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Cohen's false statements: Is Mueller's purpose to focus in on non-criminal collusion using the Trump Tower meeting?

Andrew C. McCarthy
National Review
Thu, 29 Nov 2018 18:39 UTC
Michael Cohen
© Craig Ruttle/APMichael Cohen, former personal lawyer to President Donald Trump, leaves federal court in New York, Aug. 21, 2018.
Michael Cohen, a former lawyer for President Trump, pled guilty in Manhattan federal court this morning to making false statements to Congress regarding his involvement in efforts to build a Trump Tower complex in Moscow (the "Moscow project").

As our Jack Crowe has noted, Cohen's guilty plea is in connection with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation and pertains to testimony Cohen gave to the Senate Intelligence Committee. Cohen pled guilty to a one-count criminal information.

In a nutshell, Cohen gave testimony to the committee that minimized the extent and duration of efforts made by the Trump organization on the Moscow project. In order to downplay Donald Trump's connections to Russia, Cohen told the committee that the project had ended in January 2016 (i.e., before the Iowa caucuses), and that Trump's personal involvement had been scant - limited to three conversations with Cohen.

In reality, Cohen now says efforts on the project continued well into 2016. Moreover, both Donald Trump and members of his family were extensively briefed on it. The efforts involved communications with Russian-government officials, as well as discussions of possible trips to Russia by Cohen and Trump, and possible meetings with Russian president Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dimitry Medvedev.

Comment: As Byron York at the Washington Examiner points out, there's something else interesting about this latest development. No mention is made of a central claim in the Russiagate narrative: Cohen's alleged trip to Prague to arrange secret payments to Russian hackers:
Last April, McClatchy published a blockbuster story with the headline "Sources: Mueller has evidence Cohen was in Prague in 2016, confirming part of dossier." The story was the subject of a lot of talk among Resistance types. But one notable thing about the McClatchy scoop was that other news organizations never duplicated it, as is common when one outlet breaks a big story. Now Mueller, with vastly more resources and investigative power than any news organization, hasn't either.

For more than a year, a number of Trump-Russia investigators on Capitol Hill have maintained that none of the dossier's substantive allegations are true. The new plea deal between Cohen and Mueller is more evidence to support that.


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Eye 2

Best of the Web: The Pentagon's massive accounting boondoggle exposed

Dave Lindorff
The Nation
Tue, 27 Nov 2018 16:17 UTC
The Pentagon building in Washington, DC
© Agence France-Presse
How US military spending keeps rising even as the Pentagon flunks its audit.

On November 15, Ernst & Young and other private firms that were hired to audit the Pentagon announced that they could not complete the job. Congress had ordered an independent audit of the Department of Defense, the government's largest discretionary cost center - the Pentagon receives 54 cents out of every dollar in federal appropriations - after the Pentagon failed for decades to audit itself. The firms concluded, however, that the DoD's financial records were riddled with so many bookkeeping deficiencies, irregularities, and errors that a reliable audit was simply impossible.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan tried to put the best face on things, telling reporters, "We failed the audit, but we never expected to pass it." Shanahan suggested that the DoD should get credit for attempting an audit, saying, "It was an audit on a $2.7 trillion organization, so the fact that we did the audit is substantial." The truth, though, is that the DoD was dragged kicking and screaming to this audit by bipartisan frustration in Congress, and the result, had this been a major corporation, likely would have been a crashed stock.

Comment:

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Info

Houthis express willingness to attend peace talks in Sweden, but only with security guarantees


Sputnik
Fri, 30 Nov 2018 17:41 UTC
houthis
© AP Photo / Hani Mohammed
Houthis are ready to take part in talks on Yemen in Sweden, but demand that the UN resolve the issue of providing the aircraft, issuing the permit for its departure and the delegation's security, a representative of the Ansar Allah Houthi organization told Sputnik.

"There are preparations that the UN should do by the date [December 6], they are connected with the arrival of the delegation from Sanaa to Sweden in terms of providing the aircraft, permit and guarantees of security for the delegation, transportation of those wounded and other things," the member of the political bureau of the Ansar Allah Houthi organization Fadl Abu Talib said.

