Yes, the NY Post is very Murdoch and they will run anything pro-Trump. And Trump campaign is desperate to stir the pot, drop ‘October surprises.’
Saw that others have been responding to this fabrication regarding all these characters- False facts being conjured up to slam Biden, Hunter etc. and what caused the Impeachment trial - digging for dirt on Biden.
This day is going to be a doozy…so much on so many fronts. 
Adding
Oh, true. I am watching the whole thing explode, and the whole story is ludicrous. The claim is that a Delaware store owner found the info on a laptop with a Biden sticker dropped off at his store. There are a LOT of holes in the story, and while the whole right crows over it the left and legitimate media are tearing it apart for the shoddy Rudy scam it is.
And look here, here is a pro-Trump site literally advertising Rudy and Steve Bannon about to expound on this idiocy.
All the politicians are throwing junk at each other…mostly R’s
Sen Cornyn files a shot of Sen Booker speaking with Sen Blumenthal, from 2018? I think.
And suggests that the Dems are not wearing masks.
In an interview with Newsmax TV that will air Wednesday night on “ Greg Kelly Reports,” President Donald J. Trump is refusing to confirm whether Attorney General William Barr will remain in his position should he manage a second term win.
Trump reportedly said, it’s “too early” to determine his staffing question surrounding Barr and added, “I’m not happy with all of the evidence I have, I can tell you that. I’m not happy.”
The “I’m not happy” comment stemmed from a report earlier Wednesday in which U.S. Attorney John Bash found no wrongdoing regarding the Russia probe involing the Obama administration.
“Personally, I think it’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. It’s a disgrace,” Trump told Kelly. “I think it’s really a horrible thing that they’re allowed to get away — when they say no indictments, they actually said no indictments before the election. I had to go through elections with all those clouds over my head. But they don’t because the Republicans are so nice. Personally, I think it’s too bad. I think it’s too bad, they’re guilty as hell.”
A larger probe is being led by U.S. Attorney for Connecticut John Durham, however, results are not expected to be made public until after the 2020 presidential election.
More on the Hunter Biden thing:
Just one more bit of explaining for this incredulous story…
The Washington Post: Fact Checker: An explainer on Hunter Biden’s alleged laptop
The New York Post on Wednesday published an article based on emails purportedly obtained from a laptop that Hunter Biden, the son of former vice president Joe Biden, had supposedly left behind for repair in a Delaware shop in April 2019. Here’s a brief explainer to help readers evaluate its significance. We will continue to update this article as more information becomes available.
What’s new?
The key thrust of the article is that an April 17, 2015, email suggests Hunter Biden arranged for a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm to meet with the then-vice president when he was in charge of U.S. policy toward Ukraine. “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure,” reads the email, supposedly written by Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma.
Why would that be important?
Hunter Biden in 2014 became a board member of Burisma, which news reports at the time suggested was a conflict of interest, given his father’s position. The former vice president has said he did not discuss Burisma with his son. The email is not specific about the nature of the meeting and is written in a way that it could be talking about a possible future meeting. Nevertheless, Republicans have long sought to tie Joe Biden to his son’s business interests, even launching a Senate investigation, so any indication that the vice president helped his son could be politically damaging. The New York Post claimed it was a “smoking-gun email.”
How do we know the email is authentic?
We do not. The New York Post published PDF printouts of several emails allegedly taken from the laptop, but for the “smoking-gun” email, it shows only a photo made the day before the story was posted, according to Thomas Rid, the author of “Active Measures,” a book on disinformation. “There is no header information, no metadata.” The Washington Post has not been able to independently verify or authenticate these emails, as requests to make the laptop hard drive available for inspection have not been granted. The New York Post said it obtained the material from former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, a personal lawyer to President Trump.
There also is no indication that Hunter Biden replied to the email.
More
Barr has fallen even in T’s eyes and suggests that Barr would not be a 2nd term AG.
But let’s pray it would never get this far
And this Federal Prosecutor, Philip Halpern is leaving the DOJ because of Barr
President Trump has long relied on repetition to spread his falsehoods into the national discourse. As the whistleblower complaint about his dealings with Ukraine has led to a possible impeachment crisis, he has repeated previously fact-checked claims about former vice president Joe Biden while introducing new ones. We’ve been trying to keep up at The Fact Checker, doling out lots of Pinocchios, but our reports have been scattered over several days.
