Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders lead the delegate race after the first two contests of the primary season, according to the Associated Press. The vast majority of delegates are awarded after February. Super Tuesday, when a third of all delegates are allocated in a single day, looms large with 16 contests at the beginning of March. Here is a look at when every state goes to the polls and where the largest troves of delegates are at stake.
Another key early state with a high-turnout caucus, and the first one with a significant Hispanic population.
36
Clinton
29Sat.
South Carolina primary
This state will offer the first real indication of the candidates’ strengths with black voters.
54
Clinton
March 2020
DEMOCRATIC DELEGATES
2016 PRIMARY WINNER
3Tue.
Alabama primary
Alabama is one of 16 contests on Super Tuesday, when a third of delegates are allocated.
52
Clinton
American Samoa caucus
6
Clinton
Arkansas primary
31
Clinton
California primary
Because it has the largest delegate trove in the country, California is key to Super Tuesday.
415
Clinton
Colorado primary
67
Sanders
Democrats abroad primary
13
Sanders
Maine primary
24
Sanders
Massachusetts primary
91
Clinton
Minnesota primary
75
Sanders
North Carolina primary
110
Clinton
Oklahoma primary
37
Sanders
Tennessee primary
64
Clinton
Texas primary
The second-largest delegate trove of Super Tuesday.
228
Clinton
Utah primary
29
Sanders
Vermont primary
16
Sanders
Virginia primary
99
Clinton
10Tue.
Idaho primary
20
Sanders
Michigan primary
Midwestern powerhouses like Michigan will test the candidates’ appeal among suburbanites, African-Americans and working-class white voters. If the race is not decided on Super Tuesday, this could be a line of demarcation.
125
Sanders
Mississippi primary
36
Clinton
Missouri primary
68
Clinton
North Dakota primary
14
Sanders
Washington primary
89
Sanders
14Sat.
Northern Marianas convention
6
Clinton
17Tue.
Arizona primary
67
Clinton
Florida primary
219
Clinton
Illinois primary
155
Clinton
Ohio primary
136
Clinton
24Tue.
Georgia primary
105
Clinton
29Sun.
Puerto Rico primary
51
Clinton
April 2020
DEMOCRATIC DELEGATES
2016 PRIMARY WINNER
4Sat.
Alaska primary
15
Sanders
Hawaii primary
24
Sanders
Louisiana primary
54
Clinton
Wyoming caucus
14
Sanders
7Tue.
Wisconsin primary
84
Sanders
28Tue.
Connecticut primary
60
Clinton
Delaware primary
21
Clinton
Maryland primary
96
Clinton
New York primary
This may be the last big delegate day of the race. If one candidate dominates every state this late in the primary, party leaders will most likely move to get behind that person and seek to bring the race to an end.
2020 United States presidential primary election results
Live
Updated at 2:53 PM CST
DEMOCRATIC
Delegates · 64 delegates declared
1,990 delegates needed to win the nomination
Candidate
Delegates
Pete Buttigieg
22
Bernie Sanders
21
Elizabeth Warren
8
Amy Klobuchar
7
Joe Biden
6
Andrew Yang
0
Deval Patrick
0
John Delaney
0
Michael Bennet
0
Michael Bloomberg
0
Tom Steyer
0
Tulsi Gabbard
0
Uncommitted
0
Other candidates
0
Sanders edges Buttigieg in NH, giving Dems 2 front-runners
By STEVE PEOPLES, KATHLEEN RONAYNE and HUNTER WOODALL
Bernie Sanders won New Hampshire’s presidential primary, edging moderate rival Pete Buttigieg and scoring the first clear victory in the Democratic Party’s chaotic 2020 nomination fight.
In his Tuesday night win, the 78-year-old Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, beat back a strong challenge from the 38-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana. The dueling Democrats represent different generations, see divergent paths to the nomination and embrace conflicting visions of America’s future.
As Sanders and Buttigieg celebrated, Amy Klobuchar scored an unexpected third-place finish that gives her a road out of New Hampshire as the primary season moves on to the string of state-by-state contests that lie ahead.
Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden posted disappointing fourth and fifth place finishes respectively and were on track to finish with zero delegates from the state.
The New Hampshire vote gives new clarity to a Democratic contest shaping up to be a battle between two men separated by four decades in age and clashing political ideologies. Sanders is a leading progressive voice, having spent decades demanding substantial government intervention in health care and other sectors of the economy. Buttigieg has pressed for more incremental change, preferring to give Americans the option of retaining their private health insurance while appealing to Republicans and independents who may be dissatisfied with Trump.
Their disparate temperaments were on display Tuesday as they spoke before cheering supporters.
“We are gonna win because we have the agenda that speaks to the needs of working people across this country,” Sanders declared. “This victory here is the beginning of the end for Donald Trump.”
Buttigieg struck an optimistic tone: “Thanks to you, a campaign that some said shouldn’t be here at all has shown that we are here to stay.”
Former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg addresses supporters at a rally at Nashua Community College Tuesday in Nashua, N.H. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Both men have strength heading into the next phase of the campaign, yet they face very different political challenges.
While Warren made clear she will remain in the race, Sanders, well-financed and with an ardent army of supporters, has cemented his status as the clear leader of the progressive wing of the party.
Meanwhile, Buttigieg must prove he can attract support from voters of color who are critical to winning the nomination. And unlike Sanders, he still has multiple rivals in his own ideological wing of the party to contend with. They include Klobuchar, whose standout debate performance led to a late surge in New Hampshire and a growing national following. While deeply wounded, Biden promises strength in upcoming South Carolina. And though former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg was not on Tuesday’s ballot, he looms next month when the contest reaches states offering hundreds of delegates.
After a chaotic beginning to primary voting last week in Iowa, Democrats hoped New Hampshire would help give shape to their urgent quest to pick someone to take on Trump in November. At least two candidates dropped out in the wake of weak finishes Tuesday night: moderate Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet and political newcomer Andrew Yang, who attracted a small but loyal following over the past year and was one of just three candidates of color left in the race.
The struggling candidates still in the race sought to minimize the latest results.
Warren, who spent months as a Democratic front-runner, offered an optimistic outlook as she faced cheering supporters: “Our campaign is built for the long haul, and we are just getting started.”
Having already predicted he would “take a hit” in New Hampshire after a distant fourth-place finish in Iowa, Biden essentially ceded the state. He traveled to South Carolina Tuesday as he bet his candidacy on a strong showing there later this month boosted by support from black voters.
Still, history suggests that the first-in-the-nation primary will have enormous influence shaping the 2020 race. In the modern era, no Democrat has ever become the party’s general election nominee without finishing first or second in New Hampshire.
Sanders and Buttigieg were on track to win the same number of New Hampshire delegates with most of the vote tallied, with Klobuchar a few behind. Warren, Biden and the rest of the field were shut out, failing to reach the 15% threshold needed for delegates.
Results from New Hampshire’s Democratic primary. (AP Graphic)
The AP allocated nine delegates each to Sanders and Buttigieg and six to Klobuchar.
The action was on the Democratic side, but Trump easily won New Hampshire’s Republican primary. He was facing token opposition from former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld.
With most of the vote in, Trump already had amassed more votes in the New Hampshire primary than any incumbent president in history. His vote share was approaching the modern historical high for an incumbent president, 86.43% set by Ronald Reagan in 1984. Weld received about 9% of the vote of New Hampshire Republicans.
The political spotlight quickly shifts to Nevada, where Democrats will hold caucuses on Feb. 22. But several candidates, including Warren and Sanders, plan to visit other states in the coming days that vote on Super Tuesday, signaling they are in the race for the long haul.
___
Peoples reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Seth Borenstein and Zeke Miller in Washington, Will Weissert, Holly Ramer and Thomas Beaumont contributed from New Hampshire.
Country Joe McDonald, whose rock band Country Joe and the Fish appeared at the Woodstock festival, remembers how strained his life was growing up in a communist family.
Joan Sokoloff, a 48-year-old therapist, grew up in Boston in the 1950s. But she might as well have spent her childhood on another planet. While other children were watching ″Father Knows Best,″ Sokoloff, the daughter of communists, was contemplating world change.
″I couldn’t care less if they were investigated as communists or not,″ said McDonald, who grew up in Southern California. ″All I cared about was when I went to a Cub Scout meeting or went to play baseball. … I didn’t feel comfortable anymore.″
Said Sokoloff: ″They (my parents) always used to say that the revolution is just around the corner. So there was always a sense that we were working toward something imminent.″
McDonald and Sokoloff are two of five so-called ″red diaper babies,″ the children of communists, who appear in ″Children of the Left,″ a new documentary by filmmaker Eric Stange. The 60-minute film traces the evolution of children raised as communists who are now adults in a conservative America.
The topic is a hot one. ″Loyalties – a Son’s Memoir,″ a new book by former Washington Post investigative reporter Carl Bernstein, is the story of Bernstein’s childhood in a communist family.
Bernstein writes about the conflicting legacy left by communist parents. His story is woven out of what he says are the torn loyalties and lasting repercussions of a communist childhood.
Stange found that communist parents left a mixed legacy. Some of their children remained communists. One became a Reagan conservative. But almost all remain political and most vote.
Stange, 35, a former reporter and editor for the Boston Herald, had made one previous documentary, ″The Pitch of Grief,″ when he decided to make a film about the children of communists. He knew several as friends and found out about others through them. A network exists among them as adults, he said, formed from childhood when communist families often sent their children to the same progressive summer camps and schools.
But Stange said that even now, many who grew up in communist households were still hesitant going public about the experience.
″The penalties were too great in the ’50s,″ he said.
Stange spoke to 50 former ″red diaper babies,″ interviewed 15 on tape and culled five for his film. The term ″red diaper babies″ has several rumored origins. One is that communist parents in the ’20s were so poor that they used the red flags they received in return for their party dues to diaper their babies.
″I found an incredible mixture of pride and anger,″ he said. ″It was a way of looking at the world that was much more open and diverse and worldly than what most American kids were getting.″
The film, which premiered last month in Cambridge and was co-produced with the Newton Television Foundation, also will be shown at New York’s Public Theater this month and in Los Angeles in June.
The stories that unfold on camera are generally happy ones. Though they participated in one of the most tumultuous periods in American history, Stange’s subjects recall their childhoods with more pleasure than pain.
Eugene Dennis Jr., son of the former general secretary in the American Communist Party, was a longshoreman for many years and is now a historian. In the film, tears come to his eyes as he recalls how ″safe″ he felt, held in the arms of singer-actor-writer Paul Robeson at one point during the worst of the communist witch hunts in the ’50s.
David Horowitz, the son of public schoolteachers in New York, edited the leftist magazine Ramparts in the ’60s. He has since become a best-selling author of biographies with David Collier and a conservative Republican. Richard Healey, whose mother was a high-ranking communist leader in Southern California, edits an anti-nuclear magazine.
The film uses archival footage to trace the relatively swift downfall of the Communist Party in the United States, which had formed in 1919 and enjoyed peak years in the ’30s and early ’40s.
″Children of the Left″ also outlines the turmoil that marked the party’s rapid decline, beginning with the Red Scare initiated in the ’50s by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, chaired by Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1953 and revelations in 1956 that Soviet leader Josef Stalin was a murderous dictator.
Several subjects of the film recall their parents were jailed regularly. Joan Sokoloff remembers the day one of her mother’s arrests made the front page of The Boston Globe, her struggle to overcome her own embarrassment and her eventual pride in her parents’ work.
Healey recalls his childhood years at Communist Party meetings and picnics as ″the happiest moments of my life.″
″Growing up with ideals like that, with a world view of wanting a better life for people, it was still a very rich way of life,″ said Sokoloff.
Story 2: The Political Elitist Establishment (PEEs) Hunt Down Deplorables — Socialist Satire — Coming To A Theater Nearest You March 13, 2020 — Friday The 13th –Lying Lunatic Leftist Losers vs. American Winners — Videos
The Wreck called Hillary Clinton
How voters are responding to Clinton’s ‘deplorables’ remark
Clinton: Trump supporters in ‘basket of deplorables…
Deplorables: Trump, Brexit and the Demonised Masses
Tucker: American elites more comfortable with attacking US
1. America’s Ruling Class
Angelo Codevilla – Does America Have a Ruling Class?
Universal cancels release of film where elites hunt ‘deplorables’
The Hunt – Official Trailer [HD]
Why The Hunt Is Finally Being Released with a New Marketing Campaign
The Hunt – Trailer Reaction – New Release Date of March 13th
The film was originally scheduled for release on September 27, 2019. However, following the Dayton and El Paso mass shootings in early August 2019, Universal Pictures decided to shelve the release of the film.[2] The decision came a day after criticism regarding the film came from United States President Donald Trump.[3] It has since been rescheduled for a theatrical release on March 13, 2020.[4][5]
Premise
Loosely based on the 1924 short story The Most Dangerous Game, by Richard Connell,[6] the film follows 12 strangers who mysteriously wake up in a clearing.[2][7][8] They do not know where they are or how they got there. They discover that they have been chosen to be hunted in a game devised by a group of people from the rich elite.[2][9] The hunters gather in a remote facility called the Manor House, but their sport gets derailed when one of the hunted, Crystal (Betty Gilpin), fights back and starts killing them one by one.[10]
Though some reports indicated the original title of the film was Red State vs. Blue State (after the U.S. political term red states and blue states), Universal issued a statement denying that the film had ever had that as its working title.[13]
Casting
In March 2019, Emma Roberts, Justin Hartley, Glenn Howerton, Ike Barinholtz and Betty Gilpin were announced as being cast in the film.[14][15][16] In April 2019, Amy Madigan, Jim Klock, Charli Slaughter, Steve Mokate and Dean West joined the cast of the film.[17][18]Hilary Swank was announced as being cast in July.[19]
Filming
Filming began on February 20, 2019, in New Orleans and was due to finish on April 5.[20]
Release
The film was scheduled for release on September 27, 2019. It was, for a time, moved back to October 18 before shifting back to its original release date of September 27.[21]
On August 7, 2019, Universal announced that in the wake of the Dayton and El Paso mass shootings, they would be suspending the film’s promotional campaign.[22][23] Several days later, the film was pulled from the studio’s release schedule.[24][25] An international release is still a possibility.[26]
On February 11, 2020, it was announced the film would receive a theatrical release on March 13, 2020.[4]
Reception
The Hollywood Reporter wrote that there were a pair of test screenings for the film which had “negative reactions”. The second screening was held on August 6, 2019, in Los Angeles, in which “audience members were again expressing discomfort with the politics” of it, an issue Universal had not foreseen (although other studios had initially passed on the script for that very reason). In a statement to Variety, Universal pushed back on a report that test audiences had been uncomfortable with the film’s political slant, and also countered claims that the script had originally had a politically explosive title.[26] “While some outlets have indicated that test screenings for The Hunt resulted in negative audience feedback; in fact, the film was very well-received and tallied one of the highest test scores for an original Blumhouse film,” a Universal spokesperson said. “Additionally, no audience members in attendance at the test screening expressed discomfort with any political discussion in the film. While reports also say The Hunt was formerly titled Red State vs. Blue State, that was never the working title for the film at any point throughout the development process, nor appeared on any status reports under that name.”[26]
Prior to the film’s shelving, the film attracted criticism from some of the media as an alleged portrayal of liberal elitists hunting supporters of Donald Trump.[23][27] Trump issued a tweet on August 9, 2019, calling “Liberal Hollywood” “[r]acist at the highest level” and writing: “The movie coming out is made in order to inflame and cause chaos”, adding “They create their own violence, and then try to blame others”. Although Trump did not specify the name of the film, news vehicles believed that was most likely a reference to The Hunt.[27][28][29]
“The Most Dangerous Game“, also published as “The Hounds of Zaroff“, is a short story by Richard Connell,[1] first published in Collier’s on January 19, 1924.[2] The story features a big-game hunter from New York City who falls off a yacht and swims to what seems to be an abandoned and isolated island in the Caribbean, where he is hunted by a Russian aristocrat.[3] The story is inspired by the big-game hunting safaris in Africa and South America that were particularly fashionable among wealthy Americans in the 1920s.[4]
Sanger Rainsford and his friend, Whitney, are traveling to the Amazon rainforest to hunt the region’s big cat: the jaguar. After a discussion about how they are “the hunters” instead of “the hunted”, Whitney goes to bed and Rainsford hears gunshots. He climbs onto the yacht’s rail and accidentally falls overboard, swimming to Ship-Trap Island, which is notorious for shipwrecks. On the island, he finds a palatial chateau inhabited by two Cossacks: the owner, General Zaroff, and his gigantic deaf-mute servant, Ivan.
Zaroff, another big-game hunter, knows of Rainsford from his published account of hunting snow leopards in Tibet. After inviting him to dinner, General Zaroff tells Rainsford he is bored of hunting because it no longer challenges him; he has moved to Ship-Trap in order to capture shipwrecked sailors. Any captives who can elude Zaroff, Ivan, and a pack of hunting dogs for three days are set free. Zaroff reveals that no one has lasted that long, although a couple of sailors had come close. Zaroff also says that he offers sailors a “choice”; should they decline to be hunted they will be handed over to Ivan, who had once been official knouter for The Great White Czar. Rainsford denounces this as barbarism. Zaroff reacts in a cosmopolitan manner that “life is for the strong“. Realizing he has no way out, Rainsford reluctantly agrees to be hunted.
During his three-hour head start, Rainsford lays an intricate trail in the forest and then climbs a tree. Zaroff finds him easily, but decides to play with him like a cat would a mouse, standing underneath the tree Rainsford is hiding in, smoking a cigarette, and then abruptly departing. After the failed attempt at eluding Zaroff, Rainsford builds a Malay man-catcher, a weighted log attached to a trigger. This contraption injures Zaroff’s shoulder, causing him to return home for the night, but before doing so shouts that if Rainsford is within earshot, his trap was commendable as few could pull it off. The next day Rainsford creates a Burmese tiger pit, which kills one of Zaroff’s hounds. He sacrifices his knife and ties it to a sapling to make a Ugandan knife trap; Ivan is killed when he stumbles into this trap and the knife plunges into his heart. To escape Zaroff and his approaching hounds, Rainsford dives off a cliff into the sea; Zaroff, disappointed at Rainsford’s apparent suicide, returns home. Zaroff smokes a pipe by his fireplace, but two issues keep him from peace of mind: first, the difficulty of replacing Ivan; and second, the uncertainty of whether Rainsford did indeed perish.
Zaroff locks himself in his bedroom and turns on the lights, only to find Rainsford waiting for him; he had swum around the island in order to sneak into the chateau without the dogs finding him. Zaroff congratulates him on winning the “game”, but Rainsford decides to fight him, saying he is still a beast-at-bay and that the original hunt is not over. Accepting the challenge, Zaroff says that the loser will be fed to the dogs, while the winner will sleep in his bed. The story ends with Rainsford enjoying the comfort of Zaroff’s bed.
Analysis
“The Most Dangerous Game” is a popular read within middle and high school curricula due to the strength of the themes within the story. The first and foremost question that the story bears is that of justifiable murder. Rainsford justifies his hunting of animals because he believes that man is superior to animals because animals do not feel. To contradict, General Zaroff believes that men are superior because they are able to reason. Zaroff uses his reasoning to explain why men are the most interesting game to hunt; men can reason, and thus provide a challenge that no animal can contend with. The story simultaneously highlights through the experience of Rainsford, as he is hunted, the fears that animals must experience while being hunted.
Zaroff himself is a contradiction because his exquisite manners are juxtaposed with his heartless brutality in killing men. The idea of a man who is proper in all aspects, but still contains a desire to kill, is a suggestion by Connell that men possess murderous instincts that can only be subdued by the presence of society and law. Zaroff is only able to partake in his “hobby” because he does not live within a civilization.
The ending of the story bears questions about the true nature of Rainsford, who is implied to have killed Zaroff in order to secure his own safety. By killing Zaroff, he thus took part in the “game” that Zaroff wanted him to play.[8]
The first major film adaption was RKO Pictures‘ film released in 1932, The Most Dangerous Game. Joel McCrea stars as Rainsford; Leslie Banks portrays Zaroff. The adaptation by James Ashmore Creelman adds two other principal characters, brother-and-sister pair Eve Trowbridge (Fay Wray) and Martin Trowbridge (Robert Armstrong), who are castaways from a shipwreck. The Most Dangerous Game was co-directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack and Irving Pichel; also with a score by Max Steiner, the film was a favorite project of producer Merian C. Cooper. The production shared several sets with King Kong (1933), a simultaneous RKO project that also involved Schoedsack, Cooper, Wray, Armstrong, Creelman, and Steiner. The Most Dangerous Game was a modest success.[9][10][11]:51
RKO produced a remake titled A Game of Death (1945), directed by Robert Wise, from a screenplay Norman Houston wrote. This film stars John Loder and Audrey Long, with Edgar Barrier as the mad hunter.[11]:206 In order to keep with events of that time, A Game of Death changed Zaroff into “Erich Kreiger”, a Nazi, and was set in the aftermath of the Second World War.[12]
Also in 1972, The Suckers, tells a sexploitation version of the story, with the hunter using models as his prey.[16] In 1973, The Perverse Countess was released.[17] The 1982 Australian film Turkey Shoot has similar elements.[18]
The 1987 film, Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity, transports the story to an alien world using scantily clad women as the hunted and a mad scientist, Zed as the Zaroff character.[17][19]
John Woo‘s first Hollywood directorial effort, the Jean-Claude Van Damme thriller Hard Target (1993), was loosely based on the same story. The locale was shifted to 1990s New Orleans, with homeless Vietnam war veterans voluntarily serving (in return for potential payment from a shady businessman) as human prey. It was followed by Hard Target 2, a direct-to-video sequel released in 2016.
In Surviving the Game (1994), a homeless man is hired as a survival guide for a group of wealthy businessmen on a hunting trip in the mountains. He is unaware that they are killers who hunt humans for sport, and that he is their new prey. Directed by Ernest R. Dickerson, the film stars Rutger Hauer, Ice-T, and Charles S. Dutton.
The Pest (1997) is a comedic parody of the story, with German huntsman Gustav Shank accidentally bringing Puerto Rican teenage hustler Pestario “Pest” Vargas to his island instead of the skilled man he had intended to hunt, only to decide to hunt the Pest anyway due to his sheer obnoxiousness. Shank’s ambition is to have a head of a warrior of every ethnicity in his Trophy Room. He also rigs the “game” by having his prey unknowingly drink a slow-acting poison before the hunt, making sure that they die even if they escape him.
In The Eliminator (2004), seven captured people are hunted at night for sport on an island as a betting game for the wealthy.
The 2019-produced film The Hunt follows a similar premise. It will release in March 13, 2020 and was originally going to be released in September 27, 2019. It was originally cancelled due to Daytona and El Paso mass shootings in early August 2019.
Radio
“The Most Dangerous Game” was presented four times as a radio play.
On February 1, 1945, it was presented with J. Carrol Naish as Zaroff and Joseph Cotten as Rainsford.[20] Both Suspense productions presented an adaptation by Jack Finke in which Rainsford narrates the story in retrospect as he waits in Zaroff’s bedroom for the final confrontation.[6][17]
On October 1, 1947, another adaption was used for the CBS radio program, Escape.[21]
In Have Gun Will Travel episode “The Black Bull” Paladin is forced to play the part of a black bull against an insane matador (Ned Romero)
In The Wild Wild West episode, 1/4 “The Night of Sudden Death”, Jim West and a circus girl are trapped inside an Africa Reserve wild animal Park in Colorado and are hunted by an insane big-game hunter Warren (Robert Loggia).
In the Get Smart episode, “Island of the Darned”, Agents 86 and 99 are trapped on an island with a mad KAOS killer, Hans Hunter (Harold Gould).
This trope was used in the season 3 (1968), episode 22 of I Spy, “The Name of the Game”.
In the Gilligan’s Island episode “The Hunter”, big-game hunter Jonathan Kincaid (Rory Calhoun) turned his sights on Gilligan when he realized there were no wild animals on the island.
In the series finale of Bonanza, entitled “The Hunter”, a deranged killer, Corporal Bill Tanner (Tom Skerritt), who was formerly a tracker for the United States Army, hunts Little Joe (Michael Landon).
In the 1974 TV movie “Savages” after a young man accidentally witnesses a murder, he must survive both the desert and being hunted by the killer (Andy Griffith).[23]
In the 1977 pilot episode of Fantasy Island, a big-game hunter comes to the island to be hunted by a man, an interesting twist on the usual version in which the hunted participates against his will.
The Canadian series Relic Hunter had an episode called “Run Sydney Run” that was very closely based on “The Most Dangerous Game”, with Peter Stebbings acting as General Tsarlov.[citation needed]
The Simpsons Halloween special “Treehouse of Horror XVI” contained a segment titled “Survival of the Fattest” which parodied the story closely. In this segment Mr. Burns invited much of the cast to his hunting lodge on a private island, only to reveal that he intended to hunt them all for sport. Another episode makes a reference to “The Most Dangerous Game” when Rainier Wolfcastle says that he bought a YMCA to demolish it and install a hunting ground dedicated to “hunt the most dangerous animal of all… Man”.
In an episode of the animated sitcom American Dad!, the Smith family and a young woman become stranded on an island after Francine jumps off a cruise. Stan goes up to the mansion on this island to ask for help, but the inhabitants say that they are going to hunt the family. The Smiths and the young woman become trapped in a cave, where the young woman dies and they eat her to survive. The hunters then break into the cave and shoot the family. Stan sits up, realizing it is paint. At a party later, the hunters reveal that nobody really dies on The Most Dangerous Game Island.
The Incredible Hulk episode “The Snare” has Banner trapped on a private island owned by an insane hunter who not only craves the challenge of hunting humans, but considers the discovery of Banner’s powerful Hulk form as a sign of a particularly appealing quarry.
In Season 2, Episode 21 of Criminal Minds, “Open Season”, two brothers capture people stranded in a remote region of the wilderness outside Challis, Idaho, release them into the hills, and hunt them with compound bows for sport, referring the men as “bucks” and the women as “does”.
In Season 13, Episode 15 of Law and Order: SVU, “Hunting Ground”, a serial rapist and killer lures female escorts after their date to a remote area where he sets them free while he hunts them down to recapture them again.
In the Disney animated series The Mighty Ducks “The Most Dangerous Duck Hunt” episode, the heroes are trapped on an island and hunted.
In a “Dial M for Monkey” segment of the animated series Dexter’s Laboratory, the hero Monkey is trapped by an alien big-game hunter named “Huntor”, who also makes a cameo among a league of Hunters of “Sumarai Jack” in the Cartoon Network cartoon series Samurai Jack.
In Season 1, Episode 15 of Supernatural, “The Benders”, a family has been behind disappearances in a city. The family snatches victims to hunt and kill. Sam and a police officer are taken, but Dean finds them and helps them subdue the family before it can cause them any harm.
In Season 7, Episode 12 of Futurama, “31st Century Fox“, Bender becomes the target of a fox hunting club and is referred to as ‘the most dangerous game.’
In Season 2 Episode 6 of The Blacklist, Elizabeth Keen and her FBI task force encounter a family in Idaho who trained the mother’s youngest son to hunt and kill humans kidnapped by the eldest son.
The Outer Limits 1998 episode “The Hunt” is a story in which the hunting of animals has been banned by environmentalists, and black market hunting of obsolete androids takes its place.
In the Season 3, Episode 5 episode of Archer, “El Contador”, Lana and Archer are hunted by a drug lord.
In Season 3, Episode 22 episode of Riverdale, “Chapter Fifty-Seven: Survive the Night”
In Season 4, Episode 2 of Game of Thrones, there is a scene in which Ramsay Bolton hunts a woman (one of his former lovers). She is cornered by the hunting party and eaten alive by Ramsay’s dogs. It is implied that this was not the only time Ramsay indulged in human hunting “for sport.”
In Season 3, Episodes 21 and 22 of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Ahsoka Tano and Chewbacca are hunted on an island.
An episode of the animated series Johnny Bravo entitled “Hunted!” is an obvious parody of the story. The titular Johnny is forced to go through the same ordeal, but his stupidity and foolishness greatly frustrates the hunter, who eventually allows him to leave.
Season 6 episode 11 of Xena: Warrior Princess, “Dangerous Prey”, is also inspired by The Most Dangerous Game. In this episode, Prince Morloch is a hunter who has grown bored of hunting animals, saying he’s “killed one of every creature that walks this earth”. He started hunting Amazons which grabbed the attention of Xena.
In season 3 of Wrecked, the plane crash survivors land on another island, where four wealthy men make them hunt each other, then hunting the survivor.
In the anime series Psycho-Pass, episodes 10 and 11 feature a wealthy cyborg tycoon who dons gentleman’s hunting gear and hunts people in an underground maze with his robotic hounds.
In the video game Hitman: Contracts, the mission “Beldingford Manor” takes inspiration from this story.
In the video game Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc, the character Razoff takes inspiration from General Zaroff, even sharing similar names.
In the comic-book story “The Second Most Dangerous Game” (serialized in Martian Comics #8–10), Martians possess humans to continue their tradition of hunting other humans, after the practice has been outlawed. Richard Connell is a character.
In the comic book issue Daredevil #4 Daredevil fights a mad manhunter on a remote island.
In Clive Cussler’s book DRAGON Dirk Pitt is chased by “Kamatori” on Soseki Island.
In the online game Poptropica, the five-part Survival Island features the player in a situation much like the one in the original story. At the end of the third episode, the player is rescued by a hunter known as Myron van Buren. The fourth episode revolves around the player in van Buren’s cabin, finding out that van Buren plans to hunt them. In the fifth episode, the player teams up with another victim of van Buren to defeat him by trapping him in a waterwheel.
In the video game Psychonauts, Vernon, one of the campers, references to hunting the most dangerous game while playing hide and seek.
In 2006, The Onion parodied the premise, positing that humans would actually make rather pitiful prey.[24]
In Don Pendleton’s The Executioner series, book #441, called Murder Island has a similar plot to the book. The protagonist, Mack “The Executioner” Bolan (a vigilante/government agent) encounters a rich businessman hunter on an island while on a mission and ends up in a similar position as the Rainsford character, while the rich hunter takes a similar role as Zaroff.
In a song called “Fly on the Wall” by Joey Pecoraro, the opening interaction between Rainsford and General Zaroff is used as a prelude to the actual song.
In 1987, American Metal band Laaz Rockit retold the story in their song “Most Dangerous Game” on their album Know Your Enemy. [25]
The Rooster Teeth series “Let’s Play Minecraft” featured an adaptation of the story into a game played by the show’s cast members in the video game Minecraft, where one player was given a map and hunted by the other five in and around the in-game world created by the Achievement Hunter cast members.
A translated version was published in Malayalam as an audio book by Kathacafe in 2017.[26]
In the video game West of Loathing a hunter’s ghost challenges the player to play “the most dangerous game”. After the player character shows disgust at hunting people the ghost says that wasn’t what he meant.
Real-life parallels
Robert Hansen, a serial killer who was active in the early 1980s, would kidnap women and release them in Alaska’s Knik River Valley. He would then hunt them, armed with a knife and a Ruger Mini-14 rifle.[27][28] A 2003 American crime drama film The Frozen Ground starring John Cusack and Nicolas Cage is based on this case.[29] Hanson was arrested and imprisoned for life where he died of an undisclosed illness.
In 1976, Hayes Noel, Bob Gurnsey, and Charles Gaines discussed Gaines’s recent trip to Africa and his experiences hunting African buffalo. Inspired in part by “The Most Dangerous Game”, they created paintball in 1981—a game where they would stalk and hunt each other—to recreate the same adrenaline rush from hunting animals.[30]
There is a reference to “The Most Dangerous Game” in letters the Zodiac Killer wrote to San Francisco Bay Area newspapers in his three-part cipher: “Man is the most dangerous animal of all to kill”.[31]The Most Dangerous Game film is also mentioned a number of times in the context of the Zodiac Killer in the 2007 film, Zodiac.[32]
Story 3: U.S. Houshold Debt Rising To Over $14,000,000,000 While Federal Reserve Continues To Expand Liquidity By Over $1,000,000,000 in Repo Market — Videos
The Credit Card Crisis
Fed keeps rates unchanged
Powell hinting Federal Reserve will remain on sidelines in 2020
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Economic language was downgraded in Fed decision: Portfolio manager
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More Investors are starting to assume the Fed may be cutting rates by the end of the year: Economist
What is ACTUALLY going on in the repo market and what do Hedge Funds have to do with it?
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U.S. Household Debt Exceeds $14 Trillion for the First Time
(Bloomberg) — Americans increased their borrowing for the 22nd straight quarter as more households took out loans to buy homes or refinance existing mortgages, according to a report released today from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Total U.S. household debt rose by $601 billion in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, or 1.4%, surpassing $14 trillion for the first time, the New York Fed’s quarterly household credit and debt report showed. That’s $1.5 trillion above the previous peak in the third quarter of 2008. Overall household debt is now 26.8% above the second-quarter 2013 trough.
Mortgage borrowing rose by $120 billion to $9.56 trillion. The rate for a 30-year mortgage has fallen by about 100 basis points over the past year, adding to home purchasers’ buying power. For example, a $500,000, 30-year loan costs about $300 less per month.
“Mortgage originations, including refinances, increased significantly in the final quarter of 2019,” Wilbert Van Der Klaauw, vice president at the New York Fed, said in a statement.
Mortgage loans for young adults age 18 to 29 rose to a the highest level since the third quarter of 2007. Originations for 30-year-olds rose to $210.1 billion last quarter — the highest level since the end of 2005.
Total debt for people ages 18 to 29 rose to a record $1.04 trillion.
Student debt increased to $1.51 trillion from $1.46 trillion at the end of 2018. More than $100 billion in student debt is held by those age 60 and over. Auto loans rose to $1.33 trillion, while credit card debt rose to a record $930 billion.
Auto debt, which has risen for 35 consecutive quarters, increased $16 billion from the previous quarter. Almost 5% of auto loans are 90 days of more delinquent. This is the highest percentage since the third quarter of 2011.
Credit card delinquencies rose to 8.36% an 18-month high.
Among student debt, one in nine borrowers were 90+ days delinquent or in default in 2019, and this figure may be understated. About half of student loans are currently in deferment, in grace periods or in forbearance and therefore temporarily not in the repayment cycle. Once these loans enter that cycle, delinquency rates are projected to be roughly twice as high, according to the Fed report.
To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Tanzi in Washington at atanzi@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Sarah McGregor at smcgregor5@bloomberg.net, Anita Sharpe
For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com
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Story 1: Solid January 2020 Jobs Report: 225,000 New Non-farm Payroll Jobs Created in January and Labor Participation Rate Increased to 63.4% with Over 729,000 New Participants in Labor Force! — Videos —
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.
