-41
Duration of unemployment
Less than 5 weeks
2,128
1,868
1,968
2,020
52
5 to 14 weeks
1,842
1,781
1,749
1,757
8
15 to 26 weeks
865
819
899
872
-27
27 weeks and over
1,259
1,314
1,264
1,224
-40
Employed persons at work part time
Part time for economic reasons
4,781
4,350
4,438
4,322
-116
Slack work or business conditions
2,882
2,588
2,754
2,633
-121
Could only find part-time work
1,562
1,322
1,287
1,268
-19
Part time for noneconomic reasons
20,909
21,573
21,549
21,534
-15
Persons not in the labor force (not seasonally adjusted)
Marginally attached to the labor force
1,678
1,299
1,229
1,246
–
Discouraged workers
453
321
341
325
–
– Over-the-month changes are not displayed for not seasonally adjusted data.
NOTE: Persons whose ethnicity is identified as Hispanic or Latino may be of any race. Detail for the seasonally adjusted data shown in this table will not necessarily add to totals because of the independent seasonal adjustment of the various series. Updated population controls are introduced annually with the release of January data.
Story 2: Saudi Air Force Aviation Student Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani Kills Three and Then Killed at Naval Air Station
Pensacola, Florida — Videos
Trump on shooting, impeachment, prisoner exchange
‘Radicalized’ Pensacola killer held mass-shooting video party the night before attack: FBI hunts missing Saudi servicemen linked to shooter and probes his trip to New York two days earlier
Saudi military student Mohammed Saeed al-Shamrani, 21, killed three people and injured 12 when he opened fire at Navy Station Pensacola on Friday
Another Saudi student allegedly videotaped the attack, while two others watched from a nearby car
The FBI have detained 10 Saudi students for questioning, but are still searching for ‘several’ others who have not been seen since the attack
Air Force bases have been ordered to increase their security as of Saturday evening
Al-Shamrani and three fellow Saudi students traveled to NYC just days before the attack, and investigators are now hunting anyone they may have met with
Officials have not yet deemed the shooting as ‘terrorism’, but FBI terrorism investigators are on the scene in Pensacola
Joshua Kaleb Watson, 23, Mohammed Haitham, 19, and Cameron Scott Walters, 21, have been named as the three victims of the attack
Military bases across the United States have been put on high alert in the wake of Friday’s mass shooting at Navy Station Pensacola.
US Northern Command, also known as NORTHCOM, sent out an advisory calling for an increase in security checks on Saturday night, according to Fox News.
It comes as the FBI continues to hunt for several Saudi military students from Pensacola, who have seemingly vanished in the wake of Friday’s attack.
Fellow Saudi Mohammed Saeed al-Shamrani, 21, killed three and wounded 12 others at the base before he was shot dead by police.
Investigators have now detained 10 Saudi military students from the base – a number revised up from six – but several others remain unaccounted for.
Authorities have not revealed the number of Saudi students they are still looking for, and they have not stated whether they are a risk to the public.
The New York Times reports that al-Shamrani and three fellow Saudi students traveled from Pensacola to New York last week, where they visited several museums and are thought to have watched the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting ceremony.
The tree lighting, attended by thousands of people, took place on Wednesday evening – just 36 hours before the shootings occurred.
According to one source, investigators are probing the motive for the group’s trip to the city. They also want to know who the men met with while they were there.
Meanwhile, sources with knowledge of the investigation say that three Saudi serviceman joined al-Shamrani for a dinner party on Thursday night to watch videos of mass shootings.
In the hours leading up to the attack, the shooter appeared to have posted criticism of U.S. wars in the Middle East to social media, saying he hated Americans for ‘committing crimes not only against Muslims but also humanity’ and for the country’s support of Israel.
He also posted a quote from assassinated al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, according to SITE Intelligence Group. The shooter’s Twitter account was taken down subsequent to the attack.
Mohammed Saeed al-Shamrani, 21, killed three and wounded 12 othersin the attack before he was shot dead by police. This picture was released by the FBI on Saturday evening
It has also been reported that one Saudi student allegedly videotaped al-Shamrani’s attack, while two others watched from a nearby car. It’s believed that those three Saudis are among the 10 who have been detained.
While Friday’s shooting his has not yet been officially deemed a terror attack, FBI terrorism investigators have been pictured investigating at the Pensacola base.
US Naval Academy graduate, Joshua Kaleb Watson, 23, (left) and military student Mohammed Haitham, 19, (right) have been identified as two of the victims of Friday’s shooting
Naval apprentice Cameron Scott Walters, 21, was named as the third victim
The latest: Military bases are put on high alert
US Northern Command, also known as NORTHCOM, issued the alert on Saturday in the wake of Friday’s attack at Pensacola, and a separate, unrelated attack at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on Wednesday.
A sailor whose submarine was docked at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, opened fire on three civilian employees Wednesday, killing two before taking his own life.
‘Given the recent attacks at two military installations, the Commander, US Northern Command has directed all DoD [Defense Department] installations, facilities and units within the US Northern Command area of responsibility to immediately assess force protection measures and implement increased random security measures appropriate for their facilities,’ Lieutenant Commander Michael Hatfield told Fox News.
‘The advisory also told leaders to remind their workforce to remain alert and if they see something, to say something by immediately reporting to appropriate authorities any suspicious activity they may observe,’ Hatfield said.
The FBI Evidence Response Team is pictured continuing their methodical search for clues at the base on Saturday. FBI terrorism investigators have been also been investigating, according to reports
Naval Air Station Pensacola will remain closed until further notice, officials said Saturday. The building where the shooting took place is pictured
Al-Shamrani was a second lieutenant attending the aviation school at Navy Station Pensacola. The Pentagon say his training with the US military began in August 2016, and was due to finish in August 2020.
AL- SHAMRANI’S DISTURBING TWITTER ACCOUNT AND HIS PRE-SHOOTING ‘MANIFESTO’
The now-deactivated Twitter account purportedly belonging to al- Shamrani included:
– A variety of anti-Israel postings and a quote from deceased al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden
– A lengthy manifesto posted at 4:39am Friday, less than two hours the shooting. The manifesto read in part:
‘I’m against evil, and America as a whole has turned into a nation of evil.
‘I’m not against you for just being American, I don’t hate you because [of] your freedoms, I hate you because every day you [are] supporting, funding and committing crimes not only against Muslims, but also humanity….
One of al-Shamrani’s uncles told CNN on Saturday that he was shocked by the attack, as his nephew was ‘likable and mannered towards his family and the community’.
‘He had his religion, his prayer, his honesty and commitments’, the uncle stated.
Meanwhile, it’s been revealed that al-Shamrani used a handgun in the shooting, which he purchased from a dealer in Pensacola.
Non-citizens are prohibited from purchasing guns in the United States, unless they are equipped with a hunting license.
According to NBC, al-Shamrani was equipped with such a license.
The gun has been described as a Glock 45 9-millimeter handgun with an extended magazine.
al-Sharami allegedly had four to six other magazines in his possession at the time of his shooting.
Elsewhere, the FBI is examining social media posts and investigating whether al-Shamrani acted alone or was connected to any broader group.
On Friday evening, the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadist media, claimed they had tracked a Twitter account belonging to al- Shamrani which featured a disturbing manifesto written just hours before the shooting.
Investigators are working to determine if it was in fact written by the shooter
Mohammed Saeed al-Shamrani was a Saudi aviator training at the U.S. naval station
SAUDI ARABIA’S TERROR LINK
15 of the 19 men associated with the al-Qaeda 9/11 attacks were Saudi citizens. A number of them received their aviation training at bases in the US.
al-Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden, hailed from a prominent Saudi family.
The US investigated some Saudi diplomats and others with Saudi government ties who knew hijackers after they arrived in the US, according to documents that have been declassified.
The Saudi government has repeatedly denied any involvement in the attacks.
The 9/11 Commission report found ‘no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded’ the attacks that al-Qaeda masterminded, but the commission also noted ‘the likelihood’ that Saudi government-sponsored charities did.
In 2017, families of 800 victims and 1,500 first responders file a lawsuit against Saudi Arabia accusing the country’s officials of aiding hijackers in 9/11 attacks. The lawsuit is ongoing.
Saudi Arabia is the richest and geographically largest Middle Eastern country – and a key US ally.
According to the State Department, Saudi Arabia is the second leading source of imported oil for the United States, providing just under one million barrels per day of oil to the US market
Saudi money is also widely invested in the US, with billions of private cash invested on Wall Street and beyond.
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a member of the ruling al-Saud family, has stakes in a huge range of big businesses including Citigroup, 21st Century Fox, and the Plaza Hotel in New York.
Many the country’s citizens also come to study at US colleges, with Saudis the fourth-largest source of foreign students, trailing only China, India and South Korea, according to The New York Times.
The US has long had a robust training program for Saudis, with 852 Saudi nationals currently in the country training under the Pentagon’s security cooperation agreement.
Saudi Arabia was not one of the seven countries included in President Trump’s 2017 ‘travel ban’
The three victims are publicly named
US Naval Academy graduate Joshua Kaleb Watson, 23, military student Mohammed Haitham, 19, and naval apprentice Cameron Scott Walters, 21, have been named as the three men who were shot and killed by al-Shamrani.
Watson was the first victim to be named, with his family confirming his death on Saturday morning.
In a heartbreaking tribute on Facebook, Watson’s brother wrote that he ‘saved countless lives today with his own.’
‘After being shot multiple times he made it outside and told the first response team where the shooter was and those details were invaluable. He died a hero,’ wrote brother Adam Watson.
Watson was a native of Enterprise, Alabama who was actively involved in JROTC and National Honor Society in high school.
On Saturday evening, the family of Haitham also confirmed that he was among the three killed.
