7:02 AM 12/14/2018
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"Jared Kushner is more Chief of Stiff than Chief of Staff."
Donald Trump
Main threat to Donald Trump is a gradual erosion of his authority
Donald Trump
And there are also political implications.
Politics
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WASHINGTON — To the conservative Americans she courted, Maria Butina was the right kind of Russian.
She loved guns and the church and networking with top officials in the National Rifle Association. She schmoozed with Republican presidential candidates, and became a supporter of Donald J. Trump. She spent Thanksgiving at a congressman’s country house, took a Trump campaign aide to see the rock band Styx and helped a Rockefeller heir organize “friendship dinners” with influential Washingtonians.
On Thursday, Ms. Butina, 30, pleaded guilty to a single charge of conspiring to act as a foreign agent in a deal with federal prosecutors. In doing so, she acknowledged that her activities were motivated by more than mere personal conviction.
As part of the deal, Ms. Butina admitted to being involved in an organized effort, backed by Russian officials, to open up unofficial lines of communication with influential Americans in the N.R.A. and in the Republican Party, and to win them over to the idea of Russia as a friend, not a foe.
Ms. Butina’s guilty plea now casts a spotlight on the Americans she worked with, including prominent members of the N.R.A. and her boyfriend, Paul Erickson, 56, a longtime Republican operative who ran Patrick J. Buchanan’s 1992 presidential campaign and who now faces accusations of fraud in three states. Officials have said federal investigators are examining what Mr. Erickson and others who helped Ms. Butina knew about her links to the Russian government.
Ms. Butina agreed to cooperate with the investigators as part of her deal. In exchange, she will most likely get a short prison term, or possibly be released after having already spent five months in jail. She will probably then be deported, according to court papers laying out the agreement.
At the hearing to change her plea on Thursday, the judge said Ms. Butina would remain in custody while she was cooperating with federal investigators. A hearing to consider when she should be sentenced was set for Feb. 12.
Yet even as prosecutors secured Ms. Butina’s conviction and cooperation, they faced questions about their initial portrayal of Ms. Butina as something like a character out of “Red Sparrow,” the spy thriller about a Russian femme fatale.
Prosecutors had already been forced to back off the most salacious accusations against Ms. Butina — that she used sex as spycraft — and acknowledged in court filings this week that she genuinely wanted a graduate degree, and was not simply posing as a student to live in the United States. They also dropped accusations of her being in contact with Russian intelligence agencies, and that she was only using Mr. Erickson to gain access to other influential Americans.
Ms. Butina’s lawyers had strenuously objected to the earlier portrayal of their client, and the plea deal was likely to provide her defenders with new fodder to argue that her activities look sinister only to those who see the world through the outdated lens of the Cold War. For all of the headline-grabbing talk of a flame-haired Russian spy seducing unwitting Americans that followed her arrest, they say, Ms. Butina hardly lived her life in the shadows.
She openly advocated Russia-friendly policies and closer connections between her homeland and the United States in speeches and during her time at American University in Washington, where she earned a master’s degree. Her cellphone case featured a picture of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia riding a horse shirtless. She frequented Russia House, an upscale Washington bar where Russian hockey stars like Alexander Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals enjoy vodka and caviar.
Ms. Butina similarly made little effort to hide her knack for getting close to powerful older men. She posed for pictures with prominent Republicans, including Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and other former presidential candidates. She even managed to get a photo with Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, whom she met at a 2016 dinner hosted by the N.R.A. in Louisville, Ky.
She also made no secret of her desire to help broker a secret meeting with Donald J. Trump, then a candidate, and Mr. Putin during the 2016 election.
Ms. Butina’s arrest in July stemmed from what officials described as a broader counterintelligence investigation by the Justice Department and the F.B.I. that predated the 2016 election and is separate from the work being done by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.
The investigation has focused on Aleksandr P. Torshin, a Russian government official who worked closely with Ms. Butina for years. Mr. Torshin is close to Christian conservatives in Russia and has been attending N.R.A. conventions in the United States since 2011.
Beginning in 2015, prosecutors said in the plea deal, Ms. Butina “agreed and conspired” with Mr. Torshin and Mr. Erickson — identified in court papers as the “Russian Official” and “U.S. Person 1” — to infiltrate the Republican Party and the N.R.A. and to promote Russia-friendly policies on behalf of the Kremlin. Mr. Torshin directed Ms. Butina’s work, they said, and Mr. Erickson helped her with what she called her “Diplomacy Project.”