President Donald Trump never misses an opportunity to plug the strong employment picture for which he takes credit, and today he earned more bragging rights:
The Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said the economy created 225,000 in January, well above estimates. BLS says notable job gains occurred in construction, in health care, and in transportation and warehousing.
The number of employed Americans dipped in January to 158,714,000 — down 89,000 from December’s record high.
The unemployment rate ticked up a tenth of a point to 3.6 percent in January.
But the labor force participation rate reached a Trump-era high of 63.4 percent, up from 63.2 percent in December, because the civilian labor force increased by 574,000 in January, after accounting for annual adjustments to population controls, BLS said.*
In January, the civilian non-institutional population in the United States was 259,502,000. That included all people 16 and older who did not live in an institution (such as a prison, nursing home or long-term care facility).
Of that civilian non-institutional population, 164,606,000 were participating in the labor force, meaning that they either had a job or were actively seeking one during the last month. This resulted in a labor force participation rate of 63.4 percent, the highest it’s been since June 2013.
The number of Americans counted as not in the labor force — meaning they did not have a job and were not looking for one — dropped by 442,000 in January (after population control adjustments). This number hovers around 95,000,000, partly because of retiring baby boomers.
Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (3.3 percent), adult women (3.2 percent), teenagers (12.2 percent), Whites (3.1 percent), Blacks (6.0 percent), Asians (3.0 percent), and Hispanics (4.3 percent) showed little or no change over the month.
The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for November was revised up by 5,000 from +256,000 to +261,000, and the change for December was revised up by 2,000 from +145,000 to +147,000. With these revisions, employment gains in November and December combined were 7,000 higher than previously reported.
In January, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by 7 cents to $28.44. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 3.1 percent.
The current economic expansion, now in its 11th year, became the longest in U.S. history on July 1, 2019, beating the previous record that lasted from March 1991 through March 2001.
President Trump bragged about the economy Tuesday night in his State of the Union speech:
In just over two years since the election, we have launched an unprecedented economic boom — a boom that has rarely been seen before. There’s been nothing like it. We have created 5.3 million new jobs and, importantly, added 600,000 new manufacturing jobs — something which almost everyone said was impossible to do. But the fact is, we are just getting started.
Wages are rising at the fastest pace in decades and growing for blue-collar workers, who I promised to fight for. They’re growing faster than anyone else thought possible. Nearly 5 million Americans have been lifted off food stamps. The U.S. economy is growing almost twice as fast today as when I took office. And we are considered, far and away, the hottest economy anywhere in the world. Not even close.
Unemployment has reached the lowest rate in over half a century. African American, Hispanic American, and Asian American unemployment have all reached their lowest levels ever recorded. Unemployment for Americans with disabilities has also reached an all-time low. More people are working now than at any time in the history of our country — 157 million people at work.
*(BLS explained that the January 2020 data includes updated population estimates developed by the Census Bureau’s household survey. “Each year,” BLS said, “the Census Bureau updates the estimates to reflect new information and assumptions about the growth of the population since the previous decennial census. The change in population reflected in the new estimates results from adjustments for net international migration, updated vital statistics, and estimation methodology improvements.”)
Transmission of material in this news release is embargoed until USDL-20-0180
8:30 a.m. (EST) Friday, February 7, 2020
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 -- JANUARY 2020
Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 225,000 in January, and the unemployment rate
was little changed at 3.6 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.
Notable job gains occurred in construction, in health care, and in transportation and
warehousing.
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.
___________________________________________________________________________________
| |
| Changes to The Employment Situation Data |
| |
| Establishment survey data have been revised as a result of the annual |
| benchmarking process and the updating of seasonal adjustment factors. In |
| addition, several changes have been made to household survey data, including |
| the annual update of population estimates. See the notes at the end of the |
| news release for more information. |
|___________________________________________________________________________________|
Household Survey Data
Both the unemployment rate, at 3.6 percent, and the number of unemployed persons, at
5.9 million, changed little in January.(See table A-1. For information about annual
population adjustments to the household survey estimates, see the note at the end of
the news release and tables B and C.)
Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (3.3 percent),
adult women (3.2 percent), teenagers (12.2 percent), Whites (3.1 percent), Blacks
(6.0 percent), Asians (3.0 percent), and Hispanics (4.3 percent) showed little or
no change over the month. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)
Among the unemployed, the number of reentrants to the labor force increased by
183,000 in January to 1.8 million but was little changed over the year. (Reentrants
are persons who previously worked but were not in the labor force prior to beginning
their job search.) (See table A-11.)
The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more), at 1.2 million,
was unchanged in January. These individuals accounted for 19.9 percent of the unemployed.
(See table A-12.)
After accounting for the annual adjustments to the population controls, the civilian
labor force rose by 574,000 in January, and the labor force participation rate edged
up by 0.2 percentage point to 63.4 percent. The employment-population ratio, at 61.2
percent, changed little over the month but was up by 0.5 percentage point over the year.
(See table A-1. For additional information about the effects of the population adjustments,
see table C.)
The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons, at 4.2 million, was
essentially unchanged in January. 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.)
The number of persons marginally attached to the labor force, at 1.3 million, changed
little in January. 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
for a variety of reasons, such as belief that no jobs are available for them (referred
to as discouraged workers), school attendance, or family responsibilities. Discouraged
workers numbered 337,000 in January, little changed over the month. (See Summary table A.)
Establishment Survey Data
Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 225,000 in January, compared with an
average monthly gain of 175,000 in 2019.Notable job gains occurred in construction,
in health care, and in transportation and warehousing. (See table B-1. For information
about the annual benchmark process, see the note at the end of the news release and table A.)
In January, construction employment rose by 44,000. Most of the gain occurred in specialty
trade contractors, with increases in both the residential (+18,000) and nonresidential
(+17,000) components. Construction added an average of 12,000 jobs per month in 2019.
Health care added 36,000 jobs in January, with gains in ambulatory health care services
(+23,000) and hospitals (+10,000). Health care has added 361,000 jobs over the past 12 months.
Employment in transportation and warehousing increased by 28,000 in January. Job gains
occurred in couriers and messengers (+14,000) and in warehousing and storage (+6,000).
Over the year, employment in transportation and warehousing has increased by 106,000.
Employment in leisure and hospitality continued to trend up in January (+36,000). Over
the past 6 months, the industry has added 288,000 jobs.
Employment continued on an upward trend in professional and business services in January
(+21,000), increasing by 390,000 over the past 12 months.
Manufacturing employment changed little in January (-12,000) and has shown little movement,
on net, over the past 12 months. Motor vehicles and parts lost 11,000 jobs over the month.
Employment in other major industries, including mining, wholesale trade, retail trade,
information, financial activities, and government, changed little over the month.
In January, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by
7 cents to $28.44. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by
3.1 percent. Average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees
were $23.87 in January, little changed over the month (+3 cents). (See tables B-3 and B-8.)
The average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls was unchanged at 34.3
hours in January. In manufacturing, the average workweek remained at 40.4 hours, while
overtime edged down 0.1 hour to 3.1 hours. The average workweek of private-sector production
and nonsupervisory employees edged up by 0.1 hour to 33.6 hours. (See tables B-2 and B-7.)
The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for November was revised up by 5,000 from
+256,000 to +261,000, and the change for December was revised up by 2,000 from +145,000 to
+147,000. With these revisions, employment gains in November and December combined were
7,000 higher 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. The annual benchmark process also contributed to the
November and December revisions.) After revisions, job gains have averaged 211,000 over the
last 3 months.
_____________
The Employment Situation for February is scheduled to be released on
Friday, March 6, 2020, at 8:30 a.m. (EST).
____________________________________________________________________________________
| |
| Changes to Household Survey Data |
| |
| Effective with this news release, two not seasonally adjusted series previously |
| displayed in Summary table A--persons marginally attached to the labor force and |
| discouraged workers--have been replaced with new seasonally adjusted series. The |
| new seasonally adjusted series are 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 are also 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. Effective with this news release, data for U-4, U-5, and U-6 in |
| table A-15 reflect the new seasonally adjusted series. Changes to historical |
| data were negligible. Revised data back to 1994 are available in the BLS online |
| database. Not seasonally adjusted series for the alternative measures are |
| unaffected. |
| |
| Effective with data for January 2020, occupation estimates in table A-13 |
| 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. Historical |
| data have not been revised. Beginning with data for January 2020, occupation |
| estimates are not strictly comparable with earlier years. |
| |
| In addition, industry estimates in table A-14 reflect the introduction of the |
| 2017 Census industry classification system, which is derived from the 2017 |
| North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). The classification |
| changes are minor and do not involve re-classification of industries between |
| the broader industry sectors. |
| |
| Beginning with data for January 2020, marital status estimates are not strictly |
| comparable with earlier years. Estimates of married persons now refer to those |
| in opposite-sex and same-sex marriages. Prior to January 2020, these estimates |
| referred only to those in opposite-sex marriages. Persons with a same-sex |
| spouse were previously classified in other marital status categories, such as |
| "women who maintain families." These changes affect marital status estimates in |
| tables A-9 and A-10. (Note that not all marital status categories are presented |
| in these tables. BLS has not separately tabulated estimates for persons with an |
| opposite-sex spouse and persons with a same-sex spouse.) Historical data have |
| not been revised. |
|____________________________________________________________________________________|
Revisions to Establishment Survey Data
In accordance with annual practice, the establishment survey data released today
have been benchmarked to reflect comprehensive counts of payroll jobs for March 2019.
These counts are derived principally from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages
(QCEW), which counts jobs covered by the Unemployment Insurance (UI) tax system. The
benchmark process results in revisions to not seasonally adjusted data from April 2018
forward. BLS revised seasonally adjusted data from January 2015 forward. In addition,
both seasonally adjusted and unadjusted data for some series incorporate other
revisions prior to 2015.
The total nonfarm employment level for March 2019 was revised downward by 514,000
(-505,000 on a not seasonally adjusted basis), or -0.3 percent. The absolute average
benchmark revision over the past 10 years is 0.2 percent.
The over-the-year change in total nonfarm employment for 2019 was revised from
+2,108,000 to +2,096,000 (seasonally adjusted). Table A presents revised total nonfarm
employment data on a seasonally adjusted basis from January to December 2019.
All revised historical establishment survey data are available on the BLS website at
www.bls.gov/ces/data/home.htm. In addition, an article that discusses the benchmark
and post-benchmark revisions and other technical issues is available at
www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cesbmart.htm.
Table A. Revisions to total nonfarm employment, January to December 2019, seasonally
adjusted
(Numbers in thousands)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| |
| Level | Over-the-month change
|---------------------------------------------------------------------
Year and month | | As | | | As |
| As |previously | Difference| As |previously| Difference
| revised |published | | revised |published |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| | | | | |
2019 | | | | | |
| | | | | |
January......... | 150,134 | 150,587 | -453 | 269 | 312 | -43
February........ | 150,135 | 150,643 | -508 | 1 | 56 | -55
March........... | 150,282 | 150,796 | -514 | 147 | 153 | -6
April........... | 150,492 | 151,012 | -520 | 210 | 216 | -6
May............. | 150,577 | 151,074 | -497 | 85 | 62 | 23
June............ | 150,759 | 151,252 | -493 | 182 | 178 | 4
July............ | 150,953 | 151,418 | -465 | 194 | 166 | 28
August.......... | 151,160 | 151,637 | -477 | 207 | 219 | -12
September....... | 151,368 | 151,830 | -462 | 208 | 193 | 15
October......... | 151,553 | 151,982 | -429 | 185 | 152 | 33
November........ | 151,814 | 152,238 | -424 | 261 | 256 | 5
December(p)..... | 151,961 | 152,383 | -422 | 147 | 145 | 2
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(p) = preliminary.
Adjustments to Population Estimates for the Household Survey
Effective with data for January 2020, updated population estimates were incorporated into
the household survey. Population estimates for the household survey are developed by the
U.S. Census Bureau. Each year, the Census Bureau updates the estimates to reflect new
information and assumptions about the growth of the population since the previous decennial
census. The change in population reflected in the new estimates results from adjustments
for net international migration, updated vital statistics, and estimation methodology
improvements.
In accordance with usual practice, BLS will not revise the official household survey estimates
for December 2019 and earlier months. To show the impact of the population adjustments,
however, differences in selected December 2019 labor force series based on the old and new
population estimates are shown in table B.
The adjustments decreased the estimated size of the civilian noninstitutional population in
December by 811,000, the civilian labor force by 524,000, employment by 507,000, and
unemployment by 17,000. The number of persons not in the labor force was decreased by 287,000.
The total unemployment rate, employment-population ratio, and labor force participation rate
were unaffected.
Data users are cautioned that these annual population adjustments can affect the comparability
of household data series over time. Table C shows the effect of the introduction of new
population estimates on the comparison of selected labor force measures between December 2019
and January 2020. Additional information on the population adjustments and their effect on
national labor force estimates is available at
www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cps-pop-control-adjustments.pdf.
Population controls for veterans, which are derived from a Department of Veterans Affairs'
population model and are updated periodically, have also been updated with the release of
data for January 2020. Historical data have not been revised.
Table B. Effect of the updated population controls on December 2019 estimates by sex, race, and Hispanic or Latino ethnicity, not seasonally adjusted
(Numbers in thousands)
Category
Total
Men
Women
White
Black or
African
Ameri-
can
Asian
Hispanic or
Latino
ethnicity
Civilian noninstitutional population
-811
-403
-408
-461
-59
-273
-323
Civilian labor force
-524
-289
-235
-297
-41
-171
-219
Participation rate
0
0
0
0
0
0
-0.1
Employed
-507
-279
-227
-287
-39
-167
-210
Employment-population ratio
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Unemployed
-17
-10
-9
-10
-2
-4
-9
Unemployment rate
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Not in labor force
-287
-115
-172
-164
-18
-102
-104
NOTE: Detail may not sum to totals because of rounding. Estimates for the above race groups (White, Black or African American, and Asian) do not sum to totals because data are not presented for all races. Persons whose ethnicity is identified as Hispanic or Latino may be of any race.
Table C. December 2019-January 2020 changes in selected labor force measures, with adjustments for population control effects
(Numbers in thousands)
Category
Dec.-Jan.
change, as
published
2020
population
control effect
Dec.-Jan. change, after
removing the
population control
effect(1)
Civilian noninstitutional population
-679
-811
132
Civilian labor force
50
-524
574
Participation rate
0.2
0
0.2
Employed
-89
-507
418
Employment-population ratio
0.2
0
0.2
Unemployed
139
-17
156
Unemployment rate
0.1
0
0.1
Not in labor force
-729
-287
-442
(1) This Dec.-Jan. change is calculated by subtracting the population control effect from the over-the-month change in the published seasonally adjusted estimates.
Employment Situation Summary Table A. Household data, seasonally adjusted
HOUSEHOLD DATA
Summary table A. Household data, seasonally adjusted[Numbers in thousands]
Category
Jan.
2019
Nov.
2019
Dec.
2019
Jan.
2020
Change from:
Dec.
2019-
Jan.
2020
Employment status
Civilian noninstitutional population
258,239
260,020
260,181
259,502
–
Civilian labor force
163,142
164,347
164,556
164,606
–
Participation rate
63.2
63.2
63.2
63.4
–
Employed
156,627
158,536
158,803
158,714
–
Employment-population ratio
60.7
61.0
61.0
61.2
–
Unemployed
6,516
5,811
5,753
5,892
–
Unemployment rate
4.0
3.5
3.5
3.6
–
Not in labor force
95,097
95,673
95,625
94,896
–
Unemployment rates
Total, 16 years and over
4.0
3.5
3.5
3.6
–
Adult men (20 years and over)
3.7
3.2
3.1
3.3
–
Adult women (20 years and over)
3.6
3.2
3.2
3.2
–
Teenagers (16 to 19 years)
12.9
12.0
12.6
12.2
–
White
3.5
3.2
3.2
3.1
–
Black or African American
6.8
5.6
5.9
6.0
–
Asian
3.1
2.6
2.5
3.0
–
Hispanic or Latino ethnicity
4.8
4.2
4.2
4.3
–
Total, 25 years and over
3.2
2.9
2.8
2.9
–
Less than a high school diploma
5.7
5.3
5.2
5.5
–
High school graduates, no college
3.7
3.7
3.7
3.8
–
Some college or associate degree
3.4
2.9
2.7
2.8
–
Bachelor’s degree and higher
2.4
2.0
1.9
2.0
–
Reason for unemployment
Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs
3,060
2,804
2,686
2,665
–
Job leavers
816
776
829
836
–
Reentrants
1,944
1,663
1,655
1,838
–
New entrants
607
581
551
557
–
Duration of unemployment
Less than 5 weeks
2,319
2,026
2,065
2,059
–
5 to 14 weeks
1,999
1,753
1,730
1,755
–
15 to 26 weeks
898
865
812
887
–
27 weeks and over
1,259
1,219
1,186
1,166
–
Employed persons at work part time
Part time for economic reasons
5,105
4,288
4,148
4,182
–
Slack work or business conditions
3,402
2,634
2,657
2,655
–
Could only find part-time work
1,413
1,259
1,215
1,294
–
Part time for noneconomic reasons
20,984
21,532
21,586
22,154
–
Persons not in the labor force
Marginally attached to the labor force
1,498
1,244
1,230
1,342
–
Discouraged workers
418
316
289
337
–
– December – January changes in household data are not shown due to the introduction of updated population controls.
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.
Footnotes
(1) Includes other industries, not shown separately.
(2) Data relate to production employees in mining and logging and manufacturing, construction employees in construction, and nonsupervisory employees in the service-providing industries.
(3) The indexes of aggregate weekly hours are calculated by dividing the current month’s estimates of aggregate hours by the corresponding annual average aggregate hours.
(4) The indexes of aggregate weekly payrolls are calculated by dividing the current month’s estimates of aggregate weekly payrolls by the corresponding annual average aggregate weekly payrolls.
(5) Figures are the percent of industries with employment increasing plus one-half of the industries with unchanged employment, where 50 percent indicates an equal balance between industries with increasing and decreasing employment.
(P) Preliminary
NOTE: Data have been revised to reflect March 2019 benchmark levels and updated seasonal adjustment factors.
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Trump defense concludes opening arguments in Senate impeachment trial Day 7
WATCH: Dershowitz says charges against Trump are ‘outside’ of impeachment offenses
[Verse 1]
Day after day, alone on a hill
The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still
But nobody wants to know him, they can see that he’s just a fool
And he never gives an answer[Chorus]
But the fool on the hill sees the sun going down
And the eyes in his head see the world spinning around[Verse 2]
Well on the way, head in a cloud
The man of a thousand voices talking perfectly loud
But nobody ever hears him or the sound he appears to make
And he never seems to notice[Chorus]
But the fool on the hill sees the sun going down
And the eyes in his head see the world spinning around{Instrumental bridge}
[Verse 3]
And nobody seems to like him, they can tell what he wants to do
And he never shows his feelings
Verse 1]
The long and winding road that leads to your door
Will never disappear, I’ve seen that road before
It always leads me here
Lead me to your door[Verse 2]
The wild and windy night that the rain washed away
Has left a pool of tears, crying for the day
Why leave me standing here?
Let me know the way[Bridge]
Many times I’ve been alone, and many times I’ve cried
Anyway, you’ll never know the many ways I’ve tried[Verse 3]
And still they lead me back to the long and winding road
You left me standing here a long, long time ago
Don’t leave me waiting here
Lead me to your door[Orchestral Solo]
[Verse 3]
But still they lead me back to the long and winding road
You left me standing here a long, long time ago
Don’t keep me waiting here (Don’t keep me waiting)
Lead me to your door
Story 2: Advance Estimate of The U.S. Economy’s Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Growth Rate in Fourth Quarter 2020
Is 2.1% — Failure of Big Government Parties To Balance The Budget and Live Within The Means of American People —Videos
EMBARGOED UNTIL RELEASE AT 8:30 A.M. EST, Thursday, January 30, 2020
BEA 20—04
Gross Domestic Product, Fourth Quarter and Year 2019 (Advance Estimate)
Two Years After Trump Said The Economy Can Hit 6 Percent, GDP Growth
Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 2.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2019 (table 1), according to the “advance” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the third quarter, real GDP increased 2.1 percent.
The GDP estimate released today is based on source data that are incomplete or subject to further revision by the source agency (see “Source Data for the Advance Estimate” on page 3). The “second” estimate for the fourth quarter, based on more complete data, will be released on February 27, 2020.
The increase in real GDP in the fourth quarter reflected positive contributions from personal consumption expenditures (PCE), federal government spending, state and local government spending, residential fixed investment, and exports, that were partly offset by negative contributions from private inventory investment and nonresidential fixed investment. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, decreased (table 2).
Real GDP growth in the fourth quarter was the same as that in the third. In the fourth quarter, a downturn in imports, an acceleration in government spending, and a smaller decrease in nonresidential investment were offset by a larger decrease in private inventory investment and a slowdown in PCE.
Current dollar GDP increased 3.6 percent, or $191.7 billion, in the fourth quarter to a level of $21.73 trillion. In the third quarter, GDP increased 3.8 percent, or $202.3 billion (table 1 and table 3).
The price index for gross domestic purchases increased 1.5 percent in the fourth quarter, compared with an increase of 1.4 percent in the third quarter (table 4). The PCE price index increased 1.6 percent, compared with an increase of 1.5 percent. Excluding food and energy prices, the PCE price index increased 1.3 percent, compared with an increase of 2.1 percent.
Personal Income
Current-dollar personal income increased $148.7 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with an increase of $162.6 billion in the third quarter. The smaller increase reflected decelerations in proprietors’ income, personal current transfer receipts, and personal dividend income that were partly offset by a smaller decrease in personal interest income and an acceleration in compensation (table 8).
Disposable personal income increased $127.4 billion, or 3.1 percent, in the fourth quarter, compared with an increase of $179.5 billion, or 4.5 percent, in the third quarter. Real disposable personal income increased 1.5 percent, compared with an increase of 2.9 percent.
Personal saving was $1.29 trillion in the fourth quarter, compared with $1.30 trillion in the third quarter. The personal saving rate — personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income — was 7.7 percent in the fourth quarter, compared with 7.8 percent in the third quarter.
2019 GDP
Real GDP increased 2.3 percent in 2019 (from the 2018 annual level to the 2019 annual level), compared with an increase of 2.9 percent in 2018 (table 1).
The increase in real GDP in 2019 reflected positive contributions from PCE, nonresidential fixed investment, federal government spending, state and local government spending, and private inventory investment that were partly offset by negative contributions from residential fixed investment. Imports increased (table 2).
The deceleration in real GDP in 2019, compared to 2018, primarily reflected decelerations in nonresidential fixed investment and PCE and a downturn in exports, which were partly offset by accelerations in both state and local and federal government spending. Imports increased less in 2019 than in 2018.
Current-dollar GDP increased 4.1 percent, or $848.8 billion, in 2019 to a level of $21.43 trillion, compared with an increase of 5.4 percent, or $1,060.8 billion, in 2018 (table 1 and table 3).
The price index for gross domestic purchases increased 1.6 percent in 2019, compared with an increase of 2.4 percent in 2018 (table 4). The PCE price index increased 1.4 percent, compared with an increase of 2.1 percent. Excluding food and energy prices, the PCE price index increased 1.6 percent, compared with an increase of 1.9 percent (table 4).
Measured from the fourth quarter of 2018 to the fourth quarter of 2019, real GDP increased 2.3 percent during the period. That compared with an increase of 2.5 percent during 2018. The price index for gross domestic purchases, as measured from the fourth quarter of 2018 to the fourth quarter of 2019, increased 1.5 percent during 2019. That compared with an increase of 2.2 percent during 2018. The PCE price index increased 1.5 percent, compared with an increase of 1.9 percent. Excluding food and energy, the PCE price index increased 1.6 percent, compared with an increase of 1.9 percent (table 6).
Source Data for the Advance Estimate
Information on the source data and key assumptions used for unavailable source data in the advance estimate is provided in a Technical Note that is posted with the news release on BEA’s Web site. A detailed “Key Source Data and Assumptions” file is also posted for each release. For information on updates to GDP, see the “Additional Information” section that follows.
* * *
Next release: February 27, 2020 at 8:30 A.M. EST
Gross Domestic Product, Fourth Quarter and Year 2019 (Second Estimate)
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Porcelli: “People need to reorient their thinking on the payroll report, job growth is going
to slow
Ep. 518: Another Trumped up Jobs Report
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: Unfair Partisan Democrat Impeachment Inquiry Ends– No Evidence of Bribery or Quid Pro Que — American People Unconvinced That President Trump Did Anything Wrong — American People Do Not Support Impeachment of President Trump — House Speaker Pelosi Will Not Call For An Impeachment Vote Arguing The Republican Senate Will Not Convict President Trump of A Non-existent Crime or Impeachment Offense — American People Will Elect President Trump For A Second Term in Landslide of 70 Million Votes and Over 330 Electoral College Votes — Elections Have Consequences — Schiff Parody of Richard III Cries– A Horse A Horse My Kingdom for A Horse — The End — Videos
rab·bit hole
noun
1.
a rabbit’s burrow.
“a heather-covered hillside full of rabbit holes”
2.
used to refer to a bizarre, confusing, or nonsensical situation or environment, typically one from which it is difficult to extricate oneself.
“he’ll continue fearmongering to promote his agenda no matter how far down the rabbit hole it takes him”
Jefferson Airplane White Rabbit (Live At Woodstock 1969)
One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you, don’t do anything at all
Go ask Alice, when she’s ten feet tall
And if you go chasing rabbits, and you know you’re going to fall
Tell ’em a hookah-smoking caterpillar has given you the call
And call Alice, when she was just small
When the men on the chessboard get up and tell you where to go
And you’ve just had some kind of mushroom, and your mind is moving low
Go ask Alice, I think she’ll know
When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead
And the white knight is talking backwards
And the red queen’s off with her head
Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head, feed your head
Fox News Live: Trump impeachment hearing Day 5 – Fiona Hill testifies
Rep. Devin Nunes Opening Statement
Fiona Hill Opening Statement
David Holmes Opening Statement
Day 5, Part 6: Devin Nunes and Steve Castor question Fiona Hill and David Holmes
WATCH: Republican counsel and Rep. Nunes’ full questioning of Hill and Holmes
Nunes presses Fiona Hill over the Steele dossier and its origins
WATCH: Rep. Jim Jordan speaks during testimony by Hill and Holmes | Trump impeachment hearings
WATCH: Rep. Nunes’ full closing statement in Hill and Holmes hearing | Trump impeachment hearings
WATCH: Democratic counsel’s full questioning of Hill and Holmes | Trump impeachment hearings
WATCH: Rep. Adam Schiff’s full questioning of David Holmes | Trump impeachment hearings
ADAM SCHIFF ERUPTS: Closing Statement On CONTENTIOUS Impeachment Hearing
EXCLUSIVE: Rudy Giuliani Responds to Dems’ ‘Quid Pro Quo’ Claims Amid Impeachment Hearings
Glenn Beck Lays Out the Case Against The Media
Glenn Beck Presents: The Democrats’ Hydra
Biden’s Ukraine Scandal Explained I Glenn Beck
House GOP speak following the fifth public impeachment hearing
Tucker’s big takeaways from the Trump impeachment saga
The Doors – The End – Live At Hollywood Bowl 1968
The Doors Lyrics
Play “The End”
on Amazon Music
“The End”
This is the end Beautiful friend This is the end My only friend
The end Of our elaborate plans The end Of everything that stands The end No safety or surprise The end I’ll never look into your eyes Again
Can you picture what will be So limitless and free Desperately in need of some stranger’s hand In a desperate land
Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain And all the children are insane All the children are insane Waiting for the summer rain, yeah
There’s danger on the edge of town Ride the king’s highway, baby Weird scenes inside the gold mine Ride the highway west, baby
Ride the snake, ride the snake To the lake The ancient lake Baby
The snake is long, seven miles Ride the snake He’s old And his skin is cold
The west is the best The west is the best Get here, and we’ll do the rest
The blue bus is callin’ us The blue bus is callin’ us Driver, where you taking us
The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on He took a face from the ancient gallery And he walked on down the hall He went into the room where his sister lived, and…then he Paid a visit to his brother, and then he He walked on down the hall, and And he came to a door…and he looked inside “Father?” “Yes, son.” “I want to kill you.” “Mother, I want to…”
C’mon babe
C’mon baby, take a chance with us C’mon baby, take a chance with us C’mon baby, take a chance with us And meet me at the back of the blue bus Doin’ a blue rock On a blue bus Doin’ a blue rock C’mon, yeah
Hill was born in Bishop Auckland, County Durham in northern England, the daughter of a coal miner, Alfred Hill, and a midwife, June Murray. Her father died in 2012; her mother still resides in Bishop Auckland.[1] In the 1960s, after the last of the local coal mines had closed, her father wanted to emigrate to find work in the mines of Pennsylvania or West Virginia, but his mother’s poor health required him to stay in England.[2] Her family struggled financially; June sewed clothes for her daughters and at age 13, Fiona began working at odd jobs, including washing cars and working as a waitress at a local hotel.[1]
Hill served as an intelligence analyst under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama from 2006 to 2009. She was appointed, in the first quarter of 2017, by President Donald Trump as Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs on his National Security Council staff,[6][5][7] and resigned her position on July 19, 2019.[8]
Fiona Hill (center left) with John R. Bolton at a meeting with Vladimir Putin on June 27, 2018
She testified in public before the same body on November 21, 2019.[12] While being questioned by Steve Castor, the counsel for the House Intelligence Committee’s Republican minority, Hill commented on Gordon Sondland‘s involvement in the Ukraine matter: “It struck me when (Wednesday), when you put up on the screen Ambassador Sondland’s emails, and who was on these emails, and he said these are the people who need to know, that he was absolutely right,” she said. “Because he was being involved in a domestic political errand, and we were being involved in national security foreign policy. And those two things had just diverged.”[13] In response to a question from that committee’s chairman, Rep. Adam Schiff, Hill stated: “The Russians’ interests are frankly to delegitimize our entire presidency.… The goal of the Russians [in 2016] was really to put whoever became the president — by trying to tip their hands on one side of the scale — under a cloud.”[14]
Solomon: These once-secret memos cast doubt on Joe Biden’s Ukraine story
BY JOHN SOLOMON, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 09/26/19 06:00 PM EDT 11,214
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL
96,086
Former Vice President Joe Biden, now a 2020 Democratic presidential contender, has locked into a specific story about the controversy in Ukraine.
He insists that, in spring 2016, he strong-armed Ukraine to fire its chief prosecutor solely because Biden believed that official was corrupt and inept, not because the Ukrainian was investigating a natural gas company, Burisma Holdings, that hired Biden’s son, Hunter, into a lucrative job.
There’s just one problem.
Hundreds of pages of never-released memos and documents — many from inside the American team helping Burisma to stave off its legal troubles — conflict with Biden’s narrative.
And they raise the troubling prospect that U.S. officials may have painted a false picture in Ukraine that helped ease Burisma’s legal troubles and stop prosecutors’ plans to interview Hunter Biden during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
For instance, Burisma’s American legal representatives met with Ukrainian officials just days after Biden forced the firing of the country’s chief prosecutor and offered “an apology for dissemination of false information by U.S. representatives and public figures” about the Ukrainian prosecutors, according to the Ukrainian government’s official memo of the meeting. The effort to secure that meeting began the same day the prosecutor’s firing was announced.
In addition, Burisma’s American team offered to introduce Ukrainian prosecutors to Obama administration officials to make amends, according to that memo and the American legal team’s internal emails.
The memos raise troubling questions:
1.) If the Ukraine prosecutor’s firing involved only his alleged corruption and ineptitude, why did Burisma’s American legal team refer to those allegations as “false information?”
2.) If the firing had nothing to do with the Burisma case, as Biden has adamantly claimed, why would Burisma’s American lawyers contact the replacement prosecutor within hours of the termination and urgently seek a meeting in Ukraine to discuss the case?
Ukrainian prosecutors say they have tried to get this information to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) since the summer of 2018, fearing it might be evidence of possible violations of U.S. ethics laws. First, they hired a former federal prosecutor to bring the information to the U.S. attorney in New York, who, they say, showed no interest. Then, the Ukrainians reached out to President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, told Trump in July that he plans to launch his own wide-ranging investigation into what happened with the Bidens and Burisma.
“I’m knowledgeable about the situation,” Zelensky told Trump, asking the American president to forward any evidence he might know about. “The issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the honesty so we will take care of that and will work on the investigation of the case.”
Biden has faced scrutiny since December 2015, when the New York Times published a story noting that Burisma hired Hunter Biden just weeks after the vice president was asked by President Obama to oversee U.S.-Ukraine relations. That story also alerted Biden’s office that Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin had an active investigation of Burisma and its founder.
Documents I obtained this year detail an effort to change the narrative after the Times story about Hunter Biden, with the help of the Obama State Department.
Hunter Biden’s American business partner in Burisma, Devon Archer, texted a colleague two days after the Times story about a strategy to counter the “new wave of scrutiny” and stated that he and Hunter Biden had just met at the State Department. The text suggested there was about to be a new “USAID project the embassy is announcing with us” and that it was “perfect for us to move forward now with momentum.”
I have sued the State Department for any records related to that meeting. The reason is simple: There is both a public interest and an ethics question to knowing if Hunter Biden and his team sought State’s assistance while his father was vice president.
The controversy ignited anew earlier this year when I disclosed that Joe Biden admitted during a 2018 videotaped speech that, as vice president in March 2016, he threatened to cancel $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, to pressure Ukraine’s then-President Petro Poroshenko to fire Shokin.
At the time, Shokin’s office was investigating Burisma. Shokin told me he was making plans to question Hunter Biden about $3 million in fees that Biden and his partner, Archer, collected from Burisma through their American firm. Documents seized by the FBI in an unrelated case confirm the payments, which in many months totaled more than $166,000.
Some media outlets have reported that, at the time Joe Biden forced the firing in March 2016, there were no open investigations. Those reports are wrong. A British-based investigation of Burisma’s owner was closed down in early 2015 on a technicality when a deadline for documents was not met. But the Ukraine Prosecutor General’s office still had two open inquiries in March 2016, according to the official case file provided me. One of those cases involved taxes; the other, allegations of corruption. Burisma announced the cases against it were not closed and settled until January 2017.
Joe Biden has since responded that he forced Shokin’s firing over concerns about corruption and ineptitude, which he claims were widely shared by Western allies, and that it had nothing to do with the Burisma investigation.
Some of the new documents I obtained call that claim into question.
In a newly sworn affidavit prepared for a European court, Shokin testified that when he was fired in March 2016, he was told the reason was that Biden was unhappy about the Burisma investigation. “The truth is that I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holdings, a natural gas firm active in Ukraine and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was a member of the Board of Directors,” Shokin testified.
