Category: Unpresidential

Trump: Discussing a Biden probe with Barr would be ‘appropriate’

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President Donald Trump told POLITICO on Friday that it would be “appropriate” for him to speak to Attorney General Bill Barr about launching an investigation into his potential 2020 rival, Joe Biden, or his son, Hunter.

The question of whether Trump could pressure Barr to probe Biden is coming under scrutiny after Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, said he would be traveling to Ukraine to urge the incoming government there to look at Hunter Biden’s involvement with a Ukrainian energy company that has reportedly been in prosecutors’ crosshairs. The efforts appear to be part of a broader campaign by Trump’s allies to damage the former Democratic vice president’s White House campaign and have raised questions about whether Trump’s team is trying to enlist a foreign government to aid the president’s re-election bid.

“Certainly it would be an appropriate thing to speak to him about, but I have not done that as of yet. … It could be a very big situation,” Trump said in a 15-minute telephone interview on Friday afternoon, which stemmed from POLITICO’s inquiries for a separate story.

Barr also drew attention during his recent congressional testimony when he demurred on a question about whether anybody in the White House had ever suggested that he launch an investigation.

President Donald Trump told POLITICO on Friday that it would be “appropriate” for him to speak to Attorney General Bill Barr about launching an investigation into his potential 2020 rival, Joe Biden, or his son, Hunter.

The question of whether Trump could pressure Barr to probe Biden is coming under scrutiny after Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, said he would be traveling to Ukraine to urge the incoming government there to look at Hunter Biden’s involvement with a Ukrainian energy company that has reportedly been in prosecutors’ crosshairs. The efforts appear to be part of a broader campaign by Trump’s allies to damage the former Democratic vice president’s White House campaign and have raised questions about whether Trump’s team is trying to enlist a foreign government to aid the president’s re-election bid.

“Certainly it would be an appropriate thing to speak to him about, but I have not done that as of yet. … It could be a very big situation,” Trump said in a 15-minute telephone interview on Friday afternoon, which stemmed from POLITICO’s inquiries for a separate story.

Barr also drew attention during his recent congressional testimony when he demurred on a question about whether anybody in the White House had ever suggested that he launch an investigation.

“Because he’s a Democrat,” Trump said, the report had about “one-hundredth” the impact as it would have if he “were a Republican.”

That’s not for lack of effort by the president’s allies. As of Friday afternoon, Giuliani was about to travel to Ukraine in an effort to push the country’s president-elect to pursue the investigation into Hunter Biden’s involvement with the energy company, Burisma Holdings. He also wants Ukraine to probe whether the country’s officials were trying to help Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election by releasing forged documents tied to Paul Manafort.

Giuliani was planning to leave Sunday and return Wednesday, he told POLITICO in an interview Friday afternoon. During his trip, Giuliani was expecting to meet with Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian who was elected president of Ukraine last month and who has reportedly said he’s looking to replace one of the prosecutors involved in the cases.

“I just want to tell him, ‘Don’t let these crooks talk you out of the investigation. There are real facts there they’ve got to investigate,’” Giuliani said. “A lot of this stuff is a lot easier for them to get. They do get nervous if they think the government is going to scuttle this investigation.”

But later Friday, Giuliani said he had canceled his trip, explaining his change of plans in a text message to POLITICO that the original offer for a meeting was a “set up” orchestrated by “several vocal critics” of Trump who are advising Ukraine’s new president-elect. “Only got name yesterday and told pres elect is in hands of avowed enemies of Pres Trump,” Giuliani wrote. “Useless meeting.”

Biden’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The president said Friday he didn’t know much about Giuliani’s planned trip but wanted to speak with him about it.

“I have not spoken to him at any great length, but I will,” Trump said in the interview. “I will speak to him about it before he leaves.”

The former New York mayor for weeks has been talking with reporters about the Biden-Ukraine connection, insisting it is a scandal.

“I don’t see how you get from here to the presidency without that being investigated,” Giuliani said earlier on Friday, swinging back at critics who say the president’s attorney is openly encouraging a foreign government to meddle in the American election.

“If I wanted to meddle in the election, I’d be talking about it a year from now,” Giuliani said. “I’d have kept it for myself and I’d have popped it right before the Democratic convention. That’d be fun.”

