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More Questionable Behavior from Trump, T Admin, DOJ, and R's vs Dems, Press, Justice

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#985

US police and public officials donated to Kyle Rittenhouse, data breach reveals

Officers and officials also donated to fundraisers for far-right activists and fellow officers accused of shooting black Americans

A data breach at a Christian crowdfunding website has revealed that serving police officers and public officials have donated money to fundraisers for accused vigilante murderers, far-right activists, and fellow officers accused of shooting black Americans.

In many of these cases, the donations were attached to their official email addresses, raising questions about the use of public resources in supporting such campaigns.


Proud Boys and other far-right groups raise millions via Christian funding site


Read more

The breach, shared with journalists by transparency group Distributed Denial of Secrets, revealed the details of some donors who had previously attempted to conceal their identities using GiveSendGo’s anonymity feature, but whose identifying details the website preserved.

The beneficiaries of donations from public officials include Kyle Rittenhouse, who stands accused of murdering two leftwing protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last August. Rittenhouse traveled from neighboring Illinois to, by his own account, offer armed protection to businesses during protests over the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

Rittenhouse, who became a cause célèbre across conservative media throughout late 2020, and was even supported by then president Donald Trump, held a fundraiser on GiveSendGo billed as a contribution to his legal defense. According to data from the site, he raised $586,940 between 27 August last year and 7 January .

Among the donors were several associated with email addresses traceable to police and other public officials.

One donation for $25, made on 3 September last year, was made anonymously, but associated with the official email address for Sgt William Kelly, who currently serves as the executive officer of internal affairs in the Norfolk police department in Virginia.

That donation also carried a comment, reading: “God bless. Thank you for your courage. Keep your head up. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

The comment continued: “Every rank and file police officer supports you. Don’t be discouraged by actions of the political class of law enforcement leadership.”

Another Rittenhouse donor using an official email address was Craig Shepherd, who public records show is a paramedic in Utah. This donor gave $10 to Rittenhouse on 30 August.

Donations also came to Rittenhouse associated with official email addresses for Keith Silvers, and employee of the city of Huntsville, Alabama, and another $100 was associated with the official address of Michael Crosley, an engineer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a body which is charged with maintaining the US’s nuclear weapons stockpile.

Meanwhile, several Wisconsin police officers donated to a fundraiser, “Support Rusten Sheskey”, held for the Kenosha police department officer whose shooting of a black man, Jacob Blake, led to the protests that drew Rittenhouse to the city.

Two $20 donations to Sheskey’s fund were associated with email addresses of a pair of lieutenants in Green Bay, Wisconsin’s police department. One, given under the name, “GBPD Officer”, was tied to an address associated with Chad Ramos, a training lieutenant in the department; another anonymous donation was associated with Keith A Gehring, who is listed as a school resources officer lieutenant.

Another donation to Sheskey was associated with the official email address of officer Pat Gainer of the Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin police department. Given under the screen name “PPPD Motor 179”, the donation also carried the comment: “Stay strong brother.”

About 32 more donations, totaling more than $5,000, came to Sheskey from private email addresses associated with Kenosha officers, but under badge numbers rather than names.

More anonymous donations on the site came from city employees of Houston, Texas, who were objecting to the actions of the then police chief, Art Acevedo, who fired four Houston police officers after they shot and killed a man, Nicolas Chavez, who was on his knees, and in an apparent mental health crisis.

One anonymous donation of $100 was associated with the official address of that city’s fire chief, Samuel Peña, who has himself faced recent employee revolts over cost-cutting, but who has been publicly supportive of Acevedo, describing him in a tweet as a “brother & partner in Public Safety” in March, when Acevedo announced that he would be taking up an appointment as Miami’s chief of police.

Another anonymous donation of $400 was attributed in site data to an email linked to Chris Andersen and carried the comment: “I think that Chief Acevedo is part of the ‘unrecognized form of police corruption’ that Chris Anderson [sic] wrote about in his book’. Hang in there guys!!!”

