Author Archives: News Sources

Sen. Jeff Sessions, defined by race and immigration, selected by Trump to become attorney general

Bannon, Flynn & Sessions — Americans are on the way to taking back our government, our nation and our children's future! #TakeItBack

— David Duke (@DrDavidDuke) November 18, 2016

The New York Times reports: President-elect Donald J. Trump has selected Senator Jeff Sessions, a conservative from Alabama who became a close adviser after endorsing him early in his campaign, to be the attorney general of the United States, according to officials close to the transition.

Mr. Sessions was also under consideration for secretary of defense, creating debate within the Trump transition team over which job he should fill.

Mr. Sessions, a former prosecutor elected to the Senate in 1996, serves on the Judiciary Committee and has opposed immigration reform as well as bipartisan proposals to cut mandatory minimum prison sentences. [Continue reading…]

In July, NPR reported: In 1981, President Reagan appointed him U.S. Attorney in Mobile. That’s when Sessions first gained national attention over the issue of race. He prosecuted three black civil rights workers for voter fraud. And Hank Sanders was one of their defense lawyers.

“They called them voter fraud cases, and we called them voter persecution cases. Not prosecution, persecution. It was all about stopping black folks from voting, in our opinion,” said Sanders, who’s also a Democratic state senator in Selma.

Sessions accused the defendants of crimes like forging signatures on absentee ballots — and in less than three hours of deliberating, the jury delivered zero convictions.

But it wasn’t a career setback for Sessions. Soon after, in 1986, President Reagan tapped him to be a federal district court judge. And the issue of race would follow Sessions again.

During the confirmation hearings, a Justice Department lawyer alleged that Sessions had called the NAACP “Communist-inspired” and “un-American.” One witness said Sessions once referred to a white civil rights lawyer as a “disgrace to his race.” And a black prosecutor who worked closely with him testified that Sessions had called him “boy.” Sessions denied all of this at the hearing.

“I am not the Jeff Sessions my detractors have tried to create. I am not a racist. I am not insensitive to blacks. I have supported civil rights activities in my state. I have done my job with integrity, equality and fairness for all,” Sessions told senators in 1986.

But a bipartisan group of 10 senators on the Judiciary Committee wasn’t convinced, and voted him down. Sessions was the first Reagan judicial nominee the Senate rejected. [Continue reading…]

Transition team says Trump’s campaign talk should not be taken literally

Following an informal meeting between President-elect Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, CNN reports: Like other Asian leaders, Abe was keen to discover how much of Trump’s campaign-trail rhetoric will become policy, in particular whether Trump will follow through on a suggestion he might withdraw US troops from the region.

A top aide to Abe, Katsuyuki Kawai, said that he’d been told by members of Trump’s transition team that Trump’s previous remarks should not be taken literally.

It’s not hard to see why Abe wanted to get first word with Trump.

The Japanese government was concerned by remarks made by Trump during his campaign about relations between the two countries. In particular, officials were rattled by Trump’s suggestions that Japan, which until last year had a pacifist constitution, should obtain nuclear weapons to protect itself from North Korea.

“Japan is better if it protects itself against this maniac of North Korea,” Trump told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in March.

At the time, Abe said that “whoever will become the next president of the United States, the Japan-US alliance is the cornerstone of Japan’s diplomacy.”

A special adviser sent in advance by Abe to meet with members of Trump’s transition team said he was told Japan shouldn’t take Trump’s campaign talk literally. [Continue reading…]

Making America white again

Toni Morrison writes: This is a serious project. All immigrants to the United States know (and knew) that if they want to become real, authentic Americans they must reduce their fealty to their native country and regard it as secondary, subordinate, in order to emphasize their whiteness. Unlike any nation in Europe, the United States holds whiteness as the unifying force. Here, for many people, the definition of “Americanness” is color.

Under slave laws, the necessity for color rankings was obvious, but in America today, post-civil-rights legislation, white people’s conviction of their natural superiority is being lost. Rapidly lost. There are “people of color” everywhere, threatening to erase this long-understood definition of America. And what then? Another black President? A predominantly black Senate? Three black Supreme Court Justices? The threat is frightening.

