Emrys
Emrys's JournalCorporations Open the Cash Spigot for Trump's Inauguration
Source: New York Times
WASHINGTON — When Donald J. Trump strides onto the inaugural ballroom floor this week amid the sprawling celebration of his swearing-in, he will have corporate America and many of its titans to thank for the rapturous greeting.
Chevron, the oil giant, has given $500,000 for the dayslong festivities. Boeing, which has been a target of Mr. Trump, pledged $1 million. And Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, giants of the gambling industry, are said to have donated more than that by themselves.
They are far from alone.
All told, the group planning the inaugural festivities says it has raised more than $100 million, which would be nearly double the record for an inauguration, with much of it coming in six- and seven-figure checks from America’s corporate suites.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/15/us/politics/trump-inauguration-donations-corporations.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytpolitics&smtyp=cur
Head of MI6 used information from Trump dossier in first public speech
Source: The Independent
The head of MI6 used information obtained by former officer Christopher Steele in his Trump investigation, in a warning against Russian cyberattacks and attempts to subvert Western democracies, The Independent has learned.
Sir Alex Younger's briefing notes for his first public speech as head of the Secret Intelligence Service contained some of the material supplied by Mr Steele, according to security sources. Drawing on the alleged hacking carried out by Moscow in the US presidential campaign, he warned of the danger facing Britain and Western European allies, and especially to elections due to be held next year.
Security sources stress that MI6 had extensive information, British and international, on the Russian threat apart from that of Mr Steele. But they pointed out that he is held in high regard and the contribution he provided was valuable.
In one of his recent tweets, Mr Trump described Mr Steele as a failed spy. He also claimed in another tweet that "James Clapper {director of national intelligence} called me yesterday to denounce the false and fictitious report that was illegally circulated. Made up, phony facts. Too bad!"
Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-dossier-mi6-christopher-steele-russia-documents-alex-younger-a7528681.html
More about Steele's professional reputation at the link. So let's kill this meme some are trying to push that Steele is some sort of flaky maverick limelighter.
The article also gives a little more background into the UK intelligence services' current concerns.
.... And
6: Put food on the families of his cronies:
Trump offered 10 billion euro bribe to end Russian sanctions?
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2017/01/11/trump-offered-10-billion-euro-bribe-to-end-russian-sanctions/
BuzzFeed: "Help Us Map Trump's Global Businesses And Associates"
...
We wound up with the diagram you see above — a bird’s-eye view of what we call TrumpWorld. We spent two months building the dataset from public records, news reports, and other sources on the Trump family, his Cabinet picks, and top advisers — more than 1,500 people and organizations altogether. BuzzFeed News is the first news organization to publish such an exhaustive list of Trump’s business interests, and we hope it will help you, the public, better understand the new administration.
But Trump’s web is so sprawling there are surely things we missed. We need your help to capture as many connections as we can.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/johntemplon/help-us-map-trumpworld?bftwnews&utm_term=.jvNR54MdRb#.gaBVlmZzVG
Click through above for higher-def graphics and links to spreadsheets etc.
We could chew the fat about what we know here, but BuzzFeed adds:
Exclusive: The Trump Administration May Evict the Press from the White House
Source: Esquire
The upset to the existing order caused by the presidential election has been acutely felt by no one, perhaps, so much it has by the national press. At Donald Trump's press conference on Wednesday, reporters found themselves not only subject to a scolding ("Fake news!" "Disgraceful!"
but also awakened to the strong suggestion that, at least in tactical terms, the showdown had been won by the president-elect.
The media's sense of dislocation may soon become literal.
According to three senior officials on the transition team, a plan to evict the press corps from the White House is under serious consideration by the incoming Trump Administration. If the plan goes through, one of the officials said, the media will be removed from the cozy confines of the White House press room, where it has worked for several decades. Members of the press will be relocated to the White House Conference Center—near Lafayette Square—or to a space in the Old Executive Office Building, next door to the White House.
