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Today's News (2020/02/20) Late Edition
Feb. 20th, 2020 10:49 pmTrump's own acting Director of National Intelligence told Congress Russia - as has already been said - is acting in the 2020 election as it did in 2016, this time to keep Trump in office.
Trump fired him and is replacing him with a loyalist who has no intelligence experience.
This is straight up subversion. In public.
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Lawmakers Are Warned That Russia Is Meddling to Re-elect Trump
A classified briefing to House members is said to have angered the president, who complained that Democrats would “weaponize” the disclosure.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/20/us/politics/russian-interference-trump-democrats.html
WASHINGTON — Intelligence officials warned House lawmakers last week that Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get President Trump re-elected, five people familiar with the matter said, a disclosure to Congress that angered Mr. Trump, who complained that Democrats would use it against him.
The day after the Feb. 13 briefing to lawmakers, the president berated Joseph Maguire, the outgoing acting director of national intelligence, for allowing it to take place, people familiar with the exchange said. Mr. Trump was particularly irritated that Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the leader of the impeachment proceedings, was at the briefing.
During the briefing to the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Trump’s allies challenged the conclusions, arguing that he had been tough on Russia and that he had strengthened European security.
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After a congressional briefing on election threats, Trump soured on acting spy chief
By Ellen Nakashima, Shane Harris and Josh Dawsey
Feb. 20, 2020
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/after-a-congressional-briefing-on-election-threats-trump-soured-on-acting-spy-chief/2020/02/20/1ed2b4ec-53f1-11ea-b119-4faabac6674f_story.html
President Trump erupted at his acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, in the Oval Office last week over what he perceived as disloyalty by Maguire’s staff, which ruined Maguire’s chances of becoming the permanent intelligence chief, according to people familiar with the matter.
Trump announced on Wednesday that he was replacing Maguire with a vocal loyalist, Richard Grenell, who is the U.S. ambassador to Germany.
Maguire had been considered a leading candidate to be nominated for the post of DNI, White House aides had said. But Trump’s opinion shifted last week when he heard from a GOP ally that the intelligence official in charge of election security, who works for Maguire, gave a classified briefing last Thursday to the House Intelligence Committee on 2020 election security.
It is unclear what the official, Shelby Pierson, specifically said at the briefing that angered Trump, but the president erroneously believed that she had given information exclusively to Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the committee chairman, and that the information would be helpful to Democrats if it were released publicly, the people familiar with the matter said. Schiff was the lead impeachment manager, or prosecutor, during Trump’s Senate trial on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
...
As acting DNI, Grenell would oversee the intelligence community’s efforts to combat election interference and disinformation, but he has been skeptical of Russia’s role in 2016.
“Russian or Russian-approved tactics like cyber warfare and campaigns of misinformation have been happening for decades,” he wrote in a 2016 opinion article for Fox News, playing down the severity of the threat. That view is at odds with the conclusions of senior U.S. intelligence officials, who have said Russia’s operation in 2016 was sweeping and systematic, and unlike previous Russian or Soviet efforts.
But Grenell’s view is in line with Trump’s assessment. The president has portrayed disinformation campaigns as commonplace and has compared Russia’s interventions to U.S. efforts to support democracy overseas.
Some lawmakers said that Grenell lacks the experience necessary for the job and have said his avid support for the president could impair his duty to speak candidly to Trump and represent the intelligence community as a nonpolitical body.
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This Obscure Foundation Helped Fund The Alt-Right
By Sarah Jones - New York Magazine
18 February 2020
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/this-obscure-foundation-helped-fund-the-alt-right.html
At first glance, Robert Rotella appears to be a typical libertarian donor. Through the foundation named in his honor, the Bellevue, Washington–based founder of Rotella Capital Management has donated millions to libertarian and conservative organizations like the Cato Institute, the Reason Foundation, and Turning Point USA. One of his particular favorites is the Institute for Justice. Since 2010, he has donated nearly a quarter of a million dollars to the group, and through it, he has helped set up a Supreme Court battle with dramatic implications for public schools. Justices heard Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue on Wednesday: the Institute for Justice had brought the case against the state of Montana in order to force it to include religious schools in its tax-credit scholarship program. The case has implications not just for the First Amendment but for teachers’ unions, who view it as yet another attempt to take precious resources away from public schools.
