Broke Wave
The GOAT
I haven’t been this hungry since last Ramadan
nikkas acting like they’re fed.... I need to see cacs in cuffs
RUSSIA/РОССИЯ THREAD—ASSANGE CHRGD W/ SPYING—DJT IMPEACHED TWICE-US TREASURY SANCTS KILIMNIK AS RUSSIAN AGNT
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nikkas acting like they’re fed.... I need to see cacs in cuffs
:ALERTRED:
nbcnews.com
After clashes with first lady and others, Kelly may soon exit White House
Carol E. LeeCarol E. Lee is a national political reporter for NBC News.
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Nov. 13, 2018 / 11:59 AM EST
By Carol E. Lee, Kristen Welker, Hallie Jackson and Courtney Kube
WASHINGTON — John Kelly, mired in conflicts with a widening array of officials from the National Security Council to the office of the first lady, may soon depart the Trump administration, according to seven people familiar with the discussions.
Nick Ayers, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, is among those being considered for the job, three of the people said, though President Donald Trump has mused about other possible candidates.
Kelly’s time as chief of staff for most of the past year has been clouded by controversy and disagreements with Trump and various West Wing staff. But questions about his future in the White House recently became more serious after his repeated clashes with national security adviser John Bolton and his deputy, Mira Ricardel.
Kelly has also gotten on the wrong side of first lady Melania Trump over staffing issues and travel requests. Some of the disputes with the East Wing have escalated to the president, the seven people familiar with the clashes said.
"There have been instances where the East Wing staff were not treated as equals to the male-dominated decision makers in Chief Kelly’s office," one White House official said. "Promotions were denied then finally granted after months of requests," the official said.
Melania Trump raised concerns with her husband earlier this year, amid the height of the controversy over his alleged affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels, that Kelly had repeatedly denied her requests to promote some of her aides, two White House officials told NBC News.
The requests languished for months as Kelly insisted there weren’t enough available positions for the first lady’s aides to have senior titles, these people said. During this same period however, West Wing officials working for Kelly received promotions, the White House officials said.
Having learned of the dispute, the president was furious and told Kelly to give the first lady, who has a smaller East Wing staff than her recent predecessors, what she wanted, these people said. "I don't need this shyt," Trump told Kelly, according to one person familiar with the conversation.
Kelly wouldn’t be the first chief-of-staff to upset a first lady but history has shown that such disputes are tough to overcome.
Nancy Reagan was at odds with President Ronald Reagan’s chief of staff, Donald Regan, which ultimately helped orchestrate his departure. And Hillary Clinton was at odds with President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff over her large role in policy decisions.
Trump was especially annoyed, according to people familiar with his thinking, that he had to get involved in disputes involving his wife. His message to Kelly, according to one of them, repeatedly has been: "Deal with it."
The promotions of the first lady’s communications director, Stephanie Grisham, and White House social secretary, Rickie Niceta, from special assistants to the president to deputy assistants to the president were ultimately cleared and announced in June.
Kelly has also sparred with the East Wing over travel arrangements for the first lady’s staff, people familiar with the issue said. He often wouldn’t reserve space for Melania Trump’s two aides on Air Force One or on helicopters. They would find themselves without hotel rooms and not listed for motorcade movements. The omissions have caused last-minute logistical issues that the first lady viewed as a slight, these people said.
The White House declined to comment for this story.
"The East Wing is very focused on the First Lady’s initiatives and works independently," Grisham said in a statement to NBC news. "However, we do collaborate on a variety of projects and work alongside many departments within the west wing. We have a very positive working relationship," she said.
The first lady also took issue with Kelly over the ousting in March of her director of operations, Justin Caporale, and of John McEntee, the president’s personal aide who had become close with the Trump family since working for him during the 2016 campaign, people familiar with the matter said.
The first lady liked and trusted both of them, according to current and former White House officials, and viewed forcing them out "as personal affronts."
Some people close to the president believe Kelly’s handling of the East Wing at times is a significant threat to him maintaining his job.
"There’s one problem John Kelly has that’ll do him in, and that’s the first lady," one of them said.
A White House official said the first lady has not pushed for his departure, noting that she likes Kelly personally and gets along with him. But tensions with her office, on top of his intensifying power struggle with Bolton, have reignited speculation that Trump will replace him before the end of the year.