“On several occasions President Poroshenko asked me to have a look at the case against Burisma and consider the possibility of winding down the investigative actions in respect of this company but I refused to close this investigation,” Shokin added.
Shokin certainly would have reason to hold a grudge over his firing. But his account is supported by documents from Burisma’s legal team in America, which appeared to be moving into Ukraine with intensity as Biden’s effort to fire Shokin picked up steam.
Burisma’s own accounting records show that it paid tens of thousands of dollars while Hunter Biden served on the board of an American lobbying and public relations firm, Blue Star Strategies, run by Sally Painter and Karen Tramontano, who both served in President Bill Clinton’s administration.
Just days before Biden forced Shokin’s firing, Painter met with the No. 2 official at the Ukrainian embassy in Washington and asked to meet officials in Kiev around the same time that Joe Biden visited there. Ukrainian embassy employee Oksana Shulyar emailed Painter afterward: “With regards to the meetings in Kiev, I suggest that you wait until the next week when there is an expected vote of the government’s reshuffle.”
Ukraine’s Washington embassy confirmed the conversations between Shulyar and Painter but said the reference to a shakeup in Ukrainian government was not specifically referring to Shokin’s firing or anything to do with Burisma.
Painter then asked one of the Ukraine embassy’s workers to open the door for meetings with Ukraine’s prosecutors about the Burisma investigation, the memos show. Eventually, Blue Star would pay that Ukrainian official money for his help with the prosecutor’s office.
At the time, Blue Star worked in concert with an American criminal defense lawyer, John Buretta, who was hired by Burisma to help address the case in Ukraine. The case was settled in January 2017 for a few million dollars in fines for alleged tax issues.
Buretta, Painter, Tramontano, Hunter Biden and Joe Biden’s campaign have not responded to numerous calls and emails seeking comment.
On March 29, 2016, the day Shokin’s firing was announced, Buretta asked to speak with Yuriy Sevruk, the prosecutor named to temporarily replace Shokin, but was turned down, the memos show.
Blue Star, using the Ukrainian embassy worker it had hired, eventually scored a meeting with Sevruk on April 6, 2016, a week after Shokin’s firing. Buretta, Tramontano and Painter attended that meeting in Kiev, according to Blue Star’s memos.
Sevruk memorialized the meeting in a government memo that the general prosecutor’s office provided to me, stating that the three Americans offered an apology for the “false” narrative that had been provided by U.S. officials about Shokin being corrupt and inept.
“They realized that the information disseminated in the U.S. was incorrect and that they would facilitate my visit to the U.S. for the purpose of delivering the true information to the State Department management,” the memo stated.
The memo also quoted the Americans as saying they knew Shokin pursued an aggressive corruption investigation against Burisma’s owner, only to be thwarted by British allies: “These individuals noted that they had been aware that the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine had implemented all required steps for prosecution … and that he was released by the British court due to the underperformance of the British law enforcement agencies.”
The memo provides a vastly different portrayal of Shokin than Biden’s. And its contents are partially backed by subsequent emails from Blue Star and Buretta that confirm the offer to bring Ukrainian authorities to meet the Obama administration in Washington.
For instance, Tramontano wrote the Ukrainian prosecution team on April 16, 2016, saying U.S. Justice Department officials, including top international prosecutor Bruce Swartz, might be willing to meet. “The reforms are not known to the US Justice Department and it would be useful for the Prosecutor General to meet officials in the US and share this information directly,” she wrote.
Buretta sent a similar email to the Ukrainians, writing that “I think you would find it productive to meet with DOJ officials in Washington” and providing contact information for Swartz. “I would be happy to help,” added Buretta, a former senior DOJ official.
Burisma, Buretta and Blue Star continued throughout 2016 to try to resolve the open issues in Ukraine, and memos recount various contacts with the State Department and the U.S. embassy in Kiev seeking help in getting the Burisma case resolved.
Just days before Trump took office, Burisma announced it had resolved all of its legal issues. And Buretta gave an interview in Ukraine about how he helped navigate the issues.
Today, two questions remain.
One is whether it was ethically improper or even illegal for Biden to intervene to fire the prosecutor handling Burisma’s case, given his son’s interests. That is one that requires more investigation and the expertise of lawyers.
The second is whether Biden has given the American people an honest accounting of what happened. The new documents I obtained raise serious doubts about his story’s credibility. And that’s an issue that needs to be resolved by voters.
John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists’ misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments, and numerous cases of political corruption. He serves as an investigative columnist and executive vice president for video at The Hill. Follow him on Twitter @jsolomonReports.
Story 1: Coup Cover-up Campaign Continues — Big Lie Media Continues Peddling Progressive Propaganda Lies — Both Phony Whistle Blower and Trump Dirt Digger Must Testify — Democrat Operative Activist and CIA Analyst Eric A. Ciaramella Is The Whistleblower — Democrat National Committee (DNC) Ukraine Trump Dirt Digger –Alexandra Chalupa — Both Must Testify In Public or Impeachment Fails — Videos —
House Impeachment Inquiry Hearing – Vindman & Williams Testimony
Impeachment Inquiry Hearing with Lt. Col. Vindman and Vice President Pence Aide Jennifer Williams. Hearing begins with gavel at 31:40. https://cs.pn/377wOPm
Rep. Devin Nunes Opening Statement
WATCH: Rep. Nunes’ full opening statement in Volker and Morrison hearing
WATCH: Rep. Elise Stefanik’s full questioning of Vindman and Williams | Trump impeachment hearings
WATCH: Rep. Michael Turner’s full questioning of Vindman and Williams | Trump impeachment hearings
WATCH: Rep. Jordan criticizes Vindman for discussing Trump Ukraine call | Trump impeachment inquiry
WATCH: Rep. Jim Jordan’s full questioning of Vindman and Williams | Trump impeachment hearings
WATCH: Schiff’s full questioning of Vindman and Williams | Trump impeachment hearings
WATCH: Democratic counsel’s full questioning of Vindman and Williams | Trump impeachment hearings
WATCH: Rep. Nunes’ full opening statement in Volker and Morrison hearing
Rep. Devin Nunes, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said there has been in a “disconnect” between what’s been seen and heard in the public impeachment hearings so far, and what’s been reported by media. Repeating a GOP argument in the hearings, Nunes raised questions about Democrats’ “prior coordination” with the whistleblower. Rep. Adam Schiff, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, has previously said he doesn’t know the identity of the whistleblower or communicated with them. Nunes spoke ahead of testimony from Jennifer Williams, an aide to Vice President, and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, an Army officer who works for the National Security Council, on Nov. 19, in a public hearing as part of the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. The impeachment inquiry has focused on a July 25 phone call in which Trump asked the president of Ukraine to investigate former vice president and 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. For more on who’s who in the Trump impeachment inquiry, read: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics…
Day 3, Part 13: Devin Nunes and Steve Castor question Kurt Volker and Tim Morrison
WATCH: Rep. Jim Jordan’s full questioning of Volker and Morrison | Trump impeachment hearings
WATCH: Republican counsel’s full questioning of Volker and Morrison | Trump impeachment hearings
WATCH: Rep. Michael Turner’s full questioning of Volker and Morrison | Trump impeachment hearings
WATCH: Democratic counsel’s full questioning of Volker and Morrison | Trump impeachment hearings
House Impeachment Inquiry Hearing – Vindman & Williams Testimony
George Soros, Marie Yovanovitch, Democrats & Ukraine: How the DEEP STATE Takes Control
Glenn breaks down the several steps our shadow government, or deep state, uses to take control of both domestic and foreign policy, allowing them to gain power and shape the world into their socialistic viewpoint. Several sources claim former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, instructed Ukraine officials to keep their hands off investigating the NGO in Ukraine founded by George Soros. Why? George Soros is working with the State Department on the two final steps to take power there: training activists to go into action when cued, and actively supporting that opposition.
Debunking some of the Ukraine scandal myths about Biden and election interference
There is a long way to go in the impeachment process, and there are some very important issues still to be resolved. But as the process marches on, a growing number of myths and falsehoods are being spread by partisans and their allies in the news media.
The early pattern of misinformation about Ukraine, Joe Biden and election interference mirrors closely the tactics used in late 2016 and early 2017 to build the false and now-debunked narrative that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin colluded to hijack the 2016 election.
Facts do matter. And they prove to be stubborn evidence, even in the midst of a political firestorm. So here are the facts (complete with links to the original materials) debunking some of the bigger fables in the Ukraine scandal.
Myth: There is no evidence the Democratic National Committee sought Ukraine’s assistance during the 2016 election.
The Facts: The Ukrainian embassy in Washington confirmed to me this past April that a Democratic National Committee contractor named Alexandra Chalupa did, in fact, solicit dirt on Donald Trump and Paul Manafort during the spring of 2016 in hopes of spurring a pre-election congressional hearing into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. The embassy also stated Chalupa tried to get Ukraine’s president at the time, Petro Poroshenko, to do an interview on Manafort with an American investigative reporter working on the issue. The embassy said it turned down both requests.
You can read the Ukraine embassy’s statement here. The statement essentially confirmed a January 2017 investigative article in Politico that first raised concerns about Chalupa’s contacts with the embassy.
Chalupa’s activities involving Ukraine were further detailed in a May 2016 email published by WikiLeaks in which she reported to DNC officials on her efforts to dig up dirt on Manafort and Trump. You can read that email here. Myth: There is no evidence that Ukrainian government officials tried to influence the American presidential election in 2016.
The Facts: There are two documented episodes involving Ukrainian government officials’ efforts to influence the 2016 American presidential election. The first occurred in Ukraine, where a court last December ruled that a Parliamentary member and a senior Ukrainian law enforcement official improperly tried to influence the U.S. election by releasing financial records in spring and summer 2016 from an investigation into Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s lobbying activities. The publicity from the release of the so-called Black Ledger documents forced Manafort to resign. You can read that ruling here. While that court ruling since has been set aside on a jurisdiction technicality, the facts of the released information are not in dispute.
The second episode occurred on U.S. soil back in August 2016 when Ukraine’s then-ambassador to Washington, Valeriy Chaly, took the extraordinary step of writing an OpEd in The Hill criticizing GOP nominee Donald Trump and his views on Russia just three months before Election Day. You can read that OpEd here.
Chaly later told me through his spokeswoman that he wasn’t writing the OpEd for political purposes but rather to address his country’s geopolitical interests. But his article, nonetheless, was viewed by many in career diplomatic circles as running contrary to the Geneva Convention’s rules barring diplomats from becoming embroiled in the host country’s political affairs. And it clearly adds to the public perception that Ukraine’s government at the time preferred Hillary Clinton over Trump in the 2016 election.
Myth: The allegation that Joe Biden tried to fire the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating his son Hunter Biden’s Ukrainian gas firm employer has been debunked, and there is no evidence the ex-vice president did anything improper.
The Facts: Joe Biden is captured on videotape bragging about his effort to strong-arm Ukraine’s president into firing Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. Biden told a foreign policy group in early 2018 that he used the threat of withholding $1 billion in U.S. aid to Kiev to successfully force Shokin’s firing. You can watch Biden’s statement here.
It also is not in dispute that at the time he forced the firing, the vice president’s office knew Shokin was investigating Burisma Holdings, the company where Hunter Biden worked as a board member and consultant. Team Biden was alerted to the investigation in a December 2015 New York Times article. You can read that article here.
The unresolved question is what motivated Joe Biden to seek Shokin’s ouster. Biden says he took the action solely because the U.S. and Western allies believed Shokin was ineffective in fighting corruption. Shokin told me, ABC News and others that he was fired because Joe Biden was unhappy that the Burisma investigation was not shut down. He made similar statements in an affidavit prepared to be filed in an European court. You can read that affidavit here.
In the end, though, whether Joe Biden had good or bad intentions in getting Shokin fired is somewhat irrelevant to the question of the vice president’s ethical obligation.
U.S. ethics rules require all government officials to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest in taking official actions. Ethics experts I talked with say Biden should have recused himself from the Shokin matter once he learned about the Burisma investigation to avoid the appearance issue.
And a senior U.S. diplomat was quoted in testimony reported by The Washington Post earlier this month that he tried to raise warnings with Biden’s VP office in 2015 that Hunter Biden’s role at the Ukrainian firm raised the potential issue of conflicts of interest.
Myth: Ukraine’s investigation into Burisma Holdings was no longer active when Joe Biden forced Shokin’s firing in March 2016.
The Facts: This is one of the most egregiously false statements spread by the media. Ukraine’s official case file for Burisma Holdings, provided to me by prosecutors, shows there were two active investigations into the gas firm and its founder Mykola Zlochevsky in early 2016, one involving corruption allegations and the other involving unpaid taxes.
In fact, Shokin told me in an interview he was making plans to interview Burisma board members, including Hunter Biden, at the time he was fired. And it was publicly reported that in February 2016, a month before Shokin was fired, that Ukrainian prosecutors raided one of Zlochevsky’s homes and seized expensive items like a luxury car as part of the corruption probe. You can read a contemporaneous news report about the seizure here.
Burisma’s own legal activities also clearly show the investigations were active at the time Shokin was fired. Internal emails I obtained from the American legal team representing Burisma show that on March 29, 2016 – the very day Shokin was fired – Burisma lawyer John Buretta was seeking a meeting with Shokin’s temporary replacement in hopes of settling the open cases.
In May 2016 when new Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko was appointed, Buretta then sent a letter to the new prosecutor seeking to resolve the investigations of Burisma and Zlochevsky. You can read that letter here.
Buretta eventually gave a February 2017 interview to the Kiev Post in which he divulged that the corruption probe was resolved in fall 2016 and the tax case by early January 2017. You can read Buretta’s interview here.
In another words, the Burisma investigations were active at the time Vice President Biden forced Shokin’s firing, and any suggestion to the contrary is pure misinformation.
Myth: There is no evidence Vice President Joe Biden did anything to encourage Burisma’s hiring of his son Hunter.
The Facts: This is another area where the public facts cry out for more investigation and raise a question in some minds about another appearance of a conflict of interest.
Hunter Biden’s business partner, Devon Archer, was appointed to Burisma’s board in mid-April 2014 and the firm Rosemont Seneca Bohai — jointly owned by Hunter Biden and Devon Archer — received its first payments from the Ukrainian gas company on April 15, 2014, according to the company’s ledgers. That very same day as the first Burisma payment, Devon Archer met with Joe Biden at the White House, according to White House visitor logs. It is not known what the two discussed.
A week later, Joe Biden traveled to Ukraine and met with then-Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. During that meeting, the American vice president urged Ukraine to ramp up energy production to free itself from its Russian natural gas dependence. Biden even boasted that “an American team is currently in the region working with Ukraine and its neighbors to increase Ukraine’s short-term energy supply.” Yatsenyuk welcomed the help from American “investors” in modernizing natural gas supply lines in Ukraine. You can read the Biden-Yatsenyuk transcript here.
Less than three weeks later, Burisma added Hunter Biden to its board to join Archer. To some, the sequence of events creates the appearance that Joe Biden’s pressure to increase Ukrainian gas supply and to urge Kiev to rely on Americans might have led Burisma to hire his son. More investigation needs to be done to determine exactly what happened. And until that occurs, the appearance issue will likely linger over this episode.
Myth: Hunter Biden’s firm only received $50,000 a month for his work as a board member and consultant for Burisma Holdings.
The Facts: This figure frequently cited by Biden defenders and the media significantly understates what Burisma was paying Hunter Biden’s Rosemont Seneca Bohai firm for his and Devon Archer’s services. Bank records obtained by the FBI in an unrelated case show that between May 2014 and the end of 2015, Hunter Biden’s and Archer’s firm received monthly consulting payments totaling $166,666, or three times the amount cited by the media. In some months, there was even more money than that paid. You can review those bank records here.
The monthly payments figures are confirmed by the accounting ledger that Burisma turned over to Ukrainian prosecutors. That ledger, which you can read here, also shows that in spring and summer of 2014 Burisma paid more than $283,000 to the American law firm of Boies Schiller, where Hunter Biden also worked as an attorney.
Myth: President Trump was trying to force Ukraine to reopen a probe into Burisma Holdings and its founder Mykola Zlochevsky when he talked to Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in July of this year.
The Facts: Trump could not have forced the Ukrainians into opening a new Burisma investigation in July because the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s office had already done so on March 28, 2019, or three months before the call.
The prosecutors filed this notice of suspicion in Ukraine announcing the re-opening of the investigation. The revival of the case was even widely reported in the Ukrainian press, something U.S. intelligence and diplomats who are now testifying to Congress behind closed doors should have known. Here’s an example of one such Ukrainian media report at the time.
Myth: Former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko retracted or recanted his claim that U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch in 2016 identified people and entities she did not what to see prosecuted in Ukraine.
The Facts: In a March interview with me at Hill.TV captured on videotape, Lutsenko stated that during his first meeting with Yovanovitch in summer 2016, the American diplomat rattled off a list of names of Ukrainian individuals and entities she did not want to see investigated or prosecuted. Lutsenko called it a “do not prosecute” list. You can watch that video here. The State Department disputed his characterization as a fabrication, which Hill.TV reported in its original report.
A few weeks later, a Ukrainian news outlet claimed it interviewed Lutsenko and he backed off his assertion about the list. Several American outlets have since picked up that same language.
There is just one problem. I re-interviewed Lutsenko after the Ukrainian report suggesting he recanted. He adamantly denied recanting, retracting or changing his story, and said the Ukrainian newspaper simply misunderstood that the list of names were conveyed orally during the meeting and not in writing, just like he said in the original Hill.TV interview.
Here is Lutsenko’s full explanation to me back last spring: “At no time since our interview have I ever retracted the statement I made about the U.S. ambassador providing me a list of names of people and organizations she did not want my office to prosecute. Shortly after my televised interview with your news organization I was asked by a Ukraine reporter if I had a copy of the letter that Ambassador Yovanovitch provided me with the names of those she did not want prosecuted. The reporter misunderstood how the names were transmitted to me. I explained to the reporter that the Ambassador did not hand me a written list but rather provided the list of names orally over the course of a meeting.” Lutsenko reaffirmed he stood by his statements again in September.
It is important to note Lutsenko’s story was also backed up by State Department officials and contemporaneous memos before his interview was ever aired. For instance, a senior U.S. official I interviewed for the Lutsenko story reviewed the list of names that Lutsenko recalled being on the so-called do-not-prosecute list.
That official stated during the interview: ““I can confirm to you that at least some of those names are names that U.S. embassy Kiev raised with the Prosecutor General’s office because we were concerned about retribution and unfair treatment of Ukrainians viewed as favorable to the United States.”
Separately, both U.S. and Ukrainian official confirmed to me a letter written by then-U.S. embassy official George Kent in April 2016 in which U.S. officials pointedly (and in writing) demanded that Ukrainian prosecutors stand down an investigation into several Ukrainian nonprofit groups suspected of misspending U.S. foreign aid. The letter even named one of the groups, the AntiCorruption Action Centre, a nonprofit funded jointly by the State Department and liberal megadonor George Soros.
“We are gravely concerned about this investigation, for which we see no basis,” Kent wrote the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office in April 2016. You can read the letter here.
So even without Lutsenko’s claim, there is substantial evidence that the U.S. embassy in Kiev applied pressure on Ukrainian prosecutors not to pursue certain investigations in 2016.
Myth: The narratives about Biden, the U.S. embassy and Ukrainian election interference are conspiracy theories invented by Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, to impact the 2020 election.
The Facts: Giuliani began investigating matters in Ukraine in late fall 2018 as a personal lawyer to the president. But months before his quest began, Ukrainian prosecutors believed they possessed evidence about Burisma, the Bidens and 2016 election interference that might interest the U.S. Justice Department. It is the same evidence that came to light this spring and summer and that is now a focus of the impeachment proceedings.
Originally, one of Ukraine’s senior prosecutors tried to secure a visa to come to the United States to deliver that evidence. But when the U.S. embassy in Kiev did not fulfill his travel request, the group of Ukrainian prosecutors used an intermediary to hire a former U.S. attorney in America to reach out to the U.S. attorney office in New York and try to arrange a transfer of the evidence. The Ukrainian prosecutors’ story about making the overture to the DOJ was independently verified by the American lawyer they hired.
So the activities and allegation now at the heart of impeachment actually pre-date Giuliani starting work on Ukraine. You can read the prosecutors’ account of their 2018 effort to get this information to Americans here.
Solomon speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C.
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 also 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 Biden and Ukraine; Solomon’s stories about the Bidens influenced President Trump to request that the Ukrainian president launch an investigation into 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, which led to an impeachment inquiry into President Trump.[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] During this time, Solomon made a mission to make the paper’s coverage more objective while expanding its reach. 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 Sean Hannity, whose TV show 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 for the Hill.[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 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 Paul 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 Heannity’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 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 – the personal attorney of President Trump – 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 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump). 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]
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.[37] In October 2019, it was reported he was joining Fox News as an opinion contributor.[38]
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.”[39][40]
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.[41][42][43] According to The Intercept, Just Security and The Daily Beast, Solomon helps to advance right-wing and pro-Trump conspiracy theories.[26][24][44] The New Republic described Solomon’s columns for the Hill as “right-wing fever dreams.”[45] Independent journalist Marcy Wheeler accused Solomon of manufacturing fake scandals which suggested wrongdoing by those conducting probes into Russian interference in the 2016 election.[46] 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 Wall Street Journal.[47] 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.”[47]
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Story 1: Senator Mitch McConnell on Unfair Behind Closed Doors Single Party Impeachment Inquiry and Syria — Videos —
Senator Mitch McConnell: Democrats Are ‘Throwing Fairness And Precedent To The Wind’ | NBC News
Senate Needs to Make a Strong, Strategic Statement on Syria
Trump was ‘absolutely right’ to take troops out of Syria: Rand Paul
Democrats, Republicans unite on Trump’s decision on Syria
Senate Needs to Make a Strong, Strategic Statement on Syria
McConnell splits with Trump on Syria pullout
Mitch McConnell rebukes Donald Trump over Turkish invasion of Kurdish-held Syria, saying troop pullout gives Iran a chance to reach Israel’s doorstep and contending worthwhile intervention does NOT make the U.S. world’s policeman
McConnell once again expressed his ‘grave concern’ about the situation in Syria
Said the door is ‘wide open’ for resurgence of ISIS
Said policy could put Iran on Israel’s ‘door-step’
Said standing up for U.S. interests does not make nation the ‘evil empire’
Trump has repeatedly complained the nation should not be world’s policeman
At the same time, he blasted House Democrats on impeachment
PUBLISHED: 17:14 EDT, 15 October 2019 | UPDATED: 17:14 EDT, 15 October 2019
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell directly confronted President Trump‘s complaint that U.S. troop deployment’s make it the ‘world’s policeman’ and expressed his ‘grave concern’ about Trump’s policy moves in Syria.
McConnell issued the rebuke without directly blaming President Trump for the latest calamity in the region – although he said Trump’s policy threatens to put Iran on Israel’s door-step and fuel a ‘humanitarian catastrophe.’
Following Turkey’s incursion into Syria in territory that had been controlled by U.S.-allied members of the Kurdish minority, McConnell warned that the ‘door is wide open for resurgence of the Islamic State.’
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell took on President Trump’s contention that having forces remain in Syria was akin to being the ‘world’s policeman’
In a Senate floor speech, McConnell said the situation created a power vacuum that could fuel the meddling influence of Russia, and ‘leaving northeastern Syria wide open Iran to extend reach unimpeded all the way from tehran to the door step of our friends in Israel.
He also confronted the view, espoused directly by President Trump, that the U.S. should pull out of the region rather serving as the ‘world’s policeman.’
‘I want to make something clear, the United States has taken the fight to Syria and Afghanistan because that is where our enemies are, that’s why we’re there. Fighting terrorists, exercising leadership and troubled regions and advancing U.S. interests around the world does not make us an evil empire or the world’s policeman,’ McConnell said.
This picture taken on October 15, 2019 shows a missile fired by Turkish forces towards the Syrian town of Ras al-Ain, from the Turkish side of the border at Ceylanpinar district in Sanliurfa on the first week of Turkey’s military operation against Kurdish forces
McConnell shared his ‘grave concern’ about the situation in Syria
‘When it looked like President Trump would withdraw from Syria at beginning of the year, 70 senators joined in warning of the risk of precipitously withdrawing from Syria or Afghanistan,’ McConnell noted in his floor speech
McConnell had also warned of his ‘grave concern’ in a written statement Monday that did not mention Trump by name. But in his floor speech Tuesday, he included such a reference.
‘When it looked like President Trump would withdraw from Syria at beginning of the year, 70 senators joined in warning of the risk of precipitously withdrawing from Syria or Afghanistan,’ McConnell noted.
But even as he challenged the president on a policy that has resulted in the release of ISIS prisoners, led to attacks against key regional allies, and even led to shelling by Turkish forces toward a U.S. troop-held position, he defended the president on impeachment by attacking Democrats.
‘House Democrats are finally indulging in their impeachment obsession. Full steam ahead,’ McConnell warned. ‘I don’t think many of us were expecting to witness a clinic in terms of fairness or due process. But even by their own partisan standards, House Democrats have already found new ways to lower the bar,’ he complained.
McConnell has said he was required by Senate rules to hold a trial should the House impeach Trump.
He resorts to sanctions as the harm from withdrawal builds.
By The Editorial Board
Syrians fleeing Turskih advance arrive to the town of Tal Tamr in north Syria, Oct. 14.PHOTO: BADERKHAN AHMAD/ASSOCIATED PRESS
What a fiasco. Foreign-policy blunders often take months or years to reveal their damaging consequences, but the harm from President Trump’s abrupt withdrawal of U.S. forces from northern Syria is playing out almost in real time.
Critics said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would invade northern Syria despite Mr. Trump’s public warnings, and the Turkish strongman did. Critics said our Kurdish allies would strike a deal with Syria’s Bashar Assad to defend themselves, and the Kurds have. Critics said Islamic State prisoners held by the Kurds would be released and scatter to wage jihad again, and they are.
The mess compounded Monday when Mr. Trump authorized sanctions against several Turkish officials and agencies who are “contributing to Turkey’s destabilizing actions in northeast Syria.” The sanctions include financial measures and barring entry to the U.S. Mr. Trump also said he’s ending trade talks with Turkey and raising steel tariffs to 50%.
Mr. Trump now finds himself back in an economic and diplomatic brawl with Turkey that he said he wanted to avoid. Wouldn’t it have been easier simply to tell Mr. Erdogan, on that famous phone call two Sundays ago, that the U.S. wouldn’t tolerate a Turkish invasion against the Kurds and would use air power to stop it? Mr. Erdogan would have had to back down and continue negotiating a Syrian safe zone with the Kurds and the U.S.
Mr. Trump is also making matters worse with his unserious justifications. “After defeating 100% of the ISIS Caliphate, I largely moved our troops out of Syria. Let Syria and Assad protect the Kurds and fight Turkey for their own land,” he tweeted Monday. “Anyone who wants to assist Syria in protecting the Kurds is good with me, whether it is Russia, China, or Napoleon Bonaparte. I hope they all do great, we are 7,000 miles away!”
We suppose the Napoleon line was a joke, but the world is laughing at an American President. Mr. Trump was able to project an image of strength in his early days as he prosecuted the war against ISIS and used force to impose a cost on Mr. Assad for using chemical weapons. But that image has faded as he has indulged his inner Rand Paul and claims at every opportunity that the main goal of his foreign policy is to put an end to “endless wars.”
This is simple-minded isolationism, and it’s a message to the world’s rogues that a U.S. President has little interest in engaging on behalf of American allies or interests. Friends like Israel and Saudi Arabia are quietly dismayed, while Iran, Russia and Hezbollah can’t believe Mr. Trump has so glibly abandoned U.S. commitments and military partners.
By now it’s not unreasonable to conclude that Mr. Trump’s foreign policy can be distilled into two tactics—sanctions and tariffs. Mr. Trump wields them willy-nilly against friend and foe alike as substitutes for diplomacy and the credible threat of military force.
Mr. Trump won’t like to hear it, but the Syrian mess is hurting him at home too. Republicans who have stood by him through the Russia fight and more are questioning his judgment as Commander in Chief in an increasingly dangerous world. With impeachment looming, he can’t afford to alienate more friends.
Opinion: Trump’s Foreign Policy Needs to Change Course
As Turkey advances into Syria, foreign powers will increasingly act on the belief that the American executive is both politically weak and intellectually unfocused. Image: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Imageshttps://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-syria-mess-11571095091
TRUMP’S CHAOTIC SYRIA EXIT PUTS ANTI-WAR 2020 DEMOCRATS IN A DELICATE SPOT
THE PENTAGONannounced on Monday that the U.S. was pulling all of its troops out of northeastern Syria at President Donald Trump’s direction, completing a withdrawal he had started by Twitter declaration a week earlier. The move further clears the way for a full-on invasion by Turkey, whose soldiers have already been accused of executing noncombatants. In the chaos, hundreds of Islamic State detainees have reportedly escaped.
Trump defended his decision in a series of early-morning tweets on Monday. “The same people who got us into the Middle East mess are the people who most want to stay there!” he wrote. “Never ending wars will end!”
Trump’s abandonment of eastern Syria and the U.S. military’s Kurdish allies has put progressive Democrats — many of whom also favor withdrawing from overseas military operations — in a delicate spot. Over the past week, they have been trying to thread the needle between condemning Trump for recklessly abandoning an ally and emphasizing that withdrawing U.S. troops should be an eventual policy goal.
Trump’s decision has showcased what a worst-case scenario for expedited military withdrawal could look like, making it harder for progressive Democratic presidential candidates like Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to press their cases against “endless wars” on the campaign trail. The question of how progressives can go about drawing down U.S. military commitments without repeating Trump’s calamitous actions would be an obvious pick for Tuesday night’s Democratic debate.
So far, the Democratic candidates have been critical of Trump but light on specifics about what they would do differently. Last week, Sanders condemned Trump’s withdrawal from Syria, telling reporters that “as somebody who does not want to see American troops bogged down in countries all over the world — you don’t turn your back on allies who have fought and died alongside American troops. You just don’t do that.” But when George Stephanopoulos asked Sunday morning on ABC for Sanders to explain the difference between his and Trump’s approaches, Sanders responded simply that Trump “lies. I don’t.”
Warren’s response was similarly vague. She tweeted that “Trump recklessly betrayed our Kurdish partners” and that “we should bring our troops home, but we need to do so in a way that respects our security.”
Trump Turned His Back on Syrian Kurds. Here’s How They View Their New Precarious Position.
Ro Khanna, a Democratic representative from California and co-chair of Sanders’s 2020 campaign, told The Intercept that progressives urgently need to make the case for a “doctrine of responsible withdrawal.”
“I don’t believe that withdrawal from a progressive perspective means a moral indifference to the lives of the places that we leave,” Khanna said in a phone interview. “It’s not an ‘America First’ approach that says our interests and our American lives are the only things that have moral worth. Rather, our withdrawal is based on an understanding of the limitations of American power to shape and restructure societies. It emphasizes the need for effective diplomacy and understands our moral obligations in these places.”
The U.S. should not have withdrawn troops without negotiating a deal that would have kept Turkey from invading Syria, backed by a threat to withhold future arms sales and economic assistance, Khanna told The Intercept. “We could have used all those points of leverage to get their commitment that they wouldn’t slaughter the Kurds.”
Another key difference between Trump’s approach and that of progressives is their level of trust for civil service expertise, Khanna said. “What this shows is that it’s not enough to have a president with certain instincts. Foreign policy requires great expertise. You need a progressive president who understands the importance of military restraint, but who also has the ability to put together an extraordinary foreign policy team to implement the goals that they may have.”
Far from admiring Trump’s approach to Syria, many anti-interventionists and foreign policy experts in D.C. view it as a blueprint for how not to withdraw from a conflict, according to Adam Wunische, a researcher with the Quincy Institute, a new pro-diplomacy, noninterventionist, and nonpartisan think tank.
“What we should have been doing from the very beginning is once we achieved the limited objective of destroying ISIS territory, they should have immediately begun contemplating what kind of peace or settlement could come afterwards,” Wunische told The Intercept. “To my knowledge, the U.S. is one of the only actors that can effectively talk to both the Turks and the Kurds. So they should have been trying to find an acceptable political arrangement for all the parties involved that doesn’t involve an endless, ill-defined military presence for the U.S.”
The Quincy Institute is working on a report outlining a possible plan for U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan that would avoid the type of disorder on display in northeastern Syria, Wunische said, though the timing of the report remains unclear.
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Throughout the 2020 Democratic primary campaign, a number of candidates have railed against “endless wars.” But in a conversation that has been defined by intricate domestic policy proposals and detailed outlines of how to structure a wealth tax, candidates have said little about the rest of the world and even less about how they would wind down overseas conflicts.
Sanders, for example, has called for a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan “as expeditiously as possible.” Warren has said “it’s long past time to bring our troops home, and I would begin to do so immediately.” Joe Biden has said he would bring “American combat troops in Afghanistan home during my first term,” but left the door open for a “residual U.S. military presence” that would be “focused on counterterrorism operations.” When asked during a July debate whether he would withdraw from Afghanistan during the first year of his presidency, Pete Buttigieg, the South Bend mayor and Navy Reserve veteran who spent seven months in Afghanistan, answered emphatically in the affirmative.
But aside from seeking a diplomatic solution, candidates have said very little about their policies for ending the war. And as in Syria, stakes for U.S. allies in Afghanistan are high.
A January study by the Rand Corporation found that a “precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan” would have far-reaching consequences. The legitimacy for the U.S.-backed Kabul government would plummet, the report argued, and the Taliban would extend its control and influence. People all across the country would turn to regional militias and rival warlords for basic security.
“I don’t think that anyone, whether they promise it or not, is going to get out of Afghanistan in a week,” said Wuinsche. “What we need to focus on is, what is the political solution that we think is possible, and how do we get there? That requires marshaling all of these different tools of foreign policy, not just the military.”
Kate Kizer, policy director for the D.C.-based advocacy group Win Without War, stressed that one of the most revealing differences between progressives and Trump is how they would treat a conflict’s refugees. Under Trump, the U.S. has accepted historically low numbers of refugees and closed the door on future Syrian immigrants applying for Temporary Protected Status.
“One of the cruelest parts of Trump’s policy is the fact that, in addition to fueling more bloodshed with this decision, he’s also banning any types of civilians who would be fleeing from the conflict,” Kizer said. “In a situation like Syria and even Afghanistan, there’s a way to responsibly withdraw and then there’s a way to cut and run, which is what Trump has shown he has a predilection for. But I’m not sitting here saying that any type of military withdraw will necessarily be bloodless.”
Story 2: The Search of Leakers in Trump Administration — Videos
RUST NO ONE
Trump Suspects a Spiteful John Bolton Is Behind Some of the Ukraine Leaks
Trump fears the leaks are now coming from the people he chose to serve him—and that only increases the paranoia currently infecting the West Wing.
