WTF Community

Day 853

1/ Nancy Pelosi said she believes Trump is "engaged in a cover-up" after Trump abruptly ended a meeting about infrastructure with Democratic leaders. "We believe that the president of the United States is engaged in a cover-up," Pelosi told reporters. after the meeting ended. "A cover-up. And that was the nature of the meeting." Trump later responded to Pelosi's comments at a surprise press conference in the Rose Garden. "I don't do cover-ups," Trump said, and declared that he would refuse to work with Democrats until they stop investigating him. "I want to do infrastructure," Trump said. "I want to do it more than you want to do it. I’d be really good at that - that’s what I do. But you know what? You can’t do it under these circumstances. So get these phony investigations over with." (NBC News / Axios / Reuters / CNBC / ABC News)


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/2019/05/22/day-853/
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Happy Wednesday, yes it’s only Wednesday.

Deutsche Bank blames a software bug for its supposed lax money laundering controls. :joy: Good one guys!

Deutsche Bank acknowledged on Wednesday that it had used faulty software to screen customer transactions for suspicious activity, another blow to the lender’s reputation as top executives prepare to face restive shareholders at its annual meeting.

Already under fire for lax money-laundering controls, the bank confirmed the essence of a report in Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper that revealed software problems in its efforts to curb such activity. The bank maintained that no suspicious transactions had slipped through as a result.

“Deutsche Bank is working on correcting the error as quickly as possible and is in close contact with the regulators,” the bank said in a statement.

Coming after Deutsche Bank’s share price reached an all-time low this week, the newspaper report has helped fuel an extraordinary level of shareholder anger even by the standards of the perpetually troubled lender.

There is a movement among investors to vote on a measure expressing a lack of confidence in bank management at the annual meeting on Thursday. Paul Achleitner, the chairman, is expected to survive with the help of several influential shareholders, but he is likely to face pressure to step down before his term’s scheduled end in 2022.

Deutsche Bank has faced repeated accusations that its lax scrutiny of customers made it a party to money laundering.

This week The New York Times reported that anti-money-laundering specialists at the bank recommended in 2016 and 2017 that multiple transactions involving legal entities controlled by Donald J. Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, [be reported to a federal financial-crime watchdog.](Deutsche Bank Staff Saw Suspicious Activity in Trump and Kushner Accounts - The New York Times)

But Deutsche Bank, which has lent billions of dollars to the entities controlled by Mr. Trump and Mr. Kushner, never filed such reports.

In November, prosecutors, federal agents, police officers and tax authorities searched [Deutsche Bank headquarters in Frankfurt](Deutsche Bank Offices Are Searched in Money Laundering Investigation - The New York Times) as part of an investigation into whether bank employees had helped customers use offshore tax havens to transfer money obtained illegally.

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:eyes: click to watch video :point_down:

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This site is pretty profane, but it notes that apparently he had his Rose Garden speech planned out from the start, though neither Democrats nor the press were aware of this. Apparently he never intended to have a real meeting with Schumer and Pelosi, but instead to go out and grandstand to confused press summoned at the last minute:

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Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s longtime lawyer, was in constant contact with — and received thousands of dollars from — a Russia-linked firm starting on Election Day in 2016, newly unsealed court documents show.

The transactions soon caught the attention of investigators, as the FBI zeroed in on what it considered to be suspicious emails and bank transfers from Cohen’s accounts — including his Trump Organization email account. With special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation in full swing, authorities filed a series of search warrants between July and November 2017 to investigate whether the exchanges violated foreign agent laws and constituted wire fraud and money laundering.

[…]

Emails obtained by the FBI and described in the search warrant for the first time, however, show that Vekselberg met with Cohen and Intrater 11 days before Trump’s inauguration. At that gathering, the three discussed a lobbying group based in Moscow that promotes Russian business interests, called the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs.

And according to the court documents, Cohen also remained in touch with Vekselberg and scheduled a meeting with him in March 2017 at Renova headquarters — while Columbus Nova was still paying Cohen.

The meeting was of interest to lawmakers because Cohen had met in late January of that year with his longtime acquaintance Felix Sater and the Ukrainian lawmaker Andrei Artemenko to discuss a Russia-Ukraine “peace plan” that would involve lifting sanctions on Russia. The FBI wanted to know whether Vekselberg was paying Cohen to promote the sanctions-lifting plan, which would have benefited the Russian oligarch. Vekselberg has been doing business in the United States since at least 1990, when he co-founded the conglomerate Renova Group as a joint U.S.-Russian venture.

No evidence has emerged of such a quid-pro-quo, and Columbus Nova has denied participating in anything related to a Ukranian peace plan. But the FBI did reveal some new details about the episode in the search warrants unsealed on Wednesday.

According to phone records investigators reviewed, “a call was exchanged” between Cohen and soon-to-be White House national security adviser Michael Flynn on Jan. 11, 2017, just days before Trump’s inauguration. A New York Times report said Cohen had delivered the sanctions-lifting plan to Flynn, but Cohen later told lawmakers that he threw the plan in the trash and never delivered it to the White House.

The FBI also found that Cohen continued speaking to Sater, a Russian-born businessman who helped Cohen negotiate a Trump Tower Moscow deal during the election, well after the peace plan meeting. Records they obtained showed approximately 20 calls exchanged between them from Jan. 5, 2017 to Feb. 20, 2017.

Sater on Wednesday told POLITICO he couldn’t remember the exact substance of the calls but said they likely had to do with the New York Times’ story about the “peace plan” meeting, which was published on Feb. 19.

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WOW…

T always projects the truth…that is SOMETHING.

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It’s probably just word salad but wow what a moment, huh?!

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Exactly. It’s a nice take on things, and a good read, but not something I’d cite from. heh

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Another site I am growing to love for their snark but wouldn’t necessarily cite is McSweeney’s. Two examples why:

Sites like this are fun to pass around and read, though, and CAN act as jumping-off points for searches for more news-oriented sites with articles on the topics they are presenting.

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18-counts…superseding indictment

Federal prosecutors on Thursday accused WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange of violating the Espionage Act, bringing against him a new, 18-count indictment alleging he unlawfully obtained and disclosed national defense information.

The new charges dramatically raise the stakes of the case both for Assange and the news media, raising questions about the limits of the First Amendment and protections for publishers of classified information.

Prosecutors allege Assange worked with a former Army intelligence analyst to obtain and disseminate classified information — conduct of which many traditional reporters might also be accused. The U.S. government, though, sought to distinguish the anti-secrecy advocate from a traditional reporter.

“Julian Assange is no journalist,” said John Demers, the Justice Department’s Assistant Attorney General for National Security. He said Assange engaged in “explicit solicitation of classified information.”

Assange was previously indicted by a U.S. grand jury over his interactions in 2010 with Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst who shared hundreds of thousands of classified war logs and diplomatic papers with WikiLeaks. If convicted, Assange faced a maximum of five years in prison under that conspiracy charge. Each alleged violation of the Espionage Act carries a potential ten-year prison sentence.

But the new charges against Assange carry potential consequences not just for him, but for others who publish classified information, and could change the delicate balance in U.S. law between press freedom and government secrecy. They also raises fresh questions about whether the British courts will view the new charges as justified and worthy of extradition.

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Docs: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6024848/5-23-19-US-Assange-Superseding-Indictment.pdf

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I wouldn’t cite from Wonkette but I’m happy they exist. :grin:

Deutsche Bank just published the line of code containing the bug. Here it is.

IF last letter of day of week = Y then GOTO do not check for money laundering

:wink:

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Love Wonkette! :hugs:

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I do also, though I know many wouldn’t consider it a normal news site. heh.

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