- Intelligence Contractors Make Second Attempt In One Week To Provoke Tensions With North Korea
Authored by William Craddick via Disobedient Media,
It’s the second, but no less ludicrous, attempt in one week to sway the opinion of the public and President Donald Trump against the concept of denuclearization and peaceful dialogue with North Korea.
A March 8, 2019 report from National Public Radio (NPR) follows another by NBC News with sensational and misleading claims that satellite imagery released by private corporations with contractual ties to government defense and intelligence agencies show imminent preparations by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to engage in missile testing or the launch of a satellite from their facilities in Sanumdong, North Korea. An examination of the photos provided shows absolutely no indication of such activity.
I. Satellite Footage Of Sanumdong Facility Shows No Sign Of Imminent Launch
Images provided to NPR by private contractor DigitalGlobe consist of two low resolution images, one of a building in the Sanumdong complex and the other of a train sitting along a rail line. In neither photo is there any discernible amount of unusual activity.
Credit: Image ©2019 DigitalGlobe, Inc. Graphic: Alyson Hurt/NPR The first image of a “production hall” bears a striking resemblance to a similar photo run by the Washington Post in July 2018 where unnamed intelligence officials claimed that North Korea was building one or possibly two liquid fueled ICBMs which appear to have never materialized or been used in any launch. The claims came one month after President Trump met with Chairman Kim Jong Un in Singapore for a historic summit between the United States and the DPRK.
NPR’s claims that the imagery shows “vehicle activity” occurring around the facility. Yet close inspection shows that the “activity” consists of a few inert vehicles, which appear to be a white pickup and white dump truck or flatbed parked in a permanent position next to piles of metal. The scene does not appear to be different from any number of sleepy yards of businesses that can be examined by members of the public on Google Maps.
Credit: Image ©2019 DigitalGlobe, Inc. Graphic: Koko Nakajima/NPR The second image, according to NPR, shows rail cars sitting “in a nearby rail yard, where two cranes are also erected.” The photo simply shows a train car sitting inert with empty flatbed cars and hopper cars that are either filled with coal or empty. A second rail line similarly holds a number of hoppers and flatbed cars. Hopper cars in particular are totally unsuitable for the transportation of military technology such as missiles.
The tracks in the lower left corner are covered in snow, meaning that the train sat for many months through the winter or was backed into its position. Considering that US and international sanctions have caused an extreme scarcity of fuel in the DPRK it is likely that the trains have not moved for quite some time, unless their diesel engines were converted to burn coal or wood.
In short, there is absolutely no indication that several low resolution photos of a facility in North Korea have any activity in them outside of a few rusting vehicles that have sat without moving for some time.
II. NPR’s Sources Of Satellite Imagery Are Contractors For The CIA And Pentagon
The report by NPR lists two sources of satellite imagery – DigitalGlobe, Inc. and Planet Labs, Inc. As Disobedient Media has previously reported, DigitalGlobe is an American vendor of satellite imagery founded by a scientist who worked on the US military’s Star Wars ICBM defense program under President Ronald Reagan. DigitalGlobe began its existence in Oakland, CA and was seeded with money from Silicon Valley sources and corporations in North America, Europe and Japan. Headquartered in Westminster CO, DigitalGlobe works extensively with defense and intelligence programs. In 2016, it was revealed that DigitalGlobe was working with CIA chipmaker NVIDIA and Amazon Web Services to create an AI-run satellite surveillance network known as Spacenet.
Planet Labs is a private satellite imaging corporation based in San Francisco, CA that allows customers with the money to pay an opportunity to gain access to next generation surveillance capabilities. In February 2016, Federal technology news source Nextgov noted a statement from former CIA Information Operations Center director and senior cyber adviser Sue Gordon that Planet Labs, DigitalGlobe and Google subsidiary Skybox Imaging were all working with the Pentagon’s National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) to provide location intelligence. Planet Labs’ own website also lists press releases detailing past contracts for subscription access to high resolution imagery with the NGA.
* * *
The pervasive involvement of intelligence agencies and defense contractors in attempts to undermine negotiations with North Korea does not create confidence in the already shaky claims made by NPR regarding alleged preparations by the DPRK to participate in a missile launch.
