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The Obama administration was poised to send armed federal agents to polling places, deploy the military and launch full-scale counter-propaganda measures in case hackers disrupted the vote on Election Day, according to a report.

The 15-page playbook, produced in October, outlined the enhanced measures the government was prepared to take in the event of a significant incident, Time magazine reported Thursday, citing a copy of the document.

In almost all potential cases of malicious cyber activity impacting election infrastructure, state, local, tribal, and territorial governments, to include their law enforcement agencies, will have primary jurisdiction to respond, it says.

The playbook coordinated the responsibilities of the different government agencies Department of Homeland Security, Justice Department and FBI and dictated how they would activate enhanced procedures and allocate the resources described in their enhanced coordination procedures to coordinate incident response activities.

It would allow for stationing armed federal law enforcement agents at polling places and deploying Active and Reserve military forces and the National Guard upon a request from a federal agency and the direction of the Secretary of Defense or the President.

The plan also called for increased vigilance for three days after the election to address any post-election cyber incidents (e.g., planted stories calling into question the results).

The US intelligence community concluded that the Kremlin, under the authorization of Russian President Vladimir Putin, meddled in the election to undermine the US democratic process.

A number of congressional panels, as well as the FBI and special counsel Robert Mueller, are investigating Russias involvement and any connections to Trump campaign officials.

Link:
Obama's secret plan to deploy the military on Election Day - New York Post

The dollar amount of assets seized by federal authorities via civil asset forfeiture more than doubled under Obama's watch.

When CBS news announced that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had reinstated rules allowing seizure of assets by the federal government, the broadcast news network painted it as a serious departure from the Obama era:

A change would likely represent another reversal by Sessions of Obama-era Justice Department policies. His Democratic predecessor Eric Holder had tightened control of the departments asset forfeiture operations amid concerns that property could be seized without judicial oversight and without the owner ever being charged with a crime.

Almost nothing in this paragraph is accurate.

Eric Holder was Attorney General from 2009 to early 2015. During that time, the total annual dollar value of assets seized by federal law enforcement went from less than $2 billion to more than $5 billion, exceeding criminal burglary losses in 2014.

Just two months before the end of his six-year tenure and attendant support of the program, Holder received accolades for supposedly ending the program. Some civil libertarians warned that he hadnt actually ended the program. They were right.

One of the few journalists to follow the program and report on its abuses is Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post. He reported in March of last year, The feds have resumed a controversial program that lets cops take stuff and keep it. That story, from which the above graph is taken, noted:

Reformers had hoped that the suspension of the program in December was a signal that the Justice Department was looking for ways to rein in the practice. But that no longer appears to be the case.

This really was about funding, not a genuine concern about the abuses rampant in the equitable sharing system, said Scott Bullock, president of the Institute for Justice (IJ), in an interview. IJ is a civil liberties law firm that researches asset forfeiture and advocates on behalf of forfeiture defendants. It has reported extensively on what it calls the profit motive created by the Equitable Sharing Program: Because police get to keep a share of the items they seize, they have an incentive to take more stuff.

Bullock said the suspension and return of equitable sharing demonstrate the need for Congress to act on the issue. Changes to forfeiture policy can be swept away by the stroke of a pen, he said.

Sessionss order opening up the gates received well-deserved condemnation from libertarians and conservatives yesterday (see here, here, here, for example). Libertarians and conservatives are long-time critics of the program that allows governments to seize property without even feinting toward due process. However, the issue never generated much anger among liberals during the Obama administration. The American Civil Liberties Union technically joined with the libertarian Koch Foundation to oppose the program and liberal John Oliver did a segment on it in 2014.

A Nexis search for civil asset forfeiture and Eric Holder of all English language news from the date of Eric Holders nomination as attorney general through the end of 2014, just before the program was supposedly altered, found only 45 mentions, almost all of them reprints of state or federal Justice Department press releases. A couple of libertarian and conservative publications, including The Federalist, ran multiple articles critiquing the practice and its proponents, and Republican Jim Sensenbrenners criticism of the program drew minor coverage. The Wall Street Journals editorial page expressed concern and the San Francisco Chronicle did as well.

More general and less political coverage of civil asset forfeiture that is, coverage that didnt mention the top Democratic dog responsible for the program was more common 1,054 articles. Compare that to 1,119 articles in the last six months alone.

