[FOX] Lawyers for ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort are raising concerns about a 2017 meeting between top law enforcement figures and Associated Press reporters, questioning whether "grand jury secrecy" was violated and revealing memos that say the reporters even offered investigators a "code" pertaining to their client’s storage facility.
The details emerged in a series of recent filings, including an effort by Manafort's attorneys to get his criminal trial moved from Northern Virginia, citing pretrial publicity.
"Mr. Manafort's legal issues and the attendant daily media coverage have become a theatre in the continuing controversy surrounding President Trump and his election," Manafort's lawyers wrote Judge T.S. Ellis, who is overseeing the bank and tax fraud case in Northern Virginia. A second prosecution, involving similar charges, is underway in Washington, D.C.
Arguing for a trial in Roanoke, Va., Manafort's legal team said an "inside-the-beltway jury" would be biased against their client.
But Manafort’s defense also is seeking a hearing on the April 2017 meeting involving FBI and Justice Department officials and four AP reporters ‐ after his team for months has argued that improper leaks to the media have put him at a disadvantage.
The recent filing contains two newly disclosed FBI memos documenting the April 2017 meeting. It included three FBI agents; a Justice Department trial attorney; an assistant U.S. attorney and Andrew Weissmann, then chief of the DOJ’s fraud division before he moved on to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe. The meeting also included four AP reporters: Chad Day, Jack Gillum, Ted Bridis and Eric Tucker.
"The meeting raises serious concerns about whether a violation of grand jury secrecy occurred," Manafort’s lawyers wrote in the filing. "Now based on the FBI's own notes of the meeting, it is beyond question that a hearing is warranted."
#1
Seems odd. Why would AP know about it unless someone snitched? How would it work its way over to DoJ? Seems like the DoJ is playing games here and found a patsy.
#3
A program on the Hutterites and their take on communism was informative. They believe that if the community has more than about 200 people it can no longer maintain their "religious communal ownership" system and needs to split off a new "daughter colony".
So essentially, we have a group performing a long-term social experiment and the result is that: "Communism does not work for large groups. Period."
[Times of Israel] Sergio Kowensky, a prominent Jewish pro-Israel advocate, killed at his office in the crime-ridden city; circumstances surrounding his death are not clear.
An outspoken Jewish advocate of Israel was gunned down at his workplace in South Africa by unidentified assailants, who left behind his car, wallet and cellular phone.
Sergio Kowensky, the chairman of the Likud South Africa Jewish group, was killed Tuesday in a southern suburb of Johannesburg at his air-conditioning firm, according to the South African Jewish Report.
The shots, fired at around noon, alerted workers in his factory and others in surrounding businesses.
"The initial fears were that this could have been the work of anti-Israel fanatics, given that Kowensky spent his entire life dedicated to Zionist ideals, with an intense passion for the well-being of the State of Israel," the newspaper article’s author wrote. But with the investigation into Kowensky’s death only in its initial phases, his slaying could be "just another senseless act of urban violence on the crime-ridden streets of Johannesburg," the author also wrote.
LONDON (AP) ‐ A woman who was poisoned by a military-grade nerve agent in southwest England died Sunday, eight days after police think she touched a contaminated item that has not been found.
London's Metropolitan Police force said detectives had become a homicide investigation with 44-year-old Dawn Sturgess's death at a hospital in Salisbury. She and her boyfriend, Charlie Rowley, 45, were admitted June 30 after falling ill a few miles away in Amesbury; Rowley remains in critical condition.
Tests at Britain's defense research laboratory showed the pair was exposed to Novichok, the same type of nerve agent used to poison a former Russian spy and his daughter in Salisbury in March. Police suspect Rowley and Sturgess handled a discarded item from the first attack, though they have not determined for certain that the two cases are linked.
Britain blames the Russian state for the attack on Sergei Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter ‐ an allegation Moscow strongly denies.
Prime Minister Theresa May said she was "appalled and shocked" by Sturgess's death.
#5
Other UK news media have speculated the "item" that was picked up was a syringe, and that the newly affected couple were known substance abusers. The Sun: "The pair are believed to have picked up the nerve agent vial from a park drug den, according to their neighbour.
Tom Ricks told The Sun on Sunday, dealers often placed stashes in their crack hideout at Queen Elizabeth Gardens in Salisbury."
