Mediaboss Marketing

Photograph Source: United States Attorneys Office, District of Connecticut Public Domain

For months, the names of Michael Horowitz and John Durham have figured in the pounding rhythms of right-wing media in which a heroically afflicted president faces down his perfidious enemies. A steady drumbeat of reports from Fox News, echoed by President Trump and Republican loyalists in Congress, proclaimed these two obscure Justice Department officials would get to the bottom of an alleged conspiracy against the Trump presidency.

They would, in Trumps words, investigate the investigators. It was oh so promising.

I will tell you this, Trump blustered on October 25, I think youre going to see a lot of really bad things, he said. I leave it all up to the attorney general and I leave it all up to the people working with the attorney general who I dont know. I think you will see things that nobody will ever believe.

Horowitz, as the DOJ Inspector General, had the narrower assignment. He was tasked with investigating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants issued to intercept the communications of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Horowitz had to answer the question, Was Page targeted for political reasons, perhaps based on the famous Steele Dossier?

Durham, a senior U.S Attorney in Connecticut, has a broader brief: to review the FBIs decision to open an investigation of the Trump campaigns contacts with Russians in 2015. Durham was selected for the job by Barr.

For those inclined to believe Fox News and the president, the deep state cabal that allegedly targeted Trump was running scared. In early October, Fox News reported that Barr and Durham traveled to Italy recently to talk to law enforcement officials there about the probe and have also had conversations with officials in the U.K. and Australia about the investigation.

From this report the Daily Caller imaginatively extrapolated that Durhams probe had expanded to include looking at the activities of foreign intelligence agencies. One British official told The Independent that Barr and his minions asked, in quite robust terms, for help in doing a hatchet job on their own intelligence services.

On October 22, the Washington Examiner said Durham was scrutinizing four key characters: The Spectator, a right-wing British magazine, claimed former CIA director John Brennan is in Durhams cross hairs.

And so on.

Things that nobody will ever believe.

Trumps words, ironically, are sort of coming true. Horowitz, it is now reliably reported, found that the Trump/Fox News talking points about a deep state conspiracy against Trump are, in fact, things that nobody will ever believe..

Horowitzs report, says USA Today is expected to conclude the FBI was justified in launching its two-year inquiry into the Trump campaign and possible ties to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The Washington Post reports that Durham has already disappointed Trump. In the course of Horowitzs investigation, Durham declined to endorse one key Republican talking point: that one witness, Joseph Mifsud, was actually a CIA or FBI agent deployed to undermine and defeat Trumps presidential bid.

Durham, according to the Post, has said he could not offer evidence to the Justice Departments inspector general to support the suspicions of some conservatives that the case was a setup by American intelligence. (The Post describes its source as people familiar with the matter.)

Horowitzs Letter

Those pundits expected Horowitz to side with the president could be detained by mere facts, no matter how public. Remember a couple of hundred news cycles agomid-Octoberwhen right-wing media was filibustering about the identity of the CIA whistleblower who first brought Trumps Ukraine pressure campaign to light?

At the time, Horowitz was engaged in a more substantive matter. As Inspector General, Horowitz played a leading role in an extraordinary letter, signed by 70 inspector generals, about the Justice Departments handling the whistleblowers allegation. Although the letter never mentioned the Attorney Generals name, its message was a broad rebuke of Barr.

The legal question was far too intricate to generate pleasurable repartee on Twitter. The whistleblower complained in August to the Inspector General in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The DNI is legally bound to pass to Congress only whistleblower complaints of urgent concern. Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, passed the buck and asked the Office of Legal Counsel for guidance. In a secret memo, dated September 2, the OLC decided the whistleblowers complaint was not an urgent matter that had to be passed to Congress.

The OLC, beholden to Barr, took the position that there was no need to tell Congress of the possibility that Trump was withholding congressionally appropriated funds from the beleaguered Ukraine armed forces in order to force the Ukraine president to investigate Joe Bidens son. The legal logic was fallacious and tortured.

Horowitzs name topped the list of 70 inspectors general who declared:

the OLC opinion [written at Barrs behest] could seriously impair whistleblowing and deter individuals in the intelligence community and throughout the government from reporting government waste, fraud, abuse, and misconduct.