Last month, Kelly got into a heated argument with Bolton on immigration, ultimately storming out of the White House on Oct. 18, NBC News reported last month after learning that Bolton had criticized Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen as doing a terrible job on border security, an issue of top concern to the president.
Nielsen is a close Kelly confidante, and Kelly viewed Bolton’s move as the latest example of the national security adviser circumventing his authority as chief of staff. Trump has been unhappy with Nielsen for months and she has not denied reports that the president has yelled at her in private settings. The Washington Post reported Tuesday that she may also be asked to depart the administration soon.
Kelly and Bolton also have clashed over Ricardel, the deputy national security adviser, four people familiar with the issue said. Bolton recently learned that Kelly has quietly mounted an effort to oust Ricardel, these people said, and was furious.
Ricardel was among Bolton’s first hires when he became national security adviser in March. She previously worked for him during the administration of former president George W. Bush.
But at the NSC, Ricardel has gotten into several disputes with the East Wing, also over the First Lady’s trip to Africa in October. One White House official said that in that instance, Kelly intervened on behalf of the East Wing to smooth over the issues.
Some current and former White House officials and other people close to the president said it’s the accumulation of incidents in recent months, on top of Kelly’s tensions with first daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner, that has led to a desire by the president to seek out a new chief of staff.
Kelly is Trump’s second chief of staff, having replaced Reince Priebus just seven months into the presidency. Kelly left his position as Secretary for Homeland Security in August, 2017 and joined the White House to bring structure to a freewheeling West Wing. He curtailed access to the president and he cut back on the number of staff allowed in meetings. The efforts quickly won him enemies among the president’s confidants.
John Kelly speaks to President Donald Trump as he departs the Oval Office on July 18, 2018.Tasos Katopodis / AFP - Getty Images
A retired Marine general, Kelly maintained his job despite a steady flow of reports that he’s lost the confidence of much of the White House staff and has disparaged the president behind his back, NBC has reported.
As conflicts have arisen, Trump has for months mused on and off about possible replacements for Kelly and vented his frustrations with his handling of the job. The president also arranged for some of his new hires this past spring, including Bolton, to report directly to him rather than his chief of staff.
The White House has tried to quell speculation about Kelly’s exit, even issuing a statement in July that he would remain in the job through 2020. But few expressed confidence that would be the case.
Ayers, who has worked to develop a relationship with Trump as the vice president’s chief of staff, is not the only candidate under consideration in what the three people familiar with the outreach describe as active discussions in the White House about replacing Kelly, possibly by the end of the year. The vice president’s office had no comment on the possibility of the appointment. One White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity said "personnel decisions don’t mean anything until formally announced by the," president. "Regardless, Nick and those close to him have never lobbied for this."
Melania Trump has kept a low profile as first lady and has surrounded herself with a smaller group of aides compared to her predecessors. In a rare, wide-ranging interview with ABC News during her Africa trip, she signaled, however, that she doesn’t hold back in private about her views on her husband’s aides.
There currently are members of her husband’s staff she does not trust, she said, which makes it "harder to govern."
"You always need to watch your back," she said.
Mueller is on some ego sh!t, taking down a president would be the icing on his resume
AZBeauty
Stop lyin' nicca.
I just read on twitter that media it setting up outside the court house. It auto refreshed and now I cant find the tweet.
MVike28
right around the ACC
GnauzBookOfRhymes
Superstar
i bet kelly is fukking the chick from DHS.
FYI, Stephen Roh, Mifsud's lawyer, is connected with Russian intelligence...
The Professor At The Heart Of The Trump-Russia Probe Wants To Testify Before The Senate, Lawyer Claims
“We are working towards his appearance,” a lawyer closely associated with Joseph Mifsud wrote in an email to BuzzFeed News.
Alberto Nardelli
BuzzFeed News Europe Editor
Reporting From
London
Posted on November 13, 2018, at 12:05 p.m. ET
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Juan Manuel Herrera / OAS / Flickr / Via Flickr: oasoea
LONDON — A lawyer closely associated with Joseph Mifsud claims that the Maltese professor, who allegedly delivered word of Hillary Clinton’s stolen emails to Donald Trump's campaign, is willing to testify to the US Senate.
Mifsud disappeared after he was identified as the unnamed professor alleged by FBI investigators in court documents unsealed in October 2017 to have told Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos that the Russians had “dirt” on Clinton in the form of thousands of emails, months before the Democrats themselves were aware that their computer system had been hacked.
