"Archfoe of Bernie Sanders targets senator’s wife, and may gain clout" by Laura Krantz Globe Staff July 15, 2017
Senator Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician in America, but he certainly has his share of passionate enemies.
Back home in Vermont, Brady Toensing isn’t exactly a household name; he could well become one. He is a candidate for US attorney in the state, a perch from which he would oversee an ongoing federal investigation into Sanders’ wife — a crusade he started even before Sanders ran for president.
The story is convoluted, but one thing is clear: Jane Sanders has had enough of Toensing and his tactics.
“I find it incredibly sexist that basically he’s going after my husband by destroying my reputation, and that’s not OK,” she said in her first interview about the man responsible for an FBI probe that centers on her leadership at Burlington College, a small liberal arts school on Lake Champlain that she led from 2004 to 2011. The college closed last year as it struggled to pay its creditors and lost its accreditation.
Look at her play the gender card!
Yup, must be corruption and looting there then, proving Bernie is no different than all the rest. He's got three houses, was bought off to back Clinton, and is now hardly on the radar. And I actually voted for and liked the guy during the campaign, but as we constantly see, it's all show. Anything and everything in the ma$$ media is either distraction or diversion, nothing is as it seems, and the best that can be said for them is they distort at best, lie outright at worst.
Some choice, huh?
I think I'll take the distortion.
To hear Toensing tell it, however, he’s looking for justice.
Toensing, 49, is an attorney and vice chairman of the state Republican Party. If not for Trump, he might be nothing more than a local thorn in the family’s side. But in 2016, Toensing became leader of the Trump campaign in Vermont, a role that has propelled him into contention to become the state’s chief federal prosecutor.
Toensing has made a career of attacking Vermont’s Democratic and Progressive politicians. His targets include the former governor and attorney general. His highest-profile target by far has been the Sanders family.
Yeah, it's all partisan politics against the alleged independent, democratic socialist -- of whom many supporters went and voted for Trump (not me, nor Clinton).
That activism makes him an anomaly in Vermont, a relentless partisan operative in a state so bipartisan that some state legislators register in more than one party.
(Blog editor just shakes his head; partisan politics has nothing to do with it. Looks like some case of fraud and corruption to me. So how did the wife get the job, and how much was she getting paid?)
Toensing grew up in Detroit, where his mother was a federal prosecutor, and the Upper Valley of Vermont and New Hampshire, where his father lived. He went to law school at Georgetown, then moved to Charlotte, Vt., in 2001 with his wife and three children. He remains a partner in the politically wired and aggressive D.C. law firm of his mother, Victoria, and her husband, Joe diGenova.
I've seen them on TV!
Toensing’s opposition research on Jane Sanders began in 2014, when the idea of Bernie Sanders’ eventual run for president made most Vermonters laugh. Late that summer, he approached a Vermont news outlet promising a juicy scoop. Jane Sanders had received a lucrative payout when she left the small, struggling college, he said.
A month later, attack ads appeared on local television that accused her of accepting a “golden parachute” from Burlington College even though her husband had criticized Wall Street executives for taking such payouts.
A little more than a year later, Toensing filed a complaint with the Vermont US attorney that requested an investigation into alleged bank fraud by Jane Sanders.
He accused the former college president of misleading a bank into financing the 2010 purchase of land to expand the Burlington campus. Jane Sanders, he said, had knowingly overstated the prospect of philanthropic pledges to obtain the loan.
“Ms. Sanders’s privileged status as the wife of a powerful United States Senator seems to have inoculated her from the robust underwriting that would have uncovered the apparent fraudulent donation claims she made,” his complaint says.
The Justice Department probe became public this spring when Vermont news outlet VTDigger first reported on e-mails about it. Since then, FBI agents have contacted people connected to the college, including staff and its last president, even traveling to Florida to interview one former trustee, according to Vermont news reports.
Oh, this had to be dug up outside the agenda-pushing and duplicitous propaganda pre$$, huh?
Meanwhile, Toensing is one of at least two candidates to become Vermont US attorney, according to a person close to Toensing.
That nomination process has become fraught. Vermont’s Republican Governor Phil Scott opposes Toensing’s candidacy, as does the state’s senior US senator, Democrat Patrick Leahy. Sanders, the state’s other senator, has not weighed in.
Looks like all hands on deck for cover-up!
Until now, Jane Sanders has resisted the urge to criticize Toensing. When she spoke for the first time last week, she said many national reporters who have picked up the story accept Toensing’s easy accusations instead of digging for facts.
