Can Hunter Biden Be Both Right and Wrong, Both Innocent and Guilty? Yes He Can.

The story that started the latest round of madness

 by Thomas Neuburger

If you're confused by the welter of reports around the Hunter Biden-purloined (or forgotten) laptop story, don't be embarrassed. The reporting is not just confusing, but confusingly told. Even if we divide the story into its two major parts — what the Post printed; what Facebook and Twitter did about it — and analyze them separately, things don't become more clear. Large sections of each side's version of each side of the story overlap in confusing and unremarked-on ways. 

In brief, here's what happened as Matt Taibbi describes it:

The “blockbuster” had a controversial provenance. A computer repair shop in Delaware reportedly came to possess a laptop belonging to the younger Biden. According to the Post, it contained a treasure trove of Republican oppo, including videos of the younger Biden smoking crack and having sex, and emails from a Ukrainian businessman pleading with Hunter to use connections to help the corrupt energy firm Burisma escape a shakedown.

Later, the Burisma exec appeared to thank the younger Biden for an introduction to his father. The Post strongly suggested that these emails, in conjunction with the well-known tale of Joe Biden demanding the ouster of then-General Prosecutor Viktor Shokin, represented a misuse of influence.

Soon after the story was published, we were hit with a stunner: two major tech platforms, Twitter and Facebook, took third-world style steps to limit the distribution of the story. Facebook announced that it was slowing the article’s spread on its news feed via a tweet from Andy Stone, a Facebook employee whose previous jobs included handling communications for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and for Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer [...].

That presents the two major pieces: the story in the Post, and the censorship of the story by two social media giants. Most non-right-wing writers, worried about appearing to attack Joe Biden in the run-up to the Most Important Election Ever (and who knows, maybe it is), have focused either on the censorship side of the story, or attributed the Post-published elements — the laptop and what it purports to contain — to Russian interference. (No one in the Biden camp has declared the released emails to be false, for what that's worth.)

But even focusing alone on the censorship side of the story produces confusion. Is what Facebook and Twitter did actual censorship, a traditionally bad thing in the liberal world? Or were they instead refusing to comply with "Russian interference in our election," something called an act of war not too long ago, thus giving their silence resistance-hero status? Even liberal opinion is divided on that one.

(Phil Ochs has a now-famous song about "liberals" in the 1960s. Listen again, but instead of his opening line — "I cried when they shot Medgar Evers" — substitute, "I cried when they published her emails.")

The Underlying Story

But let's look at the story itself, again through Matt Taibbi's eyes. (Part of this comes from the piece linked above and part comes from a longer, subscriber-only version of the same piece.)

As Taibbi points out, of those outlets that did cover the underlying story — the supposedly stolen laptop, the supposedly copied drive, the photos and emails it supposedly contained — mostly reported only on its electoral effect and not on the truth or falsity of its allegations. 

Even those who did report on the relations between the Bidens and Burisma did so in a binary, an on-off yes-or-no, way:

• Did Burisma use Hunter to "bribe" Joe Biden, the Obama administration's point man on Ukraine? Yes or no?

• Did Joe Biden try to get the Ukrainian investigator fired to help his son escape investigation? Yes or no?

The actual tale may be much more complex and interesting. Here's how Taibbi, who, we must remember, spent many years in Russia and "knows their ways," seems to have pieced it together. 

After a long description (well worth reading) of various machinations by Burisma's founder, a corrupt, former public official named Mykola Zlochevsky and a benefactor during the regime of ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich, Taibbi writes this:

To recap: an oligarch [Zlochevsky] whose company’s wealth was tied to embezzlement and graft was booted from power via revolution in February, 2014, causing his company’s assets to come under fire, both in Ukraine and abroad. With Zlochevsky’s former protector Viktor Yanukovich having fled Ukraine back to Russia, Burisma scrambled to shore up a new power base. Within six weeks of the revolution, the firm brought big names onto its board, including former Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski, Biden, and Devon Archer, pal to Hunter and the college roommate of Christopher Heinz, stepson to John Kerry. They would later add former CIA counter-terrorism chief Cofer Black. [...]

