The “great and unmatched wisdom” thing got “Wizard of Oz” trending, but I think it’s more important to note that thus far Saudi Arabia bombing Yemen and murdering Khashoggi, North Korea effectively murdering Otto Warmbier and launching ballistic missiles, and Russia attacking our elections have all gone ignored, leading one to wonder what “line” Turkey would have to cross for Trump to take any sort of action.
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It begins.
Turkey starts bombing Kurds in Syria as US pulls out – report
While we get angry and outraged, the Kurdish genocide has resumed.
EDIT: In a strange twist, the headline for the article above has changed to “US denies Syrian media report that Turkey has begun anti-Kurd offensive”.
To say this worries me is putting it mildly.
Exclusive: Official Who Heard Call Says Trump Got ‘Rolled’ By Turkey and ‘Has No Spine’
Donald Trump got “rolled” by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a National Security Council source with direct knowledge of the discussions told Newsweek
Trump did not endorse any Turkish military operation against Kurdish Forces, but also did not threaten economic sanct ions during the phone call if Turkey decided to undertake offensive operations.
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Trump is pulling us out of the Open Skies Treaty!
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Yes, many of the captured and imprisoned ISIS fighters have now escaped. Reports are that about 18 were recaptured.
NBC reporter
Hundreds of ISIS Supporters Flee Detention Amid Turkish Airstrikes
The attacks caused about 700 Islamic State families to escape a Kurdish-run camp. The American defense secretary also said the U.S. would pull about 1,000 troops from the area.
AKCAKALE, Turkey — Hundreds of relatives of Islamic State fighters fled a Kurdish-run detention camp on Sunday morning after Turkish airstrikes hit the surrounding area, deepening the crisis prompted by the Turkish-led invasion of northern Syria.
The escapes came hours before the United States military said it would withdraw its remaining troops from northern Syria in the coming weeks, despite a likely resurgence of the Islamic State amid chaotic efforts by Turkish-led troops to wrest the region from Kurdish control.
A Kurdish official also said that the flag of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, had been raised in the countryside between the camp in the Kurdish-held town of Ain Issa and the Turkish border, another indication of how the Kurdish authorities were losing control of a region they had freed from the extremists only months ago.
“We are facing very fierce attacks and we’re forced to decrease numbers of guards,” said the official, Ciya Kurd, of the Kurdish-led regional authority, who confirmed the break from the displacement camp after the Turkish strikes.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/10/12/inside-isis-prisons-controlled-by-syrian-kurds/
As The Washington Post’s Liz Sly and Missy Ryan reported, “U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe the evolving U.S. strategy in Syria, said the Pentagon did not have enough forces to oversee the prisons if those facilities were left unguarded, nor a mandate to do so.”
In addition to the detention for facilities, there are camps holding the wives and children of suspected fighters, some of whom are themselves members and supporters of the organization.
Sen Paul trying to insinuate that a Dem letter sent by three Senators Sens. Robert Menendez (N.J.), Dick Durbin (Ill.) and Patrick Leahy (Vt.) to Ukraine also threatened to withhold military funds.
Time will tell…
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Sunday called for an investigation into the Democratic senators who sent a letter in 2018 to the prosecutor general of Ukraine requesting information on investigations into former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.
Paul dodged questions from Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on whether President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani’s interactions with foreign governments to get information on former Vice President Joe Biden bothered him.
“If anything’s consistent here, both parties have tried to involve themselves in Ukraine,” Paul said.
“If you’re going to condemn Trump, you need to condemn the Democratic senators,” he added. “It shouldn’t just be one-sided.”
The 2018 letter Paul referred to was sent by three Democratic senators — Sens. Robert Menendez (N.J.), Dick Durbin (Ill.) and Patrick Leahy (Vt.) — to Ukraine’s prosecutor general, asking for the country’s assistance in the Mueller investigation. The letter was sent after a New York Times report found the investigations into Manafort in Ukraine had stalled.
Paul asserts the Democratic senators threatened to withhold aid from Ukraine in the letter if the country did not cooperate in the Mueller investigation.
The Kentucky senator said the Democratic senators’ sending of the letter needs to be examined.
“That’s a threat and that’s the same kind of stuff they’re accusing Trump of,” he said.
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Should go under Impeachment - Document request for Fiona Hill, who is testifying this week. Axios is saying this is the exact roadmap for impeachment process - T’ request from Ukraine for help getting dirt on Bidens and Obstruction of Justice
Ahead of this week’s subpoenas and depositions, new documents obtained by Axios show how Democrats are taking the impeachment inquiry in two tightly focused directions: Ukraine and obstruction of justice.
Why it matters: There are new temptations for Democrats to broaden the scope of their inquiry after developments last week including President Trump’s gift to Turkey, new questions about coordination with the Chinese over Hunter Biden, and the dramatic airport arrests of two of Rudy Giuliani’s associates with Eastern European backgrounds and their indictments on campaign finance violations.
- But for now, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appears to be sticking with her instincts to keep the probe tight and as simple as possible for Americans to understand.