Andersen’s book, The Sniper: Hunting A Serial Killer – A True Story, purports to tell the story of the hunt for a serial killer by Houston police at a time when “the United States was experiencing a wave of civil discontent regarding the unwarranted shootings (either true or perceived) of black men by law enforcement (the Black Lives Matter era)”.

In his Amazon bio, Andersen describes himself as a “39-year veteran of the Houston police department”, and as having worked in roles including homicide detective, supervising a Swat team and internal affairs.

In an email, the Green Bay police chief, Andrew Smith, wrote of the donations that “we are looking into the matter”, but added on Sheskey’s actions that his department “does not take a position on other agencies use of force”.

Lynda Seaver, director of public affairs at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, wrote in an email that Michael Crosley had made “an honest mistake”, and had “never intended to use his Lab email on this matter”.

All other agencies and individuals who were included in the Guardian’s reporting did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Guardian previously reported on the use of the site for fundraising purposes for far-right groups like the Proud Boys, who have been banned from other crowdfunding platforms after violent incidents including the alleged participation of members of the group in an attack on the United States Capitol building on 6 January.

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#986

MTG has been stopped…good.

Conservative Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is scrapping the planned launch of her “America First” caucus after receiving blowback from leaders in her own party, despite confirming through a spokesperson on Friday that the caucus would launch.

Nick Dyer, Greene’s spokesperson, told CNN in an email on Saturday afternoon the Georgia Republican is not "launching anything."

“The Congresswoman wants to make clear that she is not launching anything. This was an early planning proposal and nothing was agreed to or approved,” he said in an email to CNN , referring to a flier promoting the caucus, obtained by Punchbowl News, that used inflammatory rhetoric.

He added that “she didn’t approve that language and has no plans to launch anything.”

This is a reversal from Friday, when her office said she would launch the caucus “very soon.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene launching ‘America First’ caucus pushing for ‘Anglo-Saxon political tradition’

“Be on the look out for the release of the America First Caucus platform when it’s announced to the public very soon,” Dyer said in a statement to CNN Friday.

Greene in a series of tweets Saturday afternoon also claimed that the staff-level draft proposal of her “America First” caucus is “from an outside group that I hadn’t read.” She also accused the media of creating “false narratives” and focusing on race to “divide the American people with hate through identity politics.”

Greene suggested in her tweets she plans to move forward with advocating for former President Donald Trump’s America First agenda.

The flier promoting the new caucus calls for a “common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions” and pushes a series of conspiracy theories about election integrity.

The flier also outlined a nativist argument warning that “mass immigration” poses a threat to “the long-term existential future of America as a unique country with a unique culture and a unique identity.”

Congressional caucuses are voluntary groups usually made up of lawmakers seeking to advance certain policy agendas. While the groups operate outside of the formal congressional legislative structure, many have found success influencing debate and amplifying their shared policy prescriptions.

On Friday, amid news reports of the caucus, Dyer complained about the initial draft of the flier being leaked but confirmed to CNN in a statement that plans were in the works to form the group, which he said would be “announced to the public very soon.”

The reversal from her office comes a day after top House Republican Kevin McCarthy indirectly referenced the congresswoman’s new caucus, tweeting, "The Republican Party is the party of Lincoln & the party of more opportunity for all Americans—not nativist dog whistles."

And GOP conference chair Liz Cheney, the No. 3 House Republican, responded to the reporting about the new caucus from Greene in a tweet.

“Republicans believe in equal opportunity, freedom, and justice for all. We teach our children the values of tolerance, decency and moral courage,” she wrote. “Racism, nativism, and anti-Semitism are evil. History teaches we all have an obligation to confront & reject such malicious hate.”

Embattled GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, who is under federal investigation over allegations involving sex trafficking and prostitution, tweeted Friday, “I’m proud to join @mtgreenee in the #AmericaFirst Caucus. We will end wars, stop illegal immigration & promote trade that is fair to American workers. This is just a hit piece from the America Last crowd in Big Media, Big Tech & Big Government.”

GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois said that he was “disgusted” following initial reports of the new caucus, and on Friday said that anyone who joins the caucus should have their committee assignments stripped and be expelled from Republican conference participation.

“While we can’t prevent someone from calling themselves Republican, we can loudly say they don’t belong to us,” he wrote on Twitter.

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#987

I don’t trust this woman at all. Bet this moves forward…

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#988

Yes, I agree. She is two-faced and menacing - and stops at nothing.

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#989

Five months after the presidential election, the Supreme Court said on Monday that it won’t take up a case from several Republicans challenging changes to election rules in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.

The unsigned ruling sends yet another message that the court’s majority has no interest in relitigating the last election.

Before Monday, the justices had already declined several requests to dive into one of the most litigious elections in history, denying petitions from then-President Donald Trump and other Republicans seeking to overturn election result in multiple states President Joe Biden won.

There were no noted dissents.

“Once again, the court’s involvement in the 2020 election is going out with a whimper, not a bang,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law.

The case was brought by a former Republican congressional candidate, Jim Bognet, and four individual voters who argued the state high court exceeded its authority when it ordered the expansion of ballot deadlines amidst the pandemic.

It was a hotly debated issue in the weeks before and after the election as some Republicans charged that state courts might not have the final say on their state voting rules.

The argument goes that the Constitution gives the state legislature – not the governor or state courts – the final word on elections and the manner by which states choose electors. Critics of the so called “independent state legislature” doctrine say that “legislature” is a broad term including commissions given legislative powers by the state constitution.

After the election, Trump invited leaders of the Pennsylvania legislature to the White House as he continued to make baseless claims that widespread voter fraud had occurred, although no court agreed. Biden won the state by roughly 82,000 votes.

The 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals earlier dismissed this case holding that the challengers did not have the legal right to bring the case. The challengers wanted the Supreme Court to reverse that decision and hold that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court usurped the Pennsylvania General Assembly’s authority when it changed voting rules prescribed by the legislature.

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#990

The Washington Post: Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick died from strokes one day after Jan. 6 riot, D.C. chief medical examiner rules

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/brian-sicknick-death-strokes/2021/04/19/36d2d310-617e-11eb-afbe-9a11a127d146_story.html.

Capitol Police officer Brian D. Sicknick suffered two strokes and died of natural causes a day after he confronted rioters at the Jan. 6 insurrection, the District’s chief medical examiner has ruled.

The ruling, released Monday, likely will make it difficult for prosecutors to pursue homicide charges in the officer’s death. Two men are accused of assaulting Sicknick by spraying a powerful chemical irritant at him during the siege.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Francisco J. Diaz, the medical examiner, said the autopsy found no evidence the 42-year-old officer suffered an allergic reaction to chemical irritants, which Diaz said would have caused Sicknick’s throat to quickly seize. Diaz also said there was no evidence of internal or external injuries

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#991
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#992

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/arizona-recount-trump-fraud-claims/

Arizona judge orders pause in Republican-backed recount of ballots cast in Maricopa County last fall

A judge in Arizona Friday ordered a temporary pause in an extensive effort to recount ballots from the November election hours after the process began, citing concerns about whether a private vendor hired to review nearly 2.1 million ballots cast in the state’s largest county is complying with state laws governing election security.

The recount of the ballots from Maricopa County is being conducted by Republicans in the state Senate to examine unsubstantiated claims that fraud or errors tainted President Biden’s win.

Election officials and the courts have found no merit to such allegations, and the GOP-led county board of supervisors has objected to the recount.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Christopher Coury on Friday paused the audit beginning at 5 p.m. Friday until Monday at noon in response to a suit filed by the state Democratic Party and the county’s only Democratic supervisor, who argued that the audit violates Arizona rules governing the confidentiality and security of ballots and voting equipment.