In order to limit the possibility of this untenable change, and restore whiteness to its former status as a marker of national identity, a number of white Americans are sacrificing themselves. They have begun to do things they clearly don’t really want to be doing, and, to do so, they are (1) abandoning their sense of human dignity and (2) risking the appearance of cowardice. Much as they may hate their behavior, and know full well how craven it is, they are willing to kill small children attending Sunday school and slaughter churchgoers who invite a white boy to pray. Embarrassing as the obvious display of cowardice must be, they are willing to set fire to churches, and to start firing in them while the members are at prayer. And, shameful as such demonstrations of weakness are, they are willing to shoot black children in the street.

To keep alive the perception of white superiority, these white Americans tuck their heads under cone-shaped hats and American flags and deny themselves the dignity of face-to-face confrontation, training their guns on the unarmed, the innocent, the scared, on subjects who are running away, exposing their unthreatening backs to bullets. Surely, shooting a fleeing man in the back hurts the presumption of white strength? The sad plight of grown white men, crouching beneath their (better) selves, to slaughter the innocent during traffic stops, to push black women’s faces into the dirt, to handcuff black children. Only the frightened would do that. Right?

These sacrifices, made by supposedly tough white men, who are prepared to abandon their humanity out of fear of black men and women, suggest the true horror of lost status.

It may be hard to feel pity for the men who are making these bizarre sacrifices in the name of white power and supremacy. Personal debasement is not easy for white people (especially for white men), but to retain the conviction of their superiority to others—especially to black people—they are willing to risk contempt, and to be reviled by the mature, the sophisticated, and the strong. If it weren’t so ignorant and pitiful, one could mourn this collapse of dignity in service to an evil cause. [Continue reading…]

Trump’s new world order

Politico reports: It’s been only nine days since Donald Trump won the presidential election, but much of the world is acting like he’s already in charge.

Russia is doubling down on its military offensives in Syria, where dictator Bashar Assad says Trump could be a “natural ally.” Mexico has unveiled an 11-point plan to protect its citizens in the United States. China is touting a new trade bloc in which it will dominate instead of the United States. And the Islamic State terrorist group is stepping up recruiting of jihadists eager to defy a U.S. president-elect whom one fighter described as a “complete maniac.”

As the world moves faster, it may seem normal that foreign interests are willing to look past Barack Obama, the sitting president, and adjust to deal with what they believe his successor will do. And, historically speaking, the transition period has often been a time of tumult in world, as well as domestic, affairs. It was in the presidential transition period between 1860 and 1861 that the U.S. unraveled into the Union and the Confederacy, so-called “Secession Winter.”

But Trump’s looming ascension to the White House is unusually unsettling for the rest of the world for two main reasons: the Republican real estate mogul appears ready to take American foreign policy in a radically different direction than even many in his own party want; and yet he’s so inconsistent that no one really knows what he’ll actually do. [Continue reading…]

Days before election, U.S. used secret hotline to ask Russia to halt cyber interventions

David Ignatius writes: The White House sent a secret “hotline”-style message to Russia on Oct. 31 to warn against any further cyber-meddling in the U.S. election process. Russia didn’t escalate its tactics as Election Day approached, but U.S. officials aren’t ready to say deterrence worked.

The previously undisclosed message was part of the high-stakes game of cyber-brinkmanship that has been going on this year between Moscow and Washington. How to stabilize this relationship without appearing to capitulate to Russian pressure tactics is among the biggest challenges facing President-elect Donald Trump.

The message was sent on a special channel created in 2013 as part of the Nuclear Risk Reduction Center, using a template designed for crisis communication. “It was a very clear statement to the Russians and asked them to stop their activity,” a senior administration official said, adding: “The fact that we used this channel was part of the messaging.”

According to several other high-level sources, President Obama also personally contacted Russian President Vladimir Putin last month to caution him about the disruptive cyberattacks. The senior administration official wouldn’t comment on these reports.

The private warnings followed a public statement Oct. 7 by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson charging that “Russia’s senior-most officials” had authorized cyberattacks that were “intended to interfere with the U.S. election process.” [Continue reading…]

Ukrainians worry they’re the big losers in the U.S. election

The Washington Post reports: Vitaly Sych, the editor of the Ukrainian weekly Novoye Vremya, had readied a profile for only one candidate, Hillary Clinton, to run once the results came in after what he called “the most closely watched U.S. election by Ukrainians” of all time.

Then came the bombshell that echoed all the way from the Potomac to the Dnieper.

“AMERICA PLAYS THE FOOL” was the headline looming above a portrait of Donald Trump the next day. (Sych’s colleagues talked him down from his first choice: “A boor, an ignoramus, and a racist: Meet the new president of the United States.”)