“If they just looked into public documents, they could see that his allegations of the financial difficulty during my tenure are not true at all,” Sanders said.
I'm sure the Globe will do that.
She said Toensing’s campaign against her is sexist because it assumes her husband somehow interceded on her behalf to secure the loan to buy the new campus — an accusation she insists has no merit.
The Burlington College land deal was part of Jane Sanders’ grand vision for the school. The scrappy, alternative college was founded in 1972 as a place for adult learners and had operated for years out of a North Avenue building that was once a general store. She was working to increase its enrollment and expand its programs.
In 2010 she seized a chance to buy a 33-acre lakefront parcel that had been the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington. She said she set the school on an upward trajectory that should have allowed the school to pay its bills and maintain accreditation.
“The bank knew from all the indicators of a college, the Department of Education, the accreditors, the audits, and their firsthand knowledge as our bank, that we were in the best shape the college had ever been in,” she said.
Sanders ultimately resigned from the school in 2011 under pressure from trustees after disagreement about the school’s future and concerns about fund-raising. The school’s former CFO became president and its financial position plummeted. Eventually, the school closed, the bank foreclosed on the property, and most of the land was bought by residential developers.
Toensing has a fractious relationship with other politicians in Vermont. Many Democrats and Progressives can’t stand him. Even some Republicans keep him at arms length. The Vermont House Republican minority leader two weeks ago cast doubt on Toensing’s allegations against Sanders.
He must be on the right track then.
The establishment in Vermont hates him, huh?
State defender general Matthew Valerio has known of Toensing over the years as a fellow attorney. “We don’t take him too seriously around here, but it also doesn’t prevent him from doing what he wants to do,” Valerio said.
Maybe you better start taking him seriously (of course, then he runs the risk of ending up Seth Riched).
For Toensing, the case of Jane Sanders and Burlington College is only the most prominent of many he has taken on. He is a fierce advocate for government transparency and a frequent user of the state public records law. He floods state agencies with requests, fishing expeditions that yield a fair share of fish.
Yeah, fishing around for the truth.
Of course, when the total surveillance state does it (see: Power to seize phone, Net records is a ‘sanctioned fishing expedition,’ critics say) no one gives a damn.
In 2010 he filed a records request that revealed a trooper had tried to fix a speeding ticket for then-Democratic gubernatorial candidate Peter Shumlin, who was driving 81 in a 65 miles-per-hour zone.
He has also clashed several times with the now-former state attorney general and has a case before the Vermont Supreme Court seeking his private e-mails.
“The point of the public records law is to expose government conduct and these guys resist mightily,” Toensing said. “They always revert back to secrecy.”
Yeah, WHAT ARE THEY HIDING?!!!!!!
--more--"
Related: Tracing a Russian pop singer’s link to Trump
That's the more important scandal based upon the fold placement.
"Lobbyist in Trump case accused in past of e-mail hacking" by Andrew Higgins New York Times July 15, 2017
MOSCOW — While not an expert in the technical aspects of hacking nor, he insisted, a spy, Rinat Akhmetshin, the Russian-American lobbyist who met with Donald Trump Jr. in June 2016, talked openly about how he had worked in counterintelligence while serving with the Red Army after its 1979 invasion of Afghanistan and how easy it was to find tech-savvy professionals ready and able to plunder just about any e-mail account.
On another occasion, at a meeting with a New York Times reporter at the Ararat Park Hyatt hotel in Moscow, Akhmetshin, now a US citizen, informed the journalist he had recently been reading one of his e-mails: In that instance, the reporter’s e-mail had become public as part of a lawsuit, but the episode sheds light on Akhmetshin’s professional focus in the decades since he emigrated to the United States as a go-to man for ferreting out information from Russia and other former Soviet states.
His ever-changing roster of clients hired him to burnish their images — and blacken that of their rivals. Some clients were Russians close to the Kremlin. Others involved its bitter foes.
A gregarious, fast-talking man with a sharp sense of humor, he often warned his friends and contacts: “Nothing is secure.”
And there is really nothing here!!
This is all total garbage!
--more--"
Also see: Is Donald Trump Jr. our era’s Fredo Corleone?
I've had it with the insults from the supremacist pre$$.
The surprising power of political graphics
Here is one for you.
Surprised?
