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randomrags · 4 months

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Trump Hush Money Trial - A Timeline

May 29th 2024

- 1st day of deliberation ends

- Jury requests for 4 items during deliberation:

1) transcript of ex-National Enquirer publisher Pecker’s testimony regarding a phone conversation he had with Trump while in a meeting with investors in New Jersey

2) Testimony relating to the rights to Karen McDougal’s story.

3) relate to a key August 2015 Trump Tower meeting that prosecutors say kickstarted the so alled " catch and kill" arrangements.

MAY 28TH 2024

Trump jury begins deliberations

After more than five weeks, countless hours of testimony and a mountain of documents, a New York judge instructed a jury to make a historic decision: whether Donald Trump is guilty or not guilty of a crime.

On Wednesday, a day after both sides made their final pitches to jurors, Justice Juan Merchan delivered over an hour of deliberation instructions, going over each of the charges and detailing the elements of the alleged crime.

He explained to the 12-person jury the bar that prosecutors have to meet to convict the former president: guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

“It is not sufficient to prove that the defendant is probably guilty,” Justice Merchan told the court. “In a criminal case, the proof of guilt must be stronger than that.”

The former president has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records in relation to a hush-money payment made to adult-film star Stormy Daniels, who claimed she had sex with Mr Trump.

- Trump denies the encounter.

Morning court session - Justice Merchan delivered a variety of guidelines, advising jurors

- not to base their decisions on biases or the criminal convictions of other witnesses in the case.

Most crucially, he spelled out in detail prosecutors’ complicated felony case against Mr Trump. They claim he falsified a reimbursement to his fixer for the hush-money payment with the intent to conceal other crimes: violations of state and federal election laws and tax laws.

He told the jury that prosecutors do not need to prove these secondary crimes, nor do jurors need to be in agreement on which specific one Mr Trump committed.

- They must reach a unanimous verdict on each of the 34 counts, however.

From the start, the defence has denied any wrongdoing and sought to cast doubt on testimony from the prosecution's key witness

- former fixer and convicted felon Michael Cohen - in an attempt to disprove the larger case.

Here is what jurors could decide:

1) If Trump is found guilty

All 12 members of the jury must agree Mr Trump is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt for prosecutors to secure a conviction.

This is the worst-case scenario for Trump, who would become the first major party candidate running for US president as a felon.

He would almost certainly appeal this verdict. His lawyers already have argued for a mistrial on multiple occasions, each time unsuccessfully.

If found guilty, he faces a maximum sentence of four years behind bars per count, or a smaller punishment of probation and a fine.

- Most experts say the 77-year-old is unlikely to face any time in prison.

"It is a non-violent offence. It's the lowest of the [felony] offences," said former Brooklyn prosecutor Julie Rendelman. "With no record, his age, you name it, it would be highly unlikely."

If Mr Trump was sentenced to time in prison, it would pose a logistical challenge for court officers and Secret Service staff who would be required to protect him in prison.

2) If Trump is acquitted

If all 12 members of the jury find prosecutors have not proven Mr Trump's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, he would be acquitted of the felony charges, which would be a major blow to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office that brought the case.

It also would be a huge victory for the former president as he bids to return to the White House. While it is still legal for a convicted felon to run for US president, a guilty verdict could hurt his chances with voters.

An acquittal would mean that the prosecution, despite weeks of testimony and hours of questioning high-profile witnesses, including Ms Daniels, Cohen and a former senior Trump aide, failed to convince the Manhattan jury.

Mr Trump has complained daily in the courthouse about the trial, claiming that Judge Merchan and the case against him are unfair, and that he has committed no crime.

Trump faces three other criminal cases,

- election interference and the January 6th Capitol riot that followed his 2020 election loss.

-- This case was widely thought to be the only one likely to go to trial before Americans go to the polls on November 5th.

3) If it's a hung jury

It only takes one of the 12 jurors to unravel the prosecutors' case.

If the jurors cannot all agree unanimously on a verdict - guilty or not guilty - this will result in a hung jury.

If they report to the judge that they cannot reach a decision, Justice Merchan may instruct them once or twice more to try again to reach a verdict.

But if they still cannot, he would declare a mistrial. Prosecutors would then have to decide on the spot whether they want to retry the case

SOURCES

- Yahoo - Courtroom Sketches

#donald trump #Hush Money Trial #stormy daniels #new york

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aaronjhill · 1 year

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‘Quit dreaming about Donald Trump in an orange jump suit’

“Incarceration is certainly off the table for an ex-president – how would that work with his lifelong Secret Service protection? It is even possible that he will be elected president for a second time before or after being convicted for one or more of his crimes. If Trump is re-elected before federal conviction, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) will withdraw all charges against him. The DOJ does not indict or prosecute sitting presidents.”

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mattkennard · 5 years

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Britain’s seven covert wars: An Explainer

Published: Daily Maverick (17 September 2019) w/ Mark Curtis

The United Kingdom is fighting at least seven covert wars largely outside parliamentary or democratic oversight.

The British government states that its policy on the covert wars it fights is “not to comment, and to dissuade others from commenting or speculating, about the operational activities of special forces because of the security implications”.

The British public’s ability to scrutinise policy is further restricted by the UK’s Freedom of Information Act which applies an “absolute exemption” to its special forces.

UK special forces consist of a number of regiments, but the Special Air Service (SAS), a unit of the British army, is the most renowned. Based at RAF Credenhill, just outside Hereford in western England, it is rumoured to have about 500 personnel.

This explainer outlines what is known of these covert wars, which is likely to represent only a small part of actual UK military operations in these countries. Nearly all the leaks which appear in the mainstream media are officially sanctioned and have been further approved by the Ministry of Defence’s DSMA Committee, which seeks to prevent material deemed damaging to the national security interest from being published in the media.

Afghanistan

The SAS has fought in Afghanistan since 2001, longer than any war in the regiment’s history, according to some sources.

The public was told at the end of 2014 that British forces had withdrawn from Afghanistan. However, some British troops stayed behind to help create and train an Afghan special forces unit. Despite officially only having “advisers” in the country, British covert forces have consistently fought Islamic State and the Taliban.

By 2018, the SAS was reportedly fighting almost every day in Afghanistan, usually in support of Afghan commandos leading the battle against the Taliban.

In February 2018, Britain doubled the size of its SAS force in Afghanistan from about 50 to more than 100. One newspaper reported at the time:

“The commandos will conduct kill-or-capture missions alongside US special forces and come under the command of the American-led Joint Special Operations Command. Part of the force will be made up of 15 snipers who will be part of a specialist unit tasked with killing Taliban commanders.”

In July 2018, “dozens” more special forces troops were sent to Afghanistan as part of a contingent of 490 extra soldiers deployed to join the almost 650 already there.

By March 2019, the Pentagon was asking British special forces to play a key role in counter-terrorist operations in Afghanistan. This followed US President Donald Trump’s decision to pull US troops out of the country. It was also reported that a contingent of the Special Boat Service (SBS) is operating in central and eastern Afghanistan.

In 2014, the government stated that it had ended its drone strikes programme in Afghanistan, which had begun in 2008 and covered much of the country. It is believed that all British Reaper drones were withdrawn from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. Yet in 2015, British special forces were still calling in airstrikes using US drones instead.

Overall, British troops in Afghanistan numbered about 1,000 by mid-2019.

Iraq

Hundreds of British troops have been deployed in Iraq to train local security forces. But they are also engaged in covert combat operations against Islamic State.

In early 2016, Britain reportedly had more than 200 special forces soldiers in the country, operating out of a fortified base within a Kurdish Peshmerga camp near Mosul in northern Iraq. In May 2016, special forces were given the green light to conduct covert parachute assaults involving SAS and SBS commandos being sent in to support Kurdish and Iraqi troops fighting Islamic State, with small vehicles, heavy machine guns and mortars.

The SAS in Iraq was also reported in 2016 to have been given a “kill or capture” list of up to 200 UK citizens who had joined the Islamic State group.

By May 2019 about 30 SAS and SBS troops were reported to be working on a “kill or capture” mission to hunt down Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Iraq. They were said to be operating from a special forces HQ north of Baghdad and teaming up with US special forces. The search for al-Baghdadi reportedly involved MI6, UK listening station GCHQ and the American National Security Agency.

British Reaper drones were first deployed over Iraq in 2014 and continue to fly. From then until March 2019, UK drones conducted 1,384 missions in Iraq, releasing 666 weapons.

Libya

SAS forces were secretly deployed to Libya at the beginning of 2016, working with Jordanian special forces embedded in the British contingent. This followed a mission by MI6 and the Royal Air Force in January 2016 to gather intelligence on Islamic State and draw up potential targets for airstrikes.

Some 100 British special forces were said to be operating in Libya in early 2016, helping to protect government officials and advising Libyan forces on fighting Islamic State. The Libyan Express reportedthat “British and American intelligence officers ‘with suitcases full of cash’ are bribing tribal leaders not to oppose an international ground force” in the country.

British commandos were soon also engaged in fighting and directing assaults against Islamic State in Libya. They also ran intelligence, surveillance and logistical support operations from a base in the western city of Misrata.

A team of 15 British special forces were also reported in June 2016 to be based in a French-led multinational military operations centre in Benghazi, eastern Libya, supporting Libyan general Khalifa Haftar. In July 2016, Middle East Eye reported that this British involvement was intended to help coordinate airstrikes in support of Haftar, whose forces are opposed to the Tripoli-based government that Britain is otherwise supporting. It was unclear why.

In 2017, eight members of the SBS — supported by 40 British specialists — were deployed with US, French and Italian forces “to deny Islamic State any opportunity to establish a base in Libya”.

A Libyan anti-terrorism official was quoted as saying in May 2019 that the UK was co-operating with the Libyan government in “surveilling and fighting terrorists”. In the same month, an SAS unit was evacuatedby the RAF following the rapid advance of Haftar’s forces in the cities of Tobruk and Tripoli.

Pakistan

The UK has been a co-party to the US’s extensive drone campaign in Pakistan. The UK spy base at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire has facilitated US drone strikes against jihadists in Pakistan, with Britain’s GCHQ providing “locational intelligence” to US forces for use in these attacks.

RAF pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada have been involved in these US drone operations in Pakistan (and Afghanistan) which have killed hundreds of civilians. The role of these pilots is unclear but, Amnesty International notes, “this does raise concerns that UK pilots under US command may have been ordered to carry out drone strikes and could therefore implicate them in these violations”.

US drone strikes continue in Pakistan, although at much lower levels than in previous years, and the UK role in them remains obscure.

Somalia

A small contingent of SAS troops has been training and advising Kenyan security forces and providing intelligence to help Kenya in its efforts against al-Shabaab in Somalia, including to capture its leaders.

In 2012, it was reported that the SAS was working on the ground in Somalia with Kenyan forces to target al-Shabaab terrorists. This involved up to 60 SAS soldiers, close to a full squadron, including forward air controllers who called in airstrikes by the Kenyan air force, which also employs a number of ex-RAF pilots.

In early 2016, Jordan’s King Abdullah, whose troops have operated with UK special forces for the war against Bashar Assad in Syria and whose special forces were planned to be embedded with the UK’s in Libya, said that his troops were also ready with Britain and Kenya to go “over the border” to attack al-Shabaab in Somalia.

By April 2016 it was reported that the SAS had a 10-strong team in Somalia, based at a camp north of Mogadishu, which was engaged in “regular skirmishes” with al-Shabaab and was also training Somali soldiers. The SAS team was also working with US Delta Force directing airstrikes against the insurgents by US jets based in Djibouti.

The British government said in May 2016 that it had 27 military personnel in Somalia. These troops were said to be supporting the UN, EU and African Union training missions in Somalia which were set up to counter al-Shabaab and were “developing” the Somali national army.

The Menwith Hill base in Yorkshire has also facilitated US drone strikes against jihadists in Somalia (as they have in Pakistan), with Britain’s GCHQ similarly providing “locational intelligence” to US forces for use in these attacks.

Syria

Evidence suggests that a British covert operation in Syria began in late 2011. By November of that year, MI6 and French special forces were reportedly assisting Syrian fighters and assessing their training, weapons and communications needs. The CIA, meanwhile, was providing communications equipment and intelligence.

Britain also became involved in the “rat line” of weapons delivered from Libya to Syria via southern Turkey. This was authorised in early 2012 following a secret agreement between the US and Turkey. Revealed by journalist Seymour Hersh, the project was funded by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar while “the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria”.

British and US covert operations were focused on toppling the Assad regime in the first few years of the war. Britain began training Syrian rebel forces fighting Assad from bases in Jordan in 2012. At the same time, the SAS and SBS also began “slipping into Syria on missions”.

No evidence appears to have emerged of British training of Syrian rebels to fight Islamic State in Syria before May 2015, when Britain sent 85 troops to Turkey and Jordan to train rebels to fight both Islamic State and Assad. By July 2015, Britain was training Syrians in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan and Qatar to fight Islamic State, but the war against Assad also continued. As part of a US-led training programme, British special forces provided training, weapons and other equipment to the New Syrian Army, comprised of defectors from the Syrian army.