Driving the news: If the document request for Trump’s former Russia adviser Fiona Hill, reviewed by Axios, is a road map for what Dems plan to ask Trump administration officials this week — and committee sources tell me that it is — then the inquiry remains focused on Ukraine and has not yet branched out into other countries.
Below are some of the key areas of interest to the committees, as outlined in their Oct. 9 letter to Hill:
- All transcripts, notes, recordings, summaries, prep sessions and communications around Trump’s April and July calls with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.
- Efforts to restrict access to or limit distribution of documents referring to calls with foreign leaders; policies surrounding the practice of moving politically damaging documents to a special electronic system.
- Interagency meetings relating to foreign assistance of any kind.
- A meeting on or around May 21 in Kiev, Ukraine, with Energy Secretary Rick Perry, U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, former special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, Ukrainian officials and representatives of the Ukrainian energy sector.
- A White House meeting on or around May 23 involving Trump, Volker, Perry or Sondland.
- A dinner in Brussels on or around June 4 involving Jared Kushner, Zelensky, Sondland and Perry.
- A White House meeting on or around July 10 with Ukrainian officials and former national security advisor John Bolton, Volker, Perry, Sondland — and possibly Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.
- Efforts by Rudy Giuliani or associates to pressure Ukrainian government officials to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter, Paul Manafort, the DNC, Hillary Clinton and former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.
- Potential attempts by Trump administration officials to influence Ukraine’s state gas company Naftogaz.
- Ukraine’s acquisition of Javelin missiles from the U.S. and the decision to stop investigating Manafort and cease cooperation with former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
- Efforts by Trump administration officials to retaliate against the whistleblower or dispose of documents relating to the Ukraine investigation.
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Cross-posting to add these related posts:
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I highly doubt this and
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If they’re playing the “they did it, so we did it” or “both sides do it” cards, I think they’re going to be highly disappointed in the results.
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Bill Barr’s meeting with Fox News chairman should be investigated
Hundreds of ISIS prisoners have escaped thanks to Turkish bombing and shelling.
Trump just accused THE KURDS of releasing them to get the U.S. involved.
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No Doral For G7…T withdraws it.
President Trump’s decision to award the Group of Seven summit of world leaders to his own struggling Florida resort brought a flood of pushback from Democrats and members of his own party
Other U.S. sites will be considered, including Camp David, Trump tweeted.
This is a developing story. It will be updated
Story from WaPo TK
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And he whined about it. A lot. And forgot how to thread.
Again.
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A photographer’s account from the frontlines of Turkey’s incursion in Syria
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/world/amp-stories/first-person-syria/
Fact-checking Trump on the Kurds: Yes, they are more unsafe now. No, they aren’t more threatening than ISIS.
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‘Get the Hell Out of Syria. It’s Sand and Blood and Death’: Inside America’s Chaotic Retreat
President Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops upended Middle East policy and empowered Washington’s adversaries
Real leadership in action.
Pelosi leads a surprise delegation to Jordan for ‘vital discussions’ on Syria crisis
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________________________________________________________________
Politico
By JOSH GERSTEIN and DARREN SAMUELSOHN
10/20/2019 04:04 PM EDT
Justice Dept. confirms Trump Jr. and McGahn did not testify to Mueller grand jury
________________________________________________________________
I’m beginning to think that we didn’t get the thorough investigation we thought we did.
The Justice Department confirmed Sunday that President Donald Trump’s son Donald Jr. and former White House counsel Don McGahn were never called before a grand jury that heard witnesses called by special counsel Robert Mueller.
The disclosure was set in motion by Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., who ruled last week that Justice Department attorneys had deleted too much information from a court filing last month in an ongoing legal dispute over Attorney General William Barr’s refusal to share with House lawmakers grand jury-related information in Mueller’s final report.
Howell’s opinion, issued Thursday, suggested it was perplexing why Trump Jr. and McGahn were not subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury.
“The Special Counsel’s reasons remain unknown,” Howell wrote. “The reason is not that the individuals were insignificant to the investigation. To the contrary, both of the non-testifying individuals named in paragraph four figured in key events examined in the Mueller Report. Assessment of these choices by the Special Counsel is a matter for others.”
Trump Jr. was present at the now-famous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting in which Trump campaign officials met with Russians. Before that meeting, he also received an email offering “dirt” on Democratic president candidate Hillary Clinton.
“If it’s what you say, I love it,” Trump Jr. responded.
Mueller never brought Trump Jr. before a Grand Jury. WTF? squared. Trump Jr. was at the very center of the collusion allegations. He should have been required to either perjure himself by lying (for which he could pay a price later) or tell the truth so we could get to the bottom of what happened. How in hell did he just skate? And were only now just finding this out.
How can any Republican claim that Trump was exonerated on collusion allegations when the key witness did not testify?
The judge suggested that she was “perplexed” that Trump Jr. was not subpoenaed. Perplexed? That’s a massive understatement. It’s outrageous. I wonder how many missteps like this will need to be uncovered before there are calls for reopening the investigation.
