Reminds me of this meme.
Who knew they were going to keep them away from sharpies by kicking them out the country?
RUSSIA/РОССИЯ THREAD—ASSANGE CHRGD W/ SPYING—DJT IMPEACHED TWICE-US TREASURY SANCTS KILIMNIK AS RUSSIAN AGNT
- Thread starter ☑︎#VoteDemocrat
- Start date
Reminds me of this meme.
Who knew they were going to keep them away from sharpies by kicking them out the country?
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
The Hill
13 mins ·
President Trump joked during a speech before the Boy Scouts of America that he will tell Health secretary Tom Price “you’re fired” if Senate Republicans fail to repeal ObamaCare.
Trump jokingly threatens to fire his Health secretary if ObamaCare repeal fails
“He better get them, otherwise I’ll say, ‘Tom, you’re fired,’” Trump said.
THEHILL.COM
I doubt he was kidding
13 mins ·
President Trump joked during a speech before the Boy Scouts of America that he will tell Health secretary Tom Price “you’re fired” if Senate Republicans fail to repeal ObamaCare.
Trump jokingly threatens to fire his Health secretary if ObamaCare repeal fails
“He better get them, otherwise I’ll say, ‘Tom, you’re fired,’” Trump said.
THEHILL.COM
I doubt he was kidding
Tony D'Amato
It's all about the inches
Who were the people behind this clown during that speech? 1 lady drew her own eyebrows and the dude next to her look like Paul Ryan in Jr high 
Bill Browder (of Magnitsky Act fame) is going after Rohrabacher
http://www.businessinsider.com/dana-rohrabacher-russia-sanctions-magnitsky-2017-7
A pro-Putin California congressman has been accused of violating US sanctions on Russia
Natasha Bertrand
A new complaint filed with the Treasury's Office of Foreign Asset Control alleges that California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and his staff director, Paul Behrends, violated the Magnitsky Act when they tried to get Russia's deputy general prosecutor, Victor Grin, removed from the US sanctions list last year.
The complaint was filed by US financier Bill Browder, the founder of Hermitage Capital Management, who spearheaded the Magnitsky Act in 2012 to punish Russian officials suspected of being involved in the death of his account, Sergey Magnitsky.
Magnitsky uncovered a $230 million tax fraud scheme in 2008 when he was working for Hermitage that implicated high-level Kremlin officials and allies of President Vladimir Putin. He was later thrown in jail by the same Interior Ministry officers he testified against during criminal proceedings to punish those involved in the tax scheme, Browder said in 2015, and died in custody after being held for 358 days.
Browder's complaint rests largely on a Daily Beast report published last week alleging that Rohrabacher, a staunch defender of Russia and Putin, met with officials from the prosecutor general’s office in Moscow in April 2016. The report said he accepted a "confidential" document that Rohrabacher then used to try to undermine the Magnitsky Act on Capitol Hill.
"Changing attitudes to the Magnitsky story in the Congress ... could have a very favorable response from the Russian side," the document said, according to the Daily Beast.
Upon returning to Washington, DC, Rohrabacher tried to organize a show-trial of Browder in front of Congress that would have included a screening of an anti-Magnitsky Act film that attacked Browder, The Daily Beast reported. The hearing was ultimately canceled when Republican Party leaders intervened, and the film was shown at the Newseum instead of on Capitol Hill.
The complaint Browder filed on July 21 alleges that Rohrabacher "made personal introductions for lobbyists advocating the Russian government's and Grin's position against the Magnitsky Act." Those people, according to the complaint, include Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin — both of whom attended a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower last June to discuss a possible repeal of the Magnitsky Act.
"These actions constitute services provided to a SDN [specially designated national] by US persons in apparent violation of the Magnitsky Act sanctions which expressly forbid US persons to provide such services," the complaint says of Rohrabacher's activities last summer.
Browder, who filed the complaint, told Business Insider that he would be "surprised" if the Treasury did not take it seriously.
"The violations are brazen and when you get into sanctions offenses, politics disappear almost completely," he said.
