| Rep. Swalwell: Trump 'makes us look like geniuses every day for impeaching him' Posted: 02 Jul 2020 04:25 PM PDT  Rep. Eric Swalwell to the Yahoo News "Skullduggery" podcast: Recent disclosures that the White House failed to act on intelligence showing that Russian operatives were paying bounties to kill American soldiers fully vindicates impeachment.
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| Jeffrey Epstein friend Ghislaine Maxwell arrested on sex abuse charges Posted: 02 Jul 2020 06:44 AM PDT  The FBI arrest of the British socialite is the latest twist in the mystery of Epstein, who went from a high school math teacher to high-flying lifestyle of private Caribbean islands and powerful connections that his victims say allowed him to abuse minors with impunity. Maxwell, 58, was arrested in Bradford, New Hampshire, where she had been laying low since December, the FBI said. Maxwell appeared briefly by video from jail at a hearing in New Hampshire federal court, where a judge ordered her to face the criminal charges in New York.
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| Black Lives Matter: Florida police officers laugh and brag on video about shooting rubber bullets at protesters Posted: 02 Jul 2020 02:45 PM PDT  Florida police officers responding to a George Floyd protest have been caught on camera laughing and bragging about shooting protesters with rubber bullets.The video shows police forming a line against a group of protesters in Fort Lauderdale on 31 May and eventually tossing tear gas to drive them away. When protesters began throwing the cannisters back at the police, they responded by shooting at demonstrators with rubber bullets.
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| Court record shows St. Louis couple pulled gun before Posted: 02 Jul 2020 11:44 AM PDT  O'FALLON, Mo. (AP) — The white St. Louis couple who became internationally famous for standing guard with guns outside their mansion during a protest have pulled a gun before in defense of their property, according to an affidavit in an ongoing case. As demonstrators marched near the Renaissance palazzo-style home of Mark and Patricia McCloskey on Sunday, video posted online showed him wielding a long-barreled gun and her with a small handgun. The protesters, estimated at around 500 racially mixed people, were passing the house on the way to the nearby home of Mayor Lyda Krewson.
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| North Korea's response to coronavirus has been a 'shining success', says Kim Jong-un Posted: 02 Jul 2020 09:03 PM PDT  Kim Jong-un has said that North Korea has stopped the coronavirus making inroads in his country and his response to the pandemic has been a "shining success". According to state news agency KCNA, Mr Kim told a meeting of the politburo of the ruling Workers Party that North Korea had "thoroughly prevented the inroad of the malignant virus and maintained a stable anti-epidemic situation despite the worldwide health crisis, which is a shining success achieved." He warned against complacency or relaxation in the anti-epidemic effort and urged North Koreans to maintain "maximum alert", KCNA said in a statement. The politburo meeting on Thursday comes as many hard-hit countries are easing lockdowns, even as the world moves quickly past the grim milestones of 10 million confirmed infections and 500,000 deaths. North Korea has reopened schools but kept a ban on public gatherings and made it mandatory for people to wear masks in public places as part of its response to the coronavirus threat, a World Health Organisation (WHO) official said on Wednesday.
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| WHO Quietly Changes COVID Timeline following Republican Questioning Posted: 02 Jul 2020 07:43 AM PDT  The World Health Organization quietly changed its timeline of the coronavirus pandemic's first days on Tuesday, clarifying that the Chinese Communist Party never informed the organization of the pandemic on December 31, despite previous claims to the contrary.In the new timeline, which the WHO says has been updated "in light of evolving events and new information," the organization reveals that its Chinese Office "picked up" an online statement — which has since been deleted — made by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission describing cases of "viral pneumonia." The WHO says it also received open-source intelligence suggesting there was "pneumonia of unknown cause" in Wuhan.The additions clarify the WHO's previous timeline, which simply stated that on December 31, "Wuhan Municipal Health Commission, China, reported a cluster of cases of pneumonia in Wuhan" — implying the report was made to the WHO. In its initial report on the outbreak, the WHO said its China office "was informed" of the unknown pneumonia cases, without clarifying that the information was not provided by the Chinese Communist Party.The lack of clarity led multiple outlets — including Axios, the Washington Post, and the BBC — to report that Chinese authorities told the WHO's China office about the outbreak on December 31. But an interim report released last month by Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee scrutinized that claim, and argued the CCP never actually told the WHO about the outbreak."I'm glad to see the WHO and the Chinese Communist Party have both read my interim report on the origins of the pandemic and are finally admitting to the world the truth — the CCP never reported the virus outbreak to the WHO in violation of WHO regulations," HFAC Lead Republican and China Task Force Chairman Michael McCaul (R., Texas) told National Review. "The question now is whether the CCP will continue their false propaganda campaign that continues to claim they warned the world, or whether they will come clean and begin to work with the world health community to get to the bottom of this deadly pandemic."The WHO did not respond to a request for comment.McCaul, along with China Task Force member Jim Banks (R., Ind.), have argued that China violated the WHO's International Health Regulations by failing to be transparent about the origins of the pandemic.
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| Alabama college students are throwing 'COVID parties' where they invite infected people and gamble on who gets sick first, officials say Posted: 02 Jul 2020 02:48 AM PDT  As of Thursday, Alabama reported more than 38,000 coronavirus cases. State health authorities have warned intensive-care-unit beds might run out.
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| India Kanpur: Eight policemen killed in clash with gang members Posted: 03 Jul 2020 01:11 AM PDT  Gang members fired at the officers during a raid in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
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| New Yahoo News/YouGov July 4 poll: A staggering 62 percent of Americans no longer see America as Ronald Reagan's 'shining city on a hill' Posted: 02 Jul 2020 01:29 PM PDT  This Fourth of July, a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows that no matter how polarized they might be politically, Americans finally seem to agree on one thing: America itself is getting worse.
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| As coronavirus surges, Fox News shifts its message on masks Posted: 02 Jul 2020 01:08 PM PDT  However haltingly and incompletely, the president's favorite news outlet has started to acknowledge that the coronavirus is a far graver threat than even Trump will acknowledge.
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| Duckworth to hold up confirmations to ensure impeachment witness Vindman's promotion isn't blocked Posted: 02 Jul 2020 10:58 AM PDT  Duckworth said her blockade on senior nominees would exempt Army Gen. Gustave Perna, nominated to lead the effort to develop a coronavirus vaccine.