Asawin Suebsaeng
White House Reporter
Sam Stein
Politics Editor
Photo Illustration by Lyne Lucien/The Daily Beast/Getty
At a critical juncture in his presidency, facing a rapidly unfolding impeachment inquiry by House Democrats, Donald Trump is feeling besieged by snitches.
In recent weeks, numerous leaks have appeared in the pages of The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other major papers and news outlets detailing the president’s attempts to enlist foreign leaders to help dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and also aid Trump’s quest to discredit Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s concluded investigation. And as is his MO, the media-obsessed president has been fixated on not just the identity of the whistleblower behind the internal complaint that brought this scandal to the fore, but also on who, exactly, has been namelessly feeding intel to the press.
In the course of casual conversations with advisers and friends, President Trump has privately raised suspicions that a spiteful John Bolton, his notoriously hawkish former national security adviser, could be one of the sources behind the flood of leaks against him, three people familiar with the comments said. At one point, one of those sources recalled, Trump guessed that Bolton was behind one of the anonymous accounts that listed the former national security adviser as one of the top officials most disturbed by the Ukraine-related efforts of Trump and Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney who remains at the center of activities that spurred the impeachment inquiry.
“[Trump] was clearly implying [it, saying] something to the effect of, ‘Oh, gee, I wonder who the source on that could be,’” this source said, referring to the president’s speculation. Bolton, for his part, told The Daily Beast last month that allegations that he was a leaker in Trump’s midst are “flatly incorrect.”
The former national security adviser—who departed the administration last month on awful, mutually bitter terms—is working on a book about his time serving Trump, and has “a lot to dish,” one knowledgeable source noted.
Neither Bolton nor White House spokespeople provided comment for this story. Matt Schlapp, an influential conservative activist with close ties to the White House, said his assumption was that the leaks were coming from “career folks inside who hate Trump” and that the president and his campaign had “14 months of this” to come. As for Bolton, Schlapp said, “He’s smarter than that, although he does aggressively defend himself.”
Indeed, Bolton’s name surfaced Monday before House impeachment inquiry committees, when Hill reportedly testified that he told her to alert the chief lawyer for the National Security Council that Giuliani was working with Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, on an operation with legal implications, the Times reported late Monday. “I am not part of whatever drug deal Rudy and Mulvaney are cooking up,” Bolton told Hill to tell White House lawyers, according to sources familiar with the testimony.
“I have not spoken to John about [his comments, as conveyed by Hill],” Giuliani told The Daily Beast on Tuesday morning. “John is a longtime friend. I have no idea why John is doing this. My best guess is that he’s confused and bought into a false media narrative without bothering to call me about it.”
Regarding Bolton’s reported comment about Mulvaney being involved in this figurative Ukraine “drug deal,” the former New York City mayor insisted that “Mick wasn’t involved in this. I don’t recall having any lengthy conversation with him about this subject… I don’t recall ever having a lengthy conversation [about Ukraine] with John, either.”
Trump has felt under siege from within before, including at various flashpoints of his presidency. For instance, near the end of the Mueller probe, the president became so distrustful and resentful toward Don McGahn, his own White House counsel at the time, he started asking those close to him, “Is [Don] wearing a wire?”
But the current sense that he has been undermined by people whom he brought into his orbit has come at a critical juncture and colored some of the decisions he has made since the whistleblower complaint became public. The president has openly declared that the whistleblower committed an act of treason. He has attempted to stop prominent advisers—including Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, a man who donated $1 million to the Trump inauguration—from testifying to Congress, only to apparently fail. On Monday, Fiona Hill, Trump’s former top adviser on Russia and Europe, was on Capitol Hill, where she reportedly told lawmakers that Sondland and Giuliani circumventedthe standard national-security process on high-profile Ukraine matters. The president has struggled to add to his current legal team, and appeared to begin putting some distance between himself and Giuliani last week.
And when outside allies began to talk about constructing a war room to help with impeachment, Trump shot down the concept, in part out of a sense that he couldn’t rely on them to get the message out right. One top White House aide subsequently labeled the idea an exercise by “outside peeps trying to self-aggrandize.”
The impression left on Republicans is one of a president increasingly driven by paranoia and a desire for insularity—and not, necessarily, to his own benefit.
“There is a certain level of frustration that all the sudden the president says something, then Rudy does, and it is not always consistent. There is a frustration that not everybody knows what they should be doing. It is not that they can’t defend the president it is a frustration that they don’t know exactly how they are supposed to defend the president,” said John Brabender, a longtime GOP consultant. “From the president’s perspective, this whole thing is a witch hunt and is outrageous and, therefore, it shouldn’t even need explanation…But with that said, you can’t just be angry. You need a unified communications team.”
According to those who’ve known the president, the sense that a good chunk of the government has never fully accepted his presidency and has actively worked to undermine it has animated much of his activity over the past few weeks. And though they believe he has a point, they also wonder if it is making him functionally incapable of taking the advice of some advisers: to simply ignore impeachment and apply his attention to other facets of governance.
Trump, they add, is preternaturally incapable of ignoring press about him and lingers particularly on leaks that depict atmospherics of his inner sanctum, the West Wing, and his internal well-being.
“In my experience, what he despises is somebody writing that Donald Trump feels under siege and his emotions are this and his thinking is this,” said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign aide. “He hates people saying what he is thinking… And one of his most frequent tricks in terms of talking about himself on background [as an anonymous source] is him having the reporter say [he is] someone ‘familiar with the president’s thinking.’”
Nunberg said he had yet to see a blind quote in any recent report that would lead him to believe that Trump is cold-calling reporters. But the president is certainly working the fourth estate. Democratic aides were left shaking their heads last week when they received an email from the White House with the subject line, “Article from President Trump” and a PDF attachment of a Kimberly Strassel Wall Street Journal column.
“He’s apparently so anxious about GOP support in the Senate, he’s taken to sending WSJ columns against the House inquiry,” said a Senate source.
Still, for all of Trump’s grousing and preoccupation with who is and isn’t stabbing him in the back, loyalty has always been a one-way street for this president. Last week, after the news broke that Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two Soviet-born businessmen tied to Giuliani, were arrested on charges of violating campaign-finance law, a reporter at the White House asked Trump if the former New York mayor was still his personal attorney. The president responded that he didn’t know.
Though the president would later tweet out his support for Giuliani over the weekend, Trump has a long track record for being loyal to and supportive of a longtime associate, friend, or staffer—up until the moment he’s not. Perhaps the quintessential example of this is that of one of the president’s former attorneys, Michael Cohen, who famously turned on Trump after becoming convinced that the president had abandoned him while he was in the crosshairs of federal prosecutors.
Asked by The Daily Beast last week if the president told him that he still had his lawyer’s back—an attorney who further earned the president’s trust by defending Trump during the Mueller investigation—Giuliani let out a big belly-laugh and responded, “There’s nothing, [no knife], in my back.”
“My back feels very comfortable right now,” he added.
Story 1: President Trump Approved Sending U.S. Troops To Bolster Saudi Arabia’s Air and Missile Defenses — Videos
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by Reuters
Friday, 20 September 2019 23:57 GMT
By Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali
U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday approved sending American troops to bolster Saudi Arabia’s air and missile defenses after the largest-ever attack on the kingdom’s oil facilities, which Washington has squarely blamed on Iran.
The Pentagon said the deployment would involve a moderate number of troops – not numbering thousands – and would be primarily defensive in nature. It also detailed plans to expedite delivery of military equipment to both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Reuters has previously reported that the Pentagon was considering sending anti-missile batteries, drones and more fighter jets. The United States is also considering keeping an aircraft carrier in the region indefinitely.
“In response to the kingdom’s request, the president has approved the deployment of U.S. forces, which will be defensive in nature and primarily focused on air and missile defense,” U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said at a news briefing.
“We will also work to accelerate the delivery of military equipment to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the UAE to enhance their ability to defend themselves.”
The Pentagon’s late Friday announcement appeared to close the door to any imminent decision to wage retaliatory strikes against Iran following the attack, which rattled global markets and exposed major gaps in Saudi Arabia’s air defenses.
Trump said earlier on Friday that he believed his military restraint so far showed “strength,” as he instead imposed another round of economic sanctions on Tehran.
“Because the easiest thing I could do, ‘Okay, go ahead. Knock out 15 different major things in Iran.’ … But I’m not looking to do that if I can,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
But the deployment could further aggravate Iran, which has responded to previous U.S. troop deployments this year with apprehension. It denies responsibility for the attack on Saudi Arabia.
Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi movement, which has been battling a Saudi-led military coalition that includes the UAE, has claimed responsibility for the strikes.
ATTACK LAUNCHED FROM IRAN?
Relations between the United States and Iran have deteriorated sharply since Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear accord last year and reimposed sanctions on its oil exports.
For months, Iranian officials issued veiled threats, saying that if Tehran were blocked from exporting oil, other countries would not be able to do so either.
However, Iran has denied any role in a series of attacks in recent months, including bombings of tankers in the Gulf and strikes claimed by the Houthis.
U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, have fingered southwest Iran as the staging ground for the attack, an assessment based at least in part on still-classified imagery showing Iran appearing to prepare an aerial strike.
They have dismissed Houthi claims that the attacks originated in Yemen.
One of the officials told Reuters the strike may have been authorized by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The United States is wary of getting dragged into another conflict in the Middle East. It has troops positioned in Syria and Iraq, two countries where Iranian influence is strong and Iran-backed forces operate openly.
U.S. officials fear Iran’s proxies might attempt to strike American troops there, something that could easily trigger a broader regional conflict.
Saudi Arabia has said it was attacked by a total of 25 drones and missiles, including Iranian Delta Wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and “Ya Ali” cruise missiles.
U.S. Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said officials were still hammering out the best array of capabilities to defend Saudi Arabia, noting the difficulty combating a swarm of drones.
“No single system is going to be able to defend against a threat like that, but a layered system of defensive capabilities would mitigate the risk of swarms of drones or other attacks that may come from Iran,” Dunford said. (Reporting by Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali, Eric Beech and Mohammad Zargham Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Cynthia Osterman)
A whistleblower complaint about President Trump made by an intelligence official centers on Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the matter, which has set off a struggle between Congress and the executive branch.
The complaint involved communications with a foreign leader and a “promise” that Trump made, which was so alarming that a U.S. intelligence official who had worked at the White House went to the inspector general of the intelligence community, two former U.S. officials said.
Two and a half weeks before the complaint was filed, Trump spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian and political newcomer who was elected in a landslide in May.
The Democrats’ investigation was launched earlier this month, before revelations that an intelligence official had lodged a complaint with the inspector general. The Washington Post first reported on Wednesday that the complaint had to do with a “promise” that Trump made when communicating with a foreign leader.
Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) on Sept. 19 said a whistleblower complaint to the intelligence community met the threshold requiring notification of Congress. (JM Rieger/The Washington Post)
On Thursday, the inspector general testified behind closed doors to members of the House Intelligence Committee about the whistleblower’s complaint.
Over the course of three hours, Michael Atkinson repeatedly declined to discuss with members the content of the complaint, saying he was not authorized to do so.
He and the members spent much of their time discussing the process Atkinson followed, the statute governing his investigation of the complaint and the nature of an “urgent concern” that he believed it represented, according to a person familiar with the briefing, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“He was being excruciatingly careful about the language he used,” the person said.
What is a whistleblower: How to be a journalist
Whistleblowers such as Daniel Ellsberg take personal risks to expose wrongdoing. (The Washington Post)
Atkinson made clear that he disagreed with a lawyer for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, who had contradicted the inspector general and found that the whistleblower complaint did not meet the statutory definition of an urgent concern because it involved a matter not under the DNI’s jurisdiction.
Atkinson told lawmakers that he disagreed with that analysis — meaning he felt the matter was under the DNI’s purview — and also that it was urgent “in the common understanding of the word,” the person said.
Atkinson told the committee that the complaint did not stem from just one conversation, according to two people familiar with his testimony.
Following the meeting, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the chairman of the committee, warned of legal action if intelligence officials did not share the whistleblower complaint.
Schiff described acting director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire’s refusal to share the complaint with Congress as “unprecedented” and said he understood the Justice Department was involved in that decision.
“We cannot get an answer to the question about whether the White House is also involved in preventing this information from coming to Congress,” Schiff said, adding: “We’re determined to do everything we can to determine what this urgent concern is to make sure that the national security is protected.”
Someone, Schiff said, “is trying to manipulate the system to keep information about an urgent matter from the Congress … There certainly are a lot of indications that it was someone at a higher pay grade than the director of national intelligence.”
Trump has denied doing anything improper. In a tweet Thursday morning, the president wrote, “Virtually anytime I speak on the phone to a foreign leader, I understand that there may be many people listening from various U.S. agencies, not to mention those from the other country itself.
“Knowing all of this, is anybody dumb enough to believe that I would say something inappropriate with a foreign leader while on such a potentially ‘heavily populated’ call,” Trump wrote.
In a Sept. 17 letter to intelligence committee leaders, Atkinson wrote that he and Maguire “are at an impasse” over how the whistleblower could contact the congressional committees. Ordinarily, a matter of urgent concern that the inspector general deems credible is supposed to be forwarded to the intelligence oversight panels in the House and Senate.
But Maguire prevented Atkinson from doing so, according to correspondence that has been made public. Atkinson wrote that he had requested permission from Maguire to inform the congressional intelligence committees about the general subject matter of the complaint, but was denied.
Maguire, Atkinson wrote, had consulted with the Justice Department, which determined that the law didn’t require disclosing the complaint to the committee because it didn’t involve a member of the intelligence community or “an intelligence activity under the DNI’s supervision.”
Atkinson faulted the Justice Department’s conclusion “particularly … and the Acting DNI’s apparent agreement with the conclusion, that the disclosure in this case does not concern an intelligence activity within the DNI’s authority.”
Maguire is scheduled to testify before the Intelligence Committee in a public session next Thursday.
In letters to the White House and State Department, top Democrats earlier this month demanded records related to what they say are Trump and Giuliani’s efforts “to coerce the Ukrainian government into pursuing two politically-motivated investigations under the guise of anti-corruption activity” — one to help Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who is in prison for illegal lobbying and financial fraud, and a second to target the son of former vice president Joe Biden, who is seeking the Democratic nomination to challenge Trump.
“As the 2020 election draws closer, President Trump and his personal attorney appear to have increased pressure on the Ukrainian government and its justice system in service of President Trump’s reelection campaign, and the White House and the State Department may be abetting this scheme,” the chairmen of the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees wrote, citing media reports that Trump had threatened to withhold $250 million in aid to help Ukraine in its ongoing struggle against Russian-backed separatists.
Lawmakers also became aware in August that the Trump administration may be trying to stop the aid from reaching Ukraine, according to a congressional official.
Giuliani dismissed the reports of the whistle blower and Trump’s “promise” to a foreign leader.
“I’m not even aware of the fact that he had such a phone call,” Giuliani said Thursday. “If I’m not worried about it, he’s not worried about it.”
House Democrats are looking into whether Giuliani traveled to Ukraine to pressure that government outside of formal diplomatic channels to effectively help the Trump reelection effort by investigating Hunter Biden about his time on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company.
The filing of the whistleblower complaint has led to what veterans of U.S. spy agencies described as an unprecedented situation with potentially grave consequences for the already troubled relationship between the president and the nation’s powerful intelligence community.
It remains unclear how the whistleblower gained access to details of the president’s calls — whether through “readouts” generated by White House aides or through other means.
Memos that serve as transcripts of such calls are created routinely. But if that is the source in this instance, it would appear to mean that White House aides made a formal record of comments by the president later deemed deeply troubling by the intelligence community’s chief watchdog.
John Wagner, Karoun Demirjian, Robert Costa and Josh Dawsey contributed reporting.
The New York Fed — which handles the levers that control the flow of money in the system — has for the past four days had to pump billions into money markets after bank demand for cash pushed interest rates above the Fed’s target (AFP Photo/Delil SOULEIMAN)
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New York (AFP) – The New York Federal Reserve Bank said Friday it will inject billions into the US financial plumbing on a daily basis for the next three weeks in an effort to prevent a spike in short-term interest rates.
The Fed will offer up to $75 billion a day in repurchase agreements — exchanging secure assets for cash for very short periods — through October 10, it said in a statement.
In addition, it will offer three 14-day “repo” operations of at least $30 billion each.
Banks have struggled in recent days to find the cash needed to meet reserve requirements which has pushed up short-term borrowing rates, prompting the New York Fed to pump billions into US money markets with repo operations over the past four days.
However, in a sign a cash crunch could be easing, demand for liquidity on Friday did not significantly exceed the amount offered, as it had on two prior days.
After October 10, the New York Fed will “conduct operations as necessary to help maintain the federal funds rate in the target range, the amounts and timing of which have not yet been determined.”
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell this week downplayed concerns about the money market’s cash crunch, saying it was not a sign of problems in the wider economy or a concern for monetary policy.
Economists say an array of conditions converged to dry up liquidity in the banking system — including quarterly corporate tax payments and a surge in government debt sold to investors, which drained cash out of banks.
Banks borrow regularly in markets for very short periods, usually overnight, to make sure their daily cash reserves do not fall below the required level. But interest rates increase with demand.
The New York Fed adds or removes liquidity to keep interest rates in line with the desired target, but the cash shortage in recent days prompted it to pump funds into the short-term repo market as rates soared and threatened to break out of the Fed’s target range.
The central bank cut benchmark lending rates interest rate on Wednesday, and also made some technical adjustments to try to keep the market rates from breaking out of the range, including cutting the interest it offers on bank reserves held at the Fed that are in excess of the minimum required level.
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First Global Climate Strike arrests in London as teachers encourage pupils to take to the streets and join mass protest inspired by eco-activist Greta Thunberg
The Metropolitan Police said two people had been arrested in the Strand as activists gathered across London
Schoolchildren joined the protests in Britain after they were urged to walk out of classes and lectures today
State schools urged pupils not to attend, while some private schools urged them to make their own decision
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and mayor Sadiq Khan have been among those to praise young demonstrators
Do you know any of the protesters taking part in today’s climate action? You can email tips@dailymail.co.uk
PUBLISHED: 06:12 EDT, 20 September 2019 | UPDATED: 11:38 EDT, 20 September 2019
Police have moved in and made their first arrests as the largest worldwide climate protest in history arrived in London today with hundreds of thousands of Brits taking part in demonstrations across the country.
Activists, many of whom carried Extinction Rebellion flags and banners, have descended on the capital as the Global Strike 4 Climate Change movement kicked off in the UK to coincide with protests all over the planet.
The Metropolitan Police said two people had been arrested in the Strand for breaching conditions imposed on the protesters which dictate they must gather in a specific place in Westminster, central London.
Schoolchildren, many of them dressed in their uniforms, joined in on more than 200 different climate events in Britain after they were urged to walk out of classes and lectures today.
Politicians have been split on whether or not pupils should be skipping lessons to attend the climate protests, with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and mayor Sadiq Khan among those to commend young demonstrators.
Mr Corbyn addressed a rally of climate strikers outside Parliament and praised those who had missed lessons to attend, adding: ‘Thank you for being here to teach me and everyone else a lesson about the environment.’
State school leaders have urged youngsters not to take part, saying they understand the strength of feeling around the issue, but have concerns about pupil welfare.
But Suzie Longstaff, headmistress of the £18,900-a-year private Putney High School in south-west London, said that young people should be able to make their own decisions about whether to take part in today’s action.
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A protester is arrested by police officers stationed outside outside King’s College London as mass demonstrations hit the UK this morning
A protester is led away by police in handcuffs this morning (shown left), while an Extinction Rebellion activist is shown waving a XR flag outside King’s College London
Two protesters are placed in handcuffs outside King’s College London near the Strand as mass demonstrations kicked off in the capital today
Schoolchildren protest with banners outside parliament in London after youngsters were urged to skip lessons in order to take part in demonstrations
Youngsters take part in today’s climate change demonstrations after thousands skipped lessons and lectures this morning
Thousands of protesters gather near the Houses of Parliament for today’s climate change demonstration, where Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will speak later this afternoon
Police officers carry a protester away in the Strand after issuing section 14 notices amid mass-scale demonstrations in London today
An aerial shot from Central London shows thousands of protesters gathering during one of more 200 events across the UK this afternoon
Scottish comedian Billy Connolly was among those to lend his support to protesters marching in Glasgow this afternoon
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn tweeted an image from the protest in London and is due to address a rally of climate strikers outside Parliament, while dozens of other mass-scale events are being held up and down the country
Students carrying Extinction Rebellion banners and flags are shown marching through the streets outsude the Houses of Parliament
Police officers form a cordon outside Parliament Square, as demonstrators were asked to protest in specified areas
A young child looks out at the masses of people who gathered in central London today for the what is expected to be the world’s largest ever join climate change demonstration
Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger was among those to give their support to those taking part in the Global Climate Strike
The Global Strike For Climate in London is being held only days ahead of the scheduled United Nations Climate Change Summit in New York
Hundreds of protesters hold a ‘die-in’ at the UK Student Climate Network’s Global Climate Strike in Cambridge this afternoon
But Ms Longstaff said: ‘Every day we are educating the young people of the future to speak out and make their own decisions.
‘We are trying to provide a modern and relevant education which includes connecting to topics that they feel passionate about. We can’t pick and choose what those are.
‘I’m proud that Putney students have both a social and environmental conscience and I applaud them. Those who feel strongly about protesting will be there.’
Sylvie Craig, 11, and her friend Eva De Pear, 12, both of Shepherds Bush in west London, took the day off school and brought their mothers to the demonstration.
Sylvie said: ‘Climate change is really important. We can’t just talk about it, we have to do something about it ‘
Her mother Bay Garnett, a fashion director, said: ‘I am here for my children and all children. I think every mother feels the same. They need a healthy planet to live on.’
Eva skipped her biology lesson on Friday, saying that going to it made ‘no sense’ because ‘the planet is in real big trouble’. She said: ‘I am here to teach people a lesson instead of learning a lesson.’
Her mother Leila Amanpour said: ‘I feel that unless we come out into the streets, especially the children, the Government is not going to do anything about climate change.’
Thousands of protesters, including hundreds of children, many wearing school uniform, gathered in Birmingham’s Victoria Square before marching through nearby streets.
Meanwhile, West Mercia Police advised drivers to find alternatives routes after around 40 Extinction Rebellion members intermittently blocked traffic in Worcester.
Tweeting a photo from a climate strike in London, Mr Corbyn said: ‘Young people here and across the world are making it impossible to ignore the environment and climate emergency.
‘This is the wonderful youth Climate Strike in my constituency; now I’m on my way to the main London demonstration.’
Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson tweeted: ‘Great to see so many people the Glasgow Youth Climate March, all raising awareness of the climate crisis.
‘We demand immediate, strong action to stop irreversible damage. We must protect both our planet and future generations.’
Protesters gather ahead of the UK Student Climate Network’s Global Climate Strike at Millbank in London today
Young climate strikers across the country (pictured here in Millbank, London this morning) are taking to the streets as part of a global protest to demand urgent action to tackle climate change
Protesters hold banners as they attend the Global Climate Strike taking place outside the Houses of Parliament this morning
A sign posted on the outside of the Ben and Jerry’s store in Wardour Street, London, shows the firm’s support of the climate strikes today
London joins in global Climate change strikes call for action
Workers joined thousands of schoolchildren in taking part in the mass-scale demonstrations in London today (pictured in Westminster)
Medical professionals were shown marching near Westminster holding up banners and homemade signs declaring their support of climate intervention
State school leaders have urged youngsters not to take part, saying they understand the strength of feeling around the issue, but have concerns about pupil welfare
Students hold placards as they attend a climate change demonstration in London this morning (pictured on the lawns outside the Houses of Parliament)
Hundreds demonstrate in Bristol in global climate change strike
London Mayor Mr Khan called on the Government to ‘step up’ action on climate change, adding: ‘I am standing in solidarity with all those who are taking part in the Global Climate Strike.
‘Here in London, City Hall staff have also been encouraged to observe the strike by taking time out of their day to send a message to the world that London demands more ambitious climate actions from governments.’
However business, energy and clean growth minister Kwasi Kwarteng said he could not endorse children leaving school to take part in the protests, which have been inspired by teenage eco-activist Greta Thunberg.
He told BBC Breakfast on Friday that he supports the ‘energy and creativity’ of students, but said time spent in school is ‘incredibly important’.
Jessica Ahmed, 16, who is studying for an International Baccalaureate had emailed her school to warn that she would be walking out on Friday.
Speaking at a protest in Westminster, Miss Ahmed of Barnet, north London, said: ‘There are no excuses in this. School is important but so is my future.
‘If politicians were taking the appropriate action we need and had been taking this action a long time ago when it was recognised the world was changing in a negative way, then I would not have to be skipping school.
‘I would be doing the maths exam I have studied for.
She called on the Government to acknowledge the severity of the climate crisis and for youth to be included in policy-making, adding ‘With so many people striking, surely Government have got to take notice?’
Slogans such as ‘if you breath air you should care’, ‘us snowflakes are melting’, ‘learn to change or learn to swim’, and ‘don’t be a fossil fool’, were among the homemade banners held aloft in the crowd.
Politicians have been split on whether or not children should be skipping lessons to attend the climate protests, with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and mayor Sadiq Khan among those to praise young demonstrators
Students carrying Extinction Rebellion banners and flags are shown marching through Parliament Square in central London this afternoon
The protests in central London today are part of a snowballing movement sparked by teenage activist Greta Thunberg’s school strikes outside the Swedish parliament
Politicians have been split on whether or not students should be skipping lectures to attend the climate protests, with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and mayor Sadiq Khan among those to praise young demonstrators
As protests got under way across the UK, the Metropolitan Police said two adults had been arrested on The Strand in central London – where XR Universities, an Extinction Rebellion group are holding a protest (pictured)
In Belfast, hundreds of young people took over the Corn Market area of the city centre, where they staged a colourful protest, with speeches and chants, before lying on the ground to participate in a mass ‘die-in’.
John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said the school strikers have shown that people power could move governments.
He said: ‘The rest of us now need to step up and stand with the children demanding radical, systemic change, before it’s too late.’
Metropolitan Police announced it had made a couple of arrests relating to protests this morning, adding in a tweet: ‘Two adults have been arrested in the Strand for breach of the S14 conditions.
‘We would ask everyone attending #ClimateStrike please attend Millbank, where in conjunction with the organisers we have created a safe space for protest.’
Missing a day of school for climate protest will hit your child’s exam chances, says UK’s schools minister
British schools minister Nick Gibb said the Government ‘shares young people’s passion’ for tackling climate change, but said children should not miss school to protest.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said schools need to record the absences.
He said: ‘We share the passion, as a Government, of young people for tackling climate change, and that is why this Government and this country is committed to reaching net zero greenhouse gasses by 2050.’
He added: ‘We don’t think it should be at the expense of a child’s education because what we want is for the next generation to be as well educated as possible to tackle these kinds of problems, and you don’t do that by missing out on an education.’
He said even missing out on one day of school can affect GCSE results.
The ‘Global Strike 4 Climate Change‘ rally started in Sydney this morning where Thor star Chris Hemsworth and his young daughter India joined 50,000 in a rally that saw some violent clashes between police and protesters.
Throughout the day the movement is spreading west across the world to most of the planet’s biggest cities including Hong Kong, Bangkok, Delhi, London and New York.
But in China – the world’s most polluting nation – President Xi’s government has banned the movement from protesting in its cities.
In New York, the city’s Department of Education says all its 1.1million schoolchildren can skip class to participate in the strike if they had parental consent – without any fear of punishment.
Miss Thunberg, who has been nominated for a Nobel prize for her climate activism, will spearhead a rally at the United Nations headquarters in the city later.
As the sea of people made their way through the city, some school students on scooters could be seen heading in the opposite direction, while there was some fighting between protesters and police.
Others could be seen scribbling their signs on old pieces of cardboard on the footpath as they waited for the event to begin.’.
Britons joining the climate strikes can expect a day of unseasonably warm weather on Friday as they call on businesses and politicians to cut emissions.
Children and young people are preparing to walk out of lessons and lectures, with hundreds of thousands of workers expected to join them.
The protests are part of a snowballing movement sparked by teenage activist Greta Thunberg’s school strikes outside the Swedish parliament.
It comes ahead of a climate action summit in New York convened by UN secretary general Antonio Guterres to urge countries to up their climate efforts.
Much steeper measures are needed across the globe to prevent temperature rises of more than 1.5C (2.7F) or 2C (3.6F) to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
Sydney: A protester clashes with police during the climate rally in the Australian city on Friday before he was arrested and removed from the area
Sydney: Children chanting for change march through Australia’s largest city today as the ‘Global Strike 4 Climate Change’ began
Climate demonstrators shut down Sydney streets
Sydney: In Australia today 300,000 people have taken part including more than 50,000 people in Sydney with Thor star Chris Hemsworth and his young daughter India among those who flooded the streets
Canberra: A baby takes part in the The Global Strike 4 Climate rally with his parents displaying a warning about the extinction of animals in his car seat
Marovo Island, Solomon Islands: Students in traditional dress gathered on the South Pacific Ocean took part in a march along the beach
Bangkok: Marchers in Thailand decided to block the roads outside the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment as they demanded action
Hong Kong: Protesters carrying coffins and placards accusing governments of ‘ecocide’ march through Hong Kong’s famous harbour
Indonesia: Youths walk with signs through the main road during a Global Climate Strike rally as smog covers the city due to the forest fires in Palangka Raya, Central Kalimantan province
As if to underline the urgency of the issues, the mercury is set to hit 26C (78.8F) this weekend – 8C(46.4F) above average for the time of year.
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said: ‘It is unbelievable that we should need global strike action for the future of our planet to be taken seriously.
‘The stark reality is that our climate is changing rapidly and we are running out of time to address it.’
He promised strikers his full support, adding that City Hall had been invited to observe the strike themselves.
‘I hope governments around the world who are failing to take action hear the voices of millions of people, young and old, unified in their call for action to save our planet. Our future depends on it,’ he said.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is due to address a rally of climate strikers outside Parliament on Friday, while other events are being held up and down the country.
The UK Student Climate Network (UKSCN) says more than 200 events are taking place across the UK, with – for the first time – adults being encouraged to join the youngsters as they strike.
UKSCN is calling on politicians to bring in a ‘Green New Deal’ to cut the UK’s emissions to zero and improve lives, changes to education to equip youngsters to deal with the climate crisis and votes at 16 to give them a voice.
Bali: People display placards during a rally as part of a global climate change campaign at Sanur beach on Indonesia’s resort island
Dhaka: Bangladeshi students join the protest and claim world leaders are ‘acting like children’ over climate change
Berlin: Activists chose to cycle to block traffic at Ernst-Reuter-Platz square as they take part in the Global Climate Strike
Brisbane: Millions of people from across the globe are expected to walk out of work and school as part of ‘Strike 4 Climate Action’ which will be held in 150 countries on September 20
Sydney: Two young girls climb a pole as thousands gathered in the centre of the city as part of global mass day of action
Sydney: A man clashes with police during the climate rally in Sydney on Friday. He was arrested and removed from the area
Sydney: Parents took their children out of school to take part in the protest. However, acting Prime Minister Michael McCormack said students should be in school as it was ‘just a disruption’
Among the many trade unions throwing their weight behind the strikes are the TUC Congress, the University and College Union and Unite.
Some businesses are actively supporting their workers to take action, with outdoor clothing company Patagonia closing stores and offices globally, and taking out adverts to support the strikers.
The Co-operative Bank has also teamed up with Unite to support its workforce to take part in the climate strikes around the country.
Worldwide, there are more than 4,600 events in 139 countries taking place as part of the Fridays for Future movement between Friday September 20 and 27, and campaign group 350.org says more than 70 unions, 500 organisations and 1,000 companies have come out in support of the strikes.
Muna Suleiman, Friends of the Earth campaigner, said most people wanted to fix the climate crisis but politicians needed to act.
She said: ‘Right when we need our leaders to step up, they continue to let us down.
‘From filling the skies with more planes, to backing fracking in the UK and funding oil and gas projects abroad.
‘That’s why we’re standing shoulder to shoulder with young people to call on our politicians to deliver emergency climate action now. And we’re asking everyone to join us.’
Sydney: The Global Strike 4 Climate will on Friday take place in 110 towns and cities across Australia, with organisers demanding government and business commit to a target of net zero carbon emissions by 2030
Sydney: More than 50,000 people flooded Sydney’s streets as they made their way to the Domain to take part in the demonstration calling for governments and businesses to commit to a target of net zero carbon emissions by 2030
‘Can’t eat money, can’t drink money’: Protesters take to the streets in Sydney as part of the rally which happened across the globe on Friday
Brisbane (left) and Melbourne (right): More than 300,000 Australians have chosen to take part in the Global Strike 4 Climate
In Australia there were hundreds of young people proving their dedication to the cause as they carried artistic placards they had made the night before, which read: ‘Time is almost up’ and ‘There is no Planet B’
Sydney: A young girl sits on a man’s shoulders during the Sydney protest on Friday. She held a sign which read: ‘There is no planet B’
Sydney: Children allowed out of school chant and throw their arms in the air during the world’s biggest planned climate protests
Sydney: Thousands of protesters turned out for the climate strike on Friday. This woman wore green and wrapped a vine around her neck for the cause
Bangkok: Thai people protest in front of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment
Bangkok: Children with megaphones demand their politicians make changes to protect the future of the planet
Nolte: Climate ‘Experts’ Are 0-41 with Their Doomsday Predictions
For more than 50 years Climate Alarmists in the scientific community and environmental movement have not gotten even one prediction correct, but they do have a perfect record of getting 41 predictions wrong.
In other words, on at least 41 occasions, these so-called experts have predicted some terrible environmental catastrophe was imminent … and it never happened.
And not once — not even once! — have these alarmists had one of their predictions come true.
Think about that… the so-called experts are 0-41 with their predictions, but those of us who are skeptical of “expert” prediction number 42, the one that says that if we don’t immediately convert to socialism and allow Alexandria Ocasio-Crazy to control and organize our lives, the planet will become uninhabitable.
Why would any sane person listen to someone with a 0-41 record?
Why would we completely restructure our economy and sacrifice our personal freedom for “experts” who are 0-41, who have never once gotten it right?
If you had an investment counselor who steered you wrong 41times, would you hang in there for number 42?
Of course not. You’d fire him after failed prediction two or three.
And if that’s not crazy enough, the latest ploy is to trot out a 16-year-old girt to spread prediction number 42, because it is so much more credible that way.
Sometimes you just have to sit back and laugh.
Anyway, I want you to have the data, so go ahead and print this out in advance of Thanksgiving dinner with your obnoxious Millennial nephew.