They helped her organize trips to Moscow for prominent N.R.A. members, and helped her set up meetings for a Russian delegation to the National Prayer Breakfast in 2017.
“Throughout the conspiracy, Butina wrote notes to Russian Official about her efforts and her assessment of the political landscape in the United States in advance of the 2016 election,” the prosecutors wrote.
“Butina also sought Russian Official’s advice on whether to take meetings with certain people,” they added. “She asked him for direction on whether the Russian ‘government’ was ready to meet with some of those people.”
The plea deal also makes reference to George O’Neill Jr., a Rockefeller relative and conservative writer who helped pay Ms. Butina’s bills in the United States. Mr. O’Neill, who is not accused of wrongdoing, is described in the court papers as “a wealthy and well-connected U.S. person” who hosted large “friendship dinners” that were focused on improving relations between Russia and the United States.
The dinners, prosecutors said, afforded Ms. Butina chances “to meet individuals with political capital, learn their thoughts and inclinations toward Russia, gauge their responses to her and adjust her pitch accordingly.”
Then there was a Russian oligarch, Konstantin Y. Nikolayev, who provided money for some of Ms. Butina’s initial travel and work in the United States, prosecutors said. Mr. Nikolayev is a transport magnate whose wife runs a Russian gun company that Ms. Butina visited with an N.R.A. delegation in 2015. He has previously denied providing Ms. Butina with any financial support after 2014.
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WASHINGTON ― Having run through his first choices for his chief of staff vacancy without any luck, President Donald Trump is considering his own son-in-law for the job.
Jared Kushner, the husband of Trump’s daughter Ivanka and already an official White House adviser, met with Trump Wednesday about the job, a top Republican close to the White House told HuffPost. He and two others close to Trump or the White House who confirmed Kushner’s interest in the position did so on condition of anonymity to discuss the president’s staffing considerations freely.
Kushner has been pushing his own candidacy with Trump, citing his work on a criminal justice reform package and a claimed ability to work with Democrats, one person said. “I don’t know why he thinks that, when the Democrats are mainly going to be coming after Trump,” the source said.
The White House did not respond to HuffPost’s queries about Kushner’s prospects for the job.
Trump told reporters Thursday that he is down to five finalists. “We are interviewing people now for chief of staff,” he said at a photo opportunity with newly elected governors who were visiting the White House.
Trump announced on Saturday that current chief of staff John Kelly would leave “toward the end of the year.” Nick Ayers, the current chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, was thought to be the likely favorite to succeed Kelly. But Ayers announced on Twitter on Sunday that he was withdrawing from consideration.
“Thank you @realDonaldTrump, @VP, and my great colleagues for the honor to serve our Nation at The White House. I will be departing at the end of the year but will work with the #MAGA team to advance the cause,” he wrote.
Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images
One source said Ayers, the father of young triplets, wanted to take the job on a short-term basis to see whether he could manage it, but then grew less interested the more time he spent with Trump.
The president ― who came into office after starring in a reality television show and running a closely held family business using wealth largely inherited from his father ― is known for temper tantrums and making demands that are illegal or impossible to carry out.
“So often, the president would say here’s what I want to do and here’s how I want to do it and I would have to say to him, ‘Mr. President I understand what you want to do but you can’t do it that way. It violates the law,’” former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said at a fundraising event for the MD Anderson Cancer Center last week.
Kelly, a retired Marine general, was expected to bring order and discipline to the West Wing when he took the job in mid-2017. Despite this, the unscripted chaos that marked Trump’s first six months under his initial chief of staff, Reince Priebus, largely continued unchanged.
It is unclear who the five finalists Trump claimed he was looking at are. Former deputy campaign manager David Bossie is scheduled to have lunch with Trump Friday at the White House. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is also thought to be under consideration, while Trump is soliciting names from the legal community in New York City, where he lived his entire life before winning the presidency in 2016.
After Ayers turned the job down, Trump tried to recruit Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, top economic adviser Larry Kudlow and North Carolina Republican Congressman Mark Meadows, all of whom declined, one source said.
