Суд обязал Белый дом обнародовать переписку о задержке военной помощи Украине
Администрация президента Трампа должна по решению суда предоставить электронную переписку, касающуюся задержки военной помощи Украине летом прошлого года.
Такое решение приняла судья Эми Джексон, информирует "Голос Америки".
Решение было принято по иску издание The New York Times в рамках закона о доступе к информации. Ранее Белый дом отказался предоставлять изданию эти документы.
Речь идет об электронной переписке президента, вице-президента или непосредственных советников президента по вопросу об объеме, сроках и цели задержки военной помощи Украине.
Судья Джексон является председателем в деле Роджера Стоуна, бывшего советника Трампа, которого обвиняли в даче ложных показаний.
https://censor.net.ua/news/3195678/sud_ ... hi_ukraineIn recording Trump asks how long Ukraine can resist Russians
Trump inquired how long Ukraine would be able to resist Russian aggression without U.S. assistance during a 2018 meeting with donors that included the indicted associates of his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.
“How long would they last in a fight with Russia?” Trump is heard asking in the audio portion of a video recording, moments before he calls for the firing of U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. She was removed a year later after a campaign to discredit her by Giuliani and others, an action that is part of Democrats' case arguing for the removal of the president in his Senate impeachment trial.
A video recording of the entire 80-minute dinner at the Trump Hotel in Washington was obtained Saturday by The Associated Press. Excerpts were first published Friday by ABC News. People can be seen in only some portions of the recording.
The recording contradicts the president's statements that he did not know the Giuliani associates Lev Parnas or Igor Fruman, key figures in the investigation who were indicted last year on campaign finance charges. The recording came to light as Democrats continued to press for witnesses and other evidence to be considered during the impeachment trial.
On the recording, a voice that appears to be Parnas' can be heard saying, “The biggest problem there, I think where we need to start is we got to get rid of the ambassador." He later can be heard telling Trump: “She's basically walking around telling everybody, 'Wait, he's gonna get impeached. Just wait.'”
Trump responds: "Get rid of her! Get her out tomorrow. I don't care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. OK? Do it.”
Ukraine came up during the dinner in the context of a discussion of energy markets, with the voice appearing to be Parnas' describing his involvement in the purchase of a Ukrainian energy company.
The group then praises Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to which the president says: “Pompeo's going to be good. He's doing a good job. Already he's doing a good job.”
At the beginning of the video, Trump is seen posing for photos before entering the blue-walled dining room. A voice that appears to be Fruman's is heard saying that "it's a great room" before a chuckle. “I couldn't believe myself.”
Also visible in the video are the president's son Donald Trump Jr. and former counselor to the president Johnny DeStefano. Jack Nicklaus III, the grandson of the golf icon, and New York real estate developer Stanley Gale also attended the event for a pro-Trump group.
Just a few minutes into the conversation, Trump can be heard railing against former President George W. Bush, China, the World Trade Organization and the European Union. “Bush, he gets us into the war, he gets us into the Middle East, that was a beauty,” Trump says. “We’re in the Middle East right now for $7 trillion.” He later says: “China rips us off for years and we owe them $2 trillion.” The president blames the WTO because it “allowed China to do what they’re doing.”
"The WTO is worse,” than China, he declares. “China didn’t become great until the WTO.”
Trump also seemed to question the U.S. involvement in the Korean War: “How we ever got involved in South Korea in the first place, tell me about it. How we ended up in a Korean War."
Trump provided the guests with an update ahead of his first meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, revealing that he'd settled on a date and location. One of the people in attendance sought to pitch a different location: Songdo, South Korea, which is 70% owned by Gale International and features a Nicklaus-designed golf course.
“You know that Kim Jong Un is a great golfer,” Trump is heard telling the guests, who roar with laughter.
Trump also discussed the border crisis and plans for a border wall with Mexio, insisting that he wants to build a concrete wall but had heard from law enforcement officials that it isn't viable. “You do have to be able to see through the wall, I think,” Trump says. He says drug dealers would throw heavy bundles of drugs over the wall, which could kill Border Patrol agents.
“They have a catapult and they throw it over the wall, and it lands on the other side of the wall and it can hit people. Can you imagine you get hit with 100 pounds?” the president says. “The whole thing is preposterous. I would’ve loved to have seen to see a concrete wall, but you just can’t do that.”
Toward the end of the dinner, the discussion turns to the upcoming election and media.
"Magazines are dead," Trump says.
"I think cable TV is OK. If we ever lost an election, cable TV is dead," he says, the party goers laughing. “Can you imagine if they had a normal candidate? It's all they talk about. If they had Hillary, crooked Hillary, their ratings would be one-fifth.”
Trump says that he believes he would have had a harder time in 2016 if Bernie Sanders had been the Democratic nominee.
Near the end of the dinner Parnas can be heard presenting what he says is a gift to Trump from “the head rabbi in Ukraine” and rabbis in Israel drawing a parallel between Trump and the messiah. “It’s like messiah is the person that’s come to save the whole world. So it’s like you’re the savior of the Ukraine.”
"All Jew people of Ukraine, they are praying for you,” Fruman says, as Parnas tells Trump to show the gift to Jared Kushner, the president’s Jewish son-in-law and senior adviser, to explain its meaning. In the video, it appears Fruman is seated across the narrow part of the rectangular table and one seat over from the president.
Trump also tells the assembled guests that it is "ridiculous" and “wrong” that he can’t hold political fundraisers inside the White House, saying it would save the government money compared to driving him the four blocks to his hotel.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/In- ... 270482.phpState Department emails indicate Yovanovitch met with Burisma rep, despite testimony
State Department emails obtained by the conservative group Citizens United this week indicate that the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine was involved in discussions about the natural gas firm Burisma Holdings and even in a meeting with a company representative, despite testifying to Congress during the impeachment inquiry that she knew little about the firm.
Burisma Holdings was at the center of impeachment proceedings against President Trump, after he pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a phone call to look into the Biden family’s dealings in Ukraine. Former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, held a lucrative position on the board of Burisma Holdings.
During the impeachment hearings, many witnesses were questioned about their knowledge of the Biden-Burisma connection, and the firm's reputation in Ukraine. Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, during House testimony last year, said she didn't have much knowledge about the firm, and noted that she only learned of its connection to Biden through "press reports" she read while preparing for her Senate confirmation hearing.
“Burisma wasn’t a big issue in the fall … of 2016, when I arrived,” she said, noting that the investigation and details surrounding its closure “happened before I arrived.”
"It was not a focus of what I was doing in that six-month period," she said.
But thrugh a Citizens United Freedom of Information Act request for emails related to Burisma sent by former deputy assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eastern Europe George Kent, the organization obtained more than 160 pages of emails and memos sent during the fall of 2016, including communications between Yovanovitch and U.S. Embassy officials about Burisma Holdings and documents indicating that she met with a representative of the firm at the embassy in December 2016.
In September 2016, Yovanovitch received a letter from Burisma’s American lawyers, John Buretta of Cravath, Swaine and Moore law firm based in New York, alerting her that prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko’s office was dropping a corruption investigation related to Burisma without filing charges. Buretta also called allegations against the firm’s founder “baseless.”
“We respectfully request that Your Excellency take into consideration these objective facts when considering the narrative promoted by some, and no doubt to be repeated again, in disregard of the facts and the law and the decisions by courts,” Buretta wrote the ambassador.
Yovanovitch appeared to forward the email to Kent, who then arranged a briefing for her to discuss the issues. Kent, before the briefing, wrote to colleagues the topics he hoped to discuss, which included “[Burisma founder Mykola] Zlochevsky/Burisma - asset recovery and past crimes of the Yanu regime as they intersect U.S. corporate/individual interest.”
In another email, Kent wrote to Yovanovitch that the briefing was “further to the Blue Star effort to rehabilitate the reputation of their non-client in the US, former ministry of ecologies Zlochevsky, who clearly has retained the services of a blue chip law firm and his energy company Burisma, which in turn has Hunter Biden on its board.”
Yovanovitch was herself a key figure in impeachment proceedings, recalling how she was ousted from her post and allegedly targeted by Trump allies — some of whom have argued that the concerns about Burisma and the Biden connection were legitimate for the president to press Ukraine on. Trump's move to withhold U.S. aid during that period, though, is what catapulted the controversy into impeachment territory — with the president ultimately impeached by the House and then acquitted by the Senate.
Burisma's founder, former minister of ecologies Mykola Zlochevsky, had been under investigation in Ukraine. The Obama administration pushed for the prosecutor investigating Zlochevsky, Viktor Shokin, to be removed from his post. Shokin was fired in April 2016 and the case was closed by the prosecutor who replaced him, Lutsenko. Joe Biden once boasted on camera that when he was vice president he successfully pressured Ukraine to fire Shokin.