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| 'We're not going anywhere': Seattle's Chop zone dismantled but cause lives on Posted: 02 Jul 2020 06:33 AM PDT  The special police-free zone set up by protesters has now been cleared, but activists say they won't stop the fight for justiceThe occupied protest zone near downtown Seattle known as the Capitol Hill Organized Protest, or "Chop", effectively came to a swift end early on Wednesday morning when officers largely cleared the area of people and encampments, despite some protests lingering overnight into Thursday.Now activists say the relationships built and lessons learned over the last three weeks in the self-proclaimed police-free zone have already had a lasting impact that will live on past the physical presence of Chop."We won, we're winning, we made history," said Rick Hearns, who had become head of security at Chop. "Look what we did here. The world saw it."But the protest area also became the location of a series of night-time shootings, which left a 16-year-old boy and a 19-year-old man dead and several others seriously injured.In a series of tweets on Wednesday afternoon, Seattle's mayor, Jenny Durkan, highlighted the violence in the zone, saying "the recent public safety threats have been well documented" and "this violence demanded action".She said: "Our conversations over the weekend made it clear that many individuals would not leave, and that we couldn't address these critical public safety concerns until they did."The autonomous zone emerged organically following a series of dangerous clashes between protesters and law enforcement during marches against police brutality sparked by the killing of George Floyd, and African American, by a white police officer, in Minneapolis in May.Officers in Seattle abandoned their east precinct building as demonstrations closed in, after which protesters camped out around it, with the intention of protecting the building from possible destruction that might be blamed on them.In the days that followed, hundreds more joined, and suddenly several blocks of the city's streets were teeming with people of different ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds, focused on calling for the defunding the city's police department – echoing such protest cries emerging coast to coast, which can mean diverting money budgeted for police departments to social and education services, or even dismantling an entire department and restructuring the law enforcement system.And they wanted an end to police brutality against black people, explained Tarika Powell, an organizer with Seattle Black Collective Voice.> We're going to organize sit-ins, we're going to spam the city officials, we're going to show up> > Jessie Livingston"It was a space where people came to learn. We screened documentaries, we put on people's assemblies every day where people had the opportunity to speak and share their feelings and ideas … we put on educational events every single day," she told the Guardian."We had a space called the conversation cafe where people could come to learn about racism and to talk about it in ways they don't get to do in their daily lives."It spurred not only important conversations and learning, but also lasting bonds, which have since resulted in the organizing of anti-racist protests and the creation of social justice groups.The Seattle Black Collective Voice, for example, was formed after a group of organizers and protesters met in the Chop, explained Powell.Today, there are about 40 people involved with the collective, and they hold weekly educational events, and organize neighborhood cleanups and mental health outreach for people in the African American community."We would have not been able to come together and engage in the work that we're doing if it had not been for Chop," she said.Pay the Fee Tiny Library was launched in a tent at the Chop, and now organizers have set up the library, which includes black, indigenous and people of color and LGBTQ literature, around the city and held events. And a garden started in the Cal Anderson Park is now expected to become a permanent addition to the neighborhood.Protesters have repeatedly stressed that the shootings and violence was not directly connected with Chop, and may have happened anyway . But it resulted in a dramatic decline in occupiers, it concerned local businesses and residents, and amplified officials calling on occupants to disperse.By the time police cleared Chop on Wednesday, following Mayor Durkan's emergency executive order, the area had largely been reduced to a small number of activists and many homeless people, explained Powell.The truth is they "went in and did a violent sweep on homeless people, throwing away their tents and belongings", she said."Those homeless people had come into Chop to be safe from the sweeps. That is the vast majority of people that were in that space since the shooting started."Officers reported on Twitter that they arrested 31 people during the sweep.Some activists have argued that the police precinct was needed as a bargaining chip in order to get their three main demands met, which involve defunding the police, using that money to invest in community health and services, and dropping criminal charges against protesters. Others say another occupation in the city could be a future possibility.Jessie Livingston, 36, a protester who has been camped at Chop almost every day since it was founded, said she didn't know exactly the form the movement might take, but said: "We're going to organize sit-ins, we're going to spam the city officials, we're going to show up to city council meetings, we're going to do everything we know how to do."She added: "We're not going anywhere."
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| Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested at a $1 million luxury 4-bedroom New Hampshire house that was bought last year in cash Posted: 03 Jul 2020 04:38 AM PDT  Maxwell, a former girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein, is accused of helping him sexually abuse underage victims over the course of many years.
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| Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina get best marks in Latin America for pandemic response - poll Posted: 03 Jul 2020 06:42 AM PDT  Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina are the Latin American countries that earned the best grades for their response to the coronavirus, according to a poll conducted in the region and released on Friday, while Brazil was tagged as the worst performer. The survey by the consulting firm Trespuntozero, to which Reuters had exclusive access, shows that in eight of the 10 countries in which the study was conducted, the respondents considered Uruguay one of the best controllers of the pandemic. According to the poll, the performance of Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou against the pandemic had 77.8% approval in his own country; that of Paraguayan Mario Abdo, 76.7%; and that of Argentina's Alberto Fernandez, 68%.
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| US victims of FARC rebels win claim to Venezuelan's fortune Posted: 02 Jul 2020 09:12 PM PDT  Three American defense contractors held for five years by leftist rebels in Colombia moved closer to collecting on a $318 million judgment against their former captors when a U.S. Supreme Court justice rebuffed an appeal by a sanctioned Venezuelan businessman whose assets they seek to claim. Justice Clarence Thomas refused to hear an emergency appeal by Samark López, letting stand an order by a federal appeals court immediately turning over $53 million from the businessman's previously seized U.S. bank accounts, though the appeals court judgment is being contested.