He has not been seen in public since November that year. His former girlfriend in Ukraine says he disappeared, prosecutors in Italy investigating a decade-old case couldn’t locate him, and US investigators have complained they weren’t able to interrogate the professor thoroughly when he was last in the US in Feb. 2017. Democratic National Committee lawyers even suggested he may be dead.
But in an email to BuzzFeed News sent on Monday, Stephan Roh, a 51-year-old Swiss lawyer with a long history of dealings with Mifsud, wrote: “Prof Mifsud is to testify in front of the US Senate — we are working towards his appearance.”
Spokespeople for the Senate intelligence committee declined to comment, and BuzzFeed News has been unable to independently verify this claim.
Asked if a date for the testimony had been set, whether Mifsud would be travelling to the US in person to testify, and if any talks with Senate officials to schedule a testimony had already taken place, Roh replied, “we will not comment or answer further questions of journalists until the Senate hearing takes place — unless necessary and in the interest of Prof. Mifsud.”
Mifsud’s interactions with Papadopoulos reportedly kickstarted the FBI investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election — and remain one of the great mysteries in special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing probe.
Should the Maltese academic suddenly reappear in public after more than a year to testify before the Senate, it could be a hugely significant moment in Mueller’s investigation.
Roh claims that Mifsud has done nothing wrong, and was set up — and denies having ever told Papadopoulos the Russians had dirt on Clinton.
Last month, Roh emailed a photograph of Mifsud purportedly taken in May this year to several news organizations, including BuzzFeed News. Despite several requests, Roh has not granted BuzzFeed News — or other outlets — permission to publish the photo, the existence of which was first reported by the Associated Press.
In the photo, the Maltese professor, sporting stubble and with his stare fixed on the camera, is pictured seated at a table with the May 17, 2018 edition of a Swiss newspaper.
According to Roh, who was interviewed by the FBI last year as part of the Trump-Russia investigation, Mifsud, 58, was in Zurich days later, instructing legal representation and to record a witness statement with Roh’s law firm. A power of attorney document dated May 21 of this year can also clearly be seen in the photograph.
Roh said that Mifsud travelled to Zurich for their meeting by train from Italy. Two sources BuzzFeed News has spoken to in recent months have also claimed the Maltese professor was in Rome this summer. However, neither source provided corroborating evidence.
During the course of several email exchanges and telephone calls with BuzzFeed News — using different numbers with dialling codes originating in the United Arab Emirates and Russia — between early October and this week, Roh shared what he claims to be Mifsud’s side of the story.
Roh claims to have spoken to Mifsud multiple times this year directly, and through an intermediary, including from mobile and landline numbers with an Italian dialling code. The Swiss lawyer also said the academic spoke to him from Malta in December last year, where he was visiting his ill parents, and has told him of trips to other European countries this year.
BuzzFeed News has not been able to independently confirm any of these movements, nor to establish Mifsud’s current whereabouts.
Yuri Gripas / Reuters
George Papadopoulos
Papadopoulos was sentenced in September this year to 14 days in prison for lying to the FBI.
Since his sentencing, Papadopoulos has repeatedly speculated on Twitter — without providing evidence — that he was targeted by British and Australian intelligence as part of a plot to sabotage the Trump campaign.
Mifsud acknowledged in the interview with the Italian newspaper in Nov. 2017 that he met Papadopoulos “three or four times,” and facilitated connections between "official and unofficial sources," but denied any wrongdoing.
Papadopoulos is reported to have later shared the information about the emails with the Australian high commissioner to the UK, whose government passed the information to US authorities after WikiLeaks began publishing the emails in July 2016. That information sparked the FBI to launch the investigation that Mueller now leads.
According to the government’s sentencing memo, published in August, Papadopoulos’s statements “substantially hindered” investigators ability to effectively question Mifsud when the FBI located him in Washington DC in Feb. 2017. “The defendant’s lies undermined investigators’ ability to challenge the Professor or potentially detain or arrest him while he was still in the United States,” the document states.
