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
And he whined about it. A lot. And forgot how to thread.
Again.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/world/amp-stories/first-person-syria/
Real leadership in action.
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Politico
By JOSH GERSTEIN and DARREN SAMUELSOHN
10/20/2019 04:04 PM EDT
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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.
Meanwhile, in another investigation…
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.
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. 
We knew they obstructed in many ways, this seems to be one of them.
This is not adoption. It is kidnapping and human trafficking by the US government.
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.
I am pretty certain purging somebody from the voter role as an act of retaliation is illegal:
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:
In an interesting interview that shows how Turkey views Trump, their foreign minister openly laughs at him.
And for the weird vote:
In an interview on “Axios on HBO,” Jonathan Swan asked the South Carolina senator: "Are you open minded if more to comes out that you could support impeachment?"
"Sure, I mean show me something that is a crime," Graham replied. "If you could show me that, you know, Trump actually was engaging in a quid pro quo outside the phone call, that would be very disturbing."
[…]
The “Axios on HBO” segment was taped on Tuesday before acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney came under renewed scrutiny Thursday after he said, then denied, that Trump held up an aid package to Ukraine in exchange for an investigation into an unsubstantiated theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was responsible for hacking Democratic Party emails in 2016.
His comments undercut denials by the President of a quid pro quo, and stunned White House staffers who questioned his strategy.
And yet he’s flip-flopped on Syria already. Whatever Trump has on Lindsey, it’s huge.
Also:
Here is Trump thanking Turkey for annexing part of Syria and “cleaning out” that land of the Kurds.
Ethnic cleansing, blunt and blatant. And he is bragging about it. There are a few other videos in following posts that are really worth looking at.
this is the danger of the Trump Presidency. He does not seem to have the capacity for empathy nor the ability to understand that this is genocide.
Happy Monday!
President Donald Trump held a press availability during a Cabinet meeting on Monday, during which he went on a number of tangents and rants. Here are six of the wildest moments:
Schiff Is The Whistleblower’s Informant
Trump predictably went on a rant about the whistleblower at the heart of the House impeachment probe into Trump’s Ukraine scheme.
The rant got a little less predictable when Trump bizarrely suggested House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) was the informant in the whistleblower’s complaint. …
Trump’s Trying To Get Us Out Of Wars But Also He Might Get Us Into Wars
As he was complaining about how the impeachment inquiry was distracting him from staying out of wars, Trump suddenly decided mid-sentence that he might go to war after all.
“In the midst of [the inquiry], I’m trying to get out of wars,” Trump said, immediately followed up by: “We may have to get in wars, too. We may have to get in wars.” …
The “Phony” Emoluments Clause
Trump also spent several minutes moaning about being forced to cancel his plan to host next year’s G-7 summit at his Florida resort, claiming that using the resort for the summit would not serve to promote his businesses. …
You’ve got to watch this clip of Trump first bragging in a way that (even for him) will make you cringe and then whining about the emoluments clause. What. A. Baby.
Glad to see that CNN is now actually overlaying his rants with “fact check boxes” (in this case when he flagrantly lies about Obama’s Netflix deal) – they’re basically saying, “In case you weren’t aware of it, the President is outright lying here.”
Etc., etc., etc.
I’d view the entire spectacle except I can’t stand to watch more than two minutes of him at a time and even that’s pushing it. I can only absorb summaries like this one.
I saw a shorter clip earlier, just watched the longer one. It really is out there.
Breaking - 11p 10/26/19 Al-Baghdadi was killed by the US Military in an operation with help from the Russians, Iraqi’s…
Trump’s comments this morning - he must have mentioned that al-Baghdadi’s death was killed “like a dog” about 5 different times. T also mentions Russia as the number one help in getting al-Baghdadi in their sights…an obvious nod to his desire to get Russia back into a respectful world power, and part of G-7 etc.
T’s support of Russia, Turkey, Iran…and then downgrades the European alliances, and also does not say that Kurds were a vital part of this operation. Shameful.
And T’s commentary about oil…and securing the OIL.
Here’s T’s “I killed him…” and his heroic, presidential standing…and a coup to talk about for his 2020. T gets the drama award for bein’ presidential. 
https://ww * The latest: President Trump is holding a press conference at 9 a.m. A senior administration official tells CNN that the president approved the mission aimed at ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
- ISIS leader believed dead: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is believed to have been killed in a raid conducted by the US military in northwest Syria on Saturday, according to a senior US defense official and a source with knowledge.
- Elusive leader: Baghdadi has been the subject of an international manhunt for years, and has been incorrectly reported dead or injured multiple times.w.cnn.com/politics/live-news/abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-isis-intl-hnk/index.html
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump said Sunday that terrorist leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, perhaps the world’s most wanted man, was killed during a special operations raid over the weekend.
“Last night the United States brought the world’s No. 1 terrorist leader to justice,” Trump said at the White House in an early morning televised address to the nation.