Biden allies, though, maintain that his intervention had nothing to do with his son, but was rather tied to the administration’s concerns of corruption in Ukraine. At the time, as vice president to former President Obama, Biden was running U.S.-Ukraine policy and anti-corruption campaigns.
Meanwhile, another document appeared to be a briefing memo to prepare Yovanovitch for a meeting on Dec. 8, 2016 inside the U.S. Embassy with Burisma representative Karen Tramontano.
“An Atlantic Council member and Washington veteran, Tramontano informally represents Mykola Zlochevsky, the Burisma CEO, who has long been the target of law enforcement proceedings in Ukraine,” the memo stated, adding that Zlochevsky’s “official US representatives sent a letter in September ... asking that the embassy reconsider its position on him.”
Yovanovitch did not make mention of meeting with Burisma representatives during her testimony.
“These newly uncovered documents indicate Ambassador Yovanovitch made false statements under oath during the impeachment charade and this must be thoroughly investigated,” Citizens United president David Bossie told Fox News, adding that “the American people are sick and tired of the double standard.”
Bossie called for President Trump to order the release of records related to impeachment, Burisma and Hunter Biden:
...
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/state- ... testifyingТрамп внес на рассмотрение Сената кандидатуру посла США в Украине
https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/4344070AG Barr may face subpoena from House judiciary panel over Flynn case, Nadler says
U.S. Attorney General William Barr is expected to testify next month before the House Judiciary Committee regarding the Justice Department’s recent decision to drop the Michael Flynn case, the panel’s chairman said Wednesday.
The Democrat-led panel will issue a subpoena, if necessary, if Barr chooses not to cooperate, Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said during a television interview.
“Now that the District of Columbia has extended the stay-at-home order until June 8, we expect to see Barr in front of our committee on June 9, the very next day,” Nadler told MSNBC.
He said the panel was in communication with the Justice Department regarding the scheduling of a Barr appearance. Barr had been set to testify in late March, but the session was postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic, The Hill reported.
Justice ended its case against Flynn last Thursday as the former White House national security adviser was awaiting sentencing following his late 2017 guilty plea on charges of lying to the FBI about his communications with Russia.
In scrapping the case, Justice officials cited problems with the FBI’s handling of its Flynn investigation that called into question whether the probe was justified.
“I want to make sure that we restore confidence in the system,” Barr told CBS News in an interview last week. “There’s only one standard of justice and I believe that … justice, in this case, requires dismissing the charges against General Flynn.”
But Democrats have accused Barr of dropping the case for political reasons, claiming the attorney general’s motivation was to shield President Trump rather than enforce the law.
Barr denied those accusations in the CBS interview.
“I’m doing the law’s bidding,” Barr said. “A crime cannot be established here.”
Having Barr testify would be the House panel’s attempt to clarify the reasons why the Justice Department dropped the case.
“We cannot have a situation where the attorney general just thumbs his nose and the administration holds Congress in contempt,” Nadler told MSNBC.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ag-bar ... adler-saysAhead of election, Trump attacks Russia probe and Democrats
Trump and Republicans are launching a broad election-year attack on the foundation of the Russia investigation, including declassifying intelligence information to try to place senior Obama administration officials under scrutiny for routine actions.
The effort has been aided by a Justice Department decision to dismiss its prosecution of former Trump administration national security adviser Michael Flynn, essentially rewriting the narrative of the case in a way that former federal law enforcement officials say downplays the legitimate national security concerns they believe Flynn’s actions raised.
Trump and his Republican allies are pushing to reframe the Russia investigation as a “deep state” plot to sabotage his administration, setting the stage for a fresh onslaught of attacks on past and present Democratic officials and law enforcement leaders.
Two Republican critics of the Russia investigation, Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, disclosed a list of names of Obama administration officials they say may have received Flynn’s identity from intelligence reports in 2016 and 2017. Among the names is Trump’s Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, who was vice president when the Russia probe began.
Names of Americans are routinely hidden, or minimized, in intelligence reports that describe routine, legal surveillance of foreign targets. U.S. officials must make a specific request if they want to know the person’s identity, or “unmask” them.
“He was one of the unmaskers," Trump said of Biden in an interview with Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo, labeling the Russia investigation as “the greatest political crime in the history of our country.”
Trump moved further to lay the blame on his predecessor and would-be replacement. “The president knew everything," Trump said. "President Obama and Vice President Biden, they knew everything."
Biden and the other officials had full authority to seek the name of the unidentified American in the reports — it turned out to be Flynn — and did so through proper channels, according to Trump administration documents. Rather than reveal any actual wrongdoing, the release of the information by the president’s allies seems designed to create suspicion around Biden and other senior Democrats as the November election approaches.
Trump hyped the disclosure of the list with Biden’s name as a “massive thing.” But the Biden campaign dismissed the revelation, with spokesman Andrew Bates saying it simply indicates “the breadth and depth of concern across the American government” at the time about Flynn’s conversations with foreign representatives. None of the officials could have known beforehand that the unidentified person in the reports was Flynn, Bates said.
The requests for the information came as U.S. officials were scrutinizing Russian election interference on Trump’s behalf and trying to determine whether Trump associates were involved in that effort.
The issue has been politically charged since early 2017, when it was revealed that Flynn had discussed sanctions during the presidential transition period with Russia’s then-U.S. ambassador, Sergey Kislyak. Flynn later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about those talks with Kislyak.
U.S. officials may ask the National Security Agency to disclose to them the names of Americans who are swept up in the surveillance of foreigners and whose identities are concealed in intelligence reports if they believe the identity is essential in understanding the intelligence — and they do so thousands of times a year.
In fact, unmasking requests increased in the first years of the Trump administration from 2015-2016 totals during the latter years of the Obama administration, according to a government transparency report issued last month.
The list declassified by Richard Grenell, a Trump loyalist and acting national intelligence director, shows a broad range of U.S. officials submitted requests to the NSA between Nov. 8, 2016, and Jan. 31, 2017, to unmask the identity of an American who was revealed to be Flynn, according to a cover letter accompanying the release.
It is unclear if they actually viewed the unmasked information.
Flynn’s call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak occurred in late December 2016. Many of the requests to unmask his identity took place before then, as well as in the weeks that followed. The content of the intelligence reports was not disclosed.
The highly unusual disclosure comes as Trump, scrambling to manage the coronavirus crisis, has been eager to shift the focus elsewhere. He has repeatedly pronounced Flynn “exonerated” and pushed a loosely defined “Obamagate” allegation that the previous administration tried to undermine him during the presidential transition.
Trump has tried to rally his supporters around the claim to revive enthusiasm among voters disappointed by his handling of the pandemic. He used the first 20 minutes of a recent Fox News interview to attack the Obama administration rather than offer updates on the pandemic.
He has increasingly lashed out in the year since Mueller’s report, which identified substantial contacts between Trump associates and Russia but did not accuse him of a crime or allege a criminal conspiracy between his campaign and the Kremlin. Revelations since then have exposed problems in the early days of the FBI’s probe, including errors and omissions in applications to surveil an ex-Trump campaign adviser.
Attorney General William Barr has said dropping the case against Flynn was in the interests of justice. The department says the FBI had insufficient grounds for interviewing Flynn about his “entirely appropriate” calls with the ambassador and that any imperfect statements he made during the interview weren’t material to the broader counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign.
But the decision stunned former law enforcement officials involved in the case, including some who say the Justice Department is rewriting history and omitting key context.
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said the FBI was obligated to interview Flynn about his conversations with Kislyak, and that Flynn’s lies compounded the bureau’s concerns.
And because White House officials were inaccurately asserting that Flynn had never discussed sanctions with Kislyak, U.S. officials were concerned Flynn could be vulnerable to blackmail since Russia also knew what was discussed.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan has yet to rule on the Justice Department’s dismissal request and has indicated he is not inclined to do so swiftly.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Ahe ... 268958.phpHow a Flynn theory became central to the Trump reelection campaign
Philip Rucker, Matt Zapotosky, Robert Costa and Shane Harris, The Washington Post Published
On the day Attorney General William Barr moved to drop criminal charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn, again winning the adulation of President Donald Trump, he was paid a special visit.
Richard Grenell, the acting director of national intelligence and one of Trump's most combative defenders, arrived last Thursday at the Justice Department's headquarters clutching a brown leather briefcase. A Fox News camera was pre-positioned at the entrance on 10th Street NW, seemingly tipped off to record footage of the dramatic scene.