In 2015, British special forces were “mounting hit-and-run raids against Islamic State deep inside eastern Syria dressed as insurgent fighters”. They were reported to “frequently cross into Syria to assist the New Syrian Army”, from their base in Jordan.

Turkey also offered a base for British military training. In 2015, for example, Britain deployed several military trainers to Turkey as part of the US-led training programme in Syria. This programme was providing small arms, infantry tactics and medical training to rebel forces.

British aircraft began covert strikes against Islamic State targets in Syria in 2015, months before Parliament voted in favour of overt action in December 2015. These strikes were conducted by British pilots embedded with US and Canadian forces.

In September 2016, UK forces were involved in US-led airstrikes against targets in Syria which killed more than 60 Syrian troops. These strikes were part of a battle against Islamic State in Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria which the US and UK claimed they were targeting and had hit Syrian army targets accidentally. In June 2018, the RAF targeted Syrian army forces near the border with Iraq and Jordan in close proximity to a UK/US special forces base.

Some 200 UK troops were in Syria in early 2018, consisting of the SAS, Parachute Regiment and Royal Marines which together make up the Special Forces Support Group. They were working alongside the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

In March 2018, Matt Tonroe, an SAS soldier embedded with US forces, was killed in the northern city of Manbij, fighting with local Kurdish troops against Islamic State. SAS sources claimed that those who planted the bomb which killed Tonroe could have belonged to the Free Syrian Army. However, a media investigation in 2019 revealed that Tonroe was killed by “friendly forces” after an accidental detonation.

British special forces continue to operate on the ground in Syria in 2019 and are reported to number at least 120 soldiers.

Britain has also been operating a secret drone warfare programme in Syria which began in 2014. From then until March 2019, UK drones conducted 1,801 missions in Syria, releasing 304 weapons. In 2017, Reaper drones killed two British Islamic State militants in Syria, again before parliament approved military action.

Yemen

The government previously claimed it had no military personnel based in Yemen. Yet a Vice News report in 2016 based on interviews with UK officials revealed that British special forces were in Yemen. They were, in fact, seconded to MI6, which was training Yemeni troops fighting Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and had infiltrated AQAP.

Vice News also revealed in 2016 that British military personnel were helping with US drone strikes against AQAP. Britain was playing “a crucial and sustained role with the CIA in finding and fixing targets, assessing the effect of strikes and training Yemeni intelligence agencies to locate and identify targets for the US drone programme”. UK officials, the report said, were taking part in “hits”, preparing “target packages” and participating in a “joint operations room” with US and Yemeni forces in support of strikes.

The Menwith Hill base in Yorkshire facilitates US drone strikes in Yemen, as shown in files from Edward Snowden revealed by The Intercept in 2016. Documents show that the US National Security Agency has pioneered groundbreaking new spying programmes at Menwith Hill to pinpoint the locations of suspected terrorists accessing the internet in remote parts of the world. This role for Menwith Hill was denied for years by the UK government.

In November 2017, it was revealed that the British Army was secretly training Saudi troops to fight in Yemen. It was reported that up to 50 UK military personnel were in Saudi Arabia teaching battlefield skills. The training mission — codenamed Operation Crossways — came to light only after the army released photos and information by mistake. The training was undertaken by UK troops from the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland who were imparting “irregular warfare” techniques to officers from the Royal Saudi Land Forces Infantry Institute.

In January 2019, a 12-man US/UK special forces task force, comprising the SAS and the US Green Berets, was flown into Yemen from Djibouti. The soldiers were dressed in Arab clothing and were reported to be operating near the government-held town of Marib, 500 miles north of Aden.

By March 2019, 30 SBS personnel were deployed inside Yemen, based in the Sa’dah area of the northern part of the country. The SBS force includes medics, interpreters and intelligence officers and their mission is to “advise” official Saudi and Yemeni government troops. However, the media has reported that these SBS forces have also been involved in fierce clashes with militia groups. An SBS spokesperson has said that British soldiers have been injured in “firefights”.

More on the UK’s drone wars

The UK has been recently involved in drone strikes in at least six countries: Afghanistan,Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. Its squadron of 10 Reaper drones is controlledremotely by satellite from RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire and by RAF aircrew at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, US.

The RAF’s secret drone war beganin Afghanistan in October 2007 and elsewherein 2014. The NGO Reprieve notesthat Britain provides communications networks to the CIA “without which the US would not be able to operate this programme”. Reprieve says that this is a particular matter of concern as the US covert drone programme is illegal.

UK personnel have been embeddedwithin US units and form part of US drone operations. UK personnel flew US drones (Predators) during Operation Ellamy, the codename for the UK’s participation in the military intervention in Libya in 2011. UK personnel embedded with the US Air Force have also operated US armed and unarmed drones in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In July 2018, a two-year probe by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Drones revealedthat the number of drone operations facilitated by the UK in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia has been growing without any public scrutiny. The drone strategy also involved working with repressive regimes including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Amnesty International’s 2018 report, Deadly Assistance, documented four RAF bases in the UK involved in the US drone attacks programme: Menwith Hill in Yorkshire, Molesworth in Cambridgeshire, Digby in Lincolnshire and Croughton in Northamptonshire. Around one-third of all US military communications in Europe pass through RAF Croughton, which has a direct link through a fibre-optic communications system to a US military base in Djibouti (Camp Lemonnier), from where most US drone strikes in Yemen and Somalia are carried out.

Embedded in the US and other militaries

The government stated in 2015 that it had 177 military personnel embedded in other countries’ forces. Some 30 of those were working with the US military. UK military personnel are assignedto various commands in the US and to US Navy Carrier Strike Groups.

It is possible that these forces are also engaged in combat. For example, the then First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Philip Jones, saidBritish pilots fly US F18s from the decks of US aircraft carriers in the Gulf. This means that some “US” airstrikes may well be carried out by British pilots.

“British forces embedded in the armed forces of other nations operate as if they were the host nation’s personnel, under that nation’s chain of command”, the Ministry of Defence has stated.

#SpecialForces #UKmilitary #Syria #Yemen #Pakistan #drones

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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Exclusive: Security reports reveal how Assange turned an embassy into a command post for election meddling

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/15/politics/assange-embassy-exclusive-documents/index.html

Exclusive: Security Reports Reveal How Assange turned An Embassy Into A Command Post For Election Meddling

By Marshall Cohen, Kay Guerrero and Arturo Torres | Updated 3:31 PM EDT, Mon July 15, 2019 | CNN | Posted July 28, 2019

Atlanta(CNN)New documents obtained exclusively by CNN reveal that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange received in-person deliveries, potentially of hacked materials related to the 2016 US election, during a series of suspicious meetings at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

The documents build on the possibility, raised by special counsel Robert Mueller in his report on Russian meddling, that couriers brought hacked files to Assange at the embassy.

The surveillance reports also describe how Assange turned the embassy into a command center and orchestrated a series of damaging disclosures that rocked the 2016 presidential campaign in the United States.

Read the Spanish-language version of this story at CNN en Español

Despite being confined to the embassy while seeking safe passage to Ecuador, Assange met with Russians and world-class hackers at critical moments, frequently for hours at a time. He also acquired powerful new computing and network hardware to facilitate data transfers just weeks before WikiLeaks received hacked materials from Russian operatives.

These stunning details come from hundreds of surveillance reports compiled for the Ecuadorian government by UC Global, a private Spanish security company, and obtained by CNN. They chronicle Assange's movements and provide an unprecedented window into his life at the embassy. They also add a new dimension to the Mueller report, which cataloged how WikiLeaks helped the Russians undermine the US election.

An Ecuadorian intelligence official told CNN that the surveillance reports are authentic.

The security logs noted that Assange personally managed some of the releases "directly from the embassy" where he lived for nearly seven years. After the election, the private security company prepared an assessment of Assange's allegiances. That report, which included open-source information, concluded there was "no doubt that there is evidence" that Assange had ties to Russian intelligence agencies.

UC Global did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Assange, a native of Australia, has always denied working for the Kremlin and has insisted that the source of the leaks "is not the Russian government and it is not a state party." He also said he would have published damaging information about then-candidate Donald Trump if he had received it.

The US announced criminal charges against Assange earlier this year for his role in the 2010 leaks of secret diplomatic cables and Pentagon war logs, which WikiLeaks got from then-US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. British police yanked Assange from the embassy in April. He is now serving a one-year prison term in London for skipping bail in the UK, while aggressively fighting extradition to the US.

WikiLeaks did not respond to requests for comment. Assange's lawyers declined to comment. Assange maintains his innocence and WikiLeaks says the charges are "the worst attack on press freedom in our lifetime."

A Guest With Privileges

Assange sought refuge at the Ecuadorian Embassy in June 2012 to apply for political asylum and avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faced sexual assault allegations, which he denies.

The decision to offer Assange asylum was made by then-Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, who claimed he was protecting Assange from "political persecution." The asylum also served two larger purposes: It heightened Ecuador's status on the world stage and brandished Correa's credentials as a leading US antagonist in Latin America.

Initially the diplomats hoped to take Assange swiftly to Ecuador. But that plan stalled amid British refusals to allow Assange safe passage outside the embassy. So he settled in for a protracted stay.

Though confined to a few rooms inside the embassy, Assange was able to wield enormous authority over his situation. From the outset he demanded (and was granted) high-speed internet connectivity, phone service and regular access to professional visitors and personal guests. This arrangement enabled him to keep WikiLeaks active, the documents said.

Assange also issued a special list of people who were able to enter the embassy without showing identification or being searched by security. He was even granted the power to delete names from the visitor logs. To avoid surveillance cameras, Assange occasionally met guests inside the women's bathroom, according to the security reports.

This all leaves open the possibility that additional sensitive meetings took place but are still secret.

Quickly, the once-mundane diplomatic mission in the heart of London became a hotbed of tension and suspicion. Throughout Assange's stay at the embassy, Ecuador employed three security companies to conduct constant surveillance. Assange installed his own recording devices and used noise machines to stymie the snooping, according to the documents obtained by CNN.

The task of controlling Assange proved difficult. Fistfights broke out between Assange and the guards. He smeared feces on the walls out of anger.

Assange also maintained direct contact with senior officials in Ecuador, including former Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño, and regularly used those connections to threaten embassy staff, according to the surveillance documents and two Ecuadorian government sources who spoke to CNN. He claimed he could get people fired, even the sitting ambassador.

Assange's authority appeared at times to rival that of the ambassador. In December 2013, Ambassador Juan Falconí wrote a letter to Assange and said that "you cannot give instructions contrary to mine."

CNN reached out to the four ambassadors who overlapped with Assange's time at the embassy. Only Falconí would comment, saying the Ecuadorian government had never pressured him to give Assange special treatment and that he had established rules for Assange to follow.

Several current and former Ecuadorian government officials, including Correa and Patiño, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. While Correa was in office, he responded to criticism over harboring Assange by doubling down on the asylum offer and holding Assange up as a symbol of Ecuador's commitment to freedom of the press.

Referring to Assange, Correa pointed out that "the icon of freedom of expression chooses to take refuge in the embassy of Ecuador," in a 2012 interview with RT en Español, a Spanish-language network controlled by the Kremlin. The Russian government operates television networks around the world to spread propaganda, and it reaches American audiences on its flagship English-language station, RT.

Despite the years of strife, Assange was allowed to stay and prepared to wield his power when the moment was right. That moment came in summer 2016, a pivotal time in the US presidential campaign.

Russia Comes Knocking

By June, Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton had emerged as the de facto nominees of their parties and were gearing up for what would be a bruising general election. The campaign took a historic turn on June 14, when the Democratic National Committee announced that it had been hacked and blamed Russia -- which Trump dismissedas a farce.

Assange was busy back at the embassy. That month, members of the security team worked overtime to handle at least 75 visits to Assange, nearly double the monthly average of visits logged by the security company that year. He met Russian citizens and a hacker later flagged in the Mueller report as a potential courier for emails stolen from the Democrats.

View this interactive content on CNN.com

Also in June, WikiLeaks secretly communicated with Russian hackers and Assange publicly announced plans to release new material about Clinton. The Mueller report says the Russian hackers obscured their identities by using online personas for all their communications with WikiLeaks, which included emails and direct messages to WikiLeaks' account on Twitter.

Assange took at least seven meetings that month with Russians and others with Kremlin ties, according to the visitor logs.

Two encounters were with a Russian national named Yana Maximova, who could not be reached for comment. Almost nothing is known about Maximova, making it difficult to discern why she visited the embassy at key moments in June 2016. During her two visits that month, she met with Assange in the middle of the day in the embassy's conference room.

Assange also had five meetings that month with senior staffers from RT, the Kremlin-controlled news organization.

US intelligence agencies have concluded that RT had "actively collaborated with WikiLeaks" in the past and played a significant role in Russia's effort to influence the 2016 election and help Trump win. For several months in 2012, Assange hosted a television show on RT.

In June 2016, RT's London bureau chief, Nikolay Bogachikhin, visited Assange twice, and gave him a USB drive on one occasion, according to the surveillance reports. That five-minute visit was hastily arranged and required last-minute approval from the Ecuadorian ambassador.

