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A Washington-based artist and filmmaker briefly illuminated President Donald Trump's Washington hotel with projected messages, including "pay Trump bribes here" and "emoluments welcome." (May 16)
The plot, she thickens.Joel wrote: ↑May 17th, 2017, 7:47 pm WikiLeaks cable Robert Mueller delivering highly enriched stolen Uranium to Russia in 2009 https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09STATE85588_a.html
In a private meeting, President Trump allegedly urged Comey to imprison journalists
President Trump asked former FBI Director Jim Comey to lock up journalists for publishing classified information during a February Oval Office meeting, according to a memo written by Comey shortly after the meeting summarized Tuesday by The New York Times.
Trump urged Comey to imprison journalists at the beginning of an exchange during which he also asked the former FBI chief to back off an investigation into then-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, according to the story:
This isn't the first time President Trump has threatened to curtail press access or punish leakers. On March 20, he tweeted, "must find leaker now!" in response to successive stories about the ongoing FBI investigation into possible collusion between Trump's associates and Russian officials.Mr. Comey had been in the Oval Office that day with other senior national security officials for a terrorism threat briefing. When the meeting ended, Mr. Trump told those present — including Mr. Pence and Attorney General Jeff Sessions — to leave the room except for Mr. Comey.
Alone in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump began the discussion by condemning leaks to the news media, saying that Mr. Comey should consider putting reporters in prison for publishing classified information, according to one of Mr. Comey’s associates.
This latest revelation is "a disturbing yet unsurprising culmination of Trump's war on the press," Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in an email.
"Reporting on classified information is a bedrock right of journalists, and so I guess it's only natural, given his past statements, that Trump wants to take that away," he said. "Any prosecution of reporters for publishing true information about our government would strike at the very heart of press freedom."
The comments by President Trump "cross a dangerous line," Bruce Brown, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, said in a statement.
"But no president gets to jail journalists," he continued. "Reporters are protected by judges and juries, by a congress that relies on them to stay informed, and by a Justice Department that for decades has honored the role of a free press by spurning prosecutions of journalists for publishing leaks of classified information."
"Comments such as these, emerging in the way they did, only remind us that every day public servants are reaching out to reporters to ensure the public is aware of the risks today to rule of law in this country," he said. "The president’s remarks should not intimidate the press but inspire it."
Perhaps the most troubling thing about the exchange is that it represents an "unprecedented" departure from the practices of previous presidential administrations with regard to leak investigations, said Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. In the Obama administration, reporters were ensnared and subpoenaed in investigations that targeted leakers, not journalists. This is more direct, Simon said.
And it's in line with an analysis conducted by CPJ that found prosecution of journalists in leak investigations is the No. 1 threat to press freedom posed by the Trump administration, Simon said.
"We did our own internal analysis of what we perceived as the greatest potential threats of the Trump administration," he said. "This was at the top."
Report: Russian bank whose CEO met secretly with Jared Kushner helped finance Trump's Toronto hotel
A Russian state-owned bank under US sanctions, whose CEO met with President Donald Trump's son-in-law in December, helped financed the construction of the president's 65-story Trump International Hotel and Tower in Toronto, according to a new report.
The bank, Vnesheconombank, or VEB, bought $850 million of stock in a Ukrainian steelmaker from the billionaire Russian-Canadian developer Alexander Shnaider, who was constructing the hotel at the time, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
Shnaider initially purchased the stock via his company, Midland Resources Holding, for about $70 million after the collapse of the Soviet Union, according to The Journal.
The money from the sale of that stock to VEB — which The Journal said went through while Russian President Vladimir Putin was chairman of VEB's supervisory board — was used to help finance the construction of the Toronto hotel "at a key moment for the project."
From the Journal:
"After Mr. Shnaider and his partner sold their stake in the steelmaker, Mr. Shnaider injected more money into the Trump Toronto project, which was financially troubled. Mr. Shnaider's lawyer, Symon Zucker, said in an April interview that about $15 million from the asset sale went into the Trump Toronto project. A day later, he wrote in an email: 'I am not able to confirm that any funds' from the deal 'went into the Toronto project.'"
Zucker, Shnaider's lawyer, told The Journal that Midland Resources "has never had any relationship with VEB" and "does not dictate where their purchasers borrow funds." He told Business Insider that the Journal " got their facts all wrong."
"Trump was never a partner," Zucker said. "He never had an equity interest. We licensed his name and there was a contract for him to manage the hotel."
The Trump Organization has distanced itself from the Toronto project, which faced financial difficulties last year. The organization "merely licensed its brand and manages the hotel and residences," it told The Journal in a statement.
The project was initially a joint venture between Trump and Shnaider, who approached Trump in 2004 asking to license the Trump name for the 65-story tower. Trump said at the time that he would "manage the hotel's operations," according to The Journal, while Shnaider and his business partner, Val Levitan, would focus on the development.
Additionally, Zucker claimed, "we had nothing to do with VEB... the infusion of cash [into the hotel] didn't come from the Russians -- Alex [Shnaider] borrowed $350 million from an Austrian bank and invested some of his own" into the project.
Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and a top White House adviser, met with the Vnesheconombank CEO Sergey Gorkov in December, The New York Times reported in late March. Putin appointed Gorkov in January 2016 as part of a restructuring of the bank's management team, according to Bloomberg.
At the time, Kushner was trying to find investors for an office building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
Hope Hicks, a White House spokeswoman, told The Times that Gorkov and Kushner didn't discuss the Kushner Tower project, and a White House official said in a statement that Kushner met with Gorkov as part of his role as "the official primary point of contact with foreign governments and officials."
But the meeting was reportedly orchestrated by Russia's ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, who also met with Kushner in December, and it caught the eye of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has invited Kushner to testify about his meetings with Gorkov and Kislyak. The committee is investigating Russia's interference in the 2016 election and whether any members of Trump's campaign colluded with Russian officials.
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper appeared to signal during a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month that the intelligence community was scrutinizing Trump's business ties to Russia.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Judiciary subcommittee on crime and terror, asked Clapper if he ever found "a situation where a Trump business interest in Russia" gave him "concern."
"Not in the course of the preparation of the intelligence community's assessment," Clapper said.
Graham pressed Clapper on whether he had ever come across such a situation, to which Clapper replied, "I can't comment on that because that impacts an investigation."
As Trump praised and defended Putin along the campaign trail, many questioned whether the real-estate mogul had any financial incentives — including business ties or outstanding debt — to seek better relations with Moscow.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Thanks for posting, Elizabeth. Putin is right on the money regarding the irrationality directed toward Trump, and what the likely end-result will be.Elizabeth wrote: ↑May 18th, 2017, 4:42 pm " Russian President Vladimir Putin said : “political schizophrenia” has seized Washington, impeding Trump’s ability to function as president.“It’s hard to imagine what else can these people who generate such nonsense and rubbish can dream up next,” said Putin.“What surprises me is that they are shaking up the domestic political situation using anti-Russian slogans,” he said. “Either they don’t understand the damage they’re doing to their own country, in which case they are simply stupid, or they understand everything, in which case they are dangerous and corrupt.”
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