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| Fox’s Neil Cavuto Grills GOP Rep Who Wants to Disband Coronavirus Task Force Posted: 02 Jul 2020 03:05 PM PDT  Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto had an intense confrontation with Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) on Thursday over his demand that the White House coronavirus task force disband, calling the Trumpian congressman out over his home state's exploding COVID-19 cases and his own lack of health expertise.Biggs recently called for the Trump administration to scrap its pandemic task force over his belief that its public health experts, namely Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, were undermining President Donald Trump as the president pushes for the economy to continue to reopen.Interviewing Biggs on Thursday's broadcast of Your World with Neil Cavuto, the veteran Fox anchor—who has frequently been the target of the president's ire over his critical Trump coverage—immediately pressed Biggs on whether he thought masks could help stem the spread of coronavirus.Hospital Workers to 'Complacent' Americans: Stop Right Now"I have to tell you, I'm reticent to believe that if a mask works so well, then why is L.A. spiking and surging with COVID cases when they've had a mandatory mask regulation in effect for seven weeks now," the Arizona congressman replied. "There is no empirical evidence that that is the case."Cavuto, meanwhile, pointed out that while localities may have had mask ordinances, the issue may have been enforcement and getting residents to follow the guidelines. Biggs, however, insisted that the actual problem was that masks themselves aren't very effective, despite copious studies showing otherwise. "You don't think it has any benefit at all?" Cavuto shot back. In recent days, Republicans and even some of Trump's staunchest Fox allies have attempted to get the president to embrace mask-wearing to keep the economy open amid a spike in cases.The Fox host pivoted to Biggs' demand that the task force shutter, asking the Freedom Caucus chair whether or not he thought it was risky."No, I don't. I appreciate what the vice president has done and I think he is done a great job," he replied before criticizing Fauci, complaining that the top infectious disease expert has been "inconsistent" with his message.Cavuto, however, implored Biggs to "forget Dr. Fauci for a second" and think about what's happening in his home state, which is currently suffering from the worst coronavirus surge in the nation."You have hospitalizations and ICU bed use, the highest of this crisis," Cavuto exclaimed. "You are telling people to get rid of it? People are listening to you and you're saying we can ease up!"After Biggs accused the Fox anchor of "cherry-picking data," Cavuto retorted he was doing no such thing before accusing Biggs of just wanting to get rid of the commission because it is saying things he doesn't like.The far-right lawmaker argued that they were "undermining" Trump, prompting Cavuto to ask whether it was the president's job to have health experts he defers to. Biggs, meanwhile, downplayed Birx and Fauci's expertise by wondering aloud about when they last saw patients."When's the last time you have?" Cavuto snarked back."I'm not a trained physician," Biggs replied."But you're telling the ones who are to get out!" Cavuto shouted in response. "To get off the commission!"Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| ‘Slipping and Sliding down the Polls’ Posted: 02 Jul 2020 04:37 PM PDT  This is an excerpt from episode 233 of The Editors.Rich: So Jim Geraghty, I have the RealClearPolitics Biden versus Trump polling page up right here. I'm just going to read you some numbers going back to . . . This is a CNBC poll from the 10th and 12th of June. And I'm just going to run through to the latest poll. Biden plus ten. Biden plus eight. Biden plus twelve. Biden plus nine. Biden plus twelve. Biden plus 14. Biden plus nine. Biden plus eight. Biden plus four. Biden plus eight. Let's look at Wisconsin, Jim. Wisconsin. Biden plus twelve. Biden plus 14. Biden plus nine. Biden plus eight. Biden plus four. Biden plus eight. Sorry, that was the general election again. Florida, Biden eleven. Biden plus seven. Biden plus six. Biden plus nine. These are the real Wisconsin numbers. Whoops, now I'm on Florida. I'm back on Florida 2016 for some reason. Wisconsin, here it is. Biden plus nine. Biden plus eleven. Biden plus four. Biden plus eight. Trump plus one. Let's do Pennsylvania just for fun. Pennsylvania, Biden plus ten. Biden plus three. Biden plus five. Jim Geraghty, what do you make of it?Jim: Well, for all the listeners who lost track of all those numbers in there, let me summarize what Rich just laid out over the last couple of minutes. Everything is bad. The polls are bad.Rich: There was a Trump plus one in one of these states. Florida maybe. Was it Florida or Wisconsin?Charlie: Wisconsin. It was the Trafalgar poll in Wisconsin.Rich: Trafalgar. I think Trafalgar has him up in one of these other states, too. I won't bore our listeners by trying to find where it is.Jim: Broadly speaking, the big three swing states up in the upper Midwest, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, they all look pretty bad. Florida, maybe not looking bad but still not looking great. Every now and then Arizona, which everybody kind of thinks of as a Trump state, not looking that great. Iowa and Ohio, two states that Trump won by pretty sizable margins last time, not looking great. Well actually, there's a fairly consistent movement across all the polls, across all the country of anywhere I would say from two to five to ten points against Trump towards Biden. Now, when you have this discussion with Trump supporters, they'll jump up, and they'll say, "Hey, there are some people out there who don't want to tell a pollster that they're voting for Donald Trump, but they're going to vote for him anyway." I think that's true. I think that's probably . . . I don't know what percentage of the population that is. I don't know what percentage of the electorate that is. I think it's probably worth one or two points easily. Five points? Not so sure. The idea that it's going to overcome a ten-point deficit we're seeing in these polls, I'm rather skeptical of it. And I certainly would not want the Trump campaign to walk around saying, "Oh don't worry; we're totally doing fine."And I think probably what might have been a particularly useful canary in the coal mine, for weeks and months we've been hearing, "Oh, don't worry; don't worry about these polls. Polls were wrong in 2016." Brad Parscale is building the Death Star. By the way, if you're going to compare your campaign to some sort of science fiction device or instrument, please don't pick one that blew up twice when a small underfunded band decided to go after it. Probably what I think was the steam coming out of the engine for the Trump campaign was the Tulsa rally last week. The turnout was nowhere near what the Trump campaign expected. Parscale himself was saying a million tickets had been requested. And yeah, maybe some people were afraid of the protesters. No doubt I think some people were understandably worried about catching coronavirus at a large indoor event with crowds. Maybe some of the factor was people who ordered tickets who had no intention of showing up. But let's face it; it's Tulsa, Okla. It's Trump, it's a Saturday. There's really no good reason for him to not be able to put a decent crowd together. And the fact that this was so much lower than they expected, I think that convinced even the skeptics on the Trump campaign that no, they're not winning this race. Everything is not fine.The interesting thing is, I actually think one of the most encouraging headlines I saw, even articles that I saw in the past week was by Politico, June 27th, "Trump Knows He's Losing." Trump admits that he's losing and the story begins, "The president has privately come to a grim realization in recent days. People told Politico, amid a mountain of bad polling and warnings from some of his staunchest allies that he's on course to be a one-term president." You can't solve a problem unless you see a problem and unless you recognize it's a problem. And I think the worst possible thing for the Trump campaign between now and November would be to walk around saying, "We don't have to worry about any of these polls. These polls are meaningless. We're still doing fine. We're still doing great." Look, there's a very simple way to explain why Trump would be in lousy shape up against Joe Biden at this point. When in fact, at the beginning of the year, he was not in that rough shape.For a long time the idea is: Okay, these Democrats have taken over the suburbs. There're a whole bunch of white soccer moms and minivan-driving dads out there who abhor what the president does. They just don't like what they see. They can't stand what he's saying on his Twitter feed. But that's okay because we're going to make up for it amongst blue-collar whites in those key swing states. Well, that works when unemployment is