Of course, the letter was a dud on social media, cable TV, and Fox News. Who cares what a bunch of bureaucrats in Washington think? Horowitz, the hoped-for savior of Trump, had rebuked his boss, along with six dozen other senior civil servants in public. His real-world actions were ignored by conservative news outlets hyping imaginative reporst on his investigation

The Question

Will John Durham follow Barrs lead? Or Horowitzs?

The modus operandi of this administration is that when they cannot dismiss somebody elses fact-based conclusions, they create a parallel narrative, Joel Brenner, a former inspector general at the National Security Agency in the George W. Bush administration told USA Today.

What kind of narrative will Durham write?

One clue can be heard in the The Report, the Adam Driver star turn about the Senate Intelligence Committees 2014 report on torture. The name Durham is heard exactly once in the movie. And yes, it is a reference to the same John Durham.

Durham is a career Justice Department prosecutor in Connecticut. In 2009 Attorney General Eric Holder assigned him to investigate the CIAs torture program. It was a delicate assignment. On the one side, he had to poke into the dirty business of an $15 billion a year agency that believed it had legal and presidential sanction for enhanced interrogation techniques. On the other side, he was working for a popular new President who said the program was abhorrent and a host of lawyers who said it might well be criminal.

Durham, in short, walked into a legal and political minefield. Two years later, he emerged unscathed with a supple, if not evasive, reading of the law. His investigation exonerated the CIA on 99 out of 101 incidents of torture.

Whatever you make of Durhams report legally and morally, it was politically adroit. The report pleased Obama and Holder who dodged the need to take on the barons of the national security agencies. His report pleased the CIA, which dodge the bullet of indictments of senior officials who had approved the torture regime, including John Brennan. As a narrative, Durhams torture report shows that he implicitly shares the world view of Brennan and other senior national security managers.

Hes also a career prosecutor sure to consider all the facts brought to his attention.

Trump was enraged and threatened by national security leaks, even before he took office. Did Brennan et al commit any technical violations of the Espionage Act in talking to reporters about the president elects Russian contacts? Quite possibly. Would John Durham go out on legal limb to prosecute former top U.S. officials on behalf of Barr and Trump, who will be gone from Washington in five years at the maximum? That seems highly unlikely.

As Trump sails into the high seas of a Senate impeachment trial, Durham s report on the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation is not likely to be a lifeline.

Originally posted here:
Trump's Hand-Picked Prosecutor John Durham Cleared the CIA Once, Will He Again? - CounterPunch

Billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg plans a $100 million online advertising campaign to target low income and minority voters in several general election swing states.

Some analysts argue his plans may have the opposite effect intended.

Bloomberg has switched party affiliation several times in his career. Before 2001, he was a registered Democrat. From 2001-2007, he was a Republican while mayor of New York City. From 2007 to 2018, he was an Independent. He then switched back to being a Democrat in 2018.

Bloomberg announced his bid for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president while pouring $3 million into a television ad campaign targeting key markets in Texas, according to Advertising Analytics, a Virginia-based company that tracks ad buys.

Bloomberg also promised to make Arizona part of his bid. Both states are led by Republican governors who were newly elected as chair and co-chair of the Republican Governors Association.

The 60-second ads ran for one week ending Dec. 2 in the Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, El Paso, Harlingen-Weslaco, Houston and San Antonio markets.

Texas is one of 32 states in which Bloomberg is spending a total of $35 million on airtimethe largest one-week television ad buy in political history, according to Advertising Analytics.

According to CNN, Bloomberg has already spent $1 million worth of ads in Illinois, North Carolina, Ohio and Washington, and nearly $1 million in Michigan alone. Bloombergs top five markets for spending on television ads are Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami and New York.

Of the 2019 Democratic presidential nominees, none have run broadcast television ads in Texas.

When non-Texan outsiders have announced their plans to target Texas politically, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has warned them not to mess with Texas.

Pointing to a story published by The Wall Street Journal, Abbott tweeted, This story explains how Eric Holder, Barack Obama, George Soros & others spent $50 million to win Virginia legislative seats to control the redistricting process. Now they target a Texas takeover. Well remind Eric Holder not to mess with Texas.

Bloombergs voter registration drive, according to TIME, will begin early next year initially in Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin.

The Republican Party of Texas hired political consultant Karl Rove to run its voter registration and identification program in the state, according to Texas Scorecard.

