NO STRINGS ATTACHED NEWS THAT MAINSTREAM JUST WON'T COVER.
Ronda Rousey says her wrestling career is up in the air — admitting she could quit WWE forever after having her baby … but she hasn’t made up her mind yet. As we previously reported, Ronda is taking a hiatus from WWE to work on starting her…
https://www.tmz.com/2019/04/23/ronda-rousey-wwe-baby-pregnancy-planning/
FISA Court Falls Under Congressional Scrutiny Following IG Report
The shadowy Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA court) and the processes behind obtaining a warrant from it has fallen under harsh scrutiny by lawmakers following the release of the DOJ Inspector General's report which found that the FBI was able to easily mislead the judges to surveil Trump adviser Carter Page.
FISA Judge Rudolph Contreras, who recused himself from the Mike Flynn case after his friendship with former FBI agent Peter Strzok was revealed in text messages.
"The goal is to make sure this doesn’t happen again, so you tighten up the system right," said Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC), adding: "Quite frankly, I’m looking at the FISA court itself. ... I’m looking for the court to tell the public, ‘Hey, we’re upset about this too,’ and, you know, take some corrective steps."
Graham said his committee will look into legislation to introduce more "checks and balances" to the FISA process, according to The Hill.
When asked if he thought there would be bipartisan support for FISA reform, Sen. Dick Durban (D-IL) said "I hope so," adding "This was a real wake-up call that three different teams can screw this up at the FBI."
The renewed interest comes after five hours of partisan barb trading during a Judiciary hearing Wednesday with Horowitz that resulted in one clear bipartisan interest: overhauling the FISA court.
“One of the only points I’ve heard with bipartisan agreement today is a renewed interest in reforming the FISA process,” said Sen. Christopher Coons (D-Del.). -The Hill
Created under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, the FISA court is made up of 11 judges who are chosen by the chief justice of the Supreme Court to serve seven-year terms. They are responsible for approving warrant applications for intelligence gathering purposes and national security operations, which - as The Hill notes, "more often than not, they sign off."
And in the case of Carter Page, the FISA judges initially denied a warrant to surveil the former Trump aide until the agency padded the application with the wildly unverified Steele Report, lying about Steele's credibility, and then fabricating evidence to specifically say Page was not an "operational contact" for the CIA, when in fact he was - and had a "positive assessment."
Last year the government filed 1,117 FISA warrant applications, including 1,081 for electronic monitoring. The court signed off on 1,079 according to a DOJ report.
That said, reform may come slowly.
But the timeline for any legislative reforms is unclear. Congress already faces a mid-March deadline to extend expiring surveillance authorities under the USA Freedom Act.
Durbin suggested the discussions could merge, while Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a longtime privacy advocate, appeared skeptical that Republicans would ultimately get on board with broader changes to surveillance powers.
“Why after YEARS of blocking bipartisan FISA reforms are senior Republicans suddenly interested in it? There is no question that we need to improve transparency, accountability and oversight of the FISA process,” Wyden tweeted. -The Hill
Still, the IG report appears to have 'enlightened' some GOP lawmakers who previously resisted the notion of reining in FISA courts. Several GOP senators gave credit to their libertarian-minded colleagues on the hill, who have pushed for surveillance reform after accurately predicting the potential for abuse.
Those who have long-advocated for reform include GOP Sens. Thom Tillis (N.C.) and Ben Sasse (Neb.), according to Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT).
"I wish Mike Lee weren’t sitting here two people from me right now, because as a national security hawk I’ve argued with Mike Lee in the 4 1/2 or five years that I’ve been in the Senate that stuff just like this couldn’t possibly happen at the FBI and at the Department of Justice," said Sasse during the Horowitz testimony, who added that the IG's findings marked a "massive crisis of public trust" since we should know about FISA applications that aren't as high-profile as Page's.
Horowitz reported a total of 17 “significant inaccuracies and omissions” in the applications to monitor Page, taking particular issue with applications to renew the FISA warrant and chastising the FBI for a lack of satisfactory explanations for those mistakes.
Horowitz stressed that he would not have submitted the follow-up applications as they were drafted by the FBI. Kevin Clinesmith, an FBI lawyer, altered an email related to the warrant renewal application, according to Horowitz’s report.
"[The] applications made it appear as though the evidence supporting probable cause was stronger than was actually the case," Horowitz said. "We also found basic, fundamental and serious errors during the completion of the FBl's factual accuracy reviews."
Horowitz also found that there were errors that “represent serious performance failures by the supervisory and non-supervisory agents with responsibility over the FISA applications.” -The Hill
Let's not forget that FISA court judge Rudolph Contreras recused himself from overseeing the case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn due to his personal friendship with former FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok.