Grenell carried a list he had declassified of former Obama administration officials, including former vice president Joe Biden, who had sought to remove the cloak of anonymity from references in intelligence documents that turned out to be of Flynn. During a brief meeting with Barr, Grenell turned over the list of names, setting off a chain reaction that led Republican senators to publicly release it on Wednesday in what they claim is a monumental scandal.
The practice, known as unmasking, is commonplace in government. But in the case of Flynn, Trump and his allies used the list of names to claim Obama, Biden and their appointees deliberately sought to sabotage the incoming Trump administration as part of a long-running conspiracy they have dubbed "Obamagate."
"We sort of have the smoking gun because we now have the declassified document with Joe Biden's name on it," Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said Thursday.
Biden's campaign maintains that his actions were entirely appropriate and that the declassified document shows he followed normal intelligence procedures.
With Trump suffering political damage for hi management of the coronavirus pandemic less than six months before the election, the president's government appointees and allies in Congress are using their powers to generate a political storm aimed at engulfing Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, and Obama, whom polls show is the nation's most popular political figure, making him a potent threat to Trump as a Biden surrogate.
Another objective is to rewrite the history of the Russia investigation as Trump has long sought, by casting Flynn as a martyr wronged by nefarious bureaucratic elites.
These efforts are being amplified by wall-to-wall coverage on Fox News Channel and elsewhere in conservative media, where this week Flynn coverage has rivaled and at times overshadowed news about the pandemic, even as the U.S. death toll from the novel coronavirus climbed past 85,000.
And in a remarkable turn Thursday, Trump urged Congress to call Obama to testify and even suggested those involved - including Biden and two longtime Trump antagonists, former FBI director James Comey and former CIA director John Brennan - go to prison.
"I'm talking with 50-year sentences," Trump said in an interview with Fox Business Network that aired Thursday. "It's a disgrace what's happened. This is the greatest political scam, hoax in the history of our country. . . . People should be going to jail for this stuff. "
Trump added, "This was all Obama. This was all Biden. These people were corrupt - the whole thing was corrupt - and we caught them."
Biden has denied any wrongdoing. The newly revealed list shows that roughly three dozen government officials, including Biden, Brennan and Comey, may have received Flynn's name in response to a request to reveal the identity of a U.S. person anonymously identified in an intelligence report.
Biden acknowledged attending a Jan. 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting with Obama and other officials at which the counterintelligence investigation into Flynn, then Trump's designee for national security adviser, was discussed. But he said he knew nothing else about the topic when pressed Tuesday on ABC's "Good Morning America."
"This is all about diversion," Biden said, ascribing a motive to Trump. "This is a game this guy plays all the time. The country is in crisis. . . . He should stop trying to always divert attention from the real concerns of the American people."
Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said the unmasking list underscores "the breadth and depth of concern across the American government - including among career officials" about Flynn's interactions with officials from Russia and other foreign governments. Bates also accused Republicans of abusing their government powers "to act as arms of the Trump campaign."
Trump has been distracted recently from managing the pandemic by fixating on Flynn and related matters, ranting in private about the Russia investigation, complaining about Comey and others in the FBI, and making clear he wanted to talk in the run-up to the election about law enforcement targeting him, according to one adviser who spoke with the president last week.
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has been focused extensively on the Flynn situation and has discussed it regularly with Trump, seeing it as vindication of his long-held skepticism toward the Russia probe, according to two senior administration officials.
Paul framed the unmasking as an opportunity to counter the Democratic-led impeachment of Trump for allegedly using his office to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate Biden.
"What it seems to indicate is that high-ranking members, including Joe Biden, used the power of government to go after a political rival - and if that story line sounds familiar, well, we heard that sort of story line from the other side for over a year," Paul said.
Trump has branded the saga "Obamagate," a slogan he has tweeted or retweeted 14 times in the past five days. When asked Monday what crime he was accusing Obama of having committed, Trump could not say beyond "some terrible things happened." Pressed a second time, Trump admonished a Washington Post reporter for asking.
"You know what the crime is," Trump said. "The crime is very obvious to everybody. All you have to do is read the newspapers, except yours."
"Obamagate" morphed in just one week from a fringe cause pushed on social media and podcasts by Trump allies - including former National Security Council staffer Sebastian Gorka and conservative legal commentators Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing, among others - to a centerpiece of Trump's reelection message.
In Trump's political orbit, advisers had been quietly readying a renewed political war over the Russia probe for weeks, but the Justice Department's move last Thursday to drop charges against Flynn flipped the switch.
"It's a constitutional scandal because all of these people acting together at the Obama Justice Department, the FBI, and the CIA decided they were either going to prevent [Trump] from being elected," diGenova said during an April 29 podcast. If that failed, diGenova said the Obama team was determined to "frame Trump and make him look like a Russian agent. Nothing gets bigger than that. This is a kind of perfidy and sedition that should never be tolerated."
Flynn had pleaded in 2017 to lying to the FBI, admitting multiple times in court, under oath, that he was guilty of the crime. But as the months wore on, Flynn changed his legal teams and went on the attack against the Justice Department - alleging a bevy of misconduct, including that the agents who interviewed him had set him up to lie.
Barr, acting on the recommendation of Jeff Jensen, the U.S. attorney in St. Louis, agreed to ask a judge to dismiss the charges. The department's legal rationale - essentially, that the FBI did not have good reason to interview Flynn in the first place and thus his misstatements were not relevant - was criticized by some legal observers as a contorted way of helping a Trump ally.
But the move won Barr praise from Trump and many on the right, who immediately sought to rewrite the narrative about Flynn - whom Trump said he had fired as national security chief because he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence as well as to the FBI - and hailed him instead as a hero.
At the same time, other allies of the president were laboring to resurrect a long-dormant line of attack on the case: that intelligence officials in the Obama administration sought to remove the cloak of anonymity from references to Flynn in intelligence documents.
Unmasking is common. Many intelligence documents are distributed with identities concealed to protect the privacy of U.S. citizens, though certain officials can ask that the protection be removed to help them better understand what they are looking at.
Still, Trump and his allies are attempting to turn it into a scandal.
"This is something Trump is very good at," said Joyce White Vance, a former U.S. attorney in the Obama administration. "He takes things that are the normal course of business - like, for instance, people who are authorized for unmasking so they can make sense of intelligence data - and turn them into something suspicious. It becomes an us-versus-them moment."
Grenell sent an email on May 3 about unmasking requests related to Flynn to the National Security Agency, which routinely receives and approves thousands of unmasking requests each year, including during Trump's term. Gen. Paul Nakasone, the NSA director, responded the next day with a list of U.S. officials who may have received Flynn's name following a request to unmask it in an intelligence report.
There was no indication that the people who requested the unmasking knew that Flynn's name would be the one revealed. Nor, the NSA advised, was it clear that every official on the list actually saw a report with Flynn's name, or that they made the request themselves. Staffers often make unmasking requests on their bosses' behalf, said people who have been involved in the process.
The list showed that a broad range of officials obtained information about Flynn, from the CIA and the FBI to the Treasury Department and the U.S. mission to the United Nations. Biden, or possibly a staff member acting on his behalf, made his unmasking request that revealed Flynn's name on Jan. 12, 2017.
The document does not make clear why Biden or any other official had requested the unmasking in the first place, nor does it indicate that Flynn had engaged in communications that alerted intelligence officials to investigate his contacts with foreigners.
Last Thursday, when Grenell showed up at the Justice Department to deliver the list to Barr, the visit and Fox News' apparent knowledge of it took some senior officials there aback. Grenell, who had been ambassador to Germany before assuming the intelligence post on a temporary basis, has long associated with some of Trump's most vocal right-wing supporters and has earned plaudits from the president for his tweets attacking journalists.
Shortly after the visit, according to Justice Department officials, Grenell's office seemed to be intimating to reporters that it would be up to Barr or his underlings to decide whether to release the document.
That, in the view of Justice Department leadership, was not accurate, since the department did not create the document and Grenell, not Barr, had declassified it.
"The information is not ours to release," Justice Department spokesman Kerri Kupec said Tuesday on Fox News. She explained that Grenell's office "owns that document. They declassified that document. So if they choose to put that out there, they're more than welcome to do so."
Ultimately, Republican Sens. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin asked for the list and then released it on Wednesday.
Trump and his allies were prepared to pounce.
"Almost all of us who are involved or follow this have the facts of this case memorized," said Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer during the Russia investigation. "So it's natural to want to talk about the requests to unmask Flynn and really look at whether these people were engaged in a conspiracy to get Flynn out."