LIST OF DOOMSDAY PREDICTIONS CLIMATE ALARMIST GOT RIGHT
NONE.
ZIP.
ZERO.
NADA.
BLANK
DONUT HOLE
NIL.
NOTHING.
VOID.
ZILCH.
LIST OF DOOMSDAY PREDICTIONS THE CLIMATE ALARMIST GOT WRONG
Here is the source for numbers 1-27. As you will see, the individual sources are not crackpots, but scientific studies and media reports on “expert” predictions. The sources for numbers 28-41 are linked individually.
1967: Dire Famine Forecast By 1975
1969: Everyone Will Disappear In a Cloud Of Blue Steam By 1989 (1969)
1970: Ice Age By 2000
1970: America Subject to Water Rationing By 1974 and Food Rationing By 1980
1971: New Ice Age Coming By 2020 or 2030
1972: New Ice Age By 2070
1974: Space Satellites Show New Ice Age Coming Fast
Sorry, Experts… Sorry, Scientific Consensus… Only a fool comes running for the 42nd cry of wolf.
Don’t litter, be kind to animals, recycling’s for suckers (it’s all going to end up in the ground eventually), so stop feeling guilty… Go out there and embrace all the bounty that comes with being a 21st century American — you know, like Obama, who says he believes in Global Warming with his mouth but proves he doesn’t with the $15 million he just spent on oceanfront that we’re told is doomed to flooding
(Bloomberg) — It’s time to stop crediting corporate sustainability efforts as acts of altruism. For big business, protecting the environment often means padding the bottom line.
Nike Inc. has come up with a way to weave more efficiently, reducing the raw material and labor time needed to make each shoe. That has kept more than 3.5 million pounds of waste from reaching landfills since 2012. But the good news doesn’t stop with the environmental impact. The company is spending less on transportation, materials and waste disposal.
The shoemaker’s “more environmentally conscious product has been a source of cost savings,” said James Duffy, an analyst at Stifel.
Those flimsy plastic water bottles sold by Nestle SA? The ultra-thin design has a smaller impact on the environment while pushing down costs associated with packaging and shipping. Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart Inc. have poured tens of millions of dollars into a fund that builds out recycling infrastructure, reducing landfill tipping fees and recovering material that could be sold as new products.
Tech giants have spent billions of dollars on solar and wind power, cutting greenhouse-gas emissions and energy expenditures at the same time. Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Amazon and Facebook Inc. are now some of the largest buyers of green power in America.
Turns out it’s not just easy being green—it’s also profitable.
“We’ve moved past this concept that business versus the environment is a tradeoff,” said Tom Murray, who advises companies on reducing emissions at Environmental Defense Fund, including Walmart, McDonald’s Corp. and Procter & Gamble Co. “The business benefits were always there, but more and more companies are going after them.”
The business case for going green has never been stronger as companies find ways to make more from less. Here’s a look at the ways corporate sustainability is making environmentalism pay.
Lightweight Flights Cost Less
United Airlines Holdings Inc. has been making its planes lighter, driving down fuel use and costs. Airlines account for almost 2% global carbon emissions. Not even the in-flight magazine has been spared in the search for unnecessary heft: changing to a lighter paper stock saved almost $300,000 per year on fuel. United redesigned airplane bathrooms, switched out beverage carts and ended duty-free sales. The company was also working on reducing its cabin waste to zero.
What it pays: United has saved more than $2 billion on fuel so far.
Hanging Hotel Towels Saves More Than Water
It turns out that simply asking guests to hang up towels to dry and forego daily sheet changes can save hotel operators 25% off annual energy costs. “To some surprise within the hotel industry, this option was quickly embraced by hotel guests as a small way to engage in energy conservation,” according to a report by the Urban Land Institute. Clarion Partners LLC does that at all of its hotels and went a step further by reducing flows through toilets, faucets and showerheads.
What it pays: Cutting water use saves Clarion hotels about $17,250 per year.
Idle Trucks, Real Money
Walmart runs one of the biggest trucking fleets in the U.S. That means scores of semis standing in traffic at any given time. At that scale, the introduction of technology that reduces energy use when trucks or idling and software that creates more efficient routes can improve fuel efficiency by 90%, reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
What it pays: Diesel averages almost $3 a gallon in the U.S.
Tech’s Green Power Payoff
Google, Facebook and Amazon are among the largest energy consumers in the U.S., and a lot of that power is now emission-free. Each company committed to getting 100% of their power for their data centers from renewable resources such as wind and solar. Exxon Mobil signed up to energize its operations in Texas with solar and wind energy starting next year, which would place the oil producer among the top 10 buyers.
What it pays: With renewables now cheaper than fossil fuels, these green energy commitments shave an estimated 10% off tech giants’ gargantuan utility bills.
Paperless Bathrooms Are Cheaper
Restaurants, movie theaters and others have been making the switch from paper towels to hand dryers in their restrooms for years. Dryers have become the norm because of the savings on the cost of paper towels and the expense of sending garbage to the landfill. Soldier Field, home of the Chicago Bears, made the switch and cut carbon emissions by 76% per use.
Patrick J. (“Pat“) Michaels (born February 15, 1950) is an American climatologist. Michaels was a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute until Spring 2019. Until 2007 he was research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, where he had worked from 1980.[2][3][4]
A self-described skeptic on the issue of global warming, he is a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists. He has written a number of books and papers on climate change, including Sound and Fury: The Science and Politics of Global Warming (1992), The Satanic Gases (2000), and Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media (2004). He’s also the co-author of Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know (2009).[2] Michaels’ viewpoint, as argued in a 2002 article in the journal Climate Research, is that the planet will see “a warming range of 1.3–3.0°C, with a central value of 1.9°C” for the 1990 to 2100 period (a value far smaller than the IPCC’s average predictions).[5]
Contents
Education
Patrick Michaels obtained an A.B. in biological science in 1971 and an S.M. in biology in 1975 from the University of Chicago, and in 1979 obtained his Ph.D. in ecological climatology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.[6] His doctoral thesis was titled Atmospheric anomalies and crop yields in North America.[7]
Views on climate change
Michaels has said that he does not contest the basic scientific principles behind greenhouse warming and acknowledges that the global mean temperature has increased in recent decades.[8] He is quoted as being skeptical of global warming,[citation needed][9] and is described by Michael E. Mann as a “prominent climate change contrarian.”[10] He contends that the changes will be minor, not catastrophic, and may even be beneficial.[11]
He has written extensive editorials on this topic for the mass media, and for think tanks and their publications such as Regulation. He stated in 2000:[11]
[S]cientists know quite precisely how much the planet will warm in the foreseeable future, a modest three-quarters of a degree (C) [in 50 years]
All this has to do with basic physics, which isn’t real hard to understand. It has been known since 1872 that as we emit more and more carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, each increment results in less and less warming. In other words, the first changes produce the most warming, and subsequent ones produce a bit less, and so on. But we also assume carbon dioxide continues to go into the atmosphere at an ever-increasing rate. In other words, the increase from year-to-year isn’t constant, but itself is increasing. The effect of increasing the rate of carbon dioxide emissions, coupled with the fact that more and more carbon dioxide produces less and less warming compels our climate projections for the future warming to be pretty much a straight line. Translation: Once human beings start to warm the climate, they do so at a constant rate.[12]
Michaels has stated in the Wall Street Journal:
Why is the news on global warming always bad? Perhaps because there’s little incentive to look at things the other way. If you do, you’re liable to be pilloried by your colleagues. If global warming isn’t such a threat, who needs all that funding?[13]
A 2002 article published in the journal Climate Research by Michaels and three other scholars has predicted “a warming range of 1.3–3.0°C, with a central value of 1.9°C” over the 1990 to 2100 period, although he remarked that the “temperature range and central values determined in our study may be too great.” He made the argument that the climate feedback system involving current warming trends was weaker than generally asserted, coming to a conclusion that set his views apart from that of the IPCC’s estimates.[5]
In 2009, Michaels authored a Cato report arguing that “Congress should pass no legislation restricting emissions of carbon dioxide, repeal current ethanol mandates, and inform the public about how little climate change would be prevented by proposed legislation.” [14]
In 2018, Michaels asserted on Fox News, “probably about half, maybe half of that nine-tenths of the degree [of total warming] might be caused by greenhouse gases.” Climate Feedback, a fact-checking website for media coverage on climate change, wrote of Michaels’ assertion, “no evidence or research is provided to support this claim, which contradicts the published scientific literature.”[15]
Advocacy
Expert witness for Western Fuels Association
In May 1994 Richard Lindzen, Michaels, and Robert Balling served as expert witnesses on behalf of Western Fuels Association in St. Paul, Minnesota to determine the environmental cost of coal burning by state power plants.[16] Western Fuels Association is a consortium of coal producers that uses collective advocacy to represent industry interests.[17]
1998: Michaels and Balling complaint against Star Tribune upheld
In May 1997 Ross Gelbspan made a presentation in Minneapolis discussing his concerns, documented in his 1997 book The Heat is On, that some climatologists were involved in a “disinformation campaign” to counter the scientific consensus on global warming. The Minnesota Star Tribune ran an editorial praising this as a public service exposing undue credit given to the “unsubsantiated opinions” of a handful of contrarian scientists, and naming Michaels and his colleague Robert Balling as skeptics whose views had been examined and dismissed by numerous other scientists. Michaels and Balling took a complaint against the Star Tribune to the Minnesota News Council, and at a hearing in April 1998 by a 9–4 decision the council “voted to sustain the complaint that the Star Tribune editorial unfairly characterized the scientific reputations of Patrick Michaels and Robert Balling.”[18]
World Climate Report, Greening Earth Society, and Western Fuels Association
The World Climate Report, a newsletter edited by Michaels was first published by the Greening Earth Society. The society was a public relations organization associated with the Western Fuels Association (WFA), an association of coal-burning utility companies.[19][20][21]It has been called a “front group created by the coal industry”[22] and an “industry front”.[23] Fred Palmer, a society staffer, is a registered lobbyist for Peabody Energy, a coal company.[24] WFA founded the group in 1997, according to an archived version of its website, “as a vehicle for advocacy on climate change, the environmental impact of CO2, and fossil fuel use.”[25]
2003 John Holdren
Office of Science and Technology Policy director, John Holdren,[26] told the U.S. SenateRepublican Policy Committee in June 2003, “Michaels is another of the handful of U.S. climate-change contrarians … He has published little if anything of distinction in the professional literature, being noted rather for his shrill op-ed pieces and indiscriminate denunciations of virtually every finding of mainstream climate science.”[27] In 2009 Michaels responded in a Washington Examiner Op-Ed, saying that the IPCC had subverted the peer review process, and adding the IPCC had “left out plenty of peer-reviewed science that it found inconveniently disagreeable.”[28]
International Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group in 2007
Michaels was one of hundreds of US reviewers composing the International Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group in 2007.
Although the Greening Earth Society was generally skeptical of the impact of climate change, it acknowledged some degree of global warming as real: “Fact #1. The rate of global warming during the past several decades has been about 0.18°C per decade”.[29] Note that the actual increase in the global surface temperature during the 100 years ending in 2005 was 0.74 ± 0.18 °C.[30]
Climate scientist Tom Wigley,[31] a lead author of parts of the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has stated that “Michaels’ statements on the subject of computer models are a catalog of misrepresentation and misinterpretation … Many of the supposedly factual statements made in Michaels’ testimony are either inaccurate or are seriously misleading.”[32]
Climate of Extremes
Michaels received praise for his book, Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know (2009) from University of Alabama-Huntsville Principal Research ScientistRoy Spencer, who wrote, “Michaels and [Co-Author Robert] Balling have provided a treasure trove of the latest global warming science.”[33]Will Happer, Professor of Physics and Former Chairman of the University Research Board at Princeton University, also praised the book and wrote it “…provides important and honest information about climate change that is hard to find elsewhere.”[34]
Funding from energy or fossil fuel companies
On July 27, 2006 ABC News reported that a Colorado energy cooperative, the Intermountain Rural Electric Association, had given Michaels $100,000.[35] An Associated Press report said that the donations had been made after Michaels had “told Western business leaders … that he was running out of money for his analyses of other scientists’ global warming research” and noted that the cooperative had a vested interest in opposing mandatory carbon dioxide caps, a situation that raised conflict of interest concerns.[36]
Michaels said on CNN that 40 per cent of his funding came from the oil industry.[37] According to Fred Pearce, fossil fuel companies have helped fund Michaels’ projects, including his World Climate Report, published every year since 1994, and his “advocacy science consulting firm”, New Hope Environmental Services.[38]
A 2005 article published by the Seattle Times reported that Michaels had received more than $165,000 in fuel-industry funding, including money from the coal industry to publish his own climate journal.[9]
Selected publications
Michaels is the author of several books including: Sound and Fury: The Science and Politics of Global Warming (1992), Satanic Gases (2002; as coauthor), Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians and the Media (2004), published by the Cato Institute, and Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming (2005; as editor and coauthor).
Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media. Cato Institute. October 25, 2005. p. 280. ISBN1-930865-79-1.
Story 1: Black Swan Song — Pathetic Incompetent Corrupt Swamp Swan Figurehead Special Counsel Robert Swan Mueller III Exposed As Fraud — “A Man’s Got to Know His Limitations” — Corrupt Democrat Punks — “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya, punk? — “Go Ahead Make My Day” — Impeach Trump — Big Lie Media and Lying Lunatic Leftist Losers Exposed — No Credibility and No Longer Trusted — No Evidence or Basis For Impeachment — Mueller “Outside My Purview”: Clinton Obama Democrat Criminal Conspiracy — American People Will Reelect Trump for Second Term in A Landslide Victory — Videos
Black Swan – Last Dance Scene (“I was perfect…”)
The Real ‘Black Swan’: Double Speaks
Magnum Force (10/10) Movie CLIP – A Man’s Got to Know His Limitations (1973) HD
A Good Man Always Has to Know His Limitations
Dirty Harry Do You ( I ) Feel Lucky Punk? ( high quality)
WATCH: Rep. Brad Wenstrup’s full questioning of Robert Mueller | Mueller testimony
WATCH: Rep. Ben Cline’s full questioning of Robert Mueller | Mueller testimony
WATCH: Rep. Guy Reschenthaler’s full questioning of Robert Mueller | Mueller testimony
WATCH: Rep. Debbie Lesko’s full questioning of Robert Mueller | Mueller testimony
WATCH: Rep. Michael Turner’s full questioning of Robert Mueller | Mueller testimony
Jim Jordan pushes Mueller on investigating ‘how the false accusations started’
Joe diGenova: The public got to see Mueller’s incompetence
Joe diGenova: IG Horowitz and John Durham Have Both Already interviewed Joseph Mifsud
Mueller’s testimony riddled with shaky moments, incomplete answers
Robert Mueller testifies before Judiciary Committees on Capitol Hill (LIVE) | USA TODAY
Robert Mueller’s full testimony to House Judiciary committee
MUELLER HEARING: House Judiciary Committee Part 1
MUELLER HEARING: House Intelligence Committee Part 2
Full: Robert Mueller Testimony To Congress, Reaction And Analysis | NBC News
Collins at Mueller hearing: I hope this brings us closure
WATCH: Rep. Steve Chabot’s full questioning of Robert Mueller | Mueller testimony
WATCH: Rep. Ted Lieu’s full questioning of Robert Mueller | Mueller testimony
WATCH: Rep. Debbie Lesko’s full questioning of Robert Mueller | Mueller testimony
WATCH: Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner’s full questioning of Robert Mueller | Mueller testimony
Ratcliffe Questions Former Special Counsel Mueller on Report
Representative Turner questions Mueller
WATCH: Rep. Matt Gaetz’s full questioning of Robert Mueller | Mueller testimony
Rep. Jim Jordan blasts Mueller for dodging questions
Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan presses former Special Counsel Robert Mueller on the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion investigation. Jordan says maybe a better course of action is to figure out how the false accusations started.
Rep. Gohmert grills Mueller: Did you know Strzok hated Trump?
Representative Nunes questions Mueller
WATCH: Rep. Ben Cline’s full questioning of Robert Mueller | Mueller testimony
Joe diGenova: The public got to see Mueller’s incompetence
Whitaker says it was clear Mueller didn’t have a grasp of Russia report
Tucker: Democrats believed Mueller would save America
Hannity: Mueller’s testimony was an unmitigated disaster
Ingraham: Trump beats the elites again
Jim Jordan says Dems are never going to stop going after Trump
Gowdy on Mueller: I would’ve beaten the hell out of that exoneration
Trump’s legal team takes victory lap after Mueller hearings
WATCH: Key moments from Mueller’s testimony
Takeaways and analysis of Mueller hearings
‘Disoriented’ Mueller’s stumbling responses to questions during blockbuster hearing leave social media concerned the special counsel seems a ‘confused old man’ but some think it is all a strategy to frustrate the committee members
Mueller faced members of the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees on Wednesday morning at a highly-anticipated hearing on the Russia investigation
Viewers reacting on social media noticed Mueller stumbled at several points
‘Mueller is acting like he doesn’t know what’s going on,’ one viewer wrote on Twitter. ‘He’s acting like a confused old man’
Some viewers have said Mueller’s shaky demeanor calls his report into question
Others think the 74-year-old veteran prosecutor sounds uncertain because he is being overly-cautious about coming off as impartial
When it came to questions at the core of the report, Mueller has delivered firm answers without hesitation
Another theory suggests the wobbly performance is a delaying tactic to frustrate Republican committee members determined to discredit the report
Viewers also noted that Mueller is hindered by the mammoth task of manually searching through 397 pages to effectively answer questions about the report
PUBLISHED: 10:11 EDT, 24 July 2019 | UPDATED: 16:45 EDT, 24 July 2019
Perplexed viewers are questioning Robert Mueller’s ‘confused’ demeanor as he testifies in front of Congress.
The special counsel faced members of the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees on Wednesday morning at a highly-anticipated hearing on the Russiainvestigation.
Viewers reacting on social media have noticed that Mueller appeared to stumble at multiple points.
‘Robert Mueller comes across as a doddering old fool with a questionable moral compass based on situational ethics who should never have been appointed in the first place based on reduced mental capacity,’ one person tweeted.
‘Mueller is acting like he doesn’t know what’s going on,’ another wrote. ‘He’s acting like a confused old man.’
Some are saying the wobbly performance is a delaying tactic on the part of the special counsel to frustrate Republican committee members determined to discredit findings that are damaging to President Donald Trump.
When it came to questions at the core of the report, Mueller has delivered firm answers without hesitation.
Asked whether Trump had been exonerated or if he could be charged with obstruction of justice when he leaves office, Mueller replied: ‘No’ and ‘Yes’ respectively.
‘Lots of twitter folks are dogging Mueller out for looking old and feeble,’ MSNBC’s Joy Reid tweeted. ‘But optically, that just makes the Republicans yelling at him look more absurd. Mueller is quite definitive in his one word answers, which only Dems are eliciting from him so far.’
Perplexed viewers are questioning Robert Mueller’s ‘confused’ demeanor as he testifies in front of members of the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees on Wednesday morning
Viewers reacting on social media noticed that Mueller appeared to stumble at multiple points
Several Twitter users expressed the opinion that the 74-year-old veteran prosecutor’s shaky demeanor calls his entire report into question.
‘Listening too Mueller the cracking in his voice shows clearly that he is a conflicted Skunk and lying ! And I think he is senile !’
‘As I said when Mueller gave speech in May, he is feeble,’ radio personality Mark Levin tweeted. ‘I say that not as a personal attack but as a rational observation. It’s on display today during this hearing.
‘This underscores that the person who influenced this investigation most was Andrew Weissman, his top lieutenant.’
Replying to Levin’s tweet, one man wrote: ‘Agreed, Mueller looks geriatric and lost…. find that man a time machine.’
‘It’s quite entertaining. Mueller can’t make a coherent statement. Looks like the circus made a stop in DC,’ a woman tweeted.
‘I’d say Democrats right now regretting they ever subpoenaed Mueller. He looks confused,’ a man wrote.
Some viewers have said Mueller’s shaky demeanor calls his report into question
Others think Mueller sounds uncertain because he is being overly-cautious about coming off as impartial.
‘I’m concerned that Mueller is so concerned with not appearing political that he is really under-performing at times by failing to clarify things that need clarification,’ one woman wrote.
‘To let crazy GOP statements stand without clarification could be interpreted as agreement.’
Some noted that Mueller is being hindered by the mammoth task of manually searching through 397 pages to effectively answer questions about the report his team took two years to compile.
He repeatedly had to ask committee members for page numbers when asked to comment on specific sections.
One woman tweeted that Mueller would have a much easier time referring to the report if he had searchable copy on a computer.
‘Give Robert Mueller a computer, he desperately needs CTRL + F,’ Vice Media VP Katie Drummond wrote.
Ironically, the copy of the report released by the Justice Department was a scanned printout and thus couldn’t be searched. Several searchable versions have cropped up in the months since then.
Unfortunately for Mueller, witnesses are not allowed to use computers during hearings.
Mueller frequently had to pause and manually search through the 397-page report to effectively answer questions from lawmakers
Throughout the hearing, Democrats, who hold the majority on both committees present, worked to elicit short, definitive answers from Mueller.
House Judiciary Chairman Jerold Nadler asked him: ‘Director Mueller, the president has repeatedly claimed that your report found there was no obstruction and that it completely and totally exonerated him. But that is not what your report said, is it?
‘That is correct. That is not what the report said,’ Mueller responding.
‘Does that say there was no obstruction?’ Nadler followed up later.
‘No,’ the former special counsel said.
‘In fact, your report expressly states that it does not exonerate the president,’ Nadler told him.
‘Yes it does,’ Mueller replied.
Most of Mueller’s fumbles came in response to Republicans trying to get him to stray from his typical dry, technical explanations.
‘Where are you reading from?’ he asked one member, Rep James Sensenbrenner. ‘I am reading from my question,’ the Wisconsin Republican lawmaker told him.
Under questioning by Republican Rep Steve Chabot, Mueller didn’t show immediate familiarity with political intelligence firm Fusion GPS, a key player in the trail of the Steele Dossier, and a fixture of attention of President Trump and GOP critics of the Mueller probe.
‘When you talk about the firm that produced the Steele reporting, the name of the firm was Fusion GPS, is that correct?’
‘I’m not familiar with that,’ said Mueller.
‘That’s not a trick question. It’s Fusion GPS.’
Most of Mueller’s fumbles came in response to Republicans trying to get him to stray from his typical dry, technical explanations
Ohio Republican Rep Jim Jordan sought to draw Mueller out on the surveillance warrants for former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, whose trips to Russia drew attention of investigators.
‘Director Mueller, the third FISA renewal happens a month after you’re named special counsel. What role did your office play in the third FISA renewal of Carter Page?’ Jordan asked.
‘I’m not going to talk to that,’ said Mueller.
In his prepared statement, Mueller began by defending his probe following an onslaught of attacks, and spelling out questions he will and will not answer.
He said he told his team at the start of the Russia probe to ‘work quietly, thoroughly and with integrity so that the public would have full confidence in the outcome.
‘We needed to do our work as thoroughly as possible and as expeditiously as possible. It was in the public interest for our investigation to be complete and not to last a day longer than necessary,’ Mueller said.
He said his team of lawyers and agents worked ‘fairly and with absolute integrity’ – minutes after President Trump once again attacked it as a ‘witch hunt’.
‘Our team would not leak or take other actions that would compromise the integrity of our work,’ said Mueller. ‘All decisions were made based on the facts and the law.’
Ohio Republican Rep Jim Jordan sought to draw Mueller out on the surveillance warrants for former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, whose Russia trips drew investigators’ attention
Rep Doug Collins tried to get Mueller to contradict his report by asking him whether ‘collusion’ and ‘conspiracy’ are the same thing after Mueller testified that they weren’t.
Collins cited a portion of the report that states: ‘Collusion is not a specific offense or theory of liability found in the U.S. Code; nor is it a term of art in federal criminal law. To the contrary, even as defined in legal dictionaries, collusion is largely synonymous with conspiracy as that crime is set forth in the general federal conspiracy statute.’
Mueller critics declared that the special counsel had been bested by Collins, while experts explained that Collins’ citation was taken out of context.
The part of the report in question was about collusion in the sense of corporate collusion – when companies conspire in an illegal fashion to help each other at consumers’ expense.
Corporate collusion is unrelated to ‘collusion with Russia’, the colloquial term adopted in the debate about potential cooperation between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
Both sides sought to get Mueller on record on the question of whether he had any potential conflict that would prevent him from overseeing the probe.
Georgia Democrat Rep Hank Johnson asked Mueller if he had any conflicts of interest that prevented him from being special counsel. Mueller said he did not. Trump has repeatedly said Mueller was ‘highly conflicted,’ saying he had interviewed to be his FBI director and that the two men had a nasty business dispute.
Some people on social media lambasted Republican committee members for trying to damage Mueller’s credibility.
‘No matter your political party, it’s absolutely disgusting to see those attacking Mueller’s integrity,’ one man tweeted.
‘The way the @JudiciaryGOP members talked and yelled at Robert Mueller is beyond awful. They’ve all lost their souls,’ another wrote.
‘Republicans can’t argue the facts, so they attack the investigation and the investigators,’ another said.
‘Remember this slander of Mueller the next time you hear republicans going on about their love & respect for veterans. They will throw anyone under the bus who doesn’t toe the party line.’
Some people on social media lambasted Republican committee members for trying to damage Mueller’s credibility
TOP 10 MUELLER TAKEAWAYS
Below are the 10 most important takeaways gleaned from Robert Mueller’s testimony before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees on Wednesday.
Mueller said all he wanted to say in his report
When Mueller finally agreed to testify before Congress – after more than two years of silence about the Russia investigation – the special counsel said he ‘would not provide information beyond that which is already public’ in the report published in April.
He stuck to that promise throughout Wednesday’s hearing, declining or deferring nearly 200 questions from committee members.
Mueller’s reasons for not answering included not wanting to speculate, being unable to detail internal Justice Department deliberations and being under orders not to broach specific topics.
Trump was paying attention
After saying that he couldn’t be bothered to watch Mueller’s testimony, President Trump made it clear that he was tuned in as he tweeted multiple reactions to the proceedings on Wednesday.
‘I’m not going to be watching Mueller because you can’t take all those bites out of the apple,’ Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. ‘We had no collusion, no obstruction.’
Before the hearing even kicked off Trump had posted seven tweets about the hearing, echoing his go-to attacks on ‘Mueller & his band of 18 Angry Democrats’.
Over the next eight hours tweeted and retweeted 14 posts about Mueller’s testimony, including multiple videos of Republican lawmakers grilling the special counsel.
‘TRUTH IS A FORCE OF NATURE!’ he declared just after 2.30pm.
Mueller didn’t subpoena Trump to avoid a lengthy court battle
The special counsel addressed why Trump wasn’t interviewed during the two-year-long investigation when New York Democratic Rep Sean Maloney asked him: ‘Why didn’t you subpoena the president?’
Trump’s legal team had refused to have him be interviewed in the probe because they felt such a meeting would amount to a ‘perjury trap’.
Before Congress Mueller stated that his team had ‘little success’ when pushing for an interview for over a year and decided that they didn’t want to delay the investigation with a lengthy court battle.
‘We did not want to exercise the subpoena power because of the necessity of expediting the end of the investigation,’ he said, adding that no one at the Justice Department pressured him to finish the probe.
Mueller acknowledged that Trump’s written answers to questions about possible conspiracy with Russia were ‘not as useful as the interview would be’.
Trump was not exonerated by the Russia investigation
Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat, kicked off Wednesday’s proceedings by asking Mueller directly if the Russia investigation exonerated President Trump.
‘No,’ Mueller stated without hesitation.
That goes against the president’s repeated claims that the probe proved there was ‘no obstruction, no collusion’.
Mueller’s team never determined whether Trump committed a crime
While the majority of his answers were straightforward and technical, Mueller struggled when questioned about why he did not indict the president.
During an exchanged with California Democratic Rep Ted Lieu, Mueller stated that the reason he did not even consider indicting Trump on obstruction charges was because of guidance from the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel that a sitting president cannot be indicted.
That goes against assertions by Attorney General William Barr, who has repeatedly said the OLC’s opinion was not the only reason Mueller did not indict Trump.
Arizona Republican Rep Debbie Lesko asked Mueller to clarify that contradiction, at which point he said he ‘would have to look closer at it’.
He later conceded that he had misspoken when he characterized the OLC’s guidance to Lieu.
‘We did not reach a determination as to whether the President committed a crime,’ he said.
‘Based on Justice Department policy and principles of fairness, we decided we would not make a determination as to whether the president committed a crime.’
Mueller was much less steady than in previous hearings
At times, Mueller, 74, stumbled during answers, asking fast-talking lawmakers to repeat page citations and repeat their questions. He sometimes had to scan the hearing room to locate questioners.
Although his stock answer was to say issues were beyond the purview of his mandate, he also appeared not to recall specific information at times.
‘Where are you reading from?’ he asked one member, Rep. James Sensenbrenner. ‘I am reading from my question,’ the Wisconsin Republican lawmaker told him.
Under questioning by Republican Rep Steve Chabot, Mueller didn’t show immediate familiarity with political intelligence firm Fusion GPS, a key player in the trail of the Steele Dossier, and a fixture of attention of President Trump and GOP critics of the Mueller probe.
Viewers reacting on social media called out Mueller’s unsteadiness early on, remarking that he was acting ‘like a confused old man’.
Some said the wobbly performance could be a delaying tactic on the part of the special counsel to frustrate Republican committee members determined to discredit findings that are damaging to Trump.
Mueller and Trump have opposing accounts of what led up to special counsel appointment
Republicans probed Mueller’s professional links with Trump in an attempt to show he may have had a reason to be biased against the president – specifically questioning whether he was turned down for the FBI director position the day before being tapped to lead the Russia investigation.
Trump gave his version of events on Wednesday morning, tweeting: ‘It has been reported that Robert Mueller is saying that he did not apply and interview for the job of FBI Director (and get turned down) the day before he was wrongfully appointed Special Counsel.
‘Hope he doesn’t say that under oath in that we have numerous witnesses to the interview, including the Vice President of the United States!’
Mueller contradicted Trump’s account when Texas Republican Rep Louie Gohmert seized on his alleged conflicts of interest.
Gohmert asked Mueller about a meeting he had with Trump the day before the special counsel appointment and contended that it was a job interview for the FBI director slot.
Mueller stated that he was not interviewed ‘as a candidate’ for the position.
Mueller fiercely defended his team’s impartiality
The special counsel was calm and composed throughout the proceedings, save for one moment when Florida Republican Rep Greg Steube decried the political affiliations of the lawyers on his team.
Mueller said never in his 25 years in his position had he felt the need to ask the people he works with about their political affiliation.
Rep Gohmert also called Mueller’s hiring practices into question, particularly his appointment of FBI agent Peter Strzok – who was later removed from the probe after he was found to have sent anti-Trump text messages to a woman he was involved with.
Mueller said he did not know of Strzok’s disdain for Trump before the probe started and learned about it in the summer of 2017, several months into the investigation.
Republicans tried to collect evidence for a probe into Mueller’s investigation
Republicans committee members tried both the blast the origins of the Russia probe and potentially establish a record that might play out in an ongoing investigation overseen by Attorney General William Barr.
‘Before you arrested [Trump campaign foreign policy aide] George Papadopoulos in July of 2017, he was given $10,000 in ash in Israel. Do you know who gave him that cash?’ California Rep Devin Nunes asked Mueller.
‘Again, that’s outside our … questions such as that should go to the FBI or the department,’ said Mueller.
‘But it involved your investigation,’ said Nunes.
‘It involved persons involved in my investigation,’ said Mueller.
Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow released a statement saying: ‘This morning’s testimony exposed the troubling deficiencies of the Special Counsel’s investigation. The testimony revealed that this probe was conducted by a small group of politically-biased prosecutors who, as hard as they tried, were unable to establish either obstruction, conspiracy, or collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. It is also clear that the Special Counsel conducted his two-year investigation unimpeded. The American people understand that this issue is over. They also understand that the case is closed.’
Democrats tried to breathe life into a dense, technical report
The Democrats, who hold a majority on both committees, made a concerted effort to present the investigation’s findings in a more provocative and damning light than they had been in the dense, 337-page report.
‘Your investigation determined that the Trump campaign — including Trump himself — knew that a foreign power was intervening in our election and welcomed it, built Russian meddling into their strategy, and used it,’ California Rep Adam Schiff, the House Intelligence Committee chair, said when the afternoon portion began.
‘Disloyalty to country. Those are strong words, but how else are we to describe a presidential campaign which did not inform the authorities of a foreign offer of dirt on their opponent, which did not publicly shun it, or turn it away, but which instead invited it, encouraged it, and made full use of it?’ Schiff continued.
‘That disloyalty may not have been criminal. Constrained by uncooperative witnesses, the destruction of documents and the use of encrypted communications, your team was not able to establish each of the elements of the crime of conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt, so not a provable crime, in any event’, he added.
However, a levelheaded Mueller didn’t play along, making for a rather mundane hearing.
In a moment that quickly made the rounds on conservative media on Wednesday, Rep. Jim Jordan sharply questioned Robert Mueller on the origins of the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
The Ohio Republican pressed the former special counsel to detail who told George Papadopoulos, a young foreign policy aide on the Trump campaign, that the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. When Mueller said he would not go into it, Jordan became heated.
“Yes you can, because you wrote about it – you gave us the answer!” Jordan said. “Joseph Mifsud.”
The name of the shadowy Maltese academic kept coming up on Wednesday as Republicans accused Mueller of covering up how the FBI came to investigate the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia, a popular talking point for Trump allies. At the House Intelligence Committee hearing, Rep. Devin Nunes pointed to a large photo of Mifsud with then-U.K. foreign secretary Boris Johnson as evidence that he “has extensive contacts with Western governments and the FBI”.
Boris Johnson makes an appearance at this hearing — Nunes is trying to prove that the investigation was started wrongly, shows a photo of him with Joseph Mifsud
Mifsud’s name would have been familiar for regular consumers of Fox News and conservative outlets that have spent two years dissecting what they believe was a “deep state” attempt to take down the Trump campaign. The London-based professor at the center of the Trump-Russia probe has not been seen in public since October 2017, just days after Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his interactions with him. One of those was a key conversation in London in April 2016, in which Mifsud told him the Russians had damaging information on Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.” Mifsud also introduced him to a Russian graduate student that Papadopoulos believed to be Putin’s niece, and connected him with an official with ties to the Russian foreign ministry who said he could set up a meeting with the country’s ambassador, according to Mueller’s report. Papadopoulos later relayed that information to an Australian diplomat, Alexander Downer, who passed it on to U.S. government officials, setting into motion the FBI investigation into Russian contacts with the Trump campaign.
