Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse



An alleged scheme to pay off women to fabricate sexual assault allegations against Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been referred to the FBI for further investigation, according to a spokesman for the special counsel’s office, Peter Carr. “When we learned last week of allegations that women were offered money to make false claims about the Special Counsel, we immediately referred the matter to the FBI for investigation,” Carr said in a statement on Tuesday.

The special counsel’s attention to this scheme—which was brought to the office by a woman claiming she herself had been offered money to make up sexual harassment claims against Mueller—and its decision to release a rare statement about it to reporters indicates the seriousness with which the office is taking the purported scheme to discredit Mueller in the middle of an ongoing investigation.

The special counsel’s office confirmed that the scheme was brought to its attention by several journalists who were told about it by a woman alleging that she herself had been offered roughly $20,000 by a GOP activist named Jack Burkman “to make accusations of sexual misconduct and workplace harassment against Robert Mueller.” The woman told journalists that she had worked for Mueller as a paralegal at the Pillsbury, Madison, and Sutro law firm in 1974. The firm has not returned a request for comment about whether the woman actually worked there.
 


An alleged scheme to pay off women to fabricate sexual assault allegations against Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been referred to the FBI for further investigation, according to a spokesman for the special counsel’s office, Peter Carr. “When we learned last week of allegations that women were offered money to make false claims about the Special Counsel, we immediately referred the matter to the FBI for investigation,” Carr said in a statement on Tuesday.

The special counsel’s attention to this scheme—which was brought to the office by a woman claiming she herself had been offered money to make up sexual harassment claims against Mueller—and its decision to release a rare statement about it to reporters indicates the seriousness with which the office is taking the purported scheme to discredit Mueller in the middle of an ongoing investigation.

The special counsel’s office confirmed that the scheme was brought to its attention by several journalists who were told about it by a woman alleging that she herself had been offered roughly $20,000 by a GOP activist named Jack Burkman “to make accusations of sexual misconduct and workplace harassment against Robert Mueller.” The woman told journalists that she had worked for Mueller as a paralegal at the Pillsbury, Madison, and Sutro law firm in 1974. The firm has not returned a request for comment about whether the woman actually worked there.




Lobbyist Jack Burkman invited reporters to huddle around a phone in a Holiday Inn conference room on Tuesday, promising damning revelations about the 2016 murder of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich.

On the other end of the call, Burkman insisted, was a former intelligence operative with an explosive revelation: government agents from the DEA and ATF were behind Rich’s murder. Burkman’s source — codename “Luke” — was about to blow this still-unsolved case open.

But Burkman couldn’t get the call to work. The call from his tipster, ostensibly whistleblowing from deep inside the deep state on the second anniversary of Rich’s death, kept getting bounced back to the phone at the reception desk at the Northern Virginia hotel. Burkman scrambled out of the room, leaving reporters and Burkman’s online audience — watching live from a variety of livestreams operated by fringe internet personalities — wondering what exactly was going on.

Police believe Rich’s murder, in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C., was the result of a botched robbery, and Rich’s parents have repeatedly urged anyone with information about their son’s death to contact police instead of speculating about it in the media or online. Still, Burkman and other Rich conspiracy theorists used the anniversary of Rich’s death to attempt to relaunch their baseless claims that Rich’s death was orchestrated by a government or Democratic Party conspiracy.

The claim that Rich was murdered for leaking Democratic emails to WikiLeaks became a popular conspiracy theory on the right around the 2016 election. Speculation about the motivations behind Rich’s murder are now the subject of a number of lawsuits, with Rich’s parents suing Fox News and Rich’s brother suing America First Media Group, a conspiracy theory outlet that Burkman teamed up with for his press conference.

The event was the latest production from Burkman, an attention-hungry Washington character whose previous causes have included banning gay athletes from the NFL. After initially considering having his mystery source appear in-person with a “mask or bag” over his head, Burkman eventually opted for the call, claiming it was too dangerous for his source to appear in public.
 


EXCITING! I have screamed myself hoarse at the seemingly endless parade of media bootlickers and social media mavens who are willing to not only provide a bullhorn to fascists like Bolsonaro and Trump, but will also take their word as gospel and provide the additional service of laundering their lies and hate into tasteful, family-friendly language. I can shame them all I like, but these people never learn because they don’t WANT to learn. They’re all in on this scam. They are all in on this great, terrible hoarding of money and resources that is spreading like cancer across the globe at the moment. There is a great deal of money to be made in the Industrial Hate Complex right now, whether you are part of it or simply abetting it, as HBO is apparently more than willing to assist Axios in doing.

This isn’t terribly new, of course. The supposed idealism buttressing so many historical dictatorships and genocidal regimes has been not-so-secretly rooted in greed and selfishness.
 


Lobbyist Jack Burkman invited reporters to huddle around a phone in a Holiday Inn conference room on Tuesday, promising damning revelations about the 2016 murder of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich.

On the other end of the call, Burkman insisted, was a former intelligence operative with an explosive revelation: government agents from the DEA and ATF were behind Rich’s murder. Burkman’s source — codename “Luke” — was about to blow this still-unsolved case open.

But Burkman couldn’t get the call to work. The call from his tipster, ostensibly whistleblowing from deep inside the deep state on the second anniversary of Rich’s death, kept getting bounced back to the phone at the reception desk at the Northern Virginia hotel. Burkman scrambled out of the room, leaving reporters and Burkman’s online audience — watching live from a variety of livestreams operated by fringe internet personalities — wondering what exactly was going on.

Police believe Rich’s murder, in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C., was the result of a botched robbery, and Rich’s parents have repeatedly urged anyone with information about their son’s death to contact police instead of speculating about it in the media or online. Still, Burkman and other Rich conspiracy theorists used the anniversary of Rich’s death to attempt to relaunch their baseless claims that Rich’s death was orchestrated by a government or Democratic Party conspiracy.

The claim that Rich was murdered for leaking Democratic emails to WikiLeaks became a popular conspiracy theory on the right around the 2016 election. Speculation about the motivations behind Rich’s murder are now the subject of a number of lawsuits, with Rich’s parents suing Fox News and Rich’s brother suing America First Media Group, a conspiracy theory outlet that Burkman teamed up with for his press conference.

The event was the latest production from Burkman, an attention-hungry Washington character whose previous causes have included banning gay athletes from the NFL. After initially considering having his mystery source appear in-person with a “mask or bag” over his head, Burkman eventually opted for the call, claiming it was too dangerous for his source to appear in public.


 
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