Conservative media in turn have been abuzz this week with anger about Flynn's treatment and criticism of U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, who is overseeing the Flynn case and must approve the dismissal of the charges. Sullivan has appointed a retired federal judge to oppose the Justice Department's position and explore where Flynn should be held in contempt for lying to the court.
"The hatred for Donald J. Trump is as strong and intense as ever, and it is flavoring and directing and influencing what everybody in that town is saying and doing about virtually everything they're saying and doing," conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh told his listeners this week.
Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett, whose books about the Russia probe have been touted by Trump, theorized Thursday on "Fox & Friends" that the Obama administration went after Flynn "with a vengeance" because he had been determined to "expose the Russia hoax."
Two people involved in Trump's reelection campaign said the effort was designed not only to weaken Biden, but also to tarnish Obama, who is likely to be a visible surrogate for Biden this fall. Obama had the highest approval rating, at 60 percent, of all living political figures tested in a recent Republican National Committee poll of voters in 17 battleground states. Biden and Pence tied for second at 47 percent.
Revealing the ways Trump hopes to benefit politically from the issue, Trump sent a fundraising plea to supporters on Thursday declaring, "Oh how the tables have turned." After an investigation he dubbed "the Russian Collusion Delusion," Trump wrote, the unmasking list shows "Sleepy Joe is the GUILTY one."
Also on Thursday, Trump took to Twitter to urge Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., to call Obama to testify about the matter.
"He knew EVERYTHING," Trump wrote. "Do it @LindseyGrahamSC, just do it. No more Mr. Nice Guy. No more talk!"
Graham responded with a statement saying the committee would begin hearings on this and related matters in June, but that he is "greatly concerned about the precedent that would be set by calling a former president for oversight."
"Both presidents are welcome to come before the committee and share their concerns about each other," Graham said. "If nothing else it would make for great television. However, I have great doubts about whether it would be wise for the country."
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/How ... 271336.phpTrump: Gen. Flynn unmasking greatest political crime in history of our country
President Trump says the explosive unmasking of Gen. Flynn was a "disgrace."
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6156588565001/Trump suggests Obama officials involved in 'unmasking' Flynn should go to jail
Biden, Brennan, Clapper and Comey are on the list of Obama officials who requested to 'unmask' Michael Flynn; John Roberts reports from the White House.
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6156600039001/Trump calls for Obama testimony amid unmasking controversy; Graham cool to idea
President Trump on Thursday pressed Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham to call former President Barack Obama to testify amid new developments surrounding the origins of the Russia investigation and efforts at the time to "unmask" Michael Flynn's name in intelligence reports.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump- ... just-do-itGraham to probe Russia investigation; won't call Obama
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham said Thursday his committee is opening a wide-ranging inquiry into the Russia investigation, but rejected President Donald Trump’s call to bring in former President Barack Obama to testify.
“I am greatly concerned about the precedent that would be set by calling a former president for oversight,'' said Graham, a South Carolina Republican and staunch Trump ally. “No president is above the law. However, the presidency has executive privilege claims against other branches of government.''
Graham noted the surprising nature of his announcement, saying: “To say we are living in unusual times is an understatement."
The U.S. has a sitting president accusing the former president "of being part of a treasonous conspiracy to undermine his presidency,'' Graham said. "We have the former president suggesting the current president is destroying the rule of law” by dismissing a case against Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn. “All of this is occurring during a major pandemic."
The Judiciary Committee will first delve into the Justice Department's decision to dismiss its prosecution of Flynn, as well as actions by the Obama administration to view Flynn's name in intelligence reports during the Russia probe, Graham said.
“We must determine if these requests were legitimate,'' Graham said, referring to requests by top Obama administration officials to “unmask" Flynn's name. The requests are common, including during the Trump administration, which has made thousands of “unmasking” requests.
Graham also said the committee will look into potential abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, during a probe of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The FBI identified Page during the early days of its investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign and secretly targeted his electronic communications.
A federal watchdog later concluded that the FBI made significant errors and omissions in applications it made to a U.S. foreign intelligence court for the authorization to eavesdrop on Page. Those mistakes prompted internal changes within the FBI and spurred a congressional debate over whether the bureau’s surveillance tools should be reined in.
"My goal is to find out why and how the system got so off the rails,'' Graham said.
The Judiciary Committee also will look at whether Robert Mueller should have been appointed as special counsel in the Russia probe. The decision to appoint Muller was made in 2017 by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey.
"Was there legitimate reason to conclude the Trump campaign had colluded with the Russians?” Graham asked.
Graham's announcement comes as Trump and his GOP allies begin a broad election-year attack on the foundation of the Russia investigation, including declassifying intelligence information to try to place senior Obama administration officials under scrutiny for routine actions.
The effort has been aided by the Justice Department decision to dismiss the Flynn prosecution, essentially rewriting the narrative of the case in a way that former federal law enforcement officials say downplays the legitimate national security concerns they believe Flynn’s actions raised. Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States during the presidential transition period.
Trump and his Republican allies are pushing to reframe the Russia investigation as a “deep state” plot to sabotage his administration, setting the stage for a fresh onslaught of attacks on past and present Democratic officials and law enforcement leaders.
Hearings by the Judiciary Committee will start in early June, Graham said.
Trump tweeted Thursday that Graham should call Obama to testify. “Do it @LindseyGrahamSC, just do it,'' Trump tweeted. “No more Mr. Nice Guy. No more talk!''
Both Trump and Obama are welcome to come before the committee “and share their concerns about each other,'' Graham said. “If nothing else it would make for great television. However, I have great doubts about whether it would be wise for the country.”
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Gra ... 270376.phpFox News hosts who once hailed Michael Flynn's judge now say he's hopelessly biased
The judge in the Michael Flynn case Tuesday declined to immediately dismiss the case, despite the Justice Department dropping its prosecution. Instead, Judge Emmet Sullivan on Wednesday appointed a retired judge to argue the case for allowing Flynn's guilty plea to stand - and even possibly that Flynn committed perjury.
And for this, Sullivan earned the ire of Fox News hosts who have been arguing that Flynn's prosecution was the canary in the coal mine of a coup against President Donald Trump.
Former New York state judge Jeanine Pirro said Wednesday night that Sullivan should "recuse himself" from the case, adding that "he should be embarrassed to put a robe on."
"And now what he's doing is he's poisoning the 2020 election by trying to make it look like [Attorney General] Bill Barr," she said. "He's trying to destroy the whole thing so that Barr looks like the villain here."
Sean Hannity offered an extensive broadside against Sullivan later in Fox's prime-time programming.
"Mr. Sullivan, what part of General Flynn being ambushed and set up by [former FBI deputy director Andrew] McCabe and [former FBI director James] Comey don't you understand?" Hannity said Wednesday night, accusing Sullivan of taking a "clearly political stand."
He added: "You botched this from Day One, and you had a bias from Day One," he seethed. "You reek of ignorance, you reek of political bias!"
But if Sullivan had botched this from Day One, that's certainly news . . . to Fox News. There was a time not that long ago that its opinion hosts and analysts lifted up Sullivan as a paragon of virtue. At the time, some of them wishfully believed he was about to blow the lid off the supposed scandal they're suddenly pressing with gusto again.
Back in December 2018, they hailed a decision by Sullivan to dig deeper into the circumstances of the interview in which Flynn lied. And they argued he was the kind of watchdog for prosecutorial misconduct that was needed at the moment. Sullivan, after all, had dismissed the case against former senator Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, for those reasons, angrily rebuking the government.
Nobody on Fox leaned as hard into the idea that Sullivan was their hero-in-waiting as Pirro.
In a segment at the time, she hailed Sullivan as "a jurist unafraid of the swamp, a judge who has a track record of calling out prosecutorial misconduct, a man who does not tolerate injustice or abuse of power." She also suggested Flynn's guilty plea might be thrown out entirely at that point, and that it could undo then-special counsel Robert Mueller's entire Russia investigation in the process.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Fox ... 269747.phpBurr steps aside as Senate intelligence chair amid FBI probe
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Republican senator with access to some of the nation's top secrets became further entangled in a deepening FBI investigation as agents examining a well-timed sale of stocks during the coronavirus outbreak showed up at his home with a warrant to search his cellphone.