Haitham, known as ‘Mo’ to those who knew him, was a track and field star from Lakewood, Florida, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
He graduated from high school in 2018 and joined the Navy soon afterward. Haitham completed boot camp and was assigned to flight crew training in Florida.
Evelyn Brady, his mother who herself is a Navy veteran and who now works for the Veterans’ Administration, said she was informed of her son’s death.
‘The commander of his school did call me,’ she said.
‘He told me my son did try to stop the shooter.’
Meanwhile, naval apprentice Walters, 21, from Richmond Hill, Georgia was confirmed as the third victim late Saturday.
Friends paid tribute on social media, saying he was a ‘kind-hearted’ and ‘wonderful’ person.
Ensign Joshua Watson graduates from the US Naval Academy in 2019
A SURVIVOR’S STORY
Among the 12 who were wounded was airman Ryan Blackwell, 27, who works at Naval Base Pensacola processing paperwork for international students.
Ryan Blackwell, 27, was shot and injured on Friday
He remains in intensive care after being shot in his pelvis and his right arm . His intestines were severed by a ricocheting bullet.
Speaking to Pensacola News Journal from his hospital bed on Saturday, Blackwell recalled how he and his two colleagues were shot through a glass door.
‘My adrenaline was pumping so much,’ he recalled. ‘I was worried about getting us to safety and getting us out of there’
Blackwell and his colleagues jumped out of a window and ran to safety, despite the fact they had all been shot and were ‘bleeding out’.
‘We could have been three more casualties if we didn’t escape,’ Blackwell recalled.
How US and Saudi officials have reacted to the attack
On Saturday, President Donald Trump told reporters: ‘We’re finding out what took place, whether it’s one person or a number of people. We’ll get to the bottom of it very quickly.’
He had faced criticism on Friday evening for his initial response to the shooting, which perceived as a defense of Saudi Arabia.
After news of the shooting broke, Trump tweeted his condolences to the families of the victims and noted that he had received a phone call from Saudi King Salman.
‘The King said that the Saudi people are greatly angered by the barbaric actions of the shooter, and that this person in no way shape or form represents the feelings of the Saudi people who love the American people,’ Trump wrote.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Saturday that he had spoken with Saudi Foreign Minister Al-Saud, who ‘expressed his condolences and sadness’ at the shooting.
However, not all US politicians have been as conciliatory.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis suggested Saudi Arabia should offer compensation to the victims.
‘The government of Saudi Arabia needs to make things better for these victims, and I think they’re going to owe a debt here given that this is one of their individuals,’ DeSantis said on Friday.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis suggested Saudi Arabia should offer compensation to the victims
Naval Air Station Pensacola: Home of The Blue Angels
One of the Navy’s most historic and storied bases, Naval Air Station Pensacola sprawls along the waterfront southwest of the city’s downtown and dominates the economy of the surrounding area.
Part of the base resembles a college campus, with buildings where 60,000 members of the Navy, Marines, Air Force and Coast Guard train each year in multiple fields of aviation.
The base is also the home of the Navy’s revered Blue Angels aerial demonstration team
Weapons are not allowed on the base Naval Air Station Pensacola, which will remain closed until further notice.
One of the Navy’s most historic and storied bases, Naval Air Station Pensacola sprawls along the waterfront southwest of the city’s downtown
Pensacola Shooting: Police Give Update On Victims, White House Reacts | NBC News
NAVAL AIR STATION PENSACOLA SHOOTING UPDATE
Six Saudis are arrested over Pensacola naval base shooting including three who FILMED the attack by countryman who killed three and wounded eight before being shot dead – as FBI probes terror link
Shooting took place on base early Friday morning, sparking a lockdown
Sources identified the suspected gunman as Saudi Air Force aviation student Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani
As of Friday evening, six Saudi nationals have been detained for questioning
It’s reported that three of them filmed the shooting as it happened
Rep Matt Gaetz, a Republican representing Pensacola, called the shooting ‘an act of terrorism’
President Trump tweeted that King Salman told him ‘the Saudi people are greatly angered by the barbaric actions of the shooter…’
Three other people were shot and killed during incident inside classroom building on base
The Air Force trainee who killed three and injured eight when he opened fire at a naval base in Florida assailed the United States as ‘a nation of evil’ before he went on his shooting rampage, AFP reports.
The man, first identified by NBC News as Saudi national Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, opened fire inside a classroom at Naval Air Station in Pensacola early Friday morning. Police quickly responded to the scene and he was shot dead.
US officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, said the suspect was a second lieutenant attending the aviation school at the base.
Meanwhile six other Saudi nationals were arrested near the base shortly after the attack, as investigators began to probe a terror link.
Three of the six were seen filming the entire incident as it unfolded, a source told The New York Times on Friday evening.
No officials have yet stated whether any of them were students inside the classroom where the shooting occurred.
Florida news outlets, citing sources, on Friday afternoon identified the suspected gunman as Saudi second lieutenant Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani and released this photo that purports to show the alleged shooter (pictured by NBC 6 South Florida)
Military from around the globe attend the Naval Air Station in Pensacola for flight training.
President Donald Trump this afternoon tweeted that he spoke on the phone with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, who he said expressed ‘sincere condolences’ to those impacted by the shooting.
Trump added that King Salman informed him the Saudi people love Americans and ‘are greatly angered by the barbaric actions of the shooter…’
Shortly before 8pm Eastern Time, Saudi officials condemned the shooting and claimed they are willing to cooperate with the investigation.
The shooter opened fire in a classroom building shortly before 7am Friday. The attack left four people dead, including the assailant, and eight others wounded.
A gunman opened fire at Naval Air Station Pensacola Friday morning, killing three people and injuring eight others before being shot dead by sheriff’s deputies
Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan said at a press conference on Friday two of his deputies engaged the gunman and took him out
Heavy police presence was reported at the scene of the shooting Friday morning
During an afternoon press briefing, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis confirmed the shooter was from Saudi Arabia, which has long relied on the US to train it military officers.
‘There’s obviously going to be a lot of questions about this individual being a foreign national, being a part of the Saudi air force and then to be here training on our soil,’ DeSantis told reporters.
‘Obviously the government of Saudi Arabia needs to make things better for these victims. And I think they are going to owe a debt here given that this is one of their individuals.’
Of the 19 men involved in the September 11 attacks, 15 were Saudi and some of them attended flight school in Florida.
In recent weeks, 18 naval aviators and two aircrew members from the Royal Saudi Naval Forces were training with the US Navy, including at Pensacola, according to a November 15 press release from the Navy. It was not clear if the suspected shooter was part of that delegation.
The delegation came under a Navy program that offers training to US allies, known as the Naval Education and Training Security Assistance Field Activity.
A person familiar with the program said that Saudi Air Force officers selected for military training in the United States are intensely vetted by both countries.
n ambulance is seen arriving at the scene of the mass shooting at NAS Pensacola
An armored vehicle is pictured on the scene during Friday’s shooting that claimed three innocent lives
A medical helicopter is seen in the skies over Pensacola, Florida, Friday morning
Twenty ‘hand-picked’ Saudi airmen training at Pensacola are among the 62,700 foreign military personnel the US trains each year
In the 2018 fiscal year, some 62,700 foreign military students from 155 countries participated in U.S.-run training, the total cost of which was approximately $776.3 million, according to DoD records.
Among them is a contingent Saudis who recently arrived at Naval Air Station Pensacola.
In recent weeks, 18 naval aviators and two aircrew members from the Royal Saudi Naval Forces were training with the U.S. Navy, including a stint at Pensacola, according to a November 15 press release from the Navy.
It was not clear if the suspected shooter was part of that delegation.
The delegation came under a Navy program that offers training to U.S. allies, known as the Naval Education and Training Security Assistance Field Activity.
A person familiar with the program said that Saudi Air Force officers selected for military training in the United States are intensely vetted by both countries.
The Saudi personnel are ‘hand-picked’ by their military and often come from elite families, the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they did not have permission to speak to a reporter. Trainees must speak excellent English, the person said.
Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Washington did not respond to questions.
Saudi Arabia, a major purchaser of U.S. arms, accounts for a massive portion of America’s spending on foreign military training.
In the 2018 fiscal year, the U.S. trained 1,753 Saudi military members at an estimated cost of $120,903,786, according to DoD records.
For fiscal year 2019, the State Department planned to train roughly 3,150 Saudis in the U.S.
-Keith Griffith for DailyMail.com and Reuters
The Saudi personnel are ‘hand-picked’ by their military and often come from elite families, the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they did not have permission to speak to a reporter. Trainees must speak excellent English, the person said.
Officials announced Friday morning that the shooter was killed by two Escambia County Sheriff’s deputies, who were injured during the exchange.
Three of the fatally injured people were pronounced dead at the scene and the fourth passed away at the hospital.
‘This was an act of terrorism,’ Rep Matt Gaetz, a Republican representing Pensacola, told the station WEAR.
The congressman said the investigation into the shooting has been handed over from NCIS to the FBI, signaling that it was ‘not an act of workplace violence,’ but rather an act of terror.
After news broke that the suspect was a Saudi national, Donald Trump tweeted that ‘King Salman of Saudi Arabia just called to express his sincere condolences and give his sympathies to the families and friends of the warriors who were killed and wounded in the attack that took place in Pensacola, Florida.’
The President continued: ‘The King said that the Saudi people are greatly angered by the barbaric actions of the shooter, and that this person in no way shape or form represents the feelings of the Saudi people who love the American people.’
+13
Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan said a 911 call was received at 6.51am central time reporting an active shooter on base.
Two deputies confronted the gunman inside a classroom building and exchanged gunfire, killing the perpetrator.
It has since been revealed that the gunman was armed with a handgun.
One of the officers suffered a gunshot wound to the arm, while the other was shot in the knee and underwent surgery.
Morgan said both deputies are expected to recover.
In total, eight people were taken to Baptist Health Care in Pensacola, one of whom later died.