Talib further noted that the prospective talks on Yemen in Sweden would last 7-10 days.
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Binoculars

Facebook's evolving narrative on COO Sandberg's involvement in anti-Soros research

Sara Salinas
CNBC
Fri, 30 Nov 2018 17:25 UTC
Sheryl Sandberg
Facebook's story around Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, billionaire philanthropist George Soros and the company's dealings with opposition conservative research firm Definers Public Affairs keeps evolving, now weeks after a New York Times investigation into questionable operations inside Facebook.

Sandberg has cemented herself as the business face of the company, and was a particular focus of the Times report. She drove the company's public response to scandal and orchestrated behind-the-scenes messaging while founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was touring the country and less involved, the report says.

Part of Facebook's internal strategy, the Times reported, involved hiring Definers to write negative news about rivals and push the idea that liberal financier Soros was behind a growing anti-Facebook movement in an effort to delegitimize the campaign.

But Facebook and Sandberg's public stance about who at the company worked with Definers, and what the firm was tasked with researching, has evolved in the 2½ weeks since that initial report. The company declined to comment beyond its previously public statements.

Here's everything Facebook and Sandberg have said about the company's relationship with Soros and Definers since Nov. 14:

Comment: See also: Feuding manipulators: Soros' Open Society president calls for congressional oversight of Facebook

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Dig

Best of the Web: Ding-dong, another witch is dead: Deep State bagman George Bush Sr. finally croaks


RT
Sat, 01 Dec 2018 17:02 UTC

Comment: First McCain, and now Daddy Bush. Not a bad end to the year.

Cue another round of gushing obituaries for another powerful crook...


bush senior cheney
The Endless War of the Endless Terror of the Endless Bush Regime... has finally come to an end
Former US President George H.W. Bush, credited for helping to end the Cold War, passed away on Friday at the age of 94, a family spokesperson confirmed. Bush governed the nation from 1989 to 1993.

The 41st president died at 10:10pm (local time) on Friday. Funeral arrangements will be announced some time later, the spokesperson for the Bush family, Jim McGrath, said in a statement.

His health deteriorated in recent years, as he suffered from lower-body Parkinson's disease and was confined to a wheelchair. In April, Bush was discharged from a hospital after receiving treatment for low blood pressure.

Former US leader as well, George W. Bush, called his late father "a man of the highest character and the best dad a son or daughter could ask for."

Current President Donald Trump praised Bush for his "essential authenticity" and "disarming wit." His "unflappable leadership" brought the US and the world "to a peaceful and victorious conclusion of the Cold War," Trump said.

Comment: Sarah McLendon, a Texas journalist, asked Daddy Bush in 1992:
"What will the people do if they ever find out the truth about Iraq-gate and Iran-Contra?"
His answer:
"Sarah, if the American people ever find out what we have done, they would chase us down the street and lynch us."
Iraq-gate was the exposure of US-UK weapons sales to Saddam right up until invading his country the first time around. Iran-Contra was the covert sales of weapons to the other side in that war. Both were arranged - or signed off - by the CIA's man in the White House; VP, later president, George HW Bush.

The Iran-Iraq War, Iraq-gate, Iran-Contra, the first invasion of Iraq, anti-Iraq sanctions, the second invasion of Iraq, anti-Iran sanctions, and ISIS... all share the same underlying strategic rationale, greatly facilitated, if not publicly articulated, by Bush Sr.:

"If we (America) can't have it (domination of world energy markets), they (the Russians and the Chinese) can't either."

Bush Sr. was an oil man from the time he graduated Yale (and Skull 'n' Bones), and it's interesting that he was in Florida running an oil operation while being an errand boy for the CIA's Cuban 'rebels', right around the time of their involvement in the JFK assassination. The last co-conspirator of that crime may have died today...

See also: Dark Legacy Documentary: Bush Senior was Central Figure in Plot to Kill JFK

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Propaganda

'Dark day for press freedom' in Canada? Supreme Court rules reporter must give RCMP material on accused terrorist

Jim Bronskill
The National Post
Fri, 30 Nov 2018 23:51 UTC
Journalist Ben Makuch
© Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian PressJournalist Ben Makuch of Vice Media arrives to the Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa on May 23, 2018.


The court said the state's interest in prosecuting crime outweighed the media's right to privacy in gathering news when all factors were considered.

A Vice Media reporter must give the RCMP material he gathered for stories about an accused terrorist, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled in a case that pitted press freedoms against the investigative powers of police.