Essentially, a mob enterprise gearing up to defend itself against international lawsuits and seizure orders hired as decorative cover an ex-president of Poland, the son of a sitting U.S. Vice President, and a close family friend and business partner of the son of the American Secretary of State — not exactly subtle, and far beyond nepotism.

The truth of these events, then, is more nuanced — less binary if not less damning — than the black-and-white lens we are offered to view them through:

The Burisma board deals were a protection scheme, funded with stolen money and designed to scare off commercial rivals and would-be regulators alike. Archer and Hunter Biden, even if they never did a minute of work for Burisma, were being paid to provide a criminal enterprise with the appearance of American protection. Similarly, if Joe Biden never actually intervened on behalf of Burisma, Hunter’s presence on Burisma’s board made it possible for anyone to argue that he was.

At best, Biden and Archer were put on Burisma's board to provide Zlochevsky and Burisma protection against their enemies in the new, unfriendly-to-Zlochevsky Ukrainian government. Whether Biden and Archer knew this or not — and how could they not know? what could this free money otherwise be for? — it corrupted them both to take those jobs. 

The Corruption That Shows the Corruption

For them to benefit from these gifts and yet be widely defended for taking them, is one more instance, as anyone with eyes must know, of institutional corruption at its core. Accepting these board positions goes "beyond nepotism," in Taibbi's phrase, to complicity with all the corruption abroad we supposedly abhor — and which we use as a reason to overthrow unfriendly governments. Yet this kind of corruption can never be prosecuted here, because our own corrupt institution — the present American state — has legalized and legitimized it. 

For example, here's Matt Yglesias, a Hunter Biden critic, making the Establishment case for Biden's relationship with Burisma: "The worst you can say about any of this, however, was that Hunter’s position on the board was a standing conflict of interest that should have been avoided. There’s no evidence that Joe did anything wrong, specifically."

That's not the worst you can say. Hunter Biden can be — and likely was — both innocent and guilty simultaneously. He didn't have to be "taking a bribe for Joe" or "just benefiting when he can" to be complicit in, and a beneficiary of, everything that's wrong with the stinking Ukrainian state. That's an overlap of ideas our modern media, and our Trump-obsessed, #BackToBrunch liberal minds, can't seem to fathom. 

I can't wait to see what happens after Biden takes the White House. No one will be going back to brunch.

  

Remember The Swamp? Trump Fished Louis DeJoy Out Of It To Run The Post Office (Into The Ground)

Can this crooked, rich, ugly man with an obscene watch give Trump 4 more years via the USPS?

Louis DeJoy personally contributed over a million dollars to the NRC and to Trump's campaign, $32,300 to the North Carolina Republican Party, tens of thousands more to Republican congressional candidates and thousands to official Republican Party committees in Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, Arizona, Minnesota, Iowa, Maine, Arkansas and Washington. That's all perfectly legal and he was then hired by Trump to destroy the U.S. Postal Service, which he's been busy doing. Reporters Aaron Davis, Amy Gardner and Jon Swaine of the Washington Post looked into another kind of fundraising De Joy did that is perfectly illegal and which could and should, but won't, send him to prison.

"DeJoy’s prolific campaign fundraising," they wrote, "which helped position him as a top Republican power broker in North Carolina and ultimately as head of the U.S. Postal Service, was bolstered for more than a decade by a practice that left many employees feeling pressured to make political contributions to GOP candidates-- money DeJoy later reimbursed through bonuses, former employees say. Five people who worked for DeJoy’s former business, New Breed Logistics, say they were urged by DeJoy’s aides or by the chief executive himself to write checks and attend fundraisers at his 15,000-square-foot gated mansion beside a Greensboro, N.C., country club. There, events for Republicans running for the White House and Congress routinely fetched $100,000 or more apiece. Two other employees familiar with New Breed’s financial and payroll systems said DeJoy would instruct that bonus payments to staffers be boosted to help defray the cost of their contributions, an arrangement that would be unlawful."