Law enforcement and US Navy officials declined to release any information concerning the identities of the shooter and the victims pending the notification of next of kin.
Commanding officer Timothy Kinsella said the base’s security forces first responded to the shooting before outside police agencies arrived.
The facility, which is used for training and made up mostly of classrooms, ‘is shut down until further notice,’ he said.
Florida State Troopers block traffic over the Bayou Grande Bridge leading to the Pensacola Naval Air Station
This map shows the location of the sprawling Naval Air Station Pensacola
Sheriff Morgan said the crime scene was spread over two floors, which were left littered with spent shell casings.
‘Walking through the crime scene was like being on the set of a movie,’ he revealed.
Federal agencies are investigating, authorities said, including the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
St. John’s Catholic School, located directly outside the air station, was placed on lockdown as a precaution.
Eight people were taken to Baptist Health Care in Pensacola from the site of the shooting
A Facebook message from NAS Pensacola this morning confirmed an active shooter situation
PREVIOUS MASS SHOOTINGS AT US MILITARY FACILITIES
While mass shootings in the United States are common, those at military facilities are rare.
In July 2015, Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez carried out an attack at two military installations in Tennessee that killed four Marines and a sailor, with the FBI concluding that the violence was inspired by a “foreign terrorist group.”
Two years earlier, Aaron Alexis killed 12 people and wounded eight others at the Washington Navy Yard, just two miles (three kilometers) from the US Capitol building, before being shot dead by officers.
Four years before that, Major Nidal Hasan, a US Army psychiatrist, killed 13 people and wounded more than 30 others at Fort Hood.
He was considered a “lone wolf” who supported terror network Al-Qaeda.
Supporters of tighter gun laws seized on the latest shooting.
‘Our veterans and active-duty military put their lives on the line to protect us overseas — they shouldn’t have to be terrorized by gun violence at home,’ Cindy Martin, a volunteer with the Florida chapter of Moms Demand Action whose daughter works at the naval base, said in a statement.
Source: AFP
NAS Pensacola employs more than 16,000 military and 7,400 civilian personnel, according to its website.
One of the Navy’s most historic and storied bases, it sprawls along the waterfront southwest of downtown Pensacola and dominates the economy of the surrounding area.
It’s home to the Blue Angels flight demonstration team, and includes the National Naval Aviation Museum, a popular regional tourist attraction.
The shooting in Pensacola comes less than 48 hours after an active duty US sailor opened fire at Pearl Harbor’s naval shipyard in Hawaii, killing two civilian workers and injuring a third, before taking his own life.
NAS Pensacola employs more than 16,000 military and 7,400 civilian personnel, according to its website.
Story 3: Schiff Extracted Journalist Solomon Phone Number from Guiliani Records — Invasion of Privacy — Videos
Solomon says Schiff extracted his number after requesting Giuliani records
Nunes reacts to Schiff releasing his personal phone calls
John Solomon (political commentator)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John F. Solomon is an American media executive, and a conservative political commentator. He was an editorialist and executive vice president of digital video for The Hill[1] and as of October 2019, is a contributor to Fox News.[2] He was formerly employed as an executive and as editor-in-chief at The Washington Times.[3]
While he won a number of prestigious awards for his investigative journalism in the 1990s and 2000s,[4][5] he has in recent years been accused of magnifying small scandals and creating fake controversy.[6][7][8] During Donald Trump’s presidency, he has been known for advancing Trump-friendly stories. He played a role in advancing conspiracy theories about wrongdoing involving Joe Biden, his son Hunter, and Ukraine; Solomon’s stories about the Bidens influenced Trump to request that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky launch an investigation into the elder Biden, which led to an impeachment inquiry.[2]
Contents
Career
Solomon graduated from Marquette University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and sociology.[9]
From May 1987 to December 2006, Solomon worked at the Associated Press, where he became the assistant bureau chief in Washington, helping to develop some of the organization’s first digital products, such as its online elections offering.
In February 2008, Solomon became editor-in-chief of The Washington Times.[10] Under Solomon, the Times changed some of its style guide to conform to more mainstream media usage. The Times announced that it would no longer use words like “illegal aliens” and “homosexual,” and instead opt for “more neutral terminology” such as “illegal immigrants” and “gay,” respectively. The paper also decided to stop using “Hillary” when referring to Senator Hillary Clinton, and to stop putting the word “marriage” in the expression “gay marriage” in quotes.[11] He also oversaw the redesign of the paper’s website and the launch of the paper’s national weekly edition. A new television studio was built in the paper’s Washington DC headquarters, and the paper also launched a syndicated three-hour morning drive radio news program.[8]
Solomon left the paper in November 2009 after internal shakeups and financial uncertainty among the paper’s ownership.[12]
Return
After a three-and-a-half-year hiatus, most of which was spent at Circa News, Solomon returned to the paper in July 2013 to oversee the newspaper’s content, digital and business strategies.[13] He helped to craft digital strategies to expand online traffic, created new products and partnerships, and led a reorganization of the company’s advertising and sales team. He also helped launch a new subscription-only national edition targeted for tablets, cellphones and other mobile devices, and helped push a redesign of the paper’s website.
Solomon left the paper in December 2015 to serve as chief creative officer of the mobile news application Circa, which was relaunching at that time.[3]
Packard Media Group
Solomon was president of Packard Media Group from November 2009 to December 2015.[14] Solomon also served as journalist in residence at the Center for Public Integrity, a non-profit organization that specializes in investigative journalism, from March 2010 to June 2011.[8] He was also named executive editor of the Center for Public Integrity in November 2010 and helped oversee the launch of iWatch News, but resigned quickly after to join Newsweek/The Daily Beast in May 2011.[15][16][8]
Washington Guardian
In 2012, Solomon and former Associated Press executives Jim Williams and Brad Kalbfeld created the Washington Guardian, an online investigative news portal. It was acquired by The Washington Times when Solomon returned to the paper in July 2013.[3]
Circa
After leaving The Washington Times, Solomon became chief creative officer for Circa News. Circa is a mobile news application founded in 2011 that streams updates on big news events to users. In June 2015, it shut down, but its relaunch was announced after its acquisition by Sinclair Broadcast Group.[3]
Upon leaving Circa, Solomon became executive vice president of digital video for The Hill.[1][19] Until May 2018, he worked on news and investigative pieces for The Hill.[19] According to the New York Times, Solomon tended to push narratives about alleged misdeeds by Trump’s political enemies.[20]
In October 2017, Solomon published an article in The Hill about the Uranium One controversy where he insinuated that Russia made payments to the Clinton Foundation at the time when the Obama administration approved the sale of Uranium One to Rosatom.[21] Solomon’s story also focused on the alleged failures of the Department of Justice to investigate and report on the controversy, suggesting a cover-up.[21] Subsequent to Solomon’s reporting, the story “took off like wildfire in the right-wing media ecosystem,” according to a 2018 study by scholars at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University.[21] No evidence of any quid pro quo or other wrongdoing has surfaced.[21]
In January 2018, it was reported that newsroom staffers at The Hill had complained about Solomon’s reporting for the publication.[22][23][24] The staffers reportedly criticized Solomon’s reporting as having a conservative bias and missing important context, and that this undermined The Hill‘s reputation.[22][23] They also expressed concerns over Solomon’s close relationship with conservative Fox News personality Sean Hannity, on whose TV show Hannity he appeared on more than a dozen times over a span of three months.[22] In May 2018, the editor-in-chief of The Hill announced that Solomon would become an “opinion contributor” at The Hill while remaining executive vice president of digital video.[19] He frequently appeared on Fox News, which continued to describe him as an investigative reporter, even after he became an opinion contributor.[24]
Pro-Donald Trump opinion pieces
Solomon published a story alleging that women who had accused Trump of sexual assault had sought payments from partisan donors and tabloids.[24]
On June 19, 2019, The Hill published an opinion piece written by Solomon alleging that the FBI and Robert Mueller disregarded warnings that evidence used against Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort may have been faked.[25] His source was Nazar Kholodnytsky, a disgraced Ukrainian prosecutor, and Konstantin Kilimnik, who has been linked to Russian intelligence and who happens to be Manafort’s former business partner.[26]
In April 2019, The Hill published two opinion pieces by Solomon regarding allegations by Ukrainian officials that “American Democrats” and particularly former Vice-President Joe Biden of collaborating with “their allies in Kiev” in “wrongdoing…ranging from 2016 election interference to obstructing criminal probes.”[27][28] Solomon’s stories attracted attention in conservative media.[23] Fox News frequently covered Solomon’s claims;[29] Solomon also promoted these allegations on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show.[23] According to The Washington Post Solomon’s pieces “played an important role in advancing a flawed, Trump-friendly tale of corruption in Ukraine, particularly involving Biden and his son Hunter”, and inspired “the alleged effort by Trump and his allies to pressure Ukraine’s government into digging up dirt on Trump’s Democratic rivals.”[23] On the same day that The Washington Post published its article, The Hill published another opinion piece by Solomon in which Solomon states that there are “(h)undreds of pages of never-released memos and documents…(that) conflict with Biden’s narrative.”[30]
Solomon’s stories had significant flaws.[23][20] Not only had the State Department dismissed the allegations presented by Solomon as “an outright fabrication”, but the Ukrainian prosecutor who Solomon claimed made the allegations to him is not supporting Solomon’s claim.[23][20]Foreign Policy noted that anti-corrupton activists in Ukraine had characterized the source behind Solomon’s claims as an unreliable narrator who had hindered anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine.[31] Solomon pushed allegations that Biden wanted to remove a Ukrainian prosecutor in order to prevent an investigation of Burisma, a Ukrainian company that his son, Hunter Biden, served on; however, Western governments and anti-corruption activist wanted the prosecutor removed because he was reluctant to pursue corruption investigations.[20] By September 2019, Solomon said he still stood 100% by his stories.[23] There is no evidence of wrong-doing by Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, and no evidence that Hunter Biden was ever under investigation by Ukrainian authorities.[32] WNYC characterized Solomon’s Ukraine stories as laundering of foreign propaganda.[33]