Rotella’s financial support for libertarian causes is enough to make him a consequential figure, but there’s another reason to know his name: A closer look at the financial records of the Robert P. Rotella Foundation, which he manages alongside his sister, Rosemarie, reveals that he isn’t just interested in right-to-work laws or free enterprise. He’s also a significant funder of white nationalism.
Of the $5.8 million the foundation has donated to various causes since 2002, roughly $105,000 has gone to organizations like the National Policy Institute, or NPI, which is led by neo-Nazi Richard Spencer. A comprehensive review of the foundation’s available 990 reports indicates that its financial support for white nationalism began in 2014 and continued through 2018. Though $105,000 is not an exceptionally large sum of money, white nationalist organizations are small, and it doesn’t take much money to keep them afloat. “Annual recurring donations are kind of where it’s at for these guys because they all have financial limits, imposed by federal law, on how large the donations can be,” explained David Neiwert, the author of Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump.
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What is the 'boogaloo'? How online calls for a violent uprising are hitting the mainstream
The movement says it wants a second Civil War targeting liberal political opponents and law enforcement.
Feb. 19, 2020, 7:10 AM PST
By Brandy Zadrozny
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/what-boogaloo-how-online-calls-violent-uprising-are-getting-organized-n1138461
An anti-government movement that advocates for a violent uprising targeting liberal political opponents and law enforcement has moved from the fringes of the internet into the mainstream and surged on social media in recent months, according to a group of researchers that tracks hate groups.
The movement, which says it wants a second Civil War organized around the term "boogaloo," includes groups on mainstream internet platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Reddit, as well as fringe websites including 4chan, according to a report released Tuesday night by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), an independent nonprofit of scientists and engineers that tracks and reports on misinformation and hate speech across social media.
...
"When you have people talking about and planning sedition and violence against minorities, police and public officials, we need to take their words seriously," said Goldenberg, who is also CEO of the security consulting company Cardinal Point Strategies.
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Children stage mass-walkout after teachers were forced to quit for being gay
Jacob Geanous
Wednesday 19 Feb 2020 7:20 pm
https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/19/students-walk-class-catholic-school-forced-gay-teachers-quit-12269247/
Students at a Catholic school have walked out in protest at the resignations of two teachers who allegedly resigned because they were gay.
Paul Danforth and Michelle Beattie quit Kennedy Catholic High in Burien, Seattle, soon after getting engaged to their same sex partners. After hearing this, children staged a mass walk-out and many of them blocked the corridors.
They were said to have resigned ‘voluntarily’, but Paul’s fiance Sean Nyberg said he had been forced out soon after he proposed to him at Disneyland on November 1. Beattie had also recently got engaged to her same-sex partner.
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Rohrabacher confirms he offered Trump pardon to Assange for proof Russia didn't hack DNC email
Michael Isikoff
Yahoo News
20 February 2020
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/rohrabacher-confirms-he-offered-trump-pardon-to-assange-for-proof-russia-didn-t-hack-dnc-email/ar-BB10cxji
WASHINGTON — Former California Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher confirmed in a new interview that during a three-hour meeting at the Ecuadorian Embassy in August 2017, he told Julian Assange he would get President Trump to give him a pardon if he turned over information proving the Russians had not been the source of internal Democratic National Committee emails published by WikiLeaks.
In a phone interview with Yahoo News, Rohrabacher said his goal during the meeting was to find proof for a widely debunked conspiracy theory: that WikiLeaks’ real source for the DNC emails was not Russian intelligence agents, as U.S. officials have since concluded, but former DNC staffer Seth Rich, who was murdered on the streets of Washington in July 2016 in what police believe was a botched robbery.
A lawyer for Assange in London on Wednesday cited the pardon offer from Rohrabacher during a court hearing on the U.S. government’s request to extradite the WikiLeaks founder.
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham immediately denounced the claim about a pardon discussion with Assange as a “complete fabrication,” adding that the president “barely knows Dana Rohrabacher” and has “never spoken to him on this subject or almost any subject.”