Trump’s critics have long feared that the president would pressure the Justice Department to investigate his political opponents.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump and his allies led chants of “Lock her up!” in reference to Clinton, though there has been no public follow-up on the Clinton investigation since the arrival of the Trump administration.

More recently, Barr has come under fire for his reply to Sen. Kamala Harris during a hearing last week where the attorney general did not explicitly answer the California Democrat’s questions about whether Trump or anyone else in the White House asked or suggested the DOJ launch an investigation.

“I’m trying to grapple with the world ‘suggest’,” Barr replied during the hearing. “I mean there have been discussions of, of matters out there that uh … they have not asked me open an investigation.”

Harris, who is running for president, followed up by asking if the White House had hinted at an investigation, and the attorney general replied, “I don’t know.”

Several former national security and law enforcement officials took issue later Friday with the president’s comment that he was within his right to approach Barr about a possible Biden investigation.

“Past Republican and Democratic administrations alike have recognized the critical importance of the wall of separation between the White House and DOJ when it comes to criminal investigations,” said Matt Axelrod, a former senior Obama Justice Department official. “This president’s belief that he can instruct the Attorney General to investigate his political rival is a wild break from past precedent and would represent a dangerous assault on the rule of law.”

Susan Hennessey, a former attorney at the National Security Agency wrote on Twitter after this story published that Trump’s comment was a “disturbing development people should pay attention to.”

[Politico]

Rudy Giuliani says he’s going to Ukraine to meddle in probes in hopes of helping Trump

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President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani says he’s traveling to Ukraine to urge that country’s president-elect to push forward with investigations that he anticipates could help Trump’s re-election campaign.

“We’re not meddling in an election, we’re meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do,” Giuliani said in an interview with The New York Times published Thursday.

According The Times, Giuliani plans to ask Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian comedian elected to lead the nation in April, to move ahead with probes involving the son of potential Trump rival Joe Biden as well inquiries related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.

“There’s nothing illegal about it,” he told the paper.

But, the former New York City mayor allowed in the interview, “Somebody could say it’s improper.”

Democrats quickly did.

“We have come to a very sorry state when it is considered OK for an American politician, never mind an attorney for the president, to go and seek foreign intervention in American politics,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, to reporters Friday.

Rep. Adam Schiff, chair of the House Intelligence Committee,tweeted that Giuliani’s efforts are not only improper, but “immoral, unethical, unpatriotic and, now, standard procedure.”

Giuliani told The Times Thursday that Trump fully supports his plans.

“The President is openly asking a foreign government to investigate his political rival. This is next level,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., tweeted Friday.

Giuliani tweeted back, “Explain to me why Biden shouldn’t be investigated if his son got millions from a Russian loving crooked Ukrainian oligarch while He was VP and point man for Ukraine.”

In a text message, Giuliani told NBC News that what he’s planning is “perfectly legal” since it involves an investigation. The 2020 “election is 17 months away,” he wrote.

In recent days, Giuliani has repeatedly alleged a conspiracy involving the former vice president, who has emerged as the early front-runner in the race to be the Democratic nominee. In an interview with NBC News earlier this week, Giuliani said he stumbled upon the story by accident as he was investigating a claim he’d heard about Democratic National Committee officials “using the American embassy in Ukraine as their focal point to get dirt on Trump” and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who earned millions working for a corrupt pro-Russian political party in Ukrainefor nearly a decade.

“All of a sudden, as I’m interviewing these people, they tell me the Biden story,” Giuliani said.

The “Biden story” involves the then-vice president’s 2016 call for Ukraine to crack down on corruption, including removing a Ukrainian prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, seen as ineffective. As Giuliani has noted, one of the cases that Shokin had been investigating involved a company called Burisma Holdings. Biden’s son Hunter Biden was on the board of the company at the time.

But Bloomberg News, citing documents and an interview with a former Ukrainian official, reported earlier this week that the Burisma investigation had been dormant for over a year when Biden called for the crackdown on corruption. PolitiFact, meanwhile, reported that it found no evidence to “support the idea that Joe Biden advocated with his son’s interests in mind.”

Giuliani has said, and The Times has reported, that Ukrainian prosecutors have reopened the Burisma investigation, but a spokesperson for the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office told Bloomberg that it had not done so.

That spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment from NBC News.

Hunter Biden, who stepped down from Burisma’s board last month, told The Times, “At no time have I discussed with my father the company’s business, or my board service.”

Giuliani told NBC News, “I assure you I am not trying to take him [Biden] out. I’m actually — he won’t appreciate it — but I’m doing him a favor by trying to get it investigated now. Because it wasn’t going to live through November of next year.”

The DNC has repeatedly denied working with the Ukrainian government to obtain dirt on Manafort. The incriminating Ukrainian information about Manafort that emerged during the campaign — a ledger showing $12.7 million in unreported payments from a Russia-backed Ukrainian political party — was from public records. However, Ukraine’s current top prosecutor has reportedly opened an investigation into whether the Manafort information was released in order to help Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Manafort, 70, is now serving a seven-and-a-half year federal prison sentence for undisclosed lobbying work in Ukraine, as well as tax and bank fraud — charges that were brought as part of Mueller’s investigation but were unconnected to Manafort’s work with the Trump campaign.

The New York Times previously reported on Giuliani’s interest in the Biden and Manafort-related inquiries as well as his meetings with Ukrainian officials about the probes. Giuliani said then he’d been keeping the president apprised of his efforts.

Trump spoke about the Biden story in an interview with Fox News last week.

“I’m hearing it’s a major scandal, major problem,” Trump said. “I hope for him it is fake news. I don’t think it is.”

[NBC News]

Trump says bring on ‘Sleepy/Creepy’ Joe Biden

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He’s got his heart set on Joe.

President Trump tweeted that he has his money on Vice President Joe Biden winning the crowded Democratic primary battle to take him on in 2020.

It was one of a head-spinning 16th tweet by 10 am eastern time for Trump. Critics have noted that the president spends most of his working day in so-called “Executive Time,” which is a euphemism for whipping out tweets and chatting with pals on the phone.

Trump regularly mocks Biden for his well-reported proclivity for getting touchy feely with women and men alike. Some women have expressed discomfort with Biden’s “tactile” personality for years but so far he has not faced more serious harassment or abuse allegations.

The president, on the other hand, was infamously caught on tape bragging about “grabbing” women by their private parts and has faced numerous claims of sexual impropriety, including paying hush money during the 2016 campaign to silence porn stars about extramarital affairs.

Twitter quickly piled on the POTUS for his dig at Biden. George (Mr. Kellyanne) Conway took just an hour to get 7,500 retweets for his riposte that Trump “palled around with” big bucks pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

[New York Daily News]

Trump suffers meltdown after James Comey tells CNN it is ‘possible’ that ‘the Russians have leverage over’ the president

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President Donald Trump freaked out on Twitter after former FBI Director James Comey gave an exclusive interview to CNN on the two-year anniversary of being fired.

“Do you think the Russians have leverage over President Trump?” Anderson Cooper asked.

“I don’t know the answer to that,” Comey replied.

“Do you think it’s possible?” Cooper asked.

“Yes,” Comey answered.

That was not the only news Comey made.

Comey also said that Attorney General Bill Barr has behaved “less than honorably” and that America can’t have a president “who lies constantly.”

Trump lashed out after the interview was televised.

“James Comey is a disgrace to the FBI and will go down as the worst director in its long and once proud history,” Trump argued, seemingly unaware of the Bureau’s history.

“He brought the FBI down, almost all Republicans and Democrats thought he should be fired, but the FBI will regain greatness because of the great men & women who work there!” Trump argued.

[Raw Story]

Media

White House celebrates the Red ‘Socks’ for winning the ‘World Cup Series’

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That’s an error.

White House officials misspelled the name of the Red Sox in an announcement about the 2018 World Series championship team visiting Washington to meet with President Trump on Thursday, before declaring them the “World Cup Series” champions in a separate e-mail sent afterward.

On a page listing upcoming “Live” events to be streamed online from the White House, the announcement about the team’s arrival called the team the “Socks,” instead of Sox.

“President Trump Welcomes the 2018 World Series Champions The Boston Red Socks to the White House,” the statement read.

The announcement leads to the White House’s official YouTube page, where the event will be broadcast. The name of the team was also spelled wrong on that page.