In an email to CNN, Bogachikhin said, "RT has produced multiple programming featuring Mr. Assange. Within that process, everything that is intrinsically involved in the production of content took place."

The RT bureau chief previously mocked reports about his visits with Assange, jokingly tweeting that he gave the WikiLeaks founder "a whole bag of Novichok," the chemical weapon used last year to poison a traitorous ex-Russian spy who lives in the UK. Since Bogachikhin's post last year, he has remained silent on Twitter.

Shortly after WikiLeaks established contact with the Russian online personas, Assange asked his hosts to beef up his internet connection. The embassy granted his request on June 19, providing him with technical support "for data transmission" and helping install new equipment, the documents said.

This was the same day Assange and his lawyers met with then-Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Guillaume Long, according to the surveillance reports. Long declined to comment for this story.

It's unclear whether Assange told the Ecuadorians that WikiLeaks was working behind the scenes to acquire documents related to the US election. The US government has never publicly accused Ecuador of knowingly helping Assange or the Kremlin.

Creating Chaos From The Embassy

As the election approached, security officials at the embassy noted that Assange released some of the hacked emails "directly from the embassy," according to the surveillance documents. The Mueller report explicitly referenced that "Assange had access to the internet from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, England." The rest of that paragraph is heavily redacted.

It's unclear whether Mueller ever obtained these surveillance reports as part of his investigation.

Mueller concluded that hackers from Russia's military intelligence agency, known as the GRU, attacked Democratic targets in spring 2016 and removed hundreds of gigabytes of information. They created online personas -- Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks -- to transfer some of the files to WikiLeaks and publicly claim responsibility for the hacks, falsely disavowing any Russian ties.

Mueller's team noted that it "cannot rule out that stolen documents were transferred to WikiLeaks through intermediaries who visited during the summer of 2016." Assange has said a small group of associates helped him from the outside, but only to sift through the emails.

The special counsel named one of those associates, German hacker Andrew Müller-Maguhn, and said he "may have assisted with the transfer of these stolen documents to WikiLeaks." The Mueller report appears to contain additional details about this possibility, but those portions were redacted because they contain classified information about sensitive investigative techniques.

Assange has known Müller-Maguhn for years. The hacker even showed up as a featured guest on Assange's short-lived television show on RT in 2012, discussing the future of the internet and digital privacy. Müller-Maguhn is also involved in mainstream technology groups, and served on the board of ICANN, the international organization that governs internet domains.

When contacted by CNN, Müller-Maguhn declined to comment about his meetings with Assange. He previously told The Washington Post that he was never in possession of the hacked materials before they were posted online.

According to the surveillance reports, Müller-Maguhn visited Assange at the London embassy at least 12 times before the 2016 election. During a few of those meetings, Müller-Maguhn was accompanied by another well-known German hacker, Bernd Fix, the reports said. CNN was unable to reach Fix for comment.

The Mueller report says that on July 6, WikiLeaks reached out to the Russian online personas with a request to send anything "hillary related" as soon as possible, "because the (Democratic National Convention) is approaching and she will solidify bernie supporters behind her after," referring to her opponent in the Democratic primaries, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

The trio of hackers -- Assange, Müller-Maguhn and Fix -- then gathered on July 14 for more than four hours on, according to the security logs. The special counsel's report indicates that on this date, Russian hackers posing as Guccifer 2.0 sent encrypted files to WikiLeaks, with the title "big archive."

Days later, on July 18, while the Republican National Convention kicked off in Cleveland, an embassy security guard broke protocol by abandoning his post to receive a package outside the embassy from a man in disguise. The man covered his face with a mask and sunglasses and was wearing a backpack, according to surveillance images obtained by CNN.

The security company saw this unfold on surveillance footage and recommended that the guard be replaced. But the Ecuadorian government kept him on the job.

On that same day, according to the Mueller report, WikiLeaks informed the Russian hackers that it had received the files and was preparing to release them soon. It's not clear if these incidents are related, and the contents of the package delivered to the embassy are unknown.

WikiLeaks released more than 20,000 files from the Democratic National Committee on July 22, and the emails exposed how top officials preferred Clinton and tried to undermine Sanders. The party's convention days later in Philadelphia dissolved into a chaotic mess. A week that had been designed to engineer party unity transformed into a near-mutiny and the DNC chair, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, was forced to resign.

As Democrats tried to manage the fallout, Trump quickly upped the ante.

"Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," he said on July 27, referring to Clinton's private server. Mueller said the Russians were listening after all, and tried for the first time to hack Clinton's office within hours of Trump's comment.

'You Won't Be Disappointed '

While Trump and Clinton crisscrossed the country in the final weeks of the campaign, the Russians ramped up their efforts, and Assange was toiling away on another major project.

Russian hackers, posing as DCLeaks, had reached out again to WikiLeaks and offered more materials, writing that "you won't be disappointed, I promise," according to the Mueller report. They later transmitted 50,000 emails stolen from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's inbox.

The special counsel report pinpoints a potential date for the data transfer: September 19. On that day, Assange met again with Müller-Maguhn and the security guards observed Assange installing new computer cables in his room, according to the documents obtained by CNN.

WikiLeaks started releasing Podesta's emails on October 7 and released new batches nearly every day before the November election. The media covered all the embarrassing details, including transcripts of Clinton's closed-door Wall Street speeches, sniping from staffers about her "terrible" instincts and frustrations about overlap between business and charity, which they dubbed "Bill Clinton Inc."

Trump touted the new leaks at nearly every stop on the campaign trail in the final weeks of the race, sometimes reading directly from emails and seizing on thinly sourced conspiracy theories.

"This just came out -- WikiLeaks! I love WikiLeaks," Trump said at a rally in Pennsylvania, a critical swing state that he carried by less than 1% of the 6.1 million votes cast statewide.

Kremlin-backed outlets, including RT, breathlessly amplified the leaks on social media. On at least two occasions, RT even published articles detailing the new batches of emails before WikiLeaks officially released them, suggesting that they were coordinating behind the scenes, which they deny.

Diplomatic Ultimatum

Not long after the Podesta emails began trickling out, with the election fast approaching, the US government raised concerns with Ecuadorian officials that Assange was using their diplomatic mission in London to help the Russians interfere in the 2016 election, a former US official familiar with the matter told CNN.

The US protest came with an implicit warning: Stop Assange or there will be consequences for Ecuador, just like there would eventually be consequences for the Russians for meddling in the election, and for Assange too, according to the US official and documents obtained by CNN.

Facing this ultimatum, Ecuadorian officials in the capital city of Quito decided on October 15 to cut Assange off from the outside world, shutting down his internet access and telephone service. Even this didn't stop the deluge of email releases, which WikiLeaks continued pumping out every day until the election.

Ecuador soon released a public statement condemning WikiLeaks' involvement in efforts to interfere with the US election but reaffirmed its commitment to protecting Assange. As this geopolitical saga unfolded, the Ecuadorian Embassy received calls from other countries asking about potential US retribution and Assange's physical safety, the security reports said.

The situation intensified three days later. The security documents lay out a critical sequence of events on the night of October 18. Around 10 p.m., Assange got into a heated argument with then-Ecuadorian Ambassador Carlos Abad Ortiz. Just before midnight, Abad banned any non-diplomatic visitors to the embassy and left the building. Behind the scenes, Assange communicated with the foreign minister in Quito.

Within an hour of Abad's departure, he called the embassy and reversed the ban.

By 1 a.m., two WikiLeaks personnel arrived at the embassy and started removing computer equipment as well as a large box containing "about 100 hard drives," according to the documents.

Security officials on site wanted to examine the hard drives, but their hands were tied. The Assange associates who removed the boxes were on the special list of people who couldn't be searched. The security team sent a memo back to Quito raising red flags about this late-night maneuver and said it heightened their suspicions about Assange's intentions.

US intelligence agencies have said from the very beginning that WikiLeaks got the stolen emails from the Russian government, which Mueller also alleged in his indictment against a dozen Russian hackers. But the suspects are all living safely in Russia, so the US will likely never publicly produce a smoking gun or prove in court that Russia worked with WikiLeaks.

Trump was inaugurated in January 2017 and continued to question whether Russia had meddled in the election. Assange's internet access was restored after the election, and he continued to meet with hackers as well as an American lobbyist representing a prominent Russian oligarch.

In Ecuador, Correa's presidential term ended in May 2017 and he was succeeded by Lenín Moreno, a close ally who had been his vice president for more than six years. But after Moreno was elected, he quickly turned against Correa and started undoing many of his policies, including his friendly relationship with Assange.

Justice Department lawyers secretly prepared a criminal case against Assange for the Chelsea Manning leaks. Federal prosecutors even turned to a controversial law to target Assange for actively soliciting and publishing classified materials, which is typically protected under the First Amendment.

In April of this year, Moreno revoked Assange's asylum and said Assange had "violated the norm of not intervening in internal affairs of other states." This cleared the way for British police to forcibly remove Assange from the embassy when the first US charges were unsealed.

Assange hasn't been accused of any crimes related to his actions in 2016. He remains in a UK prison, awaiting what will likely be a grueling battle over his extradition to the US, where he could face spending the rest of his life in prison.

Meanwhile, he still has allies in Russia. Within hours of Assange's arrest, senior officials from President Vladimir Putin's government rushed to Assange's defense and slammed the US for infringing his rights, declaring that, "The hand of 'democracy' squeezes the throat of freedom."

CNN's Laura Weffer, Alfredo Meza and Evan Perez contributed to this report.

Timeline graphics by Tal Yellin. Illustration by Will Mullery.

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corporationsarepeople · 6 years

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Only now is the world figuring out that making up stories to sell papers may have been the least of the sins committed by the Enquirer, which was propped up in its 1950s’ infancy by Mafia money and which later forged a close relationship with Roy Cohn, the notorious New York fixer attorney who took an up-and-coming New York developer named Donald Trump under his wing while fighting off allegations including (wait for it) extortion and blackmail.

Since Trump was elected 45th president of the United States, we’ve learned that …

a) Pecker’s AMI reached a deal with federal prosecutors in Manhattan to avoid prosecution and tell all about how it aided Trump by working with Trump’s legal fixer, Michael Cohen, to pay Trump’s mistress Karen McDougal $150,000 in a scheme to keep her out of the news right before the November 2016 election.

b) AMI’s Enquirer protected Trump in myriad other ways, from paying off a doorman with a salacious Trump rumor to publishing false stories that his opponent Hillary Clinton was gravely ill just as Trump’s political fixer, Roger Stone, was suggesting that bogus line of attack.

c) That while the Enquirer was aiding and protecting Trump it was also -- according to reports -- holding onto a remarkable source of protection: a safe containing damaging stories about the president it had buried over the years.

The yeoman’s work that Pecker’s Enquirer had performed on behalf of Trump’s election -- combined, possibly, with the treasure trove of dirt inside of that safe -- meant it was time to cash in on the newfound connections of the man who went in just a decade from scamming Trump Vodka and Trump University to running a global superpower. And no connection was worth more than the vast wealth of Saudi Arabia.

What the public didn’t know in the early months of Trump’s presidency was that Donald Trump Jr. had secretly met in Trump Tower in early August 2016 with a longtime emissary for the Saudis and its closest ally, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), George Nader, and two figures from the world of intelligence: Erik Prince, founder of the notorious firm known as Blackwater, and an ex-Israeli intelligence agent named Joel Zamel.

Nader, according to the New York Times, said the Saudis and the UAE wanted to help Trump win the election. Zamel proposed a covert social media campaign. Trump Jr. swears that nothing came of the meeting -- even though a sleazy social-media campaign exactly like the one Zamel proposed helped Trump narrowly win the Electoral College. When Trump became president, he could have gone anywhere for his first international trip: He went to Saudi Arabia. When the Saudis and UAE split with Qatar -- a key ally where American troops are stationed -- Trump baffled his own administration by trash-talking Qatar.

In July 2017, the president invited his good friend David Pecker to the White House and -- after chatting with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who was developing close ties with MBS -- the two men had dinner with Kacy Grine, a French businessman who’s a longtime adviser to MBS. Two months later, Pecker went to Saudi Arabia and met personally with MBS and Grine and pitched business opportunities.

About six months later, shoppers in U.S. supermarkets, Walmart and other retailers might have been shocked to see a colorful piece of pro-Saudi propaganda at the checkout. The New Kingdom was a glossy publication with many color photos lauding MBS, overwrought text describing Saudi Arabia as “a magic kingdom,” no ads and a ridiculous cover price of $13,99. The magazine -- just ahead of an MBS visit to America where he met Trump, Pecker (and, ironically, Bezos) and other luminaries -- was of course published by AMI.

During this same period, Team Trump and MBS grew even closer, with Kushner traveling to Riyadh in October 2017 for two days of secret meetings where, according to several unconfirmed reports, he may have shared U.S. intelligence a short time before MBS rounded up and detained some 200 high-ranking Saudis. At the same time, Trump fumed over the investigative journalism of the Bezos-owned Washington Post. Even though Bezos is by all accounts a hands-off owner with no say in the Post’s journalism, Trump at one point reportedly demanded that the U.S. Postal Service hike the rates charged Amazon.