Policy and communications consultant Paul Bledsoe says Bloombergs efforts could help reelect President Trump.

Bloombergs campaign risks further dividing Democrats over issues of extreme wealth and economic fairness, Bledsoe writes for The Hill.

Outside of buying votes with TV ads, its unclear what cohort of democratic primary voters he and his campaign think he can win, Bledsoe added. None of the major groups progressives, women, blacks, Hispanics, the young, and working-class voters seem to have any strong reason to support him.

Bloomberg initiated several tax hikes as New York City mayor, including initially on the Big Gulp, which he then sought to ban. His reasoning, pointing to health department data, was that increasing sugar intake contributes to obesity and diabetes, which creates a greater burden for the taxpayer and increases healthcare costs for low-income residents. By banning large fountain drinks at fast food restaurants, which primarily service lower income patrons according to Bloomberg's reasoning, he sought to decrease patrons' sugar intake as welll as overall healthcare costs.

The state appeals court disagreed. It ruled that Bloombergs effort to ban the Big Gulp and 16. oz sodas was unconstitutional, and violated the state principle of separation of powers.

Bloomberg explained part of his taxation policy at a Spring 2018 IMF meeting in Washington, D.C., arguing that increasing taxes on the poor will help them live longer. He told Christine Lagarde, then-managing director of the IMF, Some people say, Well, taxes are regressive. But in this case, yes they are. Thats the good thing about them because the problem is in people that dont have a lot of money. And so, higher taxes should have a bigger impact on their behavior and how they deal with themselves.

So, I listen to people saying, Oh, we dont want to tax the poor. Well, we want the poor to live longer so that they can get an education and enjoy life. And thats why you do want to do exactly what a lot of people say you dont want to do.

Read the original here:
Billionaire Bloombergs multimillion dollar plan to 'mess with Texas,' other states - The Center Square

For months, the names of Michael Horowitz and John Durham have figured in the pounding rhythms of right-wing media in which a heroically afflicted president faces down his perfidious enemies. A steady drumbeat of reports from Fox News, echoed by President Trump and Republican loyalists in Congress, proclaimed these two obscure Justice Department officials would get to the bottom of an alleged conspiracy against the Trump presidency.

They would, in Trumps words, investigate the investigators. It was oh so promising.

I will tell you this, Trump blustered on October 25. I think youre going to see a lot of really bad things, he said. I leave it all up to the attorney general and I leave it all up to the people that are working with the attorney general who I dont know. I think youll see things that nobody wouldve believed.

Horowitz, as the DOJ inspector general, had the narrower assignment. He was tasked with investigating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants issued to intercept the communications of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Horowitz had to answer the question: Was Page targeted for political reasons, perhaps based on the famous Steele Dossier?

Durham, a senior U.S. attorney in Connecticut, has a broader brief: to review the FBIs decision to open an investigation of the Trump campaigns contacts with Russians in 2015. Durham was selected for the job by Barr.

For those inclined to believe Fox News and the president, the deep state cabal that allegedly targeted Trump was running scared. In early October, Fox News reported that Barr and Durham traveled to Italy recently to talk to law enforcement officials there about the probe and have also had conversations with officials in the U.K. and Australia about the investigation. From this report, the Daily Caller imaginatively extrapolated that Durhams probe had expanded to include looking at the activities of foreign intelligence agencies. (One British official told the Independent that Barr and his minions asked, in quite robust terms, for help in doing a hatchet job on their own intelligence services.) On October 22, the Washington Examiner said Durham was scrutinizing four key figures; the Spectator, a right-wing British magazine, claimed former CIA director John Brennan was in Durhams crosshairs.

And so on.

"Things that nobody wouldve believed"

Trumps words, ironically, are coming true. Horowitz, it is now reliably reported, found that the Trump/Fox News talking points about a deep state conspiracy against Trump are, in fact, things that nobody wouldve believed.

Horowitzs report, says USA Today, is expected to conclude the FBI was justified in launching its two-year inquiry into the Trump campaign and possible ties to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The Washington Post reports that Durham has already disappointed Trump. In the course of Horowitzs investigation, Durham declined to endorse one key Republican talking point: that one witness, Joseph Mifsud, was actually a CIA or FBI agent deployed to undermine and defeat Trumps presidential bid.