These contentions are not supported in substance by any tangible facts. As claims and pressure continue to build on President Donald Trump to abandon the peace process, there are multiple factions of the United States government who are running a real risk of behaving in manners which could be interpreted as open sedition or refusal to carry out the stated goals and policies of the President.
- Self-Proclaimed "Nerd" Wins $10,000 After Discovering Hidden Contest In Insurance Contract
Self-proclaimed nerd Donelan Andrews of Thomaston, Georgia won $10,000 after discovering a hidden contest in the often-ignored fine print of a travel insurance contract bought from Tin Leg, a subsidiary of Florida-based Squaremouth.
“If you’ve read this far, then you are one of the very few Tin Leg customers to review all of their policy documentation,” the fine print read. “We estimate that less than 1 percent of travelers that purchase a travel insurance policy actually read all of their policy information — and we’re working to change that.”
To Andrews – the first person to win the hidden contest out of 73 policies sent out a day earlier, reading the fine print comes naturally.
“I always read all the fine print,” according to the Washington Post, which noted that her college major was consumer economics. “I know I sound like a nerd, but I learned to read contracts so you don’t get taken advantage of.”
According to Andrews, her friends and family aren’t surprised.
“Most of the comments from people who know me have been, ‘that doesn’t surprise me at all, you’re that kind of person,” she said. “Particularly in my family, I’m the one who gets things straight.”
The contest reminded the 59-year-old Andrews of an old trick she’s used on her high school students.
She thought back to the days when she used to write high school tests, and she’d sneak in a bonus for students who carefully read the instructions. For example, the fourth sentence of test instructions would say something like: Circle the number 10 three times for 10 extra points. –Washington Post
“About a third of the class would read it and the rest would get mad,” she said. “The lesson they learned is they need to read the directions.”
The day after Andrews discovered the contest on Feb. 12 and emailed Squaremouth, a company representative contacted An and said she’d won $10,000.
“It was my lucky day”
In addition to the $10,000 Andrews won, Squaremouth donated an additional $20,000; $5,000 to each of the Georgia schools she works for, and $10,000 to children’s literacy charity “Reading Is Fundamental.”
- Mueller's Manafort Scam: 4 Years In The Slammer For Helping Ukraine Against Russia!
Authored by Andrew McCarthy via The National Review,
Paul Manafort Was an Agent of Ukraine, Not Russia
He is a scoundrel, but he was never a Kremlin operative.
Paul Manafort, the clandestine agent of Russia at the heart of the Trump campaign’s “collusion” scand – oh, wait.
Have you ever noticed what Paul Manafort’s major crime was? After two years of investigation, after the predawn raid in which his wife was held at gunpoint, after months of solitary confinement that have left him a shell of his former self, have you noticed what drew the militant attention of the Obama Justice Department, the FBI, and, ultimately, a special counsel who made him the centerpiece of Russia-gate?
According to the indictment Robert Mueller filed against him, Manafort was an unregistered “agent of the Government of Ukraine.” He also functioned as an agent of Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s president from 2010 to 2014, and of two political parties, the Party of Regions and its successor, the Opposition Bloc.
Manafort was not an unregistered agent of Russia. Mueller never alleged that Manafort was a clandestine operative of the Kremlin. He worked for Ukraine, not Putin. Indeed, for much of his time in Ukraine, he pushed his clients against Putin’s interests.
Mueller’s prosecutors looked on glumly Thursday as Manafort was sentenced to a mere 47 months’ imprisonment by Judge T. S. Ellis III of the federal court in Alexandria, Va. After rescinding the cooperation agreement they had extended Manafort following his convictions at trial, Mueller’s team had pressed for a sentence of up to 24 years for the 70-year-old former Trump campaign chairman. The judge demurred, pointedly observing that Manafort was “not before this court for anything having to do with collusion with the Russian government to influence [the 2016] election.”
The prosecutors won’t be chagrined long, of course. Against Manafort, one case with a potential century of jail time was not enough. There’s a case in Washington, too. There, Manafort will be sentenced next week, by a different judge who will surely impose a sentence more to the special counsel’s liking. The knowledge of that, more than anything else, explains Judge Ellis’s comparative wrist-slap, which ignored sentencing guidelines that called for a severe prison term.
Those guidelines were driven by prodigious financial fraud, not espionage. No one has even alleged espionage — even though the investigation was aggressive, even though the two indictments charge numerous felonies, and even though Mueller has had as his star informant witness Manafort’s longtime sidekick, Richard Gates, a fellow fraudster who was deeply involved in his partner’s work for foreign governments.