Which brings us to Oct. 2, 2018, the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, and the Post’s vow to get to the bottom of it. Three months later came the salacious Enquirer report on Bezos. Its publication was joyously celebrated by none other than President Trump, who sounded like a Mafia boss, albeit a dumb one, with a tweet about the troubles of “Jeff Bozo.”

But Bezos didn’t take the news lying down. He hired a well-known investigator, Gavin de Becker, to launch a detailed investigation of how the Enquirer obtained his private text messages. Early reports suggested a focus on the brother of Bezos’s paramour, Michael Sanchez, who is a political supporter of Trump and a friend of Trump-Russia scandal figures such as Carter Page and (wait for it ... again) Roger Stone. And maybe the simplest explanation is the best explanation -- except that Bezos wrote on Thursday night that what apparently made Pecker “apoplectic” was questions about Saudi Arabia.

—-

Just go read the whole thing. This is only a small sample. Will Bunch wrote it, so you know it’s gonna be good.

#maga #trump #kompromat #us politics

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worldofwardcraft · 3 years

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Eyes on the prize.

March 21, 2022

We're all used to the nonstop grifting of disgraced ex-president Donald Trump. Like charging his Secret Service protection detail $650 a night whenever he stayed at his Bedminster, NJ golf club. Or, more recently, when the bogus billionaire asked his dim-witted followers to give him money so he can buy an airplane like he had when he was president. And don't even get us started on his kids.

So it's only to be expected that former First Lady and current third wife Melania would want to get in on the action as well. Last month, she announced an "exclusive high tea" event to be held in Naples, FL on April 9. Purportedly, it was to benefit a BeBest initiative called "Fostering the Future" that was to grant foster children scholarships for computer training. Ticket prices to this funfest were advertised for as high as $50,000.

However, as The New York Times reported, no charity with the name “Fostering the Future” or “BeBest” is registered in Florida. And Trump spokespersons are not saying how much of the take was to go to their hypothetical charity. With Florida officials now investigating, the party has since been called off.

But Mel has other ops afoot. She's also selling digital art collections as nonfungible tokens (NFTs). The first one — titled "Head of State Collection, 2022" — was put up for auction in January. In addition to the digital artwork, the set included a white hat she once wore and a watercolor of her eyes (pictured above on the lookout for easy marks). It sold for a cool $180,000, and you'll never guess who bought it. Turns out Bloomberg News did some analysis of the blockchain transaction and discovered the lucky winning bidder was...Melania Trump! Yeah, she bought her own hat.

Undeterred, the plucky immigrant con artiste also announced, according to Forbes, a forthcoming

“POTUS NFT Collection,” which will consist of 10 pieces of digital artwork, with 500 to 1,750 editions available for each item. Altogether there will be 10,000 NFTs, priced at $50 each, “highlighting iconic moments” from the former president’s administration, such as the Fourth of July visit to Mount Rushmore and Christmas at the White House.

As her husband has demonstrated time after time, the essential quality for pulling off scams like this is a complete lack of shame. Which Melania certainly shows in this statement: “I am proud to expand upon my NFT platform and am honored to be able to recognize important moments in our Nation’s history.” Hold on to your wallet.

#trump crime family #Melania Trump #trump greed #Grifter

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davidraudalesuk · 4 years

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Presidents' Salaries During and After Office

While in office, the U.S. president receives a salary of $400,000 a year and a $50,000 expense account. Congress added the expense account in 1949. This pays for the president's personal expenses, such as food and dry cleaning.1

Title 3 of the U.S. Code also grants a $100,000 non-taxable travel account. Congress has appropriated $19,000 for official presidential receptions and related expenses.2 Other perks include free transportation in the presidential limousine, Marine One, and Air Force One.

The president receives free furnished housing in the White House. The First Family also receives $100,000 to redecorate the White House to feel more at home.3 White House upkeep requires permanent residents including maids, cooks, valets, and groundskeepers.

The president receives free health care from the official physician who directs the White House Medical Unit.

Presidents and vice presidents, unlike other federal employees, are expressly permitted to receive any gift, for themselves or on behalf of any family members, as long as the gift is not solicited, coerced, or in exchange for an official act.4

Key Takeaways

The current salary for the President of the United States is $400,000 per year with an expense account of $50,000.

Former presidents receive a pension and other benefits when they leave office.

The benefits former presidents receive is nearly $4 million dollars a year, with more than 40% of that cost in office space.5

While the First Spouse has many responsibilities, the position does not pay a salary.

Presidents Who Did Not Take a Salary

The Constitution requires a president to take a salary. The Founding Fathers wanted to protect even wealthy presidents from misfortune that could tempt them to take bribes. The salary may have also been designed to ensure that a lack of personal wealth would not prohibit a president-elect from taking office.

Four presidents refused a salary. Instead, they donated all or part of it.

Donald J. Trump donated his $400,000 annual salary to various federal departments from 2017 to 2020.6 As of October 15, 2020, Trump's net worth was $2.5 billion.7

John F. Kennedy donated his $100,000 salary to charity. He was the beneficiary of a multimillion-dollar trust fund. He also donated his salary while serving 14 years in Congress.8

Herbert Hoover divided his salary between various charities. He gave some of it to his staff. Hoover's net worth was around $4 million in 1913, worth about $105 million today.9

George Washington donated his $25,000 salary.10 He used some of it for travel expenses. He needed a special chariot to take him through the rugged roads of the South. He had also foregone a salary while he was our nation's military commander.11

Salary for First Spouses

The First Spouse receives no salary. The responsibilities include SVP of communications and strategic planning, head of program management, and VP of Global Affairs.

Some First Spouses give up lucrative careers to enter the White House. For example, Hillary Clinton had been a partner at Rose Law Firm in Arkansas and Michelle Obama was an executive at the University of Chicago hospitals.

Vice Presidents' Salary

The Vice President receives the same salary as the chief justice of the United States and the speaker of the House. It is dictated by the Ethics Reform Act of 1989.12 The Vice President receives an annual cost-of-living adjustment.13

The Vice President's pension is calculated like that of other members of Congress. Ex-Vice Presidents and their families are entitled to Secret Service protection for six months after leaving office, and temporarily any time afterward if warranted.14

Presidents' Salaries Throughout History

Congress has only given the president a raise five times. A president cannot get a raise while serving a current term. As a result, most raises are gifts from an outgoing president to future ones.

Here is the president's salary through history, and what it would be worth in today's dollars. Thanks to inflation, all previous presidents received more in buying power than the nation's top executive does today.

1789: The president's salary was $25,000. It would be worth around $740,000 in 2020.

1873: President Ulysses S. Grant signed the bill that authorized his raise for his second term.15 The $50,000 salary would be worth $1.08 million in 2020.

1909: William Taft received a $75,000 salary. It would be worth $2.15 million in 2020.

1949: Harry Truman received a $100,000 salary. It would be worth $1.09 million in 2020.

1969: Richard Nixon's $200,000 salary would be worth $1.42 million in 2020.

2001: George W. Bush received $400,000. That amount paid in 2001 would be worth about $588,000 in 2020.16

How Long Do Presidents Get Paid?

The Former Presidents Act of 1958 ensures that U.S. presidents get paid for life.17 Congress passed the act to provide for President Harry Truman. After he left office, he had many financial problems. The Act provides former presidents with a pension. They also receive funds for travel, office space, support staff, and mailing costs. The pay should equal that of a head of a federal government executive department. In 2020, these Executive Level I employees received $219,200.18

Ex-presidents also receive seven months of transition services. It covers the costs of winding down the outgoing administration and briefing the incoming administration.

They receive funds for office space and office staff. The aggregate salary for the staff is capped at $150,000 a year for the first 30 months and $96,000 a year afterward.

Widows or widowers of former presidents receive $20,000 a year.19

How Long Presidents Get Secret Service

Former presidents and their spouses receive Secret Service protection for life. In 1994, Congress reduced it to 10 years for presidents who entered office after 1997. But Congress reinstated lifetime protection in 2012. Children of former presidents receive Secret Service protection until they are 16 years old.20 The cost of Secret Service protection is not made public.

The Former Presidents Act provides $1 million a year for security and travel expenses if they didn't receive Secret Service protection. Former first spouses receive $500,000 a year for security and travel purposes if they didn't receive Secret Service protection.17

Salaries of Former Presidents

The salaries of ex-presidents are set by the Former Presidents Act. The amount is equivalent to the salary of the head of an executive department. The other costs vary according to each president's needs.17

The General Services Administration manages the costs.

The figures stated below are from the FY 2021 budget request:

Jimmy Carter served from 1977-1981. While in office, he earned $200,000 a year with a $50,000 expense account.

As an ex-president, Carter receives $480,000 in FY 2021. That includes $219,000 in pension benefits, $118,000 for office space, and $120,000 for contracted personnel compensation and benefits.5

Carter received the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.21 He had mediated the 1978 Camp David Accords, established full diplomatic relations with China, and negotiated the SALT II nuclear limitation treaty with the Soviets.

Carter imposed sanctions on Iran in response to the Nov. 4, 1979 hostage crisis.22 Iranian students took Americans hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. He also struggled to end the stagflation created by Richard Nixon.

Carter added almost 10 million jobs while president, the fourth-largest increase.23 He added $299 billion to the debt, increasing it by 43%.24 Carter created the Department of Education, deregulated oil prices as well as the trucking and airline industries.

Bill Clinton served from 1993-2001. He earned $200,000 a year with $50,000 in expenses.

As ex-president Clinton receives about $1.1 million in FY 2021. That includes $219,000 in personnel compensation and benefits and $237,000 in pensions. He has no travel budget but receives $537,000 for office space.5

He signed the North American Free Trade Agreement.25 He got HIPAA, CHIP, and welfare reform passed.

Clinton added about 18.7 million new jobs, more than any other president.23 Homeownership was 67.5% when he left office.26 The poverty rate dropped to 11.3%.27

Clinton created a $63 billion budget surplus during his term.28 The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 raised taxes on the wealthy.29 He also cut spending by reforming welfare.30

George W. Bush served from 2001-2009. He was the first president to earn $400,000 a year.

As ex-president, Bush receives about $1.15 million in FY 2021. That includes $206,000 for staff, and $231,000 in pension benefits. He receives $8,000 for travel, $500,000 for office space, and thousands more for other costs.5

Bush fought the 2001 recession with the Bush tax cuts. He responded to the 9/11 attacks with the War on Terror. He started the War in Afghanistan, created the Homeland Security Act, and launched the Iraq War in 2003.31

Bush promoted the Medicare Part D prescription drug program. Bush responded to Hurricane Katrina with billions to help with clean up. Bush signed the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention Act.32

Bush responded to the 2008 financial crisis by approving the $700 billion bailout package.33 The government took over Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG.34 35

From fiscal years 2001-2009, the national debt increased by about $6.1 trillion, the second-greatest amount under any president.36 Bush created about 4.4 million jobs, a 3.2% increase.23

Barack Obama served from 2009 to 2017. He earned $400,000 a year while president, with a $50,000 expense account.

As an ex-president, Obama receives about $1.5 million for FY 2021. That includes $244,000 for his pension. For his staff, he is allocated $188,000 in benefits and compensation. Obama receives $711,000 for office space, communications, utilities, and miscellaneous expenses. His travel budget is $5,000.5

Obama entered office during the Great Recession. He fought it with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

He bailed out the U.S. auto industry. Obama's 2010 bill to extend Bush-era tax cuts and unemployment benefits added $858 billion to the debt over two years.37

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act improved banking regulation. The Affordable Care Act expanded health insurance and Medicaid. Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in international diplomacy.

Obama's administration finalized a nuclear agreement with Iran and the International Climate Agreement. He enacted the Clean Power Plan in 2015.38 His team negotiated the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, but they weren't finalized.39 40

Obama increased the national debt by about $9 trillion, the most dollar-wise.36 Federal income was down, thanks to lower tax receipts. He created 14 million jobs from the depths of the recession in December 2009 to the end of his term.23

Donald Trump's term is from 2017 to 2021. He earns $400,000 a year with a $50,000 expense account. He donates this to a different federal department each quarter.6

Trump's policies follow economic nationalism. He renegotiated NAFTA and started a trade war by imposing tariffs on imports. He withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Trump's immigration policies focus on blocking illegal immigration. A crucial part of Trump's plan is to build a wall along the 2,000-mile U.S. border with Mexico. He also announced the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement.41

Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act to cut income and corporate taxes.42 It also repeals the Affordable Care Act's tax penalties for those who don't get insurance. As a result, Trump has weakened Obamacare even without repealing and replacing it.

Trump promised to reduce the debt but instead added about $3.3 trillion in his first three years, and almost $7.2 trillion by October 2020. He added 6.6 million jobs in his first three years in office, a 4.3% increase. By October 2020, the net job increase was 4.6 million jobs, a 3.1% increase.