Unfortunately for the White House, that wasn’t the only gaffe involving the Boston team. After the ceremony was over, the White House sent a transcript of the event to pool reporters with a subject line that said Trump welcomed the “World Cup Series” champions.

“Remarks by President Trump Welcoming the 2018 World Cup Series Champions Boston Red Sox,” the e-mail’s subject line proclaimed.

A copy of the statement was also posted to the White House website.

Members of the championship team met with Trump on Thursday afternoon for the Rose Garden ceremony — but not everyone was in attendance.

Red Sox manager Alex Cora said earlier this week, while in Chicago, that he wouldn’t be making the visit when the team is honored at the White House.

Cora said the trip wouldn’t feel right given what he considers the Trump administration’s poor treatment of his native Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.

Among those who are not attending the White House visit are Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, David Price, Jackie Bradley Jr., Rafael Devers, Christian Vazquez, and Hector Velazquez.

The pending visit has become what Red Sox CEO Sam Kennedy called “a difficult issue.”

A majority of the players who have pledged to visit Trump are white, while those who have said they will forgo the trip are people of color, the Globe has previously reported.

The trip is optional for the team and members of the clubhouse and staff. Red Sox owner John Henry, who also owns the Globe, and team chairman Tom Werner have said they would attend.

[Boston Globe]

Trump Twitter rages at ‘BAD DEMOCRAT Disaster Bill” that he claims will hurt farmers

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President Donald Trump on Thursday urged Capitol Hill Republicans to vote against a bill proving disaster assistance.

The commander-in-chief referred to the legislation as a “BAD DEMOCRAT” bill, writing in all capital letters.

Trump claimed the bill would harm states, farmers, and border security.

“We want to do much better than this. All sides keep working and send a good bill for immediate signing,” Trump demanded.

[Raw Story]

Reality

The major sticking point for Trump is the additional funding Democrats included to help Puerto Rico rebuild after Hurricane Maria severely damaged the island and killed 3,000 people. It amounts to more than $3 billion, including $600 million for nutrition assistance.

Trump has pushed back against giving more money to Puerto Rico, incorrectly stating that the federal government has already allocated $91 billion to help Puerto Rico. It’s actually promised about half of that amount and spent only $11 billion.

White House revokes press passes for dozens of journalists

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IN WHAT APPEARS TO BE an unprecedented move, the White House revoked the press passes of a significant chunk of the Washington press corps because they didn’t meet a new standard, according to Washington Postcolumnist Dana Milbank. Under the new rules, rolled out earlier this year, in order to qualify for the highest level of access—known as a “hard pass”—journalists had to be present in the White House for at least 90 days out of a 180-day period. According to Milbank, virtually the entire press corps failed to meet this new test, including all six of the Post’s White House correspondents. Media outlets then had to apply for exceptions to cover their senior journalists, or settle for six-month passes, which don’t allow as much access.

The Post applied for and was granted exceptions for its White House correspondents, Milbank says, but he was not given one. “I strongly suspect it’s because I’m a Trump critic,” he wrote on Wednesday. “The move is perfectly in line with Trump’s banning of certain news organizations, including The Post, from his campaign events and his threats to revoke White House credentials of journalists he doesn’t like.” Milbank noted that, since dozens of senior correspondents didn’t meet the new standards either, “they all serve at the pleasure of Press Secretary Sarah Sanders” and
“therefore, in theory, can have their credentials revoked any time they annoy Trump or his aides.” (The White House press secretary told the Post the move was a result of security concerns, not a desire to crack down on specific journalists.)

Some seemed concerned that the new rules are an attempt to exert more direct control over the White House press corps, after an incident involving CNN reporter Jim Acosta in November. Acosta’s press pass was revoked following a contentious press conference in which the CNN reporter repeatedly asked the president questions about immigration policy that Trump refused to answer, and then refused to hand over the microphone when an aide tried to take it from him. Later that day, Acosta tried to access the White House in the usual way and was told his “hard pass” had been revoked because of his behavior. Sanders later released a statement saying the CNN reporter’s pass had been withdrawn “until further notice.”

