Day 909

matt · July 17, 2019, 9:42pm

1/ The House will vote to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in criminal contempt of Congress for failing to provide documents about the Trump administration's efforts to add a question on citizenship to the 2020 census. Barr and Ross withheld documents that had been subpoenaed by the Oversight and Reform Committee as part of its probe into the origins of the citizenship question. The Trump administration claimed it needed the citizen question to enforce the Voting Rights Act. In May, however, evidence emerged that the question was intended to specifically give an electoral advantage to Republicans and whites. Ross also previously testified before Congress that he added the question "solely" at the request of the Justice Department. It later came out that he'd asked the department to make the request. (Washington Post / NBC News)

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/2019/07/17/day-909/

dragonfly9 · July 17, 2019, 10:19pm

Vote happening now…Barr and Ross in contempt!!!
Dem 229 R’s 198 1 yes R 1 yes Independent

Vote 230 YES 198 NO

Looks like the dems will get it.

Windthin · July 17, 2019, 11:01pm

Trump said he’d talk when Iran was ready to; now Iran is ready to, and Trump is busy being racist and Pompeo is “skeptical” (read: still wants to invade, so this fails to fit his agenda)

Windthin · July 17, 2019, 11:22pm

House votes to hold AG Barr and Commerce chief Ross in criminal contempt over census

Wilbur Ross derided the effort as nothing but “political theater” and “silly.”

Windthin · July 18, 2019, 3:33pm

Democrats Issue Warnings Against Viral Russia-Based Face-Morphing App

Sen. Chuck Schumer has called for a federal investigation into the Russia-based company FaceApp over what he says are potential national security and privacy risks to millions of Americans.

It notes this in the article too,

"In many cases, O’Sullivan said, the public doesn’t find out what information is being collected about them until we see personal data revealed through Freedom of Information Act requests.

This month, as NPR has reported, researchers received records through one such request to find that Immigration and Customs Enforcement mines a massive database of driver’s license photos in facial recognition efforts that may be used to target undocumented immigrants. Researchers have concluded facial recognition technology is biased and imperfect, putting innocent people at risk."

I don’t begin to know what to say about this one, but I think that horrible high-pitched sound in my head might be me screaming.

Times Investigation: Trump administration has gutted programs aimed at detecting weapons of mass destruction

dragonfly9 · July 18, 2019, 3:33pm

No surprises here…Epstein denied bail

NEW YORK — Multimillionaire and registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein will remain jailed while he awaits trial on new allegations that he sexually abused children, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman announced the decision at a hearing, siding with prosecutors after they and defense attorneys traded arguments for more than a week about whether Epstein could be released to some sort of home confinement.

dragonfly9 · July 18, 2019, 3:37pm

Be prepared for the Michael Cohen papers today

Michael Cohen bought the silence of Stormy Daniels after a flurry of phone calls between Donald Trump, Hope Hicks and executives at AMI in the heat of the 2016 election, according to newly unsealed FBI documents.

Federal prosecutors on Thursday released hundreds of pages detailing how the president’s former fixer illegally paid hush money to Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal who both were prepared to publicly say before Election Day that Trump had cheated on his wife with them. Instead, they were silenced through six-figure sums paid out of Cohen’s pockets.

A federal judge ordered the documents to be released after Manhattan federal prosecutors told a court it closed its investigation into the Trump Organization and whether it had any criminal liability for Cohen’s hush-money payouts. Cohen plead guilty in 2018 to campaign-finance violations in connection with payoffs. The judge said the documents were “a matter of national importance” and added that “it is time that every American has an opportunity to scrutinize the materials.”

Windthin · July 18, 2019, 4:23pm

Apparently Hope Hicks was in on it also.

Windthin · July 18, 2019, 4:27pm

OMG

Trump’s racist screed against Omar was scripted and came off the teleprompter: CNN’s Camerota

matt · August 2, 2019, 4:27pm

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dragonfly9 · September 29, 2020, 12:41am

Some revelations on the Cohen papers - Trump was fully involved with Stormy Daniels squashing-her-story.

Note: Reporters are discussing
More discussions on whether Barr has stopped SDNY to further pursue this campaign finance violation by closing out that case.

More to come.

NEW YORK (AP) — Court records show that in the days leading up to the 2016 election, President Donald Trump spoke with aides rushing to squash stories about alleged affairs he had.

Search warrants unsealed Thursday shed new light on the president’s role as his campaign scrambled to respond to media inquiries about hush-money paid to two women who said they had affairs with Trump.

U.S. District Judge William Pauley ordered the materials unsealed this week after prosecutors said they had concluded their investigation into a scheme intended to protect Trump’s reputation as he ran for president.