Understand:
Paul Manafort would never have been prosecuted if he had not joined Donald Trump’s campaign. He would not have been prosecuted if Hillary Clinton had won the 2016 election and spared Democrats the need to conjure up a reason to explain their defeat – something other than nominating a lousy candidate who stopped campaigning too early.
Manafort’s Ukrainian work was not a secret. By the time of the 2016 campaign, he’d been at it for over a dozen years. He wasn’t alone. Not even close. An array of American political consultants flocked to post-Soviet Ukraine because that’s where the money was. Manafort worked for the Party of Regions, led by Yanukovych. The Obama consultants worked for Yanukovych’s rival, Yulia Tymoshenko — the populist-socialist who sometimes colluded with Putin and other times posed as his opponent. The Clinton consultants lined up with Viktor Yuschenko, Putin’s generally pro-Western bête noire, who was nearly assassinated by Kremlin operatives and who navigated between east and west.
What you may already notice is that Ukraine is complicated. That collusion narrative you’ve been sold since November 8, 2016? It’s a caricature.
The people peddling it know that Americans are clueless about the intricacies of politics in a former Soviet satellite and the grubby bipartisan cesspool of international political consultancy. You are thus to believe that the Party of Regions was nothing but a cat’s paw of Moscow; that Manafort went to work for Yanukovych, the party’s Putin puppet; and that Manafort’s entrée into the Trump campaign was a Kremlin coup, a Russian plot to control of the White House.
Sure. But then . . . where’s the collusion charge? If that’s what happened, where is the special counsel’s big indictment of a Trump–Russia conspiracy, with Manafort at its core?
There is no such case because the collusion narrative distorts reality.
Manafort is not a good guy. He did business and made lots of money with Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs who, largely through their organized-crime connections, made their fortunes in the post-Soviet gangster-capitalism era, when the spoils of an empire were up for grabs.
Manafort got himself deeply in hock with some of these tycoons. He may owe over $25 million to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian aluminum magnate. Deripaska, you’ve repeatedly been told, is Putin’s oligarch. That may be true — they are close enough for Putin to have intervened on his behalf when the U.S. government imposed travel restrictions. But former senator Bob Dole intervened on Deripaska’s behalf, too. So did the FBI, when they thought Deripaska could help them rescue an agent detained in Iran. So did Christopher Steele, the former British spy of Steele-dossier infamy.
Having business with Deripaska did not make Manafort a Russian spy. No more than taking $500,000 from a Kremlin-tied bank made Bill Clinton a Russian spy. For a quarter century, the United States government encouraged commerce with Russia, notwithstanding that it is anti-American and run like a Mafia family. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton worked with the Putin regime to develop Moscow’s version of Silicon Valley. Business with Russia was like what the Clintons used to tell us about lies about sex: Everybody does it.
Manafort’s business eventually soured. There is good reason to believe that, once he was installed as chairman of the Trump campaign — when Trump looked like a sure GOP-nomination winner and general-election loser — Manafort tried to monetize his position of influence. He hoped to make himself “whole,” as he put it, by demonstrating that he was once again a political force to be reckoned with — offering Deripaska briefings on the campaign, offering his Ukrainian oligarch benefactors polling data showing that Trump had a real chance to win.
Manafort likes the high life. Running with this crowd helped him live it, and helped him hide most of his money overseas, in accounts he could stealthily access without sharing his millions with the taxman.
But all that said, Manafort was not a Russian agent. Even Robert Mueller, who went after him hammer and tongs, never accused him of that.
When his Ukrainian oligarch sponsors asked him to take Yanukovych on as a client, Manafort was reluctant. Yanukovych was essentially a thug who grew up in the Soviet system. The corruption of the 2004 presidential election, which Yanukovych’s Kremlin-backed supporters tried to steal, ignited Kiev’s Orange Revolution. Manafort, a cold-blooded Republican operative who had cut his teeth fighting off the Reagan revolution in the 1976 Ford campaign, calculated that Yanukovych was damaged goods.
