The thing to remember from today's firehose is:
The Senate report on interference in the 2016 elections,
as approved by the Republican-controlled Senate, clearly showed how it was Russian in origin, serving Russian purposes, and specifically helped Donald Trump.
No matter how hard they try to throw that down the memory hole now, remember.
The smaller point is that everything Assange's lawyer is saying is true, and we have Rohrabacher on tape talking about it
in 2017 as something he was working on
then. He frames it differently, but it's the same. damn. thing.
And now the news.
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Trump Offered Assange Pardon if He Covered Up Russian Hack, WikiLeaks Founder’s Lawyer Claims
QUID PRO QUO
Lawyers acting for the WikiLeaks founder said Dana Rohrabacher, a former Republican congressman, had brought the message to London from Trump.
Nico Hines
London Editor
Updated Feb. 19, 2020 2:07PM ET
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-offered-assange-pardon-if-he-covered-up-russian-hack-court-hearsLONDON—A lawyer for Julian Assange has claimed in court that President Trump offered to pardon Assange if the WikiLeaks founder agreed to help cover up Russia’s involvement in hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee.
Assange’s lawyers said on Wednesday that former Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher offered Assange the deal in 2017, a year after emails that damaged Hillary Clinton in the presidential race had been published. WikiLeaks posted the stolen DNC emails after they were hacked by Russian operatives.
The claim that Rohrabacher acted as an emissary for the White House came during a pre-extradition hearing in London.
Assange has argued that he should not be extradited to the U.S. because the American case against him is politically motivated. He spent almost seven years hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy in Central London claiming that he would be jailed in the U.S. if he wasn’t granted asylum. He was kicked out of the embassy last year.
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Donald Trump 'offered Julian Assange a pardon if he denied Russia link to hack'
WikiLeaks published emails damaging to Hillary Clinton in 2016
Offer claim made at WikiLeaks founder’s extradition hearing
Donald Trump offered Julian Assange a pardon if he would say Russia was not involved in leaking Democratic party emails, a court in London has been told.
The extraordinary claim was made at Westminster magistrates court before the opening next week of Assange’s legal battle to block attempts to extradite him to the US.
Julian Assange: Australian MPs call on UK to block US extradition
Read more
Assange’s barrister, Edward Fitzgerald QC, referred to evidence alleging that the former US Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher had been to see Assange, now 48, while he was still in the Ecuadorian embassy in August 2017.
...
White House spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, told reporters: “The president barely knows Dana Rohrabacher other than he’s an ex-congressman. He’s never spoken to him on this subject or almost any subject.”
“It is a complete fabrication and a total lie,” Grisham said. “This is probably another never ending hoax and total lie from the DNC.”
Trump, however, invited Rohrabacher to the White House in April 2017 after seeing the then congressman on Fox TV defending the president.
In September 2017, the White House confirmed that Rohrabacher had called the then chief of staff, John Kelly, to talk about a possible deal with Assange.
Rohrabacher told the Wall Street Journal that as part of the deal he was proposing, Assange would have to hand over a computer drive or other data storage device that would prove that Russia was not the source of the hacked emails.
“He would get nothing, obviously, if what he gave us was not proof,” Rohrabacher said.
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Steven Portnoy
twitter.com/stevenportnoy
https://twitter.com/stevenportnoy/status/1230201440561397760It seems like news today, but then-Rep. Rohrabacher went on camera and told our LA station in September 2017 that he was engaged in a "confidential interaction" with the WH on a pardon for Assange.
[EMBEDDED VIDEO]
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The EPA is about to change a rule cutting mercury pollution. The industry doesn’t want it.
By Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis
Feb. 17, 2020 at 3:00 a.m. PST
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/the-epa-is-about-to-change-a-rule-cutting-mercury-pollution-the-industry-doesnt-want-it/2020/02/16/8ebac4e2-4470-11ea-b503-2b077c436617_story.htmlFor more than three years, the Trump administration has prided itself on working with industry to unshackle companies from burdensome environmental regulations. But as the Environmental Protection Agency prepares to finalize the latest in a long line of rollbacks, the nation’s power sector has sent a different message:
Thanks, but no thanks.