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xtruss · 4 years

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The Ex-Presidents Club From Left: Jimmy Carter (Jesus’ Man), Bill Clinton (Womanizer), Barack Hussain Obama & George W Bush (Both War Criminals)

What Trump Could Do After Leaving The White Elephant House

Donald Trump will remain in office until 20 January, when he'll hand the job over to his successor and join the exclusive club of former US presidents. So what next for the politician and business mogul?

— Jessica Murphy, Vancouver & Robin Livinson-King, Toronto

— BBC News | US & Canada | November 11, 2020

There's a lucrative speakers' circuit, the penning of a memoir, the planning of a presidential library.

Jimmy Carter took up humanitarian causes, and George W Bush a paintbrush. But Mr Trump has never been a traditional politician.

"Donald Trump has broken many norms as president," says Tim Calkins, professor of marketing at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

"There's no reason to think that Donald Trump will act like any former president that we've ever seen."

Here are some of the possibilities.

He could run again

It may not be the end of Mr Trump's political ambitions - he could always pull a Grover Cleveland and run for a second term.

Cleveland is the only president to leave the White House and return four years later, taking on the top job in 1885 and then again in 1893.

The US Constitution stipulates that "no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice", but there's nothing about terms needing to be consecutive.

And former aides have suggested Mr Trump may seek to do just that.

"I would absolutely put him on the shortlist of people who are likely to run in 2024," former chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, recently said.

Mr Trump clearly loves campaign rallies and he received 71.5 million votes in the election - a record total for a losing candidate, and one that clearly demonstrates a significant base of support among the American public.

"He will leave the presidency with a brand in some ways just as powerful as it was when he came into the presidency," says Prof Calkins.

There has also been speculation that the president's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, is interested in running for the top job, conjecture he hasn't tried to tamp down.

Mr Trump has rarely shied away from a legal fight - and there are a few on the horizon that could keep him occupied once he leaves office.

Some investigations into the Trump Organization have already begun, including one in New York State.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance launched an investigation into the Trump Organization, initially related to claims that hush money payments were made to two women who say they had affairs with Mr Trump, though recent court filings have suggested the inquiry has broadened.

Mr Trump has repeatedly dismissed the probe, calling it a "witch hunt" and it's unclear whether Mr Vance has any evidence to file criminal charges.

The president also faces defamation lawsuits related to two cases of alleged sexual assault - both of which Mr Trump has denied - brought forward by two separate women.

Mary Trump, the president's niece, has also filed a lawsuit, accusing him and two family members of fraud and conspiracy.

Rescue his business empire

Before he was a politician, Mr Trump was a real estate mogul, a reality television star and his own brand ambassador, using his name for lucrative licensing deals.

He may be keen to pick up where he left off four years ago and get back into the world of business.

The New York Times has reported that Mr Trump has over $400m (£300m) in loans coming due over the next few years - though he has said that represents "a tiny percentage" of his net worth.

The Trump Organization has numerous hotels and golf courses.

There are Trump-branded properties in Mumbai, Istanbul and the Philippines - and of course, Washington, DC - and golf courses in the US, the UK, Dubai and Indonesia.

But if that is the course the president chooses in January, he'll have plenty of work ahead of him.

Many of his business ventures are in the travel and leisure industry, which was badly affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

Forbes has reported his wealth could have taken as much as a $1bn hit due to Covid-19.

Based on two decades of tax papers seen by the New York Times, the newspaper also reported "chronic losses and years of tax avoidance", saying he paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years, "largely because he reported losing much more money than he made".

Both the Trump Organization and the president criticised the report as inaccurate.

Mr Calkins said the president has proven time and again he has an incredible ability to keep his brand "in the conversation" and it remains strong - but not unchanged - by the presidency.

"It's become far more polarising and far more distinctive, which in some ways makes it less appealing as a business brand," he says.

"Now if you're going to have a wedding at a Trump hotel, that is really making a statement, that was not the case prior to the presidency."

First daughter Ivanka Trump's now shuttered namesake brand faced boycotts and was dropped by some major retailers once she took on her senior advisor role at the White House.

His sons Eric and Donald Jr were overseeing the Trump Organization, the umbrella company for Mr Trump's hundreds of investments in real estate, brands and other businesses, during the presidency but are also deeply involved in their father's political career.

"One of the things they will all be thinking about is, 'What is the best road forward [for the family]?'" says Prof Calkins.

Become a media mogul

President Trump is no stranger to television, after a bankable stint on The Apprentice reality show.

So there's a lot of speculation that his ambition is to get involved in the news media, either by launching his own channel or collaborating with an established conservative network.

"He'll definitely have a potential audience," says Henry Schafer, executive vice-president at Q Scores Company.

Mr Trump succeeded in building his brand as a "love-to-hate personality" like the Kardashians or Howard Stern, he says.

And Mr Schafer expects him to "fall back on what works best for him - that's controversy".

"He thrives on controversy, he spins controversy to his advantage, that's his 'MO' [modus operandi]."

Possible collaborators are cable networks One American News Network (OANN) or Newsmax.

OANN is a favourite of the president and vice-versa, and he has been described as "part ringleader, part muse" for the channel by the Atlantic magazine.

Christopher Ruddy, CEO of Newsmax, a conservative TV channel, was once dubbed a "Trump Whisperer" by the Washington Post.

There could be other media or entertainment ventures.

Presidents often sign book deals, with Barack and Michelle Obama netting a record-breaking joint deal reportedly worth $65m - though that amount is rare. George W Bush got a rumoured $10m advance for his memoir.

The Obamas also signed a multi-million dollar production deal with Netflix, and both the Clintons have podcast deals.

Post-presidential retirement

Mr Trump will have a presidential pension - and plenty of other perks - when he leaves office.

The Former Presidents Act, enacted in 1958 to "maintain the dignity" of the office, provides benefits including an annual pension, which was $207,800 (£158,124) in 2017.

Former presidents are also eligible for lifetime Secret Service protection, health benefits, and travel office and staff expenses.

So Mr Trump, now 74, could decide to quietly retire.

He could spend his days involved in philanthropic pursuits, boost his bank balance on the speakers' circuit and plan his presidential library - archives and museums of a president and his administration, usually in their home state.

And he could fill any spare time relaxing and playing golf in Florida at Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach retreat.

But Prof Calkins doesn't see the quiet life as a likely scenario for a man who spent so much of it in the limelight.

"Donald Trump as a personality is not likely to fade away and I think we're going to continue to see the Trump brand in the world," he says.

In October, Mr Trump even speculated that, if he lost the election he would feel so terrible that "maybe I'll have to leave the country, I don't know".

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techcrunchappcom · 4 years

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The Entire Presidency Is a Superspreading Event - New York Magazine

Donald Trump was on the phone, and he was talking about dying. It was Saturday, October 3, and while his doctor had told the outside world that the president’s symptoms were nothing to worry about, Trump, cocooned in his suite at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, was telling those close to him something very different.

“I could be one of the diers,” he said.

The person on the other end of the line couldn’t forget that unusual word the president used: dier. A seldom-said dictionary standard, it was a classic Trumpism, at once sinister and childlike. If being a loser was bad, being a dier was a lot worse. Losers can become winners again. Diers are losers forever. But aren’t we all diers in the end? Donald Trump, the least self-reflective man in America, was contemplating his own mortality.

He said it again: “I could be one of the diers.”

The previous day, at 12:54 a.m., he had announced that he and the First Lady, Melania, had tested positive for COVID-19 in an outbreak that would sideline dozens across the West Wing, the East Wing, the highest levels of the federal government, the military ranks, Trump’s 2020 campaign team, and prominent supporters in the religious community. The virus had barreled into the very White House that allowed its spread throughout the United States, where 213,000 were dead and 7.6 million more were infected amid the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression.

As infections swelled nationwide, the virus made its way inside the president himself — an epic security failure with no modern analog. It was over a century ago, amid a pandemic in 1919, that Woodrow Wilson got sick in Paris. His White House blamed what it called a cold and a fever on the dreary weather. But, in fact, Wilson was sick with the virus now known as the Spanish flu, which killed hundreds of thousands of Americans as his administration looked away. One hundred and one years later, the story of Trump’s “mild symptoms” became less and less true as the hours ticked by. His fever crept up. His cough and congestion grew worse. Doctors gave him oxygen and administered a high dose of an experimental antibody treatment unavailable to the ailing masses and made using fetal tissue, a practice his administration opposes, from the drugmaker Regeneron. Still, he resisted going to Walter Reed. “I don’t need to go,” he said, according to a person who spoke to him. “I’m fine. I’m fine. We have everything we need here.”

Persuading him to leave the White House required an intervention from his doctors, members of the White House operations staff, the Secret Service, and his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. They had failed to stop the mass deaths of high-risk Americans, but they were going to save Trump, the most important high-risk American of them all. They told him, “This isn’t just your choice. This really isn’t about you. It’s about the presidency. Our job is to protect the presidency, and you occupy it.” They asked him to think about the military and everyone else whose life would be upended if the state of the country’s leadership was in doubt.

Fine. He agreed to walk across the South Lawn and board Marine One. The White House said the move was made “out of an abundance of caution.” In a video posted on social media, the president hinted that things weren’t so great. He put it this way: “I’m going to Walter Reed hospital. I think I’m doing very well, but we’re going to make sure that things work out.”

In the hospital, Trump’s world shrank overnight in a way it hadn’t since he arrived in Washington from New York to be sworn into office nearly four years ago. Contagious and isolated from his family and closest aides, he was accompanied by Dan Scavino, the social-media director who had first been his caddie and had survived at his side longer than anyone who wasn’t blood, and Mark Meadows, his highly emotional chief of staff, who slept in a room nearby, and was attended to by a team of camera-conscious doctors. In this sterilized confinement, he tried to distract himself from his illness. He plotted his escape, planned public-relations stunts, watched TV, and took calls from friends, members of his staff, and Republican lawmakers. But he remained consumed by what the doctors told him about his chances of survival. It wasn’t a sure thing.

Nine months into the pandemic and one month away from Election Day, the president considered for the first time that the disease killing him in the polls, threatening his political future, might just kill him, too. On the phone he remarked sarcastically, “This change of scenery has been great.”

He asked for an update on who else in his circle had contracted the virus, though he expressed no regret, no indication that he understood his own decisions could have led to the infections. Unable to process the irony of his own misfortune, he tried his best to find the Trumpiest spin. Looked at one way, he was having the greatest and most important illness of all time. He had the best care in the world, and he raved about the virtues of the drugs the doctors had him on, including dexamethasone, a steroid pumping up his lungs that can induce euphoria. He was awed by the wonders of modern medicine. He said he was feeling really good, and it didn’t sound like he was lying. Then he admitted something scary. That how he felt might not mean much in the end.

“This thing could go either way. It’s tricky. They told me it’s tricky,” the president said. “You can tell it can go either way.”

Trump held a press conference on September 26 in the Rose Garden to announce Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Photo: Carlos Barria/REUTERS

Statistically, the coronavirus is more likely to cost Donald Trump the White House than his life, though the threat to the latter isn’t helping the former. A little more than three weeks before the election, potentially contagious and freaking everybody out, Trump faces what looks like the end of his presidency. “He’s mishandled the coronavirus, he’s never been popular, and he’s gonna lose badly. I think it’s pretty simple,” a senior Republican official said. “Of course he was going to say, ‘Oh look, I feel great! Look how badly I beat this puny little virus!’ Meanwhile, it touches every American’s life every day in multiple different ways, and he’s handled it badly and people don’t forget that.” Or, as ex–Trump adviser Sam Nunberg put it, “Everything has just completely gone to shit.”

The polls suggest not just that the president will lose to Joe Biden but that he might lose bigly, in a landslide.

When the coronavirus came to America, the president was preoccupied with more obvious threats. The first positive case was confirmed in Washington State on January 21, and that same day, as he landed in Davos, the Senate was debating an organizing resolution for the president’s impeachment trial. In the Alps, he dismissed the news about the virus at home. “We have it totally under control,” he said. In fact, the president soon thought that things could hardly be going better.

After three years of crisis, the election year had begun with his acquittal on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of justice brought by the House under Articles of Impeachment. At the same time, the economy was booming. In the Democratic primary, which would select his opponent for the general election, the candidate he most feared, Joe Biden, seemed to be choking. And Michael Bloomberg was threatening to blow the whole thing up anyway. Trump thought about the last campaign and, ever superstitious, how to replicate its magic. He was relieved when Hope Hicks, his closest aide, returned to the White House after two years in exile in Los Angeles. Around the same time, he welcomed back Johnny McEntee, a former aide he believed to be a MAGA whisperer, capable of knowing exactly what would appeal to his base. He didn’t think about the coronavirus much. And then the deaths began.

“If the president had his way, he’d be back in February,” Newt Gingrich told me. The former Speaker of the House is an opportunist, and in the era of Donald Trump, that means he must be an optimist. In 2016, Gingrich supported Trump’s campaign in the hope that he’d be asked to be the vice-president. Instead, Trump repaid his loyalty not with power or higher status in history but with the cushiest gig in Europe: He made Gingrich the husband of the United States ambassador to the Vatican, based in Rome. Before the pandemic, whenever you’d call the guy, he was in a loud restaurant — “Hi! Yeah?! This is Newt!” — having the time of his life. So one might understand why he’s invested in keeping this whole thing going.