And the only reason Contreras did so was because his friendship with Strzok was revealed in their anti-Trump text messages found by the Inspector General.
Tyler Durden Fri, 12/13/2019 - 17:45Is The Market Up This Week? Just Ask The Fed's Balance Sheet
Something remarkable happened when the Fed announced "NOT QE": starting that week, every time the Fed's balance sheet rose, so did the S&P. And the one week when the Fed's balance sheet shrank, the market dropped. Yes, correlation may not be causation, but if a pattern repeats 9 weeks out of 9, then it becomes feedback loop which the math PhDs plug into their various algo/quant models and... voila:
Which begs the question: yesterday we reported that as part of its year-end repo bailout, the Fed plans on injecting over $500 billion of liquidity in the next 4 weeks, a process which will take the Fed's balance sheet sharply higher by a record $500 billion in one month through mid-January, in the process sending the balance sheet to a new all time high above $4.5 trillion. We wonder: just what will happen to stocks?
Rudy Giuliani Can Barely Contain Himself Over His Ukraine Findings
Rudy Giuliani is grinning like the Cheshire cat. His standard smile.
For the past several weeks, the personal attorney to President Trump has been in Ukraine, interviewing witnesses and gathering evidence to shed light on what the Bidens were up to during the Obama years, and get to the bottom of claims that Kiev interfered in the 2016 US election in favor of Hillary Clinton. He has enlisted the help of former Ukrainian diplomat, Andriy Telizhenko, to gather information from politicians and ask them to participate in a documentary series in partnership with One America News Network (OANN) - which will make the case for investigating the Bidens as well as Burisma Holdings - the natural gas firm which employed the son of a sitting US Vice President in a case which reeks of textbook corruption.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi2UWTO2DyY]
According to the Journal, Giuliani will present findings from his self-described "secret assignment" in a 20-page report.
Trump and Giuliani say then-Vice President Biden engaged in corruption when he called for the ouster of a Ukrainian prosecutor who had investigated a Ukrainian gas company where Hunter Biden served on the board. The Bidens deny wrongdoing, and ousting the prosecutor was a goal at the time of the U.S. and several European countries. -Wall Street Journal
(Note the Wall Street Journal's use of a straw man when they write: "The allegations of Ukrainian election interference are at odds with findings by the U.S. intelligence community that Russia was behind the election interference."
Apparently the three journalists who collaborated on the article didn't get the memo that two countries can meddle at the same time, nor did any of them read the January, 2017 Politico article: Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire - which outlines how Ukrainian government officials conspired with a DNC operative to hurt the Trump campaign during the 2016 election - a move which led to the disruptive ouster of campaign chairman Paul Manafort).
Rudy Giuliani’s trip to Kyiv this month, which he described as a “secret assignment,” included a meeting with Ukrainian lawmaker Andriy Derkach. PHOTO: PRESS OFFICE OF ANDRIY DERKACH/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Telizhenko, the former diplomat, tells the Journal that the plan for the series was conceived during the impeachment hearings as a way for Giuliani to tell his side of the story. The former Ukrainian diplomat flew to Washington on November 20 to film with Giuliani, while in early December he accompanied America's Mayor on the Kiev trip - stopping in Budapest, Vienna and Rome.
Rudy comes home
Upon his return to New York on Saturday, Giuliani says he took a call from President Trump while his plane was still taxiing down the runway, according to the Wall Street Journal.
"What did you get?" Trump asked. "More than you can imagine," answered the former New York mayor who gained notoriety in the 1980s for taking down the mob as a then-federal prosecutor.
According to the 77-year-old Giuliani, Trump instructed him to brief Attorney General William Barr and GOP lawmakers on his findings. Soon after, the president then told reporters at the White House, "I hear he has found plenty."
Rudy has been working on this project for a while. In late January, he conducted phone interviews with former Ukrainian prosecutors Viktor Shokin and Yiury Lutsenko. On the call was George Boyle - Giuliani's Chief Operating Officer and Director of Investigations. Boyle started as a NYPD beat cop in 1987, and was promoted to detective - eventually joining the Special Victims Squad. In short, the ever-grinning Giuliani has some serious professionals working on this.
"When he believes he’s right, he loves taking on fights," said longtime Giuliani friend, Tony Carbonetti.
That said, Giuliani's efforts have not gone off without a hitch. In October, two associates - Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, both of whom assisted with his Ukraine investigation, were related in October on campaign-finance charges. Both men have pleaded not guilty, while Giuliani denies wrongdoing and says they did not lobby him. Parnas, notably, was also on the January call with Shokin and Lutsenko as a translator.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc4nQD6eiW4]
In pressing ahead on Ukraine, Mr. Giuliani has replaced the translation skills of Messrs. Parnas and Fruman with an app he downloaded that allows him to read Russian documents by holding his phone over them. But on his recent trip, he said, “despite whatever else you can say, I missed them.” -Wall Street Journal
Trump opponents insist Giuliani is conducting shadow foreign policy and orchestrated the ouster of former US Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch - who Ukraine's new president Volodomyr Zelensky complained on a now-famous July 25 phone call accused of not recognizing his authority.
