Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse



Saudi Arabia is not a U.S. ally no matter how many times the president, Pompeo, and other senior administration officials affirm it. Unlike traditional allies, such as Britain, Canada, France or Australia, the Saudis don’t share fundamental American values: respect for human rights, freedom of speech and freedom of the press. At best, they are an occasional and often reluctant, half-hearted security partner and their interests, particularly under the influence of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (commonly known as MBS), only episodically align with ours.

Nor, as Trump and Pompeo have argued, can Saudi Arabia serve as the linchpin of America’s Middle East regional strategy. Indeed, the Trump administration has wildly exaggerated Saudi Arabia’s importance, inflated its capacity to play such a role and minimized the risks of our current relationship with MBS. The fact is, Saudi Arabia simply isn’t as important to the U.S. as it once was. The relationship needs to be reset and rebalanced to better protect American interests.

Here’s a close look at Secretary’s Pompeo’s dubious claims.
 


Everyone's waiting for the "Mueller Report." But it turns out that special counsel Robert Mueller is writing a "report" in real time, before our eyes, through his cinematic indictments and plea agreements.

The big picture: One of the least-noticed elements of the special counsel's approach is that all along, he has been making his case bit by bit, in public, since his very first court filing. With his major court filings so far, Mueller has already written more than 290 pages of the "Mueller Report." And there are still lots of loose ends in those documents — breadcrumbs Mueller is apparently leaving for later.
 




It is the perverse good fortune of Alexander Acosta, Donald Trump’s secretary of labor, to be part of an administration so spectacularly corrupt that it’s simply impossible to give all its scandals the attention they deserve.

Last Wednesday, The Miami Herald published a blockbuster multipart exposé about how the justice system failed the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, a rich, politically connected financier who appears to have abused underage girls on a near-industrial scale. The investigation, more than a year in the making, described Epstein as running a sort of child molestation pyramid scheme, in which girls — some in middle school — would be recruited to give Epstein “massages” at his Palm Beach mansion, pressured into sex acts, then coerced into bringing him yet more girls. The Herald reported that Epstein was also suspected of trafficking girls from overseas.

What’s shocking is not just the lurid details and human devastation of his alleged crimes, but the way he was able to use his money to escape serious consequences, thanks in part to Acosta, then Miami’s top federal prosecutor. For reasons that are not entirely clear, Acosta took extraordinary measures to let Epstein — and, crucially, other unnamed people — off the hook.

The labor secretary, whose purview includes combating human trafficking, has done nothing so far to rebut The Herald’s reporting. (A spokesman for his department has referred reporters to his previous statements about the case.) It should end his career. The story might have been overshadowed by last week’s cascading revelations in the Trump-Russia scandal, or the news that acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker knew of numerous fraud complaints against a company he advised, to take just two examples of administration lawlessness. But while Acosta’s record covering up for a depraved plutocrat makes him a good fit for the Trump administration, it should disqualify him from public service.
 


Conservative author Jerome Corsi has lodged a formal complaint with the Justice Department accusing special counsel Robert Mueller's office of misconduct in the investigation into Russian election interference.

Corsi, an associate of Roger Stone, alleges Mueller's team tried to pressure him to admit that he lied about his efforts to learn WikiLeaks' plans ahead of the release of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's stolen emails in October 2016.

Corsi insists he never lied. He says he forgot about the messages he sent to Stone and others seeking to find out what damaging information WikiLeaks had on the Clinton campaign — and later amended his testimony after he found them.

"The special counsel and his prosecutorial staff threatened to indict Dr. Corsi, who is now 72 years old, and effectively put him in jail for the rest of his life, unless Dr. Corsi would provide the false testimony that they demanded, even after being informed that the testimony desired would be false," says the 78-page document. "This is criminal."

The paperwork was addressed to acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, the Justice Department's inspector general and the District of Columbia Bar.

Former federal prosecutors contacted by NBC News said they believe Corsi's claims against Mueller have no merit.

"Filing a complaint based on Corsi's version of the truth abuses the role of the inspector general to ferret out wrongdoing within DOJ and seems to be more of a public relations stunt than a meritorious concern," said Daniel Goldman, a former federal prosecutor who is now a legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC.

Mimi Rocah, who served as an assistant U.S. attorney for New York's Southern District, described Corsi's claims as "patently ridiculous."

"This is somebody who doesn't like the fact that he's being caught in his lies," said Rocah, now a Pace University law professor and legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC.
 
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