“The major emotion here is anxiety and concern because he really said all those things, so he must believe some of them,” Sych said. [Continue reading…]

Russia withdraws signature from international criminal court statute

The Guardian reports: Russia has said it is formally withdrawing its signature from the founding statute of the international criminal court, a day after the court published a report classifying the Russian annexation of Crimea as an occupation.

The repudiation of the tribunal, though symbolic, is a fresh blow to efforts to establish a global legal order for pursuing genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In recent months, three African countries who were all full members of the ICC – South Africa, Burundi and Gambia – have signalled their intention to pull out, following complaints that ICC prosecutions focused excessively on the African continent.

The Russian foreign ministry made the announcement on Wednesday on the orders of the president, Vladimir Putin, saying the tribunal had failed to live up to hopes of the international community and denouncing its work as “one-sided and inefficient”.

Russia signed the Rome statute in 2000 and cooperated with the court, but had not ratified the treaty and thus remained outside the ICC’s jurisdiction. This means that the latest move, though highly symbolic, will not change much in practice. [Continue reading…]

The way to stop President Trump

David Cole writes: The stunning upset election of Donald Trump has left many Americans wondering what has become of their country, their party, their government, even their sense of the world. Purple prose has been unleashed on the problem; comparisons to fascism and totalitarianism abound. Commentators claim that Trump’s election reflects a racist, sexist, xenophobic America. But we should resist the temptation to draw broad-brush generalizations about American character from last Tuesday’s outcome. The result was far more equivocal than that; a majority of the voters rejected Trump, after all. There is no question that President Trump will be a disaster — if we let him. But the more important point is that — as the fate of American democracy in the years after 9/11 has taught us — we can and must stop him.

The risks are almost certainly greater than those posed by any prior American president. Trump, who has no government experience, a notoriously unreliable temperament, and a record of demagoguery and lies, will come to office with Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, and, once he fills the late Antonin Scalia’s seat, on the Supreme Court as well. His shortlist of Cabinet appointees offers little hope that voices of moderation will be heard. Who, then, is going to stop him? Will he be able to put in place all the worst ideas he tossed out so cavalierly on the campaign trail? Building a wall; banning and deporting Muslims; ending Obamacare; reneging on climate change treaty responsibilities; expanding libel law; criminalizing abortion; jailing his political opponents; supporting aggressive stop-and-frisk policing; reviving mass surveillance and torture?

Whether Trump will actually try to implement these promises, and more importantly, whether he will succeed if he does try, lies as much in our hands as in his. If Americans let him, Trump may well do all that he promised — and more. Imagine, for example, what a Trump administration might do if there is another serious terrorist attack on US soil. What little he has said about national security suggests that he will make us nostalgic for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

We let a minority of voters give Trump the presidency by not turning out to vote for Clinton. (Trump didn’t even get as many votes as McCain and Romney, but Clinton received nearly five million fewer votes that Obama in 2012). But if we now and for the next four years insist that he honor our most fundamental constitutional values, including equality, human dignity, fair process, privacy, and the rule of law, and if we organize and advocate in defense of those principles, he can and will be contained. It won’t happen overnight. There will be many protracted struggles. The important thing to bear in mind is that if we fight, we can prevail. [Continue reading…]

Trump’s Muslim registry would not be illegal, constitutional law experts say

Politico reports: The day after Donald Trump won the White House last week, the American Civil Liberties Union wrote on Twitter that if the president-elect attempts “to implement his unconstitutional campaign promises, we’ll see him in court.”

But when it comes to the immigrant registration program that would target Muslims entering the United States — outlined Wednesday by an adviser to Trump’s transition team — three constitutional lawyers say the ACLU won’t have much of a shot before a judge.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, known for his hard-line stance on immigration, told Reuters in a story published Wednesday that he has been in regular contact with Trump’s immigration advisers and that the president-elect’s team is considering a system modeled after a controversial one implemented in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It fulfills Trump’s promise of “extreme vetting” for immigrants from countries affected by terrorism, a threshold he has yet to flesh out more fully.

That program, labeled the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, required those entering the U.S. from a list of certain countries — all but one predominantly Muslim — to register when they arrived in the U.S., undergo more thorough interrogation and be fingerprinted. The system, referred to by the acronym NSEERS, was criticized by civil rights groups for targeting a religious group and was phased out in 2011 because it was found to be redundant with other immigration systems.