In the impeachment hearings, witnesses accused Mr. Giuliani of conducting a shadow foreign policy and orchestrating the ouster of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. He was described as “problematic” and “disruptive” and, in testimony that cited former national security adviser John Bolton, likened to a “hand grenade that’s going to blow everybody up.” Mr. Giuliani has said he kept the State Department apprised of his efforts and that he was working at the president’s behest. -Wall Street Journal
"Just having fun while Dems and friends try to destroy my brilliant career," Giuliani wrote in a text message while conducting his investigation overseas.
Tyler Durden Fri, 12/13/2019 - 17:05 Tags PoliticsSupreme Court Agrees To Hear Trump Appeal Over Financial Records Disclosure
In a mostly expected progression, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear appeals from President Trump in three cases involving efforts to gain access to his financial records.
All of the subpoenas sought information from Mr. Trump’s accountants or bankers, not from Mr. Trump himself, and the firms have indicated that they will comply with the court’s ruling.
As The New York Times reports, the court’s ruling (what NYT calls aa once-in-a-generation statement on presidential accountability), expected by June, could release information the president has tried to protect; or the justices could rule that his financial affairs are not legitimate subjects of inquiry so long as he remains in office.
In urging the Supreme Court to block the Second Circuit’s ruling while the justices decided how to proceed in the case, Trump v. Deutsche Bank AG, No. 19A640, Mr. Trump wrote that “these ‘dragnet’ subpoena look nothing like a legislative inquiry.”
The case, which will be spun as testing the independence of the court, and the timing would suggest this will be yet another key aspect of the Democrats campaign to ouster Trump before the country is allowed to make a decision in November.
Tyler Durden Fri, 12/13/2019 - 16:48 Tags Law Crime PoliticsThe "Trade Deal": A Pathetic Parody, Credibility Squandered
Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
Anyone who thinks this bogus "deal" has resolved any of the issues or uncertainties deserves to be fired immediately.
Here's a late-night TV parody of a trade deal: The agreement won't be signed by both parties, though each might sign their own version of it, and the terms of the deal will never ever be revealed to the public, which includes everyone doing any business in the nations doing the "deal."
How is this "deal" not a pathetic parody of a real deal? A real deal is signed by both parties and is made public, so the business community can make informed decisions. The leaders who sign the agreement have to sell their respective nations on the benefits of the deal and explain the horse-trading that is part and parcel of any voluntary agreement.
But nope, this "deal" has none of that. If the "deal" is so great, why is it secret?
Anyone claiming a deal so odious or empty that it can't be revealed to the electorate has destroyed whatever credibility they had left after 18 months of teases and promises. Put yourself in the shoes of a soybean farmer. Are you going to plant another 1,000 acres of soybeans because now that the "deal" is done, you can be absolutely confident that your entire harvest will be bought by China?
You're joking, right? Anyone making decisions based on this travesty of a mockery of a sham "deal" should have their medications checked.
And scene: Corporate America boardroom: CEO stands and addresses the board:
CEO: Now that the President signed off on the "deal," I propose we invest $100 million in a new factory in China, because the President said it was a "great deal."
Board member: But we have no idea what the deal even specifies.
CEO: Well, I'm sure it's "great."
Board member: The Chinese are signing a different version of the deal, they're not even signing whatever the President signed off on.
CEO: I'm confused. The trade "deal" is done, so let's move forward with the $100 million.
Board member: But there are no credible enforcement mechanisms in the deal. Our intellectual property is at risk, and for what gains? Expanding production in Vietnam is less risky, production costs are lower and there's none of the uncertainty we face in China.
CEO: The "deal" has been signed, so everything's fixed, correct?
Board member: Nothing's been fixed, and I'll have to call for your resignation if you insist on gambling $100 million in China, a gamble that could destroy this company.
Please tell me this "trade deal" is a bad joke, a parody being played for laughs. Please don't tell me anyone is taking it seriously. Hey, I have a deal for you, a great deal. The other party is signing another version, but never mind, it's a great deal. And all the terms are secret, but never mind, it's a great deal.
Everyone connected with this pathetic parody has lost all credibility. Anyone who thinks this bogus "deal" has resolved any of the issues or uncertainties deserves to be fired immediately.
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Tyler Durden Fri, 12/13/2019 - 16:45 Tags Business Finance
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