Papadopoulos’ interactions with Mifsud, and his allegation that the Maltese professor was an FBI plant, has been at the center of some Republicans’ efforts to discredit Mueller’s probe. Papadopoulos told TIME in May that he believes he was part of an elaborate set-up by U.S. intelligence to sabotage Trump’s presidential campaign. Since serving a short sentence for lying to the FBI, Papadopoulos has continued to make the rounds alleging that Mifsud was a “Western intelligence operative” who tried to use him to entrap the Trump campaign.
“People are very fascinated about what I have to say, people are just like — their mouths are dropping,” he told TIME on April 17. “They’ve never heard this information because Mueller and the FBI wanted to keep me silenced.”
Perhaps anticipating this line of questioning, Mueller made it clear in his opening statement that he would be “unable to address questions about the opening of the FBI’s Russia investigation” because it is the subject of an ongoing review by the Justice Department.
That did not stop Jordan and Nunes, both vocal Trump supporters, from trying.
“He’s the guy who starts it all, and when the FBI interviews him, he lies three times and yet you don’t charge him with a crime,” Jordan exclaimed, angrily listing others charged by Mueller, including Michael Flynn and “13 Russians no one’s ever heard of.”
“But the guy who puts the country through this whole saga, starts it off, for three years we have lived this now, he lies and you guys don’t charge him,” he said.
“I’m not sure I agree with your characterization,” Mueller tersely responded, but Jordan’s performance was already going viral in conservative corners of the internet with headlines like “WATCH: Jim Jordan Steals the Show, Calls into Question Entire Basis of Probe!” and “‘BRUTAL’: Jim Jordan grills Mueller about why ‘guy who put this whole story in motion’ lied but wasn’t held accountable.” On Wednesday afternoon, Trump himself retweeted a clip of the exchange, indicating that Mifsud is unlikely to fade from the debate over the Russia investigation.
Rep. Jim Jordan
✔@Jim_Jordan
Why didn’t Mueller charge Joseph Mifsud for lying to the FBI?
Joseph Mifsud (born 1960)[1] is a Maltese academic, with reportedly high level connections to the Russian government.[2] In 2016, he became involved with George Papadopoulos, an advisor to the Donald Trump presidential campaign, and was later accused of being a link between that campaign and Russia. In 2018, he was described as missing, and an Italian court listed his location as “residence unknown”.[3] According to media reports he was in Rome as of April 2019.[4]
Contents
Education
Mifsud holds a bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Malta (1982) and a master’s degree in education from the University of Padua (1989).[1] He was awarded a PhD in 1995 from Queen’s University Belfast; his thesis was titled “Managing educational reform: a comparative approach from Malta (and Northern Ireland); a headteachers’ perspective”.[5]
Career
From 2006 to 2008, Mifsud served as the chef de cabinet of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Malta.[1] He later became a principal in the London Centre of International Law Practice. In 2008, he was named President of the Euro-Mediterranean University of Slovenia(EMUNI).[1][6] At least as early as 2010, he began making numerous trips to Russia.[7] He was a professorial teaching fellow at the University of Stirling in Scotland,[8] as well as director of the London Academy of Diplomacy, where he served as director from 2012 until it closed in 2016. The academy was partnered with the University of Stirling.[9][10][11] He has also served as president of the University Consortium of the Province of Agrigento in Sicily; in September 2018, an Italian court ordered him to repay the Consortium 49,000 euros ($56,700) in overpayments.[3]
In a 2017 interview, he claimed to be a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR),[12] although the ECFR website in 2018 did not list him as a member.[13] He regularly attended meetings of the Valdai Discussion Club, an annual conference held in Russia, backed by the Kremlin and attended by Vladimir Putin.[14] According to a BBC report, Mifsud was in Moscow in April 2016 to speak on a panel run by the Valdai Club alongside Dr. Stephan Roh, a German multimillionaire lawyer and investor described as a “wheeler-dealer” by the BBC Newsnight program.[15] Roh, Mifsud’s former employer,[16] could not be reached for comment by the BBC and has since attempted to erase links between the two men on his company website. Another speaker at the Valdai Club was Ivan Timofeev, who works for a think tank close to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, whom Mifsud subsequently introduced to Papadopoulos via email.[15] Mifsud reportedly claimed to his former girlfriend that he was friends with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.[17]Mifsud himself denied having any contact with the Russian government, saying “I am an academic, I do not even speak Russian.”[8] The Mueller Report, released in 2019, said that Mifsud “maintained various Russian contacts while living in London”, including an unnamed person (name redacted), who was a former staff member of the Internet Research Agency, the Russian troll farm based in Saint Petersburg.[18]
Connection to George Papadopoulos
In March 2016, shortly after Papadopoulos was named as a foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign, Mifsud met Papadopoulos in Rome. They later met again in London, where Mifsud allegedly introduced Papadopoulos to a Russian woman that he falsely claimed was Putin’s niece; Mifsud has denied the report.[8][14] At a meeting in April, Mifsud told Papadopoulos that he had learned that the Russian government had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Papadopoulos allegedly repeated the information to the Australian High Commissioner in London, Alexander Downer, who later reported to American authorities that Papadopoulos had apparently known about Russia’s theft of emails from Democratic sources before it was publicly reported. Papadopoulos has since publicly declared that he did tell Downer about the fact that he was offered “dirt” on Clinton but he has denied any recollection of communicating this theft of emails with Downer. The FBI then launched an investigation into possible connections between Russia and the Trump campaign.[19]
Volume 1 of the Mueller Report[20] states that Mifsud travelled to Moscow in April 2016, and upon his return told Papadopoulos that the Russian government had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.[18] It also mentions that Papadopoulos “suggested to a representative of a foreign government that the Trump Campaign had received indications from the Russian government that it could assist the Campaign through the anonymous release of information damaging to candidate Clinton”. This would appear to corroborate the contact with Downer.
According to Mifsud, he was interviewed by the FBI in February 2017 while visiting the United States to speak at a conference.[21][22] The FBI has not confirmed that they interviewed him, but he is listed as a featured speaker at the February 2017 national meeting of Global Ties, an event sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.[23] Mifsud left the United States on 11 February 2017. Prosecutors with the investigation into Russian interference in the election suggested, in a 17 August 2018 sentencing memorandum for Papadopoulos, that they might have wanted to challenge, detain, or arrest Mifsud if Papadopoulos had told the truth about their interactions.[24]
Connection to Stephan Roh
Stephan Roh, a Russian-speaking[25] German lawyer and multimillionaire with close ties to Russia, has worked alongside Mifsud for years. Papadopoulos’s wife, who briefly worked for Mifsud, has described Roh as Mifsud’s lawyer, best friend, and funder. Roh owns multiple businesses, many headquartered in Moscow or Cyprus; he also co-owns Link Campus University, a university also known for its diplomatic, intelligence and analytical studies, such as the School of Analysis – Security and Intelligence section, and the place where Mifsud taught.[citation needed] The fact that Mifsud taught at the Link Campus University has been denied by the current president of this university, Vincenzo Scotti.[26] Roh was detained and questioned by investigators on Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel team in October 2017.[27]
Missing report
According to a filing in a U.S. federal court in the case Democratic National Committee v. Russian Federation in September 2018, Mifsud “is missing and may be deceased”. Mifsud’s whereabouts were unknown and he could not be served with the complaint.[28] He spoke to his girlfriend on 31 October 2017. The next day an Italian newspaper revealed that the “professor” referred to in news reports about Papadopoulos was Mifsud, and she has not heard from him since then.[29] According to CNN, he has “gone to ground” and was last seen on 6 November 2017 at Link University, a private university in Rome where he was teaching at the time.[21] In September 2018, an Italian court described his location as “residence unknown”.[3]
In September 2018, a few days after the DNC filing, his associate Stephan Roh told The Daily Caller that he had gotten an indirect message from “really good sources” indicating that Mifsud is alive and living under a new identity.[30] According to media reports he was in Rome as of April 2019.[4]
Mueller was born on August 7, 1944 at Doctors Hospital in the New York City borough of Manhattan,[11][12] the first child of Alice C. Truesdale (1920–2007) and Robert Swan Mueller, Jr. (1916–2007). He has four younger sisters: Susan, Sandra, Joan, and Patricia.[13] His father was an executive with DuPont who had served as a Navy officer in the Atlantic and Mediterranean theaters during World War II.[13] His father majored in psychology at Princeton University and played varsity lacrosse, both of which he followed (see below).[13]
Mueller is of German, English and Scottish descent. His paternal great-grandfather, Gustave A. Mueller, was a prominent doctor in Pittsburgh, whose own father August C. E. Müller had immigrated to the United States in 1855 from the Province of Pomerania in the Kingdom of Prussia (a historical territory whose area included land now part of Poland and north-eastern edge of Germany).[14] On his mother’s side, he is a great-grandson of the railroad executive William Truesdale.[15]
Mueller has cited his teammate David Spencer Hackett’s death in the Vietnam War as an influence on his decision to pursue military service.[21] Of his classmate, Mueller has said, “One of the reasons I went into the Marine Corps was because we lost a very good friend, a Marine in Vietnam, who was a year ahead of me at Princeton. There were a number of us who felt we should follow his example and at least go into the service. And it flows from there.”[22] Hackett was a Marine Corps first lieutenant in the infantry and was killed in 1967 in Quảng Trị Province by small arms fire.[23]
After waiting a year so a knee injury could heal, Mueller was accepted for officer training in the United States Marine Corps in 1968, attending training at Parris Island, Officer Candidate School, Army Ranger School, and Army jump school. Of these, he said later that he considered Ranger School the most valuable because he felt “more than anything teaches you about how you react with no sleep and nothing to eat.”[24][25]
After recuperating at a field hospital near Da Hong, Mueller became aide-de-camp to 3rd Marine Division’s commanding general, then–Major General William K. Jones, where he “significantly contributed to the rapport” Jones had with other officers, according to one report.[24][31] Mueller had originally considered making the Marines his career, but he explained later that he found non-combat life in the Corps to be unexciting.[25]
Reflecting on his service in the Vietnam War, Mueller said, “I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have made it out of Vietnam. There were many—many—who did not. And perhaps because I did survive Vietnam, I have always felt compelled to contribute.”[32] In 2009, he told a writer that despite his other accomplishments he was still “most proud the Marine Corps deemed me worthy of leading other Marines.”[25]
After returning from Vietnam, Mueller was briefly stationed at Henderson Hall, before leaving active-duty service in August 1970 [31] at the rank of captain.[31]
After serving as a partner at the Boston law firm of Hill and Barlow, Mueller returned to government service. In 1989, he served in the United States Department of Justice as an assistant to Attorney General Dick Thornburghand as acting Deputy Attorney General. James Baker, with whom he worked on national security matters, said he had “an appreciation for the Constitution and the rule of law”.[34]:33–34
In 1993, Mueller became a partner at Boston’s Hale and Dorr, specializing in white-collar crime litigation.[24] He returned to public service in 1995 as senior litigator in the homicide section of the District of Columbia United States Attorney’s Office. In 1998, Mueller was named U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California and held that position until 2001.[12]
Federal Bureau of Investigation
PresidentGeorge W. Bush nominated Mueller for the position of FBI director on July 5, 2001.[37] He and two other candidates, Washington lawyer George J. Terwilliger III and veteran Chicago prosecutor and white-collar crime defense lawyer Dan Webb, were up for the job, but Mueller, described at the time as a conservative Republican,[38][39] was always considered the front-runner.[40] Terwilliger and Webb both pulled out from consideration around mid-June, while confirmation hearings for Mueller before the Senate Judiciary Committee were quickly set for July 30, only three days before his prostate cancer surgery.[41][42]
Official portrait, circa 2001
The Senate unanimously confirmed Mueller as FBI director on August 2, 2001, voting 98–0 in favor of his appointment.[43] He had previously served as acting deputy attorney general of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) for several months before officially becoming the FBI director on September 4, 2001, just one week before the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.[12]
On February 11, 2003, one month before the U.S.-ledinvasion of Iraq, Mueller gave testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Mueller informed the American public that “[s]even countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism—Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Cuba, and North Korea—remain active in the United States and continue to support terrorist groups that have targeted Americans. As Director Tenet has pointed out, Secretary Powellpresented evidence last week that Baghdad has failed to disarm its weapons of mass destruction, willfully attempting to evade and deceive the international community. Our particular concern is that Saddam Hussein may supply terrorists with biological, chemical or radiological material.”[44][45]Highlighting this worry in February 2003, FBI Special Agent Coleen Rowley wrote an open letter to Mueller in which she warned that “the bureau will [not] be able to stem the flood of terrorism that will likely head our way in the wake of an attack on Iraq”[46][47] and encouraged Mueller to “share [her concerns] with the President and Attorney General.”[47]
On March 10, 2004, while United States Attorney GeneralJohn Ashcroft was at the George Washington University Hospital for gallbladder surgery,[48]James Comey, the then deputy attorney general, received a call from Ashcroft’s wife informing him that White House Chief of StaffAndrew Card and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales were about to visit Ashcroft to convince him to renew a program of warrantless wiretapping under the Terrorist Surveillance Program which the DOJ ruled unconstitutional.[48] Ashcroft refused to sign, as he had previously agreed, but the following day the White House renewed the program anyway.[48] Mueller and Comey then threatened to resign.[49] On March 12, 2004, after private, individual meetings with Mueller and Comey at the White House, the president supported changing the program to satisfy the concerns of Mueller, Ashcroft, and Comey.[34]:289–290[49]
President Bush is presented with an honorary FBI Special Agent credential, 2008
He was inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame in 2004.[31][50]
As director, Mueller also barred FBI personnel from participating in enhanced interrogations with the CIA.[51][52] At a dinner, Mueller defended an attorney (Thomas Wilner) who had been attacked for his role in defending Kuwaiti detainees. Mueller stood up, raised his glass, and said, “I toast Tom Wilner. He’s doing what an American should.” However, the White House pushed back, encouraging more vigorous methods of pursuing and interrogating terror suspects. When Bush confronted Mueller to ask him to round up more terrorists in the U.S., Mueller responded, saying, “If they [suspects] don’t commit a crime, it would be difficult to identify and isolate” them. Vice President Dick Cheney objected, by saying, “That’s just not good enough. We’re hearing this too much from the FBI.”[34]:157, 205, 270
In May 2011, President Barack Obama asked Mueller to continue at the helm of the FBI for two additional years beyond his normal 10-year term, which would have expired on September 4, 2011.[53] The Senate approved this request 100–0 on July 27, 2011.[54][55] On September 4, 2013, Mueller was replaced by James Comey.[56]
In June 2013, Mueller defended NSAsurveillance programs in testimony before a House Judiciary Committee hearing.[57] He said that surveillance programs could have “derailed” the September 11 attacks.[58][59] Congressman John Conyers disagreed: “I am not persuaded that that makes it OK to collect every call.”[59] Mueller also testified that the government’s surveillance programs complied “in full with U.S. law and with basic rights guaranteed under the Constitution”.[60] He said that “We are taking all necessary steps to hold Edward Snowden responsible for these disclosures.”[61]
On June 19, 2017, in the case of Arar v. Ashcroft, Mueller, along with Ashcroft and former Immigration and Naturalization Services Commissioner James W. Ziglar and others, was shielded from civil liability by the Supreme Court for post-9/11 detention of Muslims under policies then brought into place.[62]
Return to private sector
Mueller at the White House in April 2013, discussing the Boston Marathon bombing, with (from left) President Obama, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, Attorney General Eric Holder, Director of CIA John O. Brennan, and Lisa Monaco, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism
After leaving the FBI in 2013, Mueller served a one-year term as consulting professor and the Arthur and Frank Payne distinguished lecturer at Stanford University, where he focused on issues related to cybersecurity.[63]
In addition to his speaking and teaching roles, Mueller also joined the law firm WilmerHale as a partner in its Washington office in 2014.[64] Among other roles at the firm, he oversaw the independent investigation into the NFL‘s conduct surrounding the video that appeared to show NFL player Ray Rice assaulting his fiancée.[65] In January 2016, he was appointed as Settlement Master in the U.S. consumer litigation over the Volkswagen emissions scandal; as of May 11, 2017, the scandal has resulted in $11.2 billion in customer settlements.[66]
On October 19, 2016, Mueller began an external review of “security, personnel, and management processes and practices” at government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton after Harold T. Martin III was indicted for massive data theft from the National Security Agency.[67] On April 6, 2017, he was appointed as Special Master for disbursement of $850 million and $125 million for automakers and consumers, respectively, affected by rupture-prone Takata airbags.[68]
“Appointment of Special Counsel to Investigate Russian Interference in the 2016 United States Election and Related Matters”, by then Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein
On May 16, 2017, Mueller met with President Trump as a courtesy to provide perspectives on the FBI and input on considerations for hiring a new FBI Director.[71] This meeting was initially widely reported to have been an interview to serve again as the FBI Director.[72] President Trump broached resuming the position in their meeting; however, Mueller was ineligible to return as FBI Director due to statutory term limits, nor did Mueller have interest in resuming the position.[71]
The next day, Deputy Attorney GeneralRod Rosenstein appointed Mueller to serve as special counsel for the United States Department of Justice. In this capacity, Mueller oversaw the investigation into “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump, and any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation”.[73]
Mueller’s appointment to oversee the investigation immediately garnered widespread support from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress.[74][75]Newt Gingrich, former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives and prominent conservative political commentator, stated via Twitter that “Robert Mueller is a superb choice to be special counsel. His reputation is impeccable for honesty and integrity.”[76] Senator Charles Schumer (D–NY) said, “Former Director Mueller is exactly the right kind of individual for this job. I now have significantly greater confidence that the investigation will follow the facts wherever they lead.” Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) stated, “former FBI dir. Mueller is well qualified to oversee this probe”.[74] Some, however, pointed out an alleged conflict of interest. “The federal code could not be clearer—Mueller is compromised by his apparent conflict of interest in being close with James Comey,” Rep. Trent Franks (R–AZ), who first called for Mueller to step down over the summer, said in a statement to Fox News. “The appearance of a conflict is enough to put Mueller in violation of the code. … All of the revelations in recent weeks make the case stronger.”[77]
Upon his appointment as special counsel, Mueller and two colleagues (former FBI agent Aaron Zebley[78] and former assistant special prosecutor on the Watergate Special Prosecution ForceJames L. Quarles III) resigned from WilmerHale.[79] On May 23, 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice ethics experts announced they had declared Mueller ethically able to function as special counsel.[80] The spokesperson for the special counsel, Peter Carr, told NBC Newsthat Mueller has taken an active role in managing the inquiry.[81] In an interview with the Associated Press, Rosenstein said he would recuse himself from supervision of Mueller if he were to become a subject in the investigation due to his role in the dismissal of James Comey.[82]
On June 14, 2017, the Washington Post reported that Mueller’s office is also investigating Trump personally for possible obstruction of justice, in reference to the Russian probe.[83] The report was questioned by Trump’s legal team attorney Jay Sekulow, who said on June 18 on NBC‘s Meet the Press, “The President is not and has not been under investigation for obstruction, period.”[84] Due to the central role of the Trump family in the campaign, the transition, and the White House, the President’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was also reportedly under scrutiny by Mueller.[85] Also in June, Trump allegedly ordered the firing of Robert Mueller, but backed down when then-White House Counsel Don McGahnthreatened to quit.[86]
During a discussion about national security at the Aspen security conference on July 21, 2017, former CIA directorJohn Brennan reaffirmed his support for Mueller and called for members of Congress to resist if Trump fires Mueller. He also said it was “the obligation of some executive-branch officials to refuse to carry out some of these orders that, again, are inconsistent with what this country is all about”.[87] After Peter Strzok, an investigator for Mueller, was removed from the investigation for alleged partiality, Senator Mark Warner, the Ranking Member of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in a speech on December 20, 2017, before the Senate warned of a constitutional crisis if the President fired Mueller.[88] On June 22, 2018, Warner hosted a fundraising party for 100 guests and was quoted there saying, “If you get me one more glass of wine, I’ll tell you stuff only Bob Mueller and I know. If you think you’ve seen wild stuff so far, buckle up. It’s going to be a wild couple of months.”[89]
On October 30, 2017, Mueller filed charges against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and campaign co-chairman Rick Gates. The 12 charges include conspiracy to launder money, violations of the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) as being an unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading FARA statements, and conspiracy against the United States.[90]
On December 1, 2017, Mueller reached a plea agreement with former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to giving false testimony to the FBI about his contacts with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.[91]As part of Flynn’s negotiations, his son, Michael G. Flynn, was not expected to be charged, and Flynn was prepared to testify that high-level officials on Trump’s team directed him to make contact with the Russians.[92][93][94] On February 16, 2018, Mueller indicted 13 Russian individuals and 3 Russian companies for attempting to trick Americans into consuming Russian propaganda that targeted Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton[95] and later President-elect Donald Trump.[96]
On February 20, 2018, Mueller charged attorney Alex van der Zwaan with making false statements in the Russia probe.[97][98][99]
On May 20, 2018, Trump criticized Mueller, tweeting “the World’s most expensive Witch Hunt has found nothing on Russia & me so now they are looking at the rest of the World!”[100] Mueller started investigating the August 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and an emissary for the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The emissary offered help to the Trump presidential campaign.[101][100] Mueller is also investigating the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Turkey, Qatar, Israel, and China.[102]
On December 18, 2018, the Washington Post published an article concerning a report prepared for the U.S. Senate which stated that Russian disinformation teams had targeted Mueller.[103]
On March 22, 2019, Mueller concluded his investigation and submitted the Special Counsel’s final report to Attorney General William Barr.[104] A senior Department of Justice official said that the report did not recommend any new indictments.[8] On March 24, Attorney General Barr submitted a summary of findings to the United States Congress. He stated in his letter, “The Special Counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russian in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.” Mueller’s report also reportedly did not take a stance on whether or not Trump committed obstruction of justice; Barr quoted Mueller as saying “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”[105]
On May 29, 2019, Mueller announced that he was retiring as special counsel and that the office would be shut down, and he spoke publicly about the report for the first time.[106] Saying “The report is my testimony,” he indicated he would have nothing to say that wasn’t already in the report. On the subject of obstruction of justice, he said “under long-standing Department [of Justice] policy, a president cannot be charged with a crime while he is in office.”[107]He repeated his official conclusion that the report neither accused nor exonerated the president, while adding that any potential wrongdoing by a president must be addressed by a “process other than the criminal justice system”.[108] Mueller reasserted the involvement of Russian operatives in the 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak and their parallel efforts to influence American public opinion using social media.[107] Referring to those actions, he declared that “there were multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election. That allegation deserves the attention of every American.”[109]
Robert Mueller was initially scheduled to publicly testify before two House committees on July 17, 2019, with two hours for lawmakers to ask questions, but the hearing was postponed to July 24 with a third hour added for questions.[110] His verbal testimony is expected to help inform the public—Democrats believe most Americans have not read the report—and to help Democratic leadership finally decide whether or not to impeach the President.[111]In particular, the Democrats aim to highlight what they consider to be the worst examples of Trump’s conduct. Representative Jamie Raskin from Maryland said he would use visual aids, such as posters, to help people understand the implications of the Mueller report.[112] Republicans, on the other hand, plan to question Mueller on the origins of this investigation.[113]
In 2001, Mueller’s Senate confirmation hearings to head the FBI were delayed several months while he underwent treatment for prostate cancer.[120] He was diagnosed in the fall of 2000, postponing being sworn in as FBI director until he received a good prognosis from his physician.[121]
Mueller and William Barr—the attorney general who supervised the late stage of Mueller’s special counsel investigation—have known each other since the 1980s and have been described as good friends. Mueller attended the weddings of two of Barr’s daughters, and their wives attend Bible study together.[123]
Military awards
Mueller received the following military awards and decorations:[30]
Events in the 2016 elections were unprecedented. Top FBI officials knowingly used information paid for by the campaign of Hillary Clinton to obtain a #FISA#spy warrant on a member of the #TrumpCampaign. Meanwhile, top Obama administration officials also spied on the campaign, using so-called unmasking requests. Those same FBI agents, however, chose to look the other way when it came to the risks posed by Clinton’s use of a private email server. We now know that emails she send as Secretary of State through that server were automatically copied to an unknown foreign entity. Looking ahead of the 2020 elections, the question is whether the FBI has been reformed enough to make sure political bias don’t influence investigations. Today we sit down with Tony Shaffer, acting president of the London Center for Policy Research. He served as a Lieutenant Colonel in U.S. Army, where he was a senior intelligence officer. Today he’s also an advising producer for National Geographic and a member of the Trump 2020 advisory board.
Rep. Matt Gaetz on Spygate, Barr Hearings, and the Attempted Coup Against Trump
Sara Carter: Fusion GPS testimony backfired on the Democrats
Andrew Weissmann (born c. 1958) is an American attorney. Since 2015 he has been the chief of the criminal fraud section of the U.S. Department of Justice. In June 2017 he was appointed to a management role on the 2017 special counsel team headed by Robert Mueller. To assume that position, Weissmann took a leave from his DOJ post.[1]
From 2002 to 2005, Weissmann was deputy director and then director of the task force investigating the Enron scandal.[1] His work resulted in the prosecution of more than 30 people for crimes including perjury, fraud, and obstruction including three of Enron’s top executives, Andrew Fastow, Kenneth Lay. and Jeffrey Skilling. In a follow-up case in U.S. District Court, Weissmann also was successful at arguing that auditing firm Arthur Andersen LLP had covered up for Enron. In that case, which resulted in the destruction of Andersen, he convinced the district judge to instruct the jury that they could convict the firm regardless of whether its employees knew they were violating the law.[3] That ruling was later unanimously overturned by the Supreme Court in Arthur Andersen LLP v. United States, in which the court held that “the jury instructions failed to convey the requisite consciousness of wrongdoing.”[3]
On June 19, 2017, Weissmann joined Special Counsel Mueller’s team to run and investigate Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.[5][6] He was said to be “the architect of the case against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.” A news report in March 2019 said he would soon leave the Justice Department and become a faculty member at New York University and to work on public service projects.[7]
Story 1: Black Swan Song — Pathetic Incompetent Corrupt Swamp Swan Figurehead Special Counsel Robert Swan Mueller III Exposed As Fraud — “A Man’s Got to Know His Limitations” — Corrupt Democrat Punks — “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya, punk? — “Go Ahead Make My Day” — Impeach Trump — Big Lie Media and Lying Lunatic Leftist Losers Exposed — No Credibility and No Longer Trusted — No Evidence or Basis For Impeachment — Mueller “Outside My Purview”: Clinton Obama Democrat Criminal Conspiracy — American People Will Reelect Trump for Second Term in A Landslide Victory — Videos
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Robert Mueller testifies before Judiciary Committees on Capitol Hill (LIVE) | USA TODAY
Robert Mueller’s full testimony to House Judiciary committee
MUELLER HEARING: House Judiciary Committee Part 1
MUELLER HEARING: House Intelligence Committee Part 2
Full: Robert Mueller Testimony To Congress, Reaction And Analysis | NBC News
Collins at Mueller hearing: I hope this brings us closure
WATCH: Rep. Steve Chabot’s full questioning of Robert Mueller | Mueller testimony
WATCH: Rep. Ted Lieu’s full questioning of Robert Mueller | Mueller testimony
WATCH: Rep. Debbie Lesko’s full questioning of Robert Mueller | Mueller testimony
WATCH: Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner’s full questioning of Robert Mueller | Mueller testimony
Ratcliffe Questions Former Special Counsel Mueller on Report
Representative Turner questions Mueller
WATCH: Rep. Matt Gaetz’s full questioning of Robert Mueller | Mueller testimony
Rep. Jim Jordan blasts Mueller for dodging questions
Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan presses former Special Counsel Robert Mueller on the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion investigation. Jordan says maybe a better course of action is to figure out how the false accusations started.
Rep. Gohmert grills Mueller: Did you know Strzok hated Trump?
Representative Nunes questions Mueller
WATCH: Rep. Ben Cline’s full questioning of Robert Mueller | Mueller testimony
Joe diGenova: The public got to see Mueller’s incompetence
Whitaker says it was clear Mueller didn’t have a grasp of Russia report
Tucker: Democrats believed Mueller would save America
Hannity: Mueller’s testimony was an unmitigated disaster
Ingraham: Trump beats the elites again
Jim Jordan says Dems are never going to stop going after Trump
Gowdy on Mueller: I would’ve beaten the hell out of that exoneration
Trump’s legal team takes victory lap after Mueller hearings
WATCH: Key moments from Mueller’s testimony
Takeaways and analysis of Mueller hearings
‘Disoriented’ Mueller’s stumbling responses to questions during blockbuster hearing leave social media concerned the special counsel seems a ‘confused old man’ but some think it is all a strategy to frustrate the committee members
Mueller faced members of the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees on Wednesday morning at a highly-anticipated hearing on the Russia investigation
Viewers reacting on social media noticed Mueller stumbled at several points
‘Mueller is acting like he doesn’t know what’s going on,’ one viewer wrote on Twitter. ‘He’s acting like a confused old man’
Some viewers have said Mueller’s shaky demeanor calls his report into question
Others think the 74-year-old veteran prosecutor sounds uncertain because he is being overly-cautious about coming off as impartial
When it came to questions at the core of the report, Mueller has delivered firm answers without hesitation
Another theory suggests the wobbly performance is a delaying tactic to frustrate Republican committee members determined to discredit the report
Viewers also noted that Mueller is hindered by the mammoth task of manually searching through 397 pages to effectively answer questions about the report
PUBLISHED: 10:11 EDT, 24 July 2019 | UPDATED: 16:45 EDT, 24 July 2019
Perplexed viewers are questioning Robert Mueller’s ‘confused’ demeanor as he testifies in front of Congress.
The special counsel faced members of the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees on Wednesday morning at a highly-anticipated hearing on the Russiainvestigation.
Viewers reacting on social media have noticed that Mueller appeared to stumble at multiple points.
‘Robert Mueller comes across as a doddering old fool with a questionable moral compass based on situational ethics who should never have been appointed in the first place based on reduced mental capacity,’ one person tweeted.
‘Mueller is acting like he doesn’t know what’s going on,’ another wrote. ‘He’s acting like a confused old man.’
Some are saying the wobbly performance is a delaying tactic on the part of the special counsel to frustrate Republican committee members determined to discredit findings that are damaging to President Donald Trump.
When it came to questions at the core of the report, Mueller has delivered firm answers without hesitation.
Asked whether Trump had been exonerated or if he could be charged with obstruction of justice when he leaves office, Mueller replied: ‘No’ and ‘Yes’ respectively.
‘Lots of twitter folks are dogging Mueller out for looking old and feeble,’ MSNBC’s Joy Reid tweeted. ‘But optically, that just makes the Republicans yelling at him look more absurd. Mueller is quite definitive in his one word answers, which only Dems are eliciting from him so far.’
Perplexed viewers are questioning Robert Mueller’s ‘confused’ demeanor as he testifies in front of members of the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees on Wednesday morning
Viewers reacting on social media noticed that Mueller appeared to stumble at multiple points
Several Twitter users expressed the opinion that the 74-year-old veteran prosecutor’s shaky demeanor calls his entire report into question.
‘Listening too Mueller the cracking in his voice shows clearly that he is a conflicted Skunk and lying ! And I think he is senile !’
‘As I said when Mueller gave speech in May, he is feeble,’ radio personality Mark Levin tweeted. ‘I say that not as a personal attack but as a rational observation. It’s on display today during this hearing.
‘This underscores that the person who influenced this investigation most was Andrew Weissman, his top lieutenant.’
Replying to Levin’s tweet, one man wrote: ‘Agreed, Mueller looks geriatric and lost…. find that man a time machine.’
‘It’s quite entertaining. Mueller can’t make a coherent statement. Looks like the circus made a stop in DC,’ a woman tweeted.
‘I’d say Democrats right now regretting they ever subpoenaed Mueller. He looks confused,’ a man wrote.
Some viewers have said Mueller’s shaky demeanor calls his report into question
Others think Mueller sounds uncertain because he is being overly-cautious about coming off as impartial.
‘I’m concerned that Mueller is so concerned with not appearing political that he is really under-performing at times by failing to clarify things that need clarification,’ one woman wrote.
‘To let crazy GOP statements stand without clarification could be interpreted as agreement.’
Some noted that Mueller is being hindered by the mammoth task of manually searching through 397 pages to effectively answer questions about the report his team took two years to compile.
He repeatedly had to ask committee members for page numbers when asked to comment on specific sections.
One woman tweeted that Mueller would have a much easier time referring to the report if he had searchable copy on a computer.
‘Give Robert Mueller a computer, he desperately needs CTRL + F,’ Vice Media VP Katie Drummond wrote.
Ironically, the copy of the report released by the Justice Department was a scanned printout and thus couldn’t be searched. Several searchable versions have cropped up in the months since then.
Unfortunately for Mueller, witnesses are not allowed to use computers during hearings.
Mueller frequently had to pause and manually search through the 397-page report to effectively answer questions from lawmakers
Throughout the hearing, Democrats, who hold the majority on both committees present, worked to elicit short, definitive answers from Mueller.
House Judiciary Chairman Jerold Nadler asked him: ‘Director Mueller, the president has repeatedly claimed that your report found there was no obstruction and that it completely and totally exonerated him. But that is not what your report said, is it?
‘That is correct. That is not what the report said,’ Mueller responding.
‘Does that say there was no obstruction?’ Nadler followed up later.
‘No,’ the former special counsel said.
‘In fact, your report expressly states that it does not exonerate the president,’ Nadler told him.
‘Yes it does,’ Mueller replied.
Most of Mueller’s fumbles came in response to Republicans trying to get him to stray from his typical dry, technical explanations.
‘Where are you reading from?’ he asked one member, Rep James Sensenbrenner. ‘I am reading from my question,’ the Wisconsin Republican lawmaker told him.
Under questioning by Republican Rep Steve Chabot, Mueller didn’t show immediate familiarity with political intelligence firm Fusion GPS, a key player in the trail of the Steele Dossier, and a fixture of attention of President Trump and GOP critics of the Mueller probe.
‘When you talk about the firm that produced the Steele reporting, the name of the firm was Fusion GPS, is that correct?’
‘I’m not familiar with that,’ said Mueller.
‘That’s not a trick question. It’s Fusion GPS.’
Most of Mueller’s fumbles came in response to Republicans trying to get him to stray from his typical dry, technical explanations
Ohio Republican Rep Jim Jordan sought to draw Mueller out on the surveillance warrants for former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, whose trips to Russia drew attention of investigators.
‘Director Mueller, the third FISA renewal happens a month after you’re named special counsel. What role did your office play in the third FISA renewal of Carter Page?’ Jordan asked.
‘I’m not going to talk to that,’ said Mueller.
In his prepared statement, Mueller began by defending his probe following an onslaught of attacks, and spelling out questions he will and will not answer.
