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Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse
- Thread starter CdnGuy
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He asks visitors if they’d like to wash their hands in a bathroom near the Oval Office.
He’ll send a military doctor to help an aide caught coughing on Air Force One.
And the first thing he often tells his body man upon entering the Beast after shaking countless hands at campaign events: “Give me the stuff” — an immediate squirt of Purell.
Two and a half years into his term, President Donald Trump is solidifying his standing as the most germ-conscious man to ever lead the free world. His aversion shows up in meetings at the White House, on the campaign trail and at 30,000 feet. And everyone close to Trump knows the president’s true red line.
“If you’re the perpetrator of a cough or of a sneeze or any kind of thing that makes you look sick, you get that look,” said a former Trump campaign official. “You get the scowl. You get the response of — he’ll put a hand up in a gesture of, you should be backing away from him, you should be more considerate and you should extricate yourself from the situation.”
The president’s admitted germaphobia has been a fixture throughout his career — from real-estate deal rooms to casino floors — and it’s now popping up in more public ways. It could create another round of tactile challenges as Trump launches his 2020 campaign, during which he might try to steer visitors toward his signature thumbs-up selfies and away from handshakes for the next 16 months.
Justice has seemed elusive these past three years. One of the most discouraging themes has been the pattern of powerful white men who seem to get away with sexual misconduct and even criminal behavior toward women and young girls: Donald Trump, Roy Moore, Brett Kavanaugh, among them. Some days, it feels like the idea of “justice” is non-existent when it comes to this type of powerful perpetrator and conduct.
The case of billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, thus far, is one of the most egregious examples. Epstein actually got caught: he was arrested and charged last decade by federal authorities for running a sex-trafficking operation in which minor girls experienced horrible sexual abuse and rape in Florida. But then Epstein was given a slap-on-the-wrist deal in 2008 from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida and some of his co-conspirators were shielded from prosecution. To make matters even worse, that deal seems to have been the product of some serious gamesmanship by a cabal of other powerful white men, including Alex Acosta, then-U.S. Attorney and now Labor Secretary.
But, finally, it looks like justice will be served to Epstein in the form of new sex-trafficking charges filed by the formidable U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York.
Epstein has reportedly been arrested for trafficking dozens of minors in New York and Florida between 2002 and 2005. And this time, Epstein shouldn’t expect the ridiculous sweetheart deal he got the first time around.
Charges of federal sex trafficking carry mandatory minimums of 10-15 years on each count. Mandatory means mandatory. In other words, short of a cooperation agreement with the government—which in the SDNY famously means full cooperation against all possible other subjects and targets—Epstein will serve at least 10-15 years in prison (possibly more depending on the number of counts) if convicted.
Who really bombed the oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman three weeks ago? Was it Iran, as the Trump administration assured us? Or was it Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates or Israel—or some combination of the three?
Here’s a confession from two former senior government officials: For days after the attacks, we weren’t sure. Both of us believed in all sincerity there was a good chance these actions were part of a false flag operation, an effort by outsiders to trigger a war between the United States and Iran. Even the film of Iranians hauling in an unexploded limpet mine from near the side of tanker, we reasoned, might be a fabrication—deep fake footage just like the clip of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi staggering around drunkenly.
Perhaps you felt that way too. But for the two of us, with 30 years of government service and almost 20 more as think tankers between us, this was shocking. Yes, we are card-carrying members of the "Blob," the all-too-conventionally minded Washington foreign policy establishment, but we weren’t sure whether to believe our government.
This was more than a little disconcerting. Imagine waking up one morning and catching yourself thinking that alt-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was making good sense, that perhaps the Sandy Hook shooting was faked or that the 9/11 attacks were really an inside job? Imagine what it might be like to be in the grip of a conspiracy theory, when you’ve spent your whole professional life being one of those policy mandarins who could smell a conspiracy theory a mile away?