This is one of those complex stories that consume Washington but frequently confuse ordinary Americans. Trump appears to be counting on that confusion to offer a fog of claims and allegations to make it appear as if Biden had done something wrong. So here’s a quick guide to Trump’s statements — and the truth.
False: Biden pushed out a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating his son
Trump has falsely claimed that Biden in 2015 pressured the Ukrainian government to fire Viktor Shokin, the top Ukrainian prosecutor, because he was investigating Ukraine’s largest private gas company, Burisma, which had added Biden’s son, Hunter, to its board in 2014.
There are two big problems with this claim: One, Shokin was not investigating Burisma or Hunter Biden, and two, Shokin’s ouster was considered a diplomatic victory.
Biden was among the many Western officials who pressed for the removal of Shokin because he actually was not investigating the corruption endemic to the country. Indeed, he was not investigating Burisma at the time. In September 2015, then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt publicly criticized Shokin’s office for thwarting a British money-laundering probe into Burisma’s owner, Mykola Zlochevsky.
“Shokin was not investigating. He didn’t want to investigate Burisma,” Daria Kaleniuk, of the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Action Center, told The Washington Post in July. “And Shokin was fired not because he wanted to do that investigation, but quite to the contrary, because he failed that investigation.”
In a 2018 appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations, Biden bragged about his role in Shokin’s removal, saying he had withheld $1 billion in loan guarantees as leverage to force action. But Biden was carrying out a policy developed at the State Department and coordinated with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.
The Ukrainian prosecutor was regarded as a failure, and “Joe Biden’s efforts to oust Shokin were universally praised,” said Anders Aslund, a Swedish economist heavily involved in Eastern European market reforms. Getting rid of Shokin was considered the linchpin of reform efforts, but U.S. officials had a list of changes the government needed to make before it could obtain another loan guarantee.
In December 2015, Biden traveled to Kiev and decried the “cancer of corruption” in the country in a speech to the parliament. “The Office of the General Prosecutor desperately needs reform,” he noted. Shokin was removed from office three months later, and Biden announced April 15 that the loan guarantee would go forward; the agreement between the United States and Ukraine was signed June 3.
One can certainly raise questions about Hunter Biden’s judgment in joining Burisma’s board at a time his father had a high-profile role in working with Ukraine’s government. But by continuing to claim that Biden “did” something for his son, Trump persists in spreading a false narrative about a diplomatic maneuver hailed at the time as a step toward reducing corruption in Ukraine.
False: Hunter Biden made a killing on a China deal
At various times Trump has claimed Hunter Biden “made millions of dollars from China” or “walks out of China with $1.5 billion in a fund” after hitching a ride with his father on Air Force Two. But there is no evidence to support those statements.
In December 2013, Hunter Biden and one of his daughters flew from Japan to China with Joe Biden on Air Force Two as the vice president embarked on a diplomatic mission.
Twelve days after he flew to Beijing, Hunter Biden joined an advisory board of a fund called BHR Partners, which had announced it would try to raise $1.5 billion. The New Yorker magazine reported that during the trip Hunter Biden arranged for his father to shake hands with Jonathan Li, who ran a Chinese private-equity fund and was one of the partners who had formed BHR.
But while Joe Biden was vice president, Hunter Biden was only on the board of the advisory firm that did not directly invest, but instead advised those who did. George Mesires, a lawyer for Hunter Biden, said he only took an equity stake in 2017, after Joe Biden was no longer vice president.
Mesires told The Fact Checker that the investment management company “was capitalized from various sources with a total of 30 million RMB [Chinese Renminbi], or about $4.2 million, not $1.5 billion.” Because Biden acquired a 10 percent minority interest, his “capital commitment is approximately $420,000,” Mesires said.
“To date, Mr. Biden has not received any return or compensation on account of this investment or his position on the board of directors,” Mesires added.
False: Biden lied about talking to his son
After the reports on Hunter Biden’s business deals emerged, Joe Biden told reporters: “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.”
Trump claimed that this was a lie because “he’s already said he spoke to his son.” But Biden had not. Instead, Trump appeared to be referring to a line in the New Yorker profile: “As Hunter recalled, his father discussed Burisma with him just once: ‘Dad said, “I hope you know what you are doing,” and I said, “I do.” ’”
That’s not much of a discussion. In any case, Biden never said he spoke to his son, as Trump claimed he did.