Robert McCaw, director of government affairs for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said a reinstitution of NSEERS would be akin to “just turning back the clock.” CAIR will lobby heavily against the system as not only discriminatory but also ineffective, McCaw said, if it ends up being proposed by the Trump administration.

He also accused Kobach, an architect of the original NSEERS program when he was with the Justice Department under the George W. Bush administration, of having “a long ax to grind with the Muslim community.”

“NSEERS and registries like it are totally ineffective and burdensome and they’re perceived by Muslims and other minorities as just being a massive profiling campaign that, in the past, targeted Muslim travelers solely based on their religion and ethnicity,” he said. “When every country on that list happens to be a majority-Muslim country, it is religious profiling. Because there are threats from other nations and other communities and groups that don’t make it on NSEERS.”

But a program like NSEERS would likely pass constitutional muster before a judge, multiple experts said, in part because it already has. The system was never struck down by a court in the nearly nine years it was in place. [Continue reading…]

Trump could face a nuclear decision soon

Bruce Blair writes: I was the former nuclear missile launch officer who in October appeared in a TV advertisement for Hillary Clinton, saying: “The thought of Donald Trump with nuclear weapons scares me to death. It should scare everyone.” The ad featured various quotes from Trump’s campaign rallies and interviews, in which he says, among other things: “I would bomb the shit out of ’em,” “I wanna be unpredictable,” and “I love war.” As I walked through a nuclear missile launch center in the ad, I explained that “self-control may be all that keeps these missiles from firing.”

We will see all of our fears—and the new president-elect’s self-control—put to the test over the next four years. When Trump takes the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2017, there will be no shortage of combustible tensions around the globe. And Trump will need to make some critical decisions quickly — including whether he truly wants, as he suggested during the campaign, a world in which there are even more nuclear powers than we have today.

These tensions are present even now and show no signs of easing. For starters, U.S.-led NATO and Russian military forces are shadow boxing with increasing intensity. The mutual intimidation is steadily escalating, and Trump’s soft commitment to NATO’s defense has not helped. Rather than assuaging the Russians, it has only stoked insecurity in Europe and perhaps tempted Russia to intervene in the Baltic states. In other words, appeasement only makes matters more unstable.

In East Asia, meanwhile, a mercurial and belligerent leader of North Korea will soon be able to brandish nuclear-armed missiles to credibly threaten South Korea, Japan and the U.S. homeland with nuclear devastation. The timeline for this threat to materialize is very short — months or a low number of years. (Trump himself mentioned the threat in his “60 Minutes” interview on Sunday.) Kim Jong Un’s provocations combined with Trump’s soft-pedaling of the U.S. defense commitment in Asia have put the entire region on edge and provoked South Korea to consider acquiring a nuclear arsenal in self defense.

There are other crises brewing as well, including in the South China Sea and the Middle East. As China lays claim to nearly all of this sea in part to create safe bastions for its new fleet of ballistic missile submarines, the U.S. has intensified its air, sea, and undersea surveillance and anti-submarine warfare operations, increasing the chances of hostile encounters. In the Middle East, U.S. and Russian forces are operating in very close and not-so-friendly quarters in the Syrian theater, and the specter of a region going nuclear looms larger than ever as Trump warns he will tear up and re-negotiate the hard-won Iranian nuclear deal. This ill-advised move would set Iran free to resume its nuclear program, while spurring Iran’s enemies to follow suit, as well as re-opening the debate over U.S.-Israeli pre-emptive strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities. [Continue reading…]

Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, could get key White House role

The Wall Street Journal reports: Donald Trump’s son-in-law, who became a close adviser in the presidential campaign, is likely to take a top White House job, people familiar with the presidential transition say.

Jared Kushner, who has emerged as a lightning rod as departures have mounted in recent days from the team vetting possible appointees, is being pushed to join the president’s inner circle by new White House chief of staff Reince Priebus and presidential counselor Stephen Bannon, these people say.

Mr. Kushner is regarded as Mr. Trump’s eyes and ears inside the evolving presidential transition. He is weighing formally joining his father-in-law in the White House, people familiar with the transition say. The 35-year-old Mr. Kushner would have a role in the White House along the lines of senior adviser or special counsel.

He also is weighing the option of maintaining an influential role informally, without an official White House post, according to people familiar with his thinking. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: After days of reports that President-elect Donald J. Trump had requested a top-secret security clearance for his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, people close to Mr. Kushner said that was not the case. No such request has been made, they said on Wednesday, and he will not sit in on the president’s highly classified daily intelligence briefing.