This is what it looks like when the president knows he’s losing, but it’s also close to what it looked like when he won.

Gingrich grasps better than most how to stick to a message, and he keeps a straight face on Trump’s behalf even as he argues things he knows cannot be true. That voter surveys are skewed by the left-wing media. “I think the election is not quite like the public-opinion polls,” he says. That the president’s illness is a political asset. “It gives him a better understanding of what people are going through,” he says. Or that the president doesn’t mean to imply those killed by the virus were weak when he says he’ll beat it because he’s strong. “I think he’s talking about a national attitude. Should it be ‘Hunker down in the basement’ or ‘Reopen the schools’?” he says. Still, he cannot help but break character to admit the obvious: “If the president had his way, there’d be no virus. There’d be historically high employment among Blacks and Latinos. But you don’t get to pick the circumstances in which you run.”

And the circumstances have grown less pickable each day. “I think some of this is sad to watch,” Nunberg said. “It’s getting to the point where he’s almost turning into a laughingstock. What I’m worried about is whether he wants to completely self-destruct and take everything down with him vis-à-vis the election and the Republican Party.” He added, “This is a guy who’s not gonna lose joyfully.”

It does appear at times as though self-destruction may be the point. How else could you explain the Plague Parade circling Walter Reed, in which a very sick Trump boarded a tightly sealed SUV with his Secret Service agents so he could wave at the supporters who had come to fly their flags on the street? Or the Evita-inspired return to the White House, in which a still very sick Trump ascended the staircase to the balcony, ripped off his face mask, and saluted to no one as his photographer snapped away? Or calling in to the Fox Business Channel to suggest his infection may be the fault of the Gold Star military families, since they were always asking to hug him? This is what it looks like when the president knows he’s losing, but it’s also close to what it looked like when he won — after all, he thought he was losing in 2016, too. We all did. “You’re never as smart as you look when you win, and never as dumb as you look when you lose,” according to David Axelrod. In Trump’s case, it may be more like this: What seems like genius when he manages to survive is the very madness that threatens his survival in the first place.

A senior White House official told me there has been an ongoing effort to persuade the president not to do any of this, as there always is during his episodes of advanced mania. Asked what the effort looked like this time, with Trump physically removed from most of the people who might try to calm him down, the official said, “Well, for starters, it’s unsuccessful.”

One former White House official said that stopping Trump from doing something stupid that he really wants to do is possible only if you’re “actually sitting in front of him.” Sick themselves or trying to avoid a sick president, “the people he trusts and respects who would be barriers to that behavior don’t seem to be around,” this person said. “It just looks so chaotic. Duh.”

On October 5, the night Trump returned, a member of the White House cleaning staff sprayed the press briefing room. Photo: Erin Scott/Reuters/REUTERS

A second former White House official said the problem is “now people are so broken down, to the point where everyone’s been in ‘Jesus, take the wheel’ mode for the last couple years, and fighting against him is only gonna get them burned. Why even try?” The president’s staff, this person said, have no ability to think strategically because the president’s behavior poses new threats to survival every five minutes. “I don’t think they’re even considering what happens if he’s back in the White House and he needs oxygen or a ventilator. Their view is ‘If it happens, well, we’ll fucking figure it out when it happens!’ ”

Like Gingrich, they have to stay optimistic. “They aren’t even considering what happens when he’s feeling worse than he’s feeling now, when he’s hopped up full of steroids and other performance enhancers. He’s on the sort of drugs you’d see with a Tour de France rider in the mid-’90s!” Another way to say this, the former White House official said, was that the president is “hopped up on more drugs than a Belgian racing pigeon.” In keeping with the bird theme, this person said the president’s illness was proof that “the chickens are coming home to roost.”

“Going back to 2016,” this person added, “you always had these warnings from the Clinton camp and Democrats and the Never-Trump Republicans that, if he takes office and if a crisis hits, it’s gonna be a mess. But people don’t really vote on that when there’s not a crisis. People think, A crisis isn’t gonna happen! May as well vote for the guy with a good tax policy. Suddenly, this happens, and you always assume it won’t happen to you, but when you act like that, bad things happen!”

One theory of Trump’s self-immolation campaign is that it’s about gaining a sense of control. “I don’t think he wants to lose. I think he wants to have excuses for why he did lose,” a third former White House official said. “If it’s the ballot, the China virus, if it’s Nancy Pelosi. I just think he wants an excuse.”

As he considers the end, he fakes his way through a performance of political possibility. One person who publicly supports Trump and considers him a friend said that, in conversations with White House and campaign officials following the president’s release from the hospital, it became clear that no one who was supposed to know seemed sure when he would be okay. “They’re putting out a big ‘Oh, everything’s fine!’ face. But I don’t think they know how much stamina he’s gonna have,” this person said. “I didn’t like the way he looked on that balcony. Last week, I would’ve said that he was definitely going to win. Now, I don’t know.”

Trump spoke from outside the Oval Office on October 7 about having COVID and the vaccine. Photo: @realdonaldtrump/Twitter

Donald Trump does not often get sick. The philosophy of Fred Trump decreed that “sickness was weakness,” Mary Trump told me, “which obviously Donald has adhered to, which is a big part of the reason we’re in this horrible mess we’re in.”

Mary Trump is the president’s niece as well as a psychologist, whose best seller, Too Much and Never Enough, analyzes her uncle through the dysfunctional family he came from. In her view, the president is best understood as a self-unaware Tin Man, abandoned as a small child by his sick mother and rejected by his sociopath father until he became useful to him, whose endless search for love and approval plays out as mental warfare on the Free World he improbably represents. “In order to deal with the terror and the loneliness he experienced, he developed these defense mechanisms that essentially made him unlovable,” Mary said. “Over time, they hardened into character traits that my grandfather came to value. When you’re somebody who craves love but doesn’t understand what it means — he just knows he misses it and needs it, but he’ll never have it because he’s somebody nobody loves — that’s fucking tragic. He still needs to go to prison for the rest of his life. It’s not a defense. But it’s sad.”

For two weeks before he died, Fred Trump was hospitalized at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in what Mary remembers as “a very beautiful corner room with lots of sunlight.” With her uncle at his father’s bedside, she said, “everyone just stood around chitchatting, making small talk — they just don’t understand how to be human.” When his mother was in the hospital, often for osteoporosis and once after a brutal mugging, Trump visited with an attitude of “Why the fuck do I have to be here?” she said. “It was of no use to him whatsoever.” When Mary’s father, Fred Jr., died in 1981, his brother didn’t even show up to the funeral.

In his 2007 book Think Big, the future president recalled how, a decade before, he “unexpectedly came down with a wicked case of the flu” in the middle of his negotiations to buy a newspaper (he didn’t say which one). “I felt terrible. It was so bad that I called the sellers and told them we would have to postpone the closing until I was better,” he said, which was “very unusual” because “I never get the flu. It’s been ten years and I haven’t been sick a day since then.” Trump didn’t share the story of this freak illness to reveal his humanity but to add to his myth. He lost out to another buyer in the end, he said, and he was happy he did because, he claimed, the unnamed paper turned out to be a bad investment that was some other sucker’s problem. “Catching the flu was a lucky break that saved me from ruin,” he said. “Sometimes luck makes better deals than talent.” In other words, the idea that sickness is weakness, except for when it happens to him, took root a quarter-century before he made it his case for reelection.

Trump is aware that he isn’t healthy. His wife, an Eastern European former model who eats salmon and greens, lengthens her muscles on a Pilates reformer, and glows as if cast in bronze, is “healthy.” As a 74-year-old who takes the unscientific position that human beings have a finite amount of energy that exercise needlessly drains, and who thus never engages in any physical activity more strenuous than golf or tweeting, and whose vices include red meat, French fries, ice cream, Oreos, and Diet Coke, he knows he is very much not that.

And he understood that with age and weight comes heightened risk in the coronavirus pandemic. But he couldn’t accept that he wouldn’t be fine, that he was part of the “at-risk seniors” his advisers kept telling him he should think about since they were an important voting demographic and they were literally dying by the thousands. What he could accept even less than not being fine was not seeming fine. His supporters like to imagine him as a cartoonish representation of his vigorous, manly spirit, a joke directed at anyone who doesn’t find it funny. In memes, he body-slams his enemies. A video from the Trump campaign, released the week of his COVID-19 diagnosis, shows him body-slamming the virus. When I stopped by the home of Willard and Dolly Smith in New Hampshire last month, the flag on the couple’s front lawn showed Trump’s fleshy face on Rambo’s ripped body. “I’m back because I’m a perfect physical specimen and I’m very young,” the president joked on Fox Business on Thursday. But the stabs at self-deprecation, more necessary at this moment than ever before, do little to mask deep insecurity. Since his illness, the makeup the president applies himself has gotten so heavy and so dark that rather than obscure his pale coloring, it emphasizes the contrast between his unnatural face and the bare skin of his ears and hands. (All those years spent judging beauty pageants, and he never learned from the contestants the value of body makeup.)

Personality is policy in the Trump administration, and the president’s insecurity has made the uncertainty about the country’s leadership — unavoidable when any chief executive falls ill — even worse. His unwillingness to admit human frailty has led the White House and its doctors to keep information about his illness not only from the public and the press (three members of which have, so far, been infected at the White House too) but from his own staff. After Hope Hicks began experiencing symptoms at the Minnesota MAGA rally on Wednesday, forcing her to isolate in the back of the plane on the trip home, officials with whom she’d had contact remained in the dark. After she tested positive on Thursday afternoon, the White House failed to notify others who would soon test positive themselves. They learned about it when the world did, not with an official disclosure but with a leak to the media. “The president could’ve given it to her,” one of those people told me, in fairness, but “I would’ve done things different that day, had I known.”

Trump did know, but he didn’t change his plans. At 1 p.m. on Thursday, he flew to his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, for a fund-raiser with hundreds of his supporters, some of whom he spoke with indoors. Later that night, he tweeted about Hicks being sick. “Terrible!” he said. “The First Lady and I are waiting for our test results. In the meantime, we will begin our quarantining process.”

Reading the message, the person said, “I assumed he must’ve had a preliminary positive one.” The lack of transparency, this person added, is “symptomatic about how people I work with always keep the wrong things secret.” Suicidal in all senses, this is the Trumpian madness that threatens the president’s political and earthly future as it puts at risk everyone around him.

As one White House official put it: “Everybody at the top should be fired.”

*This article appears in the October 12, 2020, issue of New York Magazine. Subscribe Now!

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day0one · 4 years

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A top former Saudi spy files suit spills the beans at an awkward time for Trump

A former senior Saudi intelligence officer in exile filed a lawsuit in a US court last week accusing Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of plotting to kill him. The allegations, including using children as bargaining chips, have sparked calls for President Donald Trump, in the thick of a difficult campaign season, to intervene on moral grounds.

In September 2017, a former top Saudi intelligence officer living in exile was desperately trying to get his two children safely out of the Gulf kingdom. Picking up his iPhone, Saad Aljabri got on WhatsApp and contacted the most powerful man in his homeland, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The WhatsApp communication between Aljabri and MBS – as the Saudi crown prince is widely known – is detailed in a lawsuit filed last week in a US court.

Defend democracy. Click to invest in courageous progressive journalism today. While the allegations have not yet been verified in court, the lawsuit makes for a jaw-dropping and yet disconcertingly familiar read.

“Tell me what you want in person,” texted MBS, according to the lawsuit, which includes a screenshot of the exchange in Arabic with an English translation.

“I hope that you will consider what I have already sent you because this issue regarding the children is very important to me,” replied Aljabri.

Two minutes later, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler once again urged the former intelligence official in exile to return home. “I definitely need you here,” said bin Salman.

Before Aljabri could reply, the crown prince added a terse, “24 hours!”

A crown prince falls, a crackdown begins

Four months earlier, Aljabri, a close advisor to bin Salman’s arch-rival, Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, had fled Saudi Arabia for Turkey. He was still in Turkey in June 2017, when his ex-boss, bin Nayef – a longtime former Saudi interior minister – was stripped of his latest post as the kingdom’s crown prince and replaced by MBS.

File photo taken in September 2016 of Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Nayef in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. File photo taken in September 2016 of Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Nayef in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. REUTERS – Ahmed Jadallah In his new position as crown prince, the brash, young MBS had begun a crackdown against his rivals and opponents in the kingdom. As a right-hand man of Saudi Arabia’s former interior minister, Aljabri was a key link between Saudi and Western intelligence services and privy to highly sensitive information on the kingdom’s rulers.

Bin Salman wanted him back in Saudi Arabia “where he could be killed”, the lawsuit alleges.

Days after the Whatsapp exchange with MBS granting him “24 hours”, Aljabri left Turkey for Canada. But two of his eight children, Omar and Sarah, were trapped in Saudi Arabia and are still being used as “human bait” to lure their father home, according to the lawsuit.