In its 9-0 ruling Friday, the high court said the state's interest in prosecuting crime outweighed the media's right to privacy in gathering the news when all the factors in play were taken into account.

Vice Media said the decision made it a "dark day for press freedom."

Comment:

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Propaganda

You don't have to love Assange to fear his prosecution

Peter Van Buren
The American Conservative
Fri, 30 Nov 2018 00:01 UTC
Julian Assange
© CreativeCommons/ Romina SantarelliWikileaks founder Julian Assange speaks via video conference to the Digital Culture Forums, organized by Argentina’s Ministry of Culture, 2015.


It turns out the DOJ is going after the Wikileaks founder. The press should be very afraid.

The Department of Justice showed its cards last week when it accidentally confirmed that the U.S. is planning to prosecute Wikileaks head Julian Assange, who has been sequestered in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012.

What happens to Assange will be one of the biggest test cases for press freedoms in America ever. At stake? The ability of all journalists to inform the public of things the government wants to withhold.

But this has been largely ignored because Assange, once a darling of the progressive activist press, is now regarded as a hero-turned-zero, mostly because of Wikileaks' role in publishing hacked emails that proved damaging to the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign ahead of the 2016 elections.

Comment: See also:

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Bomb

US dropped more bombs on Afghanistan in 2018 than it has in any other year on record


Sputnik
Sat, 01 Dec 2018 14:32 UTC
US bomb in Afghanistan
© AP Photo / U.S. Department of Defense
The US is dropping more bombs on Afghanistan in 2018 than it has in any other year on record, new Air Force data shows.

United States Air Forces Central Command has been publishing munitions data regularly since 2006, but comprehensive records are only available on their website dating back to 2009. Second to 2018, 2011 saw the most bombs dropped, according to the available data.

Sputnik News first reported in June that the US military was outpacing every other year on record in terms of bombs dropped on the country in 2018. With data from October now available, that distinction remains.

By this time in 2011, at the height of then-President Barack Obama's troop surge, the US had dropped 4,453 bombs on Afghanistan. Between January 2018 and the end of October 2018, that number stands at 5,982.

That's an increase of more than one-third.
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Info

Preparations for the second summit between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump

Konstantin Asmolov
New Eastern Outlook
Sat, 01 Dec 2018 13:45 UTC
Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump
© Kevin Lim/The Strait Times/Handout/Getty Images
The Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, citing sources in the US administration, has reported that the next summit between the United States and DPRK was to take place as early as the middle of November. Possible venues for this meeting were Stockholm and Geneva. However, the cancellation (or more officially an indefinite postponement due to conflicting work schedules) of the November meeting between the U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his counterpart Kim Yong-chol has caused the summit to be de facto rescheduled for a later date (yet to be announced). This is a sign of another pause in the dialogue between DPRK and the USA, and hence, an opportune time to draw conclusions about the relationship between the two countries in the preceding period, and to attempt to surmise when the next summit might be.

It is worth reminding the readers that in July, the American news and information website Axios reported that the second North Korea-United States summit might be held in New York, in September. However, representatives of the US administration took a different view, believing that DPRK needed to demonstrate progress made in the process of denuclearization before the second meeting between the leaders of the two nations could take place.

Comment: Meanwhile North and South Korea continue making progress: Thaw looming? North and South Korea begin tearing down guard posts at the border

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Newspaper

Why is the West silent about the chemical attack in Syria?


Oriental Review
Fri, 30 Nov 2018 13:33 UTC
Chemical attack in Aleppo, Syria
Once again, prohibited chemical weapons have been used in Syria, specifically - shells filled with chlorine gas. Despite the significant number of casualties, however, the attack was not met with the usual outcry. World leaders remained tight-lighted with only Macron deciding to break the silence. This is easily explained since the West has good reason to keep schtum.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, residential areas of Aleppo were bombarded with 120 mm mortar shells filled with chlorine gas, resulting in more than 100 people seeking medical treatment. Women and children were among those hospitalized and everyone complained of breathing difficulties.

Aleppo is Syria's largest city and one of the oldest in the world. It was divided in half during the civil conflict and the military operation to liberate the half occupied by militants was one of the most important carried out by government forces and became a major turning point in the war as a whole. At that time, the city was under the international spotlight for several months and the West regularly accused Damascus of allegedly committing numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity in order to gain time for the so-called moderate opposition. The areas under its control were next to those held by outright terrorists.
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