Hours later, Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina stepped aside Thursday as chairman of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee, calling it the “best thing to do." Burr has denied wrongdoing.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Bur ... 270085.phpВосстановление мировой экономики будет небыстрым и неровным
Еще в середине апреля многие прогнозы были основаны на сценарии V-образного восстановления мировой экономики – за быстрым провалом последует быстрый рост по мере отмены ограничений, введенных из-за пандемии COVID-19. Ожидалось, что до докризисного уровня экономика сможет восстановиться уже к концу года. Но по мере продления карантина, роста безработицы и осознания влияния кризиса на потребительский спрос и международные производственные цепочки прогнозы стали ухудшаться. Эксперты начали рисовать пессимистичные траектории – более длительного U-образного восстановления и даже L-образного: в этом сценарии второй волны пандемии и продления мер социального дистанцирования возвращение на докризисный уровень откладывается надолго.
Многие руководители компаний и экономисты теперь говорят о траектории деловой активности, которая напоминает галочку на логотипе Nike: после стремительного провала начнется длительное, болезненное восстановление, пишет The Wall Street Journal. Многие экономики вернутся на уровень 2019 г. в лучшем случае к концу следующего года. «Восстановление не будет быстрым, – приводит газета слова Марка Шнайдера, генерального директора Nestle. – Процесс займет несколько кварталов, если не лет».
Лучше не становится
Ситуация ухудшилась с тех пор, как МВФ в начале апреля опубликовал обновленный прогноз, по которому мировой ВВП сократится в 2020 г. на 3% (в развитых странах – на 6,1%, в развивающихся – на 1%), заявила во вторник директор-распорядитель фонда Кристалина Георгиева. В июне МВФ даст новые оценки.
К концу 2021 г. на докризисный уровень из крупных экономик вернется лишь Китай, по подсчетам McKinsey и Oxford Economics. Общемировой ВВП достигнет уровня IV квартала 2019 г. в III квартале 2022 г., тогда как ВВП США – в I квартале, а еврозоны – в III квартале 2023 г. (все оценки предполагают погрешность в плюс-минус один квартал).
Экономисты, опрошенные Европейским центральным банком, не ждут возвращения еврозоны на докризисный уровень до 2022 г. В этом году ВВП региона упадет на 5,5%, а в следующем вырастет всего на 4,3%, по их оценкам. Прогноз Еврокомиссии на этот год еще хуже – драматичное падение ВВП еврозоны на 7,7%, в следующем – рост на 6,3%.
Ситуация в Китае, который, как надеялись аналитики, покажет миру пример выхода из кризиса, не дает особых поводов для оптимизма. Индекс цен производителей в апреле опустился на 3,1% в годовом выражении; дефляционное давление на оптовые цены сохранится, так как в импортирующих китайскую продукцию странах тоже кризис, считает Лю Сючжи, аналитик Bank of Communications. Продажи автомобилей в апреле, когда карантин был уже снят по всей стране, а производства восстановили работу, выросли на 4,4% по сравнению с апрелем 2019 г., по данным Ассоциации автопроизводителей Китая. Но за год, по ее прогнозу, падение составит 15–25%. «V-образного восстановления экономической активности не будет, оно будет медленным», – считает Лю.
Хотя в Китае открылось около 80% ресторанов, они заполнены на 50–70% из-за мер социального дистанцирования. Около 15% ресторанов в стране, скорее всего, вообще не откроются, считает Грэм Питкетли, финансовый директор Unilever.
Производственно-инвестиционная проблема
В еврозоне карантин нанес сильнейший удар по промышленности – в марте спад составил 11,3% по сравнению с февралем, производство упало до уровня более чем 10-летней давности. Открытие заводов, безусловно, приведет к росту с еще более низких апрельских уровней, отмечает Берт Колийн, старший экономист по еврозоне ING. Последующее восстановление будет «постепенным из-за медленного снятия ограничительных мер, сбоев в цепочках поставок из-за неравномерного восстановления активности в мировой экономике и более низкого спроса, чем до коронакризиса», написал он в отчете.
Кризис ударил по долгосрочным инвестиционным планам. «Инвестиции – критически важный фактор, показывающий, каким может быть будущий рост. Не инвестируя, вы не сможете расти быстрее», – говорит Яэл Селвин, главный экономист по Великобритании KPMG (цитата по Financial Times). Компании сейчас больше озабочены поддержанием краткосрочной ликвидности. Согласно опросу ЕЦБ, корпоративных клиентов банков еврозоны, которым не нужны кредиты для долгосрочных капиталовложений, в I квартале было на 15% больше, чем тех, которым они нужны (кварталом ранее их было поровну). Тогда как с востребованностью кредитов на пополнение оборотного капитала все наоборот: тех, кому они требовались, было на 26% больше, чем тех, кому нет (также поровну в IV квартале).
По оценке Capital Economics, капиталовложения в еврозоне упадут в 2020 г. на 24%, а в последующие год-два инвестиции будут ограниченными, поскольку компаниям придется гасить отложенные сейчас налоговые платежи и антикризисные кредиты. Еще одним сдерживающим фактором будет падение прямых иностранных инвестиций, которые в этом году сократятся в мире на 40%, сильнее всего пострадают энергетика, автопромышленность и авиаперевозки, по оценке UNCTAD.
Авиакомпании не ждут возвращения пассажиропотока на докризисный уровень до 2022 г. в лучшем случае.
Сильно пострадать может сектор коммерческой недвижимости – офисной и торговой. Значительная часть сотрудников в разных отраслях может остаться на удаленной работе не только в ближайшие месяцы, но и в более долгосрочной перспективе. Facebook сообщил недавно, что его сотрудники могут работать из дома до конца года. Руководство Barclays рассматривает возможность перевести банкиров из центрального офиса на площади в отделениях и не собирать ежедневно 7000 человек в штаб-квартире. Не ясно, как будут выживать коворкинги, учитывая требования соблюдать дистанцию и опасения людей за свое здоровье.
Удар по спросу
Серьезные проблемы ожидаются в потребительском секторе из-за рекордного роста безработицы и резкой потери дохода. В Европе, по оценке McKinsey, под угрозой 59 млн рабочих мест – около 26% работников частного сектора ЕС и Великобритании могут быть уволены, отправлены в отпуск без сохранения содержания, потерять заработок полностью или частично. Шок для ВВП связан именно со спросом, отмечают эксперты McKinsey, поэтому настроения людей имеют большое значение, а в Европе они хуже, чем в США и Китае.
В США количество рабочих мест в апреле сократилось на 20,5 млн, безработица выросла до 14,7%. Выступая в среду, председатель Федеральной резервной системы Джером Пауэлл подчеркнул, что кризис усилит неравенство: только в марте работу потеряли члены почти 40% домохозяйств, зарабатывавших менее $40 000 в год. Первыми персонал стали сокращать компании, где заработки невысоки, такие как гостиницы, кафе и рестораны, турагентства. В ING ожидают, что в мае экономика лишится еще 12 млн рабочих мест, поэтому названная Пауэллом цифра может вырасти до 60% к концу месяца.
Надежды на быстрое возвращение уволенных на работу тоже, видимо, не оправдаются, по крайней мере в ряде секторов. Так, United Airlines планирует сократить около 30% офисных сотрудников начиная с октября. До этого времени авиаперевозчик согласился их не увольнять, чтобы получить $5 млрд помощи от правительства.
Люди собираются экономить и менять потребительские привычки. По опросу Coresight Research, более половины американцев уже сейчас говорят о сокращении трат на Рождество. Опасаясь за свое здоровье, свыше 70% опрошенных не собираются посещать общественные места даже после смягчения ограничительных мер; из них более половины не намерены ходить в торговые центры, почти треть из их числа не будут делать этого более полугода.
К концу года США удастся восстановить лишь 30–40% потерянного выпуска и занятости, считают аналитики Deutsche Bank. По их прогнозу, ВВП страны сократится в этом году на 7,1%, а на докризисный уровень вернется в 2022 г. или позже.
Неопределенность крайне высока, она связана не только с вирусом, но и с глубиной падения и скоростью восстановления экономики, отмечают в отчете аналитики Citigroup. Восстанавливаться разные отрасли будут по-разному. Citi разделил восемь отраслей на две группы – «игра» и «работа» в зависимости от их важности для бесперебойного функционирования экономики, обеспечения жизни людей и трудностей с сохранением дистанции. После II квартала 2020 г. восстановление до докризисного уровня в первой группе, куда вошли отели и рестораны, авиатранспорт, искусство/развлечения / персональные услуги, а также оптовая и розничная торговля, займет 6–9 кварталов. Срок для группы «работа» (промышленное производство, финансовые услуги, бизнес-услуги, высокотехнологическое производство) – 4–8 кварталов.
https://www.vedomosti.ru/economics/arti ... -ekonomikiЗа два месяца за пособием по безработице обратились 36,6 млн американцев
https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/4343982'These are not normal numbers': Newsom details bleak reality of state budget
https://www.sfgate.com/news/editorspick ... 270697.phpCalifornia Gov. Newsom proposes billions in budget cuts, slashing state workers' pay by 10 percent
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/califo ... udget-cutsNewsom Proposes Deep Education, Health Care Cuts
Billions in cuts proposed as California revenue plunges
https://www.sfgate.com/news/bayarea/art ... 271001.phphttps://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Cal ... 269011.phpCoronavirus updates: Bay Area hospitalizations hit stubborn plateau
https://www.sfgate.com/news/editorspick ... 269974.phpGovernor extends lockdown over GOP objections, Michigan protesters respond
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/protes ... an-capitolHundreds protest stay-at-home order outside Michigan Capitol
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Hun ... 269738.phpMean-spirited, Trump-supporting reopen protestors took out their frustrations on a local reporter who was covering their rally.