That's the illegal part, but widely practiced-- if not quite as systematically-- in the sewer known as corporate America. Politically-engaged CEOs and chairmen do it almost routinely... and, I'm sure you've noticed, no CEOs ever go to prison for funneling illegal cash to politicians. Not all their wives become the ambassador to Estonia and Canada though. Still, funny how that works.

“Louis was a national fundraiser for the Republican Party. He asked employees for money. We gave him the money, and then he reciprocated by giving us big bonuses,” said David Young, DeJoy’s longtime director of human resources, who had access to payroll records at New Breed from the late 1990s to 2013 and is now retired. “When we got our bonuses, let’s just say they were bigger, they exceeded expectations-- and that covered the tax and everything else.”

Another former employee with knowledge of the process described a similar series of events, saying DeJoy orchestrated additional compensation for employees who had made political contributions, instructing managers to award bonuses to specific individuals.

“He would ask employees to make contributions at the same time that he would say, ‘I’ll get it back to you down the road,’ ” said the former employee, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution from DeJoy.

In response to a series of detailed questions from the Washington Post, Monty Hagler, a spokesman for DeJoy, said the former New Breed chief executive was not aware that any employees had felt pressured to make donations.

After repeatedly being asked, Hagler did not directly address the assertions that DeJoy reimbursed workers for making contributions, pointing to a statement in which he said DeJoy “believes that he has always followed campaign fundraising laws and regulations.”

...A Washington Post analysis of federal and state campaign finance records found a pattern of extensive donations by New Breed employees to Republican candidates, with the same amount often given by multiple people on the same day. Between 2000 and 2014, 124 individuals who worked for the company together gave more than $1 million to federal and state GOP candidates. Many had not previously made political donations, and have not made any since leaving the company, public records show. During the same period, nine employees gave a combined $700 to Democrats.

Although it can be permissible to encourage employees to make donations, reimbursing them for those contributions is a violation of North Carolina and federal election laws. Known as a straw-donor scheme, the practice allows donors to evade individual contribution limits and obscures the true source of money used to influence elections.

Such federal violations carry a five-year statute of limitations. There is no statute of limitations in North Carolina for felonies, including campaign finance violations.

The former employees who spoke to The Post all described donations they gave between 2003 and 2014, the year New Breed was acquired by a Connecticut-based company called XPO Logistics. DeJoy remained at XPO briefly in a leadership role, then retired at the end of 2015. By a year after the sale, several New Breed employees who had stayed on with XPO were giving significantly smaller political contributions and many stopped making them altogether, campaign finance records show.

...Democrats have accused DeJoy, who has personally given more than $1.1 million to Trump Victory, the joint fundraising vehicle of the president’s reelection campaign and the Republican Party, of seeking to hobble the Postal Service because of the president’s antipathy to voting by mail. As states have expanded access to mail voting because of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump has repeatedly attacked the practice and claimed without evidence that it will lead to rampant fraud.

The Postal Service chief emphasized to House lawmakers last month that the agency will prioritize election mail. Responding to questions about his fundraising, DeJoy scoffed. “Yes, I am a Republican. . . . I give a lot of money to Republicans.” But he pushed back fiercely on accusations that he was seeking to undermine the November vote. “I am not engaged in sabotaging the election,” DeJoy said. “We will do everything in our power and structure to deliver the ballots on time.”

During his testimony, DeJoy was asked by Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) if he had repaid executives for making donations to the Trump campaign.

“That’s an outrageous claim, sir, and I resent it... The answer is no,” DeJoy responded angrily.

DeJoy had retired from XPO management by 2016. He hosted Trump at his Greensboro estate, known locally as The Castle, for a birthday party and fundraiser in June 2016.

Earlier this year, DeJoy was leading fundraising for the Republican National Convention in Charlotte when he was selected by the Postal Service’s Board of Governors in May.

