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Note to Team Mueller: Prosecution isn't a game of 'horseshoes or hand grenades'

John Solomon
The Hill
Sat, 06 Apr 2019 10:14 UTC
Mueller
© Christopher Morris/VII/Redux
SC Robert Mueller
I've covered the Justice Department for three decades, and seldom have I seen a story like the one published in The New York Times this week under the headline, "Some on Mueller's Team Say Report Was More Damaging Than Barr Revealed."

What concerned me most is that the story's anonymous allegations reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the role prosecutors play, including special counsels such as Robert Mueller.

The job of prosecutors is not, as the Times headline suggested, to pen "damaging" narratives about people they couldn't indict. And it's not their job to air those people's dirty laundry, or that of suspects outside of a grand jury room or a courtroom.
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MIB

The curious man behind Nordic banking scandals: Bill Browder

F. William Engdahl
New Eastern Outlook
Fri, 05 Apr 2019 00:00 UTC
Swedbank
In recent days Sweden's largest mortgage bank, Swedbank, fired its CEO amid charges she was involved in a multi-billion dollar money laundering operation. Swedbank now joins Denmark's largest bank, Danske Bank, and several other European Union banks implicated in laundering what has been claimed amounts to more than $1 trillion in funds of Russian or Ukraine or other origin in recent years. As impressive as the scandal appears, equally interesting is the curious man triggering the scandals.

On March 28 Swedbank AB fired its CEO, Birgitte Bonnesen, amid allegations she was complicit in a conspiracy to launder billions of dollars in money from former Soviet Union states via Swedbank's Estonia branch. At present Swedish SVT television reports suggest the mortgage bank laundered as much as 20 billion euros ($23 billion) in questionable funds each year, between 2010 and 2016 in Estonia, which, if true, would total some $140 billion. Swedbank allegedly also misled US authorities on its suspicious customer activities. Reportedly the Swedbank Estonia violations are tied to the even more dramatic allegations that Denmark's largest bank, Danske Bank, laundered an eye-popping $230 billion via its Estonia operation. Bonnesen was in charge of Swedbank's Baltic banking operations from 2011-2014.
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Newspaper

Israeli election ploy? Trump may declare Iran's Revolutionary Guard a 'terrorist organization'


RT
Fri, 05 Apr 2019 00:00 UTC
Iran's Revolutionary Guards
© Reuters / Morteza Nikoubazl
Members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards
The Trump administration is reportedly preparing to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization, the first such designation of another country's military, as early as next Monday.

The designation might come as early as Monday, three US officials told Reuters and the Wall Street Journal, speaking on condition of anonymity. Such a move would be a major escalation of the Trump administration's policy of pressure on Iran, which began with the pullout from the nuclear deal last May and continued with reimposition of sanctions suspended under the 2015 agreement.

Comment: Trump's Golan decision is a megalomaniac's own goal

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Black Magic

Court docs allege Democratic presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand's dad worked for NXIVM sex cult

William Davis
The Daily Caller
Fri, 05 Apr 2019 08:15 UTC
gillibrand
© Steve Pope/Getty Images
U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) speaks to a large crowd at the state capitol for the third annual Women's March on January 19, 2019 in Des Moines, Iowa.
Several court documents made public Thursday allegedly show that the father of 2020 presidential candidate and Democratic New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand worked on behalf of a sex cult.

Documents obtained by Big League Politics seem to confirm past rumors that Gillibrand's father Doug Rutnik worked for NXIVM, a sex cult in Albany, New York, that allegedly trafficked women. Rutnik reportedly worked for the organization for four months in 2004, at a monthly rate of $25,000.

"Her father Doug Rutnik came to work as a consultant for NXIVM. ... He was fired, they sued him, and they had to pay him $100,000," alleged former NXIVM employee Frank Parlato told Big League Politics. "Her father's wife, her stepmother, was also a member of NXIVM ... Doug got her into the cult, Gillibrand's father got Gillibrand's future stepmother into the cult. Doug left the cult because he was sued. Clare Bronfman, after her father was sued, donated money to Gillibrand. Gillibrand accepted it."
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Whistle

China protests deployment of US soldiers to guard Washington's 'embassy' in Taiwan


RT
Fri, 05 Apr 2019 04:00 UTC
American Institute in Taiwan
© Reuters / Tyrone Siu
The new office of American Institute in Taiwan (AIT)
Beijing has warned the US against stationing service personnel at a de-facto American embassy in Taipei, after the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) admitted to having a detachment of armed US guard on-site for over a decade.

"The US sending military personnel to Taiwan under whatever pretext constitutes a violation of the one-China principle," a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Thursday, urging the US to correct its "wrongdoing" to avoid "serious damage" to bilateral ties.

While rumors of American Marines being posted in Taipei have circulated for a while, the institute has never acknowledged their presence, until Wednesday.

