http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/10/31/1589221/-Source-Comey-thought-it-was-too-political-to-say-Russians-were-meddling-in-election

By Laura Clawson



If this report pans out, then there’s a new twist to all the talk about whether FBI Director James Comey was making an intentionally political move by releasing news that the FBI had found evidence of emails that might or might not be from Hillary Clinton and might or might not be new to the investigation of her private server. In this scenario, Comey suddenly gets a lot less benefit of the doubt:

FBI Director James Comey argued privately that it was too close to Election Day for the United States government to name Russia as meddling in the U.S. election and ultimately ensured that the FBI's name was not on the document that the U.S. government put out, a former FBI official tells CNBC. [...]

According to the former official, Comey agreed with the conclusion the intelligence community came to: "A foreign power was trying to undermine the election. He believed it to be true, but was against putting it out before the election." Comey's position, this official said, was "if it is said, it shouldn't come from the FBI, which as you'll recall it did not."

So … “we have concluded that another country is for sure trying to influence our election” isn’t suitable for public consumption, but “there may be some emails, we’re not really sure” is something to release immediately? That does not make Comey look like the principled straight shooter he keeps getting credit for being. And it gives new credence to Harry Reid’s letter charging Comey with covering up evidence of a connection between the Russian government and Donald Trump.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/07/donald-trump-tried-to-fire-nancy-o-dell-after-she-rejected-his-sexual-advances.html

Video of the Republican talking about trying to have sex with a married female journalist adds new context to his reported effort to have her kicked off of his Miss USA pageant.

Less than two years after a female journalist supposedly rebuffed Donald Trump’s sexual advances—as heard on newly discovered video—he allegedly tried to have her fired from one of his beauty pageants.

On Friday, The Washington Post revealed video of the Republican presidential nominee bragging to Billy Bush about non-consensually groping women (a.k.a, sexual assault): “When you’re a star, they let you do it—you can do anything,” Trump said in the unearthed 2005 Access Hollywood footage. “Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”
Trump, newly married to his then-pregnant bride Melania at the time, also chatted about trying, and failing, to have sex with a married woman.

“You know I moved on her actually,” Trump recounted to a young Bush. “You know she was down on Palm Beach. I moved on her and I failed. I’ll admit it. I did try and fuck her. She was married … I took her out [for] furniture [shopping]. I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn’t get there, and she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look.”

That married woman (identified as “Nancy” by Trump) was subsequently identified by Access Hollywood as former host Nancy O’Dell during the show’s Friday night episode.

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http://www.mediaite.com/tv/samantha-bee-rips-the-media-for-getting-suckered-into-trumps-birther-conference/

by Ken Meyer | 12:47 pm, September 20th, 2016

Full Frontal host Samantha Bee put cable news on blast Monday night for constantly getting fished in by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, and the ratings he brings in with his incendiary antics.

Bee took the media to task last week for not doing enough to fact-check Trump, and she was prompted to do it again in response to the superfluous media coverage that was devoted to the news conference at which the real estate mogul finally acknowledged that President Obama was a natural-born U.S. citizen. The conference was a sensationalized news event at which the media not only gave copious airtime to Trump’s vacant podium, but then stuck with the event as it turned into a major act of self-promotion.

After likening the coverage to nest-cam viewers waiting for a hawk to come back, Bee ripped the media for getting strung along by the presser as much as they were.



Trump has continued to take criticism from those who viewed his birther renouncement as inadequate, filled with lies, and/or was intentional trickery of the media. Bee also got in on this, hammering Trump for perpetuating the conspiracy and trying to put the blame on Hillary Clinton‘s 2008 staff (where there is only one alleged instance of that occurring anywhere in her immediate orbit).

“A decade of racist conspiracy mongering brushed off in a 32-word statement that contained two lies, plus one of those lies repeated, and the half-hearted disavowal of the original lie,” Bee stormed. “Even the part where he says, ‘you know what I mean,’ isn’t really true since nobody knows what the f*ck he’s talking about there.”

Watch above, via TBS.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-donations-alan-hevesi_us_57da25b8e4b0071a6e05666b

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump gave at least $45,000 to the campaign of Alan Hevesi, a New York state comptroller who later went to prison for his role in a pay-to-play bribery scandal, according to a Huffington Post review of campaign finance records.

Trump’s donations coincided with a $500 million lawsuit he filed against the city of New York in the hopes of reducing his property taxes. As the city comptroller and later the state comptroller, Hevesi, a Democrat, played a role in evaluating and settling legal claims against the city of New York and its officials.

The bulk of Trump’s donations went to Hevesi’s campaign for state comptroller, a race Hevesi won in the fall of 2002. In the fall of 2003, by which point Trump had given Hevesi $35,000, the city settled Trump’s lawsuit, a decision that would have involved both the state comptroller ― i.e., Hevesi ― and the new city comptroller.

The city reduced the tax assessment for Trump’s newest building by 17 percent and awarded the building a special tax abatement. In exchange, Trump agreed to subsidize 200 units of affordable housing in the Bronx. The settlement saved Trump $97 million in taxes he didn’t have to pay, he later wrote in Trump: How To Get Rich.

Trump had donated small amounts to Hevesi during the course of Hevesi’s decades-long career as an assemblyman and a comptroller. But the tens of thousands of dollars Trump gave between July 2002 and January 2004 had no precedent, and no postscript. According to finance records, after 2004, Trump never gave to Hevesi again.

More in link.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/sam-bee-burns-the-media-for-trading-their-balls-for-ratings-with-poor-trump-fact-checking/

Samantha Bee returned from her hiatus on Monday night, and one of her first orders of business was to scold the Fourth Estate for not doing a better job of calling out Donald Trump whenever he lies or uses false arguments.

Pointing to the highly-criticized recent performance by Matt Lauer, Bee explained that the Commander-in-Chief forum was merely symptomatic of the current state of the press. Bee explained that this could be prominently seen whenever news figures refuse to call out Trump’s politics for fear of appearing biased, invoke facts without proper context, or when they fail to adequately point out what is true or false.

“There’s no time to report the facts and what people feel are the facts,” Bee mocked. “Why can’t the media just tell us what’s true and what’s bullsh*t? ”



“Calling a liar a liar isn’t an opinion if you can prove it,” Bee pressed on. “That’s what we call a fact. The idea that news network executives traded their balls for ratings, that’s just my opinion.”

Bee somewhat conceded towards the end that news organizations are required to live up to a standard that forbids them from effectively calling out Trump’s disqualifying qualities. She argues that instead, that standard forces the press to create a false equivalency between those failings and Hillary Clinton‘s.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/08/politics/russia-television-donald-trump-interview/index.html

Washington (CNN)Donald Trump gave an interview Thursday that aired on a television station funded by the Kremlin, arguing that the Russian government was "probably" not meddling in the American presidential race.

Speaking to Larry King on RT America, which is an arm of government-funded news outlet Russia Today, Trump said it would "not be appropriate" if Russian forces were looking to influence the race, which is suspected by some investigators and has been fanned by Hillary Clinton's campaign as recently as Thursday morning.
He also suggested that the allegation was politically motivated.

(More in link)

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