Rohrabacher's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
I
Specifically, not sure, generally/probably people that are going to die from being pieces of sh1t, and the only thing that will save them are massive tax cuts for the top 1%. Whoever they are, they should hurry up and get it over with, to make more room for people to stand in front of the death panel.Who were the people behind this clown during that speech? 1 lady drew her own eyebrows and the dude next to her look like Paul Ryan in Jr high
http://www.businessinsider.com/scaramucci-hna-business-sale-conflict-2017-7
The $180 million conflict that kept Scaramucci out of the White House in January has only gotten shadier
Linette Lopez
- Anthony Scaramucci is selling his fund of funds business to a Chinese conglomerate with ties to the government.
- The firm, the HNA Group, is facing an increasing number of questions at home and abroad, and the deal is subject to review by the US Treasury.
- The sale reportedly kept Scaramucci out of the White House in January because of the conflicts it raises.
New White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci has joined the Trump administration with a $180 million conflict of interest hanging over his head. It's the same conflict that reportedly kept him out of the White House months ago, and it's only gotten stickier since then.
Scaramucci is selling his $5.6 billion financial firm, SkyBridge Capital, to a number of investors. Chief among them is a Chinese financial firm with strong ties to ruling Communist Party, called the HNA Group. Already, Bloomberg outlined that HNA and its fellow investors seem to be paying multiples more for SkyBridge than a firm like this would normally be valued at. But the sale has also been dragging on for months, and as it has we've seen the questions about HNA, its ownership structure, and its financing rise out of the murky world of big Chinese business.
Now, this all sounds pretty strange as is. But it gets even stranger when you understand what SkyBridge is, what HNA is, and what's been holding up the sale and Scaramucci's pay day. (Hint: It's the US government.)
When you understand that, you'll also understand why this sale to the Chinese was the reason why White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus didn't want Scaramucci too close to the president, according to some close to the administration. It's also why Priebus was cut out of the loop during Scaramucci's lightning fast hiring last week.
Get to know some Wall Street
But first, SkyBridge. Scaramucci's firm is likely best known for the massive bash it throws in Vegas every year, one that attracts world leaders and stars of the world of finance for four days in the desert.
But of course that's not the only business SkyBridge has. It is a fund of funds, which is to say that it is an investment fund that connects people to other investment funds.
Over the last few years, businesses like this have been hurting on Wall Street. When you pay a fund of funds, you pay a fee to them, and a fee to the hedge fund they're connecting you to. The problem with that, of course, is that it's expensive, and when hedge funds aren't performing (as they haven't been for the past couple of years) no one wants to pay high fees.
Scaramucci told me in an interview last year that part of his job was to try to get fund managers to lower their fees so that he could lower fees for his clients. Unfortunately, though, his efforts weren't enough to stop investors from pulling $1.6 billion from SkyBridge's flagship fund last fiscal year.
This is part of what makes it so curious that HNA would want to overpay for SkyBridge. It is a high-fee business in a low-fee world. Scaramucci and SkyBridge have been responding to questions about the sale the same way for months — they say it's a couple of weeks away from closing. He has also said repeatedly that he'd recuse himself from the sale of SkyBridge, and that he thinks HNA is buying it in spite of his ties to Trump, not because of them.
Get to know the 'gray rhinos'
The other thing to know is HNA itself — and all of the massive complications it faces right now. In short, HNA is a massive enterprise that traces its roots to Hainan Airlines, but went on a $50 billion buying spree — backed by big government lenders — and now owns everything from stakes in Hilton Hotels to small aviation companies.
"HNA is looking for influence in an administration that looks like it is positioning itself to be anti-China," Derek Scissors, a China specialist at the American Enterprise Institute, told The New York Times earlier this year.
Therein, of course, lies the conflict. And HNA brings baggage of its own — it is, for example, unclear exactly who owns and backs it. Bank of America won't do business with the company, and the European Central Bank is investigating HNA's stake in Germany's Deutsche Bank.
At home, President Xi Jinping just labeled HNA and other big conglomerates that got huge off debt-fueled acquisitions, "gray rhinos" — companies that seem innocuous until they start moving fast in your direction.
You do not want a catchy label in China. It usually means the government is keeping an eye on you. In this case, the government is interested in reining financial sector debt and keeping money in the country. But SkyBridge is a tiny acquisition for HNA. Even if it overpays for the firm, the $180 million price tag is a rounding error for a firm HNA's size. A few more things about HNA:
- The company claims to be owned by two charities, as well as its founders. Beyond that, the whole thing is murky.