Comment: See also:

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Eye 2

Creepy Joe Biden jokes about consent in first speech after 7 women accused him of inappropriate touching


RT
Fri, 05 Apr 2019 21:02 UTC
biden
© Reuters / Andreas Gebert
Obama's VP Joe Biden, mulling whether to run for president in 2020, has made his first public appearance after a number of women accused him of touching them inappropriately. In it, Biden attempted a joke about consent.

On stage at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers' conference in Washington, DC, "creepy uncle Joe" Biden, as he is known among his detractors, hugged the union's president Lonnie Stephenson.

"I just want you to know I had permission to hug Lonnie," he said.

"By the way, he gave me permission to touch him," he said to drive the intended hilarity home later, as he shook hands with some children.

Not everyone found it funny.

Comment: You also know someone is sincere in their apology, and has a conscience, when they make a crass joke about it a few days later. This guy is very likely a pedophile.

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Light Sabers

Tulsi Gabbard: Trump is 'for socialism' ... but only when it comes to funding US military industry


RT
Fri, 05 Apr 2019 20:59 UTC
trump and tulsi
© Global Look Press / Ron Sachs
US President Donald Trump, who has been relentlessly bashing everything linked to what he sees as 'socialism,' is himself no stranger to using socialist principles to support the US arms industry, Tulsi Gabbard has claimed.

One could hardly suspect Trump of being a socialist in disguise. After all, the US president has emerged as one of the most ardent critics of the leftist ideological platform. Just recently, he announced he would "go into the war with some socialists," while apparently referring to his political opponents from the Democratic Party.

But the president also seems to be quite keen on borrowing some socialist ideas when it fits his agenda, at least, according to the congresswoman from Hawaii and Democratic presidential candidate, Tulsi Gabbard, who recently wrote in a tweet that "Trump is for socialism when it comes to taxpayers underwriting military contractors and arms manufacturers."
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Magnify

France and Germany's 'Alliance for Multilateralism' may not be as good as it sounds

Neil Clark
RT
Fri, 05 Apr 2019 20:38 UTC
merkel and macron
© Getty Images / Friedemann Vogel
Germany and France have announced the creation of a new 'Alliance for Multilateralism' to support international cooperation and the UN. Is it a much-needed step to counterbalance the US, or a reaction to the excesses of Trump?

On the one hand you could say it's a sign of Europe's biggest powers finally showing some teeth to the US.

The news that two of America's strongest allies in Europe are forming an 'Alliance for Multilateralism' - which will officially launch in September at the United Nations General Assembly - probably won't go down well in Washington, especially as we're also told that Canada, Japan and Australia have shown interest in joining the initiative.

As cited in Deutsche Welle, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the first objective would be to show that countries that "support multilateralism and support the United Nations remain the majority in the world." US President Donald Trump wasn't mentioned by name, and while both he and his German counterpart Heiko Maas stressed that the initiative wasn't directed against America, it was clear when Le Drian talked about the "consequences of unilateralism and isolationism" who he was really referring to.
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Chess

Saudi Arabia opens consulate in Iraq after absence of nearly 30 years

Qassim Abdul-Zahra
Miami Herald
Thu, 04 Apr 2019 20:22 UTC
Mohamed Alhakim
© HADI MIZBAN AP PHOTO
Iraq Foreign Minister Mohamed Alhakim
Saudi Arabia on Friday reopened a consulate in Baghdad for the first time in nearly 30 years and announced a $1 billion aid package for Iraq, a sign of improving ties between the two neighbors whose relations have been uneasy for years.

The consulate, which will issue visas to Iraqis, was opened at a ceremony in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, during which Iraq's Foreign Minister Mohamed Alhakim raised a green Saudi flag over the building.

Iraqi Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmad Sahhaf said the move was expected to benefit both countries.

"This will reflect positively on pilgrims and investors," he told The Associated Press. He said work was also underway to reopen border crossings between Iraq and its southern neighbor.
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Eye 2

'We did not expect the world to be silent': US military machine continuing to kill civilians with impunity

Darius Shahtahmasebi
RT
Thu, 04 Apr 2019 20:00 UTC
Reaper drone
© Reuters / Omar Sobhani
MQ-9 Reaper drone
The Trump administration, which made promises to rein in Washington's unnecessary wars, has not only expanded the US' covert and lethal drone program, but has taken the covering up of its civilian death toll to a whole new level.

Like most of the battlefields opened more widely under the Obama administration, Donald Trump ramped up airstrikes against the infamous Al-Shabaab terrorist group in Somalia approximately two years ago. And, like most drone wars expanded under Obama and dramatically widened under Trump, the details of this covert assault are continuously swept under the rug, particularly when it comes to civilian casualties.

The Pentagon has openly said that its airstrikes in Somalia have killed zero civilians.

Yet, recently, an Amnesty International investigation into just five of the strikes carried out since March 2017 by both manned and unmanned reaper aircraft found that the strikes resulted in at least 14 civilian deaths, with instances of eight civilian injuries as well. In total, the US has carried out more than 100 strikes in Somalia since 2017.
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