The Saudi strategy failed to entice Aljabri back. Instead, it caught the attention of US lawmakers who called on President Donald Trump to act.

US senators remind Trump of a ‘moral obligation’

Last month, four US senators on both sides of the aisle urged Trump to help secure the release of Omar, 21, and Sarah, 20, calling it a “moral obligation” to help the former Saudi intelligence official in exile.

In a letter to the White House, Republican Senator Marco Rubio and Democratic senators, Patrick Leahy, Tim Kaine, and Chris Van Hollen, described Aljabri as a “highly valued partner” of US intelligence and State Department agencies “who has been credited by former CIA officials for saving thousands of American lives by discovering and preventing terrorist plots”.

The children’s fate also pushed their father, a 62-year-old former government official with nearly four decades of experience in the secretive world of national security and counterterrorism, to take the unusually public step of filing a civil lawsuit in a US court.

‘Tiger Squad’ on a campaign to kill

The lawsuit filed last week at US District Court for the District of Columbia alleges that bin Salman launched a state campaign to kill Aljabri that “has worked to achieve that objective over the past three years”.

Aljabri bases his claim on two US laws: the Torture Victim Protection Act, which bans extrajudicial killing; and the Alien Tort Statute, which allows victims – including non-US citizens or residents – of such illegal operations to sue in US courts.

The 170-page document details chilling but as yet unverified plots to target Aljabri. They include the arrival at a Canadian airport of a Saudi “Tiger Squad” hit team – similar to the one used to kill journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey – to target Aljabri.

The complaint also sheds light on the moves by global intelligence and law enforcement agencies to contain some of bin Salman’s human rights excesses on foreign soil. In October 2018, for instance, just weeks after Khashoggi’s brutal killing, vigilant Canadian authorities stopped and questioned Tiger Squad members who arrived separately at Ontario airport, the lawsuit claims. Most of the team were sent back home to Saudi Arabia.

Interpol snags ‘politically motivated’ warrant request

MBS, the lawsuit alleges, had warned Aljabri that he would use “legal measures as well as other measures that would be harmful to you”.

But the Saudi crown prince’s attempts to use “legal measures” were stymied at Interpol, the global law enforcement agency based in the French city of Lyon, the US court document reveals.

In a July 4, 2018 decision taken months before Khashoggi’s killing sparked an international furor, the Commission for the Control of Interpol’s Files (CCF) found Saudi Arabia’s arrest and extradition request for Aljabri was “politically motivated rather than strictly juridical”. While any person has the right to request Interpol data about them, the CCF decision on the Aljabri case was not publicly known before the lawsuit was filed last week.

‘In the business of assassinating people’

The Aljabri case once again casts a spotlight on Saudi Arabia’s human rights violations at home and against its citizens abroad.

“It’s a lawsuit containing accusations that are not yet proved, but these are serious accusations against the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, which is a very powerful country. If the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is in the business of assassinating people, it’s very important,” said Rami Khoury, a journalism professor at the American University of Beirut (AUB) and senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, in an interview with FRANCE 24.

The crown prince’s role in Khashoggi’s assassination has been a public relations nightmare for the oil-rich Gulf kingdom. While MBS has acknowledged that men working for him killed the Washington Post columnist inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, he denies involvement in the murder.

His denials are widely disbelieved. In June 2019, an investigation into Khashoggi’s killing by UN Human Rights Special Rapporteur Agnès Callamard found “credible evidence, warranting further criminal investigation”, of the involvement of top Saudi officials, including bin Salman.

The latest Aljabri allegations – which names bin Salman and several Saudi officials implicated in Khashoggi’s murder, such as Saud “Mr. Hashtag” al-Qahtani, as defendants – are strikingly similar to the slain journalist’s case.

But the Khashoggi investigations so far have been impeded by political and diplomatic challenges.

As a UN special rapporteur, Callamard works as a volunteer, not UN staffer, and her office is independent of UN institutions. The fiery French human rights lawyer has publicly criticized UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for failing to act on her investigation findings to set up a panel of criminal experts.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has been stonewalling Congressional attempts to enforce accountability for Khashoggi’s murder while a Turkish trial on the case lacks international credibility, given the weaknesses of the Turkish justice system.

‘Lost in the world of the rule of law’

Aljabri’s extraordinary recourse in a US court of law opens the gates to a level of transparency that could, depending on the court proceedings, be damning for the crown prince, some experts believe.

“The accusations against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will be adjudicated in a US court using the instruments of the rule of law,” said Khoury. “This is being put into the public light. If a crown prince or ruler of a country is convicted as a criminal, that’s very important.”

Khoury, like every Saudi expert, does not expect the crown prince to appear before a US court. Unlike criminal cases, civil suits pursue compensations, not prison sentences. On Friday, August 7, the US district court issued a summons or an official notice of a lawsuit given to defendants being sued. Saudi authorities have not responded so far to media organisations about the case.

It’s unfamiliar terrain for Saudi authorities accustomed to petrodollar diplomacy, including the use of top lobby groups during crises. “The Saudis aren’t used to it, they’re totally lost in the world of the rule of law. They operate on personal relations and don’t know how to deal with this shift into the chambers of Congress and into the chambers of courts,” explained Khoury.

Kushner-Saudi way of doing business

The Saudi way of doing diplomatic business found a perfect partner in Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who developed a personal relationship with MBS.

“Trump and Kushner, both used to shady real estate deals, adapted quickly to Saudi Arabia’s system of patronage and clientelism: unwavering support from the Trump administration for the promise of weapons sales and other business deals,” noted Mohamad Bazzi, a New York University journalism professor, in a Guardian column.

But the Saudis are keenly aware that in the US – unlike in their conservative country of glacial or paternalistic reforms – the winds of change can swerve abruptly.

The Aljabri case filing comes barely three months before the November US presidential election, with the Saudis bracing for a potential change in the White House. Historically, a confluence of oil and business interests makes a Republican US president a better fit for Saudi interests.

Joe Biden, the centrist, septuagenarian Democratic presidential candidate, is not expected to bring radical change if he wins the November 3 election. But unlike Trump, who protected MBS in the fallout of Khashoggi’s killing, Biden is unlikely to give the crown prince’s human rights violations a pass. “Joe Biden is more inclined to obey international law and follow public opinion and pressure from senators,” noted Khoury.

The pressure is expected to mount as Aljabri’s unusual lawsuit winds its way through US court proceedings before and after the 2020 presidential election.

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sinrau · 4 years

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When historians of the future look back on Donald Trump ’s presidency, they may well mark June 1st, 2020 as “a date that will live in infamy”.

That phrase was etched into the nation’s collective consciousness nearly eight decades ago by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as he addressed Congress in the wake of Japan’s December 7, 1941 sneak attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

By attacking the US fleet, Japan made clear that the geopolitical tensions which had strained its relationship with the United States during the preceding decade had reached breaking point. And if anyone in either country thought the smoking hulks and dead American servicemen strewn about Pearl Harbor were open to interpretation, the formal declaration of war signed that day made Tokyo’s intentions clear: America was now Japan’s enemy, and Japan and its allies were bent on America’s destruction.

Like December 7, 1941, Americans will remember the first day of June 2020 as the date of a sneak attack against their countrymen, but while that 78-year-old atrocity was perpetrated by a foreign government, this one came from within.

That afternoon, as hundreds of Americans protested peacefully outside the gates of the mansion that has been home to Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt, its current occupant was plotting.

That man, Donald Trump, was incensed by media reports which revealed how he’d reacted to the appearance of a few hundred demonstrators outside the White House gates on Friday.

They came from all over the Washington, DC area to protest the police brutality and systematic inequality symbolised by the late George Floyd, a Minneapolis, Minnesota man killed by police officers just one week ago.

As they massed outside the “people’s house,” they chanted Floyd’s last words, uttered as he gasped for breath as a white police officer’s knee pressed on his neck: “I can’t breathe”.

And how did Donald Trump react? He retreated to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, the Second World War-era bunker installed under the White House’s East Wing to protect FDR against a potential Luftwaffe bomber attack. Later expanded and hardened to protect presidents against nuclear explosions, it’s where then-Vice President Dick Cheney took refuge in 2001, as hijacked airliners brought down the World Trade Center and smashed a hole in the Pentagon.

Though he initially praised Secret Service officers for exhibiting restraint against the “professionally managed so-called ‘protesters’ at the White House,” administration officials said Trump later became upset at how the news of his retreat to the White House bunker made him look weak. And so he responded with what he thinks of as strength.

As he prepared to deliver remarks in the White House Rose Garden just three days later, a phalanx of shield-bearing federal police, joined by line after line of officers on horseback, suddenly opened fire on those peaceful protesters, clearing them from Lafayette Park with tear gas, pepper balls, rubber bullets, and other “less than lethal” munitions.

Not even members of the press were safe, as one Australian broadcasting crew found out when an officer began shoving and striking a videographer with a shield.

The reason for the sneak attack? After Trump finished his Rose Garden speech, in which he threatened to “deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem” of mass protesters unless the nation’s governors use National Guard forces to “dominate the streets,” he wanted to be photographed as he walked across the street to a historic church, Saint John’s Episcopal, which had been the scene of unrest the previous night.

Trump holds up bible outside Washington church

And with the smell of tear gas still hanging in the air, Trump stood outside the empty building, known as the “Church of Presidents,” and held up an upside-down bible for the cameras.

Earlier that day, Trump had hosted governors on a conference call, during which he scolded them for being “weak” by allowing the demonstrations to persist. And as night fell, helicopters with US Army markings flew low over protesters, using their rotor wash to drive them away while shattering glass and snapping tree limbs in the process.

It’s a flying manoeuvre known as a “show of force,” but one pilot I spoke to — an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran — said it’s a technique they learn for use against enemy insurgents overseas, not Americans protesting on the streets of Washington.

Dr Bandy Lee, a Yale University Medical School psychiatrist who studies violence, said the militaristic attack on protesters and the press — which occurred on Trump’s orders — reflected how he feels about most Americans.

“He probably views most of the American people as his enemy now, because of all the criticism, because of his falling polls, and because of the result of his own mishandling of the pandemic increasingly pressing in,” she said. “It’s not a reality he can easily subvert with his own fantasy thinking.”

Lee said the increasingly violent response on the part of police as they’ve put down protests across the country is the result of officers taking their cues from Trump.

“We have a president who is making violence symbolically acceptable … by anticipating that once the looting starts, the shooting will start, by labeling protesters as thugs, and by threatening vicious dogs and ominous weapons if protestors ever came close,” she explained. “These are all trigger signals for police brutality, and it would be actually be surprising if it didn’t happen.”

Patrick Skinner, a former CIA case officer who now works as a police detective in Georgia, said he did not want to directly blame Trump for the actions taken against journalists by police officers across the country, but told me the president “certainly bears responsibility for it” because his rhetoric “doesn’t help”.

“I don’t know if I blame Trump for this, but he’s certainly not stepping up to the occasion,” he added.

But Skinner did take issue with the view, popular in some police circles, that Trump has “taken the shackles” off law enforcement by rolling back Obama-era reforms.

Asked whether Trump’s rhetoric has given police permission to be more violent than they might have been otherwise, Skinner replied: “Yes.”

“Is it a silent dog whistle? I don’t want to get into all that, but I believe that anyone in a position of leadership needs to not just not tolerate that stuff but actually be affirmative, to speak out against excesses,” he said. “But he’s not speaking out against excesses, he’s objecting to the reaction to the excesses.”

Skinner posited that some of the wanton violence against protesters and the press can be attributed to a mentality among police that they are soldiers in a “war on crime”.

“They’re not wearing a uniform … so they have to be on the other side — everything stems from that,” he said. “Obviously the riots are a failure in society, but the reaction that we have all these military tools and that we want to use them? It’s funny that our response to people complaining about overwhelming force is to use overwhelming force. That’s bats**t crazy.”

Skinner maintained that Trump still bears some responsibility because his word carries weight with law enforcement: “He’s the President of the United States, and so millions and millions of people are going to listen to that, and certainly some people who are in the police department are going to listen to that. It’s irresponsible and it’s a dereliction of duty.”

Dr Peter Moskos, an ex-Baltimore City police officer who chairs the department of law, police science, and criminal justice administration at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said some of the police reaction to the protests and officers’ affinity for the president is a reflection of a solidly blue-collar, conservative culture which pervades law enforcement, but said Trump’s rhetoric has emboldened the bad actors among them.

“In a way, Trump is their id, and he does normalize bad behavior,” Moskos said. “Before, they might have had to keep things quiet because they knew they weren’t supposed to say certain things because they’d get in trouble, but now they don’t give a s**t.”

“Speech — bad speech and hate speech — has consequences. That’s become a much easier argument for me to make since Trump has become president,” he added. “Of course it influences some people, but it doesn’t have to influence all of them. That’s what makes it dangerous.”