Kevin Vesey, a TV reporter for News 12 Long Island, withstood verbal barbs and was “practically chased” by several angry rally-goers during a Thursday protest in the Commack area of Long Island, N.Y.
https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/ar ... 271605.phpTensions rise as Texas governor readies to lift more rules
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Ten ... 271682.phpIn Pennsylvania, Dem governor aims to contain GOP revolt
By many accounts, Gov. Tom Wolf has helped contain Pennsylvania's coronavirus outbreak and avoided the full-blown disasters seen elsewhere. His success containing the growing resistance to his efforts is to be determined.
In one of the premier battlegrounds in November's presidential election, Wolf is struggling to fight a Republican-driven revolt over his stay-at-home orders and business shutdowns. Egged on by state GOP lawmakers, counties have threatened to defy Wolf while at least a few business owners have reopened despite his warnings.
The mild-mannered Wolf has had to decide how far to go in enforcing the orders, mindful of criticism that he's nothing short of a tyrant.
And visiting the state Thursday was President Donald Trump, stoking the conflict with tweets such as one that said Pennsylvanians “want their freedom now."
He told reporters before leaving Washington that Pennsylvania "ought to start thinking about opening it up. You have a lot of people who want their freedom, and they’ll get their freedom very soon.”
The political fight as much over people's well-being and public health — federal health officials are aligned with Wolf's cautious approach — as it is over who will be blamed for the state's economic devastation if it is not on the mend by Election Day.
About 2 million Pennsylvania residents have lost their jobs since mid-March. Food and milk giveaways draw long lines. Some people have gone two months without money because of the state’s problem-plagued online unemployment benefits portal.
Like in swing states Michigan and Wisconsin, Republicans are trying to ensure that Democratic governors, rather than Trump, take the blame.
“Tom Wolf is going to be as much on the ballot as much as the president, the Legislature and Congress for his handling of this, but he’s going to be judged not just by Republicans but by Democrats and independents,” said Lawrence Tabas, chairman of Pennsylvania's Republican Party.
For Democrats who have stood by Wolf, that’s just fine right now. Polls show that the public has generally embraced how Wolf — who easily won reelection in 2018 — has managed the crisis.
A Washington Post-Ipsos poll released Tuesday found that more than 2 in 3 people surveyed from April 27 to May 4 approve of how Wolf has handled the outbreak. Trump's approval nationally in the same poll was at 43%.
Trump came to politically moderate Allentown area to tour a medical products distribution center. He did particularly well in the area in the 2016 election, when his narrow victory in Pennsylvania helped vault him to the White House.
Since then, Republicans lost the area's congressional seat for the first time in two decades, and Allentown, with highways connecting it to New Jersey and New York City, has become one of Pennsylvania's coronavirus hot spots.
“Here in the Lehigh Valley, people know we’re in the middle of the pandemic, and they also aren’t taking Trump as seriously as they once did,” said Democratic state Rep. Peter Schweyer of Allentown.
It was Trump's 18th to the state as president, a marker of Pennsylvania's importance to his reelection hopes.
While Trump’s advisers have started to doubt whether they can hold Michigan, another Rust Belt state Trump won, they believe Pennsylvania and Wisconsin remain in play if the economy rebounds. That may mean pressuring the states' Democratic governors to ease restrictions on business, travel and public spaces, even if that approach risks a resurgence of the virus.
Pennsylvania is 10th among states in overall infection rate — with nearly 60,000 confirmed cases, or roughly 450 per 100,000 residents, and more than 4,200 deaths, according to federal statistics. It is bordered on three sides by states with higher infection rates.
New infections have been trending down, and Wolf has been easing restrictions in lightly affected counties, but not fast enough for some.
“I know my constitutional rights, and I’ve got to pay my bills,” Brad Shepler, a barber who resumed cutting hair — something prohibited in the state right now — told police in a video he posted online when they visited his home studio this week a few miles from Pennsylvania’s Capitol. “The governor’s not paying my bills, so I’ve got to pay my bills.”
To contain growing unrest, Wolf on Monday threatened to punish a growing number of counties that pledged to let businesses reopen against his orders.
Wolf, who hasn't spoken one cross word about Trump or the White House's handling of the outbreak, also warned that business owners could lose certificates and licenses to operate, and face insurance sanctions. Wolf already had vetoed legislation Republicans passed in April to limit his powers during the disaster emergency.
He has won legal challenges to his shutdown orders in both the state Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court, let construction work restart and lifted the most severe restrictions in many areas. Still, two-thirds of the state's 12.8 million people are expected to remain under stay-at-home orders past this week.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/A-p ... 268968.phpTrump says his critics want coronavirus lockdowns extended until 2020 election
Trump says his critics want to keep the economy closed to hurt his re-election chances in November;
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6156746377001/Trump says critics want him to keep economy closed until election: 'It's a political thing'
President Trump, in an interview that aired Thursday morning with Fox Business Network's Maria Bartiromo, said he believes his political critics want a slower reopening of the economy not due to the coronavirus threat, but to hurt him politically in the November election.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump- ... ical-thingPushing back at Trump, Biden stresses ‘we all want to reopen’
As President Trump claimed in an interview with Fox Business Network that his political critics are pushing a slower reopening of the economy to hurt him politically in November’s election, former Vice President Joe Biden countered that "we all want to reopen" -- but "safely and effectively."
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pushin ... -to-reopenTrump administration plans to expand emergency gear in national stockpile
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Tru ... 270278.phpТрамп сообщил, что потерял из-за коронавируса двух близких друзей
Подробнее:
https://www.newsru.com/world/14may2020/ ... thcvd.htmlTrump calls Dr. Bright 'an angry, disgruntled employee'
Ousted vaccine official testifies before Congress; Mike Emanuel reports.
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6156706254001/Trump calls ousted HHS official 'unhappy disgruntled person,' defends hydroxychloroquine tests
President Trump on Thursday defended the use of the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine to treat the novel coronavirus and slammed the demoted government scientist who filed a whistleblower complaint claiming he was removed from his post for disagreeing with the Trump administration’s response to the contagion.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump- ... uine-testsWho is Rick Bright? HHS official claims retaliation for disagreeing with Trump’s coronavirus response
President Trump called Bright a “disgruntled employee, not liked or respected” who “should no longer be working for our government.” Who is Rick Bright?
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/who-is ... s-responsePeter Navarro calls Dr. Bright 'a deserter' in the war on coronavirus
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro reacts to Dr. Bright's testimony as President Trump works to secure PPE stockpile.
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6156691362001/Bret Baier: Whistleblower testimony potentially politically damaging for Trump
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6156660481001/Emails: Trump nominee involved in shelving CDC virus guide
A former chemical industry executive nominated to be the nation’s top consumer safety watchdog was involved in sidelining detailed guidelines to help communities reopen during the coronavirus pandemic, internal government emails show.
Now the ranking Democrat on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee is questioning the role played by nominee Nancy Beck in the decision to shelve the guidelines. Beck is not a medical doctor and has no background in virology.
President Donald Trump has nominated Beck to be chairwoman and commissioner of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, a position that requires Senate confirmation. Beck is scheduled to appear before the Senate committee later this month.
Emails obtained by The Associated Press show that Beck was the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s main point of contact in the White House about the proposed recommendations. At issue was a 63-page guide created by the CDC that would give community leaders step-by-step instructions for reopening schools, day care centers, restaurants and other facilities.
Beck is currently on detail for the White House with the Office of Management and Budget, where she is coordinating review of pandemic-related stimulus measures, and of the CDC guidance. She has a doctorate in environmental health and has worked as a toxicologist, specializing in the study of the health risks from chemical substances to the human body.