"Trump attacks as Russia revelations appear to take toll" by Mark Landler New York Times July 16, 2017
BEDMINSTER, N.J. — President Trump unleashed a new fusillade of tweets Sunday morning, defending his son Donald Trump Jr., slashing the news media and tarring his long-vanquished opponent, Hillary Clinton.
After a leisurely Saturday afternoon spent at a women’s golf tournament at his club here, where he waved to the crowd from a glassed-in viewing stand, Trump awoke with a familiar list of grievances.
Asking about Clinton's email is somehow a faux pas now.
In between his Twitter posts Sunday, Trump thanked people who had turned out to cheer him at the US Women’s Open, which is being played at Trump National Golf Club despite calls from women’s groups for it to be moved because of his record of degrading behavior toward women.
But they LOVE BILL CLINTON and JFK!
A small knot of protesters formed Saturday afternoon as well, but the police kept them well away from the club. “Thank you to all of the supporters, who far out-numbered the protesters, yesterday at the Women’s US Open,” Trump wrote. “Very cool!”
Trump has gone through one of the rockiest stretches of his presidency since the disclosure of the meeting in June 2016 between his son and the Kremlin-linked lawyer.
On Sunday, the top Democrats investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election said that e-mails that Trump Jr. sent about the meeting with the Russian lawyer appeared to confirm that members of the Trump campaign had intended to cooperate with Russian officials.
Related:
"Most experts say voter fraud is extremely rare in the United States, and the commission has already come under heavy criticism for trying to scoop up personal data on voters in every state. by far the most controversial move was the commission’s attempt to gather voter-registration information, including names and Social Security numbers, from all 50 states. Forty-four states, including many led by Republicans, declined to provide at least some of the data requested, according to a CNN tally. Trump was annoyed by this broad rebuff on Wednesday......"
But the Russians hacked the elections, yuh-duh-duh.
Turns out that lawyer hated Trump, was allowed in by the Obama administration, was cleared through State and Justice, and DJT, Jr. fell for it.
Btw, do you know who British publicist Rob Goldstone (Jewish, huh?) is?
“This is about as clear of evidence you could find of intent by the campaign to collude with the Russians, to get useful information from the Russians,” Representative Adam Schiff of California, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Related:
"Adam Schiff is worthy of special mention, as David Bromwich points out to me. “He is among the scores of obedient Democrats co-sponsoring the bill. Schiff has a high reputation in liberal circles, but he voted for the Iraq war, supported the Saudi intervention in Yemen, said the assassination of Qaddafi was ‘an end to the first chapter of another popular revolution,’ and approved of Trump’s bombing of Syria. On foreign policy he is a believer in the conventional wisdom of the Cold War and the War on Terror, that’s all; but his opinions have taken on an outsize importance since he is now routinely accepted as the party’s outstanding authority on Russia. He knows Russia about as well as he knew Iraq and Libya." -- xymphora
Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he wanted to speak with those who attended the meeting. “You saw not only willingness, but actually glee from the president’s son, as well as involvement of the campaign manager and the president’s son-in-law to say, in effect, yes, bring it on,” Warner said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
The president also tweeted his thanks to a former campaign adviser, Michael Caputo.
On Friday, Caputo testified before a closed session of the House Intelligence Committee. He emerged to say that he had witnessed no collusion between the campaign and Russia.
There is evidence that the drumbeat of Russia revelations is taking a toll on the president.
So they say.
A poll published Sunday showed Trump’s approval ratings have eroded further in recent weeks, dropping to a level never before seen for a president during his first six months in office.
The Washington Post-ABC News poll said the president’s overall approval rating was 36 percent, down from 42 percent in April. His disapproval rating rose to 58 percent, and 48 percent of those polled said they “disapprove strongly” of his performance, citing a loss of US leadership abroad and the Republican health care bill.
Like I would believe any poll put out by the Washington ComPost(h/t)!
That's their "evidence?"
The poll brought another broadside from Trump. “The ABC/Washington Post Poll ... was just about the most inaccurate poll around election time!” he tweeted.....
Yeah!
--more--"
At least it's not on front page.
Time to quit goofing around.