between 3 percent and 4 percent. That doesn't work when unemployment is in double digits, and it's easy to see some white blue-collar workers saying, oh, you know what, I'm pretty disappointed with this presidency; maybe I should give this guy Biden a try. I don't think the cake is fully baked yet. I don't think that Trump is actually defeated yet. He just needs to run a very different campaign from here on out. And I thought your observation on the Corner the other day, Rich, where you know, asked by Sean Hannity this ultimate softball, what do you want to do in your second term? And Trump gives this meandering Mississippi River of an answer that talks about how experience is good and I didn't think experience was good before. John Bolton's a real SOB.If I had the chance to talk to the president, I would say, "Mr. President, you need to start talking to people about what will happen in your second term and what you can deliver. People need a sense of what will happen. You need to lay out an extensive second-term agenda." I think this argument you've seen from . . . I don't often agree with Sohrab Ahmari about all these other guys who are saying, you got to put up a forthright defense of the American Founding, the American principles. You need to say, this is a good country. We have laws, and we're not perfect, but we are seeing this violent anarchist movement that wants to tear down everything we have, and I will not stand for it. That's a message that can win. But you can't wake up every morning, watch the TV and complain on what you see on cable news. And you've got to get rid of . . . Anyway, so I'll stop for my usual . . . I think the polls are that bad. I think he is on course to lose. I think there's time to fix it, but he's got to get focused, and time is ticking away right now.Rich: It's kind of funny. Some of Trump's worst moments have been on Hannity. And they're so bad exactly because Hannity has zero intention of making them bad. It involves whiffing on a softball. But Charlie, what do you make of the general terrain?Charlie: I really like that the impression that Jim did of Trump was actually of Chris Mathews. They have similar hair maybe. That's such a good Chris Mathews impression, Jim. What do I think? I think Biden is winning and is likely to win. I don't think that Biden will win by ten points when it comes to Election Day. There's a small part of me that wonders if we've been here before, but that's not based on any intelligent analysis. It's just the lizard part of my brain remembering how sure I was that Hillary Clinton was going to win and also remembering seeing some similar—Rich: You weren't 100 percent. In your defense, you weren't 100 percent sure. There's that moment I starkly remember we were sitting in your office. We might have been recording a podcast. We were recording a podcast. You had the sizable office back in the old NR world headquarters, and you were playing around with 270 to win or the RealClear electoral map. And I remember you pointing to 270 on the Trump side. And it involved those blue wall states. Playing around with those blue wall states.Charlie: Yeah, so I should probably separate out the year because at this point in the summer of 2016 I was absolutely convinced that Hillary was going to win. And we were seeing similar polling at the state and the national level, and we were also being told that Republicans were going to lose the House and the Senate. I would need to look up the numbers, but I distinctly remember them being down by about seven on the generic ballot in the House. As it got closer to it, yeah, I started to play around with the map and to wonder. And then there was one incident which I think I texted you about, Rich, where I went to get a haircut in Connecticut, and all of the people who worked in this old-fashioned barber shop were either second- or third-generation Hispanic immigrants or Italian Americans. And all of them were for Trump. Every single one. And it made me wonder. Not that he won Connecticut, but there's just something about the way they were talking about Trump and Hillary that made me wonder. But I didn't think that Trump was going to win even on Election Day.And I'm not saying that this is the same. I don't think it is. But there's a part of my brain that's just been humbled by that experience. I also remember Romney being up seven points in the Gallup poll a lot in 2012. And I look at these Florida polls and sure, maybe Biden's up eight. Entirely possible. It's also true that Andrew Gillum was up over Ron DeSantis by seven points on Election Day in 2018. And that's partly because of who votes in Florida. So there's a part of me that is of the view that this is a bit early and that we don't know. And the other contrarian view that I have is that Donald Trump is losing the people he is best suited to win back. If Biden were 80 to 15 or 80 to 20 with Hispanic voters, I would think, game over. But he's not. Trump's actually not doing as badly with Hispanic voters as you would assume. He seems to have kept about the same amount of black support, which is very low. But he hasn't gone to a 1 or 2 percent. He's at 8 or 9, and enthusiasm for Biden seems to be lower than usual. Where he's really suffering is with seniors. Especially white seniors and white working-class women.Now, I don't think he's going to, but if the election becomes an actual election, those are the people you would assume he would be best placed to win back. My problem in seeing him winning and the reason I think Biden is winning and will win, is that as Jim says, I'm not really sure what he can do. The economy's not going to go back to where it was by the end of the year. He's not going to gain a reputation for having guided us through the coronavirus storm by the end of the year. He is unable to articulate why he wants to be president for four more years. He's very easily distracted. And although I understand why he's criticizing the Supreme Court for its decisions over the last two weeks, "vote for me and I'll appoint different justices than the ones I already appointed" is less likely than not to be a winning message. So I can't quite see how he gets on track. I am nonetheless a little bit hesitant at this stage, both because of what happened last time but also because of who it is that he seems to be losing.Rich: Yeah, so Jim, my problem is given what happened in 2016, I just don't think I could ever count Trump out again. If these were the polls a week out, yeah. I guess I'd count him out. But we've got four months to go. The difference though is the nature of the opponent. Biden is not as hateable as Hillary Clinton. There was a stark number I believe in the last New York Times/Siena poll that had Trump down 14, which kind of seems like a lot. But just had Biden's very unfavorable number. And it's 20 something. I don't know, 23 something. And Hillary's at this point, I believe it said it was like at 46. And Trump is about 46 very unfavorable. So he's where Hillary was. Now he was also where Hillary was in 2016 with a very a . . . But still managed to win. And the other thing that's going on now is Trump's a known quantity. He's not the change candidate anymore. And he's had these two crises that people have a really negative view of his handling of them. And absent having some other crisis that he handles in an unquestionably confident and deft manner that people really approve of, it's hard to see how he can unring the bell of his numbers on the coronavirus and on police/race relations.Jim: Yeah. Look, you're not running on potential and promise anymore. You are a known quantity. I have a suspicion that a key ingredient of that unexpected 2016 victory came from the sense of, people who were not thrilled about the course of the country under the two terms of Obama, including quite a few Obama voters. People forget, the year heading into Election Day 2016, we had the San Bernardino shootings, we had the Orlando shootings. We had the shooting of the cops in Dallas right before the convention in Cleveland. I remember heading out to that Republican convention in Cleveland and being really afraid there's going to be some mass shooting or some sort of terrible terror attack. There was a sense . . . If you look in the right places, there was a sense that the country was coming apart at the seams in 2016. Of course now it looks like the good old days. This is where the president has to govern where he is, and he cannot keep running this sort outsider insurgent campaign because you're the president now. You're in charge. You are the status quo whether you like it or not.You need to make the case either that things are going well, which is going to be very, very tough considering the circumstances or probably the better argument is, I had things going really, really well and then this terrible virus came over here from China. And it's a challenge like we've never seen before and haven't seen in 100 years. And it forced us to shut down the economy that was the goose that was laying the golden egg. If you keep me in charge, once we get this virus under control, I can keep government policy