In April, prior to release of the report, one of the president’s personal attorneys tamped down talk that Trump Jr. exercised his constitutional right to remain silent.
“I can tell you I have no knowledge that anybody took the Fifth,” Rudy Giuliani said at the time.
The Trump con machine rolls on. Giuliani may be unhinged in many ways, but his maneuver here was brilliant. By saying Trump Jr. didn’t take the fifth, he implied that the President’s son did testify and did answer questions without invoking the fifth. But the real reason Trump Jr. never took the fifth was that he never testified. Again, WTF?
And there’s this, which is actually much worse:
Howell noted in her order last week that Mueller’s final report disclosed that one person highly central to the investigation — President Trump — was not interviewed or called before the grand jury. The special counsel considered subpoenaing Trump because of dissatisfaction with written responses to prosecutors’ questions but elected not to do so, the judge observed.
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Meanwhile, in another investigation…
Hilary Clinton exonerated for a third time in her handling of emails
Clinton’s handling of her emails has been investigated for years by Congress, the FBI, and the State Department. All three investigations have exonerated her. The State Department is the latest to conclude its investigation – finding no deliberate mishandling of classified materials.
A multiyear State Department probe of emails that were sent to former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s private computer server concluded there was no systemic or deliberate mishandling of classified information by department employees, according to a report submitted to Congress this month.
The report appears to represent a final and anticlimactic chapter in a controversy that overshadowed the 2016 presidential campaign and exposed Clinton to fierce criticism that she later cited as a major factor in her loss to President Trump.
In the end, State Department investigators found 38 current or former employees “culpable” of violating security procedures — none involving material that had been marked classified — in a review of roughly 33,000 emails that had been sent to or from the personal computer system Clinton used.
Overall, investigators said, “there was no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information.” The report cited “instances of classified information being inappropriately” transmitted, but noted that the vast majority of those scrutinized “were aware of security policies and did their best to implement them.”
While Clinton was exonerated, the Trump administration is flagrantly violating security protocols with zero accountability. As this article notes:
Diplomats involved in pressuring Ukraine to pursue investigations that would politically benefit Trump used private phones and texting apps to trade messages about their efforts, according to records released by leaders of the House impeachment inquiry.
Of course the Trump appointed officials and his personal lawyer used private emails and texting apps to communicate because they knew they were engaged in a criminal conspiracy to extort Ukraine into benefiting Trump’s campaign.
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Weeks before Rudy Giuliani publicly became a figure to avoid in Washington, he managed to get a meeting with the top official in the Justice Department’s criminal division on behalf of a client.
The Justice Department now says that official, Brian Benczkowski, and other fraud prosecutors at Justice headquarters wouldn’t have taken that meeting with Giuliani earlier this summer had they known about a Manhattan US attorney probe of two Giuliani associates who were indicted this month.
Favorite line:
It is striking that the Justice Department is having to distance itself from the President’s own personal attorney.
This announcement smacks of a CYA maneuver by Barr and there’s reason to believe he’s not being entirely truthful. As the article points out:
Justice officials have said Attorney General William Barr was briefed on the case in February upon taking office. Information about the case also was shared with the public integrity lawyers working in Benczkowski’s division.
A person familiar with the matter said that at the time, Giuliani wasn’t a central figure in the case as he is now. That emerged in recent weeks, the person said.
Still, New York federal prosecutors had their eyes set on Giuliani months ago. A New York lawyer told CNN that FBI counterintelligence agents asked him questions in February or March related to Giuliani and his associates.
It will be interesting to see how Giuliani reacts to the DOJ distancing themselves from him. When the State Department tried the same thing, Giuliani went bonkers and said they were lying. He waved around his phone, referring to text messages he said he had from State that proved he was doing work they requested. Then he published the texts.
Let’s hope he has some text messages from the DOJ as well. 
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We knew they obstructed in many ways, this seems to be one of them.
Friday was supposed to be the opening night of “Perra de Nadie,” a dance theater piece by acclaimed Spanish artist Marta Carrasco
Instead, Carrasco and her team were detained and then deported by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents, leaving her Los Angeles host “horrified” and an 11-day run of performances canceled.
“The atmosphere was hostile, especially in the first hours when they took us each to different rooms to question us,” Carrasco wrote on Twitter. The interrogation lasted for five hours, she said.
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This is not adoption. It is kidnapping and human trafficking by the US government.
US troops leaving Syria cross into Iraq despite Trump rhetoric about “bringing them home”
The surest way for Trump to lose the backing of the military is to force them to be cowards in the face of their allies’ desperate plight.
U.S. soldiers who fought alongside Kurds blast Trump’s Syria retreat
I am pretty certain purging somebody from the voter role as an act of retaliation is illegal:
Ohio purge of targeted 40,000 active voters — including head of voting rights group
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Monday, Monday, Can’t Trust That Day…
If you’re President, it’s got to be unnerving when you wake up Monday morning to this front page banner headline from the world’s number one news agency:
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