Liberals did condemn Sessions yesterday, though their voice would have been more valuable during the Obama era when civil asset forfeiture skyrocketed.

The group that most consistently opposes the unconstitutional civil asset forfeiture programs whether theyre tolerated and encouraged by Democratic attorneys general or Republican is the Institute for Justice. Its Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture report is available here. The Department of Justices Office of Inspector General report on the Drug Enforcement Agencys decade-long abuses of the program, most of which occurred during the Obama administration, received little coverage upon its release in March. It is available here.

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Civil Asset Forfeiture Skyrocketed Under Obama - The Federalist

President Donald Trump is set to breeze pastthe legacy of his predecessorBarack Obamathat is, at least when it comes to golf.

Trump officially hit the six-months-in-office milestone Thursday, and many of his 181 full days in the White House haven't actually been spentin the White House. Quite a few havebeen spent on the links.

It's tough to calculate exactly how many rounds of golf Trump has played in office. Whereas Obama was up front about when he was golfingwe know he played exactly 333 times during his eight years in officeTrump often goes to one of his golf courses and disappears for about, oh, four hours orso. (Curiously enough, that's about how long it takes to play 18 holes of golf.)

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The Trump administration has worked to keep the president'sgolfing habit under wraps. That might be because Trump used to slam Obama, over and over, about golfing while in office. "Can you believe that, with all of the problems and difficulties facing the U.S., President Obama spent the day playing golf," Trump tweetedin October 2014, for instance.

Later than month, he tweeted about Obama and golf yet again:"President Obama has a major meeting on the N.Y.C. Ebola outbreak, with people flying in from all over the country, but decided to play golf!"

But despite the efforts the White House makes to prevent folks from knowing if Trump is golfing, news of the president hitting the links often gets out. Sometimes the press catches wind that the president mighthit a few ballslike when he showed up to one of his Florida courses on Mother's Day wearinggolf shoesand a golf glovewhile other times he's spotted playing through the trees, like Bigfoot. Sometimes Trump makes himself known at a golf course by driving his golf cart across the greena nearly unthinkable breach of etiquetteand chatting up other players. But we stilldon't really have an official count.

It is known, however, that the presidenthas spent 40 of his 181 fulldays in office at a Trump-branded golf course. That's roughly 22 percent of his days in office. He has been to TrumpNational Bedminsterin New Jersey 14 times, Trump International West Palmin Florida 13 times, Trump National Potomac Falls near Washington, D.C., 12 timesand Trump National Jupiter in Florida once,according to NBC News'stracker. The website TrumpGolfCount.com has community-sourced a rough tracker of the president's rounds of golf and estimates he hasbeen spottedplaying golfat least 16 times.

Despite Trump's frequent complaints, Obama, comparatively speaking, spent very few days on the golf course in the early days of his presidency. And over eight years he visited a golf course on about 11.4 percent of his days as president. So, at about 22 percent, Trump is well ahead of Obama's pace on the links.

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Trump vs. Obama: Golf Course Outings Piling Up Six Months Into Donald's Presidency - Newsweek

President Donald Trump made the same mistake as his predecessor by not being more involved in the details of health-care legislation, a former assistant Commerce secretary told CNBC on Thursday.

Trump and then-President Barack Obama should have been more engaged in the legislative process, said Mary Jo Jacobi, a former aide to President Ronald Reagan and a member of the George H.W. Bush administration.

"He just left it to the House and Senate," she said, referring to Obama. "President Trump has made a similar mistake with what may or may not be 'Trumpcare' leaving it to the House and Senate."

Referring to Congress, she said: "They've had 7 years to come up with a replacement once they repeal. Now they haven't repealed, they haven't replaced and it doesn't look like they're going to do either."

Obama signed an overly complex bill that was likely to be unworkable in the real world, but at least he got a bill, Jacobi later added.

"The lesson is that the executive and legislative branches need to work together on big affairs of state to ensure protection of the public interest and a workable outcome," Jacobi said in an email.

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Trump made the same mistake as Obama on health care, former Reagan aide says - CNBC

Q: Did former President Barack Obama follow President Donald Trump to the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany?

A: No. That claim was made on websites that dont make any warranties about the reliability of their information.

I read a posting on Facebook that said Obama showed up at the G-20 conference and is shadowing Trump. It sounds like fake news to me. Is it?

Former President Barack Obama didnt attend the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, in early July as headlines on a viral story falsely claim. Several readers asked about the story, which Facebook users also flagged as potentially fake news.