CNN went to court to seek an injunction ordering the White House to return Acosta’s pass, and won. The media company and a number of other organizations that filed briefs in the case argued that the First Amendment protected the media’s right to cover the White House, and that this right couldn’t be abridged without due process. Judge Timothy Kelly agreed with the latter part of that argument, and said the Trump administration had failed to show why Acosta’s press pass was being revoked, or, in fact, that any process had been followed at all. “Whatever process occurred within the government is still so shrouded in mystery that the government could not tell me at oral argument who made the initial decision to revoke Mr. Acosta’s press pass,” he wrote.

Now, with its new standards for performance and most of the press corps holding passes that have only been issued as “exceptions,” the White House has a structure in place that could allow it to remove whoever it wishes to remove. That wouldn’t necessarily override First Amendment protection for press access (which Kelly didn’t rule on), but in the short term it gives the Trump administration new levers with which to control the press corps. Some argue that access to the White House is already almost meaningless, since press briefings are few and far between (there hasn’t been an on-camera briefing for 58 days, a new record) and what briefings there are often involve the White House press secretary and/or the president shutting down journalist questions and in many cases outright lying about various details of the administration’s behavior or plans.

Here’s more on the White House’s tangled relationship with the press:

  • Un-American: “This is what dictators do,” Patrick Leahy, the senior Democratic senator from Vermont, said in a tweet posted to his official Twitter account, quoting from the Dana Milbank piece in The Washington Post. Jeff Merkley, a Democratic senator from Oregon, posted a similar sentiment on Twitter, saying: “Curtailing a free press and undermining the public’s access to government is a hallmark of authoritarianism & has no place in America. This purge of reporters is un-American and needs to be reversed ASAP. ”
  • Not normal: Even before the furor over the revoking of Jim Acosta’s press pass, New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen was arguing that the media should “suspend normal relations with the Trump presidency” because of the way it treated journalists and the press. New outlets and journalists should refuse to do background or off-the-record briefings, Rosen said, and stop repeating the president’s falsehoods. Rosen also argued as early as 2017 that media outlets should stop sending their senior journalists to White House briefings.
  • Does it matter? In September, Pete Vernon wrote for CJR about the inexorable decline of the White House press briefing and asked whether or not it matters anymore. Olivier Knox, the president of the White House Correspondents Association, told CNN’s Brian Stelter that the briefing “has both a symbolic and a substantive importance to the White House press corps,” because it shows that “the most powerful political institution in American life is not above being questioned.” But others argued it was just an exercisein political theater.
  • No dinner: Trump announced last month that he wouldn’t be attending the White House Correspondent Dinner, an annual fundraiser in which journalists dine with politicians and celebrities, and then ordered that no White House or administration officials would be allowed to attend the dinner either. Trump said the dinner was “so boring and negative” that he would be attending a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin instead. Last year, CJR looked at the dinner and found that less than half the money raised went to scholarships.

[Columbia Journal Review]

Trump Calls for the Prosecution of John Kerry Under the Logan Act

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President Donald Trump called for the prosecution of former Secretary of StateJohn Kerry for his negotiations with a foreign government, namely Iran. In particular, Trump said Kerry violated the Logan Act.

“What I would like to see with Iran, I would like to see them call me. John Kerry, he speaks to them a lot. John Kerry tells them not to call. That is a violation of the Logan Act. And frankly, he should be prosecuted on that,” he said. “But my people don’t want to do anything — only the Democrats do that kind of stuff. You know? If it were the opposite way, they would prosecute him under the Logan Act. But John Kerry violated the Logan Act.”

“He’s talking to Iran and has been, has many meetings and tells them what to do,” Trump added. “That is a total violation of the Logan act.”

The Logan Act came up before in the context of fired National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. At the time, it was noted that the Logan Act is a 1799 law that is “rarely enforced” and has “never been used to successfully prosecute any American citizen.”

Here’s what 18 U.S.C. §953, the Logan Act, says:

Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

Only two people have ever been indicted for a Logan Act violation, and neither of them were convicted.

[Law and Crime]

Reality

In September Marco Rubio sent a letter to the DOJ urging an investigation of the matter.

https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=Press-Releases&id=2D9F248A-E57B-468D-8B76-99D0290EE080

Media

‘Shoot them!’: Trump laughs off a supporter’s demand for violence against migrants

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A roar rose up from the crowd of thousands of Trump supporters in Panama City Beach on Wednesday night, as President Trump noted yet again that Border Patrol agents can’t use weapons to deter migrants. “How do you stop these people?” he asked.