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'Titanic, meet iceberg': Warren's 'devastating' takedown of Bloomberg goes viral
Allyson Chiu, Yahoo News
20 February 2020
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/elections-2020/titanic-meet-iceberg-warrens-devastating-takedown-of-bloomberg-goes-viral/ar-BB10cmNk
It was open season on former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg during Wednesday night’s Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas. But although all five other hopefuls took their shots, one person emerged as the leader of the onslaught: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.).
“Bloomberg went in as the Titanic — billion-dollar-machine Titanic,” CNN’s Van Jones said Wednesday night. “Titanic, meet iceberg Elizabeth Warren.”
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Germany shooting: Investigation into 'deeply racist' gunman's links
20 February 2020
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51577196
The investigation into a deadly gun attack in Hanau is focusing on whether others knew about or helped organise it, Germany's federal prosecutor says.
The suspect shot dead nine people "of migrant background" at two shisha bars on Wednesday evening. He and his mother were later found dead in his flat.
Peter Frank said material the suspect Tobias R had posted online showed a "deeply racist mindset".
...
Tobias R had posted videos and a kind of manifesto on his website, Mr Frank said.
In the manifesto he wrote that people from more than 20 countries including Turkey and Israel should be "destroyed", AFP reported.
London-based German counter-terrorism expert Peter Neumann said the text contained "various, but mostly extreme right views, with a do-it-yourself ideology cobbled together out of parts found on the internet".
"The pattern is clear, and not at all new," he added.
In her statement, Mrs Merkel said there were "many indications at the moment that the perpetrator acted on right-wing extremist, racist motives, out of hatred towards people of other origins, religion or appearance".
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Trump calls for all cases stemming from Mueller probe to be 'thrown out'
February 18, 2020
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia/trump-calls-for-all-cases-stemming-from-mueller-probe-to-be-thrown-out-idUSKBN20C1RG
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday called for all cases stemming from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election to be “thrown out” and suggested he could bring a lawsuit over the matter.
Trump made the comments hours before a telephone conference call between lawyers for the president’s former adviser, Roger Stone and prosecutors. Stone was convicted on seven counts of lying to the U.S. Congress, obstruction and witness tampering.
Prosecutors initially called for Stone to receive a prison sentence of between seven to nine years in the case but, after Trump publicly called the recommendation “unfair,” the Justice Department scaled it back. That sent shock waves through Washington and prompted all four prosecutors to quit the case and one to quit the agency.
Trump fired him and is replacing him with a loyalist who has no intelligence experience.
This is straight up subversion. In public.
-----
Lawmakers Are Warned That Russia Is Meddling to Re-elect Trump
A classified briefing to House members is said to have angered the president, who complained that Democrats would “weaponize” the disclosure.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/20/us/politics/russian-interference-trump-democrats.html
WASHINGTON — Intelligence officials warned House lawmakers last week that Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get President Trump re-elected, five people familiar with the matter said, a disclosure to Congress that angered Mr. Trump, who complained that Democrats would use it against him.
The day after the Feb. 13 briefing to lawmakers, the president berated Joseph Maguire, the outgoing acting director of national intelligence, for allowing it to take place, people familiar with the exchange said. Mr. Trump was particularly irritated that Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the leader of the impeachment proceedings, was at the briefing.
During the briefing to the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Trump’s allies challenged the conclusions, arguing that he had been tough on Russia and that he had strengthened European security.
-----
After a congressional briefing on election threats, Trump soured on acting spy chief
By Ellen Nakashima, Shane Harris and Josh Dawsey
Feb. 20, 2020
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/after-a-congressional-briefing-on-election-threats-trump-soured-on-acting-spy-chief/2020/02/20/1ed2b4ec-53f1-11ea-b119-4faabac6674f_story.html
President Trump erupted at his acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, in the Oval Office last week over what he perceived as disloyalty by Maguire’s staff, which ruined Maguire’s chances of becoming the permanent intelligence chief, according to people familiar with the matter.
Trump announced on Wednesday that he was replacing Maguire with a vocal loyalist, Richard Grenell, who is the U.S. ambassador to Germany.
Maguire had been considered a leading candidate to be nominated for the post of DNI, White House aides had said. But Trump’s opinion shifted last week when he heard from a GOP ally that the intelligence official in charge of election security, who works for Maguire, gave a classified briefing last Thursday to the House Intelligence Committee on 2020 election security.