- Chinese billionaire businessman Guo Wengui claims HNA is owned by Chinese government officials. He's doing that from a self-imposed exile in New York City, and HNA is suing him for defamation.
- A bunch of Chinese banks may have just cut off credit to HNA in an attempt to stop it from growing larger. HNA's CEO Adam Tan told Reuters this isn't true, saying, "We've got nothing to hide."
- There are reports here in the US of HNA buying businesses and then not maintaining them. This would support the thesis that the Chinese government is angry at these gray rhinos because it believes some acquisitions were just an attempt to get money out of China.
One financial adviser Business Insider spoke with said he would have trouble explaining to clients why he was doing business with a firm like HNA. Indeed, part of the hold-up in the SkyBridge deal was getting the advisers that sell SkyBridge products at firms like Morgan Stanley on board with the deal.
If Bank of America won't do business with HNA, why should they? That, ultimately, is a question for the Treasury Department.
Get to know CFIUS
Pursuant to section 721 of the Defense Production Act of 1950, the Treasury must review any transactions that would result in control of a US business by a foreign person under the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). That means Steve Mnuchin has to sign off on this SkyBridge deal. It has been held up for months and months, according to reports, in part because the Treasury is so understaffed.
"Traditionally, there's been a bipartisan effort to use the CIFIUS process to prevent foreign companies with an affiliation with a hostile foreign government from buying key US resources or assets that could compromise national security," Lee Branstetter, an economist at Carnegie Mellon University and former CFIUS member, told Business Insider. The Trump administration has been especially tough when it comes to businesses that could affect national security, citing that as a reason for potentially levying a 25% tariff on foreign-steel imports.
Indeed, according to Reuters, CIFIUS has been more conservative than usual since the Trump administration took over, rejecting nine deals so far this year.
That said, this Scaramucci case is unique.
"I can't think of another case when a significant White House official who sold their business in its entirety to a single Chinese entity that has been known in the press as one of these 'gray rhinos,'" Branstetter said. "That does appear to be unique. We haven't faced these kinds of circumstances before ... There are questions as to whether this transaction would provide a Chinese conglomerate with influence over Mr. Scaramucci. But I'm not privy to the specifics of the deal."
Specifics are important. Branstetter said that if this is a one-time transaction between Scaramucci and HNA (which is what Scaramucci says it is), maybe this isn't so terrible. It just looks terrible.
Tony D'Amato
It's all about the inches
Breh, dem Obama videos, then seein Trump be havin me
It feels like Trump has been President for my whole life. I barely remember what it was like before him
It feels like Trump has been President for my whole life. I barely remember what it was like before him
:conceitedsideeye:The Hill
13 mins ·
President Trump joked during a speech before the Boy Scouts of America that he will tell Health secretary Tom Price “you’re fired” if Senate Republicans fail to repeal ObamaCare.
Trump jokingly threatens to fire his Health secretary if ObamaCare repeal fails
“He better get them, otherwise I’ll say, ‘Tom, you’re fired,’” Trump said.
THEHILL.COM
I doubt he was kidding
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
The Hill
2 hrs ·
“Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough turned the tables on President Trump following his tweet calling Jeff Sessions “beleaguered,” saying Trump is the one who is “beleaguered and frightened” because he senses that “justice must be closing in."
Scarborough: You can sense Trump’s fear ‘in every terrified tweet’
"Justice must be closing in," the MSNBC host said.
THEHILL.COM
2 hrs ·
“Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough turned the tables on President Trump following his tweet calling Jeff Sessions “beleaguered,” saying Trump is the one who is “beleaguered and frightened” because he senses that “justice must be closing in."
Scarborough: You can sense Trump’s fear ‘in every terrified tweet’
"Justice must be closing in," the MSNBC host said.
THEHILL.COM
The War Report
NewNewYork
No wonder Jared doesn't speak much. He sounds like a fukking douchebag.
AVXL
Laughing at you n*ggaz like “ha ha ha”
National Security
Trump leaves Sessions twisting in the wind while berating him publicly
Attorney General Jeff Sessions walks down the stairs of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on Monday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
By Sari Horwitz, Matt Zapotosky and Robert Costa July 24 at 7:15 PM
President Trump and his advisers are privately discussing the possibility of replacing Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and some confidants are floating prospects who could take his place were he to resign or be fired, according to people familiar with the talks.