Kushner and his wife Ivanka ― known derisively by White House critics as “Javanka” ― face considerable opposition from both inside and outside the West Wing because of concerns about nepotism as well as worries about Kushner’s judgment. He has had to repeatedly file addendums to his financial disclosure forms since joining the White House. More recently, he has become a strong advocate for the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman ― who U.S. intelligence agencies believe ordered the murder of U.S. resident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi after luring him to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October.
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Another top FBI official who helped oversee the Trump-Russia and Clinton email investigations is retiring, as the last traces of the bureau's embattled leadership team that once stood under Barack Obama's presidency disappear.
The official, Bill Priestap, will retire from his post as assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division by the end of the year.
“Assistant Director Bill Priestap became eligible to retire and has chosen to do so after 20 years of service,” an FBI spokesperson told Fox News on Wednesday.
Priestap, who participated in the bureau’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server and the FBI’s initial probe into Russian meddling and potential collusion with Trump campaign associates during the 2016 presidential election, has testified before Congress on multiple occasions regarding the bureau’s handling of both investigations.
In this July 26, 2017 photo, Bill Priestap, assistant director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division, testifies during a Judiciary Committee hearing into alleged collusion between Russian and the Trump campaign. (Reuters)
His departure, which reportedly was unrelated to the controversies surrounding those investigations, is significant, as it marks the de facto end of the Obama-era leadership team -- which has been steadily disbanding since the early months of the Trump administration amid a combination of firings and retirements.
Here’s a look at other top FBI officials who have since left the bureau, or been removed:
Former FBI Director James Comey
James Comey, the highest-profile of the lot, was the first to go, though he has remained in the spotlight ever since his departure. President Trump fired Comey on May 9, 2017, after a recommendation from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who pegged his advice on Comey’s handling of the Clinton investigation, though other factors are suspected of playing a role.
Comey has been hit with scrutiny from both sides of the aisle over the bureau’s handling of the Clinton probe. Comey first announced in July 2016, during the heat of the presidential race, that he would recommend no charges against the former secretary of state while calling her handling of classified information on her server “extremely careless.” But just days before voters cast their presidential ballots, on Oct. 28 2016, Comey unilaterally announced he would re-open the investigation due to new emails uncovered on the laptop of Anthony Weiner—the husband of Clinton confidante Huma Abedin. Clinton and Democrats have argued that his actions contributed to her loss.
When Trump took office, Comey decided to memorialize conversations between the two regarding the FBI’s investigation into Russian meddling. One of the memos detailed a conversation the two had in February 2017 regarding Trump’s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and his communications with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. According to Comey’s memo, Trump asked that the former director shut down the investigation into Flynn, allegedly making the infamous statement: “I hope you can let this go.”
Comey ultimately shared the memos with his friend, Columbia Law School Professor Daniel Richman, who now serves as his attorney, with the intention of Richman leaking the memos to the press to spur the appointment of a special counsel. One week after Comey was fired, Rosenstein, who oversaw the Justice Department Russia investigation after former Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself, appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller to investigate.
Comey is slated to return to Capitol Hill in the coming days, appearing before the House Judiciary Committee to share his testimony on both the Clinton and Trump probes in a closed-door setting.
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was Comey’s No. 2 and tasked with leading the bureau upon his termination, was fired by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in March, just days before he would have been eligible for a lifetime pension, after it was determined that he lied to investigators reviewing the bureau’s probe of Clinton’s server.
Sessions fired McCabe after the DOJ inspector general revealed McCabe had made “an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor –including under oath—on multiple occasions.” Inspector General Michael Horowitz determined that McCabe had not been forthcoming in regard to the handling of the probe, which in turn, sparked a disciplinary process that recommended McCabe’s firing.
That probe, though, was kick-started by Comey, who admitted to ordering the investigation this spring during an interview on his media blitz to promote his memoir. Comey said he believed McCabe was a “good person,” but that he “lied.”
McCabe, who served as acting FBI director from May 2017 until August 2017, when FBI Director Christopher Wray was confirmed to his post, was removed as Wray’s deputy in January after months of conflict-of-interest complaints from Republicans, including the president.