in a direction to restore the golden goose. I can get us back, and you know the Democrats don't do that. You know the Democrats are going to want to raise taxes. You know they're going to want to do the crazy New Deal. Sooner or later, Joe Biden will succumb to the Bernie Sanders side. Joe Biden was not put on this earth to stand up to the left wing of the Democratic Party. Joe Biden is a back slapper. Joe Biden wants everybody to get along. Joe Biden will not stand up for you. He couldn't even stand up for the businesses that were being trashed by rioters.There's an argument to be made. Except the president needs to focus and do that, and he can't run on his own personal grievances. I think it was Ramesh who made this very good point. The Trump campaign of 2016 was about doing things. Building the wall, immigration security. We're going to bring back U.S. domestic production. Just on the issue of China alone there was an enormous potential for the president to get on this. But he's got to stop thinking about like, China is merely a—Rich: I can't believe you did this, Jim. I was just about to steal Ramesh's point, and you stole it before I could get to it. I would express Ramesh's point a little differently, or maybe this is a different point. Some of my best punditry is based on stealing Ramesh's points, Jim.Jim: Here you go.Rich: Don't hone in on my territory here.Jim: I'll spike the volleyball over to you.Rich: I don't know whether Ramesh has written this or just said it. But the thing about the 2016 campaign is Trump was hitting on issues that were under-discussed in our politics, underappreciated among the political elite. Fears of terrorism, concerns about illegal immigration, concerns about de-industrialization. Whereas this time around, very often his obsessions are just totally his obsessions or the obsessions of a very small group of people that might include us on this podcast. Probably includes a lot of our listeners. But Obamagate and Section 230 and these are not things that hit people where they live, and what I wonder about, Charlie, going back to Jim's point in his first answer, that'd be great if Trump gave a speech about how this is a good country. You know, we have this wonderful Constitution. We need to defend our heritage. I certainly think he should give that speech. Any president should give that speech at any given point in time. But I just wonder if the toppling of the statues and all the rest of it infuriating and appalling to us, whether the average voter cares about it so much.I've basically been on board Jim's theory. There's going to be some sort of backlash to what's been going on. But I wonder if it's just not top of mind enough for the average voter.Charlie: So we have the opinion of the cause delivered by a Ponnuru, R. and joined in concurrence with Geraghty, J. and Lowry, R. I feel I should dissent just to make it a proper case. I think Ramesh is right, and I think that there is something to what you just said, Rich, but I think that that is only the case if you look at this narrowly. One of Trump's problems is that he's not eloquent. He is incapable of developing an argument, and he is incapable of nuance. And this is a moment that requires both. Now, four years ago just by talking about, just by mentioning topics that had been swept under the rug for so long, he had people sitting at home for better or for worse and saying, "I think that. I want to talk about that." You could distill the entire immigration question, which is a complicated topic, down to "build the wall." And people would hear, he cares about this. You could distill the question of China into a few soundbites. You can't do that when you've been in charge for four years. Because you have to defend your record and explain why it's different than the aspirant's. But also this is a moment which calls for Trump to thread needles. The coronavirus question is complicated. You can't just say, open up our businesses. You have to acknowledge this is a real threat. People have died.And the same is true of these protests. You have to acknowledge that what happened to George Floyd was terrible, and historically African Americans have been persecuted legally, systematically. But also to defend some of America's great figures and to defend America's virtue. And Trump's contributions thus far are to tweet three- or four-word sentences in all caps. LAW AND ORDER. KEEP THE STATUES. I think that there is a real appetite out there for a defense of America. But he hasn't made it. He's been oddly silent. For all of the worry about Tom Cotton, and for all the, in many cases, correct anger at what happened in the park outside the White House, Trump's been fairly hands-off. There's been no real moment where he has become the avatar of a movement that doesn't think America is rotten to the core. At least not beyond his usual platitudes. And one of the problems with being so effusive as he is, is it loses its currency. If you say all the time, this is the best, this is the greatest, this is the most influential, this is the . . . People say, "all right, whatever."You look back to presidents that have capitalized on this, you look back to Ronald Reagan when he first ran for governor of California, and he ran against the students at Berkeley and indeed the faculty at Berkeley. Find the video on YouTube of him telling them that they were in charge of spoiled children. If you look at Richard Nixon in 1968. They were pretty clear. They weren't battering rams, and they weren't just mouthing platitudes or shouting three-word slogans. They were clear about what it is that they thought. I do think maybe the statues per se aren't American's No. 1 concern. But I do think that the sort of sentiment that was expressed by Drew Brees about the importance of the flag, what it meant to him, what he thought about when he looked at it. The generational argument. The Burkean argument for America. I think that is extremely poignant and extremely poignant for a majority and extremely poignant for what it's worth, for an awful lot of minorities. I don't like this narrative that we're seeing. The white person's country. That's absolute nonsense.It's very important that we acknowledge disparities and historical persecution. But let's not pretend that there aren't lots and lots and lots of non-white people in this country who love it very dearly and who are glad to be here. Trump has an opportunity to be that guy. Joe Biden is not going to be a caricature. He's not going to be a stereotype. He's not going to burn the flag. So Trump if anything has to do it more than he would otherwise. But he's not. He hasn't sent in the authorities to shut down what's happened to these statues. He hasn't made a big speech about it. He hasn't had a great sister–soldier moment where he just says no. He's absent. And for all the talk about Joe Biden being in his basement, so is the president. And without that sort of action there's just really no rationale for him beyond people saying, well we need him as a bulwark against Joe Biden. But that just doesn't sell in the way that it did against, say, a Hillary Clinton.Rich: Yeah Jim, there are, I'm going to say it, things that I don't understand about Trump's view of the presidency. But I think I do understand them. But rhetorically I don't understand why given the opportunity to give a national speech about American history and our heritage and our heroes, I'd love to do that. I wouldn't want to do any other presidential duty, but I want to do that. And by the way, our listeners are wondering, we're going to talk about the Russian intelligence thing probably later in the week when we have a firmer bead on it. But I'd love to read the presidential daily brief every day. The best gossip basically around the world gathered by the most adept spies in world history and surveillance techniques served up in a binder on your desk every morning. Who wouldn't want to read that? And the president of the United States, you can have dinner with anyone you want, you can reach out to anyone you want. Any historian. Any issue expert at your beck and call. And instead of sitting and watching Fox News, which I can do as an ordinary American every night not being president of the United States.But these things don't appeal to him because what he's really . . . He's in the job for the show. He wants to be the center of attention every day and to vent and say whatever he's feeling at any given moment, no matter how reckless or heedless like that villages thing he retweeted. And be the center of attention and watch people talk about him every morning and every night and during a lot of the day on cable TV.Jim: Yeah. Maybe we'll talk about this a bit later in the podcast when we start talking about the coronavirus stuff, but there's considerable evidence that Donald Trump doesn't actually enjoy the job part of being president. He likes all the pomp and circumstance. He likes the title. He likes being the center of attention. But it's not like you see him spending a lot of time hashing things out with legislators and trying to put together some sort of majority to pass