It is unclear what the official, Shelby Pierson, specifically said at the briefing that angered Trump, but the president erroneously believed that she had given information exclusively to Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the committee chairman, and that the information would be helpful to Democrats if it were released publicly, the people familiar with the matter said. Schiff was the lead impeachment manager, or prosecutor, during Trump’s Senate trial on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
...
As acting DNI, Grenell would oversee the intelligence community’s efforts to combat election interference and disinformation, but he has been skeptical of Russia’s role in 2016.
“Russian or Russian-approved tactics like cyber warfare and campaigns of misinformation have been happening for decades,” he wrote in a 2016 opinion article for Fox News, playing down the severity of the threat. That view is at odds with the conclusions of senior U.S. intelligence officials, who have said Russia’s operation in 2016 was sweeping and systematic, and unlike previous Russian or Soviet efforts.
But Grenell’s view is in line with Trump’s assessment. The president has portrayed disinformation campaigns as commonplace and has compared Russia’s interventions to U.S. efforts to support democracy overseas.
Some lawmakers said that Grenell lacks the experience necessary for the job and have said his avid support for the president could impair his duty to speak candidly to Trump and represent the intelligence community as a nonpolitical body.
-----
This Obscure Foundation Helped Fund The Alt-Right
By Sarah Jones - New York Magazine
18 February 2020
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/this-obscure-foundation-helped-fund-the-alt-right.html
At first glance, Robert Rotella appears to be a typical libertarian donor. Through the foundation named in his honor, the Bellevue, Washington–based founder of Rotella Capital Management has donated millions to libertarian and conservative organizations like the Cato Institute, the Reason Foundation, and Turning Point USA. One of his particular favorites is the Institute for Justice. Since 2010, he has donated nearly a quarter of a million dollars to the group, and through it, he has helped set up a Supreme Court battle with dramatic implications for public schools. Justices heard Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue on Wednesday: the Institute for Justice had brought the case against the state of Montana in order to force it to include religious schools in its tax-credit scholarship program. The case has implications not just for the First Amendment but for teachers’ unions, who view it as yet another attempt to take precious resources away from public schools.
Rotella’s financial support for libertarian causes is enough to make him a consequential figure, but there’s another reason to know his name: A closer look at the financial records of the Robert P. Rotella Foundation, which he manages alongside his sister, Rosemarie, reveals that he isn’t just interested in right-to-work laws or free enterprise. He’s also a significant funder of white nationalism.
Of the $5.8 million the foundation has donated to various causes since 2002, roughly $105,000 has gone to organizations like the National Policy Institute, or NPI, which is led by neo-Nazi Richard Spencer. A comprehensive review of the foundation’s available 990 reports indicates that its financial support for white nationalism began in 2014 and continued through 2018. Though $105,000 is not an exceptionally large sum of money, white nationalist organizations are small, and it doesn’t take much money to keep them afloat. “Annual recurring donations are kind of where it’s at for these guys because they all have financial limits, imposed by federal law, on how large the donations can be,” explained David Neiwert, the author of Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump.
-----
What is the 'boogaloo'? How online calls for a violent uprising are hitting the mainstream
The movement says it wants a second Civil War targeting liberal political opponents and law enforcement.
Feb. 19, 2020, 7:10 AM PST
By Brandy Zadrozny
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/what-boogaloo-how-online-calls-violent-uprising-are-getting-organized-n1138461
An anti-government movement that advocates for a violent uprising targeting liberal political opponents and law enforcement has moved from the fringes of the internet into the mainstream and surged on social media in recent months, according to a group of researchers that tracks hate groups.
The movement, which says it wants a second Civil War organized around the term "boogaloo," includes groups on mainstream internet platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Reddit, as well as fringe websites including 4chan, according to a report released Tuesday night by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), an independent nonprofit of scientists and engineers that tracks and reports on misinformation and hate speech across social media.
...
"When you have people talking about and planning sedition and violence against minorities, police and public officials, we need to take their words seriously," said Goldenberg, who is also CEO of the security consulting company Cardinal Point Strategies.
-----
Children stage mass-walkout after teachers were forced to quit for being gay
Jacob Geanous
Wednesday 19 Feb 2020 7:20 pm
https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/19/students-walk-class-catholic-school-forced-gay-teachers-quit-12269247/
Students at a Catholic school have walked out in protest at the resignations of two teachers who allegedly resigned because they were gay.