McCabe also led the bureau during the early months of the Russia investigation. Republicans accused McCabe of abusing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), by signing FISA warrants targeting former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Peter Strzok and Lisa Page
Peter Strzok, a former senior counterintelligence agent, and Lisa Page, who worked as FBI general counsel, both left the bureau after a raging controversy over their apparent political bias.
Strzok and Page, who were romantically involved, first fell under intense scrutiny in December 2017, when the Justice Department inspector general revealed the two exchanged numerous anti-Trump text messages, dating back to 2016. The two discussed 2016 campaign politics and repeatedly blasted Trump. Some text messages also reflected apparent concern about being too tough on Clinton during the email probe.
One text message from Strzok to Page even vowed to “stop” Trump from becoming president.
Page and Strzok both worked on Mueller’s Russia investigation. Page left the special counsel’s office in the summer of 2017 after serving a short detail, and Strzok was removed and reassigned to the FBI’s Human Resources division after the politically charged text messages were uncovered last year.
Both Page and Strzok testified on Capitol Hill this summer—Page in a closed-door setting, and Strzok in an hours-long public grilling before the House Oversight Committee. In May, Page resigned from her post at the bureau. Strzok first lost his security clearance, and then was escorted from his FBI office. By August, Strzok was officially fired.
The inspector general is currently investigating whether Strzok’s anti-Trump bias factored into the launch of the bureau’s Russia investigation.
James Baker
James Baker served as FBI’s general counsel and left the bureau on May 4—the same day as Lisa Page.
James Baker, former FBI general counsel, left the bureau in May. (FBI)
Baker, a top FBI lawyer, was reassigned in late 2017 as an adviser to current FBI Director Wray, after being the subject of a Justice Department investigation on the suspicion of leaking classified information about the salacious anti-Trump dossier to a journalist.
Baker currently is a visiting fellow of governance studies at The Brookings Institution.
James Rybicki
James Rybicki, who served as chief of staff to Comey, left the FBI in January. He served as chief of staff to Wray in the first months of his leadership but left the bureau amid scrutiny over his role in the Clinton email investigation.
Former FBI Chief of Staff Jim Rybicki. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Rybicki was not fired. Instead, his departure was “in the works for a while,” according to law enforcement sources.
Wray said in January that Rybicki was leaving for “an opportunity in the corporate sector,” and that he would be “dearly missed by the FBI family—and me personally.”
Michael Kortan
Michael Kortan, assistant director of public affairs at the FBI, retired from his post in February.
Michael Kortan, left, departed the FBI after previously serving under James Comey and Robert Mueller.(FBI/Reuters)
Kortan worked at the FBI for 33 years.
Josh Campbell, James Turgal, Greg Bower, Michael Steinbach, John Giacalone
Josh Campbell, a former special assistant to Comey, left the bureau this year and joined CNN as a law enforcement analyst.
James Turgal, a former assistant director to the FBI, left the bureau in October 2017 and now works at Deloitte in Cyber Risk Services.
Greg Bower, the FBI’s top congressional liaison, left the bureau in April, amid multiple congressional probes and inquiries into the FBI’s Clinton and Russia investigations.
Michael Steinbach, the former head of the FBI’s national security division, and his predecessor John Giacalone both left the bureau and have appeared on Capitol Hill for interviews with committees.
Fox News’ Catherine Herridge, Samuel Chamberlain, Bradford Bentz, and Brian Flood contributed to this report.
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... up our defenses against this,” E.W. Priestap, assistant director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division, told the Senate Judiciary Committee.
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· · · · ·
Chinese spying threatens “not just the future of the United States, but the future of the world,” a senior FBI official told lawmakers Wednesday.
“We are being exploited by China, so we are right to shore up our defenses against this,” E.W. Priestap, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Our efforts must inspire other nations to preserve similar systems. We must persuade them to choose freedom, reciprocity, and the rule of law. What hangs in the balance is not just the future of the United States, but the future of the world.”
Priestap, who is due to retire at the end of this month, painted a dire picture of Chinese spycraft, warning that the Communist regime uses an array of unconventional intelligence assets to pilfer American secrets both from the government and the private sector. He urged lawmakers to brace for “a hypercompetitive world” in which China uses economic theft to cement their status as a major international power.
“Make no mistake: The Chinese government is proposing itself as an alternative model for the world, one without a democratic system of government, and it is seeking to undermine the free and open rules-based order we helped establish following World War II,” he said in his prepared testimony. “Our businesses and our government must adapt in order to compete and thrive in this world.”