a bill. He clearly has very little interest in the details of policy. At one point you had said something about all the different things he could talk about, and Charlie mentioned the tweets of three or four words all in caps that he does. Do you know what'd probably be helpful, guys? If he'd stop retweeting videos of his supporters shouting "white power." That's probably not helpful at a point of a national conversation about racial inequities and stuff like that. That's probably not helping. Yeah, I know the other guy said you're not supporting him, you're not black. Somehow we've managed to pick the two least self-aware, sensitive, erudite septuagenarians to run for president this cycle. But there is a . . .At the end when Trump couldn't articulate that second-term agenda . . . Basically what is the cause? What does America get if it reelects Trump? More Trump. Him. Him being in the White House is the victory. So you've had some very interesting arguments of what does Trump really want to do in a second term? I think the first attack against Barack Obama from the John McCain campaign that drew blood was the celebrity ad. And Barack Obama was not merely a celebrity president, but he definitely leaned into it. Doing the picks on ESPN and doing the wacky videos with BuzzFeed and all the appearances on late-night talk shows and slow-jamming the news with Jimmy Fallon. Barack Obama was a full-spectrum celebrity for a good portion of his eight years. And I have a suspicion that's part of the job. That may have been how Trump thought the job was. And guess what? Being president involves a heck of a lot more than that. Particularly when you're facing major crises of urban unrest and this terrible pandemic going around.And if Trump doesn't win reelection, I think a big chunk of the reason will be, he never really understood the job and never really wanted to do the parts of the job that are necessary to succeed in the job.Charlie: I have never wanted to be president, which is good because I can't be. But watching Trump gives me that strange instinct. You know when you're watching sports and you just sort of kick your leg out to try and kick the ball in soccer or if you're watching baseball and you see they're just going to miss catching it, you sort of put your arm out? I just sit there watching Trump so often and sort of just wish I could substitute myself—Rich: Yeah. I can do that better.Jim: You just got this yearning for mind control. Just for a short period of time.Charlie: I never felt like that before.Rich: I can see as Charlie's striding boldly in a black and white picture from the White House to St. John's Church after the protesters had been tear-gassed. You're like, I could have done that better.Charlie: Yeah. I mean for a start, I think I would have said, if anyone is liable to get hurt or moved in order for me to do this, let's not do it. It is a different feeling because with Barack Obama, I opposed almost everything he did. He was built in a laboratory to annoy me politically. But I never thought, "well I would do it better." I thought, you have an ideology that I don't share and I really wish you weren't there. But with Trump it's like watching someone drop the ball all the time. You just want to stand up and say, oh no, don't say that. Oh no, don't do that. Here's . . . It's just genuinely frustrating.Rich: Jim Geraghty exit question to you. At this juncture, which is more likely in November, a Joe Biden landslide or another Donald Trump narrow Electoral College victory without winning the popular vote?Jim: Joe Biden landslide. Didn't take me very long to make that decision.Charlie: Yeah. I think it's more likely that there'll be a Joe Biden landslide.Rich: I'm going to say more likely narrow Trump victory because I think the race will close up, and I don't see the landslide happening at this juncture. But I don't totally discount the possibility that ten days out this race could really flip and could be an utter catastrophe for Republicans. But at the moment I'm more likely a Trump narrow victory, but obviously the most likely scenario is just a solid, non-landslide Joe Biden victory.
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| ‘We’ll be waiting on you.’ Florida sheriff wants to deputize gun owners against protesters Posted: 02 Jul 2020 07:49 PM PDT  A Florida sheriff warned people protesting police brutality that he would call on individual gun owners to defend themselves if peaceful demonstrations got out of hand.
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| Did Russia Give Us a Sneak Peak of Its New Nuclear Hunter-Killer Attack Submarine? Posted: 03 Jul 2020 01:00 PM PDT  Russia has one of the largest submarine fleets in the world, but it is aging.
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| Catholic priest suspended from church for calling Black Lives Matter protesters ‘maggots and parasites’ Posted: 02 Jul 2020 02:35 PM PDT  A Catholic priest in Indiana has been suspended from his public ministry, after he called Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters "maggots and parasites".Reverend Theodore Rothrock, assigned to St Elizabeth Seton Catholic Church in Carmel, Indiana, was suspended on Wednesday, after he disparaged BLM protesters in a bulletin published on Sunday, according to Huffpost.
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| Finland's air force drops swastika emblem after century in use Posted: 02 Jul 2020 04:57 AM PDT  Finland's air force has quietly removed the last swastikas from unit emblems after over a century in use. Until recently the country's Air Force Command emblem depicted a pair of wings around a swastika, a symbol which pre-dates its associations with Nazism. The change was first observed by Teivo Teivainen, a politics professor at the University of Helsinki, who argued its negative associations made the swastika's ongoing use politically fraught. Professor Teivainen, who has written widely on the issue, said using the swastika could cause difficulties for the Nato-aligned country, particularly if worn on the uniforms of deployed personnel. "I have not found many reasonable arguments to support its military usefulness," Mr Teivainen wrote on Twitter on Thursday. The symbol's association with Finland's air force dates to its founding in 1918, when Swedish count Eric von Rosen donated a plane painted with swastikas to the newly independent country. The German Nazi Party adopted the swastika as its logo in 1920. Finland removed the swastika from its aircraft following a postwar armistice with the Soviet Union, but until recently the symbol remained on Air Force Command emblems and some flags and decorations. A spokesman for Finland's air force told the BBC, "as unit emblems are worn on uniform, it was considered impractical and unnecessary to continue using the old unit emblem, which had caused misunderstandings from time to time."
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| Virus concerns grow — as do crowds flocking to Jersey Shore Posted: 03 Jul 2020 06:25 AM PDT  New Jersey's casinos have reopened, along with amusement rides and water parks. Beaches are open, though at reduced occupancy levels.
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| The killing of 26 people at a drug rehab center in Mexico thought to be part of a gang war Posted: 02 Jul 2020 05:57 PM PDT  Authorities suspect the assault was part of a fierce turf battle that has transformed industrial Guanajuato into one of Mexico's deadliest states.
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| Court lifts restriction on Mary Trump's tell-all book Posted: 02 Jul 2020 03:39 AM PDT  A restriction placed on a tell-all book by President Trump's niece was lifted by a New York appeals court on Wednesday, clearing the way for its distribution.
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| Senator warns of political pressure on U.S. probe into hackers of green groups Posted: 03 Jul 2020 07:11 AM PDT  A Democratic U.S. senator says he has written to Attorney General William Barr outlining his concerns about potential "political interference" by the Trump administration in an investigation of a private espionage firm that targeted environmental groups in the United States. Last month Reuters reported https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-cyber-mercenaries-exclusive/exclusive-obscure-indian-cyber-firm-spied-on-politicians-investors-worldwide-idUSKBN23G1GQ that U.S. law enforcement was investigating aspects of a seven-year-long hack-for-hire operation carried out by a New Delhi-based firm called BellTroX InfoTech Services on behalf of unknown clients. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a letter https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6980750-20200702-Letter-from-Whitehouse-to-Barr.html to Barr and in an interview with Reuters on Thursday that the investigation was being carried out by prosecutors in New York and that unnamed sources had alerted his office that the Department of Justice has taken what he said was "an interest in this matter which seems inconsistent with ordinary procedure."