Related: "The White House is dubbing the coming week ‘‘Made in America week’’ as it tries to focus on issues that matter to the president’s voter base. At a hotel near President Trump’s golf course in Bedminster, N.J., director of media affairs Helen Aguirre Ferre said Sunday that the White House will host a ‘‘Made in America’’ product showcase on Monday with products from all 50 states. Trump is expected to issue a proclamation Wednesday on the importance of making goods in America. ‘‘For too long our government has forgotten the American worker. Their interests were pushed aside for global projects and their wealth was taken from the communities and shipped overseas,’’ Ferre said. Under Trump, “not only will the American worker never be forgotten, but they will be championed.’’ Trump has pledged to bring back manufacturing jobs lost to technological innovation and outsourcing by scaling back regulations and renegotiating trade deals. But critics have accused Trump of hypocrisy when he has pushed ‘‘Made in America’’ in the past, because some products he and his family have sold over the years were manufactured overseas. That includes merchandise sold under his own name and his eldest daughter’s, including clothing and shoes. Asked if the president would commit the Trump organization and his daughter’s brand to making more of their products in America, rather than overseas, Ferre was noncommittal. ‘‘We’ll get back to you on that,’’ she said."
Time to move on:
"Democratic Senators Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Al Franken of Minnesota, and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii said in a letter to the White House that given the meeting, Kushner’s top access ‘‘may pose a danger to this country.’’
OMFG!!!
Seeing as Congre$$ is AIPAC-occupied territory, Trump's team must be walking the wrong path.
Salem Witch Trials memorial dedicated
The Trump monument to be unveiled in 2018.
Trump Refugee Restrictions Allowed for Now; Ban on Grandparents Rejected
President Trump has proposed cutting $193 billion from the federal food stamp program over the next decade, a reduction of 25 percent."
That's the contentious part of the budget, how much to cut food stamps, as the Globe waves children at us.
Special counsel said to be expanding probe to Trump business transactions
When you get to all the Jewish Mafia ties let me know.
Wary of Mueller, Trump’s team is investigating his investigators
Publicly assailed by Trump, Sessions says he’s staying on
A WaPo pos replacement from my print copy!
"Attorney General Jeff Sessions, publicly skewered by his boss for stepping clear of the Russia-Trump investigations, declared Thursday he still loves his job and plans to stay on. Yet Donald Trump’s airing of his long-simmering frustrations with Sessions raised significant new questions about the future of the nation’s top prosecutor. The episode underscored how the attorney general’s crime-fighting agenda is being overshadowed by his fractured relationship with Trump and the continuing investigations into allegations of Russian ties to the Republican candidate’s presidential campaign. At a Justice Department news conference to announce the takedown of a mammoth internet drug marketplace, faced zero questions about that case and was instead grilled on his reaction to being excoriated by Trump in a New York Times interview a day earlier. The news conference on the drug case was quickly ended once it was clear reporters would only ask about the interview....."
They really are nothing but shit now, and all of a sudden the racist, extremist Sessions now has a crime-fighting agenda!
What the reporters didn't care about:
"Justice Department takes down a dark web marketplace for drugs and other illicit goods" by Matt Zapotosky The Washington Post July 20, 2017
The Justice Department announced Thursday that it had shuttered an illicit Internet marketplace for drugs, firearms, and fake documents in what Attorney General Jeff Sessions said was the ‘‘largest dark Web takedown in world history.’’
AlphaBay was a site on the dark Web where users whose identities were masked could engage in substantial buying and selling of illicit goods.
The Justice Department said that one AlphaBay staff member claimed that it serviced more than 200,000 users and 40,000 vendors, and around the time of the takedown, there were more than 250,000 listings for illegal drugs and toxic chemicals, and more than 100,000 listings for stolen and fraudulent identification documents and access devices, counterfeit goods, malware and other computer hacking tools, firearms, and fraudulent services.
In addition to seizing AlphaBay’s infrastructure, prosecutors charged AlphaBay’s founder, Alexandre Cazes, with crimes including conspiracy to engage in racketeering and conspiracy to distribute narcotics. Cazes, 26, a Canadian citizen who had resided in Thailand, apparently killed himself while in custody in Thailand this month, the Justice Department said.
Yeah, right, he killed himself. Dead men tell no tales.
While the marketplace might have been little known outside of the shadowy world of the dark Web, officials said it produced real world consequences, such as overdoses.
In 2013, federal authorities shut down a similar online drug marketplace called Silk Road. Its founder, Ross Ulbricht, was sentenced to life in prison in 2015.
That's where all roads lead.
--more--"
Of course, the NSA has known about this for a long time and the previous government allowed these sites to operate. All the data is collected and stored. How could they not know?