DeJoy was not originally on a list of prospective candidates for the job, Robert M. Duncan, chairman of the USPS Board of Governors, told House lawmakers in testimony last month. Duncan, a longtime GOP fundraiser, said he submitted DeJoy’s name as a candidate after his “interest, or availability, became known to me.”

Multiple New Breed employees said DeJoy’s ascent in Republican politics was powered in part by his ability to multiply his fundraising through his company, describing him as a chief executive who was single-minded in his focus on increasing his influence in the GOP.

...As DeJoy’s profile as a Republican bundler grew, his wife, Aldona Wos, won presidential and gubernatorial appointments-- first as an ambassador to Estonia in 2004, then as head of North Carolina’s health and human services agency in 2013. Trump appointed her in May 2017 to serve on the president’s commission on White House fellowships, and earlier this year, he nominated her to be ambassador to Canada.

DeJoy and trusted aides at the company made clear that he wanted employees to support his endeavors-- through emails inviting employees to fundraisers, follow-up calls and visits to staffers’ desks, many said.

“He would put pressure on the executives over each of the areas to go to their employees and give contributions,” one former employee said.

While some employees told The Post that they were happy to make the donations, others said they felt little choice, saying DeJoy had a heavy-handed demeanor and a reputation for angering easily.

Plant managers at New Breed said they received strongly worded admonitions from superiors that they should give money when DeJoy was holding fundraisers. A program manager said that when he was handed his first company bonus, a New Breed vice president told him he should buy a ticket to DeJoy’s next fundraiser.

Several employees said New Breed often distributed large bonuses of five figures or higher. Bonuses did not usually correlate with the exact amount of political contributions, but were large enough to account for both performance payments and donations, according to the two people with knowledge of company finances.

Five former employees said DeJoy’s executive assistant, Heather Clarke, personally called senior staffers, checking on whether executives were coming to fundraisers and collecting checks for candidates.

Trump insulted Trudeau by selling DeJoy the ambassadorship to Canada for his crazy right-wing wife

Clarke, who now works alongside DeJoy at the Postal Service as his chief of staff, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Phone messages left with Clarke’s husband were returned Friday by Hagler, who said she would have no comment.

Clarke was among several nonexecutive employees who gave substantial political donations, public records show: She alone contributed $47,000 from 2002 to 2014. Clarke has continued to donate since then, but at about half the annual rate as when she worked at New Breed.

Another longtime senior official in DeJoy’s company, Joe Hauck, also routinely contacted company employees urging them to contribute, former workers said.

In an interview, Hauck denied that the company reimbursed New Breed employees for political contributions. He said he never received any bonuses for that purpose, nor was he offered any. “That’s illegal-- you can’t do that,” said Hauck, who was vice president for sales, marketing and communications when the company was sold.

Hauck did acknowledge approaching employees and asking them to contribute, but disputed that he pressured anyone.

“I created a list of people that had indicated that they were interested. And whenever there was an event coming up, I would let them know about the event and they would either say, ‘Yeah, I want to participate’ or ‘No, I don’t,’ ” he said.

Hauck said he sometimes did collect checks for candidates in the office, but only because some employees “happened to have their checkbooks on them.”

...Steve Moore, who took a job as plant manager of a New Breed facility in Bolingbrook, Ill., in 2007, said he felt pressured to contribute just a few months into his job. DeJoy sent managers an email announcing a fundraising event at his house for former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, then a candidate for president.

Moore said his manager, Philip Meyer, soon followed up, telling him that making a contribution was “highly recommended,” even if he would not attend.

“I took that to mean my job is on the line here, or things won’t go smooth for me here at New Breed if I didn’t contribute,” Moore said in an interview. He donated $250. “I didn’t really agree with what was going on,” he said. Moore said he was terminated in 2008 after a dispute with his supervisors.

In a text message, Meyer declined to comment.