Prior to the publication of a story where Solomon alleged that the Obama administration had pressured the Ukrainian government to stop investigating a group funded by George Soros, Solomon sent the full text of his report to Ukrainian-American businessman Lev Parnas and the two pro-Trump lawyers and conspiracy theorists Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing.[34] Solomon said he did so for fact-checking, but Parnas, DiGenova and Toensing were not mentioned in the text, nor did Solomon send individual items of the draft for vetting (but rather the whole draft).[34]
During October 2019 hearings for the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump, two government officials experienced in Ukraine matters — Alexander Vindman and George Kent — testified that Ukraine-related articles Solomon had written and that were featured in conservative media circles contained a “false narrative” and in some cases were “entirely made up in full cloth.”[35][36]
Solomon worked closely with Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani – Trump’s personal attorney – who was indicted for funneling foreign money into American political campaigns, to promote stories that Democrats colluded with a foreign power in the 2016 election (the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment is that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to aid Trump, then a Republican presidential candidate). Parnas worked with Solomon on interviews and translation. Solomon defended his work with Parnas: “No one knew there was anything wrong with Lev Parnas at the time. Everybody who approaches me has an angle.” Parnas helped to set Solomon up with the Ukrainian prosecutor who accused the Bidens of wrong-doing (before later retracting the claim).[2]
Solomon and the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump
Solomon has been mentioned in a draft report by the House Intelligence Committee pubished Dec. 3, 2019, documenting President Trump’s alleged abuse of office for his personal and political gain by using congressionally approved military aid to induce Ukraine initiate investigations against Trump’s domestic political rival. The report documented phone records showing Solomon was in frequent contact with Lev Parnas, a now indicted associate of Giuliani, exchanging “at least 10 calls” during the first week in April.[37]
Advertising controversy
Solomon was accused of breaking the traditional ethical “wall” that separated news stories from advertising at The Hill. In October 2017, Solomon negotiated a $160,000 deal with a conservative group called Job Creators Network to target ads in The Hill to business owners in Maine. He then had a quote from the group’s director inserted into a news story about a Maine senator’s key role in an upcoming vote on the Trump administration’s tax bill. Solomon “pops by the advertising bullpen almost daily to discuss big deals he’s about to close,” Johanna Derlega, then The Hill’s publisher, wrote in an internal memo at the time, according to Pro Publica. “If a media reporter gets ahold of this story, it could destroy us.”[2]
Departure
In September 2019, the Washington Examiner reported that Solomon would leave The Hill at the end of the month to start his own media firm.[38] In October 2019, it was reported he was joining Fox News as an opinion contributor.[39]
Reception
Paul McCleary, writing for the Columbia Journalism Review in 2007, wrote that Solomon had earned a reputation for hyping stories without solid foundation.[7] In 2012, Mariah Blake, writing for the Columbia Journalism Review, wrote that Solomon “has a history of bending the truth to his storyline,” and that he “was notorious for massaging facts to conjure phantom scandals.”[8][23] During the 2004 presidential election between George W. Bush and John Kerry, Thomas Lang wrote for the Columbia Journalism Review that a Solomon story for the Associated Press covered criticism of John Kerry’s record on national security appeared to mirror a research report released by the Republican National Committee. Lang wrote that Solomon’s story was “a clear demonstration of the influence opposition research is already having on coverage of the [presidential] campaign.”[40][41]
The Washington Post wrote in September 2019 that Solomon’s “recent work has been trailed by claims that it is biased and lacks rigor.”[23]The Post noted that Solomon had done award-winning investigative work during his early career, but that his work had taken a pronounced conservative bent from the late 2000s and onwards.[23] According to Foreign Policy magazine, Solomon had “grown into a prominent conservative political commentator with a somewhat controversial track record.”[31]
In 2007, Deborah Howell, then-ombudsman at The Washington Post, criticized a story that Solomon wrote for The Post which had suggested impropriety by Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards in a real estate purchase; Solomon’s reporting omitted context which would have made clear that there was no impropriety.[6]Progressive news outlets ThinkProgress, Media Matters for America and Crooked Media have argued that Solomon’s reporting has a conservative bias and that there are multiple instances of inaccuracies.[42][43][44] According to The Intercept, Just Security and The Daily Beast, Solomon helps to advance right-wing and pro-Trump conspiracy theories.[26][24][45]The New Republic described Solomon’s columns for The Hill as “right-wing fever dreams.”[46] Independent journalist Marcy Wheeler accused Solomon of manufacturing fake scandals which suggested wrongdoing by those conducting probes into Russian interference in the 2016 election.[47] Reporters who worked under Solomon as an editor have said that he encouraged them to bend the truth to fit a pre-existing narrative.[8]
In January 2018, Solomon published a report for The Hill suggesting that Peter Strzok and Lisa Page had foreknowledge of a Wall Street Journal article and that they themselves had leaked to the newspaper.[48] According to the Huffington Post, Solomon’s reporting omitted that the Wall Street Journal article Strzok and Page were discussing was critical of Hillary Clinton and the FBI, Strzok and Page expressed dismay at the fallout from the article, and Strzok and Page criticized unauthorized leaks from the FBI. According to the Huffington Post, “Solomon told HuffPost he was not authorized to speak and does not comment on his reporting. He may simply have been unaware of these three facts when he published his story. But they provide crucial context to an incomplete narrative that has been bouncing around the right-wing echo chamber all week.”[48]
Throughout more than two months of the Democrats’ House impeachment inquiry, two critical questions have loomed: How will the American public react to what it uncovers? And will it help or hurt President Trump’s chances at reelection in 2020?
So far, four dozen national and state polls have been conducted since the inquiry was announced, and together they offer some clear answers.
After an initial rise, support stayed divided on impeaching and removing Trump.
Impeaching Trump was clearly unpopular this summer, standing at 39 percent supporting and 48 opposing in a Washington Post average of nationally representative polls from June through late September. But later in September — after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced the impeachment inquiry following a CIA whistleblower complaint about Trump’s request to the Ukrainian president to investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his son — support jumped to an even split at 46 percent in support and opposition.
Since that initial jump, however, support for impeachment has been stable. The Post’s average of nationally representative polls conducted since the start of the House’s public hearings on Nov. 13 finds 47 percent of Americans support impeaching and removing Trump, while 43 percent are opposed. That level of support is little different from the 47 percent support in the two weeks before hearings began and 48 percent support earlier in October.
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Independents also are divided on impeachment.
Political independents have been a key group to follow in impeachment polls, since several surveysthis summer showed independents opposed to impeaching Trump by a margin of more than 20 percentage points, the clearest signal of political risk to Democrats if they launched hearings.
National polls since the start of public hearings show independents are now divided: 42 percent in support and 44 percent opposed.
Democrats and Republicans are mirror opposites on the issue, with an average of 86 percent of Democrats supporting impeachment, compared with 9 percent of Republicans. Democrats have grown more united in their support for impeachment since before the inquiry began, when polls showed roughly two-thirds supported impeachment. Among Republicans, an average of 87 percent are opposed, while 8 percent of Democrats say the same.
In key general election states, fewer voters support impeachment.
Battleground state polls show a more negative reaction to the impeachment inquiry, signaling more risk to Democrats and potential benefit for Trump. An average of 44 percent supported impeachment, with 51 percent opposed, averaging across a dozen October and November polls in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Wisconsin. That’s a flip from an average of national polls that finds support for impeachment narrowly edging opposition, 47 percent to 43 percent.
The depressed support for impeachment in key states was first signaled by a series of New York Times-Siena College polls conducted in mid-October, which found between 51 and 53 percent opposing impeachment in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
But several other polls also have found that support for impeachment in key 2020 states lags the country overall. At the most negative, a mid-November Marquette University Law School poll in Wisconsin found 40 percent of registered voters support impeaching and removing Trump, while 53 percent are opposed. Fox News polls in North Carolina and Nevada showed opposition to impeachment outpacing support by eight and seven points, respectively. The best results in key states have shown voters divided over impeachment, such as a Muhlenberg College poll of Pennsylvania voters.
Trump’s approval rating has hardly budged.
Overall job approval ratings are the essential baseline measure of a president’s political support, and Trump’s trendline in job approval is the clearest sign of whether his popularity has increased or decreased amid the impeachment inquiry. And it has barely moved over the past few months in national polling, including the period in which impeachment support increased in late September.
In Gallup polling from mid-September to mid-November, Trump’s approval has tiptoed between 39 percent and 43 percent approving. In Quinnipiac University polls, the story is no different: Between 38 percent and 41 percent of registered voters approved of Trump from late September to late November.
The stability of Trump’s approval ratings affirms just how locked-in Americans are in their views toward Trump, even as some independents and Democrats changed their opinion on whether Congress should impeach and remove him from office. The lack of movement in this essential measure of Trump’s political standing also indicates that while most Americans think Trump did something wrong in his dealings with Ukraine, news and congressional testimony about this issue have not shifted how people feel about the president.
Story 1: Totally Out-of-Control Federal Government Spending With $984 Billion Deficit For Fiscal Year 2019 and National Debt Approaching 23,000 Billion — Videos —
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U.S. Economy 101: national debt vs. national deficit | Just The FAQs
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The Who – My Generation
Generations: America’s 5 living generations
Who Are the Generations?