But should Mr. Trump change his mind, former government officials and experts on classified information said he would have wide latitude as president to bring a family member into the most secret circles of the government.

“The president can authorize clearance for anyone he wants,” said Steven Aftergood, director of the project on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. “It’s part of his commander-in-chief role. He has broad, essentially unlimited, access in this area.”

Like anyone else, Mr. Kushner would be subject to a background check by the F.B.I. But the president’s authority is so broad, Mr. Aftergood said, that he could override red flags — like fraud, huge personal debt or ties to foreign governments — that would disqualify other applicants.

Mr. Trump said in a Twitter post on Wednesday that he was not seeking security clearances for his children, who he has said will run his businesses while he is in the White House. But he did not address the case of Mr. Kushner, who is married to Mr. Trump’s elder daughter, Ivanka. [Continue reading…]

The United States is giving Putin the green light for atrocities in Aleppo

In an editorial, the Washington Post says: On Monday, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump spoke by phone about Syria and agreed on “the need to work together in the struggle against the No. 1 common enemy — international terrorism and extremism,” according to a Kremlin statement. Hours later, Russia and its Syrian allies launched a massive new bombing campaign against eastern Aleppo and other rebel-held territories. Just a coincidence? Not likely, given what we know about Mr. Putin.

There are no Islamic State forces in Aleppo, though Mr. Trump does not appear to be aware of that fact. There are an estimated 250,000 civilians who, according to the United Nations, received the last available food rations last week. There are also rebel forces that until now have been trained and supplied by the United States and its allies, as well as groups linked to al-Qaeda. Surrounded by Syrian, Iranian and Shiite militia forces since July, all face the same brutal ultimatum President Bashar al-Assad has delivered to other rebel-held areas: Surrender, or die through bombing or starvation.

Mr. Putin’s evident aim is to support the Assad regime in a campaign to overrun the city, and perhaps other rebel-held areas, during the 2½ months of the U.S. presidential transition. If so, the result will likely be the worst humanitarian catastrophe yet in a war that has already seen more than 400,000 people killed by bombing, chemical weapons, torture and other depravities. Yet neither the outgoing nor the incoming U.S. president appears willing to do anything to prevent this calamity.

President Obama was asked about Aleppo at his news conference Monday by a journalist who pointed out that the United States had intervened to prevent a similar assault on the Libyan city of Benghazi. “We don’t have that option easily available to us,” said Mr. Obama, who recently set aside several such options, such as grounding the Syrian air force. He added that the administration would continue to press for “humanitarian safe spaces and cease-fires” before conceding, “I recognize that that has not worked.” While the honesty was welcome, Mr. Obama’s apparent willingness to watch fecklessly as hundreds of thousands of people are starved and bombed during his final weeks in office is morally abject. It will deepen the ineradicable stain Syria will leave on his legacy.

Mr. Trump, for his part, has all but given Mr. Putin the green light for atrocities. While we don’t know the specifics of what was said in his conversation with the Russian ruler, the president-elect in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Friday repeated that “Syria is fighting ISIS and you have to get rid of ISIS. Russia is now totally aligned with Syria.”

Again, the Syrian regime is not fighting the Islamic State in Aleppo. It is bombing and besieging its own citizens, with Russian and Iranian help. In refusing to allow aid deliveries and in targeting hospitals, it is willfully committing crimes against humanity. “I don’t think anybody wants a quarter of a million people to be starving in east Aleppo,” said Jan Egeland, the head of a U.N.-backed humanitarian task force. Tragically, he is wrong. The Assad regime and Mr. Putin want it. Mr. Obama is unwilling to prevent it. And Mr. Trump is, at best, indifferent. [Continue reading…]

The Associated Press reports: In an interview broadcast Tuesday with Portugal’s state-run RTP television, Assad accused armed groups he called “terrorists” of occupying eastern Aleppo and refusing government offers to evacuate. He said his mission was to liberate civilians.

Assad also identified president-elect Trump as a possible “natural ally,” if he turned out to be “genuine” about his commitment to fight terror in Syria. Trump has indicated he would prioritize defeating the Islamic State group in Syria over regime change, saying the rebels could be “worse” than the sitting president. [Continue reading…]

Lindsey Graham calls for Senate investigation into whether Russia hacked DNC

Huffington Post reports: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Tuesday said he wants Senate hearings to investigate whether Russian President Vladimir Putin interfered in the U.S. election, casting doubts on President-elect Donald Trump’s desire to improve relations with Russia.