Obama Goes to G20 Summit, reads the headline on one version of the story published July 8 on World-politicus.com. The same story, published on Wetheproudpatriots.com, was headlined, Obama Shows Up In Germany For G20 Acting Like The President Look What He Did To Screw Trump.

Obama is a shadow president that will not leave the current administration alone, the story says. He has been doing everything he can to mess up what Trump is doing. And being a liberal elite, he can get away with it. Everywhere President Donald Trump goes, Obama shows up too. A little odd, no? This concerning practice has gotten on the last nerve of the Trump administration and it shows that they are concerned with what Obama is trying to do. Obama needs to realize that he is no longer the president, no matter how much he wants to be.

But neither website provides any evidence to support the headlines stating that Obama was at the 2017 summit, where leaders from 19 countries and the European Union gathered to discuss international cooperation on financial and economic issues.

Instead, those websites point to aJuly 7 storypublished by the Young Conservatives website, which only faulted the Obama administration for not making hotel reservations for the U.S. delegation. BuzzFeed, followed by several other media outlets, had reported that the Trump administration couldnt find available hotel rooms in Hamburg. The president stayed at the city governments guesthouse.

In fact, the terms and conditions page of the We the Proud Patriots website says the site does not represent or imply that it endorses the material there posted, or that it believes such material to be accurate, useful or non-harmful. And a disclaimer policy on World-politicus.com says it does not make any warranties about the completeness, reliability and accuracy of this information. Any action you take upon the information you find on this website (world-politicus.com), is strictly at your own risk. That makes both websites unreliable sources for genuine news.

Other sites that published the story about Obama attempted to bolster their false headlines with photographic evidence.

Snoopack.com, for example, included a photo of Obama standing near German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but its an image from the 2015 summit in Turkey. The photo that Xbn-news.com published along with the story shows Obama talking to Russian President Vladimir Putin at the 2016 summit in China.

The official group photo from the 2017 summit includes Trump, not Obama.

In an email to FactCheck.org, an Obama spokesman confirmed that the former president was not at the G20 summit, Germany or even Europe and was never scheduled to be there. Obama was last in Germany in May for an event with German Chancellor Merkel, his spokesman said.

Editors note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebookto help identify and label viral fake news stories flagged by readers on the social media network.

G20. G20.org. Acccessed 10 Jul 2017.

Obama Goes To G20 Summit. World-politicus.com. 8 Jul 2017.

We The Proud Patriots. Obama Shows Up In Germany For G20 Acting Like The President Look What He Did To Screw Trump. Wetheproudpatriots.com. 8 Jul 2017.

FAQs. G20.org. Accessed 19 Jul 2017.

Miller, Andrew Mark. Trump Left Without Hotel Reservation In Hamburg, and Turns Out Obama Is Directly Responsible. Youngcons.com. 7 Jul 2017.

Engert, Marcus. President Trump Apparently Couldnt Find A Hotel To Book For The G20 Summit. Buzzfeed.com. 5 Jul 2017.

Chavez, Aida. Trump couldnt find hotel to book for G-20: report. Thehill.com. 6 Jul 2017.

Sampathkumar, Mythili. Donald Trump has trouble finding hotel room at G20 summit. Independent.co.uk. 6 Jul 2017.

Trump finally finds place to stay in Hamburg for G20 summit. Thelocal.de. 9 Jun 2017.

Terms and Conditions. Wetheproudpatriots.com. Accessed 14 Jul 2017.

Disclaimer Policy. World-politicus. Accessed 14 Jul 2017.

Obama Goes To G20 Summit. Snoopack.com. 8 Jul 2017.

Turkey G20 Summit. Afpforum.com. 15 Nov 2015.

Xbn-news. bm Shws Up In Grmny Fr G20 ting Lik Th Prsidnt Lk Wht H Did T Srw rump. Xbn-news.com. 8 Jul 2017.

China-G20-Summit-Putin-Obama. Gettyimages.com. 5 Sep 2016.

Wagner, Meg and OKey, Sean. Whos who in the 2017 class photo of G20 leaders. Cnn.com. 7 Jul 2017.

Collinson, Stephen. Without naming Trump, Obama defends merits of globalism. Cnn.com. 25 May 2017.

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Obama Didn't Attend G-20 in 2017 - FactCheck.org