Durham, according to the Post, has said he could not offer evidence to the Justice Departments inspector general to support the suspicions of some conservatives that the case was a setup by American intelligence. (The Post describes its source as people familiar with the matter.)

Horowitzs Letter

Those pundits expected Horowitz to side with the president could be detained by mere facts, no matter how public. Remember a couple of hundred news cycles ago mid-October when right-wing media was filibustering about the identity of the CIA whistleblower who first brought Trumps Ukraine pressure campaign to light?

At the time, Horowitz was engaged in a more substantive matter. As inspector general, Horowitz played a leading role in an extraordinary letter, signed by about 70 inspector generals, about the Justice Departments handling of the whistleblowers allegation. Although the letter never mentioned the attorney generals name, its message was a broad rebuke of Barr.

The legal question was far too intricate to generate pleasurable repartee on Twitter. The whistleblower complained in August to the inspector general in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The DNI is legally bound to pass to Congress only whistleblower complaints of urgent concern. Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, passed the buck and asked the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) for guidance. In a secret memo, dated September 3, the OLC decided the whistleblowers complaint was not an urgent matter that had to be passed to Congress.

The OLC, beholden to Barr, took the position that there was no need to tell Congress of the possibility that Trump was withholding congressionally appropriated funds from the beleaguered Ukraine armed forces in order to force the Ukraine president to investigate Joe Bidens son. The legal logic was fallacious and tortured.

Horowitzs name topped the list of roughly 70 inspectors general who declared:

the OLC opinion [written at Barrs behest] could seriously impair whistleblowing and deter individuals in the intelligence community and throughout the government from reporting government waste, fraud, abuse, and misconduct.

Of course, the letter was a dud on social media, cable TV, and Fox News. Who cares what a bunch of bureaucrats in Washington think? Horowitz, the hoped-for savior of Trump, had rebuked his boss, along with almost six dozen other senior civil servants in public. His real-world actions were ignored by conservative news outlets hyping imaginative reports on his investigation.

The question

Will John Durham follow Barrs lead? Or Horowitzs?

The modus operandi of this administration is that when they cannot dismiss somebody elses fact-based conclusions, they create a parallel narrative, Joel Brenner, a former inspector general at the National Security Agency in the George W. Bush administration, told USA Today.

What kind of narrative will Durham write?

One clue can be heard in The Report, a new movie starring Adam Driver about the Senate Intelligence Committees 2014 report on torture. The name Durham is heard exactly once in the movie. And yes, it is a reference to the same John Durham.

Durham is a career Justice Department prosecutor in Connecticut. In 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder assigned him to investigate the CIAs torture program. It was a delicate assignment. On the one side, he had to poke into the dirty business of a $15 billion-a-year agency that believed it had legal and presidential sanction for enhanced interrogation techniques. On the other side, he was working for a popular new president who said the program was abhorrent and a host of lawyers who said it might well be criminal.

Durham, in short, walked into a legal and political minefield. Two years later, he emerged unscathed with a supple, if not evasive, reading of the law. His investigation exonerated the CIA on 99 out of 101 incidents of torture.

Whatever you make of Durhams report legally and morally, it was politically adroit. The report pleased Obama and Holder, who dodged the need to take on the barons of the national security agencies. His report pleased the CIA, which dodged the bullet of indictments of senior officials who had approved the torture regime, including John Brennan. As a narrative, Durhams torture report shows that he implicitly shares the worldview of Brennan and other senior national security managers.

Hes also a career prosecutor sure to consider all the facts brought to his attention.

Trump was enraged and threatened by national security leaks, even before he took office. Did Brennan et al commit any technical violations of the Espionage Act in talking to reporters about the president-elects Russian contacts? Quite possibly. Would John Durham go out on a legal limb to prosecute former top U.S. officials on behalf of Barr and Trump, who will be gone from Washington in five years at the maximum? That seems highly unlikely.

As Trump sails into the high seas of a Senate impeachment trial, Durhams report on the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation is not likely to be a lifeline.

Here is the original post:
Why John Durham won't save Trump either - Salon

This appeared in Wednesday's Washington Post.