“Assuming for a moment that we do believe that the Russian government was controlling outside organizations that hacked into our election, they should be punished,” Graham told reporters on Capitol Hill. “Putin should be punished.”

U.S. officials have said the Kremlin was responsible for hacking into Democratic National Committee computers over the summer and releasing information that damaged Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Graham, who was defeated by Trump during the primary, urged fellow Republicans to not “let allegations against a foreign government interfering in our election process go unanswered because it may have been beneficial to our cause.”

He said congressional hearings would include “Russia’s misadventure throughout the world,” including its military aggression in Eastern Europe and whether it committed war crimes in Syria.

Trump has repeatedly expressed a desire to cozy up to Russia. During the campaign, he called for closer relations with Russia in fighting the Islamic State and praised Putin for being a “stronger leader” than President Barack Obama. [Continue reading…]

How Donald Trump will make Russia great again in the Middle East

David Gardner writes: Mr Trump will get along just fine with local strongmen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the Egyptian army chief who took power in 2013 in what was initially a popularly backed coup, was among the first to congratulate him. The president-elect has argued against too much criticism of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the purges that followed this July’s failed coup in Turkey. The construction tycoon, in any case, makes them look moderate since neither leader publicly endorses torture or killing the families of terror suspects.

In broad terms, a Trump administration will almost certainly de-emphasise human rights, gender equality and the rule of law. Man-made climate change afflicts the ancient fertile crescent but, unlike Mr Trump, its inhabitants probably doubt it is “a hoax” (drought and desertification were factors behind the initial uprising in Syria).

The fixation of Barack Obama’s administration is the defeat of Isis in Syria and Iraq. That will remain true under a Trump administration, but with a difference. President Obama lost interest in helping Sunni rebels topple Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Mr Trump seems inclined towards co-operating with President Vladimir Putin, Mr Assad’s patron and another strongman soulmate, in ways that will do more to make Russia than America great again. [Continue reading…]

Rudy Giuliani’s links to a formerly designated terrorist organization

The Wall Street Journal reports on Rudy Giuliani’s possible nomination as Secretary of State: Beyond the Iraq war [which he supported], Mr. Giuliani is also drawing scrutiny for his regular appearances at events supporting an Iranian opposition group, called the Mujahedin-e Khalq, which the State Department designated as a terrorist organization from 1997 through 2012.

Last year, Mr. Giuliani addressed MEK leaders in Paris and called for the overthrow of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his clerical regime. “The Ayatollah must go! Gone! Out! No more!” Mr. Giuliani told a crowd of thousands. “He and Rouhani and Ahmadinejad and all of the rest of them should be put on trial for crimes against humanity.”

The MEK paid Mr. Giuliani and other former U.S. officials to speak at its events, according to group leaders and U.S. officials who investigated the matter. Speaking fees ranged from $25,000 to $40,000 per appearance.

A broad mix of senior Republicans and Democrats has appeared at MEK events, including James Jones, President Barack Obama’s former national security advisor; Howard Dean, a one-time head of the Democratic National Committee who is now seeking that post again; and Mr. Bolton.

The Treasury Department launched a probe into the legality of former officials being paid by the MEK or its affiliates while it was still on the State Department’s terror list, U.S. officials have said. Treasury officials declined to comment on the status of that probe, including whether it has been closed. [Continue reading…]

War in Context

… with attention to the unseen

Author Archives: News Sources

Sen. Jeff Sessions, defined by race and immigration, selected by Trump to become attorney general

Transition team says Trump’s campaign talk should not be taken literally

Making America white again

Trump’s new world order

Days before election, U.S. used secret hotline to ask Russia to halt cyber interventions

Ukrainians worry they’re the big losers in the U.S. election

Russia withdraws signature from international criminal court statute

The way to stop President Trump

Trump’s Muslim registry would not be illegal, constitutional law experts say

Trump could face a nuclear decision soon

Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, could get key White House role

The United States is giving Putin the green light for atrocities in Aleppo

Lindsey Graham calls for Senate investigation into whether Russia hacked DNC

How Donald Trump will make Russia great again in the Middle East

Rudy Giuliani’s links to a formerly designated terrorist organization