Generations Throughout History
Generations and the Next America: Paul Taylor
Generations: The History of America’s Future
Neil Howe & William Strauss discuss the Silent Generation on Chuck Underwood’s Generations | 2001
Neil Howe & William Strauss discuss the book “Generations” on CSPAN | 1991
The Fourth Turning: Why American ‘Crisis’ May Last Until 2030
Neil Howe Interview: “We Are 8 Years Into the Fourth Turning” What’s Next? | MWC 2017
Neil Howe: The World Is on the Verge of Generational Crisis
The Zeitgeist According to Steve Bannon’s Favorite Demographer Neil Howe
Neil Howe: Is Trump America’s ‘Gray Champion’ Like Lincoln or FDR?
Neil Howe: It’s going to get worse; more financial crises coming
Neil Howe discusses the Fourth Turning with Don Krueger of The Motley Fool | 2011
Are Generations Real? The History, The Controversy.
Generations and the Next America: Panel 1, Family and Society
Generations and the Next America: Panel 2, Politics and Policy
Jordan Peterson to Millennials: “Don’t Be A Damn Victim!”
Our Generation Is FAILING, Why Jordan Peterson Is One Remedy
Jordan Peterson Explains WHY The Youth Today are So Unhappy + Why you Shouldn’t Lie!
Jordan B. Peterson | Full interview | SVT/TV 2/Skavlan
Neil Howe (born October 21, 1951) is an American author and consultant. He is best known for his work with William Strauss on social generations regarding a theorized generational cycle in American history. Howe is currently the managing director of demography at Hedgeye and he is president of Saeculum Research and LifeCourse Associates, consulting companies he founded with Strauss to apply Strauss–Howe generational theory. He is also a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies‘ Global Aging Initiative, and a senior advisor to the Concord Coalition.
Howe was born in Santa Monica, California. His grandfather was the astronomer Robert Julius Trumpler. His father was a physicist and his mother was a professor of occupational therapy. He attended high school in Palo Alto, California, and earned a BA in English Literature at U.C. Berkeley in 1972. He studied abroad in France and Germany, and later earned graduate degrees in economics (M.A., 1978) and history (M.Phil., 1979) from Yale University.[1]
During the 1990s, Howe developed a second career as an author, historian and pop sociologist,[4] examining how generational differences shape attitudes, behaviors, and the course of history. He has since written nine books on social generations, mostly with William Strauss. In 1997 Strauss and Howe founded LifeCourse Associates, a publishing, speaking, and consulting company built on their generational theory. As president of LifeCourse, Howe currently provides marketing, personnel, and government affairs consulting to corporate and nonprofit clients, and writes and speaks about the collective personalities of today’s generations.
Howe has written a number of non-academic books on generational trends. He is best known for his books with William Strauss on generations in American history. These include Generations (1991) and The Fourth Turning (1997) which examine historical generations and describe a theorized cycle of recurring mood eras in American History (now described as the Strauss–Howe generational theory).[5][6] The book made a deep impression on Steve Bannon, who wrote and directed Generation Zero (2010), a Citizens United Productions film on the book’s theory, prior to his becoming White House Chief Strategist.[7]
Howe and Strauss also co-authored 13th Gen (1993) about Generation X, and Millennials Rising (2000) about the Millennial Generation.[8][9] Eric Hoover has called the authors pioneers in a burgeoning industry of consultants, speakers and researchers focused on generations. He wrote a critical piece about the concept of “generations” and the “Millennials” (a term coined by Strauss and Howe) for the Chronicle of Higher Education. Michael Lind offered his critique of Howe’s book “Generations” for The New York Times Book Review.[10][11]
Howe has written a number of application books with Strauss about the Millennials’ impact on various sectors, including Millennials Go to College (2003, 2007), Millennials and the Pop Culture (2006), and Millennials and K-12 Schools (2008). After Strauss died in 2007, Howe authored Millennials in the Workplace (2010).[12]
In 1988, he coauthored On Borrowed Time with Peter G. Peterson, one of the early calls for budgetary reform (the book was reissued 2004). Since the late 1990s, Howe has also coauthored a number of academic studies published by CSIS, including the Global Aging Initiative’s Aging Vulnerability Index and The Graying of the Middle Kingdom: The Economics and Demographics of Retirement Policy in China. In 2008, he co-authored The Graying of the Great Powers with Richard Jackson.[12]
Selected bibliography
On Borrowed Time (1988)
Generations (1991)
13th-GEN (1993)
The Fourth Turning (1997)
Global Aging: The Challenge of the Next Millennium (1999)
Millennials Rising (2000)
The 2003 Aging Vulnerability Index (2003)
Millennials Go To College (2003, 2007)
The Graying of the Middle Kingdom (2004)
Millennials and the Pop Culture (2005)
Long-Term Immigration Projection Methods (2006)
Millennials and K-12 Schools (2008)
The Graying of the Great Powers (2008)
Millennials in the Workplace (2010)
Notes
^Howe, Neil. “Profile”. LinkedIn. Retrieved 4 October 2010.
^Howe, Neil; Jackson, Richard; Rebecca Strauss; Keisuke Nakashima (2008). The Graying of the Great Powers. Center for Strategic and International Studies. p. 218. ISBN978-0-89206-532-5.
^“Neil Howe”. Center for Strategic and International Studies. Archived from the original on 2010-10-08. Retrieved 4 October2010.
This article is about the American historian. For the South African footballer, see Bill Strauss (footballer). For the American state legislator, see William M. Straus.
William Strauss (December 5, 1947 – December 18, 2007) was an American author, playwright, theater director, and lecturer. As an author, he is known for his work with Neil Howe on social generations and for Strauss–Howe generational theory. He is also known as the co-founder and director of the satirical musical theater group the Capitol Steps, and as the co-founder of the Cappies, a critics and awards program for high school theater students.
After receiving his degrees, Strauss worked in Washington, DC as a policy aid to the Presidential Clemency Board, directing a research team writing a report on the impact of the Vietnam War on the generation that was drafted. In 1978, Strauss and Lawrence Baskir co-authored two books on the Vietnam War, Chance and Circumstance, and Reconciliation after Vietnam. Strauss later worked at the U.S. Department of Energy and as a committee staffer for Senator Charles Percy, and in 1980 he became chief counsel and staff director of the Subcommittee on Energy, Nuclear Proliferation, and Government Processes.[1]
In 1981, Strauss organized a group of senate staffers to perform satirical songs at the annual office Christmas party of his employer, Senator Percy. The group was so successful that Strauss went on to co-found a professional satirical troupe, the Capitol Steps, with Elaina Newport. The Capitol Steps is now a $3 million company with more than 40 employees who perform at venues across the country.[1] As director, Strauss wrote many of the songs, performed regularly off Broadway, and recorded 27 albums.
During the 1990s, Strauss developed another career as an historian and pop sociologist,[3] examining how generational differences shape attitudes, behaviors, and the course of history. He wrote seven books on social generations with Neil Howe, beginning with Generations in 1991.[4] In 1997, Strauss and Howe founded LifeCourse Associates, a publishing, speaking, and consulting company built on their generational theory. As a partner at LifeCourse, Strauss worked as a corporate, nonprofit, education, and government affairs consultant.
In 1999, Strauss received a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. This prompted him to found the Cappies, a program to inspire the next generation of theater performers and writers.[1] Now an international program including hundreds of high schools, Cappies allows students to attend and review each other’s plays and musicals, publish reviews in major newspapers, and hold Tonys-style Cappies award Galas, in which Strauss acted as MC for the Fairfax County program. Strauss also founded Cappies International Theater, a summer program in which top Cappies winners perform plays and musicals written by teenagers.[5] In 2006 and 2007, Strauss advised creative teams of students who wrote two new musicals, Edit:Undo and Senioritis. Senioritis was made into a movie that was released in 2007.[6]
Strauss authored multiple books on social generations, as well as a number of plays and musicals.
In 1978, he and Lawrence Baskir co-authored Chance and Circumstance, a book about the Vietnam-era draft. Their second book, Reconciliation After Vietnam (1978) “was said to have influenced” President Jimmy Carter‘s blanket pardon of Vietnam draft resisters.[1]
Eric Hoover has called the authors pioneers in a burgeoning industry of consultants, speakers and researchers focused on generations. He wrote a critical piece about the concept of “generations” and the “Millennials” (a term coined by Strauss and Howe) for the Chronicle of Higher Education.[12] Michael Lind offered his critique of Howe’s book “Generations” for the New York Times.[13]
Strauss also wrote a number of application books with Howe about the Millennials’ impact on various sectors, including Millennials Go to College (2003, 2007), Millennials in the Pop Culture (2005), and Millennials in K-12 Schools (2008).
Strauss wrote three musicals, MaKiddo, Free-the-Music.com, and Anasazi, and two plays, Gray Champions and The Big Bump, about various themes in the books he has co-authored with Howe. He also co-wrote two books of political satire with Elaina Newport, Fools on the Hill (1992) and Sixteen Scandals (2002).[14]
US deficit hits nearly $1 trillion. When will it matter?
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
The Trump administration reported a river of red ink Friday.
The federal deficit for the 2019 budget year surged 26% from 2018 to $984.4 billion — its highest point in seven years. The gap is widely expected to top $1 trillion in the current budget year and likely remain there for the next decade.
The year-over-year widening in the deficit reflected such factors as revenue lost from the 2017 Trump tax cut and a budget deal that added billions in spending for military and domestic programs.
Forecasts by the Trump administration and the Congressional Budget Office project that the deficit will top $1 trillion in the 2020 budget year, which began Oct. 1. And the CBO estimates that the deficit will stay above $1 trillion over the next decade.
Those projections stand in contrast to President Donald Trump’s campaign promises that even with revenue lost initially from his tax cuts, he could eliminate the budget deficit with cuts in spending and increased growth generated by the tax cuts.
Here are some questions and answers about the current state of the government’s finances.
___
WHAT HAPPENED?
The deficit has been rising every year for the past four years. It’s a stretch of widening deficits not seen since the early 1980s, when the deficit exploded with President Ronald Reagan’s big tax cut.
