New documents show that IP3 officials have had unprecedented access to the highest levels of the Trump Administration, including meeting directly with President Trump, Jared Kushner, Gary Cohn, KT McFarland, and Cabinet Secretaries Rick Perry, Steven Mnuchin, Mike Pompeo, Rex Tillerson, James Mattis, and Wilbur Ross. IP3 described the Trump Administration as “an extended team member.”

New documents show that Thomas J. Barrack, Jr.—a longtime personal friend, campaign donor, and inaugural chairman—negotiated directly with President Trump and other White House officials to seek powerful positions within the Administration—including Special Envoy to the Middle East and Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates—at the same time he was (1) promoting the interests of U.S. corporations seeking to profit from the transfer of nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia; (2) advocating on behalf of foreign interests seeking to obtain this U.S. nuclear technology; and (3) taking steps for his own company, Colony NorthStar, to profit from the same proposals he was advancing with the Administration.

Officials from other companies in the nuclear industry have serious concerns about IP3 and its financial motive in pressing for the transfer of U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia, calling it a “boondoggle,” warning that “IP3 has a questionable reputation,” and observing, “This whole IP3 effort is still a bit strange and mysterious.” One industry executive called IP3 the “Theranos of the nuclear industry.”

The state Supreme Court granted Judge James Troiano’s request to resign on Wednesday and terminated his services effective immediately.

The longtime family court judge reportedly retired in 2012, but was still hearing cases on a part-time basis in Monmouth County Superior Court.

Superior Court Judge John Russo got the ax Wednesday after asking a rape victim in 2016 whether she attempted to keep her legs closed during her alleged assault. The state Supreme Court recommended his removal and he will now have until Aug. 19 to offer evidence proving why he should keep his position.
Russo — who is also reportedly facing a sexual harassment suit from his former law clerk — has been suspended without pay, pending the conclusion of his removal proceedings.

House Democrats are introducing a resolution condemning Donald Trump for his racist remarks about four non-white freshmen House Democrats, telling them to “go back” to where they came from. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to her membership today, urging them to vote in favor of it. This means the resolution will pass easily. It’s nonbinding, in the sense that it doesn’t cause a trap door to magically open up under Trump’s desk. But it does a few important things.

First, the resolution – which will explicitly call Donald Trump a racist – makes clear to the average nonpolitical American that Trump’s words really are racist. This matters, because the people in the middle generally sit back and wait for one side or the other to spell these kinds of things out for them.

Second, this resolution forces House Republicans to vote “yes” or “no” on whether Donald Trump is a racist. Most will vote that Trump is not a racist, and that can then be used against them when they run for reelection in 2020. A few House Republicans might vote that Trump is a racist, in an attempt at protecting their reelection prospects, but that’ll prompt Trump to begin attacking them. Either way, this forces the GOP to reckon with Trump’s racism.

"that completely outstripped CBP’s systems to manage its employees. "
“[Congress’] view was, ‘We’re going to field a small army and make up for decades of neglect by previous administrations.’ Almost any body in the field was better than no body.”

CBP recruited that new army by lowering its hiring standards—already the lowest among top federal law enforcement agencies—and shoveling agents through the academy and into the field before even completing background checks. “We weren’t prepared,” one former training officer told me. Agents called it “No Trainee Left Behind.”
Management structures and processes failed, oversight lessened and by the end of the Bush administration, more than half of the Border Patrol had been in the field for less than two years. Already at that point, agent misconduct and criminality were on the rise—the lax hiring standards and background checks had populated the new border army with the wrong sort of person. “We made some mistakes,” Bush’s CBP Commissioner Ralph Basham told me in 2014. “We found out later that we did, in fact, hire cartel members.”

Juan David Ortiz, a 10-year Border Patrol veteran and supervisor in the region, had admitted he spent September driving sex workers out to rural Webb County and shooting them in the head. He allegedly killed four women before a fifth escaped last Friday and reported him to a state trooper, leading to his arrest and a confession the local DA described as “cold” and emotionless.

In the Laredo sector alone, which hosts some 1,700 of the 20,000 total Border Patrol agents, Ortiz is at least the fourth patrolman to be arrested this year.
The other cases include an agent who allegedly murdered his lover and 1-year-old child;

another allegedly sexually assaulted a woman after threatening her with deportation.

Yet another agent, who hasn’t been identified or arrested, shot and killed an unarmed 20-year-old Guatemalan woman in May.”

From 2005 to 2012, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents were arrested 2,170 times for misconduct, such as domestic violence and drunk driving, government inspectors found.
CBP, which includes Border Patrol and customs agents, was also the target of 1,187 complaints of excessive force from 2007 to 2012. Since 2004, more than 200 agents have been arrested on corruption-related charges, including at least 13 under Trump. And a 2013 government-commissioned report found that Border Patrol agents regularly stepped in the paths of cars to justify firing at drivers, as well as shooting at rock-throwers, including teenagers on the Mexican side, with the intent to kill.

As a narrative, the document is a disaster. And at 448 pages, it's too long to grind through. For long stretches, it reads less like a story and more like a terms-of-service agreement. The instinct to click "next" is strong.

And yet, buried within the Mueller report, there is a narrative that reads in parts like a thriller, like a comedy, like a tragedy — and, most important — like an indictment.
The story just needed to be rearranged in a better form.