Members of Trump’s circle, including White House officials, have increasingly raised the question among themselves in recent days as the president has continued to vent his frustration with the attorney general, the people said.
Replacing Sessions is seen by some Trump associates as potentially being part of a strategy to fire special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and end his investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 election, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
The president took another swipe at Sessions on Monday, calling his attorney general “our beleaguered A.G.” and asking why Sessions was not “looking into Crooked Hillary’s crimes & Russia relations?”
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Both points are notable. Sessions was once considered one of Trump’s closest advisers and enjoyed access few others had. Now he is left to endure regular public criticism by his boss.
Play Video 2:59
Trump's attack on Sessions raises more questions about the Russia investigation
President Trump turned on his longtime surrogate Attorney General Jeff Sessions and other members of the Justice Department over the Russia investigation. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)
Trump’s suggestion, too, that his top law enforcement official investigate a former political rival is astounding, and even his allies have said in the past that such a move would be unheard of in the United States. Trump, after the election, had backed away from the idea of possibly prosecuting Hillary Clinton.
Sessions has seen his tight relationship with Trump and the White House unravel since he recused himself in March from the Russia probe. The president had privately complained about that decision for weeks, and in an interview with the New York Times last week he said he would not have appointed Sessions as attorney general had he known in advance of the recusal.
[Sessions says he plans to stay in role, despite Trump’s comments about him]
After Sessions recused himself, he passed on the responsibility to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who then appointed Mueller as special counsel overseeing the Russia probe.
Trump could order Rosenstein — and then Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand — to fire Mueller. If they quit instead of doing so, he could appoint an acting attorney general who would. Trump could also appoint an acting attorney general with them in place — effectively passing over Rosenstein and Brand — and order that person to remove the special counsel.
Trump’s authority to jump Rosenstein and Brand, though, is murky. The Justice Department has issued opinions in the past saying both that such a move is and isn’t permissible. And his pick for an acting attorney general would have to have Senate confirmation and be serving elsewhere in the government or have worked in the Justice Department for 90 days within the past 365 and be at a certain senior pay level.
[Column: Trump or Congress can still block Mueller. I know. I wrote the rules.]
Play Video 2:05
Sessions says he will remain in role as attorney general
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he is "totally confident that we can continue to run this office in an effective way" on July 20. (The Washington Post)
Another scenario is that Trump could make a recess appointment, said University of Texas School of Law professor Steve Vladeck. Under that plan, Trump could choose an attorney general during the August recess who would serve until the end of the next Senate session, which could be early January. That person would have the same authority as someone who is confirmed by the Senate, Vladeck said.
Among the names being floated as possible Sessions replacements are Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and former New York City mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, according to people familiar with the conversations.
Giuliani dismissed a report floating his name as a possible attorney general and told CNN that Sessions “made the right decision under the rules of the Justice Department” to recuse himself. He did not return a message seeking comment.
Cruz had said previously that he “did not think it was necessary to appoint a special counsel,” but when Mueller was appointed, he praised him as “an excellent choice.” A spokesman for Cruz could not be reached for comment.
Some Trump advisers said that this process could be agonizing for the attorney general, with the president’s anger flaring but no decision being reached for weeks or maybe months, leaving Sessions isolated from the White House. Sessions was at the White House complex on Monday for a routine meeting but did not meet with the president.
But not all in Trump’s orbit share the view that Sessions’s days are numbered.
Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director, told CNN on Monday afternoon that Trump and Sessions “need to sit down face-to-face and have a reconciliation and a discussion of the future.”
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a vigorous Trump ally, said in an interview that he and Trump had talked about Sessions and that Trump had indicated “he was very unhappy both with the recusal and the fact that Jeff didn’t talk to him beforehand.” But Gingrich said he would “strongly oppose” the firing of Sessions, because “I think his base likes Sessions.”
“His base thinks that on things like [violent street gangs] and sanctuary cities that Sessions is doing a fine job, and I think his base would be confused,” Gingrich said.
Gingrich also said he believed Sessions could survive the president’s criticisms.
“He said he’s beleaguered, not failed, and he is a little beleaguered,” Gingrich said. “This whole thing has been a mess.”