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#993

A wide and bipartisan swath of Congress voted to recognize the Armenian Genocide finally, the event that GAVE us the term “genocide.”

Then Erdogan visited and Trump vetoed that.

Now Biden is recognizing it, and personally told Erdogan so.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/04/22/bidens-bold-move-recognize-armenian-genocide/

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#994

What are the odds that something strange is going on…particularly just as T leaves office? Perhaps the DOD was forced to sell off multiples of the IP addresses according to how they were instructed to do…but seeing a FL address and the timing of it, raises a huge question mark and a WTF.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/04/24/pentagon-internet-address-mystery/

While the world was distracted with President Donald Trump leaving office on Jan. 20, an obscure Florida company discreetly announced to the world’s computer networks a startling development: It now was managing a huge unused swath of the Internet that, for several decades, had been owned by the U.S. military.

What happened next was stranger still.

The company, Global Resource Systems LLC, kept adding to its zone of control. Soon it had claimed 56 million IP addresses owned by the Pentagon. Three months later, the total was nearly 175 million. That’s almost 6 percent of a coveted traditional section of Internet real estate — called IPv4 — where such large chunks are worth billions of dollars on the open market.

The entities controlling the largest swaths of the Internet generally are telecommunications giants whose names are familiar: AT&T, China Telecom, Verizon. But now at the top of the list was Global Resource Systems — a company founded only in September that has no publicly reported federal contracts and no obvious public-facing website.

As listed in records, the company’s address in Plantation, Fla., outside Fort Lauderdale, is a shared workspace in an office building that doesn’t show Global Resource Systems on its lobby directory. A receptionist at the shared workspace said Friday that she could provide no information about the company and asked a reporter to leave. The company did not respond to requests for comment.

The only announcement of Global Resources Systems’ management of Pentagon addresses happened in the obscure world of Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) — the messaging system that tells Internet companies how to route traffic across the world. There, messages began to arrive telling network administrators that IP addresses assigned to the Pentagon but long dormant could now accept traffic — but it should be routed to Global Resource Systems.

Network administrators began speculating about perhaps the most dramatic shift in IP address space allotment since BGP was introduced in the 1980s.

They are now announcing more address space than anything ever in the history of the Internet,” said Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis for Kentik, a network monitoring company, who was among those trying to figure out what was happening. He published a blog post on the mystery Saturday morning.

The theories were many. Did someone at the Defense Department sell off part of the military’s vast collection of sought-after IP addresses as Trump left office? Had the Pentagon finally acted on demands to unload the billions of dollars worth of IP address space the military has been sitting on, largely unused, for decades?

An answer, of sorts, came Friday.

The change is the handiwork of an elite Pentagon unit known as the Defense Digital Service, which reports directly to the secretary of defense. The DDS bills itself as a “SWAT team of nerds” tasked with solving emergency problems for the department and conducting experimental work to make big technological leaps for the military.

Created in 2015, the DDS operates a Silicon Valley-like office within the Pentagon. It has carried out a range of special projects in recent years, from developing a biometric app to help service members identify friendly and enemy forces on the battlefield to ensuring the encryption of emails Pentagon staff were exchanging about coronavirus vaccines with external parties.

Brett Goldstein, the DDS’s director, said in a statement that his unit had authorized a “pilot effort” publicizing the IP space owned by the Pentagon.

“This pilot will assess, evaluate and prevent unauthorized use of DoD IP address space,” Goldstein said. “Additionally, this pilot may identify potential vulnerabilities.”

Goldstein described the project as one of the Defense Department’s “many efforts focused on continually improving our cyber posture and defense in response to advanced persistent threats. We are partnering throughout DoD to ensure potential vulnerabilities are mitigated.”

The specifics of what the effort is trying to achieve remain unclear. The Defense Department declined to answer a number of questions about the project, and Pentagon officials declined to say why Goldstein’s unit had used a little-known Florida company to carry out the pilot effort rather than have the Defense Department itself “announce” the addresses through BGP messages — a far more routine approach.