False: Democratic senators also threatened Ukraine’s aid
Trump claimed that three Democratic senators — Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), Richard J. Durbin (Ill.) and Robert Menendez (N.J.) — “ implied that their support for U.S. assistance to Ukraine was at stake and that if they didn’t do the right thing they wouldn’t get any assistance.” He later referred to “senators that threatened him with votes and no money coming into Ukraine if they do things.”
Trump suggested this was the “real deal,” unlike allegations that he held up military aid to force the Ukrainian government to investigate the Bidens.
Trump is referring to a letter written in 2018, and it does not say what he claims.
The letter, written to the special prosecutor at the time, Yuriy Lutsenko, expressed concern about a New York Times report that Ukraine had stopped cooperating with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election to avoid upsetting Trump. The letter does not threaten a loss of aid, though it notes that the Times article said that the freezing of cooperation was motivated by a worry that Trump would cut off aid. (The article was titled: “Ukraine, Seeking U.S. Missiles, Halted Cooperation with Mueller Investigation.”)
The letter noted the signers have supported efforts to build Ukraine’s democracy and expressed “disappointment” that some lawmakers in Kiev were trying “to avoid the ire of President Trump.” The senators then ask a series of questions, seeking to clarify whether the Times report was correct and whether the Trump administration had encouraged the government not to cooperate with Mueller.
Lutsenko never responded. Since the letter was sent, the three senators have voted for nearly $870 million in additional aid to Ukraine, with Leahy and Durbin (members of the Senate Appropriations Committee) voting in committee on Sept. 26 for an additional $448 million in fiscal 2020, an increase over 2018 and 2019.
An inbroligio between Steve Scully, Anthony Scaramucci and Steve’s twitter account where Steve suggests he was hacked, and that was a lie. Just a crazy, crazy time…and another one pushed over the edge of insanity? because T messed with him.
I will tend to agree with Rick Wilson’s book title - ‘Everything that Touches Trump Dies’.
NEW YORK (AP) — C-SPAN suspended its political editor Steve Scully indefinitely Thursday after he admitted to lying about his Twitter feed being hacked when he was confronted about a questionable exchange with former Trump aide Anthony Scaramucci.
The news came on the day of what was supposed to be a career highlight for the 30-year C-SPAN veteran. Scully was to moderate the second debate between President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden, which was canceled after Trump would not agree to a virtual format because of his COVID-19 diagnosis.
A week ago, after Trump had criticized him as a “never Trumper,” Scully tweeted “@Scaramucci should I respond to Trump.” Scaramucci, a former Trump communications director and now a critic of the president, advised Scully to ignore him.
Scully said that when he saw his tweet had created a controversy, “I falsely claimed that my Twitter account had been hacked.”
He had been frustrated by Trump’s comments and several weeks of criticism on social media and conservative news outlets about his role as moderator, including attacks directed at his family, he said.
“These were both errors in judgement for which I am totally responsible for,” Scully said. “I apologize.”
He said he let down his colleagues at C-SPAN, fellow news professionals and the debate commission. “I ask for their forgiveness as I try to move forward in a moment of reflection and disappointment in myself,” he said.
C-SPAN said Scully confessed to lying about the hack on Wednesday.
Trump is denying federal aid to California again.
T reversed his position on helping California fires and giving emergency aid.
The Washington Post: Top Stories | Trump administration rejects, then approves, emergency aid for California fires, including biggest blaze in state history
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — Fueled by extreme heat and dry, windy conditions, wildfires ravaged California in September, blazing through almost 1.9 million acres, destroying nearly 1,000 homes and killing at least three people. One wildfire, the Creek Fire, became the largest single inferno in California history and grew so fierce it spun up fire tornadoes with 125 mph winds.
On Friday, the request for federal assistance to help pay for the recovery from a half dozen of those fires spun up a tornado of its own. Like the proverbial tempest, the storm over the money had been contained in a tea pot by the day’s end.
The day began with news that the Trump administration had refused to grant California’s emergency declaration that would make hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding available for areas devastated by the Creek Fire and five others. Federal officials said the most recent application did not meet the criteria for federal relief.
But President Trump reversed the decision a few hours later after a direct appeal from Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) in a midday phone call. The declaration was approved, the hand-wringing over.