Priestap invoked the Cold War with the Soviet Union repeatedly as a model for the U.S.-China rivalry, though he discouraged against assessing the fight in military terms. “The Chinese government understands a core lesson of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union: Economic strength is the foundation of national power,” he said. “The competition between the United States and China will be greatly influenced, if not ultimately decided, on the strength of our economies.”
His warning echoed the assessment offered by a senior CIA official in July. “At the end of the day, the Chinese fundamentally seek to replace the United States as the leading power in the world,” Michael Collins, the CIA’s deputy assistant director for the East Asia Mission Center, said during the Aspen Security Forum. “What they're waging against us is fundamentally a cold war.”
Priestap also affirmed FBI Director Chris Wray’s view that Chinese espionage represents a whole-of-society threat, though he stipulated that not every Chinese national is a spy.
"Not meaning every person in the society is posing the threat but people from all walks of life — you can't effectively combat that threat with ad hoc responses,” he said. “We need more people in government, more people in business, more people in academia pulling in the same direction to combat this threat effectively.”
That said, the Chinese spy services regard expatriate students and workers in the United States as potential assets. “[The intelligence officials] think of them as — just simply an extension of their power, of their nation,” Priestap said. “Based on FBI interaction with some of those individuals, it really is a case-by-case basis. Some I think are not knowledgeable in the least and are completely unwitting of doing anything in furtherance of their government aims. And, others either through direct or other softly applied pressure understand that they have obligations to meet.”
Priestap suggested that the U.S. government coordinate with academic institutions and major companies, in addition to outreach to incoming Chinese nationals, to mitigate the risk of potential espionage.
“However, we must also make certain that, as we address the loopholes and vulnerabilities within our system, we do not simultaneously undermine the open, free, and fair principles that have made it thrive,” he testified.
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A few hours ahead of his arrival, an irritated Salvini told Israel’s Foreign Press Association that “the growing anti-Semitism goes together with Islamic extremism, to which no one is paying attention.” Thus letting old-fashioned European fascist anti-Semitism off the hook. Salvini added, “I don’t have to justify myself every time I go to Israel.”
Protests were planned for Salvini’s visit to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, and Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin, who opposes Netanyahu’s cozy rapport with neo-fascists, announced he would not be receiving Salvini.
If you scratch beneath the surface of Netanyahu’s new friendships, the picture becomes clear: Like Britain’s UKIP and possibly like U.S. President Donald Trump, Netanyahu hopes to destabilize what has come to be known as “the international order.”
One way he is trying to do this is by encouraging European nations to break EU ranks and move their embassies to Jerusalem, as Trump has. Last month, Netanyahu welcomed Czech President Milos Zeman to Israel and accompanied him as Zeman opened a “Czech House” in the Israeli capital.
Jerusalem is burbling with rumors that Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who visited Israel in October and hopes to defeat Israel’s boycott of his Freedom Party ministers who represent a onetime neo-Nazi movement, may move his embassy to Jerusalem.
In September, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte was embraced by Netanyahu, even though he is a self-professed fan of Adolf Hitler who said he’d “be happy” to emulate Hitler by exterminating 3 million drug users and vendors.
Netanyahu recently announced his plans to attend the inauguration of Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro, another figure on the nationalist far right who is dangling the possibility of moving his embassy to Jerusalem as an enticement for Netanyahu.
President Rivlin, who has become more vocal on the subject, told CNN last week that “you can't say we admire the State of Israel and want ties with it, but we're neo-fascists.”
In July it was Orbán’s turn for a whirl around Jerusalem, and that is when they may have discussed plans for the House of Fates, an institution intended to instill in the public a revisionist interpretation of Holocaust history, a “consensus narrative” in which the murder of more than half a million Hungarian Jews, enabled by the Nazi-allied government of Miklós Horthy, will be reconfigured.
The Israeli foreign ministry holds that any new Holocaust museum should stick to the historical record “as it is depicted in Yad Vashem and in Washington’s Holocaust Museum,” but was overruled by Netanyahu, who is also Israel’s foreign minister, and its representatives were shut out of talks between Orbán and Netanyahu officials last week in Jerusalem.