I asked police, veterans and a former CIA agent what they think of Trump’s response to the protests. Even they are horrified #web #website #copied #to read# #highlight #link #news #read

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phooll123 · 4 years

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New top story from Time: George Floyd Protests Rage in Cities Across the U.S. as Tens of Thousands Take to the Streets

(MINNEAPOLIS) — Tense protests over the death of George Floyd and other police killings of black people grew Saturday from New York to Tulsa to Los Angeles, with police cars set ablaze and reports of injuries mounting on all sides as the country convulsed through another night of unrest after months of coronavirus lockdowns.

The protests, which began in Minneapolis following Floyd’s death Monday after a police officer pressed a knee on his neck until he stopped breathing, have left parts of the city a grid of broken windows, burned-out buildings and ransacked stores. The unrest has since become a national phenomenon as protesters decry years of deaths at police hands.

Tens of thousands of people were in the streets across the country, many of them not wearing masks or observing social distancing, raising concerns among health experts about the potential for spreading the coronavirus pandemic at a time when much of the country is in the process of reopening society and the economy.

After a tumultuous Friday night, racially diverse crowds took to the streets again for mostly peaceful demonstrations in dozens of cities from coast to coast. The previous day’s protests also started calmly, but many descended into violence later in the day.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia–Chicago Sun-Times/APA Chicago police vehicle is set on fire during violent protests Saturday, May 30, 2020, as outrage builds over the killing of George Floyd, a black man who died in Minneapolis on May 25 after a police officer pressed his knee into his neck for several minutes.

• In Washington, the National Guard was deployed outside the White House, where chanting crowds were taunting Secret Service agents. Dressed in camouflage and holding shields, the troops stood in a tight line a few yards from the crowd, preventing them from pushing forward. President Donald Trump, who spent much of Saturday in Florida for the SpaceX rocket launch, landed on the lawn in the presidential helicopter at dusk and went inside without speaking to journalists.

• In Philadelphia, at least 13 officers were injured when peaceful protests turned violent and at least four police vehicles were set on fire. Other fires were set throughout downtown.

• In the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, the site of a 1921 massacre of black people that left as many as 300 dead and the city’s thriving black district in ruins, protesters blocked intersections and chanted the name of Terence Crutcher, a black man killed by a police officer in 2016.

• In Seattle, police fired tear gas and stun grenades to try to disperse black-clad crowds that smashed downtown shopfronts, stole merchandise and tossed mannequins onto the street.

• In Los Angeles, protesters chanted “Black Lives Matter,” some within inches of the face shields of officers. Police used batons to move the crowd back and fired rubber bullets. One man used a skateboard to try to break a police SUV’s windshield. A spray-painted police car burned in the street.

• And in New York City, dangerous confrontations flared repeatedly as officers made arrests and cleared streets. A video showed two NYPD cruisers lurching into a crowd of demonstrators who were pushing a barricade against one of them and pelting it with objects, knocking several people to the ground. It was unclear if anyone was hurt.

Wong Maye-E–APPolice detain protesters as they march down the street during a solidarity rally for George Floyd, Saturday, May 30, 2020, in New York. Protests were held throughout the city over the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after being restrained by Minneapolis police officers on May 25.

“Our country has a sickness. We have to be out here,” said Brianna Petrisko, among those at lower Manhattan’s Foley Square, where most were wearing masks amid the coronavirus pandemic. “This is the only way we’re going to be heard.”

Back in Minneapolis, the city where the protests began, 29-year-old Sam Allkija said the damage seen in recent days reflects longstanding frustration and rage in the black community.

“I don’t condone them,” he said. “But you have to look deeper into why these riots are happening.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who said local forces had been overmatched Friday, fully mobilized the state’s National Guard and promised a massive show of force. The Guard announced Saturday it had more than 4,000 members responding to Minneapolis and would quickly have nearly 11,000.

“The situation in Minneapolis is no longer in any way about the murder of George Floyd,” Walz said. “It is about attacking civil society, instilling fear and disrupting our great cities.”

Soon after the city’s 8 p.m. curfew went into force, lines of police cars and officers in riot gear moved in to confront protesters, firing tear gas to push away throngs of people milling around the city’s 5th police precinct station. The tougher tactics came after city and state leaders were criticized for not forcefully enough confronting days of violent and damaging protests that included protesters burning down a police station shortly after officers abandoned it.

Scott Olson–Getty ImagesDemonstrators gather to protest the killing of George Floyd on May 30, 2020 in Minneapolis.

Trump appeared to cheer on the tougher tactics being used by law enforcement Saturday night. He commended the Guard deployment in Minneapolis, declaring “No games!” and also said police in New York City “must be allowed to do their job!”

Overnight curfews were imposed in more than a dozen major cities nationwide, ranging from 6 p.m. in parts of South Carolina to 10 p.m. around Ohio. People were also told to be off the streets of Atlanta, Denver, Los Angeles, Seattle and Minneapolis — where thousands had ignored the same order Friday night.

More than 1,300 people have been arrested in 16 cities since Thursday, with more than 500 of those happening in Los Angeles on Friday.

The unrest comes at a time when most Americans have spent months inside over concerns surrounding the coronavirus, which the president has called an “invisible enemy.” The events of the last 72 hours, seen live on national television, have shown the opposite: a sudden pivot to crowds, screaming protesters and burning buildings, a stark contrast to the empty streets of recent months.

“Quite frankly I’m ready to just lock people up,” Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields said at a news conference. Demonstrations there turned violent Friday, and police were arresting protesters Saturday on blocked-off downtown streets. “Yes, you caught us off balance once. It’s not going to happen twice.”

This week’s unrest recalled the riots in Los Angeles nearly 30 years ago after the acquittal of the white police officers who beat Rodney King, a black motorist who had led them on a high-speed chase. The protests of Floyd’s killing have gripped many more cities, but the losses in Minneapolis have yet to approach the staggering totals Los Angeles saw during five days of rioting in 1992, when more than 60 people died, 2,000-plus were injured and thousands arrested, with property damage topping $1 billion.

Many protesters spoke of frustration that Floyd’s death was one more in a litany. It came in the wake of the killing in Georgia of Ahmaud Arbery, a black man who was shot dead after being pursued by two white men while running in their neighborhood, and in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic that has thrown millions out of work, killed more than 100,000 people in the U.S. and disproportionately affected black people.

The officer who held his knee to Floyd’s neck as he begged for air was arrested Friday and charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. But many protesters are demanding the arrests of the three other officers involved.

Leaders in many affected cities have voiced outrage over Floyd’s killing and expressed sympathy for protesters’ concerns. But as the unrest intensified, they spoke of a desperate need to protect their cities and said they would call in reinforcements, despite concerns that could lead to more heavy-handed tactics.

Minnesota has steadily increased to 1,700 the number of National Guardsmen it says it needs to contain the unrest, and the governor is considering a potential offer of military police put on alert by the Pentagon.

Governors in Georgia, Kentucky, Ohio and Texas also activated the National Guard after protests there turned violent overnight, while nighttime curfews were put in place in Portland, Oregon, Cincinnati and elsewhere.

Police in St. Louis were investigating the death of a protester who climbed between two trailers of a Fed Ex truck and was killed when it drove away. And a person was killed in the area of protests in downtown Detroit just before midnight after someone fired shots into an SUV, officers said. Police had initially said someone fired into the crowd from an SUV.

___

Numerous AP journalists contributed from across the U.S.

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ladystylestores · 4 years

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George Floyd death: Minnesota governor decries violent protests

Media playback is unsupported on your device

Media captionThe mayor of Minneapolis said of the unrest: “This needs to stop”

Violent protests over the death of an unarmed African-American man in the hands of police officers in Minnesota “are no longer in any way” about his killing, the state’s governor has said.

Tim Walz spoke after a night of unrest in several US cities over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

He said that as a result he was taking the unprecedented step of mobilising the state’s entire National Guard.

There are also reports that military police units could deploy.

An ex-Minneapolis policeman has been charged with murder over the death of Mr Floyd, 46, in police custody on Monday.

Derek Chauvin, 44 and white, was shown in footage kneeling on Mr Floyd’s neck for several minutes, even after he said he couldn’t breathe. He and three other officers have since been sacked.

The video went viral online, reigniting US anger over police killings of black Americans, and reopening deep wounds over racial inequality across the nation.

On Friday night protesters clashed with police in cities including New York, Atlanta and Portland. In Washington DC, the White House was briefly locked down.

Image caption Demonstrations have continued since Mr Floyd’s death in Minneapolis police custody on Monday

In Houston, where George Floyd grew up, a 19-year-old protester told the Associated Press: “My question is how many more, how many more? I just want to live in a future where we all live in harmony and we’re not oppressed.”

In Minnesota, “our great cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul are under assault,” Governor Walz said. “The situation in in Minneapolis is now about attacking civil society, instilling fear and disrupting our great city.”

He said violence on Friday night had made “a mockery of pretending this is about George Floyd’s death, or inequities or historical traumas to our communities of colour”.

He and other officials have suggested that many violent protesters came from outside the state to cause trouble, but did not give details.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption People helped to clean up the rubble of burned and looted buildings in Minneapolis on Saturday

On Saturday, President Donald Trump said Mr Floyd’s death had “filled Americans with horror, anger and grief”.

“I stand before you as a friend and ally to every American seeking peace,” he said in a televised address from Cape Canaveral in Florida, following the launch into orbit of two Nasa astronauts by billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX company.

The president denounced the actions of “looters and anarchists”, saying that what was needed was “healing not hatred, justice not chaos”.

“I will not allow angry mobs to dominate – won’t happen,” he added.

Mr Trump earlier praised the US Secret Service for securing the White House but said if protesters breached the perimeter they “would have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen”. He blamed violence on “organised groups”.

What’s the latest on the protests?

Minnesota remains the most volatile region, with curfews ordered for the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-Saint Paul from 20:00 to 06:00 on Friday and Saturday evening.

Protesters defied the curfew on Friday. Fires, many from burning cars, were visible in a number of areas and television pictures showed widespread looting.

Hundreds of troops from the National Guard, a reserve military force that can be called on by the US president or state governors to intervene in domestic emergencies, moved in late at night.

Image copyright Reuters

Image caption A burnt vehicle is seen in the aftermath of protests in Minneapolis

Minnesota officials said tens of thousands of people turned out on Friday and they are expecting more unrest on Saturday night.

As a result, Gov Walz said he was activating all National Guard troops available in the state – reportedly up to 13,000 – for the first time in history to respond to rioters. The Pentagon said some US military units were on alert to support Minnesota if asked.

There are long-standing tensions between the black community and police in Minneapolis. Another black man, Philando Castile, was shot and killed in 2016 during a traffic stop close to the epicentre of these protests in a case that gained international attention.

African-Americans also suffer significant socio-economic inequalities, entrenched segregation and a higher level of unemployment than the white community.

In Atlanta, Georgia, where buildings were vandalised, a state of emergency was declared for some areas to protect people and property.

Media playback is unsupported on your device

Media captionKiller Mike: “It is your duty not to burn your own house down for anger with an enemy”

Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms issued an impassioned plea, saying: “This is not a protest. This is not in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. You are disgracing our city. You are disgracing the life of George Floyd.”

In New York’s Brooklyn district, protesters clashed with police, throwing projectiles, starting fires and destroying police vehicles. A number of officers were injured and many arrests made.

The mayor of Portland, Oregon, has declared a state of emergency amid looting, fires and an attack on a police precinct. An immediate curfew until 06:00 local time (13:00 GMT) was imposed and it will restart at 20:00.

Image copyright Laura Fuchs

Image caption Protesters use milk to treat the sting of tear gas in New York City

How did the situation get here?

On Monday night, police received a phone call from a neighbourhood grocery store alleging that George Floyd had paid with a counterfeit $20 note.

Officers responded and were attempting to put him in a police vehicle when he dropped to the ground, telling them he was claustrophobic.

According to police, he physically resisted officers and was handcuffed. Video of the incident does not show how the confrontation started.

Media playback is unsupported on your device

Media captionMinnesota governor on George Floyd death: ‘Thank God a young person had a camera to video it’

With Mr Chauvin’s knee on his neck, Mr Floyd can be heard saying “please, I can’t breathe” and “don’t kill me”.

According to a preliminary autopsy by the county medical examiner, the police officer had his knee on Mr Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds – almost three minutes of which was after Mr Floyd became non-responsive.

Nearly two minutes before Mr Chauvin removed his knee the other officers checked Mr Floyd’s right wrist for a pulse and were unable to find one. He was taken to hospital and pronounced dead around an hour later.

The preliminary autopsy, included in the criminal complaint against Mr Chauvin, did not find evidence of “traumatic asphyxia or strangulation”.

The medical examiner noted Mr Floyd had underlying heart conditions and the combination of these, “potential intoxicants in his system” and being restrained by the officers “likely contributed to his death”.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Demonstrations and protests have continued since Mr Floyd’s death in police custody on Monday

Mr Chauvin was charged on Friday with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter over his role in Mr Floyd’s death.

Mr Floyd’s family and their lawyer, Benjamin Crump, said that this was “welcome but overdue”.

The family said they wanted a more serious, first-degree murder charge as well as the arrest of the three other officers involved.

Hennepin County Prosecutor Mike Freeman said he “anticipates charges” for the other officers but would not offer more details.

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