One of the biggest beneficiaries of donations from New Breed employees has been GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, whose campaign committees collected nearly $300,000 from people at the company in 2014, campaign finance records show.

When asked for comment on the accounts of employees who said they were pressured to donate to DeJoy’s favored candidates, Andrew Romeo, a spokesman for Tillis’s campaign, said in an email: “Neither Senator Tillis nor our campaign had knowledge of these findings.”

...Young, the retired director of human resources, said it was during the 2004 Bush reelection campaign that he saw DeJoy begin to “take advantage” of his power as CEO to move money for politics.

“No one was ever forced to or lost a job because they didn’t, but if people contributed, their raises and their bonuses were bumped up to accommodate that,” said Young, who gave more than $19,000 in donations while he worked at New Breed.

...By 2007, DeJoy was carving his own path politically. With Giuliani leading in early polls for the Republican nomination for president, DeJoy signed on as co-chair of the former mayor’s North Carolina finance committee.

New Breed employees quickly followed.

DeJoy kicked off his fundraising effort by inviting a group of senior New Breed executives who had previously donated to Republicans while at the company to contribute, according to one of those who wrote a check. Campaign finance records show that New Breed employees gave Giuliani’s campaign more than $27,000 in one day.

Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment.

Less than a month later, when Giuliani made a swing through North Carolina, DeJoy invited a broader group of New Breed employees to contribute and take part in a fundraiser, according to people familiar with his outreach. The second effort netted about $40,000 from employees, campaign finance records show.

Moore, the plant director in Illinois, said he received the email inviting employees to give-- and he donated reluctantly.

Another middle manager at another New Breed facility said he received the solicitation, too, as well as encouragement in person from Meyer during a plant visit.

“He would come to me and say, ‘Louis is having this thing, and he really wants all the managers there, and you need to contribute,’ ” said the former employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he fears DeJoy could sue him.

The former employee said he recalled Meyer saying that not contributing was “not going to have any bearing on your job.”

But he worried that the reverse was true, he said. “You feel the pressure. They tell you it’s not there, and then they put it on you,” he said.





...After Giuliani’s campaign faltered, DeJoy pivoted and put his energy into backing the 2008 McCain-Palin ticket, organizing and hosting multiple fundraisers over the next year. Again, New Breed employees followed. Along with DeJoy, they contributed more than $180,000, FEC records show.

Four years later, an additional $193,000 flowed from DeJoy and other New Breed employees to the 2012 presidential campaign of Mitt Romney, now a U.S. senator from Utah.

Before the 2012 election, more than $170,000 in contributions from DeJoy and New Breed employees would also go to help lift McCrory to the North Carolina governor’s mansion, state campaign finance records show.

The following month, McCrory named Wos, DeJoy’s wife and a retired physician, as his choice for state health secretary.

In an interview, McCrory said Wos’s appointment had no connection to campaign contributions he received. “She was the most qualified person and I had to beg her to take the job,” he said.

Told of The Post’s findings, McCrory said: “I’m not aware of any of these claims.”

During her tenure, Wos drew scrutiny from Democrats after awarding a $310,000 state contract to Hauck, the New Breed employee who colleagues said had urged them to support DeJoy’s fundraising efforts.

At the time, Wos defended her pick, saying Hauck worked on a major restructuring of the department’s bureaucracy.

Hauck said he took a pay cut by going on leave from New Breed to work for Wos for 11 months. “I looked at it as serving,” he said in an interview.

ACTIVISM!

D.C. organizers figured out where DeJoy lives-- this condo in Kalorama-- so they're holding a "No Joy for DeJoy" noise demonstration at his building and stuffing mock absentee ballots into the gates.