What is clear, however, is the Global Resource Systems announcements directed a fire hose of Internet traffic toward the Defense Department addresses. Madory said his monitoring showed the broad movements of Internet traffic began immediately after the IP addresses were announced Jan. 20.

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#995

Oooooh da-da-dadadada-da-da-da-da da-da-dadadada-da-da-da-da…

It’s always a three ring circus of crime with this family.

In Sworn Testimony in Inauguration Scandal Case, Donald Trump Jr. Made Apparently False Statements

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#996

Maricopa Arizona Audit from Republicans is fraught with a lot of controversy because the ballots were already audited. WIth the Cyber Ninjas group handling it, here’s a detail which I am just reading about…auditors using black pens which can be picked up by the vote counting machines
and therefore able to alter the votes when looking over them.

Big problem.

As the Arizona Senate’s historic recount and audit of the 2020 general election in Maricopa County kicked off, outside the watchful eye of journalists who were banned from attending, election integrity experts raised a number of concerns about what they deemed an alarming lack of policies or knowledge of proper procedures by the auditing team.

After months of legal battles and various other setbacks, the Senate on Friday morning began its long-promised probe into the 2020 election, which Senate President Karen Fann ordered in December.

No credible evidence has ever emerged indicating fraud, malfeasance or inaccurate counts in the election in Maricopa County. A partial hand count of about 8,100 ballots in November showed a perfect match with the results from the county’s tabulation machines, a forensic audit the county ordered of its machines showed no problems and more than a half dozen lawsuits challenging the election results were rejected by state and federal judges.

During the confrontational hour-long press briefing, Logan and Bennett couldn’t say whether the three-person teams that will hand count the nearly 2.1 million ballots will each have at least one Democrat and one Republican. They wouldn’t say how statisticians they consulted determined where auditors will knock on voters’ doors to confirm their voter registration, which has alarmed voting rights advocates. And they refused to disclose who besides the Senate, which has a $150,000 contract with Cyber Ninjas, is paying the company for the audit.

They also affirmed that journalists would be prohibited from covering the audit in person inside Phoenix’s Veterans Memorial Coliseum. The only way reporters would be permitted inside, Bennett said, is if they work six-hour shifts as volunteer observers, during which time they would be prohibited from take photographs, recording or even taking notes with pen and paper.

Reporter Jen Fifield of the Arizona Republic worked a volunteer shift Friday and live-tweeted the first half of her shift. She revealed that the audit team was using blue pens, which election guidelines prohibit because ballot tabulation machines read any markings made in blue or black ink. Because of that, only red pens are permitted near ballots. She tweeted that she informed Logan that the audit team shouldn’t be using blue pens around ballots, and revealed that Logan didn’t know the voting machines could read blue ink. Fifield later tweeted that the team switched to all red and green pens before any paper ballots were brought to the floor of the coliseum.

After her tweets about the blue pens, audit organizers told her she could no longer tweet during her shift.

A group of election integrity experts working with an organization called the National Task Force on Election Crises held a conference call with reporters Friday morning to discuss some of their concerns with the audit, which is helmed by a company that has no experience in elections-related work and is led by a man who helped spread conspiracy theories about the election.

“I’m not going to mince words. I think the activities that are taking place here are reckless and they in no way, shape or form resemble an audit,” said Jennifer Morrell, an elections administration and auditing expert with the consulting firm The Elections Group.

Morrell and her colleagues raised several issues with the three-person teams that will hand count the ballots.

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#997

:boom:

Search warrant time for Rudy…ok…here comes the Feds for Rudy’s time in the barrel.

Federal investigators in Manhattan executed a search warrant on Wednesday at the Upper East Side apartment of Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who became President Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer, stepping up a criminal investigation into Mr. Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine, three people with knowledge of the matter said.

One of the people said the investigators had seized Mr. Giuliani’s electronic devices.