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| The Nigerian Email Scammer Who Stole Millions From Premier League Club, NY Law Firm, Banks Posted: 03 Jul 2020 02:15 PM PDT  Ramon Olorunwa Abbas, who went by the name Ray Hushpuppi, made no secret of his extraordinary wealth. On an Instagram account with 2.3 million followers, he posted photos of himself dripping in high-end watches, wearing robes with his name emblazoned on the back, and driving a $300,000 Mercedes or a white Rolls Royce Cullinan with the hashtag AllMine.He took private jets to Paris, shopped at Gucci and Louis Vuitton, and indulged in cakes depicting himself surrounded by Fendi bags. His address was 1706 Palazzo Versace in Dubai.On Snapchat, under the username "hushpuppi5," he called himself "The Billionaire Gucci Master!!!"Abbas claimed to be a real estate developer. But his wealth was instead the result of running elaborate email scams and hacking schemes, U.S. federal prosecutors argue—a rare example of a Nigerian email scam that actually fooled major companies into handing over millions. "The FBI's investigation has revealed that Abbas finances this opulent lifestyle through crime," FBI Special Agent Andrew Innocenti wrote in a lengthy arrest affidavit, filed in the District Court for the Central District of California on Thursday.Abbas, 37, was arrested when he arrived in Chicago from Dubai on Thursday night. He faces criminal charges for being the leader of a transnational network that allegedly conspired to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through email scams and other schemes, some of which targeted a New York law firm, a foreign bank and an English Premier League soccer club.Abbas and a small group of co-conspirators allegedly had a network of "money mules" that they used to carry out the email scams and then launder money through a slew of foreign bank accounts. The group would usually hack into a business' email account and either block or redirect emails, according to the FBI. They would then use the hacked email account to trick a victim or a company into sending money to them, often changing bank transfer information by just one or two numbers.However, when one member was arrested in October, 2019, shortly after a New York law firm was duped into wiring almost $1 million, investigators obtained a search warrant to go through his iPhone and found messages that blew open the inner workings of the group.Abbas had allegedly tricked one of the law firm's paralegals into wiring $922,857, intended for a client's real estate refinancing, to a Chase Bank account controlled by Abbas. The paralegal emailed a Citizens Bank email address to verify instructions for the wire transfer but it was a spoof email address set up by Abbas. About half the amount was instantly wired to a Canadian bank account and images of the wire transfer were shared between the group. "Did the big hit?" one group member texted, according to excerpts in the affidavit. "Yessir," another replied. In another instance, a foreign bank was defrauded $14.7 million in Feb. 2019 when the group gained access to the bank's computer network and sent fake SWIFT messages—utilizing software used by financial institutions to sends payment orders to each other. One co-conspirator texted Abbas to ask if he had any bank accounts that could take large amounts of the stolen money. Abbas responded with the details for Romanian, Bulgarian and U.S. bank accounts.In one text message, the co-conspirator wrote: "my guy also deleted history logs at the bank so they won't even c the transaction."But the following day, the cyber-heist hit the news and the transfers didn't reach Abbas' Romanian account."Today they noticed and pressed a recall on it , it might show and block or never show," the co-conspirator texted Abbas. "Look it hit the news." Abbas replied: "damn."The pair appeared undeterred. "Next one is in few weeks will let U know when it's ready. to bad they caught on or it would been a nice payout," he wrote to Abbas.In March, the group discussed how they could launder £100 million (about $124 million) from an unnamed English Premier League Club but it's not clear what happened to the money.At one point, the group were making $1 million to $5 million through a scam once or twice a week."This was a challenging case, one that spanned international boundaries, traditional financial systems and the digital sphere," said Jesse Baker, a Secret Service agent in the Los Angles Field Office.Abbas was expelled from the United Arab Emirates, for reasons that were unclear, and is expected to be transferred from Chicago to Los Angeles in the coming weeks. He did not yet have a lawyer appointed.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Yes, World War II Is Still Killing People (This Picture Is Proof) Posted: 02 Jul 2020 04:30 AM PDT  Unexploded bombs are a lasting danger in Europe.
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| Huge bird of prey catches shark-like fish and flies off in viral video Posted: 03 Jul 2020 05:14 AM PDT  Visitors to a beach last week would have seen a shark-like fish soaring above their heads thanks to one bird's actions.A video shared online showed one huge predatory bird seen with what appeared to be a shark suspended in its claws above crowds at South Carolina's Myrtle Beach.
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| There is no epidemic of fatal police shootings against unarmed Black Americans Posted: 03 Jul 2020 12:15 AM PDT  Ideally officers would never need to take anyone's life. But the data on police killings doesn't support reducing or abolishing law enforcement.
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| A Black woman questioned her hotel bill — and an employee called police, NC suit says Posted: 02 Jul 2020 05:22 PM PDT  The suit comes days after a video showed a worker at another hotel in North Carolina call police on Black guests at the hotel pool.
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| Gov. Huckabee on Trump’s re-election strategy: President will face some challenges Posted: 03 Jul 2020 07:25 AM PDT  Former Arkansas governor and Fox News contributor Mike Huckabee says Trump has 'enough time to remind people the worst thing they can do is vote for Biden' on 'America's Newsroom.'
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| The surgeon general refused to give a yes or no answer when asked if he would advise people to attend large gatherings for the 4th of July Posted: 03 Jul 2020 10:37 AM PDT  During an appearance on the "Today" show, US Surgeon General Jerome Adams didn't advise people not to attend large gatherings for the 4th of July.
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| Iran threatens retaliation after what it calls possible cyber attack on nuclear site Posted: 03 Jul 2020 07:28 AM PDT  Iran will retaliate against any country that carries out cyber attacks on its nuclear sites, the head of civilian defence said, after a fire at its Natanz plant which some Iranian officials said may have been caused by cyber sabotage. The Natanz uranium-enrichment site, much of which is underground, is one of several Iranian facilities monitored by inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog. Iran's top security body said on Friday the cause of the "incident" at the nuclear site had been determined, but "due to security considerations" it would be announced at a convenient time.
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| Carlos Ghosn: Japan ask US to extradite ex-Green Beret and son over Japan escape Posted: 02 Jul 2020 04:21 PM PDT  The ex-soldier and his son are held in the US for allegedly helping the ex-Nissan boss flee Japan.
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| America's World War II Nightmare: Hitler Tries to Invade the U.S. Homeland Posted: 03 Jul 2020 03:30 PM PDT  Invading a country doesn't guarantee success.
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| Letters to the Editor: If the Golden State Killer doesn't deserve the death penalty, no one does Posted: 02 Jul 2020 03:00 AM PDT  If a man who admits to 13 murders and dozens of kidnappings and burglaries doesn't get the death penalty, why should anyone?
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| School districts pushed to reopen say there isn't enough money to do it safely Posted: 03 Jul 2020 02:00 AM PDT  "They're caught between a rock and a hard place, and the biggest fear is they're going to be forced to open schools without the safety guidelines."
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| Woman calls police on black couple building patio at their own home Posted: 03 Jul 2020 11:37 AM PDT  A video of a New Jersey woman calling the police on her black neighbours went viral and eventually spawned a protest outside the woman's home.The incident occurred on Monday when Fareed Nassor Hayat, an attorney and a professor of law at City University of New York, and his wife, Norrinda, were in the backyard building a stone patio.