[AP] Volunteer groups from several U.S. states were stranded in Haiti Sunday after violent protests over fuel prices canceled flights and made roads unsafe.
Church groups in South Carolina, Florida, Georgia and Alabama are among those that haven’t been able to leave, according to newspaper and television reports.
Some flights were resuming Sunday afternoon, according to airline officials and the flight tracking website FlightAware. American Airlines spokesman Ross Feinstein said in an email that two flights bound for Miami and one for New York had taken off Sunday afternoon.
But even getting to an airport could be risky, U.S. officials warned. The U.S. State Department issued an alert Sunday urging its citizens on the island to shelter in place and not to go to an airport unless travelers had confirmed their departing flight was taking off.
Dr. Salil Bhende, a North Carolina dentist, said in a phone interview that a group of about 16 dental clinic volunteers was supposed to fly out Sunday from Port Au Prince but couldn’t make it to the airport because the roads were unsafe. After encountering rubble and garbage in the road, the group turned back to a church about 45 minutes outside the capital city where it was staying. Airline officials told them they might not be able to get a flight home until Tuesday, Bhende said.
[twitter] Interesting: China has been sending airborne troops to Venezuela since 1999 to take courses at the "Hunter School" jungle warfare, urban operations and special forces school - now sending PLA SOF-track cadets
#2
Bring Lots! A Vietnam Vet told me about buying extra toilet paper at the PX -- it went a lot farther than the local currency. Mama-san at the local bordello was most helpful.
LONDON (Reuters) - Global shares hit a two-week high on Monday as favorable U.S. jobs data whetted risk appetites, while sterling brushed off the resignation of two ministers over Britain’s departure from the European Union as traders focused on the likelihood of a "soft Brexit".
[Interesting Engineering] A new style of the drone could offer life-saving technologies onto battlefields and emergency disaster situations. Israel-based robotics company Tactical Robotics just tested a "mission representative" demonstration for its lead customer, the Israel Defense Forces.
The demonstration for the IDF took place at the Megiddo Airfield in the Galilee, according to Tactical Robotics. The Cormorant drone showed off exactly what it was built to do. It took a load of cargo through a pre-planned flight path. It then delivered that cargo load to a ground team. That team then loaded on a medical training manikin to simulate a casualty (rather than a wounded or injured patient).
Other than the unloading of cargo and loading one of the training manikin, the entire simulated mission was performed autonomously.
Rescuers in Thailand on Monday freed four more members of the boys soccer team stranded in a flooded cave complex, as part of the second phase of a desperate rescue operation that aims to save four more kids and the team's coach before heavy rains imperil the effort.
Chiang Rai acting Gov. Osatanakorn said at a news conference the rescue mission on Monday took only 9 hours compared to the 11 hours the previous day, adding that rescue crews are more familiar with the mission and additional help was present. A Thai army deputy commander added that the operation went "smoothly" but warned the next phase "will depend on all conditions".
Narongsak said that rescuers, which included 18 divers and 100 personnel, may need to adjust their operation if they choose to bring out the remaining five people on Tuesday, and that it may take multiple steps.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/09/2018 16:01 ||
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#1
Logistics nightmare. Something like 10 hour swim (r/t) and all that air has to be transported in by swimmers and set up in stages for the boys, their rescue swimmers and all the supply swimmers. Sadly, it was already proven that mistakes are fatal.
#2
The rescue operation is turning out to be outstanding. Hope it ends well. Glad it is not a retrieval operation (except for the one body of the Thai Seal). A very complex rescue operation.
h/t Instapundit
A Memphis woman whose nephew beat cancer said she's experienced hateful online attacks because she thanked Eric Trump for his commitment to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Two Minutes Hate
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Times of Israel] Sergio Kowensky, a prominent Jewish pro-Israel advocate, killed at his office in the crime-ridden city; circumstances surrounding his death are not clear.
LONDON (AP) ‐ A woman who was poisoned by a military-grade nerve agent in southwest England died Sunday, eight days after police think she touched a contaminated item that has not been found.
[AP] Volunteer groups from several U.S. states were stranded in Haiti Sunday after violent protests over fuel prices canceled flights and made roads unsafe.