“Just got off the phone with President Trump who has approved our Major Disaster Declaration request,” Newsom wrote in a statement Friday afternoon. “Grateful for his quick response.”
.
Rudy and Bannon are now up to THREE Hunter Biden laptops they claim to have possession of.
###HOW CONVENIENT!
Rudy Giuliani has dismissed concerns that his latest anti-Biden smears are part of a foreign-election interference plot, but a Ukrainian lawmaker recently deemed an “active Russian agent” by the U.S. Treasury is now touting further details to come.
Andrii Derkach, one of the key players in Giuliani’s years-long dirt-digging mission against Joe Biden in Ukraine, piggybacked on the former New York City mayor’s latest Biden smears—supposedly involving a forgotten laptop. Derkach claimed on Facebook that there is a “second laptop” with evidence of corruption involving the Biden family.
The claim appears to muddy the waters around Giuliani’s latest “smoking gun” charge against Hunter Biden. He says they came to light after an obscure Delaware computer repair shop owner found Biden’s laptop in his possession and copied the hard drive before alerting federal authorities and inexplicably Giuliani’s own lawyer. Now, with Derkach jumping in with claims of a “second laptop,” that would mean private computer contents allegedly connected to Hunter Biden have somehow found their way into the hands of three separate parties: A media empire controlled by a Chinese billionaire who’s tight with Steve Bannon; a random Delaware shop owner who is outspoken in his support of Trump; and Derkach, a Ukrainian conspiracy theory peddler who studied at Moscow’s FSB academy.
Derkach wrote on Facebook about the questionable New York Post report that relied on unverified images of emails provided by Trump allies to supposedly prove a corruption scheme by Biden and his son involving Ukrainian gas company Burisma. He then said there was a second laptop, which was used by “two representatives for the interests of [Burisma founder Mykola] Zlochevsky.”
“That laptop was given to Ukrainian law enforcement,” Derkach wrote, adding that the Burisma representatives who used the laptop were now serving as “witnesses in criminal proceedings.” He said the witnesses were ready to testify about an international corruption scheme involving Biden and his son, Hunter, who served on the board of the gas company.
It has already been reported that Russian intelligence agents successfully hacked into Burisma computer networks last year, although it is not clear how much they were able to access and copy.
Despite what Team Trump would have the public believe is a towering mountain of evidence, neither Joe or Hunter Biden have been charged with any wrongdoing, and Ukrainian prosecutors confirmed months ago that they had found no evidence of any crimes.
Derkach is no newbie to the Biden saga. While cozying up to Trump allies like Giuliani during impeachment proceedings, he held repeated press conferences in Kyiv touting purported proof of corruption by the former vice president, and claiming it was not Russia that interfered in the 2016 election, but Ukraine. He also featured prominently in an “exposé” by the Trumpian One America News Network, and met with Giuliani in Kyiv last year as part of their anti-Biden mission. His claims have not held up under scrutiny.
After Derkach was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in September for working as a foreign operative, Giuliani insisted he had not seen “any evidence” to conclusively say whether Derkach was working as a Russian agent or not.
He told The Daily Beast this week that he believed it was a toss up whether his partner in the Biden smearing campaign was an active intelligence operative. “The chance that Derkach is a Russian spy is no better than 50/50,” he said.
But U.S. intelligence officials had begun warning in spring 2019 that Derkach was part of a Russian effort to worm their way into the U.S. presidential election and spread the narrative that Biden and his son were involved in nefarious corruption schemes overseas.
Giuliani’s allegations against Biden have evolved drastically since he first began his attacks on Trump’s then presumed 2020opponent by claiming the former vice president improperly forced out a Ukrainian prosecutor. After numerous “exposés” on Biden’s supposed abuse of power aired on OAN largely failed to gain much traction, Giuliani shifted his focus to Biden’s son, Hunter, who he has now deemed a “national security risk.”
Bizarrely, even Giuliani’s allegations against the younger Biden have pinballed all over the place, from his initial claim that Hunter used access to his father to line his own pockets, to his very personal attacks on his admitted struggles with substance abuse, and, perhaps most desperately, his latest smear that Hunter Biden engaged in “disgusting sexual behavior.”
Seriously, they’re taking propaganda from Paul Blart, Mall Cop.
