Secret CIA assessment: Putin ‘probably directing’ influence operation to denigrate Biden

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Russian President Vladimir Putin and his top aides are “probably directing” a Russian foreign influence operation to interfere in the 2020 presidential election against former vice president Joe Biden, which involves a prominent Ukrainian lawmaker connected to President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, a top-secret CIA assessment concluded, according to two sources who reviewed it. 

On Aug. 31, the CIA published an assessment of Russian efforts to interfere in the November election in an internal, highly classified report called the CIA Worldwide Intelligence Review, the sources said. CIA analysts compiled the assessment with input from the National Security Agency and the FBI, based on several dozen pieces of information gleaned from public, unclassified and classified intelligence sources. The assessment includes details of the CIA’s analysis of the activities of Ukrainian lawmaker Andriy Derkach to disseminate disparaging information about Biden inside the United States through lobbyists, Congress, the media and contacts with figures close to the president.

“We assess that President Vladimir Putin and the senior most Russian officials are aware of and probably directing Russia’s influence operations aimed at denigrating the former U.S. Vice President, supporting the U.S. president and fueling public discord ahead of the U.S. election in November,” the first line of the document says, according to the sources. Continue reading.

Trump official in charge of ‘shaping policies’ at HHS has been a college senior: report

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The Trump administration put a college senior in charge of personnel at the Dept. of Health and Human Services, Catherine Granito. She appears to have graduated this spring.

A Politico report Monday afternoon, “Trump administration shakes up HHS personnel office after tumultuous hires,” revealed the stunning placement – including that she has been “playing a role in shaping policies in the middle of a pandemic.”

HHS has an annual budget of $1.286 trillion. As of 2015 it had 79,540 employees. Continue reading.

Luxury cars, MAGA flags and Facebook invites: How an unknown Idaho family organized the Portland rally that turned deadly

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MERIDIAN, Idaho — The first time Alek Kyzik tweeted, two months ago, he invited Donald Trump Jr. to a pro-Trump rally he was hosting in Boise.

“I would love to chat,” he wrote in a public post on July 9 addressed to the president’s eldest son, who did not respond. “Thanks!”

The invitation was to a “cruise,” the type of provocative show of force that would become Kyzik’s signature: a motor-rumbling, flag-waving caravan of cars and trucks endorsing Trump on the streets of liberal cities. The most recent cruise he hosted involved thousands of vehicles advancing on Portland, Ore. It ended with one participant shot dead. Continue reading.

Americans living in designated ‘anarchist’ jurisdictions offer hilarious reality check for AG Barr

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As the nation continues to face the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic and we near the November 2020 election, the Department of Justice released a list of three cities (New York, New York; Seattle, Washington; and Portland, Oregon) it designated as “anarchist” jurisdictions. Are these Democrat-led cities in a state of anarchy? No. While at first this is so absurd it’s laughable, the underlying intent here is important. Why? Because this is pretty clearly a move motivated by politics that puts state and local governments at risk of losing federal funding because of reported violence and vandalism at the summer protests.

Of course, people from these cities have been eager to show what life is really like in a state of “anarchy.” We can look at those tweets below, as well as what elected officials are saying about this new threat to federal funding.

In a Monday press release from the Department of Justice, it is claimed the department identified New York, Portland, and Seattle as “three jurisdictions that have permitted violence and destruction of property to persist and have refused to undertake reasonable measures to counteract criminal activities.” Continue reading.

Pentagon used taxpayer money meant for masks and swabs to make jet engine parts and body armor

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Shortly after Congress passed the Cares Act, the Pentagon began directing pandemic-related money to defense contractors.

A $1 billion fund Congress gave the Pentagon in March to build up the country’s supplies of medical equipment has instead been mostly funneled to defense contractors and used to make things such as jet engine parts, body armor and dress uniforms.

The change illustrates how one taxpayer-backed effort to battle the novel coronavirus, which has killed more than 200,000 Americans, was instead diverted toward patching up long-standing perceived gaps in military supplies.

The Cares Act, which Congress passed earlier this year, gave the Pentagon money to “prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus.” But a few weeks later, the Defense Department began reshaping how it would award the money in a way that represented a major departure from Congress’s intent. Continue reading.

Trump And DeJoy Lose Again In Sweeping Decision By Federal Judge

A federal district judge in New York ruled Monday that the U.S. Postal Service has to treat election mail as a priority, another loss for Postmaster General Louis DeJoy in the courts. The judge, Victor Marrero, also ordered that overtime and extra deliveries had to be permitted by the USPS as election mail demands. This came in a suit brought by several candidates for office and New York voters against Donald Trump and DeJoy.