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| Daveed Diggs on what Fourth of July means to Black Americans Posted: 03 Jul 2020 09:09 AM PDT  "What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim."
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| Tucker Carlson 2024? The GOP is buzzing Posted: 02 Jul 2020 03:49 PM PDT  The Fox News host's ratings have gone gangbusters, and many Republicans think he'd be a force in a Republican primary.
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| Dozens mourn man who killed himself in busy Beirut district Posted: 03 Jul 2020 09:18 AM PDT  Dozens of people lay flowers on a main Beirut street where a man killed himself on Friday, with some blaming his death on the country's economic collapse that has left more and more Lebanese hungry. Reuters could not establish the motive for the apparent suicide. The 61-year-old man shot himself in the head in front of a Dunkin' Donuts store in the capital's busy Hamra district, witnesses said.
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| Afghan Contractor Handed Out Russian Cash to Kill Americans, Officials Say Posted: 02 Jul 2020 05:11 AM PDT  KABUL, Afghanistan -- He was a lowly drug smuggler, neighbors and relatives say, then ventured into contracting, seeking a slice of the billions of dollars the U.S.-led coalition was funneling into construction projects in Afghanistan.But he really began to show off his wealth in recent years, after establishing a base in Russia, though how he earned those riches remained mysterious. On his regular trips home to northern Afghanistan, he drove the latest model cars, protected by bodyguards, and his house was recently upgraded to a four-story villa.Now Rahmatullah Azizi stands as a central piece of a puzzle rocking Washington, named in U.S. intelligence reports and confirmed by Afghan officials as a key middleman who for years handed out money from a Russian military intelligence unit to reward Taliban-linked fighters for targeting U.S. troops in Afghanistan, according to American and Afghan officials.As security agencies connected the dots of the bounty scheme and narrowed in on him, they carried out sweeping raids to arrest dozens of his relatives and associates about six months ago but discovered that Azizi had sneaked out of Afghanistan and was likely back in Russia. What they did find in one of his homes, in Kabul, was about half a million dollars in cash.American and Afghan officials for years have maintained that Russia was running clandestine operations to undermine the U.S. mission in Afghanistan and aid the Taliban.But U.S. officials only recently concluded that a Russian spy agency was paying bounties for killing coalition troops, including Americans, which the Kremlin and the Taliban have denied.According to officials briefed on the matter, U.S. intelligence officials believe the program is run by Unit 29155, an arm of the Russian military intelligence agency known as the GRU that has carried out assassinations and other operations overseas.That a conduit for the payments would be someone like Azizi -- tied to the U.S. reconstruction effort, enmeshed in the regional netherworld but not prominent enough to attract outside attention -- speaks to the depth of Russia's reach into the increasingly complicated Afghan battlefield, exploiting a nexus of crime and terror to strike blows with years of deniability.The public revelation last week of that conclusion has touched off a political firestorm in Washington. White House officials said at first that President Donald Trump was never briefed on the matter, but it emerged that the intelligence assessment was included in a written briefing to the president in late February, if not earlier.As Democratic and Republican officials have expressed alarm at the news, and the administration's lack of action in response, the White House has insisted that the information was uncertain.Details of Azizi's role in the bounty scheme were confirmed through a dozen interviews that included U.S. and Afghan officials aware of the intelligence and the raids that led to it; his neighbors and friends; and business associates of the middle men arrested on suspicion of involvement. All spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation.U.S. intelligence reports named Azizi as a key middleman between the GRU and militants linked to the Taliban who carried out the attacks. He was among those who collected the cash in Russia, which intelligence files described as multiple payments of "hundreds of thousands of dollars." Those files were among the materials provided to Congress this week.Through a layered and complex Hawala system -- an informal way to transfer money -- he delivered it to Afghanistan for the missions, the files say. The transfers were often sliced into smaller amounts that routed through several regional countries before arriving in Afghanistan, associates of the arrested businessmen said.Afghan officials said prizes of as much as $100,000 per killed soldier were offered for American and coalition targets.Just how the money was dispersed to militants carrying out attacks for the Taliban, and at what level the coordination occurred, remains unclear. But officials say the network had grown increasingly ambitious and was in communication with more senior levels in Taliban military ranks to discuss potential targets.About six months ago, Afghanistan's intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, raided the offices of several Hawala businessmen both in Kabul, the capital, and in Kunduz, in the north, who were believed to be associated with the bounty scheme, making more than a dozen arrests."The target of the operation was Rahmat, who was going back-and-forth to Russia for a long time and said he worked there, but no one knew what he did," said Safiullah Amiry, deputy head of Kunduz provincial council, referring to Azizi. But by the time the raid took place, "Rahmat had fled.""From what I heard from security officials, the money had come from Russia through Rahmat," he added.Russia was initially seen as cooperating with U.S. efforts after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, as its interests in defeating al-Qaida, an international Islamic terror group, aligned with those of the United States.But in recent years, as the two powers clashed elsewhere, the Kremlin grew wary of the prolonged U.S. presence and moved closer to the Taliban, hedging its bets on who would take power in a post-American Afghanistan.The Russians also saw an opportunity for long-awaited payback for the Soviet humiliation in Afghanistan in the 1980s, when the Red Army withdrew after being unable to defeat a U.S.-backed insurgency.Russia has walked a fine balance in recent years, eager to bloody the American nose but wary of Afghanistan collapsing into a chaos that could spill over its borders. Publicly, Russia has admitted only to information-sharing with the Taliban in fighting the Islamic State in Afghanistan, a common foe.The U.S. conclusion in 2019 that the Russians were sending bounty money to the Taliban came at a delicate time in the conflict, just as the United States was deep into negotiations with the insurgents over a deal to withdraw the remaining American troops from the country.Some of the attacks believed to be part of the bounty scheme were carried out around the time the Trump administration was actively reaching out to Russia for cooperation on those peace talks. Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special envoy leading the talks, repeatedly met with Russian officials to build consensus around the U.S. endgame.The Afghan battlefield is saturated with smaller terrorist groups in addition to the Taliban, who are still responsible for the majority of the violence. Criminal networks, profiteers and terror training experts also freelance their services -- often to several groups at the same time.Azizi, who neighbors and relatives said is in his 40s, thrived in that convoluted, murky environment.A friend who has known him since his early days in Kunduz, as well as later in Russia, said he had started off with smuggling small shipments of drugs into Iran in his 20s, but that venture was not very successful. He had returned to northern Afghanistan, and somehow won contracts from the U.S.-led coalition forces to build stretches of a couple roads in Kunduz, before making his way to Russia.None of those interviewed who know Azizi were surprised when his associates were raided about six months ago and one of his brothers taken into custody with the half-million dollars in cash. As one of his friends put it, he had gone from "not even having a blanket" to having multiple houses, fancy cars, and security escorts.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| No, China's Army Can't Beat America—Yet Posted: 03 Jul 2020 04:00 PM PDT  But Beijing's forces keep getting better.
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