Mifsud and Roh’s careers intertwine at several junctions. Mifsud was a consultant at Roh’s law firm. The Swiss lawyer was advertized as a visiting fellow in a brochure promoting the diplomacy academy where Mifsud was a director. The two men, who have known each other for more than a decade, also co-authored a number of reports between 2015 and 2017. They spoke on the same panel at a Valdai Discussion Club in April 2016, an annual gathering of Russian and international political, media and academic elites backed by the Kremlin. And both men have long had a professional relationship with Rome’s Link Campus University where Mifsud worked since the 2000s, and Roh was an investor.
Roh declined to discuss what Mifsud would say if he does testify.
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Hood Critic
The Power Circle
GnauzBookOfRhymes
Superstar
That actually makes a lot of sense.....
no kids/family, single...either lesbian or career driven thot
and u know guys like kelly on the wrong side of middle age cant say no to a pretty chick who looks up to them...remember david petraeus...dude gave up potential to be president for some poon just bc it made him feel young
spectator.us
Mr Cohen comes to Washington | Spectator USA
Cockburn
4-5 minutes
Cockburn Donald Trump US Politics
Michael Cohen has given 80 hours of testimony to prosecutors, not 50, as hitherto reported. Clearly, Trump’s former lawyer has a lot to get off his chest
SPOTTED: Michael Cohen, on the train from Washington DC to New York city last night. President Trump’s former lawyer was returning home after a day trip to the nation’s capital. If he thought he could slip in and out un-noticed, he was mistaken. ABC News put up a brief story online, implying that he was probably there to meet Robert Mueller, the Special Counsel investigating the Trump campaign and Russia.
This was the purpose of the visit – if not Mueller, then Mueller’s staff – though he was already on his way home by the time the ABC piece ran. No one could say what, specifically, he was talking to Mueller about – however, he brought his own lawyer along for the meeting. Was this the signing of the immunity agreement that the American media have long speculated could help bring down his old boss? Cockburn can’t say, though he does know that even before Mr Cohen came to Washington, he had racked up 80 hours of discussions with various prosecutors (more than the 50 hours that has been widely reported). Clearly he has a lot to get off his chest.
So the whiff of panic comes from the President’s Android phone when he tweets about the man he once trusted (allegedly) to do his dirty work. ‘If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!’ But what – if any of these allegations are proven – did the ‘dirty work’ consist of? Cohen has already admitted to breaching campaign finance rules by paying hush money to a porn ‘actress’, Stormy Daniels, who claims she had an affair with Trump. He says he did this at the direction of the man who would shortly be elected to the Presidency.
A Wall Street Journal report on how this was done landed like a mortar bomb in the Rose Garden on Friday. The details are devastating. ‘What can you do to help my campaign’ the story has Trump asking David Pecker, publisher of the National Enquirer. Pecker was – it’s claimed – brought on board to help Cohen silence Stormy Daniels, and another woman, a former Playboy model called Karen McDougal. Trump asks Cohen: ‘So, what are we gonna pay…150?’ Cohen replies, ‘Yes’ to the payment of $150,000 to McDougal. There is, allegedly, a recording of this conversation.
There are rumors, too, of Trump mistresses paid to have abortions and kept quiet with non-disclosure agreements. One source tells Cockburn that there are eight such women. This is more than merely sad and sordid: if any such payments were made while Trump was running for President, there could be new campaign finance violations, all felony offenses. Cohen was said to have handled all this. Cohen was also a vice-president of the Trump Organization and knows about how the secretive family business was conducted. This matters because state prosecutors in New York are now said to be looking again at how condos in Trump buildings were sold – not by Trump, but by his older children, Don Junior, Eric and Ivanka.
But what Cohen has to say about Russia could matter more. Cohen and his lawyer, Lanny Davis, continue to deny – emphatically – that he ever went to Prague to meet Russian agents, as is claimed in the ‘dossier’ written by a former MI6 officer, Christopher Steele. Cohen has told people he is being ‘framed’ for Prague – the story, after all, amounts to an allegation of treason. But he has also hinted, privately, that he has other things to say about the Trump campaign’s (alleged) links to the Kremlin… conversations he witnessed, rather than things he did. People who’ve met him in recent weeks say he seems like a recovering victim of Stockholm syndrome; he was humiliated publicly by Trump for years. The man who once said he’d ‘take a bullet’ for the President now calls him a ‘son of a bytch’. He feels that Trump should leave office in disgrace and if he can help with that, why not? So, Michael Cohen, hero of the resistance? Watch this space …