“Shoot them!” someone yelled from the crowd, according to reporters on the scene and attendees.

The audience cheered. Supporters seated behind Trump and clad in white baseball caps bearing the letters “USA” laughed and applauded.

“That’s only in the Panhandle you can get away with that statement,” Trump replied, smiling and shaking his head. “Only in the Panhandle.”

Though Trump didn’t explicitly endorse the suggestion to shoot migrants, his joking response raised concerns that he was tacitly encouraging extrajudicial killings and brutality against asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants. The president has long been accused of endorsing acts of violence through his incendiary rhetoric and allusions to the potential for violence at his rallies, a charge that members of his administration deny.

Reached for comment by The Washington Post on Trump’s reaction at the Florida rally, Matt Wolking, deputy communications director for the Trump campaign, pointed to a response he had given to many critics on Twitter. The president, he noted in his tweet, had specifically said that Border Patrol wouldn’t use firearms to stop migrants from entering the country.

The incendiary remark from the crowd came as Trump, standing before roughly 7,000 people who had gathered at an outdoor amphitheater in the hurricane-damaged Gulf Coast town, railed against what he described as an “invasion” of migrants attempting to enter the United States. Often, he claimed, only “two or three” border agents will contend with the arrival of “hundreds and hundreds of people.”

“And don’t forget, we don’t let them and we can’t let them use weapons,” Trump said of the border agents. “We can’t. Other countries do. We can’t. I would never do that. But how do you stop these people?”

The fans seated directly behind Trump wore serious, perturbed frowns, which were quickly replaced by broad grins after the shouted suggestion that the solution involved firearms. Uproarious laughter rippled across the room as audience members whistled and offered a round of applause.

To critics, Trump’s failure to outright condemn the idea of shooting migrants amounted to a “tacit endorsement” of the sentiment. Many pointed out that such rhetoric was especially concerning in light of the fact that an armed militia group, the United Constitutional Patriots, had been searching the borderlands for undocumented migrants and detaining them against their will.

Last month, after the group’s leader, Larry Mitchell Hopkins, was arrested on charges of being a felon in possession of firearms and ammunition, the FBI said that the 69-year-old claimed militia members were training to assassinate former president Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and prominent Democratic donor George Soros.

One member of that militia had also questioned why the group wasn’t killing migrants, according to a police report first obtained by left-leaning news outlet The Young Turks.

[Washington Post]

Media

Trump continues to mislead on immigration and Puerto Rico disaster funding

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During his rally in Florida Wednesday night, President Donald Trump hit on a lot of familiar themes — the strong economy, building the wall, defeating ISIS and the 2020 election.

Among his “greatest hits,” Trump also repeated several false claims he’s made in the past.

First, the President claimed that Puerto Rico had received $91 billion after being hit by hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017, adding that was the highest amount ever given to “anybody” for disaster relief.

Facts first: This is false. Not only has Puerto Rico not received $91 billion, even if it had that figure would still fall below the amount of federal money allocated to recovery efforts following Hurricane Katrina. In addition, Trump has opposed efforts in Congress to increase disaster relief funding, in part because some of the money would go to Puerto Rico.

So far, roughly $42 billion in federal disaster relief funding has been allocated to Puerto Rico. Only about a quarter of that ($12 billion) has actually been spent.

The $91 billion Trump cites is based on estimated future spending. As administration officials told the Washington Post, the additional $50 billion comes from an “internal Office of Management and Budget estimate of the potential liabilities over the life of the disaster that would need to be committed under the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act of 1988.”

In other words, the $91 billion is simply an estimate of what FEMA would have to spend to rebuild Puerto Rico, not what’s been allocated. This all comes as Congress battles over $17 billion in additional disaster fund relief, which includes funds for Puerto Rico.

In remarks Thursday afternoon, Trump repeated his $91 billion claims, again stating that Puerto Rico has gotten more money than it actually has.

The theoretical $91 billion is still less than the $114.5 billion the federal government spent on recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005, causing an estimated $160 billion in economic damage.

[CNN]

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