“I am deeply concerned by the nominee’s involvement in advocating for the deregulation of toxic chemicals known as PFAS and I also have questions about her potential involvement with the CDC coronavirus guidance,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell, the top Democrat on the committee, in a statement to AP.
Cantwell sent a letter of inquiry on Wednesday to Beck, asking for more information. Beck did not immediately respond to questions from AP sent to her via email.
Beck’s role in the coronavirus guidance document was revealed in a series of emails from late April obtained by the AP.
On April 10, CDC Director Robert Redfield emailed the guidance to a group that included some of the president’s closest White House advisers, including Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, and counselor Kellyanne Conway, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious disease expert. Redfield wrote that he wanted White House review and clearance to post the documents on the CDC website.
By the time the administration had released its “Opening Up America Again” plan on April 17, the process had stalled.
The emails show that the CDC's chief of staff, Robert “Kyle” McGowan, emailed Beck on April 26 seeking an update. “We need them as soon as possible so that we can get them posted,” McGowan wrote.
Beck responded that they still needed approval. "WH principals are in touch with the task force so the task force should be aware of status.”
The next day McGowan checked with Beck again. “I have no word on revisions yet for the rest of the package. My understanding is it is still being reviewed,” she responded.
One of Beck’s colleagues, Satya P. Thallam, followed up saying the White House Principal's Committee had not yet responded. "However, I am passing along their message: they have given strict and explicit direction that these documents are not yet cleared and cannot go out as of right now — this includes related press statements or other communications that may preview content or timing of guidances.”
McGowan responded that White House changes would cause further delay.
“The comments and edits we get back will have to be reviewed at the CDC for scientific accuracy,” McGowan responded to Thallam and Beck. “We will not be able to post the document we get back from the WH quickly if there are a substantial number of edits."
On April 30, one day before Trump's May 1 reopening goal, McGowan was told guidelines will “never see the light of day," according to three sources inside CDC who were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity.
In her letter, Cantwell said the emails raise "serious questions about whether you believe in preserving and respecting the scientific and professional integrity of scientists and health professionals that work at agencies like the CDC and the CPSC.”
On Thursday, another committee Democrat cited AP's story in calling on the administration to withdraw Beck's nomination.
“Nancy Beck reportedly led efforts to thwart CDC’s science-based guidance for protecting public health — exactly the wrong credential for a nominee to lead the CPSC, and clear reason her nomination should be withdrawn," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.
An OMB spokesperson said the initial submission to the office was the “start of the deliberative process, not the end, and everyone knows that," and added the White House appreciated that Beck continued “serving her country by helping the government respond to this pandemic while her nomination was pending.”
Before joining the Trump administration, Beck was a senior director for policy at the American Chemistry Council, the primary lobbying arm for U.S. chemical manufacturers. In that role, she frequently testified on Capitol Hill against stricter safeguards to protect human health and the environment from toxins.
In 2017, she joined the Environmental Protection Agency as a top official in the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. She oversaw efforts to block or weaken Obama-era regulations on harmful substances including asbestos, and at the White House was involved in a rewrite of limits on PFAS. Those are class of chemicals used in making nonstick cooking pans and raincoats, and the chemicals have been linked to birth defects.
Democrats and environmentalists have opposed her nomination to lead the consumer agency. While she awaits Senate confirmation, Beck has been assigned to the White House Council of Economic Advisers, which consults with the president on matters of economic policy.
On May 7, the day AP ran a story about the administration shelving the guidance, McGowan emailed Beck and copied Redfield.
“When can we expect OMB comments on the rest of the guidance? We would really like to get these moving," he wrote.
Late that afternoon, the White House called the CDC and told the agency to resend a series of detailed “decision trees” that had been shelved. Emails showed staff working on the guidance said they would “stand down.”
At a Senate hearing Tuesday on the coronavirus, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., asked Redfield about the status of that guidance. Redfield replied: “Soon.”
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Ema ... 268269.phpPostal Services launches review of package delivery fees as Trump influence grows
Weeks before a Republican donor and top White House ally becomes postmaster general, the U.S. Postal Service has quietly launched a review of its package delivery contracts and lost its last senior official who was not appointed by President Donald Trump.
The moves, confirmed by six people with knowledge of the Postal Service's inner workings but not authorized to speak publicly, underscore how Trump is moving closer to reshaping an independent agency he has dubbed "a joke."
The Postal Service in recent weeks has sought bids from consulting firms to reassess what the agency charges companies such as Amazon, UPS and FedEx to deliver products on their behalf - often in the "last mile" between a post office and a customer's home. Higher package rates would cost shippers and online retailers billions of dollars, potentially spurring them to invest in their own distribution networks instead of relying on the Postal Service.
Trump for years has alleged, without evidence, that the Postal Service is undercharging companies, particularly Amazon (whose founder and chief executive, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post). The agency has steadfastly rejected that assessment, saying it charges what it can given a competitive marketplace.
The Postal Service and White House declined to comment.
Trump has recently threatened to withhold a $10 billion line of credit approved by Congress in a coronavirus stimulus package unless the Postal Service quadruples what it charges to deliver packages. Independent analysts warn that such a change would devastate the agency, which increasingly has relied on such deliveries for a fast-growing portion of its business.
But recent developments show Trump's efforts to reshape the USPS are gaining traction. Every member of the agency's bipartisan governing board is a Trump appointee. Democratic Vice Chairman David Williams resigned April 30, fed up with what he considered Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin's meddling, according to people familiar with his thinking. The postmaster general and deputy postmaster general also sit on the board, but do not vote on postal rates or personnel matters.
And last week the panel announced it has tapped Louis DeJoy, the finance chairman of the 2020 Republican National Convention, as the new postmaster general.
Also, Deputy Postmaster General Ronald Stroman announced his resignation on Friday. Stroman had years of experience working with congressional Democrats and had become the agency point man on vote-by-mail initiatives for the November election.
Stroman did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump and Mnuchin have sought to attach terms to a $10 billion emergency loan to the USPS that would allow the administration to dictate package prices, review and alter bulk-discount contracts known as negotiated service agreements or NSAs, appoint the next postmaster general and direct negotiations with labor unions.
Conversations between Treasury and postal officials on the loan began last week where those terms were discussed, according to congressional staffers briefed on the meetings. Progress has slowed since then as House Democrats finalized language for another pandemic stimulus plan.
The reevaluation of those bulk-discount contracts signals how swiftly the independent agency and its board of governors have fallen under the administration's influence, say people familiar with the White House's plans. As one Senate aide involved in the emergency funding negotiations put it: "It is game, set, match right now with the Postal Service."
Democrats and labor unions see DeJoy, the incoming postmaster general, as the polar opposite of outgoing Postmaster General Megan Brennan, a onetime letter carrier who rose through the agency's ranks and fought to keep it independent of the White House. They worry DeJoy will be too deferential toward Trump and Mnuchin. But conservatives have hailed his business record as an executive of a national logistics firm.
DeJoy did not respond to a request for comment.
Congressional Democrats had attempted to thwart the White House's growing influence with the Postal Service by including funding and no-strings-attached borrowing in the $3 trillion Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act, or Heroes Act, which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., unveiled Wednesday. It includes $25 billion in aid and new language forbidding Treasury from attaching conditions to the earlier $10 billion loan.
"At the very moment House Democrats are trying to rescue the Postal Service by providing emergency cash and removing onerous loan terms, the president and his cronies continue to try and leverage this pandemic to privatize and dismantle the USPS," said Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., who chairs the House subcommittee responsible for postal oversight. "It's shameful and will hurt every American and business."
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., quickly rejected much of the bill, and lawmakers in both chambers say they expect the Senate to whittle down much of the USPS funding. McConnell has signaled a willingness to follow the White House's agenda on postal matters.
Advocates are fighting to persuade Senate Republicans to preserve the no-strings-attached borrowing provision. GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Steve Daines of Montana, Dan Sullivan of Alaska and Pat Roberts of Kansas joined with five Democrats last week in a letter to McConnell and Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., that called for "significant emergency appropriations" and unconditioned borrowing. That could still leave the postal provisions short of the requisite support to avoid being gutted, advocates worry.
"I don't know if you can convince them by logic or reason. You may have to convince them by force of votes," Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said of the GOP-controlled Senate. "Basically, insist on it in negotiations, show that the American people are behind it and use it as leverage in the negotiations. If they want something, they'll have to agree with this."
Postal leaders have told lawmakers they expect the agency to lose $13 billion this year as the pandemic causes the volume of personal and marketing mail - on which USPS makes its highest profit margin - fall by close to 20% and 45%, respectively.