More on Trump stirring up trouble with domestic terrorists…
https://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article246561383.html
President Trump called on the attorney general on Tuesday to take action against his political opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., over his son’s foreign work, an extraordinary push to use the levers of the federal government to sway an election in its final days.
“We’ve got to get the attorney general to act,” Mr. Trump said on the show “Fox and Friends,” when asked whether he wants to see investigations into unverified information about Mr. Biden and his son Hunter that the president’s personal lawyer claims he recently obtained from Hunter’s laptop.
“He’s got to act. And he’s got to act fast,” Mr. Trump said of Attorney General William P. Barr, calling on him to appoint a special prosecutor or a similar official. “This is major corruption, and this has to be known about before the election. And, by the way, we’re doing very well. We’re going to win the election.”
A spokesman for Mr. Biden declined to comment.
Last week, The New York Post published an unsubstantiated article based on material provided by allies to Mr. Trump claiming that when the elder Biden was vice president in 2015, he met with an adviser to a Ukrainian energy company on whose board Hunter Biden served. Mr. Biden’s campaign rejected the assertion and said his schedule showed no meeting with the adviser.
A call for authorities to take action against a political opponent is remarkable, especially two weeks before a presidential election. A day earlier, Mr. Trump repeatedly called his opponent “a criminal,” using the same word for a reporter he chided for not focusing on the Post story.
The president has repeatedly called on Mr. Barr to intervene in issues since he was confirmed by the Senate.
Mr. Biden is leading or tied with Mr. Trump in nearly every public poll in the battleground states that handed Mr. Trump his 2016 victory.
Mr. Biden has significantly cut into Mr. Trump’s edge on issues like the economy, and the president’s poor performance in handling the pandemic has brought his poll numbers down.
The president made the comments during an interview in which his answers were studded with lies and falsehoods about a range of issues, and in which he criticized the Bidens, the news media and the infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony S. Fauci.
After spending Monday attacking Dr. Fauci, who remains popular in public opinion polls, Mr. Trump claimed Tuesday he was “not at odds” with him, before renewing the attacks.
The president falsely described Dr. Fauci as a “Democrat,” and claimed he was a “good friend” of the family of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York.
“He’s been there for a long time, I leave him there, and he’s been wrong,” Mr. Trump said of Dr. Fauci.
He then accused reporters of favoring Dr. Fauci “because they think he’s against me.”
There is to be a decision from the courts today declaring whether this was a true order from T to declassify the Mueller Report, but Mark Meadows got to clarify it and say, No, he didn’t mean it.
A lot of hand-holding around here.
Buying time for the START NUCLEAR DEAL.
The U.S. and Russia are on the verge of an arms-control deal that would freeze the number of nuclear warheads on each side and extend the New START agreement for a year, a senior Trump administration official said Tuesday.
“We are very, very close to a deal,” the official said. “Now that the Russians have agreed to a warhead freeze, I do not see why we cannot work out the remaining issues in the coming days.”
The Trump administration has been pressing Russia to conclude the agreement before the Nov. 3 U.S. election, a development that would provide President Trump with a diplomatic achievement in the final days of his campaign.
On Friday, the two sides appeared to be at odds over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s proposal that the 2011 New START treaty—which cuts long-range arms and is due to expire in February—be extended unconditionally for a year.
But on Tuesday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said that Moscow also would agree to the longstanding U.S. demand for a warhead freeze for the same period if New START is extended.
The remaining issues to be worked out include verification of the warhead freeze and the definition of a warhead, the U.S. official said.
“We appreciate the Russian Federation’s willingness to make progress on the issue of nuclear arms control,” State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said. “The United States is prepared to meet immediately to finalize a verifiable agreement. We expect Russia to empower its diplomats to do the same.”
The purpose of the deal would be to buy time for a future treaty that would take the place of New START and which the Trump administration says should include China. The politically binding deal currently under negotiation between U.S. and Russian officials, however, wouldn’t specifically mention China, officials on both sides have said.
The deal, proponents of Mr. Trump’s approach say, could also shape expectations for a future treaty under an administration led by Democrat Joe Biden if Mr. Trump loses on Nov. 3.
Marshall Billingslea, the chief U.S. negotiator, was scheduled to brief NATO diplomats Tuesday on prospects for an agreement.
WTF has Betsy DeVos been doing
The hits just keep coming…
Administration officials alarmed by White House push to fast track lucrative 5G spectrum contract, sources say - CNNPolitics