- - -

U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on Monday eviscerated the Trump administration's lawless intransigence in a ruling that was as sharp as it should have been predictable. No, former White House counsel Donald McGahn is not "absolutely immune from compelled congressional testimony." No, President Donald Trump cannot prevent McGahn from responding to legal congressional subpoenas. "Compulsory appearance by dint of a subpoena is a legal construct, not a political one, and per the Constitution, no one is above the law," the judge wrote.

Previous presidents and congressional leaders have found ways to defuse disputes. George Washington and Ronald Reagan turned overdocuments to congressional investigators. During Barack Obama's presidency, Congress held then-Attorney General Eric Holder Jr.in contempt when he failed to respond to a congressional subpoena in the overhyped investigation of the "Fast and Furious" gun-running scheme, but the two sides eventually worked out a compromise that prevented lengthy litigation. President George W. Bush asserted broad "absolute" authorities to ignore Congress until a federal district judge rejected them and, again, the two sides struck a deal that mooted the case. Compromises have been found before courts could anoint victors with finality, preserving the possibility for healthy give-and-take between the branches.

Trump has evinced no interest in compromise. In a pugnacious Oct. 8 letter, White House counsel Pat Cipollone declared a policy of total noncooperation with the House impeachment inquiry, essentially arguing that the president gets to decide when congressional proceedings are legitimate and, therefore, when to respect - and when to ignore - Congress' legal orders. In the McGahn case, the Trump Justice Department appears determined to appeal Judge Jackson's ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

It should find no solace there. Though past presidents have at times claimed "absolute" authorities and immunities relative to Congress or the judiciary, there is scant caselaw evaluating such sweeping assertions - and little in the American constitutional tradition suggesting that the executive is an unaccountable branch of government. Rather than appeal, the administration should respect American tradition and comply with valid congressional subpoenas.

Meanwhile, potential witnesses with knowledge relevant to the House Intelligence Committee investigation on Ukraine, whether subpoenaed or not, should testify - among them acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former national security adviser John Bolton. They likely could clarify precisely why Trump suddenly halted military aid to Ukraine and what the president was demanding in exchange for its resumption. If the president has not abused his power for personal political gain - and if these officials are not complicit - why are they so reluctant to tell their side of the story?

Link:
'No one is above the law' - Greenwich Time

Microsoft is bringing on broken-down US Criminal legitimate Overall Eric Holder to review whether AnyVision, a facial recognition firm it invested in over the summer season, violated Microsofts ethics guidelines, in accordance to an NBC Recordsdata portray Friday.

As piece of its $74 million deal with Microsoft, the Israeli startup agreed to abide by the firms six moral suggestions in increasing and using its superior tactical surveillance technology, Better The next day to come. Those suggestions embrace fairness, non-discrimination, search and consent, transparency, accountability, and proper surveillance.

Holder, who has moreover no longer too lengthy within the past assisted totally different tech giants esteem Uber and Airbnb in navigating complicated upright waters, has been employed to ebook an audit over AnyVisions exhaust of this gadget, which might identify and video display folks all the scheme by a few are residing feeds. In step with an NPR portray, the firm operates in roughly 40 countries, largely bolstering safety in banks and law enforcement companies. At the guts of this auditing task, nevertheless, is how Israeli army checkpoints within the West Bank web used AnyVisions facial recognition utility to veil Palestinians passing by.

Recordsdata of the deal caused heavy backlash from privacy activists and the American Civil Liberties Union. More than one experiences web alleged AnyVision carries out covert army surveillance on Palestinians under the guise of national safety concerns, an initiative purportedly so a hit it earned AnyVision Israels high defense prize in 2018 for combating a entire bunch of apprehension attacks in accordance to the nations prime minister, though he didnt seek advice from the firm by title, per an NBC Recordsdata investigation last month.

For its piece, the startup has denied these claims in no unsure phrases. AnyVisions facial recognition technology is no longer being used for surveillance within the West Bank or the Gaza Strip, and AnyVision would no longer allow its technology to be used for that scheme, the firm talked about in accordance to the portray.

As for Microsoft, a firm spokesperson told NBC Recordsdata last month: If we thought any violation of our suggestions, we will have the skill to end our relationship.

Read the original:
Microsoft Faucets Eric Holder to Audit AnyVision Over Concerns of Face Recognition Surveillance - Drnewsindustry