The Trump Swamp Rears Its Ugly Head Again-- Elliott Broidy

I believe the first time I heard of Elliott Broidy was when the NY Times revealed him to be working with a very right-wing shady Mercer family SuperPAC, Secure America Now (SAN), which Broidy was using to leverage the Trump regime into filling key positions with individuals favorable to-- meaning, like Broidy himself, bought off by-- the Saudi and UAE governments. Mercer was one of just 4 uber-wealthy far-right and very crooked contributors providing SAN with the millions of dollars it needed for its entirely nefarious projects. The 3 other scumbags besides Mercer funding SAN are top Best Buy freaks Brad Anderson and Richard Schulze plus neo-fascist Estee Lauder heir Ronald Lauder.

Yesterday, Washington Post reporters Matt Zapotosky, Carol Leonnig and Rosalind Helderman wrote how now-- over two years later-- Broidy is finally about to be charged "in connection with efforts to influence the U.S. government on behalf of foreign interests, according to people familiar with the matter, a result of a sprawling, years-long investigation that involved a figure who helped raise millions for Donald Trump’s election and the Republican Party." By "influence the U.S. government," the meaning is clearly using Saudi and Emirati cash to bribe Señor Trumpanzee, who isn't being charged, at least not while he's living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

In fact this investigation had steered completely clear of Broidy's Saudi and Emerati paymasters-- a deal to protect Trump-- and is instead about Broidy's role as an unregistered lobbyist in "a campaign to persuade high-level Trump administration officials to drop an investigation of Malaysian government corruption, as well as for his attempt to push for the extradition of an outspoken Chinese dissident back to his home country." This gigantic mess is going to resulting a plea deal and, in all likelihood, an informal understanding with Trump that there will eventually be a pardon.

The case has intensified in recent weeks, with prosecutors securing a guilty plea Monday from one of Broidy’s business associates, Nickie Mali Lum Davis, who admitted to taking part in what prosecutors have described in charging documents as a “back-channel lobbying campaign” to end the Malaysian corruption investigation and to return Chinese exile Guo Wengui to his home country.

Guo is a vocal online critic of the Chinese government who was once allied with that country’s government elite but is now wanted by authorities in Beijing on charges of fraud, blackmail and bribery. He has denied those charges and said they are politically motivated.

According to a charging document filed in her case, Davis admitted she aided and abetted the efforts of two others involved in the influence campaigns, identified only as Person A and Person B. People familiar with the matter identified them as Fugees rapper Pras Michel and Broidy, respectively.





During a virtual hearing Monday before a federal judge in Honolulu, where Davis entered her guilty plea, prosecutors told a judge that charges may be filed against additional defendants in the case.

...The investigation puts a renewed focus on efforts by people close to the president to shape the fate of Guo, who has succeeded in remaining in the United States.

In the past few years, the Chinese billionaire has been closely aligned with Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s former campaign chief and top White House strategist. Bannon was on Guo’s yacht off the coast of Westbrook, Conn., when he was arrested last month for allegedly fleecing donors who supported a group that claimed to be building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

The investigation of Broidy has its roots in a massive probe of theft from a Malaysian government development fund that has come to be known by the shorthand “1MDB.” In previous civil and criminal cases, federal prosecutors have alleged that stolen funds that made their way into the United States were used to buy pricey real estate and even fund the award-winning movie The Wolf of Wall Street. Malaysia’s former prime minister Najib Razak was accused of being involved in the corruption. He was convicted in July and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

At the center of the case is a Malaysian businessman named Low Taek Jho, who was indicted in 2018 and accused of funneling tens of millions of dollars into the United States in part to get the Malaysian corruption investigation dropped. Low, who is facing multiple federal indictments, is believed to be in China, outside the reach of U.S. authorities. He has denied the allegations and said they are politically motivated.

According to court documents filed in association with Davis’s guilty plea this week, Broidy allegedly lobbied to have Guo removed from the United States at the request of Low and a Chinese government official.

Davis admitted that she met with the Chinese official-- who people familiar with the matter identified as Sun Lijun-- and the two people identified as Broidy and Michel in a Hong Kong hotel suite in May 2017, and Broidy soon launched a campaign that reached the top of the administration, court filings show.