Related: "Global Police Spring a Trap on Thousands of Dark Web Users". Note another 'apparent suicide'. It is amazing that people think they can safely buy illegal stuff on the internet based on an understanding that they can trust completely unknown actors." --xymphora
"Trump’s eldest son and his former campaign chairman won’t be forced to testify publicly this week and are instead discussing being privately interviewed by a Senate committee investigating Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election.
The Senate Judiciary Committee initially called for Donald Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort to appear at a public hearing Wednesday.
But the top Republican and Democrat on the panel now say the men are negotiating the terms of their appearances, and lawmakers don’t currently plan to issue subpoenas to compel their public testimony.
In a joint statement, Senators Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, and Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, also said they are negotiating with Trump Jr. and Manafort about possibly turning over documents. Grassley tweeted late Friday that Trump Jr.’s interview, while not public, will still be on the record.
Feinstein and Grassley both said on Twitter that the two men will testify in public after private interviews, but they did not elaborate on when that might occur.
This is all a f***ing show!!!
Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and top White House aide, also attended the meeting. He is scheduled to speak behind closed doors with the Senate Intelligence Committee Monday and with the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday.....
Do they also want to revoke his security clearance?
--more--"
You will have to pardon me regarding this next article:
"Trump says he has ‘complete power’ to pardon" by Peter Baker New York Times July 22, 2017
WASHINGTON —The Washington Post reported in recent days.
All I needed to see.
The president responded to another article by The Post.
That would be yesterday's pos nothing, and I would just as soon see Sessions go (that's police state fascism on an unimaginable scale. The greatest organized crime outfit going, the U.S. government -- at all levels! Shaking down only the poor and those that can't fight back while acting as a thin blue line for the wealthy cla$$. Otherwise, they would go where the money is), but the real question is why was this done now?
The Post cited intercepted communications between Kislyak and his home office in Moscow.
Who gave those to them?
“A new intelligence leak from the Amazon Washington Post, like Comey’s [to the New York Times]”
Thanks for the answer.
The Post reported that.
Whoop-de-f***ing doo!
Trump’s tweets came shortly before he flew to Norfolk, Va., where he presided over the commissioning of the USS Gerald R. Ford, the newest aircraft carrier. The $12.9 billion warship was officially turned over to the Navy after years of delays and cost overruns. The ship was to have been completed in 2015.
Par for the contracting cour$e.
‘‘Wherever this vessel cuts through the horizon, our allies will rest easy and our enemies will shake with fear because everyone will know that America is coming and America is coming strong,’’ Trump said.
The tweet about The Post story was followed shortly afterward by another assailing The New York Times.....
Which one of the those whiners on the verge of a nervous breakdown wrote this article?
--more--"
The New York Times is about as ‘close to a laughingstock’ as you can get these days, and how can there be a crisis in something the government didn't have to begin with?
Federal officials fork over cash for Green Line extension
Yeah, they "forked it over" with a lot more to come -- and not even a thank you from the Bo$ton Globe.
No pardons for them, and sit the f*** down.
Yeah, let's all go have an ice cream.
NDUs:
Jane Sanders’ Vermont deal deserves scrutiny — and fairness
Schumer says firing Mueller would trigger ‘a cataclysm’
Robert Mueller Covered-Up 9/11: Former Director Complicit in Sept 11th Attacks
White House indicates it won’t fight Russia sanctions
The front page tells me the bill will cut his power. So much for all the fascist hyperbole pushed by the pre$$. They become more of a cartoon every day.
"He’s part of what he calls the “0.1 percent”: The seemingly minuscule few who don’t tune in to HBO’s wildly popular fantasy series, “Game of Thrones.” “At this point, if you’re not watching Game Of Thrones . . . I frankly do not understand exactly what the [expletive] you are doing with your life.”
"It's victory for "Dunkirk" and "Girls Trip" at the box office this weekend with both films smashing expectations. Christopher Nolan's World War II epic brought in an estimated $50.5 million to easily top the charts, according to Warner Bros., while the raucous comedy "Girls Trip" broke the R-rated comedy slump of 2017 with $30.4 million to take second place. "Dunkirk" was far from an inevitable summer success. But stellar reviews, awards buzz and hype around the film's large-scale production helped drive people to the theater. "It became a must-see event," said Paul Dergarabedian, a senior media analyst for comScore. Not so successful was Luc Besson's nearly $180 million sci-fi epic "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets," which earned $17 million from North American theaters over the weekend for a fifth-place start. It came in behind "Spider-Man: Homecoming," in third in its third weekend with $22 million and "War for the Planet of the Apes" in fourth place in its second weekend with $20.4 million....."