And we weren’t alone. In conversations with former colleagues—ambassadors, undersecretaries and the like—we found that plenty of others also bought the notion that the tanker attacks were a false flag op. To these eminences, it seemed plausible the Saudis or others had staged the bombings. After all, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has practically been cheerleading for a conflict, and the idea that the Iranians would risk a U.S. attack seemed risible. It wasn’t obvious why Iran would court humiliation in a military showdown, or, for that matter, attack a Japanese tanker while the Japanese prime minister was visiting Tehran.
After conversations with other colleagues still in the government whom we trust and who attested that beyond a doubt, the Iranians were behind it, we came around to the official position. The narrative that Iran was, through the attacks, trying to prod other countries to pressure the U.S. to relax its sanctions makes sense—it is not far from the kind of stunts North Korea has pulled in the past.
But the whole unsettling episode opened our eyes to a deeply troubling reality: The current fake news epidemic isn’t just shaking up U.S. politics, it might end up causing a war, or just as consequentially, impeding a national response to a genuine threat.
As the battle over President Trump’s federal taxes intensifies in Washington, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said he would sign a bill on Monday that would allow congressional committees to access the president’s state tax returns.
The bill will require state tax officials to release the president’s state returns for any “specified and legitimate legislative purpose” on the request of the chair of one of three congressional committees: the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee and the Joint Committee on Taxation.
It would be effective immediately though it is unclear whether it would be challenged by the Trump administration, or used by the congressional committees; the Ways and Means Committee, for instance, has said previously that it remains focused on pursuing Mr. Trump’s federal tax information.
Still, the state tax documents from New York — the president’s home state and business headquarters — would likely contain much of the same information as the contested federal returns, tax experts say.
Federal prosecutors on Monday unsealed new sex trafficking charges against Jeffrey Epstein, alleging the politically connected multimillionaire abused dozens of female minors at his Manhattan and Palm Beach, Fla., homes and enlisted his victims to expand a network of possible targets.
Epstein — who was arrested over the weekend and is expected to appear in federal court in Manhattan — had previously pleaded guilty to Florida state charges of soliciting prostitution to resolve allegations he molested dozens of girls. That arrangement has been widely criticized as too lenient. As part of the deal, he had to spend just more than a year in jail and was allowed to leave daily for work, and he never faced any federal exposure.
The new charges, described in a 14-page indictment brought by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, could lead to a much harsher penalty. Epstein is charged in a two-count indictment with sex trafficking and sex trafficking conspiracy, for crimes alleged to have occurred between 2002 and 2005. Each charge carries a penalty of no less than 10 years in prison, with the possibility of a life sentence. The Justice Department is also seeking to seize Epstein’s mansion on the Upper East Side of Manhattan where some of the alleged crimes occurred.
The U.S. attorney’s office said in a news release that Epstein created “a network and operation enabling him to sexually exploit and abuse dozens of underage girls,” and that he paid victims to recruit other underage girls. The indictment alleges his victims were as young as 14 years old.
Epstein, according to the indictment, would initially recruit the girls to perform “massages,” which would become “increasingly sexual in nature.” He would then pay the victims hundreds of dollars in cash for each encounter, according to the indictment.
The indictment also alleges that Epstein “actively encouraged certain of his victims to recruit additional girls to be similarly sexually abused,” and that he “incentivized his victims to become recruiters by paying these victim-recruiters hundreds of dollars for each girl they brought to Epstein.”
Jeffrey Epstein, a wealthy financier and registered sex offender, was charged by federal prosecutors in New York for allegedly abusing dozens of female minors at his Manhattan and Florida homes, unsealed court documents show Monday.
Details: 3 unnamed victims are cited in the case. A judge ruled in February that prosecutors had broken the law in reaching a previous plea deal. One of those prosecutors was then-U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta — now President Trump's Labor secretary.
[Indictment Included]
Also, see: https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Epstein-Indictment.pdf
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