But in the shadowy world of international political consultancy, money talks and scruple walks. Manafort’s oligarch patrons made the Regions reconstruction project worth his while. He remade Yanukovych from the ground up: Learn English, warm to Europe, embrace integration in the European Union, endorse competitive democracy, be the candidate of both EU-leaning Kiev and Russia-leaning Donbas.
This was not a Putin agenda. It was an agenda for Ukraine, a country with a split personality that needs cordial relations with the neighborhood bully to the east as it fitfully lurches westward. Regions was a pro-Russia party, but that is not the same thing as being Russia. What the oligarchs want is autonomy so they can run their profitable fiefdoms independent of Kiev. They leverage Moscow against the EU . . . except when they talk up EU integration to ensure that they are not swallowed up by Moscow. What the oligarchs mainly are is corrupt, which suited Manafort fine.
The unsavory business was successful for a time. Regions returned to power. Yanukovych finally won the presidency and immediately announced that “integration with the EU remains our strategic aim.” It was a triumph for Manafort, but a short-lived one. While Yanukovych rhapsodized about rising to Western standards, he ran his administration in the Eastern authoritarian style, enriching his allies and imprisoning his rivals.
The latter included Tymoshenko, who was prosecuted over a gas deal she had entered when she was prime minister — with Putin. Russia bitterly criticized her prosecution, and when she was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment, the Kremlin blasted Yanukovych’s government for pursuing her “exclusively for political motives.” Manafort, meanwhile, continued to airbrush Yanukovych’s image in the West, scheming with lobbyists and a law firm to help him defend the controversial Tymoshenko trial — a scheme abetted by lawyer Alex van der Zwaan, who eventually pled guilty to making false statements to Mueller’s investigators.
Yanukovych’s moment of truth came in late 2013. He was poised to sign the Association Agreement with the EU, a framework for integration. Putin furiously turned up the heat: blocking Ukrainian imports, drastically reducing Ukrainian exports, bleeding billions of trade dollars from Kiev’s economy, threatening to cut off all gas supplies and drive Ukraine into default. Manafort pleaded with his client to stick with the EU. Yanukovych caved, however, declining to enter the Association Agreement and making an alternative pact with Putin to assure gas supplies and financial aid.
It was over this decision that the Euromaidan protests erupted. Yanukovych fled the country in early 2014, given sanctuary in Moscow. Subsequently, Regions renounced Yanukovych, blaming him for the outbreak of violence and for looting the treasury. The party disbanded, with many of its members reemerging as the Opposition Bloc, the party to which Manafort gravitated — along with his partner, Konstantin Kilimnik, and his lobbyist associate, W. Samuel Patten. (Like Manafort, Patten has pled guilty to working as an unregistered agent of Ukraine; Kilimnik, who is in Russia, was indicted by Mueller for helping Manafort tamper with witnesses.)
Paul Manafort is a scoundrel. He was willing to do most anything for money – even offering to burnish Putin’s image as he burnished Yanukovych’s. But Manafort was never a Kremlin operative working against his own country, except in the fever dreams of the Clinton campaign’s Steele dossier. And his crimes notwithstanding, he’d be a free man today if Mrs. Clinton had won. Instead, he’ll be sentenced yet again next week. And this time, he’ll get slammed.
- NYC's Chrysler Building To Sell At Massive Discount
Signa Holding, Austria’s largest privately owned real estate company, has reached an agreement to purchase the iconic Chrysler Building in New York City in partnership with property firm RFR Holding for about $150 million, according to Reuters.
The price is at a steep discount compared to the $800 million the Abu Dhabi Investment Council paid for a 90% stake in the building right before the 2008 financial crisis. Shortly after the investment arm of the Government of Abu Dhabi bought the property, commercial real estate prices crashed.
Sources told Reuters that the deal includes both the office building and the pyramid-topped Trylons on the land between the tower and 666 Third Avenue.
The Art Deco–style skyscraper, was completed in 1930 on the East Side of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is a recognizable symbol of Manhattan’s skyline, was for a short time in the early 1930s the tallest building in the world, only to be surpassed by the Empire State Building.
The most significant factor weighing on the price is out of control expenses tied to the building’s ground lease. The land under the tower is owned by the Cooper Union school, which raised the rent to $32.5 million last year from $7.75 million in 2017.
“The ground lease is a glaringly obvious negative,” Adelaide Polsinelli, a broker at New York City-based Compass, told Bloomberg. “The other negatives are that the space is not new and it is landmarked, therefore it’s twice as hard to get anything done.”