Yair Lapid, leader of the centrist opposition party Yesh Atid, and the son of a Holocaust survivor, described Netanyahu’s action as “appalling.”
Netanyahu’s agreement “to Hungary's attempt to eliminate its part in the Holocaust is appalling,” he tweeted. “The Hungarians were deeply involved in the destruction of Hungarian Jewry as part of the murder machine. The only response to Orbán’s is that the museum should reflect the truth and nothing else. No negotiations, no consensus, just truth.”
Orbán has appointed Maria Schmidt, an historian and the leader of a movement to rewrite the Holocaust, to lead the House of Fates. Schmidt first made her name whitewashing history as the founder of Budapest’s House of Terror, a pseudo-museum advancing the theory that the suffering of eastern European nations who fell into the Soviet sphere of influence after WWII was worse than the suffering inflicted by the Nazi régime in Germany.
Schmidt, one of Orbán’s closest associates, was most recently associated with an overt act of political antisemitism Orbán has refused to condemn: last week’s cover of Figyelő, the “conservative Christian” business magazine owned by Schmidt, showed the face of Hungarian Jewish community president András Heisler surrounded by banknotes.
An Orbán spokesperson told World Jewish Congress president Ronald Lauder that any comment would “be contrary to freedom of the press.”
The Netanyahu high-wire act on Holocaust revisionism has reached an apex just as the European Union is grappling with a frightening upswing in European antisemitism.
On Thursday, rejecting several points Netanyahu had advanced, the EU adopted a new working definition of antisemitism.
Some EU states fear that the definition issued by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) that has been adopted by over 20 countries and that Israel pushed for, could stifle criticism of Israeli policy in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The IHRA states that some criticism of Israel can be considered anti-Semitic, including “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor, or by applying double standards to Israel not imposed upon other nations.”
The EU chose to use the IHRA definition merely as a “guidance tool.”
A second EU survey published Monday reported that an astonishing nine out of 10 European Jews believe anti-Semitism has worsened in their countries over the past five years and more than one third are considering emigration.
The report prepared by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) was based on a poll of 16,000 respondents in 12 member states.
Almost 30 percent of the respondents said they had experienced some form of anti-Semitic harassment in the past year, and 2 percent reported having been physically attacked, with a further 2 percent saying their property had been deliberately vandalized in the past year because they were Jewish.
In October, following the deadly attack against the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Netanyahu biographer Anshel Pfeffer said that whereas “Netanyahu wants the right to speak as the representative of all Jews, in America and Europe he's abandoned all pretense of solidarity with them.”
In 2015, upon returning to Israel from a memorial ceremony for French Jews murdered in a terror attack, Netanyahu said, "I went to Paris not just as the prime minister of Israel but as a representative of the entire Jewish people."
In fact, Pfeffer notes, “the elected leader of a country in which less than half the Jews of the world live (and only a quarter of them actually voted for him in the last election) wants the right to address the world as the representative of all Jews. And he won’t even check with them first.”
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In-Depth-Washington Post-18 hours ago
In-Depth-Washington Post-18 hours ago
Trump cites French terrorist attack as he pleads for funding for his ...
Washington Post-17 hours ago
“Another very bad terror attack in France,” Trump wrote. ... [Christmas market attack: France declares Strasbourg shooting to be act of terrorism].
Strasbourg shooting witnesses say Christmas market killer shouted ...
CBS News-21 hours ago
... the anti-terrorist police have been called into action," Heitz said. Strasbourg Mayor Ronald Ries was unambiguous, however, declaring on ...
Police hunt through eastern France for Strasbourg Christmas market ...
CNBC-22 hours ago
Police hunt through eastern France for Strasbourg Christmas market attacker ... Police secure a street and the surrounding area after a shooting in Strasbourg, France, ... 'Allahu Akbar', the anti-terroristpolice has been called into action," ... was no need for the government to declare a state of emergency.
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· · ·
The shooting was not the first time that Strasbourg has grappled with the consequences of radicalized youth.
Delphine Rideau, the head of Maison des Adolescents, an organization in Strasbourg that helps local youths and is involved in the prevention of radicalization, said that there had been several cases of radicalized individuals in Strasbourg, although not all were violent.
“We’ve seen petty criminals who became radicalized all of sudden, and others who were isolated, abandoned, and lost ground,” she said.