Executing a search warrant is an extraordinary move for prosecutors to take against a lawyer, let alone a lawyer for a former president, and it marks a major turning point in the long-running investigation into Mr. Giuliani.

The federal authorities have been largely focused on whether Mr. Giuliani illegally lobbied the Trump administration in 2019 on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs, who at the same time were helping Mr. Giuliani search for dirt on Mr. Trump’s political rivals, including President Biden, who was then a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The United States Attorney’s office in Manhattan and the F.B.I. had for months sought to secure a search warrant for Mr. Giuliani’s phones.
>
Under Mr. Trump, senior political appointees in the Justice Department repeatedly sought to block such a warrant, The New York Times reported, slowing the investigation as it was gaining momentum last year. After Merrick B. Garland was confirmed as President Biden’s attorney general, the Justice Department lifted its objection to the search.

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#998

Some theories on Rudy.

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#999



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#1000

Looks like Gaetz might have some more 'splaining to do.

A confession letter written by Joel Greenberg in the final months of the Trump presidency claims that he and close associate Rep. Matt Gaetz paid for sex with multiple women—as well as a girl who was 17 at the time.

“On more than one occasion, this individual was involved in sexual activities with several of the other girls, the congressman from Florida’s 1st Congressional District and myself,” Greenberg wrote in reference to the 17-year-old. “From time to time, gas money or gifts, rent or partial tuition payments were made to several of these girls, including the individual who was not yet 18. I did see the acts occur firsthand and Venmo transactions, Cash App or other payments were made to these girls on behalf of the Congressman.”

The letter, which The Daily Beast recently obtained, was written after Greenberg asked Roger Stone to help him secure a pardon from then-President Donald Trump.

In late 2020, Greenberg was out of jail and in communication with Stone. A series of private messages between the two—also recently obtained by The Daily Beast—shows a number of exchanges between Greenberg and Stone conducted over the encrypted messaging app Signal, with communications set to disappear. However, Greenberg appears to have taken screenshots of a number of their conversations.

“If I get you $250k in Bitcoin would that help or is this not a financial matter,” Greenberg wrote to Stone.

“I understand all of this and have taken it into consideration,” Stone replied. “I will know more in the next 24 hours I cannot push too hard because of the nonsense surrounding pardons.”

“I hope you are prepared to wire me $250,000 because I am feeling confident,” Stone wrote to Greenberg on Jan. 13.

In a text message to The Daily Beast, Stone said that Greenberg had tried to hire him to assist with a pardon but he denied asking for or receiving payment or interceding on his behalf. He did, however, confirm he had Greenberg prepare “a document explaining his prosecution.”

In the private text messages, Greenberg described his activities with Gaetz, repeatedly referring to the congressman by his initials, “MG,” or as “Matt.”

“My lawyers that I fired, know the whole story about MG’s involvement,” Greenberg wrote to Stone on Dec. 21. “They know he paid me to pay the girls and that he and I both had sex with the girl who was underage.”

As part of the effort to obtain a pardon, Greenberg wrote multiple drafts of his confession letter. The Daily Beast obtained two typed versions and an earlier handwritten one. Certified forensic document examiner and handwriting expert Wendy Carlson compared the letter to writing samples obtained through two public records requests. She said it was her professional expert opinion that the person who authored a 2019 financial disclosure for Joel Greenberg, as well as Greenberg’s 2020 board of elections form, was the same as the author of the letter.

“The person who authored the forms has been identified as the person who authored the letter,” Carlson said.

In those letters, Greenberg detailed his relationship with Gaetz. He confessed to paying young women for sex. And he claimed that he, Gaetz, and others had sex with a minor they believed to be 19 at the time. Greenberg said he learned she was underage on Sept. 4, 2017 from “an anonymous tip” and quickly contacted Gaetz.

“Immediately I called the congressman and warned him to stay clear of this person and informed him she was underage,” Greenberg wrote. “He was equally shocked and disturbed by this revelation.”

Greenberg continued in the handwritten draft that he “confronted” the then-17-year-old and explained to her “how serious of a situation this was, how many people she put in danger.”