Tishman Speyer Properties and the Travelers Insurance Group bought the Chrysler Building in 1998 for about $230 million. In 2001, a 75% stake in the building was sold, for $300 million to TMW, the German arm of an Atlanta-based investment fund. Abu Dhabi bought the German fund’s share as well as part of Tishman’s in June 2008. Reuters said Signa and RFR were extremely close to a deal to purchase the tower.
Signa has an extensive portfolio of landmark buildings in prime locations. Its holdings include KaDeWe and the Upper West Tower in Berlin, Goldenes Quarter with the Park Hyatt Hotel in Vienna, Alte Akademie in Munich, and Alsterhaus and Alsterarkaden in Hamburg.
RFR has also made a name for itself in commercial real estate by owning and managing some of Manhattan’s most prestigious commercial properties, including the Seagram Building and Lever House, which are located on Park Avenue.
Signa and RFR had completed several deals together in the past, including in 2017, when Signa bought five landmark properties from RFR in Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt, and Munich for about 1.5 billion euros.
- Seven Things Saudi Women Still Can't Do, Despite Driving Ban Lift
Authored by Nadine Dahan via Middle East Eye,
In a decree issued in September 2017, Saudi King Salman ruled that women would be allowed to drive cars in 2018, a move which ended the kingdom’s status as the only country in the world where it was forbidden.
Saudi’s law against women drivers was one of many controversial laws presenting a web of restrictions to women.
Saudi women are required to get permission from a male family member, sometimes even a younger brother, for some of the most important decisions of her life.
And whilst they are now allowed to drive, here is a list of things Saudi women still can’t do:
1. Eat freely in public
As part of the kingdom’s dress code, women are required to wear a face veil. This, whilst selectively enforced, means that wherever it is, women must then eat under their face veil.
2. Dress ‘for beauty’
They must cover their hair and bodies. The kingdom’s dress code requires women to wear an “abaya,” a dress-like full length cloak.
3. Freely socialise with non-relative males
Women are not free to socialise with men outside of their immediate families, and can even be imprisoned for committing such an offence.
4. Marry whomever they like
There are rulings against Saudi marrying non-Muslim, Shia, or atheist men.
5. Travel
Travelling without a male guardian’s permission is prohibited.
6. Open a bank account
In Saudi Arabia, women still need their husband’s permission before they are allowed to open a bank account.
7. Get a job
Although the government no longer requires a woman to have a guardian’s permission in order to work, many employers still demand the permission before hiring.
The struggle for greater women’s rights in the kingdom has been a difficult one, with activists arrested for defying the driving ban last year. In recent months, a model was arrested for wearing a short skirt.
- Chaos Continues At Tesla As Company Now "Freezing" Store Closures And Layoffs
When even the pro-Tesla crowd at electrek begins to describe the company’s sales strategy transition as “chaotic”, you know there’s real problems afoot for Elon Musk and his merry band of world changers. This happened following reports that Tesla was “freezing current store closures” less than two weeks after telling the public that it would close most of its retail locations in a move to try and cut costs.
Employees are being told that Tesla is freezing both store closures and layoffs “until at least the end of the month”. Tesla has reportedly already closed 29 stores between the U.S. and Canada, following the February 28 announcement. Sales management at the company reportedly held a conference call with regional management last Friday, indicating to them that the company was stopping short on any more closures or layoffs until the end of the month.
Some retail stores that didn’t close were told to stop booking test drives last week. On Friday, some of them were prompted to go back to “business as usual”, despite retail employees not having access to commission and bonuses, resulting in far lower compensation. Many employees are “walking away” due to the pay cut and some suspect that Tesla is suspending the transition period for store closures simply to push out employees, in order to avoid paying them severance.
Tesla currently owes lease obligations of $1.6 billion, with $1.1 billion due between now and 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier. This includes payments for store leases, galleries and real estate abroad. Robert Taubman, chief executive officer of Taubman Centers Inc., is quoted as saying at the Citi 2019 Global Property CEO conference: “Tesla is a company with a viable balance sheet that is going to owe a lot of landlords a lot of money.”
The decision to close down all of its retail stores and move to an online-only sales model surprised many of the company’s employees and investors. For instance, we pointed out one investor who sold his shares in the company as a result of being blindsided by the news.