Exelon, one of the nation’s largest utilities, told the EPA that its effort to change a rule that has cut emissions of mercury and other toxins is “an action that is entirely unnecessary, unreasonable, and universally opposed by the power generation sector.”
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Sorry treatment of gay teachers suggests Rush Limbaugh was, sadly, right
Feb. 19, 2020 at 6:00 am
By Danny Westneat
Seattle Times columnist
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/sorry-treatment-of-gay-teachers-suggests-rush-limbaugh-was-sadly-right/Congrats, local Catholics. You have managed to demonstrate that Rush Limbaugh was right.
Just days after the right-wing radio bloviator declared that America is in no way ready for a gay, married president, the Catholic apparatus here in the allegedly not-backward Seattle region demonstrated it won’t even tolerate a gay, married English teacher.
“How’s this gonna look, a 37-year-old gay guy kissing his husband on stage next to Mr. Man, Donald Trump? What’s gonna happen there?” Limbaugh said last week, referring to Democratic candidate Pete Buttigieg. “America’s still not ready to elect a gay guy kissing his husband on the debate stage.”
Limbaugh, who said he was just imagining what freaked-out party bosses must be thinking, was roundly criticized for homophobia. Not to mention the irony of that slobbering nickname “Mr. Man,” as if the draft-dodging, thrice-married Trump embodies some sort of masculine ideal?
But then along comes Kennedy Catholic High School in Burien, with its parent, the Seattle Archdiocese, to push out two teachers in the middle of the school year for the crime of … getting engaged.
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Bill Barr Is Not Quitting—He’s Doing Some Weapons-Grade Gaslighting of America
Don’t buy these crisis of conscience leaks. They’re all part of the plan—to give Barr even more latitude to provide cover for King Donald.
Rick Wilson, Editor-at-Large
Updated Feb. 19, 2020
https://www.thedailybeast.com/bill-barr-is-not-quittinghes-doing-some-weapons-grade-gaslighting-of-americaNo matter who sits in the Oval Office or which party controls Congress, the rules of one Washington, D.C., game never change: nothing draws nearly uncritical media coverage like the “crisis of conscience” leak.
The crisis of conscience leak is an old standby; the leader of an embattled agency or their deputies suddenly, shockingly discover that either the president or one of his policies is egregious, shocking, and wrong, wrong, wrongety wrong. Of course, they’re off the record or on background. Of course, the principal is portrayed as the sole man or woman of integrity left in a sea of corrupt, gibbering idiots who would happily sink the nation into a mire of corruption or submerge it into a sea of cleansing nuclear flame.
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Trump Takes Up Call for Barr to ‘Clean House’ at Justice Dept.
With a series of retweets, President Trump kept up attacks on federal law enforcement agencies, despite pleas from the attorney general.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/19/us/politics/trump-barr-justice-department.htmlWASHINGTON — Ignoring appeals from his attorney general to stop tweeting about the Justice Department, President Trump renewed his attacks on the agency on Wednesday, demanding “JUSTICE” for himself and all future presidents.
With a series of retweets, Mr. Trump appeared to embrace the suggestion that Attorney General William P. Barr “clean shop” at the department. And the president promoted the idea of naming a special counsel to investigate what Tom Fitton, the head of the conservative nonprofit Judicial Watch, described as a “seditious conspiracy” at the department and the F.B.I.
A day earlier, Mr. Barr was, according to some of his associates, considering a different sort of shop cleaning: If his boss did not stop meddling with Justice Department investigations, he was said to be considering his own future.
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Mormon Church Formalizes Punishments for Trans Members
By Trudy Ring
February 19, 2020
https://www.advocate.com/religion/2020/2/19/mormon-church-formalizes-punishments-trans-membersThe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, known informally as the Mormon Church, has never been supportive of transgender identity, but now it has fully spelled out its anti-trans positions in a new handbook, available online.
“Gender is an essential characteristic of Heavenly Father’s plan of happiness,” says the General Handbook: Serving in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, released Wednesday. “The intended meaning of gender in the family proclamation is biological sex at birth.”
“Church leaders counsel against elective medical or surgical intervention for the purpose of attempting to transition to the opposite gender of a person’s birth sex (‘sex reassignment’),” the handbook continues. “Leaders advise that taking these actions will be cause for Church membership restrictions.”
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