“She apologized and recognized that by lying about her age, she endangered many people,” he continued. “There was no further contact with this individual until after her 18th birthday.”

But after she reached the age of legal consent in Florida, Greenberg reestablished contact. As The Daily Beast previously reported, about five months after her 18th birthday, Gaetz sent Greenberg $900 in two Venmo transactions—one titled “Test” and the other titled “hit up ___.” The blank, however, was a nickname for this girl, and Greenberg paid her and two other women a total of $900 about six hours later.

In his confession letter, Greenberg also admitted he facilitated Gaetz’s interaction with college students—and paid them on his behalf.

“All of the girls were in college or post college and it was not uncommon for either myself or the Congressman to help anyone [sic] of these girls financially, whether it was a car payment, a flight home to see their family or something as simple as helping pay a speeding ticket,” Greenberg wrote.

A partial record of Greenberg’s Venmo and Cash App transactions suggests that payments were usually for a lot more than “gas money.” The Daily Beast identified more than 150 Venmo payments from Greenberg to women, as well as more than 70 additional payments on the Cash App, that were generally between $300 and $500—though some exceeded $1,000. The Daily Beast also talked to 12 of the more than 40 different women who received money, and they all said they understood Greenberg was paying them at least in part for sex.

Greenberg, a disgraced local politician in Florida, currently faces a sweeping 33-count indictment that ranges from stalking to sex trafficking. In March, The New York Times revealed that the initial investigation into the Seminole County tax official expanded as agents looked into his role in arranging paid sexual encounters for his friend, Matt Gaetz.

Federal prosecutors have not criminally charged Gaetz—or even publicly confirmed the expansion of their probe. While Gaetz acknowledges the existence of the investigation, he denies having sex with an underage teen. But at some point, Greenberg began to cooperate with investigators, a development his lawyer has suggested poses a serious problem for Gaetz.

That defense lawyer, Fritz Scheller, declined to comment on this story, citing attorney-client privilege.

Gaetz’s office did not respond. However, Logan Circle Group, an outside public relations firm Gaetz has hired, sent the following statement:

“Congressman Gaetz has never paid for sex nor has he had sex with a 17 year old as an adult. We are now one month after your outlet and others first reported such lies, and no one has gone on record to directly accuse him of either. Politico, however, has reported Mr. Greenberg threatening to make false accusations against others, which seems noteworthy for your story and in fact sounds like the entirety of your story. Congressman Gaetz has had no role in advocating for or against a pardon for Greenberg and doubts such a pardon was ever even considered.”

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#1001

Lawyer: Feds Got Into Rudy’s iCloud With ‘Covert Warrant’ While He Repped Trump in 2019

Robert Costello, Giuliani’s attorney and longtime friend, told The Daily Beast the U.S. Attorney’s Office broke the news to them during a conference call Thursday.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/04/30/rudy-giuliani-tucker-carlson-russia/

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#1002

Big revelations here…Barr is being called out for his protection of Trump post-Mueller Report,
and Judge Amy Jackson calls him ‘disingenuous’ at best when Barr said there was a reason Trump could not be charged with Obstruction of Justice. Judge Jackson is calling for the protection memo (of Trump) to be delivered publicly.

(CNN)A federal judge this week rejected the Justice Department’s attempts to keep secret a departmental opinion to not charge former President Donald Trump with obstruction at the end of the Mueller investigation, calling the administration’s lawyers "disingenuous."

The department had argued in court that the largely redacted March 2019 memo was legal reasoning that helped then-Attorney General William Barr make a decision about Trump. But federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson said she believed Barr and his advisers had already decided they wouldn’t charge the President with a crime before he got the written advice, and the memo was partly strategic planning instead of legal reasoning – and therefore could be made public.

The decision adds to the criticism federal judges and others have had about Barr and his handling of the end of the Mueller investigation. Jackson and others have repeatedly questioned Barr’s motives to keep documents related to the investigation – including Mueller’s findings and Barr’s reactions to them – secret or by delaying their release.