“This was a total 180-degree turn. Tesla had been talking about expanding stores, and all of a sudden they are closing them. To me, this signals a huge financial concern and a possible cash-flow issue for Tesla,” former investor in Tesla, Alex Chalekian, said.
It pains me to say this, since I really love the company, but we have sold our position in #Tesla for our advisory clients. I believe that the decision to close retail stores is a bad one and points to the weakness in sales and financial strength of the company. $TSLA
— Alex Chalekian (@AlexChalekian) March 1, 2019
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Members of the media were equally as stunned.
This is not an adjustment to strategy. This is a total reversal. They had a retail plan 2 months ago and concluded they had to tear the whole thing up and come up with a radical new plan. What does that say about the company? @elonmusk @tesla https://t.co/3k04m0pW5i
— Neal Boudette (@nealboudette) March 1, 2019
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Tesla was “negotiating and signing leases” as recently as last month, according to executives at Taubman and Macerich.
It’s estimated that a “few hundred” employees have already been laid off with severance. The remaining ones have viewed this freeze as an “opportunity to prove themselves” – so it’s probably a good time to avoid a trip into your local Tesla showroom, in order to avoid the “hard sell” that Tesla hated so much about the traditional dealer model to begin with.
For now, we’ll just leave you with electrek’s take:
This is a chaotic situation for retail employees who are left in the dark for the most part.
It’s either turning into what feels like an extremely poorly managed, haphazard transition or it is intentionally made that way to push out employees like some are suspecting.
It is hard to say which is worse. Probably the latter, which would reek of corporate greed and would be disappointing to see from Tesla.
- Bruce Ohr's Testimony Contradicts Testimony Provided By Rosenstein And Simpson
Department of Justice senior official Bruce Ohr’s testimony contradicts testimony given by other senior government officials and key witnesses who testified before Congress regarding the FBI’s investigation into President Trump’s 2016 campaign and alleged collusion with the Russian government, according to the full transcripts released Friday.
Ohr’s 268-page testimony, released by Republican member of the House Judiciary Committee Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, reveals inconsistency and contradiction in testimony given by Glenn Simpson, founder of embattled research firm Fusion GPS and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is set to leave his post sometime this month.
It also reveals that many questions are still left unanswered.
The Contradictions and The Revelations
1. Glenn Simpson suggests in his testimony to the Senate that he never spoke to anyone at the FBI about Christopher Steele, the former British spy he hired to investigate the Trump campaign during the election. However, Ohr suggests otherwise telling former Rep.Trey Gowdy under questioning “As I recall, and this is after checking with my notes, Mr. Simpson and I spoke in August of 2016. I met with him, and he provided some information on possible intermediaries between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.”
2. In another instance, Simpson’s testimony also contradicts notes taken by Ohr after a meeting they had in December, 2016. Unverified allegations were decimated among the media that the Trump campaign had a computer server that was linked to a Russian bank in Moscow: Alpha Bank. Simpson suggested to the Senate that he knew very little about the Trump -Alpha Bank server story and couldn’t provide information. But Bruce Ohr’s own handwritten notes state that when he met with Simpson in December 2016, Simpson was concerned over the Alpha Bank story in the New York Times. “The New York Times story on Oct. 31 downplaying the connection between Alfa servers and the Trump campaign was incorrect. There was communication and it wasn’t spam,” stated Ohr’s notes. This suggests that Simpson was well aware of the story, which was believed by congressional investigators to have started from his research firm.
3. Ohr testified to lawmakers that Simpson provided information to federal officials that was false regarding Cleta Mitchell, a well-known Republican campaign finance lawyer, and information regarding the National Rifle Association. Sean Davis, with the Federalist pointed this out in a tweet today. Read one of those stories here.
Bruce Ohr testified that Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS provided to federal officials information we know to be false regarding Cleta Mitchell, a Republican campaign finance attorney, and the NRA. Giving false statements to federal officials is a crime under 18 U.S.C. 1001. pic.twitter.com/vm0tc4ft5R
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) March 8, 2019
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4. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would not answer questions to lawmakers during testimony about when he learned that Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, was working for Fusion GPS. Just check this out from Rep. Matt Gaetz’s interview with Judge Jeanine on Fox News.