"There has been no decision," Sean Spicer, Trump's press secretary, said about the plan today. But Spicer acknowledged that "there has been some discussion about how to do it."
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a52301/trump-evict-press-white-house/
Well apart from the conflicts of interest,
this is a big fat fold by Trump.
He said he wasn't going ahead with the "expansion" of his multi-million-dollar-losing club because of the Vattenfall experimental wind turbine development off the coast near his golf club. He took his case to the UK Supreme Court to try to get the windfarm stopped, and failed dismally.
The reality was that at the time he was kicking up that fuss, he didn't have enough money to complete the development:
Donald Trump's plan for £750m Scottish golf resort put on hold
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/jun/20/donald-trump-golf-resort-scotland
But now, all of a sudden, TrumpCo has the money to go ahead? Go figure.
An Intercept article about "Lifezette" from last November:
Laura Ingraham, a close Trump ally currently under consideration to be Trump’s White House press secretary, owns an online publisher called Ingraham Media Group that runs a number of sites, including LifeZette, a news site that frequently posts articles of dubious veracity. One video produced by LifeZette this summer, ominously titled “Clinton Body Count,” promoted a conspiracy theory that the Clinton family had some role in the plane crash death of John F. Kennedy, Jr., as well as the deaths of various friends and Democrats.
...
Another LifeZette video, picking up false claims from other sites, claimed that voting machines “might be compromised” because a voting machine company called Smartmatic, allegedly providing voting machines “in sixteen states,” was purchased by the liberal billionaire George Soros. Soros never purchased the company, and Smartmatic did not provide voting machines used in the general election.
One LifeZette article misleadingly claimed that the United Nations backed a “secret” Obama administration takeover of local police departments. The article referenced Justice Department orders that a select few police departments address patterns of misconduct, a practice that, in reality, long predates the Obama presidency, is hardly secret, and had no relation to the United Nations.
Another LifeZette article, which went viral in the week prior to the election, falsely claimed that Wikileaks had revealed that a senior Hillary Clinton campaign official had engaged in occult rituals. Ingraham’s site regularly receives links from the Drudge Report and other powerful drivers of Internet traffic.
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/laura-ingraham-lifezette/
Nice, reliable sourcing there, Donny boy.
Graphic version in case anyone wants to post it elsewhere with a character limit:
These Reports Allege Trump Has Deep Ties To Russia
Source: BuzzFeed
A dossier making explosive — but unverified — allegations that the Russian government has been “cultivating, supporting and assisting” President-elect Donald Trump for years and gained compromising information about him has been circulating among elected officials, intelligence agents, and journalists for weeks.
The dossier, which is a collection of memos written over a period of months, includes specific, unverified and potentially unverifiable allegations of contact between Trump aides and Russian operatives, and graphic claims of sexual acts documented by the Russians. CNN reported Tuesday that a two-page synopsis of the report was given to President Barack Obama and Trump.
Now BuzzFeed News is publishing the full document so that Americans can make up their own minds about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels of the US government.
The document was prepared for political opponents of Trump by a person who is understood to be a former British intelligence agent. It is not just unconfirmed: It includes some clear errors. The report misspells the name of one company, “Alpha Group,” throughout. It is Alfa Group. The report says the settlement of Barvikha, outside Moscow, is “reserved for the residences of the top leadership and their close associates.” It is not reserved for anyone, and is also populated by the very wealthy.
Read more: https://www.buzzfeed.com/kenbensinger/these-reports-allege-trump-has-deep-ties-to-russia
Direct link to the UNVERIFIED d[link:http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/10/politics/donald-trump-intelligence-report-russia/index.html|]ocument: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3259984-Trump-Intelligence-Allegations.html
It did get hacked in February 2013.
At least if you believe Trump:
Once he'd wrested back control from Will.i.am, he tweeted:
Of course, it wasn't the fault of his own lax security:
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