He said he told his team at the start of the Russia probe to ‘work quietly, thoroughly and with integrity so that the public would have full confidence in the outcome.
‘We needed to do our work as thoroughly as possible and as expeditiously as possible. It was in the public interest for our investigation to be complete and not to last a day longer than necessary,’ Mueller said.
He said his team of lawyers and agents worked ‘fairly and with absolute integrity’ – minutes after President Trump once again attacked it as a ‘witch hunt’.
‘Our team would not leak or take other actions that would compromise the integrity of our work,’ said Mueller. ‘All decisions were made based on the facts and the law.’
Ohio Republican Rep Jim Jordan sought to draw Mueller out on the surveillance warrants for former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, whose Russia trips drew investigators’ attention
Rep Doug Collins tried to get Mueller to contradict his report by asking him whether ‘collusion’ and ‘conspiracy’ are the same thing after Mueller testified that they weren’t.
Collins cited a portion of the report that states: ‘Collusion is not a specific offense or theory of liability found in the U.S. Code; nor is it a term of art in federal criminal law. To the contrary, even as defined in legal dictionaries, collusion is largely synonymous with conspiracy as that crime is set forth in the general federal conspiracy statute.’
Mueller critics declared that the special counsel had been bested by Collins, while experts explained that Collins’ citation was taken out of context.
The part of the report in question was about collusion in the sense of corporate collusion – when companies conspire in an illegal fashion to help each other at consumers’ expense.
Corporate collusion is unrelated to ‘collusion with Russia’, the colloquial term adopted in the debate about potential cooperation between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
Both sides sought to get Mueller on record on the question of whether he had any potential conflict that would prevent him from overseeing the probe.
Georgia Democrat Rep Hank Johnson asked Mueller if he had any conflicts of interest that prevented him from being special counsel. Mueller said he did not. Trump has repeatedly said Mueller was ‘highly conflicted,’ saying he had interviewed to be his FBI director and that the two men had a nasty business dispute.
Some people on social media lambasted Republican committee members for trying to damage Mueller’s credibility.
‘No matter your political party, it’s absolutely disgusting to see those attacking Mueller’s integrity,’ one man tweeted.
‘The way the @JudiciaryGOP members talked and yelled at Robert Mueller is beyond awful. They’ve all lost their souls,’ another wrote.
‘Republicans can’t argue the facts, so they attack the investigation and the investigators,’ another said.
‘Remember this slander of Mueller the next time you hear republicans going on about their love & respect for veterans. They will throw anyone under the bus who doesn’t toe the party line.’
Some people on social media lambasted Republican committee members for trying to damage Mueller’s credibility
TOP 10 MUELLER TAKEAWAYS
Below are the 10 most important takeaways gleaned from Robert Mueller’s testimony before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees on Wednesday.
Mueller said all he wanted to say in his report
When Mueller finally agreed to testify before Congress – after more than two years of silence about the Russia investigation – the special counsel said he ‘would not provide information beyond that which is already public’ in the report published in April.
He stuck to that promise throughout Wednesday’s hearing, declining or deferring nearly 200 questions from committee members.
Mueller’s reasons for not answering included not wanting to speculate, being unable to detail internal Justice Department deliberations and being under orders not to broach specific topics.
Trump was paying attention
After saying that he couldn’t be bothered to watch Mueller’s testimony, President Trump made it clear that he was tuned in as he tweeted multiple reactions to the proceedings on Wednesday.
‘I’m not going to be watching Mueller because you can’t take all those bites out of the apple,’ Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. ‘We had no collusion, no obstruction.’
Before the hearing even kicked off Trump had posted seven tweets about the hearing, echoing his go-to attacks on ‘Mueller & his band of 18 Angry Democrats’.
Over the next eight hours tweeted and retweeted 14 posts about Mueller’s testimony, including multiple videos of Republican lawmakers grilling the special counsel.
‘TRUTH IS A FORCE OF NATURE!’ he declared just after 2.30pm.
Mueller didn’t subpoena Trump to avoid a lengthy court battle
The special counsel addressed why Trump wasn’t interviewed during the two-year-long investigation when New York Democratic Rep Sean Maloney asked him: ‘Why didn’t you subpoena the president?’
Trump’s legal team had refused to have him be interviewed in the probe because they felt such a meeting would amount to a ‘perjury trap’.
Before Congress Mueller stated that his team had ‘little success’ when pushing for an interview for over a year and decided that they didn’t want to delay the investigation with a lengthy court battle.
‘We did not want to exercise the subpoena power because of the necessity of expediting the end of the investigation,’ he said, adding that no one at the Justice Department pressured him to finish the probe.
Mueller acknowledged that Trump’s written answers to questions about possible conspiracy with Russia were ‘not as useful as the interview would be’.
Trump was not exonerated by the Russia investigation
Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat, kicked off Wednesday’s proceedings by asking Mueller directly if the Russia investigation exonerated President Trump.
‘No,’ Mueller stated without hesitation.
That goes against the president’s repeated claims that the probe proved there was ‘no obstruction, no collusion’.
Mueller’s team never determined whether Trump committed a crime
While the majority of his answers were straightforward and technical, Mueller struggled when questioned about why he did not indict the president.
During an exchanged with California Democratic Rep Ted Lieu, Mueller stated that the reason he did not even consider indicting Trump on obstruction charges was because of guidance from the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel that a sitting president cannot be indicted.
That goes against assertions by Attorney General William Barr, who has repeatedly said the OLC’s opinion was not the only reason Mueller did not indict Trump.
Arizona Republican Rep Debbie Lesko asked Mueller to clarify that contradiction, at which point he said he ‘would have to look closer at it’.
He later conceded that he had misspoken when he characterized the OLC’s guidance to Lieu.
‘We did not reach a determination as to whether the President committed a crime,’ he said.
‘Based on Justice Department policy and principles of fairness, we decided we would not make a determination as to whether the president committed a crime.’
Mueller was much less steady than in previous hearings
At times, Mueller, 74, stumbled during answers, asking fast-talking lawmakers to repeat page citations and repeat their questions. He sometimes had to scan the hearing room to locate questioners.
Although his stock answer was to say issues were beyond the purview of his mandate, he also appeared not to recall specific information at times.
‘Where are you reading from?’ he asked one member, Rep. James Sensenbrenner. ‘I am reading from my question,’ the Wisconsin Republican lawmaker told him.
Under questioning by Republican Rep Steve Chabot, Mueller didn’t show immediate familiarity with political intelligence firm Fusion GPS, a key player in the trail of the Steele Dossier, and a fixture of attention of President Trump and GOP critics of the Mueller probe.
Viewers reacting on social media called out Mueller’s unsteadiness early on, remarking that he was acting ‘like a confused old man’.
Some said the wobbly performance could be a delaying tactic on the part of the special counsel to frustrate Republican committee members determined to discredit findings that are damaging to Trump.
Mueller and Trump have opposing accounts of what led up to special counsel appointment
Republicans probed Mueller’s professional links with Trump in an attempt to show he may have had a reason to be biased against the president – specifically questioning whether he was turned down for the FBI director position the day before being tapped to lead the Russia investigation.
Trump gave his version of events on Wednesday morning, tweeting: ‘It has been reported that Robert Mueller is saying that he did not apply and interview for the job of FBI Director (and get turned down) the day before he was wrongfully appointed Special Counsel.
‘Hope he doesn’t say that under oath in that we have numerous witnesses to the interview, including the Vice President of the United States!’
Mueller contradicted Trump’s account when Texas Republican Rep Louie Gohmert seized on his alleged conflicts of interest.
Gohmert asked Mueller about a meeting he had with Trump the day before the special counsel appointment and contended that it was a job interview for the FBI director slot.
Mueller stated that he was not interviewed ‘as a candidate’ for the position.
Mueller fiercely defended his team’s impartiality
The special counsel was calm and composed throughout the proceedings, save for one moment when Florida Republican Rep Greg Steube decried the political affiliations of the lawyers on his team.
Mueller said never in his 25 years in his position had he felt the need to ask the people he works with about their political affiliation.
Rep Gohmert also called Mueller’s hiring practices into question, particularly his appointment of FBI agent Peter Strzok – who was later removed from the probe after he was found to have sent anti-Trump text messages to a woman he was involved with.
Mueller said he did not know of Strzok’s disdain for Trump before the probe started and learned about it in the summer of 2017, several months into the investigation.
Republicans tried to collect evidence for a probe into Mueller’s investigation
Republicans committee members tried both the blast the origins of the Russia probe and potentially establish a record that might play out in an ongoing investigation overseen by Attorney General William Barr.
‘Before you arrested [Trump campaign foreign policy aide] George Papadopoulos in July of 2017, he was given $10,000 in ash in Israel. Do you know who gave him that cash?’ California Rep Devin Nunes asked Mueller.
‘Again, that’s outside our … questions such as that should go to the FBI or the department,’ said Mueller.
‘But it involved your investigation,’ said Nunes.
‘It involved persons involved in my investigation,’ said Mueller.
Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow released a statement saying: ‘This morning’s testimony exposed the troubling deficiencies of the Special Counsel’s investigation. The testimony revealed that this probe was conducted by a small group of politically-biased prosecutors who, as hard as they tried, were unable to establish either obstruction, conspiracy, or collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. It is also clear that the Special Counsel conducted his two-year investigation unimpeded. The American people understand that this issue is over. They also understand that the case is closed.’
Democrats tried to breathe life into a dense, technical report
The Democrats, who hold a majority on both committees, made a concerted effort to present the investigation’s findings in a more provocative and damning light than they had been in the dense, 337-page report.
‘Your investigation determined that the Trump campaign — including Trump himself — knew that a foreign power was intervening in our election and welcomed it, built Russian meddling into their strategy, and used it,’ California Rep Adam Schiff, the House Intelligence Committee chair, said when the afternoon portion began.
‘Disloyalty to country. Those are strong words, but how else are we to describe a presidential campaign which did not inform the authorities of a foreign offer of dirt on their opponent, which did not publicly shun it, or turn it away, but which instead invited it, encouraged it, and made full use of it?’ Schiff continued.
‘That disloyalty may not have been criminal. Constrained by uncooperative witnesses, the destruction of documents and the use of encrypted communications, your team was not able to establish each of the elements of the crime of conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt, so not a provable crime, in any event’, he added.
However, a levelheaded Mueller didn’t play along, making for a rather mundane hearing.
In a moment that quickly made the rounds on conservative media on Wednesday, Rep. Jim Jordan sharply questioned Robert Mueller on the origins of the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
The Ohio Republican pressed the former special counsel to detail who told George Papadopoulos, a young foreign policy aide on the Trump campaign, that the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. When Mueller said he would not go into it, Jordan became heated.
“Yes you can, because you wrote about it – you gave us the answer!” Jordan said. “Joseph Mifsud.”
The name of the shadowy Maltese academic kept coming up on Wednesday as Republicans accused Mueller of covering up how the FBI came to investigate the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia, a popular talking point for Trump allies. At the House Intelligence Committee hearing, Rep. Devin Nunes pointed to a large photo of Mifsud with then-U.K. foreign secretary Boris Johnson as evidence that he “has extensive contacts with Western governments and the FBI”.
Boris Johnson makes an appearance at this hearing — Nunes is trying to prove that the investigation was started wrongly, shows a photo of him with Joseph Mifsud
Mifsud’s name would have been familiar for regular consumers of Fox News and conservative outlets that have spent two years dissecting what they believe was a “deep state” attempt to take down the Trump campaign. The London-based professor at the center of the Trump-Russia probe has not been seen in public since October 2017, just days after Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his interactions with him. One of those was a key conversation in London in April 2016, in which Mifsud told him the Russians had damaging information on Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.” Mifsud also introduced him to a Russian graduate student that Papadopoulos believed to be Putin’s niece, and connected him with an official with ties to the Russian foreign ministry who said he could set up a meeting with the country’s ambassador, according to Mueller’s report. Papadopoulos later relayed that information to an Australian diplomat, Alexander Downer, who passed it on to U.S. government officials, setting into motion the FBI investigation into Russian contacts with the Trump campaign.
Papadopoulos’ interactions with Mifsud, and his allegation that the Maltese professor was an FBI plant, has been at the center of some Republicans’ efforts to discredit Mueller’s probe. Papadopoulos told TIME in May that he believes he was part of an elaborate set-up by U.S. intelligence to sabotage Trump’s presidential campaign. Since serving a short sentence for lying to the FBI, Papadopoulos has continued to make the rounds alleging that Mifsud was a “Western intelligence operative” who tried to use him to entrap the Trump campaign.
“People are very fascinated about what I have to say, people are just like — their mouths are dropping,” he told TIME on April 17. “They’ve never heard this information because Mueller and the FBI wanted to keep me silenced.”
Perhaps anticipating this line of questioning, Mueller made it clear in his opening statement that he would be “unable to address questions about the opening of the FBI’s Russia investigation” because it is the subject of an ongoing review by the Justice Department.
That did not stop Jordan and Nunes, both vocal Trump supporters, from trying.
“He’s the guy who starts it all, and when the FBI interviews him, he lies three times and yet you don’t charge him with a crime,” Jordan exclaimed, angrily listing others charged by Mueller, including Michael Flynn and “13 Russians no one’s ever heard of.”
“But the guy who puts the country through this whole saga, starts it off, for three years we have lived this now, he lies and you guys don’t charge him,” he said.
“I’m not sure I agree with your characterization,” Mueller tersely responded, but Jordan’s performance was already going viral in conservative corners of the internet with headlines like “WATCH: Jim Jordan Steals the Show, Calls into Question Entire Basis of Probe!” and “‘BRUTAL’: Jim Jordan grills Mueller about why ‘guy who put this whole story in motion’ lied but wasn’t held accountable.” On Wednesday afternoon, Trump himself retweeted a clip of the exchange, indicating that Mifsud is unlikely to fade from the debate over the Russia investigation.
Rep. Jim Jordan
✔@Jim_Jordan
Why didn’t Mueller charge Joseph Mifsud for lying to the FBI?
Joseph Mifsud (born 1960)[1] is a Maltese academic, with reportedly high level connections to the Russian government.[2] In 2016, he became involved with George Papadopoulos, an advisor to the Donald Trump presidential campaign, and was later accused of being a link between that campaign and Russia. In 2018, he was described as missing, and an Italian court listed his location as “residence unknown”.[3] According to media reports he was in Rome as of April 2019.[4]
Contents
Education
Mifsud holds a bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Malta (1982) and a master’s degree in education from the University of Padua (1989).[1] He was awarded a PhD in 1995 from Queen’s University Belfast; his thesis was titled “Managing educational reform: a comparative approach from Malta (and Northern Ireland); a headteachers’ perspective”.[5]
Career
From 2006 to 2008, Mifsud served as the chef de cabinet of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Malta.[1] He later became a principal in the London Centre of International Law Practice. In 2008, he was named President of the Euro-Mediterranean University of Slovenia(EMUNI).[1][6] At least as early as 2010, he began making numerous trips to Russia.[7] He was a professorial teaching fellow at the University of Stirling in Scotland,[8] as well as director of the London Academy of Diplomacy, where he served as director from 2012 until it closed in 2016. The academy was partnered with the University of Stirling.[9][10][11] He has also served as president of the University Consortium of the Province of Agrigento in Sicily; in September 2018, an Italian court ordered him to repay the Consortium 49,000 euros ($56,700) in overpayments.[3]
In a 2017 interview, he claimed to be a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR),[12] although the ECFR website in 2018 did not list him as a member.[13] He regularly attended meetings of the Valdai Discussion Club, an annual conference held in Russia, backed by the Kremlin and attended by Vladimir Putin.[14] According to a BBC report, Mifsud was in Moscow in April 2016 to speak on a panel run by the Valdai Club alongside Dr. Stephan Roh, a German multimillionaire lawyer and investor described as a “wheeler-dealer” by the BBC Newsnight program.[15] Roh, Mifsud’s former employer,[16] could not be reached for comment by the BBC and has since attempted to erase links between the two men on his company website. Another speaker at the Valdai Club was Ivan Timofeev, who works for a think tank close to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, whom Mifsud subsequently introduced to Papadopoulos via email.[15] Mifsud reportedly claimed to his former girlfriend that he was friends with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.[17]Mifsud himself denied having any contact with the Russian government, saying “I am an academic, I do not even speak Russian.”[8] The Mueller Report, released in 2019, said that Mifsud “maintained various Russian contacts while living in London”, including an unnamed person (name redacted), who was a former staff member of the Internet Research Agency, the Russian troll farm based in Saint Petersburg.[18]
Connection to George Papadopoulos
In March 2016, shortly after Papadopoulos was named as a foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign, Mifsud met Papadopoulos in Rome. They later met again in London, where Mifsud allegedly introduced Papadopoulos to a Russian woman that he falsely claimed was Putin’s niece; Mifsud has denied the report.[8][14] At a meeting in April, Mifsud told Papadopoulos that he had learned that the Russian government had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Papadopoulos allegedly repeated the information to the Australian High Commissioner in London, Alexander Downer, who later reported to American authorities that Papadopoulos had apparently known about Russia’s theft of emails from Democratic sources before it was publicly reported. Papadopoulos has since publicly declared that he did tell Downer about the fact that he was offered “dirt” on Clinton but he has denied any recollection of communicating this theft of emails with Downer. The FBI then launched an investigation into possible connections between Russia and the Trump campaign.[19]
Volume 1 of the Mueller Report[20] states that Mifsud travelled to Moscow in April 2016, and upon his return told Papadopoulos that the Russian government had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.[18] It also mentions that Papadopoulos “suggested to a representative of a foreign government that the Trump Campaign had received indications from the Russian government that it could assist the Campaign through the anonymous release of information damaging to candidate Clinton”. This would appear to corroborate the contact with Downer.
According to Mifsud, he was interviewed by the FBI in February 2017 while visiting the United States to speak at a conference.[21][22] The FBI has not confirmed that they interviewed him, but he is listed as a featured speaker at the February 2017 national meeting of Global Ties, an event sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.[23] Mifsud left the United States on 11 February 2017. Prosecutors with the investigation into Russian interference in the election suggested, in a 17 August 2018 sentencing memorandum for Papadopoulos, that they might have wanted to challenge, detain, or arrest Mifsud if Papadopoulos had told the truth about their interactions.[24]
Connection to Stephan Roh
Stephan Roh, a Russian-speaking[25] German lawyer and multimillionaire with close ties to Russia, has worked alongside Mifsud for years. Papadopoulos’s wife, who briefly worked for Mifsud, has described Roh as Mifsud’s lawyer, best friend, and funder. Roh owns multiple businesses, many headquartered in Moscow or Cyprus; he also co-owns Link Campus University, a university also known for its diplomatic, intelligence and analytical studies, such as the School of Analysis – Security and Intelligence section, and the place where Mifsud taught.[citation needed] The fact that Mifsud taught at the Link Campus University has been denied by the current president of this university, Vincenzo Scotti.[26] Roh was detained and questioned by investigators on Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel team in October 2017.[27]
Missing report
According to a filing in a U.S. federal court in the case Democratic National Committee v. Russian Federation in September 2018, Mifsud “is missing and may be deceased”. Mifsud’s whereabouts were unknown and he could not be served with the complaint.[28] He spoke to his girlfriend on 31 October 2017. The next day an Italian newspaper revealed that the “professor” referred to in news reports about Papadopoulos was Mifsud, and she has not heard from him since then.[29] According to CNN, he has “gone to ground” and was last seen on 6 November 2017 at Link University, a private university in Rome where he was teaching at the time.[21] In September 2018, an Italian court described his location as “residence unknown”.[3]
In September 2018, a few days after the DNC filing, his associate Stephan Roh told The Daily Caller that he had gotten an indirect message from “really good sources” indicating that Mifsud is alive and living under a new identity.[30] According to media reports he was in Rome as of April 2019.[4]
Mueller was born on August 7, 1944 at Doctors Hospital in the New York City borough of Manhattan,[11][12] the first child of Alice C. Truesdale (1920–2007) and Robert Swan Mueller, Jr. (1916–2007). He has four younger sisters: Susan, Sandra, Joan, and Patricia.[13] His father was an executive with DuPont who had served as a Navy officer in the Atlantic and Mediterranean theaters during World War II.[13] His father majored in psychology at Princeton University and played varsity lacrosse, both of which he followed (see below).[13]
Mueller is of German, English and Scottish descent. His paternal great-grandfather, Gustave A. Mueller, was a prominent doctor in Pittsburgh, whose own father August C. E. Müller had immigrated to the United States in 1855 from the Province of Pomerania in the Kingdom of Prussia (a historical territory whose area included land now part of Poland and north-eastern edge of Germany).[14] On his mother’s side, he is a great-grandson of the railroad executive William Truesdale.[15]
Mueller has cited his teammate David Spencer Hackett’s death in the Vietnam War as an influence on his decision to pursue military service.[21] Of his classmate, Mueller has said, “One of the reasons I went into the Marine Corps was because we lost a very good friend, a Marine in Vietnam, who was a year ahead of me at Princeton. There were a number of us who felt we should follow his example and at least go into the service. And it flows from there.”[22] Hackett was a Marine Corps first lieutenant in the infantry and was killed in 1967 in Quảng Trị Province by small arms fire.[23]
After waiting a year so a knee injury could heal, Mueller was accepted for officer training in the United States Marine Corps in 1968, attending training at Parris Island, Officer Candidate School, Army Ranger School, and Army jump school. Of these, he said later that he considered Ranger School the most valuable because he felt “more than anything teaches you about how you react with no sleep and nothing to eat.”[24][25]
After recuperating at a field hospital near Da Hong, Mueller became aide-de-camp to 3rd Marine Division’s commanding general, then–Major General William K. Jones, where he “significantly contributed to the rapport” Jones had with other officers, according to one report.[24][31] Mueller had originally considered making the Marines his career, but he explained later that he found non-combat life in the Corps to be unexciting.[25]
Reflecting on his service in the Vietnam War, Mueller said, “I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have made it out of Vietnam. There were many—many—who did not. And perhaps because I did survive Vietnam, I have always felt compelled to contribute.”[32] In 2009, he told a writer that despite his other accomplishments he was still “most proud the Marine Corps deemed me worthy of leading other Marines.”[25]
After returning from Vietnam, Mueller was briefly stationed at Henderson Hall, before leaving active-duty service in August 1970 [31] at the rank of captain.[31]
After serving as a partner at the Boston law firm of Hill and Barlow, Mueller returned to government service. In 1989, he served in the United States Department of Justice as an assistant to Attorney General Dick Thornburghand as acting Deputy Attorney General. James Baker, with whom he worked on national security matters, said he had “an appreciation for the Constitution and the rule of law”.[34]:33–34
In 1993, Mueller became a partner at Boston’s Hale and Dorr, specializing in white-collar crime litigation.[24] He returned to public service in 1995 as senior litigator in the homicide section of the District of Columbia United States Attorney’s Office. In 1998, Mueller was named U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California and held that position until 2001.[12]
Federal Bureau of Investigation
PresidentGeorge W. Bush nominated Mueller for the position of FBI director on July 5, 2001.[37] He and two other candidates, Washington lawyer George J. Terwilliger III and veteran Chicago prosecutor and white-collar crime defense lawyer Dan Webb, were up for the job, but Mueller, described at the time as a conservative Republican,[38][39] was always considered the front-runner.[40] Terwilliger and Webb both pulled out from consideration around mid-June, while confirmation hearings for Mueller before the Senate Judiciary Committee were quickly set for July 30, only three days before his prostate cancer surgery.[41][42]
Official portrait, circa 2001
The Senate unanimously confirmed Mueller as FBI director on August 2, 2001, voting 98–0 in favor of his appointment.[43] He had previously served as acting deputy attorney general of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) for several months before officially becoming the FBI director on September 4, 2001, just one week before the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.[12]
On February 11, 2003, one month before the U.S.-ledinvasion of Iraq, Mueller gave testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Mueller informed the American public that “[s]even countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism—Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Cuba, and North Korea—remain active in the United States and continue to support terrorist groups that have targeted Americans. As Director Tenet has pointed out, Secretary Powellpresented evidence last week that Baghdad has failed to disarm its weapons of mass destruction, willfully attempting to evade and deceive the international community. Our particular concern is that Saddam Hussein may supply terrorists with biological, chemical or radiological material.”[44][45]Highlighting this worry in February 2003, FBI Special Agent Coleen Rowley wrote an open letter to Mueller in which she warned that “the bureau will [not] be able to stem the flood of terrorism that will likely head our way in the wake of an attack on Iraq”[46][47] and encouraged Mueller to “share [her concerns] with the President and Attorney General.”[47]
On March 10, 2004, while United States Attorney GeneralJohn Ashcroft was at the George Washington University Hospital for gallbladder surgery,[48]James Comey, the then deputy attorney general, received a call from Ashcroft’s wife informing him that White House Chief of StaffAndrew Card and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales were about to visit Ashcroft to convince him to renew a program of warrantless wiretapping under the Terrorist Surveillance Program which the DOJ ruled unconstitutional.[48] Ashcroft refused to sign, as he had previously agreed, but the following day the White House renewed the program anyway.[48] Mueller and Comey then threatened to resign.[49] On March 12, 2004, after private, individual meetings with Mueller and Comey at the White House, the president supported changing the program to satisfy the concerns of Mueller, Ashcroft, and Comey.[34]:289–290[49]
President Bush is presented with an honorary FBI Special Agent credential, 2008
He was inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame in 2004.[31][50]
As director, Mueller also barred FBI personnel from participating in enhanced interrogations with the CIA.[51][52] At a dinner, Mueller defended an attorney (Thomas Wilner) who had been attacked for his role in defending Kuwaiti detainees. Mueller stood up, raised his glass, and said, “I toast Tom Wilner. He’s doing what an American should.” However, the White House pushed back, encouraging more vigorous methods of pursuing and interrogating terror suspects. When Bush confronted Mueller to ask him to round up more terrorists in the U.S., Mueller responded, saying, “If they [suspects] don’t commit a crime, it would be difficult to identify and isolate” them. Vice President Dick Cheney objected, by saying, “That’s just not good enough. We’re hearing this too much from the FBI.”[34]:157, 205, 270
In May 2011, President Barack Obama asked Mueller to continue at the helm of the FBI for two additional years beyond his normal 10-year term, which would have expired on September 4, 2011.[53] The Senate approved this request 100–0 on July 27, 2011.[54][55] On September 4, 2013, Mueller was replaced by James Comey.[56]
In June 2013, Mueller defended NSAsurveillance programs in testimony before a House Judiciary Committee hearing.[57] He said that surveillance programs could have “derailed” the September 11 attacks.[58][59] Congressman John Conyers disagreed: “I am not persuaded that that makes it OK to collect every call.”[59] Mueller also testified that the government’s surveillance programs complied “in full with U.S. law and with basic rights guaranteed under the Constitution”.[60] He said that “We are taking all necessary steps to hold Edward Snowden responsible for these disclosures.”[61]
On June 19, 2017, in the case of Arar v. Ashcroft, Mueller, along with Ashcroft and former Immigration and Naturalization Services Commissioner James W. Ziglar and others, was shielded from civil liability by the Supreme Court for post-9/11 detention of Muslims under policies then brought into place.[62]
Return to private sector
Mueller at the White House in April 2013, discussing the Boston Marathon bombing, with (from left) President Obama, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, Attorney General Eric Holder, Director of CIA John O. Brennan, and Lisa Monaco, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism
After leaving the FBI in 2013, Mueller served a one-year term as consulting professor and the Arthur and Frank Payne distinguished lecturer at Stanford University, where he focused on issues related to cybersecurity.[63]
In addition to his speaking and teaching roles, Mueller also joined the law firm WilmerHale as a partner in its Washington office in 2014.[64] Among other roles at the firm, he oversaw the independent investigation into the NFL‘s conduct surrounding the video that appeared to show NFL player Ray Rice assaulting his fiancée.[65] In January 2016, he was appointed as Settlement Master in the U.S. consumer litigation over the Volkswagen emissions scandal; as of May 11, 2017, the scandal has resulted in $11.2 billion in customer settlements.[66]
On October 19, 2016, Mueller began an external review of “security, personnel, and management processes and practices” at government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton after Harold T. Martin III was indicted for massive data theft from the National Security Agency.[67] On April 6, 2017, he was appointed as Special Master for disbursement of $850 million and $125 million for automakers and consumers, respectively, affected by rupture-prone Takata airbags.[68]
“Appointment of Special Counsel to Investigate Russian Interference in the 2016 United States Election and Related Matters”, by then Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein
On May 16, 2017, Mueller met with President Trump as a courtesy to provide perspectives on the FBI and input on considerations for hiring a new FBI Director.[71] This meeting was initially widely reported to have been an interview to serve again as the FBI Director.[72] President Trump broached resuming the position in their meeting; however, Mueller was ineligible to return as FBI Director due to statutory term limits, nor did Mueller have interest in resuming the position.[71]
The next day, Deputy Attorney GeneralRod Rosenstein appointed Mueller to serve as special counsel for the United States Department of Justice. In this capacity, Mueller oversaw the investigation into “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump, and any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation”.[73]
Mueller’s appointment to oversee the investigation immediately garnered widespread support from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress.[74][75]Newt Gingrich, former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives and prominent conservative political commentator, stated via Twitter that “Robert Mueller is a superb choice to be special counsel. His reputation is impeccable for honesty and integrity.”[76] Senator Charles Schumer (D–NY) said, “Former Director Mueller is exactly the right kind of individual for this job. I now have significantly greater confidence that the investigation will follow the facts wherever they lead.” Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) stated, “former FBI dir. Mueller is well qualified to oversee this probe”.[74] Some, however, pointed out an alleged conflict of interest. “The federal code could not be clearer—Mueller is compromised by his apparent conflict of interest in being close with James Comey,” Rep. Trent Franks (R–AZ), who first called for Mueller to step down over the summer, said in a statement to Fox News. “The appearance of a conflict is enough to put Mueller in violation of the code. … All of the revelations in recent weeks make the case stronger.”[77]
Upon his appointment as special counsel, Mueller and two colleagues (former FBI agent Aaron Zebley[78] and former assistant special prosecutor on the Watergate Special Prosecution ForceJames L. Quarles III) resigned from WilmerHale.[79] On May 23, 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice ethics experts announced they had declared Mueller ethically able to function as special counsel.[80] The spokesperson for the special counsel, Peter Carr, told NBC Newsthat Mueller has taken an active role in managing the inquiry.[81] In an interview with the Associated Press, Rosenstein said he would recuse himself from supervision of Mueller if he were to become a subject in the investigation due to his role in the dismissal of James Comey.[82]
On June 14, 2017, the Washington Post reported that Mueller’s office is also investigating Trump personally for possible obstruction of justice, in reference to the Russian probe.[83] The report was questioned by Trump’s legal team attorney Jay Sekulow, who said on June 18 on NBC‘s Meet the Press, “The President is not and has not been under investigation for obstruction, period.”[84] Due to the central role of the Trump family in the campaign, the transition, and the White House, the President’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was also reportedly under scrutiny by Mueller.[85] Also in June, Trump allegedly ordered the firing of Robert Mueller, but backed down when then-White House Counsel Don McGahnthreatened to quit.[86]
During a discussion about national security at the Aspen security conference on July 21, 2017, former CIA directorJohn Brennan reaffirmed his support for Mueller and called for members of Congress to resist if Trump fires Mueller. He also said it was “the obligation of some executive-branch officials to refuse to carry out some of these orders that, again, are inconsistent with what this country is all about”.[87] After Peter Strzok, an investigator for Mueller, was removed from the investigation for alleged partiality, Senator Mark Warner, the Ranking Member of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in a speech on December 20, 2017, before the Senate warned of a constitutional crisis if the President fired Mueller.[88] On June 22, 2018, Warner hosted a fundraising party for 100 guests and was quoted there saying, “If you get me one more glass of wine, I’ll tell you stuff only Bob Mueller and I know. If you think you’ve seen wild stuff so far, buckle up. It’s going to be a wild couple of months.”[89]
On October 30, 2017, Mueller filed charges against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and campaign co-chairman Rick Gates. The 12 charges include conspiracy to launder money, violations of the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) as being an unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading FARA statements, and conspiracy against the United States.[90]
On December 1, 2017, Mueller reached a plea agreement with former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to giving false testimony to the FBI about his contacts with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.[91]As part of Flynn’s negotiations, his son, Michael G. Flynn, was not expected to be charged, and Flynn was prepared to testify that high-level officials on Trump’s team directed him to make contact with the Russians.[92][93][94] On February 16, 2018, Mueller indicted 13 Russian individuals and 3 Russian companies for attempting to trick Americans into consuming Russian propaganda that targeted Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton[95] and later President-elect Donald Trump.[96]
On February 20, 2018, Mueller charged attorney Alex van der Zwaan with making false statements in the Russia probe.[97][98][99]
On May 20, 2018, Trump criticized Mueller, tweeting “the World’s most expensive Witch Hunt has found nothing on Russia & me so now they are looking at the rest of the World!”[100] Mueller started investigating the August 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and an emissary for the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The emissary offered help to the Trump presidential campaign.[101][100] Mueller is also investigating the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Turkey, Qatar, Israel, and China.[102]
On December 18, 2018, the Washington Post published an article concerning a report prepared for the U.S. Senate which stated that Russian disinformation teams had targeted Mueller.[103]
On March 22, 2019, Mueller concluded his investigation and submitted the Special Counsel’s final report to Attorney General William Barr.[104] A senior Department of Justice official said that the report did not recommend any new indictments.[8] On March 24, Attorney General Barr submitted a summary of findings to the United States Congress. He stated in his letter, “The Special Counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russian in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.” Mueller’s report also reportedly did not take a stance on whether or not Trump committed obstruction of justice; Barr quoted Mueller as saying “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”[105]
On May 29, 2019, Mueller announced that he was retiring as special counsel and that the office would be shut down, and he spoke publicly about the report for the first time.[106] Saying “The report is my testimony,” he indicated he would have nothing to say that wasn’t already in the report. On the subject of obstruction of justice, he said “under long-standing Department [of Justice] policy, a president cannot be charged with a crime while he is in office.”[107]He repeated his official conclusion that the report neither accused nor exonerated the president, while adding that any potential wrongdoing by a president must be addressed by a “process other than the criminal justice system”.[108] Mueller reasserted the involvement of Russian operatives in the 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak and their parallel efforts to influence American public opinion using social media.[107] Referring to those actions, he declared that “there were multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election. That allegation deserves the attention of every American.”[109]
Robert Mueller was initially scheduled to publicly testify before two House committees on July 17, 2019, with two hours for lawmakers to ask questions, but the hearing was postponed to July 24 with a third hour added for questions.[110] His verbal testimony is expected to help inform the public—Democrats believe most Americans have not read the report—and to help Democratic leadership finally decide whether or not to impeach the President.[111]In particular, the Democrats aim to highlight what they consider to be the worst examples of Trump’s conduct. Representative Jamie Raskin from Maryland said he would use visual aids, such as posters, to help people understand the implications of the Mueller report.[112] Republicans, on the other hand, plan to question Mueller on the origins of this investigation.[113]
In 2001, Mueller’s Senate confirmation hearings to head the FBI were delayed several months while he underwent treatment for prostate cancer.[120] He was diagnosed in the fall of 2000, postponing being sworn in as FBI director until he received a good prognosis from his physician.[121]
Mueller and William Barr—the attorney general who supervised the late stage of Mueller’s special counsel investigation—have known each other since the 1980s and have been described as good friends. Mueller attended the weddings of two of Barr’s daughters, and their wives attend Bible study together.[123]
Military awards
Mueller received the following military awards and decorations:[30]
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The Pronk Pops Show 1397, February 12, 2020, Story 1: The Red Diaper Babies Grew Up To Be REDS (Radical Extremist Democratic Socialists) and Won In Iowa and New Hampshire — Videos — Story 2: The Political Elitist Establishment (PEEs) Hunt Down Deplorables — Socialist Satire — Coming To A Theater Nearest You March 13, 2020 — Friday The 13th –Lying Lunatic Leftist Losers vs. American Winners — Videos — Story 3: U.S. Houshold Debt Rising To Over $14,000,000,000 While Federal Reserve Continues To Expand Liquidity By Over $1,000,000,000 — Videos
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Story 1: The Red Diaper Babies Grew Up To Be REDS (Radical Extremist Democratic Socialists) and Won In Iowa and New Hampshire — Videos
Hurt: New crop of Dem candidates are ‘Communists’
Mayor Pete’s Dad Was A Marxist, What Happened? ft. Richard Wolff
Author David Maraniss on his parents, who were members of the Communist Party
Red Diaper Babies
[EUA] Seeing Red: Stories of American Communists (1983) | INGLÊS
RayStevens – The Global Warming Song
2020 Delegate Count and Primary Calendar
By Lauren Leatherby and Sarah Almukhtar
Democratic delegates
1,990 to win nomination
Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders lead the delegate race after the first two contests of the primary season, according to the Associated Press. The vast majority of delegates are awarded after February. Super Tuesday, when a third of all delegates are allocated in a single day, looms large with 16 contests at the beginning of March. Here is a look at when every state goes to the polls and where the largest troves of delegates are at stake.