“Rod Rosenstein won’t tell us when he first learned that Nellie Ohr was working for Fusion GPS,” said Gaetz, in August, 2018.
“So I want to know from Bruce Ohr, when did he tell his colleagues at the Department of Justice that in violation of law that required him to disclose his wife’s occupation his sources of income. He did not do that. So when did all of the other people at the Department of Justice find this out because Rod Rosenstein, I’ve asked him twice in open hearing and he will not give an answer. I think there’s a real smoking gun there.”
However, in Ohr’s testimony he says he told the FBI about his wife’s role at Fusion GPS but only divulged his role to one person at the DOJ: Rosenstein. At the time, Rosenstein was overseeing the Trump-Russia probe, and had taken the information from Ohr and gave it to the FBI. Just read The Hill’s John Solomon full story here for the full background on Ohr’s testimony. I highlighted an important date below: remember Rosenstein wouldn’t answer lawmakers questions as to when he knew about Nellie Ohr. It also appears he failed to tell lawmakers about the information he delivered to the FBI.
Ohr stated in his testimony: “What I had said, I think, to Mr. Rosenstein in October of 2017 was that my wife was working for Fusion GPS… The dossier, as I understand it, is the collection of reports that Chris Steele has prepared for Fusion GPS.”
Ohr added: “My wife had separately done research on certain Russian people and companies or whatever that she had provided to Fusion GPS…But I don’t believe her information is reflected in the Chris Steele reports. They were two different chunks of information heading into Fusion GPS.”
5. Ohr also told lawmakers in his testimony that the former British spy, Christopher Steele was being paid by the FBI at the same time he was getting paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC. However, there was another player paying Steele and it was a Russian oligarch named Oleg Deripaska. Deripaska, a tycoon connected to Russian President Vladimir Putin, had well known animus toward his former friend Paul Manafort.
Rep. Mark Meadows asked Ohr during testimony “Did Chris Steele get paid by the Department of Justice?
Ohr’s response: “My understanding is that for a time he was a source for the FBI, a paid source.
In the testimony Ohr also revealed that Steele had told him details about his work with Deripaska saying Deripaska’s attorney Paul Hauser “had information about Paul Manafort, that Paul Manafort had entered into some kind of business deal with” Deripaska. Ohr said Manafort “had stolen a large amount of money from” the Russian Oligarch and that Hauser was “trying to gather information that would show that.”
- $250M Lawsuit Against CNN Imminent; Covington High MAGA Student Suffered "Vicious" And "Direct Attacks"
CNN is about to be sued for more than $250 million for spreading fake news about 16-year-old Covington High School student Nicholas Sandmann.
Sandmann was viciously attacked by left-leaning news outlets over a deceptively edited video clip from the January March for Life rally at the Lincoln Memorial, in which the MAGA-hat-wearing teenager appeared to be mocking a Native American man beating a drum. Around a day later, a longer version of the video revealed that Sandmann did absolutely nothing wrong – after the media had played judge, jury and executioner of Sandmann’s reputation.
CNN will be the second MSM outlet sued over their reporting of the incident, after Sandmann launched a $250 million lawsuit against the Washington Post in late February.
Speaking with Fox News host Mark Levin in an interview set to air Sunday, Sandmann’s attorney, L. Lin Wood, said “CNN was probably more vicious in its direct attacks on Nicholas than The Washington Post. And CNN goes into millions of individuals’ homes. It’s broadcast into their homes.”
“They really went after Nicholas with the idea that he was part of a mob that was attacking the Black Hebrew Israelites, yelling racist slurs at the Black Hebrew Israelites,” continued Wood. “Totally false. Saying things like that Nicholas was part of a group that was threatening the Black Hebrew Israelites, that they thought it was going to be a lynching.”
“Why didn’t they stop and just take an hour and look through the internet and find the truth and then report it?” Wood asked. “Maybe do that before you report the lies. They didn’t do it. They were vicious. It was false. CNN will be sued next week, and the dollar figure in the CNN case may be higher than it was [against] The Washington Post.”
Watch:
- A Modest Proposal For The Fed
Authored by Jeff Deist via The Mises Institute,
Quantitative easing, the program of asset buying initiated by the US Federal Reserve Bank in 2008, represents the most profound monetary experiment in the history of the world. Between fall of 2008 and fall of 2014, three successive rounds of QE quadrupled the monetary base of the world’s most-used and dominant currency, from less than $1 trillion to more than $4 trillion. The Fed literally created new money, bought Treasury debt and mortgage-backed debt (of dubious character) from commercial banks, and credited them with new reserves.