One of the gunmen in the Bataclan concert hall, one of the sites of the November 2015 attacks in and around Paris, was originally from the Strasbourg area, and French intelligence officers in 2016 detainedseven men, five of them in Strasbourg, who were preparing to “go into action imminently.”
Robert Hermann, the president of the Strasbourg Eurométropole, a grouping of city councils in the region, said that the Christmas market was the city’s most secured event of the year, but that “zero risk” was impossible. The Bas-Rhin Department, which includes Strasbourg, has less than 2 percent of France’s total population but about 10 percent of people flagged with an S File, he said, adding that monitoring everyone all the time was impossible.
“Some are intellectuals who convert people, others are ideologists who will take action, other get radicalized in prison,” Mr. Hermann said. “The profile of the main suspect is even more complex.”
The Strasbourg Christmas market, which started in 1570, is one of France’s most popular winter events. In the past few years, it has attracted more than 2.5 million visitors annually, and the authorities have tightened security, including by deploying undercover police officers.
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Chérif Chekatt: Police appeal to find Strasbourg gunman
BBC News-8 hours ago
French police have appealed for help in finding a man suspected of a Christmas market gun attack in Strasbourg that killed two people, and left ...
Christmas market attack: France declares Strasbourg shooting an act ...
In-Depth-Washington Post-18 hours ago
In-Depth-Washington Post-18 hours ago
LATEST: Two killed, 11 critically wounded in Strasbourg shooting
International-The Local France-Dec 11, 2018
International-The Local France-Dec 11, 2018
Strasbourg attack: 'It lasted for minutes, but felt like hours'
The Guardian-19 hours ago
It was about 7:50pm in the narrow shopping lanes of the historic centre of Strasbourg, the picturesque city known as France's “capital of ...
Strasbourg shooting witnesses say Christmas market killer shouted ...
CBS News-21 hours ago
The attack left at least two people dead and 12 wounded, including seven who ... 12, 2018, a day after he allegedly opened fire on the city's ...
Strasbourg Terror Suspect Yelled 'Allahu Akbar' During Attack, Has 27 ...
Breitbart News-18 hours ago
Breitbart News-18 hours ago
France's Macron caught between protests, Strasbourg attack
Washington Post-9 hours ago
The attack Tuesday night came just 24 hours after Macron broke a ... The vote, initially scheduled Thursday, may be postponed as a consequence of the shooting in Strasbourg that ... Copyright 2018The Associated Press.
'Well played Macron': 'Yellow vest' Facebook pages flood with ...
International-The Local France-20 hours ago
International-The Local France-20 hours ago
French govt urges 'yellow vests' not to protest after Strasbourg attack
International-FRANCE 24-1 hour ago
International-FRANCE 24-1 hour ago
Calls for end to gilets jaunes protests in wake of Strasbourg shooting
The Guardian-16 hours ago
French government ministers have appealed for the nationwide gilets jaunes protests to stop in the wake of the Strasbourg attack.
Police hunt through eastern France for Strasbourg Christmas market ...
CNBC-21 hours ago
Police searched through eastern France on Wednesday for a man suspected of killing at least two people in a gun attack on a Christmas ...
Strasbourg attack: Police issue photo of suspect
Irish Times-22 hours ago
Rescue vehicles are parked near the Christmas market where a deadly shooting took place in Strasbourg, France, 12th December 2018.
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· · · ·
If nothing else, Robert Mueller's year-and-a-half-long "investigation" into the Trump campaign will serve as an exposition of what it looks like when a presidential campaign and presidency are on "the wrong side of history."
In case you didn't know, "wrong side of history" is liberal-speak for "unhelpful to the progressive, globalist agenda." To be on the wrong side of history is to be on the wrong side of the army of liberal sycophants who populate the federal government -- especially the intelligence agencies.
Because this shadow government (aka deep state) hates transparency and loathes disruptive forces like Donald J. Trump, many lives associated with him have now been ruined.
If you're on the right side of history, you get to lie to Congress, lie to the FBI, leak like a sieve, and be guilty of campaign finance violations, FARA violations, and Logan Act violations with few, if any, consequences.
If you are on the wrong side, you get the book thrown at you. Suddenly, policy disagreements and gossiping about Hillary Clinton's emails become crimes.
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