Nevada caucus
South Carolina primary
Alabama primary
California primary
Texas primary
Michigan primary
New York primary
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/elections/delegate-count-primary-results.html
Updated at 2:53 PM CST
Sanders edges Buttigieg in NH, giving Dems 2 front-runners
Bernie Sanders won New Hampshire’s presidential primary, edging moderate rival Pete Buttigieg and scoring the first clear victory in the Democratic Party’s chaotic 2020 nomination fight.
In his Tuesday night win, the 78-year-old Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, beat back a strong challenge from the 38-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana. The dueling Democrats represent different generations, see divergent paths to the nomination and embrace conflicting visions of America’s future.
As Sanders and Buttigieg celebrated, Amy Klobuchar scored an unexpected third-place finish that gives her a road out of New Hampshire as the primary season moves on to the string of state-by-state contests that lie ahead.
Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden posted disappointing fourth and fifth place finishes respectively and were on track to finish with zero delegates from the state.
The New Hampshire vote gives new clarity to a Democratic contest shaping up to be a battle between two men separated by four decades in age and clashing political ideologies. Sanders is a leading progressive voice, having spent decades demanding substantial government intervention in health care and other sectors of the economy. Buttigieg has pressed for more incremental change, preferring to give Americans the option of retaining their private health insurance while appealing to Republicans and independents who may be dissatisfied with Trump.
“We are gonna win because we have the agenda that speaks to the needs of working people across this country,” Sanders declared. “This victory here is the beginning of the end for Donald Trump.”
Buttigieg struck an optimistic tone: “Thanks to you, a campaign that some said shouldn’t be here at all has shown that we are here to stay.”
Both men have strength heading into the next phase of the campaign, yet they face very different political challenges.
While Warren made clear she will remain in the race, Sanders, well-financed and with an ardent army of supporters, has cemented his status as the clear leader of the progressive wing of the party.
Meanwhile, Buttigieg must prove he can attract support from voters of color who are critical to winning the nomination. And unlike Sanders, he still has multiple rivals in his own ideological wing of the party to contend with. They include Klobuchar, whose standout debate performance led to a late surge in New Hampshire and a growing national following. While deeply wounded, Biden promises strength in upcoming South Carolina. And though former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg was not on Tuesday’s ballot, he looms next month when the contest reaches states offering hundreds of delegates.
After a chaotic beginning to primary voting last week in Iowa, Democrats hoped New Hampshire would help give shape to their urgent quest to pick someone to take on Trump in November. At least two candidates dropped out in the wake of weak finishes Tuesday night: moderate Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet and political newcomer Andrew Yang, who attracted a small but loyal following over the past year and was one of just three candidates of color left in the race.
The struggling candidates still in the race sought to minimize the latest results.
Warren, who spent months as a Democratic front-runner, offered an optimistic outlook as she faced cheering supporters: “Our campaign is built for the long haul, and we are just getting started.”
Having already predicted he would “take a hit” in New Hampshire after a distant fourth-place finish in Iowa, Biden essentially ceded the state. He traveled to South Carolina Tuesday as he bet his candidacy on a strong showing there later this month boosted by support from black voters.
Still, history suggests that the first-in-the-nation primary will have enormous influence shaping the 2020 race. In the modern era, no Democrat has ever become the party’s general election nominee without finishing first or second in New Hampshire.
Sanders and Buttigieg were on track to win the same number of New Hampshire delegates with most of the vote tallied, with Klobuchar a few behind. Warren, Biden and the rest of the field were shut out, failing to reach the 15% threshold needed for delegates.
The AP allocated nine delegates each to Sanders and Buttigieg and six to Klobuchar.
The action was on the Democratic side, but Trump easily won New Hampshire’s Republican primary. He was facing token opposition from former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld.
With most of the vote in, Trump already had amassed more votes in the New Hampshire primary than any incumbent president in history. His vote share was approaching the modern historical high for an incumbent president, 86.43% set by Ronald Reagan in 1984. Weld received about 9% of the vote of New Hampshire Republicans.
The political spotlight quickly shifts to Nevada, where Democrats will hold caucuses on Feb. 22. But several candidates, including Warren and Sanders, plan to visit other states in the coming days that vote on Super Tuesday, signaling they are in the race for the long haul.
___
Peoples reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Seth Borenstein and Zeke Miller in Washington, Will Weissert, Holly Ramer and Thomas Beaumont contributed from New Hampshire.
https://apnews.com/3d16640da86f6e5c30b1b5fba8d91936
‘Red Diaper Babies’ – Children of Communists
Country Joe McDonald, whose rock band Country Joe and the Fish appeared at the Woodstock festival, remembers how strained his life was growing up in a communist family.
Joan Sokoloff, a 48-year-old therapist, grew up in Boston in the 1950s. But she might as well have spent her childhood on another planet. While other children were watching ″Father Knows Best,″ Sokoloff, the daughter of communists, was contemplating world change.
″I couldn’t care less if they were investigated as communists or not,″ said McDonald, who grew up in Southern California. ″All I cared about was when I went to a Cub Scout meeting or went to play baseball. … I didn’t feel comfortable anymore.″
Said Sokoloff: ″They (my parents) always used to say that the revolution is just around the corner. So there was always a sense that we were working toward something imminent.″
McDonald and Sokoloff are two of five so-called ″red diaper babies,″ the children of communists, who appear in ″Children of the Left,″ a new documentary by filmmaker Eric Stange. The 60-minute film traces the evolution of children raised as communists who are now adults in a conservative America.
The topic is a hot one. ″Loyalties – a Son’s Memoir,″ a new book by former Washington Post investigative reporter Carl Bernstein, is the story of Bernstein’s childhood in a communist family.
Bernstein writes about the conflicting legacy left by communist parents. His story is woven out of what he says are the torn loyalties and lasting repercussions of a communist childhood.
Stange found that communist parents left a mixed legacy. Some of their children remained communists. One became a Reagan conservative. But almost all remain political and most vote.
Stange, 35, a former reporter and editor for the Boston Herald, had made one previous documentary, ″The Pitch of Grief,″ when he decided to make a film about the children of communists. He knew several as friends and found out about others through them. A network exists among them as adults, he said, formed from childhood when communist families often sent their children to the same progressive summer camps and schools.
But Stange said that even now, many who grew up in communist households were still hesitant going public about the experience.
″The penalties were too great in the ’50s,″ he said.
Stange spoke to 50 former ″red diaper babies,″ interviewed 15 on tape and culled five for his film. The term ″red diaper babies″ has several rumored origins. One is that communist parents in the ’20s were so poor that they used the red flags they received in return for their party dues to diaper their babies.
″I found an incredible mixture of pride and anger,″ he said. ″It was a way of looking at the world that was much more open and diverse and worldly than what most American kids were getting.″
The film, which premiered last month in Cambridge and was co-produced with the Newton Television Foundation, also will be shown at New York’s Public Theater this month and in Los Angeles in June.
The stories that unfold on camera are generally happy ones. Though they participated in one of the most tumultuous periods in American history, Stange’s subjects recall their childhoods with more pleasure than pain.
Eugene Dennis Jr., son of the former general secretary in the American Communist Party, was a longshoreman for many years and is now a historian. In the film, tears come to his eyes as he recalls how ″safe″ he felt, held in the arms of singer-actor-writer Paul Robeson at one point during the worst of the communist witch hunts in the ’50s.
David Horowitz, the son of public schoolteachers in New York, edited the leftist magazine Ramparts in the ’60s. He has since become a best-selling author of biographies with David Collier and a conservative Republican. Richard Healey, whose mother was a high-ranking communist leader in Southern California, edits an anti-nuclear magazine.
The film uses archival footage to trace the relatively swift downfall of the Communist Party in the United States, which had formed in 1919 and enjoyed peak years in the ’30s and early ’40s.
″Children of the Left″ also outlines the turmoil that marked the party’s rapid decline, beginning with the Red Scare initiated in the ’50s by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, chaired by Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1953 and revelations in 1956 that Soviet leader Josef Stalin was a murderous dictator.
Several subjects of the film recall their parents were jailed regularly. Joan Sokoloff remembers the day one of her mother’s arrests made the front page of The Boston Globe, her struggle to overcome her own embarrassment and her eventual pride in her parents’ work.
Healey recalls his childhood years at Communist Party meetings and picnics as ″the happiest moments of my life.″
″Growing up with ideals like that, with a world view of wanting a better life for people, it was still a very rich way of life,″ said Sokoloff.
https://apnews.com/e4fe9d63e8564a2f0c11adfa842f162c
Story 2: The Political Elitist Establishment (PEEs) Hunt Down Deplorables — Socialist Satire — Coming To A Theater Nearest You March 13, 2020 — Friday The 13th –Lying Lunatic Leftist Losers vs. American Winners — Videos
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Deplorables: Trump, Brexit and the Demonised Masses
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1. America’s Ruling Class
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The Most Dangerous Game colourized
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The Hunt (2020 film)
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by Richard Connell
company
The Hunt is an upcoming American action horror–thriller film directed by Craig Zobel and written by Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof, based on the 1924 short story, The Most Dangerous Game, by Richard Connell. It stars Betty Gilpin, Ike Barinholtz, Emma Roberts and Hilary Swank. Jason Blum is serving as a producer under his Blumhouse Productions banner.[2]
The film was originally scheduled for release on September 27, 2019. However, following the Dayton and El Paso mass shootings in early August 2019, Universal Pictures decided to shelve the release of the film.[2] The decision came a day after criticism regarding the film came from United States President Donald Trump.[3] It has since been rescheduled for a theatrical release on March 13, 2020.[4][5]
Premise
Cast
Production
Development
In March 2018, Universal Pictures acquired the rights to the film, which would be directed by Craig Zobel with a script from Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof.[11][12]
The elite hunters’ reference to their quarry as “deplorables” is an allusion to a phrase (“basket of deplorables“) used by Hillary Clinton during the 2016 United States presidential election campaign to refer to supporters of then-presidential candidate, Donald Trump.[3] An early draft of the script depicted working-class conservatives as the film’s heroes.[13]
Though some reports indicated the original title of the film was Red State vs. Blue State (after the U.S. political term red states and blue states), Universal issued a statement denying that the film had ever had that as its working title.[13]
Casting
In March 2019, Emma Roberts, Justin Hartley, Glenn Howerton, Ike Barinholtz and Betty Gilpin were announced as being cast in the film.[14][15][16] In April 2019, Amy Madigan, Jim Klock, Charli Slaughter, Steve Mokate and Dean West joined the cast of the film.[17][18] Hilary Swank was announced as being cast in July.[19]
Filming
Filming began on February 20, 2019, in New Orleans and was due to finish on April 5.[20]
Release
The film was scheduled for release on September 27, 2019. It was, for a time, moved back to October 18 before shifting back to its original release date of September 27.[21]
On August 7, 2019, Universal announced that in the wake of the Dayton and El Paso mass shootings, they would be suspending the film’s promotional campaign.[22][23] Several days later, the film was pulled from the studio’s release schedule.[24][25] An international release is still a possibility.[26]
On February 11, 2020, it was announced the film would receive a theatrical release on March 13, 2020.[4]
Reception
The Hollywood Reporter wrote that there were a pair of test screenings for the film which had “negative reactions”. The second screening was held on August 6, 2019, in Los Angeles, in which “audience members were again expressing discomfort with the politics” of it, an issue Universal had not foreseen (although other studios had initially passed on the script for that very reason). In a statement to Variety, Universal pushed back on a report that test audiences had been uncomfortable with the film’s political slant, and also countered claims that the script had originally had a politically explosive title.[26] “While some outlets have indicated that test screenings for The Hunt resulted in negative audience feedback; in fact, the film was very well-received and tallied one of the highest test scores for an original Blumhouse film,” a Universal spokesperson said. “Additionally, no audience members in attendance at the test screening expressed discomfort with any political discussion in the film. While reports also say The Hunt was formerly titled Red State vs. Blue State, that was never the working title for the film at any point throughout the development process, nor appeared on any status reports under that name.”[26]
Prior to the film’s shelving, the film attracted criticism from some of the media as an alleged portrayal of liberal elitists hunting supporters of Donald Trump.[23][27] Trump issued a tweet on August 9, 2019, calling “Liberal Hollywood” “[r]acist at the highest level” and writing: “The movie coming out is made in order to inflame and cause chaos”, adding “They create their own violence, and then try to blame others”. Although Trump did not specify the name of the film, news vehicles believed that was most likely a reference to The Hunt.[27][28][29]
See also
References …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunt_(2020_film)
The Most Dangerous Game
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“The Most Dangerous Game“, also published as “The Hounds of Zaroff“, is a short story by Richard Connell,[1] first published in Collier’s on January 19, 1924.[2] The story features a big-game hunter from New York City who falls off a yacht and swims to what seems to be an abandoned and isolated island in the Caribbean, where he is hunted by a Russian aristocrat.[3] The story is inspired by the big-game hunting safaris in Africa and South America that were particularly fashionable among wealthy Americans in the 1920s.[4]
The story has been adapted numerous times, most notably as the 1932 RKO Pictures film The Most Dangerous Game, starring Joel McCrea and Leslie Banks,[5] and for a 1943 episode of the CBS Radio series Suspense, starring Orson Welles.[6] It has been called the “most popular short story ever written in English.” Upon its publication, it won the O. Henry Award.[3]
The Most Dangerous Game is one of many works that entered the public domain in the United States in 2020.[7]
Contents
Plot
Sanger Rainsford and his friend, Whitney, are traveling to the Amazon rainforest to hunt the region’s big cat: the jaguar. After a discussion about how they are “the hunters” instead of “the hunted”, Whitney goes to bed and Rainsford hears gunshots. He climbs onto the yacht’s rail and accidentally falls overboard, swimming to Ship-Trap Island, which is notorious for shipwrecks. On the island, he finds a palatial chateau inhabited by two Cossacks: the owner, General Zaroff, and his gigantic deaf-mute servant, Ivan.
Zaroff, another big-game hunter, knows of Rainsford from his published account of hunting snow leopards in Tibet. After inviting him to dinner, General Zaroff tells Rainsford he is bored of hunting because it no longer challenges him; he has moved to Ship-Trap in order to capture shipwrecked sailors. Any captives who can elude Zaroff, Ivan, and a pack of hunting dogs for three days are set free. Zaroff reveals that no one has lasted that long, although a couple of sailors had come close. Zaroff also says that he offers sailors a “choice”; should they decline to be hunted they will be handed over to Ivan, who had once been official knouter for The Great White Czar. Rainsford denounces this as barbarism. Zaroff reacts in a cosmopolitan manner that “life is for the strong“. Realizing he has no way out, Rainsford reluctantly agrees to be hunted.
During his three-hour head start, Rainsford lays an intricate trail in the forest and then climbs a tree. Zaroff finds him easily, but decides to play with him like a cat would a mouse, standing underneath the tree Rainsford is hiding in, smoking a cigarette, and then abruptly departing. After the failed attempt at eluding Zaroff, Rainsford builds a Malay man-catcher, a weighted log attached to a trigger. This contraption injures Zaroff’s shoulder, causing him to return home for the night, but before doing so shouts that if Rainsford is within earshot, his trap was commendable as few could pull it off. The next day Rainsford creates a Burmese tiger pit, which kills one of Zaroff’s hounds. He sacrifices his knife and ties it to a sapling to make a Ugandan knife trap; Ivan is killed when he stumbles into this trap and the knife plunges into his heart. To escape Zaroff and his approaching hounds, Rainsford dives off a cliff into the sea; Zaroff, disappointed at Rainsford’s apparent suicide, returns home. Zaroff smokes a pipe by his fireplace, but two issues keep him from peace of mind: first, the difficulty of replacing Ivan; and second, the uncertainty of whether Rainsford did indeed perish.
Zaroff locks himself in his bedroom and turns on the lights, only to find Rainsford waiting for him; he had swum around the island in order to sneak into the chateau without the dogs finding him. Zaroff congratulates him on winning the “game”, but Rainsford decides to fight him, saying he is still a beast-at-bay and that the original hunt is not over. Accepting the challenge, Zaroff says that the loser will be fed to the dogs, while the winner will sleep in his bed. The story ends with Rainsford enjoying the comfort of Zaroff’s bed.
Analysis
“The Most Dangerous Game” is a popular read within middle and high school curricula due to the strength of the themes within the story. The first and foremost question that the story bears is that of justifiable murder. Rainsford justifies his hunting of animals because he believes that man is superior to animals because animals do not feel. To contradict, General Zaroff believes that men are superior because they are able to reason. Zaroff uses his reasoning to explain why men are the most interesting game to hunt; men can reason, and thus provide a challenge that no animal can contend with. The story simultaneously highlights through the experience of Rainsford, as he is hunted, the fears that animals must experience while being hunted.
Zaroff himself is a contradiction because his exquisite manners are juxtaposed with his heartless brutality in killing men. The idea of a man who is proper in all aspects, but still contains a desire to kill, is a suggestion by Connell that men possess murderous instincts that can only be subdued by the presence of society and law. Zaroff is only able to partake in his “hobby” because he does not live within a civilization.
The ending of the story bears questions about the true nature of Rainsford, who is implied to have killed Zaroff in order to secure his own safety. By killing Zaroff, he thus took part in the “game” that Zaroff wanted him to play.[8]
Adaptations and in popular culture
Theatrical release poster for The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
Film
The first major film adaption was RKO Pictures‘ film released in 1932, The Most Dangerous Game. Joel McCrea stars as Rainsford; Leslie Banks portrays Zaroff. The adaptation by James Ashmore Creelman adds two other principal characters, brother-and-sister pair Eve Trowbridge (Fay Wray) and Martin Trowbridge (Robert Armstrong), who are castaways from a shipwreck. The Most Dangerous Game was co-directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack and Irving Pichel; also with a score by Max Steiner, the film was a favorite project of producer Merian C. Cooper. The production shared several sets with King Kong (1933), a simultaneous RKO project that also involved Schoedsack, Cooper, Wray, Armstrong, Creelman, and Steiner. The Most Dangerous Game was a modest success.[9][10][11]:51
RKO produced a remake titled A Game of Death (1945), directed by Robert Wise, from a screenplay Norman Houston wrote. This film stars John Loder and Audrey Long, with Edgar Barrier as the mad hunter.[11]:206 In order to keep with events of that time, A Game of Death changed Zaroff into “Erich Kreiger”, a Nazi, and was set in the aftermath of the Second World War.[12]
In 1956, United Artists released another film adaptation, Run for the Sun, starring Richard Widmark, Trevor Howard and Jane Greer.[11]:206[13] In 1961, the film Bloodlust! was released, directed by Ralph Brooke and starring Wilton Graff as the Zaroff-type character, and Robert Reed as the leader of a band of youths who become stranded on the island.[14] 1972’s The Woman Hunt starring John Ashley and Sid Haig made for Roger Corman‘s New World Pictures is an unofficial remake of the story.[15]
Also in 1972, The Suckers, tells a sexploitation version of the story, with the hunter using models as his prey.[16] In 1973, The Perverse Countess was released.[17] The 1982 Australian film Turkey Shoot has similar elements.[18]
The 1987 film, Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity, transports the story to an alien world using scantily clad women as the hunted and a mad scientist, Zed as the Zaroff character.[17][19]
John Woo‘s first Hollywood directorial effort, the Jean-Claude Van Damme thriller Hard Target (1993), was loosely based on the same story. The locale was shifted to 1990s New Orleans, with homeless Vietnam war veterans voluntarily serving (in return for potential payment from a shady businessman) as human prey. It was followed by Hard Target 2, a direct-to-video sequel released in 2016.
In Surviving the Game (1994), a homeless man is hired as a survival guide for a group of wealthy businessmen on a hunting trip in the mountains. He is unaware that they are killers who hunt humans for sport, and that he is their new prey. Directed by Ernest R. Dickerson, the film stars Rutger Hauer, Ice-T, and Charles S. Dutton.
The Pest (1997) is a comedic parody of the story, with German huntsman Gustav Shank accidentally bringing Puerto Rican teenage hustler Pestario “Pest” Vargas to his island instead of the skilled man he had intended to hunt, only to decide to hunt the Pest anyway due to his sheer obnoxiousness. Shank’s ambition is to have a head of a warrior of every ethnicity in his Trophy Room. He also rigs the “game” by having his prey unknowingly drink a slow-acting poison before the hunt, making sure that they die even if they escape him.
In The Eliminator (2004), seven captured people are hunted at night for sport on an island as a betting game for the wealthy.
The 2019-produced film The Hunt follows a similar premise. It will release in March 13, 2020 and was originally going to be released in September 27, 2019. It was originally cancelled due to Daytona and El Paso mass shootings in early August 2019.
Radio
“The Most Dangerous Game” was presented four times as a radio play.
Television
In Have Gun Will Travel episode “The Black Bull” Paladin is forced to play the part of a black bull against an insane matador (Ned Romero)
In The Wild Wild West episode, 1/4 “The Night of Sudden Death”, Jim West and a circus girl are trapped inside an Africa Reserve wild animal Park in Colorado and are hunted by an insane big-game hunter Warren (Robert Loggia).
In the Get Smart episode, “Island of the Darned”, Agents 86 and 99 are trapped on an island with a mad KAOS killer, Hans Hunter (Harold Gould).
This trope was used in the season 3 (1968), episode 22 of I Spy, “The Name of the Game”.
In the Gilligan’s Island episode “The Hunter”, big-game hunter Jonathan Kincaid (Rory Calhoun) turned his sights on Gilligan when he realized there were no wild animals on the island.
In season 1, episode 18 of Star Trek: The Original Series, “The Squire of Gothos“, a childlike, seemingly all-powerful being named Trelane kidnaps and hunts Captain Kirk.
In the series finale of Bonanza, entitled “The Hunter”, a deranged killer, Corporal Bill Tanner (Tom Skerritt), who was formerly a tracker for the United States Army, hunts Little Joe (Michael Landon).
In the 1974 TV movie “Savages” after a young man accidentally witnesses a murder, he must survive both the desert and being hunted by the killer (Andy Griffith).[23]
In the 1977 pilot episode of Fantasy Island, a big-game hunter comes to the island to be hunted by a man, an interesting twist on the usual version in which the hunted participates against his will.
The Canadian series Relic Hunter had an episode called “Run Sydney Run” that was very closely based on “The Most Dangerous Game”, with Peter Stebbings acting as General Tsarlov.[citation needed]
The Simpsons Halloween special “Treehouse of Horror XVI” contained a segment titled “Survival of the Fattest” which parodied the story closely. In this segment Mr. Burns invited much of the cast to his hunting lodge on a private island, only to reveal that he intended to hunt them all for sport. Another episode makes a reference to “The Most Dangerous Game” when Rainier Wolfcastle says that he bought a YMCA to demolish it and install a hunting ground dedicated to “hunt the most dangerous animal of all… Man”.
In an episode of the animated sitcom American Dad!, the Smith family and a young woman become stranded on an island after Francine jumps off a cruise. Stan goes up to the mansion on this island to ask for help, but the inhabitants say that they are going to hunt the family. The Smiths and the young woman become trapped in a cave, where the young woman dies and they eat her to survive. The hunters then break into the cave and shoot the family. Stan sits up, realizing it is paint. At a party later, the hunters reveal that nobody really dies on The Most Dangerous Game Island.
The Incredible Hulk episode “The Snare” has Banner trapped on a private island owned by an insane hunter who not only craves the challenge of hunting humans, but considers the discovery of Banner’s powerful Hulk form as a sign of a particularly appealing quarry.
In Season 2, Episode 21 of Criminal Minds, “Open Season”, two brothers capture people stranded in a remote region of the wilderness outside Challis, Idaho, release them into the hills, and hunt them with compound bows for sport, referring the men as “bucks” and the women as “does”.
In Season 13, Episode 15 of Law and Order: SVU, “Hunting Ground”, a serial rapist and killer lures female escorts after their date to a remote area where he sets them free while he hunts them down to recapture them again.
In the Disney animated series The Mighty Ducks “The Most Dangerous Duck Hunt” episode, the heroes are trapped on an island and hunted.
In a “Dial M for Monkey” segment of the animated series Dexter’s Laboratory, the hero Monkey is trapped by an alien big-game hunter named “Huntor”, who also makes a cameo among a league of Hunters of “Sumarai Jack” in the Cartoon Network cartoon series Samurai Jack.
In Season 1, Episode 15 of Supernatural, “The Benders”, a family has been behind disappearances in a city. The family snatches victims to hunt and kill. Sam and a police officer are taken, but Dean finds them and helps them subdue the family before it can cause them any harm.
In Season 7, Episode 12 of Futurama, “31st Century Fox“, Bender becomes the target of a fox hunting club and is referred to as ‘the most dangerous game.’
In Season 2 Episode 6 of The Blacklist, Elizabeth Keen and her FBI task force encounter a family in Idaho who trained the mother’s youngest son to hunt and kill humans kidnapped by the eldest son.
The Outer Limits 1998 episode “The Hunt” is a story in which the hunting of animals has been banned by environmentalists, and black market hunting of obsolete androids takes its place.
In the Season 3, Episode 5 episode of Archer, “El Contador”, Lana and Archer are hunted by a drug lord.
In Season 3, Episode 22 episode of Riverdale, “Chapter Fifty-Seven: Survive the Night”
In Season 4, Episode 2 of Game of Thrones, there is a scene in which Ramsay Bolton hunts a woman (one of his former lovers). She is cornered by the hunting party and eaten alive by Ramsay’s dogs. It is implied that this was not the only time Ramsay indulged in human hunting “for sport.”
In Season 3, Episodes 21 and 22 of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Ahsoka Tano and Chewbacca are hunted on an island.
An episode of the animated series Johnny Bravo entitled “Hunted!” is an obvious parody of the story. The titular Johnny is forced to go through the same ordeal, but his stupidity and foolishness greatly frustrates the hunter, who eventually allows him to leave.
Season 6 episode 11 of Xena: Warrior Princess, “Dangerous Prey”, is also inspired by The Most Dangerous Game. In this episode, Prince Morloch is a hunter who has grown bored of hunting animals, saying he’s “killed one of every creature that walks this earth”. He started hunting Amazons which grabbed the attention of Xena.
In season 3 of Wrecked, the plane crash survivors land on another island, where four wealthy men make them hunt each other, then hunting the survivor.
Other adaptations
The story has also served as an inspiration for books and films like Seventh Victim, Battle Royale, Predator, Predators,The Running Man and The Hunger Games. In the film Westworld, humans are allowed to hunt and kill androids until one, played by Yul Brynner, starts hunting them.
In the anime series Psycho-Pass, episodes 10 and 11 feature a wealthy cyborg tycoon who dons gentleman’s hunting gear and hunts people in an underground maze with his robotic hounds.
In the video game Hitman: Contracts, the mission “Beldingford Manor” takes inspiration from this story.
In the video game Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc, the character Razoff takes inspiration from General Zaroff, even sharing similar names.
In the video game The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the quest “Caught in the Hunt” is inspired by this story.
In the comic-book story “The Second Most Dangerous Game” (serialized in Martian Comics #8–10), Martians possess humans to continue their tradition of hunting other humans, after the practice has been outlawed. Richard Connell is a character.
In the comic book issue Daredevil #4 Daredevil fights a mad manhunter on a remote island.
The well-known Spider-Man villain, Kraven the Hunter, is based on the character of General Zaroff.
In Clive Cussler’s book DRAGON Dirk Pitt is chased by “Kamatori” on Soseki Island.
In the online game Poptropica, the five-part Survival Island features the player in a situation much like the one in the original story. At the end of the third episode, the player is rescued by a hunter known as Myron van Buren. The fourth episode revolves around the player in van Buren’s cabin, finding out that van Buren plans to hunt them. In the fifth episode, the player teams up with another victim of van Buren to defeat him by trapping him in a waterwheel.
In the video game Psychonauts, Vernon, one of the campers, references to hunting the most dangerous game while playing hide and seek.
In 2006, The Onion parodied the premise, positing that humans would actually make rather pitiful prey.[24]
In Don Pendleton’s The Executioner series, book #441, called Murder Island has a similar plot to the book. The protagonist, Mack “The Executioner” Bolan (a vigilante/government agent) encounters a rich businessman hunter on an island while on a mission and ends up in a similar position as the Rainsford character, while the rich hunter takes a similar role as Zaroff.
In a song called “Fly on the Wall” by Joey Pecoraro, the opening interaction between Rainsford and General Zaroff is used as a prelude to the actual song.
In 1987, American Metal band Laaz Rockit retold the story in their song “Most Dangerous Game” on their album Know Your Enemy. [25]
The Rooster Teeth series “Let’s Play Minecraft” featured an adaptation of the story into a game played by the show’s cast members in the video game Minecraft, where one player was given a map and hunted by the other five in and around the in-game world created by the Achievement Hunter cast members.
A translated version was published in Malayalam as an audio book by Kathacafe in 2017.[26]
In the video game West of Loathing a hunter’s ghost challenges the player to play “the most dangerous game”. After the player character shows disgust at hunting people the ghost says that wasn’t what he meant.
Real-life parallels
Robert Hansen, a serial killer who was active in the early 1980s, would kidnap women and release them in Alaska’s Knik River Valley. He would then hunt them, armed with a knife and a Ruger Mini-14 rifle.[27][28] A 2003 American crime drama film The Frozen Ground starring John Cusack and Nicolas Cage is based on this case.[29] Hanson was arrested and imprisoned for life where he died of an undisclosed illness.
In 1976, Hayes Noel, Bob Gurnsey, and Charles Gaines discussed Gaines’s recent trip to Africa and his experiences hunting African buffalo. Inspired in part by “The Most Dangerous Game”, they created paintball in 1981—a game where they would stalk and hunt each other—to recreate the same adrenaline rush from hunting animals.[30]
There is a reference to “The Most Dangerous Game” in letters the Zodiac Killer wrote to San Francisco Bay Area newspapers in his three-part cipher: “Man is the most dangerous animal of all to kill”.[31] The Most Dangerous Game film is also mentioned a number of times in the context of the Zodiac Killer in the 2007 film, Zodiac.[32]
Citations …
General sources
External links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Most_Dangerous_Game
Story 3: U.S. Houshold Debt Rising To Over $14,000,000,000 While Federal Reserve Continues To Expand Liquidity By Over $1,000,000,000 in Repo Market — Videos
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U.S. Household Debt Exceeds $14 Trillion for the First Time
(Bloomberg) — Americans increased their borrowing for the 22nd straight quarter as more households took out loans to buy homes or refinance existing mortgages, according to a report released today from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Total U.S. household debt rose by $601 billion in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, or 1.4%, surpassing $14 trillion for the first time, the New York Fed’s quarterly household credit and debt report showed. That’s $1.5 trillion above the previous peak in the third quarter of 2008. Overall household debt is now 26.8% above the second-quarter 2013 trough.
Mortgage borrowing rose by $120 billion to $9.56 trillion. The rate for a 30-year mortgage has fallen by about 100 basis points over the past year, adding to home purchasers’ buying power. For example, a $500,000, 30-year loan costs about $300 less per month.
“Mortgage originations, including refinances, increased significantly in the final quarter of 2019,” Wilbert Van Der Klaauw, vice president at the New York Fed, said in a statement.
Mortgage loans for young adults age 18 to 29 rose to a the highest level since the third quarter of 2007. Originations for 30-year-olds rose to $210.1 billion last quarter — the highest level since the end of 2005.
Total debt for people ages 18 to 29 rose to a record $1.04 trillion.
Student debt increased to $1.51 trillion from $1.46 trillion at the end of 2018. More than $100 billion in student debt is held by those age 60 and over. Auto loans rose to $1.33 trillion, while credit card debt rose to a record $930 billion.
Auto debt, which has risen for 35 consecutive quarters, increased $16 billion from the previous quarter. Almost 5% of auto loans are 90 days of more delinquent. This is the highest percentage since the third quarter of 2011.
Credit card delinquencies rose to 8.36% an 18-month high.
Among student debt, one in nine borrowers were 90+ days delinquent or in default in 2019, and this figure may be understated. About half of student loans are currently in deferment, in grace periods or in forbearance and therefore temporarily not in the repayment cycle. Once these loans enter that cycle, delinquency rates are projected to be roughly twice as high, according to the Fed report.
To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Tanzi in Washington at atanzi@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Sarah McGregor at smcgregor5@bloomberg.net, Anita Sharpe
For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com
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