It was a great trick.
If QE can be done without adverse effects or with few adverse effects, it represents nothing short of monetary alchemy (h/t Nomi Prins). Everything we thought we knew about the Fed as backstop lender of last resort to commercial banks, as hallway monitor of inflation and unemployment, is out the window.
If QE works, then every government on earth must take notice of the opportunity to effectively recapitalize their own banks and industries free of charge. QE turns central banks into kings of capital markets, into active participants in the economy. As one twitterati put it, expansionary QE created the biggest untold American story of the last twenty years: the Fed can now inflate and deflate assets, devalue savings, influence wages and productivity, encourage corporate malfeasance, and engineer balance sheets—all the while creating economic winners and losers.
What politician or central banker could resist?
Recall how defenders of QE not only argued it was necessary, but beneficial. Paul Krugman was among the worst offenders, insisting that low interest rates would mitigate any harms from such rapid monetary expansion. These defenders dismissed, and continue to dismiss, what is now obvious: since 2008 the US economy has experienced significant asset inflation in equity markets and certain housing markets, plus a creeping but steady rise in many consumer prices.
This is no surprise. Did it never occur to QE cheerleaders that 1% money market yields might chase money into the stock market? Or that 2% interest rates might not encourage US businesses, households, and individuals to get solvent?
But monetary stimulus, like fiscal stimulus, is a heady drug for politicians and their central bank enablers. Once you accept consumption rather than production as the basis for a healthy economy, creating new money starts to sound like a good idea. And if creating money is a good idea, why not create a lot of it—especially in the midst of an economic crisis?
In 2008 Ben Bernanke was at least honest about the radical nature of what the Fed had embarked upon. He used the term “extraordinary monetary policy” for the unprecedented expansionary QE program, a program he insisted was made necessary by a potentially catastrophic global financial crisis.
But there were dissenters. David Stockman, for one, strongly disputes whether Main Street needed to save Wall Street. Chapter 26 of The Great Deformation lays out Stockman’s case against more debt and credit in an already overleveraged corporate landscape, not to mention the moral hazard of bailing out investment banks by creating money. And of course virtually all Austrian economists, plus plenty of non-Austrians, loudly opposed QE from the start: new bank reserves don’t magically create new goods and services in the economy. Low interest rates discourage capital formation and encourage malinvestment. More debt is not the answer for too much debt. And why should banks, flush with QE reserves, lend at all in a shaky economy when (since 2008) the Fed pays them interest on those excess reserves?
So here’s a modest proposal for the Federal Reserve officials, and a challenge to economists who reject Austrian views on QE and business cycles in general:
Return the Fed’s balance sheet to its pre-2008 level, by selling assets and/or letting assets mature. Do this over an identical six year period that mirrors the timeline for QE 1, 2, and 3. Do so at a rate and volume similar to which purchases were made during that period. For transparency, and to calm markets, announce this plan ahead of time.
In other words, return the country to “ordinary” monetary policy. After all, the crisis is over and the economy is healthy, right? If Austrians are wrong, if in fact QE saved the country and wasn’t merely an artificial process of juicing the economy and monetizing debt, it can and must be fully unwound.
In fact the St. Louis Fed president James Bullard nearly promised as much back in those quaint days of 2010:
The (FOMC) has often stated its intention to return the Fed balance sheet to normal, pre-crisis levels over time. Once that occurs, the Treasury will be left with just as much debt held by the public as before the Fed took any of these actions.
So how about it, Mr. Powell? A real economy operates without ultra-low interest rates and activist central bank stimulus. You’ve wavered lately; suggesting even the painfully slow process of QE tapering may be halted. Don’t make Mr. Bullard a liar, or at least a bad prognosticator. And don’t make Mr. Bernanke your permanent silent partner when it comes to Fed governance. Do what must be done, take the patient off its feeding tube, and make history as the first modern Fed Chair who allowed the US economy to rebuild itself on real capital instead of debt.
Shrink the Fed’s balance sheet and we can talk about whether QE “worked.” Until then, we can’t know if economic growth is real or artificial.
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