Trump, though, continues to let Sessions twist in the wind. One person close to Trump said the president asked him about how firing Sessions “would play in the conservative media.” Trump also asked him whether it would help to replace Sessions “with a major conservative,” the person said.
For his part, Sessions shows no signs of stepping down.
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Military, defense and security at home and abroad.
On Friday, Sessions traveled to Philadelphia to meet with law enforcement officials. In his speech, he vowed to crack down on illegal immigration and on “sanctuary cities” that are not communicating with federal authorities about undocumented immigrants. He spoke of how hard he is working, despite having none of his U.S. attorneys in place and most of his senior officials still not confirmed by the Senate.
“I do my best every day,” Sessions said, “to fulfill the goals the president and I share.”
Several of Session’s Republican former colleagues on Capitol Hill have defended him in the face of the president’s criticism.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), a close friend, said that Sessions was “doing just fine.” He also encouraged the president to try to patch up his relationship with his attorney general.
“They’re both adults, and they can work it out,” Cornyn said.
Worthless Loser
Blackpilled
Trump is playing a dangerous game by toying with the idea of firing Sessions. The Republicans in Congress support Sessions more than Trump and Trump has to know that if this is a plan to get Mueller fired, Congress will just re-appoint Mueller as the independent counsel where Trump has zero authority to remove him.
So then you just did all that for nothing and caused a political firestorm with Congress and your own party.
So then you just did all that for nothing and caused a political firestorm with Congress and your own party.
Bill Browder (of Magnitsky Act fame) is going after Rohrabacher
http://www.businessinsider.com/dana-rohrabacher-russia-sanctions-magnitsky-2017-7
A pro-Putin California congressman has been accused of violating US sanctions on Russia
Natasha Bertrand
U.S. Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-Ca) gestures as his U.S. Congressional delegation arrives to meet Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the Prime Minister's official residence in Tokyo September 2, 2013.Shuji Kajiyama/Reuters
A new complaint filed with the Treasury's Office of Foreign Asset Control alleges that California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and his staff director, Paul Behrends, violated the Magnitsky Act when they tried to get Russia's deputy general prosecutor, Victor Grin, removed from the US sanctions list last year.
The complaint was filed by US financier Bill Browder, the founder of Hermitage Capital Management, who spearheaded the Magnitsky Act in 2012 to punish Russian officials suspected of being involved in the death of his account, Sergey Magnitsky.
Magnitsky uncovered a $230 million tax fraud scheme in 2008 when he was working for Hermitage that implicated high-level Kremlin officials and allies of President Vladimir Putin. He was later thrown in jail by the same Interior Ministry officers he testified against during criminal proceedings to punish those involved in the tax scheme, Browder said in 2015, and died in custody after being held for 358 days.
Browder's complaint rests largely on a Daily Beast report published last week alleging that Rohrabacher, a staunch defender of Russia and Putin, met with officials from the prosecutor general’s office in Moscow in April 2016. The report said he accepted a "confidential" document that Rohrabacher then used to try to undermine the Magnitsky Act on Capitol Hill.
"Changing attitudes to the Magnitsky story in the Congress ... could have a very favorable response from the Russian side," the document said, according to the Daily Beast.
Upon returning to Washington, DC, Rohrabacher tried to organize a show-trial of Browder in front of Congress that would have included a screening of an anti-Magnitsky Act film that attacked Browder, The Daily Beast reported. The hearing was ultimately canceled when Republican Party leaders intervened, and the film was shown at the Newseum instead of on Capitol Hill.
The complaint Browder filed on July 21 alleges that Rohrabacher "made personal introductions for lobbyists advocating the Russian government's and Grin's position against the Magnitsky Act." Those people, according to the complaint, include Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin — both of whom attended a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower last June to discuss a possible repeal of the Magnitsky Act.
"These actions constitute services provided to a SDN [specially designated national] by US persons in apparent violation of the Magnitsky Act sanctions which expressly forbid US persons to provide such services," the complaint says of Rohrabacher's activities last summer.
Browder, who filed the complaint, told Business Insider that he would be "surprised" if the Treasury did not take it seriously.
"The violations are brazen and when you get into sanctions offenses, politics disappear almost completely," he said.
Rohrabacher's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
:Damnson: