Wednesday, November 6, 2019

Jeff Sessions plans to run for his former Alabama U.S. Senate seat. The ex-attorney general was forced out by President Trump last year.


NEW: California's attorney general has revealed that the state is investigating Facebook. Details:


NASA flew a plane carrying gas-imaging equipment above California and discovered that just a handful of operations are responsible for the vast majority of methane emissions


Women were the first Trump whistleblowers


NEW: CIA Director Haspel has been publicly silent as President Trump has railed about the Ukraine whistleblower, a CIA analyst, and pressure is building on Haspel to take a stand on the matter, current and former intelligence officials tell @NBCNews.


I’ve worked for three presidents and participated in a number of foreign leader calls. I cannot recall a president that seems to believe — and then parrots — whatever a foreign leader tells him on the phone. Such information is often false, intended to influence more than inform


LOL. Booing not allowed at spirting event. In. America. Because @POTUS is an enormous #Snowflake. Who at the @WhiteHouse made the call demanding this be enforced?


Former Twitter employees charged with spying for Saudi Arabia by digging into the accounts of kingdom critics


Since her stint as Florida AG, Bondi worked for Ballard Partners, with the Embassy of Qatar as her client. That firm's founder Brian Ballard is a top Florida fundraiser for Trump, and it made more than $4M representing the Turkish embassy and Halkbank


Headline kinda nails it: "Former Florida AG Once Suspected of Engaging in ‘Quid Pro Quo’ with Trump to Join Impeachment Team"


Trump reportedly hired Pam Bondi and ex-Treasury spokesman Tony Sayegh as impeachment aides. Bondi had been accused of a 2016 pay-to-play scandal. Trump Foundation had donated $25,000 to her reelection while other state AGs probed Trump University


Bill Taylor: "But President Trump did insist that President Zelensky go to a microphone and say he is opening investigations of Biden and 2016 election interference, and that President Zelensky should want to do this himself."


Roger Stone Trial



The new information revealed was about Stone's contacts with the Trump campaign — ominous emails to Manafort and Bannon, and calls with Trump at key times. That's because Stone is charged with a false statements count on that. (Related to his testimony to House Intel)
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Stone defense lawyer Bruce Rogow begins his opening statement. He says that the prosecutor is right that the evidence in this case is "there for you to see." "But what isn’t there for you to see is Mr. Stone’s state of mind."
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Rogow making what will apparently be Stone's main defense against the false statements charges — a claim he thought the House was only asking him for documents about Russia, not WikiLeaks or Assange. "The fact that it was a Russian investigation covered all of his answers."
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Rogow is presenting various excerpts from Stone's House Intelligence Committee testimony (which we've never seen before). Trying mightily to advance the questionable argument that Roger Stone had no idea that the committee wanted info on WikiLeaks.
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Rogow now saying Stone in fact had no intermediary with WikiLeaks. Corsi claimed to have info, but he was just "playing Stone," and "Stone took the bait." "There was no intermediary between Mr. Stone and Julian Assange. It's made-up stuff."
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Rogow adds: Stone was also “playing others himself,” by “creating that notion that he had some kind of direct contact" (with WikiLeaks) "All of these people were playing each other... trying to be important people, trying to say they had more than they really had"
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Rogow moves on to what he describes as the second part of the case, the witness tampering charge re: Credico. Says they had a longtime "friendship." Credico was never "afraid" of Stone. Exchanged many "crude" and even "odious" texts, but that's just how they talk
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Rogow apparently laying the groundwork to argue that when Stone told Credico "do a Frank Pentangeli," he was referring to Credico's talents as an "impressionist" — that he meant to an actual impression of the character