For 2019, revenues grew 4%. But spending jumped at twice that rate, reflecting a deal that Trump reached with Congress in early 2018 to boost spending.
___
WHY DOESN’T WASHINGTON DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT?
Fiscal hawks have long warned of the economic dangers of running big government deficits. Yet the apocalypse they fear never seems to happen, and the government just keeps on spending.
There have been numerous attempts by presidents after Reagan to control spending. President George H.W. Bush actually agreed to a tax increase to control deficits when he was in office, breaking his “Read my lips” pledge not to raise taxes.
And a standoff between President Bill Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich did produce a rare string of four years of budget surpluses from 1998 through 2001. In fact, the budget picture was so bright when George W. Bush took office in 2001 that the Congressional Budget Office projected that the government would run surpluses of $5.6 trillion over the next decade.
That didn’t happen. The economy slid into a mild recession, Bush pushed through a big tax cut and the war on terrorism sent military spending surging. Then the 2008 financial crisis erupted and triggered a devastating recession. The downturn produced the economy’s first round of trillion-dollar deficits under President Barack Obama and is expected to do so again under Trump.
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SHOULD WE WORRY?
As far as most of us can tell, the huge deficits don’t seem to threaten the economy or elevate the interest rates we pay on credit cards, mortgages and car loans. And in fact, the huge deficits are coinciding with a period of ultra-low rates rather than the surging borrowing costs that economists had warned would likely occur if government deficits got this high.
There is even a new school of economic theory known as the “modern monetary theory.” It argues that such major economies as the United States and Japan don’t need to worry about running deficits because their central banks can print as much money as they need.
Yet this remains a distinctly minority view among economists. Most still believe that while the huge deficits are not an immediate threat, at some point they will become a big problem. They will crowd out borrowing by consumers and businesses and elevate interest rates to levels that ignite a recession.
What’s more, the interest payments on the deficits become part of a mounting government debt that must be repaid and could depress economic growth in coming years. In fact, even with low rates this year, the government’s interest payments on the debt were one of the fastest growing items in the budget, rising nearly 16% to $375.6 billion.
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HAVEN’T ECONOMISTS BEEN MAKING THESE WARNING FOR DECADES?
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell says the day of reckoning is still coming but isn’t here yet. Most analysts think any real solution will involve a combination of higher taxes and cost savings in the government’s huge benefit programs of Social Security and Medicare.
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ANY SIGN THAT WASHINGTON MAY TAKE THE POLITICALLY PAINFUL STEPS TO CUT THE DEFICIT?
In short, no. There has been a major change since the first round of trillion-dollar deficits prompted the Tea Party revolt. This shift brought Republicans back into power in the House and incited a round of fighting between GOP congressional leaders and the Obama administration. A result was government shutdowns and near-defaults on the national debt.
But once Trump took office, things changed: The president focused on his biggest legislative achievement, the $1.5 trillion tax cut passed in 2017. This appeared to satisfy Republican lawmakers and quelled concerns about rising deficits.
Democratic presidential candidates have for the most part pledged to roll back Trump’s tax cuts for corporations and wealthy individuals. But they would use the money not to lower the deficits but for increased spending on expensive programs such as Medicare for All.
___
SO THE DEFICITS WON’T ANIMATE THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN?
It doesn’t seem likely, though former Rep. Mark Sanford, who has mounted a long-shot Republican campaign against Trump, is urging Republican voters to return to their historic concerns about the high deficits.
And economists note that today’s huge deficits are occurring when the economy is in a record-long economic expansion. This is unlike the previous stretch of trillion-dollar deficits, which coincided with the worst recession since the 1930s.
But analysts warn that if the economy does go into a recession, the huge deficits projected now will expand significantly — possibly to a size that would send interest rates surging. Such a development, if it sparked worries about the stability of the U.S. financial system, might produce the type of deficit crisis they have been warning about for so long.
PUBLISHED: 06:16 EDT, 8 October 2019 | UPDATED: 09:04 EDT, 8 October 2019
The US government ran a budget deficit of just under $1 trillion in the just-closed fiscal year, the Congressional Budget Office said Monday.
The $984 billion deficit tally for 2019 came in more than $200 billion more than last year’s, despite very low unemployment and continuing economic growth.
The figure is also slightly worse than the $960billion projected by the budget office back in August.
The US ran a budget deficit of $984billion in 2019, the Congressional Budget Office said Monday – $200million worse than last year, and $20million worse then August projections (pictured on this graph)
The CBO noted that deficits have been growing faster than the size of the economy for four years in a row, ending 2019 at 4.7 percent of gross domestic product.
Many mainstream economists have long taken the position that deficits and the nation’s $22trillion national debt are unsustainable.
Others say deficits are manageable and note continued low interest rates despite steadily growing debt.
There’s no appetite in Washington to try politically painful medicine to deal with the deficit.
Democrats have noted the spike in deficits since President Donald Trump’s tax cut plan was passed in 2017, while Trump has promised not to touch popular retirement benefits like Social Security and Medicare.
Donald Trump (pictured during a press conference announcing a US trade deal with Japan) repeatedly pledged to cut the deficit during the 2016 election, but it has grown faster than the size of the economy during every year of his presidency
Though the deficit has yet to hit the symbolic $1 trillion mark it registered during former President Barack Obama’s first term, it could jump if the economy slides into a recession.
The Treasury Department will release the final deficit figures mid-month. CBO’s preliminary estimate is based on daily Treasury reports.
During the election campaign in 2016, Trump repeatedly pledged to start cutting the size of the deficit when he became president, at one point suggesting that he could eliminate it entirely in eight years.
However, tax laws Trump championed in 2017 when limited the amount of revenue the government could collect, combined with spending pledges that breached agreed limits in the 2018 budget deal, have combined to entrench the problem.
Federal deficit increases 26% to $984 billion for fiscal 2019, highest in 7 years
The U.S. Treasury on Friday said that the federal deficit for fiscal 2019 was $984 billion, a 26% increase from 2018 but still short of the $1 trillion mark.
The U.S. government also collected nearly $71 billion in customs duties, or tariffs, a 70% increase compared to the year-ago period.
The gap between revenues and spending was the widest in seven years. Defense, Medicare and interest payments ballooned the shortfall.
Federal deficit baloons to $984 billion for fiscal 2019, highest in 7 years
The U.S. Treasury on Friday said that the federal deficit for fiscal 2019 was $984 billion, a 26% increase from 2018 but still short of the $1 trillion mark previously forecast by the administration.
The gap between revenues and spending was the widest it’s been in seven years as expenditures on defense, Medicare and interest payments on the national debt ballooned the shortfall.
The government said corporate tax revenues totaled $230 billion, up 12%, thanks to a rebound in the second half of the year. Individual tax revenues rose 2% to $1.7 trillion.
Receipts totaled $3.4 trillion, up 4% through September, while federal spending rose 8%, to $4.4 trillion.
The U.S. government also collected nearly $71 billion in customs duties, or tariffs, a 70% increase compared to the year-ago period. As a percentage of U.S. economic output the deficit was 4.6%, 0.8 percentage points higher than the previous year.
“President Trump’s economic agenda is working: the Nation is experiencing the lowest unemployment rate in nearly 50 years, there are more jobs to fill than there are job seekers, and Americans are experiencing sustained year-over-year wage increases,” said U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a press release.
“In order to truly put America on a sustainable financial path, we must enact proposals—like the President’s 2020 budget plan—to cut wasteful and irresponsible spending,” he added.
Annual deficits have nearly doubled under President Donald Trump’s tenure notwithstanding an unemployment rate at multidecade lows and better earnings figures. Deficits usually shrink during times of economic growth as higher incomes and Wall Street profits buoy Treasury coffers, while automatic spending on items like food stamps decline.
Two big bipartisan spending bills, combined with the administration’s landmark tax cuts, however, have defied the typical trends and instead aggravated deficits. The Congressional Budget Office projects the trillion-dollar deficit could come as soon as fiscal 2020.
Still, the Treasury’s report will likely come as a relief to the Trump administration, which had previously forecast that the deficit would hit $1 trillion during the 2019 fiscal year. The White House pushed through a $1.5 trillion tax cut nearly two years ago that President Trump vowed would pay for itself.
Photos:From millennials to the greatest generation
From millennials to the greatest generation – Steve Jobs with a new LISA computer during a press preview in 1983. Baby boomers like to claim this visionary for their own.
Photos:From millennials to the greatest generation
From millennials to the greatest generation – On November 30, 1965, about 20,000 marchers protested in Washington against American involvement in the Vietnam War. Those who were born in 1945 were on the tail end of the “greatest generation,” and some participated in anti-war rallies in their youth.
Photos:From millennials to the greatest generation
From millennials to the greatest generation – Many Millennials love “The Daily Show,” previously hosted by Jon Stewart.
Photos:From millennials to the greatest generation
From millennials to the greatest generation – For generation X, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana was a cultural icon.
Photos:From millennials to the greatest generation
From millennials to the greatest generation – Steve Jobs with a new LISA computer during a press preview in 1983. Baby boomers like to claim this visionary for their own.
Photos:From millennials to the greatest generation
From millennials to the greatest generation – On November 30, 1965, about 20,000 marchers protested in Washington against American involvement in the Vietnam War. Those who were born in 1945 were on the tail end of the “greatest generation,” and some participated in anti-war rallies in their youth.
Photos:From millennials to the greatest generation
From millennials to the greatest generation – Many Millennials love “The Daily Show,” previously hosted by Jon Stewart.
Photos:From millennials to the greatest generation
From millennials to the greatest generation – For generation X, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana was a cultural icon.
(CNN)Here’s a look at six generations of Americans in the 20th century: the Greatest Generation (or GI Generation), the Silent Generation, baby boomers, Generation X, millennials and Generation Z. In order to examine economic trends and social changes over time, demographers compare groupings of people bracketed by birth year. There are sometimes variations in the birth year that begins or ends a generation, depending on the source. The groupings below are based on studies by the US Census, Pew Research and demographers Neil Howe and William Strauss.
The Greatest Generation (or GI Generation)
Born in 1924 or earlier.
Tom Brokaw coined the term the Greatest Generation as a tribute to Americans who lived through the Great Depression and then fought in WWII. His 1998 bestselling book, “The Greatest Generation,” popularized the term.
The Silent Generation helped shape 20th century pop culture, with pioneering rock musicians, iconic filmmakers, television legends, beat poets, gonzo journalists and groundbreaking political satirists.
No members of the Silent Generation have served as president.
Baby Boomers Born 1946-1964 (Sometimes listed as 1943-1964)
Baby boomers were named for an uptick in the post-WWII birth rate.
Generation X
Born 1965-1980 (Sometimes listed as 1965-1979)
“Class X” was the name of a chapter in a 1983 book, “Class: A Guide Through the American Status System,” by historian Paul Fussell. Novelist Douglas Coupland used the term as the title of his first book, “Generation X: Tales for An Accelerated Culture,” published in 1991.
No members of Generation X have served as president.
About 39% of millennials ages 25-37 have a bachelor’s degree or higher, a larger percentage than previous generations, according to Pew. Millennials with a bachelor’s degree or higher had a median annual earnings valued at $56,000 in 2018, about the same earnings as Generation X workers in 2001. Millennials without a college education had lower earnings that prior generations. About 46% of millennials ages 25-37 were married in 2018, a lower percentage than Generation X (57%), baby boomers (67%) and the Silent Generation (83%).
About 15% of millennials age 25-37 lived at home with their parents as of 2018, according to Pew.Fewer members of older generations lived at home with their parents between the ages of 25-37. The rate for Generation-X was 9%. The rate for Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation was 8%. Education factors into the percentage of millennials living at home. Among millennials without college degrees, 20% lived at home with their parents.
2016 was the first year any millennial was eligible to run for president (the minimum age is 35).
Generation Z or Gen Z (sometimes called post-millennials) Born 1997-current
According to Pew, Gen Z is the most racially and ethnically diverse cohort. One in four members of Gen Z are Hispanic while 52% are non-Hispanic white and 14% are black. A total of 6% are Asian and the remaining 4% are of another racial identity, primarily two or more races. The majority of individuals in Gen Z live in metropolitan areas and western states, with just 13% residing in ruralareas.
High school completion and college enrollment rates for Gen Z are up, with significant increases for young adults who are Hispanic or African-American, according to Pew. In 2017, 64% of Gen Z women aged 18-20 were enrolled in college, an increase over millennials (57%) and Generation X (43%).
WASHINGTON — For more than two years, President Trump has repeatedly attacked the Russia investigation, portraying it as a hoax and illegal even months after the special counsel closed it. Now, Mr. Trump’s own Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into how it all began.
Justice Department officials have shifted an administrative review of the Russia investigation closely overseen by Attorney General William P. Barr to a criminal inquiry, according to two people familiar with the matter. The move gives the prosecutor running it, John H. Durham, the power to subpoena for witness testimony and documents, to convene a grand jury and to file criminal charges.
The opening of a criminal investigation is likely to raise alarms that Mr. Trump is using the Justice Department to go after his perceived enemies. Mr. Trump fired James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director under whose watch agents opened the Russia inquiry, and has long assailed other top former law enforcement and intelligence officials as partisans who sought to block his election.
Mr. Trump has made clear that he sees the typically independent Justice Department as a tool to be wielded against his political enemies. That view factors into the impeachment investigation against him, as does his long obsession with the origins of the Russia inquiry. House Democrats are examining in part whether his pressure on Ukraine to open investigations into theories about the 2016 election constituted an abuse of power.
The move also creates an unusual situation in which the Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation into itself.
Mr. Barr’s reliance on Mr. Durham, a widely respected and veteran prosecutor who has investigated C.I.A. torture and broken up Mafia rings, could help insulate the attorney general from accusations that he is doing the president’s bidding and putting politics above justice.
It was not clear what potential crime Mr. Durham is investigating, nor when the criminal investigation was prompted. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.
Mr. Trump is certain to see the criminal investigation as a vindication of the years he and his allies have spent trying to discredit the Russia investigation. In May, Mr. Trump told the Fox News host Sean Hannity that the F.B.I. officials who opened the case — a counterintelligence investigation into whether his campaign conspired with Moscow’s election sabotage — had committed treason.
“We can never allow these treasonous acts to happen to another president,” Mr. Trump said. He has called the F.B.I. investigation one of the biggest political scandals in United States history.
Federal investigators need only a “reasonable indication” that a crime has been committed to open an investigation, a much lower standard than the probable cause required to obtain search warrants. However, “there must be an objective, factual basis for initiating the investigation; a mere hunch is insufficient,” according to Justice Department guidelines.
When Mr. Barr appointed Mr. Durham, the United States attorney in Connecticut, to lead the review, he had only the power to voluntarily question people and examine government files.
Mr. Barr expressed skepticism of the Russia investigation even before joining the Trump administration. Weeks after being sworn in this year, he said he intended to scrutinize how it started and used the term “spying” to describe investigators’ surveillance of Trump campaign advisers. But he has been careful to say he wants to determine whether investigators acted lawfully.
“The question is whether it was adequately predicated,” he told lawmakers in April. “And I’m not suggesting that it wasn’t adequately predicated. But I need to explore that.”
The F.B.I. did not use information from the C.I.A. in opening the Russia investigation, former American officials said. But agents’ views on Russia’s election interference operation crystallized by mid-August, after the C.I.A. director at the time, John O. Brennan, shared intelligence with Mr. Comey about it.
The C.I.A. did contribute heavily to the intelligence community’s assessment in early 2017 that Russia interfered in the 2016 election and tried to tip it in Mr. Trump’s favor, and law enforcement officials later used those findings to bolster their application for a wiretap on a Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page.
The special counsel who took over the Russia investigation in 2017, Robert S. Mueller III, secured convictions or guilty pleas from a handful of Trump associates and indictments of more than two dozen Russians on charges related to their wide-ranging interference scheme.
In his report, Mr. Mueller said that he had “insufficient evidence” to determine whether Mr. Trump or his aides engaged in a criminal conspiracy with the Russians but that the campaign welcomed the sabotage and expected to benefit from it.
Mr. Barr is closely managing the Durham investigation, even traveling to Italy to seek help from officials there to run down an unfounded conspiracy that is at the heart of conservatives’ attacks on the Russia investigation — that the Italian government helped set up the Trump campaign adviser who was told in 2016 that the Russians had damaging information that could hurt Clinton’s campaign.
But Italy’s intelligence services told Mr. Barr that they played no such role in the events leading to the Russia investigation, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte of Italy said in a news conference on Wednesday. Mr. Barr has also contacted government officials in Britain and Australia about their roles in the early stages of the Russia investigation.
Revelations so far about Mr. Durham’s investigation have shown that he has focused in his first months on the accusations that Mr. Trump’s conservative allies have made about the origins of the Russia inquiry in their efforts to undermine it. Mr. Durham’s efforts have prompted criticism that he and Mr. Barr are trying to deliver the president a political victory, though investigators would typically run down all aspects of a case to complete a review of it.
Mr. Durham is running the investigation with a trusted aide, Nora R. Dannehy, and a pair of retired F.B.I. agents. Other prosecutors are also assisting, people familiar with the investigation said.
In interviewing more than two dozen former and current F.B.I. and intelligence officials, Mr. Durham’s investigators have asked about any anti-Trump bias among officials who worked on the Russia investigation and about one aspect of the investigation that was at the heart of highly contentious allegations that they abused their powers: the secret application seeking a court order for a wiretap on Mr. Page.
Law enforcement officials suspected Mr. Page was the target of recruitment by the Russian government, which he has denied.
Mr. Durham has also asked whether C.I.A. officials might have somehow tricked the F.B.I. into opening the Russia investigation.
Mr. Durham has indicated he wants to interview former officials who ran the C.I.A. in 2016 but has yet to question either Mr. Brennan or James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence. Mr. Trump has repeatedly attacked them as part of a vast conspiracy by the so-called deep state to stop him from winning the presidency.
Some C.I.A. officials have retained criminal lawyers in anticipation of being interviewed. It was not clear whether Mr. Durham was scrutinizing other former top intelligence officials. Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the former director of the National Security Agency, declined to say whether he had spoken with Mr. Durham’s investigators.
Mr. Durham also has yet to question many of the former F.B.I. officials involved in opening the Russia investigation.
As Mr. Durham’s investigation moves forward, the Justice Department inspector general is wrapping up his own inquiry into aspects of the F.B.I.’s conduct in the early days of the Russia investigation. Among other things, the inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, is scrutinizing the application for a warrant to wiretap Mr. Page.
Mr. Barr has not said whether Mr. Durham’s investigation grew out of the inspector general’s findings or something that prosecutors unearthed while doing interviews or reviewing documents. But the inspector general’s findings, which are expected to be made public in coming weeks, could contribute to the public’s understanding of why Mr. Durham might want to investigate national security officials’ activities in 2016.
Though the inspector general’s report deals with sensitive information, Mr. Horowitz anticipates that little of it will be blacked out when he releases the document publicly, he wrote in a lettersent to lawmakers on Thursday and obtained by The New York Times.
Mr. Durham has delved before into the secret world of intelligence gathering during the Bush and Obama administrations. He was asked in 2008 to investigate why the C.I.A. destroyed tapes depicting detainees being tortured. The next year, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. appointed Mr. Durham to spearhead an investigation into the C.IA. abuses.