Paul Danforth and Michelle Beattie quit Kennedy Catholic High in Burien, Seattle, soon after getting engaged to their same sex partners. After hearing this, children staged a mass walk-out and many of them blocked the corridors.
They were said to have resigned ‘voluntarily’, but Paul’s fiance Sean Nyberg said he had been forced out soon after he proposed to him at Disneyland on November 1. Beattie had also recently got engaged to her same-sex partner.
-----
Rohrabacher confirms he offered Trump pardon to Assange for proof Russia didn't hack DNC email
Michael Isikoff
Yahoo News
20 February 2020
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/rohrabacher-confirms-he-offered-trump-pardon-to-assange-for-proof-russia-didn-t-hack-dnc-email/ar-BB10cxji
WASHINGTON — Former California Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher confirmed in a new interview that during a three-hour meeting at the Ecuadorian Embassy in August 2017, he told Julian Assange he would get President Trump to give him a pardon if he turned over information proving the Russians had not been the source of internal Democratic National Committee emails published by WikiLeaks.
In a phone interview with Yahoo News, Rohrabacher said his goal during the meeting was to find proof for a widely debunked conspiracy theory: that WikiLeaks’ real source for the DNC emails was not Russian intelligence agents, as U.S. officials have since concluded, but former DNC staffer Seth Rich, who was murdered on the streets of Washington in July 2016 in what police believe was a botched robbery.
A lawyer for Assange in London on Wednesday cited the pardon offer from Rohrabacher during a court hearing on the U.S. government’s request to extradite the WikiLeaks founder.
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham immediately denounced the claim about a pardon discussion with Assange as a “complete fabrication,” adding that the president “barely knows Dana Rohrabacher” and has “never spoken to him on this subject or almost any subject.”
-----
'Titanic, meet iceberg': Warren's 'devastating' takedown of Bloomberg goes viral
Allyson Chiu, Yahoo News
20 February 2020
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/elections-2020/titanic-meet-iceberg-warrens-devastating-takedown-of-bloomberg-goes-viral/ar-BB10cmNk
It was open season on former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg during Wednesday night’s Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas. But although all five other hopefuls took their shots, one person emerged as the leader of the onslaught: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.).
“Bloomberg went in as the Titanic — billion-dollar-machine Titanic,” CNN’s Van Jones said Wednesday night. “Titanic, meet iceberg Elizabeth Warren.”
-----
Germany shooting: Investigation into 'deeply racist' gunman's links
20 February 2020
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51577196
The investigation into a deadly gun attack in Hanau is focusing on whether others knew about or helped organise it, Germany's federal prosecutor says.
The suspect shot dead nine people "of migrant background" at two shisha bars on Wednesday evening. He and his mother were later found dead in his flat.
Peter Frank said material the suspect Tobias R had posted online showed a "deeply racist mindset".
...
Tobias R had posted videos and a kind of manifesto on his website, Mr Frank said.
In the manifesto he wrote that people from more than 20 countries including Turkey and Israel should be "destroyed", AFP reported.
London-based German counter-terrorism expert Peter Neumann said the text contained "various, but mostly extreme right views, with a do-it-yourself ideology cobbled together out of parts found on the internet".
"The pattern is clear, and not at all new," he added.
In her statement, Mrs Merkel said there were "many indications at the moment that the perpetrator acted on right-wing extremist, racist motives, out of hatred towards people of other origins, religion or appearance".
-----
Trump calls for all cases stemming from Mueller probe to be 'thrown out'
February 18, 2020
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia/trump-calls-for-all-cases-stemming-from-mueller-probe-to-be-thrown-out-idUSKBN20C1RG
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday called for all cases stemming from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election to be “thrown out” and suggested he could bring a lawsuit over the matter.
Trump made the comments hours before a telephone conference call between lawyers for the president’s former adviser, Roger Stone and prosecutors. Stone was convicted on seven counts of lying to the U.S. Congress, obstruction and witness tampering.
Prosecutors initially called for Stone to receive a prison sentence of between seven to nine years in the case but, after Trump publicly called the recommendation “unfair,” the Justice Department scaled it back. That sent shock waves through Washington and prompted all four prosecutors to quit the case and one to quit the agency.