Marrero blasted USPS leadership and Donald Trump in his ruling. “They have not provided trusted assurance and comfort that citizens will be able to cast ballots with full confidence that their votes would be timely collected and counted,” the 87-page opinion states. “Rather, as detailed below, their actions have given rise to management and operational confusion, to directives that tend to generate uncertainty as to who is in charge of policies that ultimately could affect the reliability of absentee ballots, thus potentially discouraging voting by mail.”

This comes as previous federal and state courts have slapped DeJoy over Postal Service sabotage. Another federal court in Washington state blocked DeJoy’s operational changes, ordering a halt to the transportation schedule he’s imposed that has resulted in delivery delays across the country. Marrero ordered that all election-related mail—including voter registration materials, absentee or mail-in ballot applications, polling place notifications, blank ballots, and completed ballots—has to be treated as first-class or priority express mail. The USPS has to file weekly, public reports informing the court and the public of its performance. Continue reading.

CIA clamps down on flow of Russia intelligence to White House

Critics of the shift in approach say it seems designed to appease the president.

The CIA has made it harder for intelligence about Russia to reach the White House, stoking fears among current and former officials that information is being suppressed to please a president known to erupt in anger whenever he is confronted with bad news about Moscow.

Nine current and former officials said in interviews that CIA Director Gina Haspel has become extremely cautious about which, if any, Russia-related intelligence products make their way to President Donald Trump’s desk. Haspel also has been keeping a close eye on the agency’s fabled “Russia House,” whose analysts she often disagrees with and sometimes accuses of purposefully misleading her.

Last year, three of the people said, Haspel tasked the CIA’s general counsel, Courtney Elwood, with reviewing virtually every product that comes out of Russia House, which is home to analysts and targeters who are experts in Russia and the post-Soviet space, before it “goes downtown” to the White House. One former CIA lawyer called it “unprecedented that a general counsel would be involved to this extent.” Continue reading.

The GOP traded democracy for a Supreme Court seat and tax cuts. It wasn’t worth it.

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Was it worth it?

Republican lawmakers must ask themselves this question at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, whenever that is. Perhaps then they will finally inventory every misdeed they ignored or encouraged, every scar they seared into our republic and its institutions, in pursuit of their holy grail: another Supreme Court seat.

Two Republican senators, Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), have said they oppose a vote on a Supreme Court nominee so close to the election. This principle, of course, was widely endorsed by Republicans four years ago, when the GOP-controlled Senate refused to even hold hearings for the nominee President Barack Obama had put forward in March. Continue reading.

House overwhelmingly passes bipartisan spending deal to avert government shutdown

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Legislation would extend government funding through Dec. 11; Senate must act next to send bill to Trump

The House overwhelmingly approved a bipartisan bill late Tuesday to keep the government funded through early December and avoid a shutdown just before the November election.

The 359-to-57 vote sends the legislation to the Senate, which could take it up later this week and send it to President Trump. White House officials say they don’t want a shutdown, and Trump is expected to sign the bill, though he’s wavered at the last minute in such scenarios in the past.

The deal was negotiated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a chaotic series of events over the past several days. Talks abruptly collapsed late Friday just as a deal appeared within reach, and Pelosi released a partisan bill on Monday that was swiftly rejected by Republicans. But on Tuesday morning, Pelosi and Mnuchin resumed negotiations, and Pelosi announced late Tuesday that they had reached a deal. Continue reading.

Denial and Defiance: Trump and His Base Downplay the Virus Ahead of the Election

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With resistance to face masks and scorn for science, President Trump and a sizable number of his supporters are pushing an alternate reality minimizing a tragedy that has killed almost 200,000 Americans.

Jodee Burton, a retired preschool teacher who now helps with her husband’s logging business, lives on a remote patch in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, a state that has been embroiled in a partisan battle over how to respond to a pandemic that has killed nearly 7,000 people there and almost 200,000 nationwide.

Ms. Burton, 63, who is the mother of three grown children, is not convinced that there is a crisis — and she is certainly not happy with the efforts by her governor, Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, to require some people to wear masks or restrict where they can play and work.

“There’s only been three cases in Luce County and I know all three of them,” said Ms. Burton, whose family dog wears a Trump bandanna in place of a collar. “They have husbands and they sleep with these men every night, and none of them got it.” Continue reading.