“The agency’s redactions and incomplete explanations obfuscate the true purpose of the memorandum, and the excised portions belie the notion that it fell to the Attorney General to make a prosecution decision or that any such decision was on the table at any time,” Jackson wrote in a 35-page opinion released Tuesday.

“The fact that [Trump] would not be prosecuted was a given,” she added.

The judge’s opinion comes in a lawsuit where the government transparency group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is seeking access to DOJ documents through the Freedom of Information Act.

CREW and several other groups are still trying to pry new records from the Mueller investigation into the public’s eye, through lawsuits and other challenges. The case Jackson decided this week deals with documents around Barr’s decision to decline to charge Trump.

The memo of supposed legal reasoning prepared for Barr should be released, Jackson ruled. A draft legal analysis from the Office of Legal Counsel would stay secret, Jackson also decided.

Mueller fraud investigator brought in to help Vance’s probe of Trump Org.

“We requested these records and filed this lawsuit due to serious doubts about the official story coming out of Barr’s DOJ. While we do not yet know what is in the memo, the Court’s opinion gives us confidence that we were right to have questions,” Jordan Libowitz, a spokesman for CREW, said on Tuesday.

Behind the memo

The 9-page memo that Jackson said should be released was finalized by two top political leaders in the Justice Department – Steven Engel of the Office of Legal Counsel and Ed O’Callaghan, a top adviser in the Deputy Attorney General’s Office – the same day Barr briefed Congress about Mueller’s findings on Russian interference in the 2016 election and Trump’s attempts to obstruct justice.

The Justice Department had argued in court that much of the substance of Engel and O’Callaghan’s memo should stay blacked out, because it was protected internal discussions about the law and policy. One DOJ lawyer, Paul Colborn, had told the court the memo was meant to help Barr decide whether to prosecute Trump.

Engel and O’Callaghan’s memo recommended no prosecution, saying that Mueller’s findings weren’t evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.

Jackson has read the document at issue in the case for herself, she noted. The judge said the redacted pages offer “strategic, as opposed to legal advice” to Barr. By not mentioning that in court, Jackson wrote that the DOJ was pretending the strategy discussion didn’t exist.

The way the Justice Department has handled the dispute over public access to the document “served to obscure the true purpose of the memorandum,” Jackson added.

Not worthy of credence, Jackson says

Jackson’s strongly worded opinion, though largely about technicalities around government confidentiality, comes close to accusing the Justice Department of a cover-up.

The judge wrote that while top DOJ officials prepared the legal opinion that gave Barr cover not to prosecute Trump, they simultaneously were emailing about a higher priority they had: to inform Congress the President was exonerated.

The Mueller probe thoroughly investigated several episodes where Trump tried to impede or end the inquiry into his campaign’s ties to Russia. But the special counsel left the indictment decision to Barr and his top political appointees. Mueller partly found that Justice Department policy blocked the prosecution of a sitting President. After closing his office, Mueller later told to Congress that an ex-President could be prosecuted for obstruction, yet Barr had already reached a definitive conclusion in Trump’s case.

Jackson reviewed closely how that decision came about, looking at court statements from department lawyers and internal emails between Barr’s top advisers.

Justice Department officials’ “affidavits [in court about the memo] are so inconsistent with evidence in the record, they are not worthy of credence,” Jackson wrote.

Another federal judge previously slammed Barr in another public records case following the Mueller investigation, saying the attorney general had a “lack of candor” that was helpful to Trump politically when the then-attorney general told Congress and announced to the public what Mueller had found, without releasing Mueller’s nearly 500-page report.

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#1003

Some of the dirty plays within Trump’s campaign around collusion are coming to light. What will Merrick Garland be doing about it?

Biden administration confirms Russian agent shared 2016 Trump polling data as part of election interference efforts

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#1004

This thread lays it out nicely:










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