Package volumes, though, have skyrocketed as a homebound nation dived into e-commerce. Packages typically constitute 5 percent of postal volume, but 30 percent of its revenue, postal experts say. During the pandemic, volume has surged 70 percent, propping up the agency's finances. The Postal Service frequently contracts with shippers and internet retailers to perform "last mile" delivery, or the final leg of an item's journey, to a customer's home.
But Trump often cites packages, and the Postal Service's relationship with Amazon and other online retailers, as the main driver of USPS's financial woes. He falsely stated in April that the agency loses $2 to $5 each time it delivers a package for "Internet retail companies." The Postal Service is required by law to charge enough on each package to cover the cost of delivery and a percentage of the agency's overhead expenses.
Much of Trump's ire is aimed at Bezos and his ownership of The Post. Trump has been critical of the newspaper's coverage of his administration, and his policy priorities on mail issues appear to target Amazon directly, independent experts say.
One former senior administration official who was present for Trump's discussions with some Postal Service employees said he repeatedly railed about Amazon and Bezos and told Brennan, the outgoing postmaster general, and others to raise rates. When told that the rates were fixed by the contacts, Trump regularly grew irate, the official said.
The agency reviews these deals annually, both for individual contracts and for each mail product, according to one person with knowledge of the postal pricing process. Such audits are included in annual reports to the USPS's leadership but rarely scrutinize packages, because they represent a relatively small slice of the agency's volume.
The private nature of the agency's review and the solicitation of outside consulting firms in late April to conduct it may point to agency leaders' interest in crafting a case for package rate increases to present to the Postal Regulatory Commission, the person said, though the USPS still may choose not to pursue price changes.
Companies can receive discounts with the Postal Service if they deliver a large quantity of packages directly to a postal facility nearest to the parcels' final destination, said John Haber, founder and chief executive of Spend Management Experts, a logistics consulting firm in Atlanta.
Those discounts are often marginal, often only 5% to 10% off normal shipping rates, according to a former Amazon executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the company's internal business practices.
Analysts say higher package prices or even smaller bulk discounts would hurt Amazon disproportionately because it is both a retailer and shipper. Other shipping companies can pass higher costs on to merchants and customers; since Amazon both sells and delivers products, it has less room to defray the expense.
It would hurt small businesses even more, though, that don't have their own distribution networks, experts say, and rely on the Postal Service as a secure, cheap way to reach customers across the country.
The bulk discounts do, though, ensure that shipping companies continue work with the Postal Service, providing the post office with a reliable and brisk package business, Haber said.
Raising rates on NSAs would drive crucial clients away from USPS, and lead them to cover more "last mile" deliveries on their own. Amazon already delivers roughly half of all packages itself, according to an estimate by Morgan Stanley.
"I can promise that will happen," Haber said. "Amazon is going to bring that stuff in house if the price of using the Postal Service is too much."
Trump's supporters argue that once the Postal Service raises package prices, it should focus on paper mail delivery, still its most profitable product, and scale back its package business.
"Packages are bigger, they're bulky, they're heavy. They're not as efficient to deliver as envelopes," said Paul Steidler, who studies the Postal Service at the right-leaning Lexington Institute. "The packages bring in revenue, but they don't necessarily bring in profitability."
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Pos ... 270420.phpСША готовятся выступить с заявлением по поводу ВОЗ
Власти США сделают заявление относительно деятельности Всемирной организации здравоохранения (ВОЗ). Это произойдет на днях, заявил американский президент Дональд Трамп.
Подробностей он не привел.
https://www.rosbalt.ru/world/2020/05/14/1843412.htmlЦРУ: Китай мог шантажировать ВОЗ в связи с COVID-19
На ранних этапах пандемии Китай мог угрожать Всемирной организации здравоохранения (ВОЗ) приостановкой сотрудничества в случае, если будет объявлена чрезвычайная ситуация в связи с коронавирусом. К такому выводу пришло Центральное разведывательное управление США (ЦРУ), сообщает Newsweek.
По данным ЦРУ, данный факт подтвердили два представителя разведки США. В то же время они затруднились с ответом на вопрос, принимал ли председатель КНР Си Цзиньпин личное участие в «шантаже» ВОЗ.
https://www.rosbalt.ru/world/2020/05/14/1843416.htmlТрамп: США могут полностью прекратить отношения с Китаем из-за пандемии
Трамп: в случае проблем с Китаем можно было бы полностью прекратить с ним отношения
"Здесь много чего можно сделать. К примеру, можно полностью прекратить отношения", - сказал он в интервью телеканалу Fox Business в четверг. Такой шаг, по мнению президента США, позволил бы его стране "сэкономить 500 млрд долларов", передает "Интерфакс".
Кроме того, Трамп заявил, что не желает в нынешней ситуации общаться с председателем КНР Си Цзиньпином. "У меня очень хорошие отношения (с ним), но прямо сейчас я с ним говорить не хочу", - сказал лидер США.
Трамп также обратил внимание, что, хотя Вашингтон просил Пекин изучить проблему коронавируса COVID-19, он получил отказ, а власти КНР не захотели принять помощь Соединенных Штатов по этому вопросу.
"И я догадался, что все о'кей, потому что они должны знать, что они делают. Так что это была либо глупость, некомпетентность, либо умысел", - отметил Трамп.
Трамп напомнил, что тема коронавируса во время визита китайской делегации в Америку в январе не обсуждалась: представители ничего не сказали о вирусе, "он даже не был темой для обсуждения". Он отметил, что очень разочарован в Китае в этой связи.
Ранее американский лидер говорил, что готов рассмотреть вариант с введением санкций против Китая в том случае, если эта страна не будет сотрудничать в расследовании по поводу причин распространения коронавируса.
"Я буду готов рассмотреть это", - сказал он журналистам в Белом доме, говоря о законопроекте, подготовленном группой сенаторов-республиканцев и внесенном Линдси Грэмом.
Сенатор, считающийся близким союзником Трампа, предложил дать администрации США возможность вводить санкции, если КНР откажется сотрудничать со Штатами в рамках коронавирусного расследования.
Законопроект предусматривает, в частности, введение запретов на въезд в США для тех или иных граждан Китая, а также замораживание их активов на американской территории. Кроме того, предусмотрена возможность запрета на выдачу американцами кредитов китайскому бизнесу.
Напомним, в начале мая госсекретарь США Майк Помпео заявил о наличии у США доказательств того, что Китай намеренно скрывал или уничтожал доказательства вспышки коронавируса.
Подробнее:
https://www.newsru.com/world/14may2020/ ... china.htmlhttps://www.kommersant.ru/doc/4343840Помпео осудил попытки Китая похитить данные американских исследований по коронавирусу
Госсекретарь США Майкл Помпео осудил попытки Китая похитить информацию о научных разработках против COVID-19 и призвал официальный Пекин прекратить подобную деятельность.
Об этом говорится в заявлении главы Госдепартамента США,
"Соединенные Штаты осуждают кибер-попытки лиц, связанных с КНР, похитить интеллектуальную собственность США, а также данные о результатах исследований по COVID-19",- заявил Помпео.
Он подчеркнул, что Соединенные Штаты призывают Пекин "прекратить эту вредную деятельность".
Глава американской дипломатии сослался на оценки правоохранительных органов США, подчеркнув, что "потенциальное похищение этой информации ставит под угрозу предоставление безопасного, эффективного и квалифицированного лечения".
По словам Помпео, поведение Китая в киберпространстве является "продолжением контрпродуктивных действий" с самого начала пандемии COVID-19.
"Пока США, наши союзники и партнеры координируют коллективный, прозрачный ответ, чтобы спасти человеческие жизни, КНР и далее заставляет молчать ученых, журналистов и граждан и распространяет дезинформацию, что усиливает опасность этого кризиса", - заявил госсекретарь.
Отмечается, что ФБР, а также Агентство кибербезопасности и защиты инфраструктуры США официально подтвердили попытки Китая похитить информацию, связанную с разработками вакцины и лекарств против COVID-19.
https://censor.net.ua/news/3195703/pomp ... ronavirusuТрамп продлил санкции в отношении Huawei до мая 2021 года
Подробнее:
https://www.newsru.com/hitech/14may2020 ... order.htmlКитай пригрозил США санкциями за обвинения в распространении коронавируса
В Пекине готовят ответ на судебные иски американских чиновников, конгрессменов и организаций, которые обвинили Китай в неправильных действиях в начале пандемии. Все они могут попасть под ответные санкции со стороны Китая
Подробнее на РБК:
https://www.rbc.ru/politics/14/05/2020/ ... m=newsfeedhttps://www.kommersant.ru/doc/4343811
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