Career prosecutors had already examined many of the same cases and declined to bring charges, and in an echo of the Russia investigation, they fumed that Mr. Holder was revisiting the issue. Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, then the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said that the abuses had been “exhaustively reviewed” and that a new inquiry could put national security at risk.
After nearly four years, Mr. Durham’s investigation ended with no charges against C.I.A. officers, including two directly involved in the deaths of two detainees, angering human rights activists.
President Trump has ratcheted up his claim that the Obama White House spied on his 2016 campaign, charging in a new book that it was a “treasonous” act by the former Democratic president.
“The interesting thing out of all of this is that we caught them spying on the election. They were spying on my campaign. So you know? What is that all about?” said Trump.
“I have never ever said this, but truth is, they got caught spying. They were spying,” said Trump who then added, “Obama.”
President Trump (seated) meets with Doug Wead in the Oval Office of the White House. Wead provided the photo to Secrets.
(Official White House Photo/Tia Dufour)
In 2017, Trump tweeted that he felt the Obama White House “had my wires tapped” in Trump Tower. He later said he didn’t mean it literally but that he felt his campaign was being spied on.
Attorney General William Barr earlier this year said he was looking into whether “improper surveillance” may have occurred in 2016. “I think spying did occur,” he said.
He has tasked a prosecutor to look into Obama officials and other officials who sparked the Russia collusion investigation into Trump after a report showed no collusion. New reports on that investigation described it as “criminal” in nature.
“It turned out I was right. By the way,” Trump told Wead in excerpts provided to Secrets. “In fact, what I said was peanuts compared to what they did. They were spying on my campaign. They got caught and they said, ‘Oh we were not spying. It was actually an investigation.’ Can you imagine an administration investigating its political opponents?” said the president.
In the book, Trump said that the Russia investigation undercut his presidency.
“Anybody else would be unable to function under the kind of pressure and distraction I had. They couldn’t get anything done. No other president should ever have to go through this. But understand, there was no collusion. They would have had to make
Stefan Halper: The Cambridge don the FBI sent to spy on Trump
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Story 1: President Trumps Declares A National Emergency — Unleashes Full Power of United States Government — $50 Billion in New Funding To Deal With COVID-19 Pandemic — Videos
BREAKING: Donald Trump declares a national emergency
Trump declares National Emergency over coronavirus
Trump declares national emergency over coronavirus pandemic
Tucker: Regular life is all but suspended
Hannity: Major businesses working with Trump on coronavirus
Trump declares virus emergency; Pelosi announces aid deal
President Donald Trump on Friday declared the coronavirus pandemic a national emergency in order to free up more money and resources. But he denied any responsibility for delays in making testing available for the new virus, whose spread has roiled markets and disrupted the lives of everyday Americans.
Speaking from the Rose Garden, Trump said, “I am officially declaring a national emergency,” unleashing as much as $50 billion for state and local governments to respond to the outbreak.
Trump also announced a range of executive actions, including a new public-private partnership to expand coronavirus testing capabilities with drive-through locations, as his administration has come under fire for being too slow in making the test available.
Trump said, “I don’t take responsibility at all” for the slow rollout of testing.
Late Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a deal with the Trump administration for an aid package from Congress that aims at direct relief to Americans — free testing, two weeks of sick pay for workers, enhanced unemployment benefits and bolstered food programs.
“We are proud to have reached an agreement with the Administration to resolve outstanding challenges, and now will soon pass the Families First Coronavirus Response Act,” Pelosi announced in a letter to colleagues. The House was poised to vote.
The crush of late-day activity capped a tumultuous week in Washington as the fast-moving virus shuttered the capital’s power centers, roiled financial markets and left ordinary Americans suddenly navigating through self-quarantines, school closures and a changed way of life.
The White House was under enormous pressure, dealing with the crisis on multiple fronts as it encroached ever closer on the president.
Trump has been known to flout public health advice — eagerly shaking hands during the more than hour-long afternoon event — but acknowledged he “most likely” will be tested now after having been in contact with several officials who have tested positive for the virus. “Fairly soon,” he said.
Still, Trump said officials don’t want people taking the test unless they have certain symptoms. “We don’t want people without symptoms to go and do that test,” Trump said, adding, “It’s totally unnecessary.”
Additionally, Trump took a number of other actions to bolster energy markets, ease the financial burden for Americans with student loans and give medical professionals additional “flexibility” in treating patients during the public health crisis.
“Through a very collective action and shared sacrifice, national determination, we will overcome the threat of the virus,” Trump said.
Central to the aid package from Congress, which builds on an emergency $8.3 billion measure approved last week, is the free testing and sick pay provisions.
Providing sick pay for workers is a crucial element of federal efforts to stop the rapid spread of the infection. Officials warn that the nation’s healthcare system could quickly become overwhelmed with gravely sick patients, as suddenly happened in Italy, one of the countries hardest hit by the virus.
The ability to ensure paychecks will keep flowing — for people who stay home as a preventative measure or because they’re feeling ill or caring for others — can help assure Americans they will not fall into financial hardship.
Hopes for swiftly passing the package seemed to be fading throughout the day as talks dragged on and Trump dismissed it during as “not doing enough.”
Ahead of Trump’s new conference, Pelosi delivered a statement from the speaker’s balcony at the Capitol imploring the Trump administration and congressional Republicans to “put families first” by backing the effort to provide Americans with relief.
“Our great nation has faced crisis before,” Pelosi said. “And every time, thanks to the courage and optimism of the American people, we have prevailed. Now, working together, we will once again prevail.”
Pelosi and Mnuchin engaged in days of around-the-clock negotiations with cross-town phone calls that continued even as Trump was speaking, both indicating earlier they were close to a deal.
They both promised a third coronavirus package will follow soon, with more aggressive steps to boost the U.S. economy, which economists fear has already slipped into recession.
The financial markets closed on an upswing after one of the worst nosedives since the 1987 downturn.
For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia.
The vast majority of people recover. According to the World Health Organization, people with mild illness recover in about two weeks, while those with more severe illness may take three to six weeks to be over it.
Trump said he was gratified that Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro tested negative for the virus, after the pair sat next to each other for an extended period of time last weekend at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. A senior aide to Bolsonaro tested positive.
Trump’s daugher, Ivanka Trump, worked from home Friday after meeting with Australian Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, now in isolation at a hospital after testing positive for the coronavirus. White House spokesman Judd Deere said she was evaluated by the White House Medical Unit and it was determined that because she was exhibiting no symptoms she does not need to self-quarantine.
Attorney General William Barr, who also met with the Australian official, was staying home Friday, though he “felt great and wasn’t showing any symptoms,” according to his spokeswoman Kerri Kupec.
Several lawmakers, including some close to Trump, have also been exposed to people who tested positive for the virus, and are self-isolating.
Among them are Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Rick Scott, who were at Trump’s club on the weekend. Graham announced Friday that he also met with the Australian official who has now tested positive. And GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who had previously isolated himself after a potential exposure at a conservative conference in Washington, said Friday he met with a Spanish official and is now self-quarantining.
Hospitals welcomed Trump’s emergency declaration, which they and lawmakers in Congress had been requesting. It allows the Health and Human Services Department to temporarily waive certain federal rules that can make it harder for hospitals and other health care facilities to respond to an emergency.
The American Medical Association said the emergency declaration would help ensure America’s health care system has sufficient resources to properly respond to the ongoing outbreak.
Trump has struggled to show he’s on top of the crisis, after giving conflicting descriptions of what the U.S. is doing to combat the virus. On Wednesday he announced he would ban travel to the U.S. from Europe, and on Friday he suggested extending that to the U.K. because of a recent rise in cases.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious disease chief at the National Institutes of Health, said more tests would be available over the next week, but warned, “We still have a long way to go.”
Fauci said Friday, “There will be many more cases. But we’ll take care of that, and ultimately, as the president said, this will end.”
___
Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani, Alan Fram, Lauran Neergaard, Martin Crutsinger, Laurie Kellman, Michael Balsamo and Kevin Freking in Washington and Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.
https://apnews.com/83b0c8e168548fd453b0c177dd1f203a
Story 2: House Expected Passes Family First Coronavirus Response Bill Supported By President Trump — Videos
House Passes Coronavirus Relief Bill
House approves coronavirus response bill supported by Trump
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the House will pass coronavirus legislation
Mnuchin: Trump is very interested in putting money into the economy
PBS NewsHour West live episode, March 13, 2020
Story 3: United State Stock Market Rallies — Best Day Since 2008 — Consumer Sentiment Beating Expectations At 95.9 — Videos
The Dow Is Soaring – Here’s Why the Stock Market Is Cheering Trump
Barry Sternlicht: Stock market will make a comeback from coronavirus
El-Erian on markets: ‘It’s getting less scary than it has been for a while’
Cramer’s game plan for the trading week of March 16
Jim Cramer: Not sure this stock market sell-off can be stopped
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Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 414-421
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 408-413
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 400-407
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 391-399
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 383-390
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 376-382
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 369-375
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 360-368
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 354-359
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 346-353
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 338-345
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 328-337
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 319-327
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 307-318
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 296-306
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 287-295
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 277-286
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 264-276
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 250-263
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 236-249
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 222-235
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 211-221
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 202-210
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 194-201
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 184-193
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 174-183
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 165-173
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 158-164
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 151-157
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 143-150
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 135-142
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 131-134
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 124-130
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 121-123
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 118-120
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 113 -117
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Show 112
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 108-111
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 106-108
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 104-105
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 101-103
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 98-100
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 94-97
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Show 93
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Show 92
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Show 91
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 88-90
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 84-87
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 79-83
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 74-78
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 71-73
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 68-70
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 65-67
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 62-64
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 58-61
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 55-57
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 52-54
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 49-51
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 45-48
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 41-44
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 38-40
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 34-37
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 30-33
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 27-29
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 17-26
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 16-22
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 10-15
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1-9
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