Al-Baghdadi led the extremist organization known as the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. Trump said he died after running into a dead-end tunnel while being chased by United States Special Operations commandos in Northwest Syria. Al-Baghdadi detonated an explosive vest that killed him as well as three of his children, Trump said.
He died like a dog," Trump said. “He died like a coward. The world is now a much safer place.""He was a sick and depraved man, and now he’s gone,” Trump said.
Al-Baghdadi is the highest-ranking terrorist to be killed or captured since the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011.
Who really helped capture al-Baghdadi - See Kurds, Iraqis, CIA…most of whom are denigrated by T? And who is taking credit?
Well…you already know.
Armed with that initial tip, the C.I.A. worked closely with Iraqi and Kurdish intelligence officials in Iraq and Syria to identify Mr. al-Baghdadi’s more precise whereabouts and to put spies in place to monitor his periodic movements, allowing American commandos to stage an assault Saturday in which President Trump said Mr. al-Baghdadi died.
But Mr. Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw American forces from northern Syria disrupted the meticulous planning and forced Pentagon officials to press ahead with a risky, night raid before their ability to control troops and spies and reconnaissance aircraft disappeared, according to military, intelligence and counterterrorism officials. Mr. al-Baghdadi’s death, they said, occurred largely in spite of Mr. Trump’s actions.
The officials praised the Kurds, who continued to provide information to the C.I.A. on Mr. al-Baghdadi even after Mr. Trump’s decision to withdraw the American troops left the Syrian Kurds to confront a Turkish offensive alone. The Syrian and Iraqi Kurds, one official said, provided more intelligence for the raid than any single country.
The initial planning for the raid began this past summer. The Army’s elite Delta Force commando unit began drawing up and rehearsing plans to conduct a secret mission to kill or capture the ISIS leader, and faced huge hurdles. The location was deep inside territory controlled by Al Qaeda. The skies over that part of the country were controlled by Syria and Russia. The military called off missions at the last minute at least twice.
…
The initial planning for the raid began this past summer. The Army’s elite Delta Force commando unit began drawing up and rehearsing plans to conduct a secret mission to kill or capture the ISIS leader, and faced huge hurdles. The location was deep inside territory controlled by Al Qaeda. The skies over that part of the country were controlled by Syria and Russia. The military called off missions at the last minute at least twice.
“It wasn’t until Thursday and then Friday the president chose his option and gave us the green light to proceed as we did yesterday,” Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.
How the capture/killing happened…
Around midnight Sunday morning — 5 p.m. Saturday in Washington — eight American helicopters, primarily CH-47 Chinooks, took off from a military base near Erbil, Iraq.
Flying low and fast to avoid detection, the helicopters quickly crossed the Syrian border and then flew all the way across Syria itself — a dangerous 70-minute flight in which the helicopters took sporadic groundfire — to the Barisha area just north of Idlib city, in western Syria. Just before landing, the helicopters and other warplanes began firing on a compound of buildings, providing cover for commandos with the Delta Force and their military dogs to descend into a landing zone.
…
The president said that with the helicopter gunships firing from above, the commandos bypassed the front door, fearing a booby trap, before destroying one of the compound’s walls. That allowed them to rush through and confront a group of ISIS fighters.
…
The Delta Force commandos, under fire, entered the compound, where they shot and killed a number of people. Mr. Trump said they also removed 11 children from harm’s way,
Mr. al-Baghdadi ran into an underground tunnel, with the American commandos in pursuit. Mr. Trump said that the ISIS leader took three children with him, presumably to use as human shields from the American fire. Fearing, apparently correctly, that Mr. al-Baghdadi was wearing a suicide vest, the commandos dispatched a military dog to subdue Mr. al-Baghdadi, Mr. Trump said.
It was then that the Islamic State leader set off the explosives, wounding the dog and killing the three children, Mr. Trump said.
…
Altogether, the American troops were on the ground in the compound for around two hours, Mr. Trump said, clearing the buildings of fighters and scooping up information that the president said contained important details on ISIS operations. Mr. Trump said the commandos already had DNA samples from the Islamic State leader, which he said they used to make a quick assessment that they had the right man.
Once all the Americans had piled back into their helicopters and started the return flight to Iraq — using the same route out as they used coming in, Mr. Trump said — American warplanes bombed the compound to ensure it was physically destroyed, Mr. Esper said. Just after 9 p.m. Washington time Saturday — four hours after the helicopters took off — Mr. Trump tweeted, “Something very big has just happened!”
This apparently was a months-long operation that the Kurds CONTINUED to help us with while we were betraying them.
He thanked the Russians three times. Special Forces and the Kurds once each, and the Kurds barely at that.
But Russia says they have no idea what Trump is talking about.
Meanwhile, Russia is brokering the ceasefire now.
https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/syria/27102019
And Turkey is still murdering Kurdish leaders.
https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/24102019
But hey, we secured the oil.
https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/syria/261020191
Also, this:
Also also, I agree that the sheer delight he’s taken in recounting all of the gory details is highly disturbing.