According to the documents and people familiar with the matter, Broidy allegedly made various entreaties to people in the administration or close to it, including President Trump’s then-chief of staff, Reince Priebus; his former deputy campaign chairman, Rick Gates; and the president himself.

At one point, Broidy also tried to enlist the help of casino magnate and Trump friend Steve Wynn, according to the documents and the people with knowledge of the case. In August 2017, Broidy and Wynn called Trump from Wynn’s yacht and asked about Guo’s status.

Davis also admitted in court that she connected multiple calls between Wynn and Sun.

Reid Weingarten, an attorney for Wynn, declined to comment but said his client has been cooperating with investigators and continues to do so.

Wynn and Broidy worked closely together to get Trump elected in 2016 while they served as finance chairman and deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee.

Wynn made his own attempt to pass a message about Guo directly to Trump from Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to two people with knowledge of the episode. In a private meeting around June 2017, Wynn told Trump why Xi felt so strongly about the United States returning Guo to China, handing Trump two pictures of Guo, the people said.

At the time, Wynn had significant business interests involving China, operating a major casino in Macao.

Trump was eager to extradite Guo, as the Chinese wished, telling aides in an Oval Office meeting that he supported the plan, according to a former administration official familiar with his views.

Priebus passed along the extradition request to the National Security Council, where it was vetted by a senior White House lawyer, John Eisenberg, who conferred with then-White House Counsel Donald McGahn, the official said.

White House lawyers agreed that extradition, which was opposed by the Justice Department, would not be appropriate, according to the official. McGahn later told aides who asked about the status request, “We killed that,” the official said.

McGahn did not response to requests for comment. A White House spokesman referred questions about the episode to the National Security Council. An NSC spokesman declined to comment and referred questions to the Justice Department.

During the 2016 campaign, Broidy, a Los Angeles-based investor, helped corral big donors to support Trump’s campaign. After the election, he was appointed to serve as a national deputy finance chairman for the Republican National Committee.

Broidy resigned from that post in April 2018 in the wake of a report that he had paid a former Playboy model $1.6 million in exchange for her silence about a sexual affair. Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen-- another RNC fundraiser-- helped arrange the settlement, Broidy acknowledged at the time.

As part of the Malaysian corruption probe, the U.S. government has previously alleged that Michel and a former Justice Department employee, George Higginbotham, opened U.S. accounts to move Low’s money into the United States and fund the lobbying effort.

Davis acknowledged that she helped route an $8 million retainer to Broidy for the influence campaign and that Low offered to pay a $75 million “success fee” as part of a contract with Broidy’s wife’s law firm if the 1MDB case was resolved within 180 days.

Higginbotham pleaded guilty in November 2018 to illicitly facilitating the transfer of tens of millions of dollars into the United States to finance the lobbying effort.

According to Davis’s criminal information and people familiar with the matter, Broidy met with Trump at the White House in October 2017 and told others that he raised the subject of the 1MDB investigation.

A former attorney for Broidy told the Wall Street Journal in 2018 that at no time did Broidy, his wife, “or anyone acting on their behalf, discuss Mr. Low’s case with President Trump, any member of his staff, or anyone at the U.S. Department of Justice.”

Text messages and emails quoted in Davis’s plea documents show that Broidy messaged Gates, Trump’s former deputy campaign chairman, and Priebus in 2017 about arranging a visit for Malaysia’s prime minister and a possible golf outing with Trump. An attorney for Gates declined to comment.

Priebus responded but was noncommittal, saying the NSC was working on the matter, according to court filings and the people. Priebus declined to comment.

The prime minister did visit, but he did not golf with Trump, according to the court documents. The meeting was meant in part so the Malaysian prime minister could press Trump about ending the 1MDB case, according to the documents.

How many mentions of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Broidy's business partner (and a repeat child sex abuser and Erik Prince and UAE lobbyist), currently serving a 10 ten year prison term, George Nader in that Post report? How many mentions of Robert Mercer or SAN? Just the Fugees and Malaysia. Back in May of 2018, the Business Insider reported that after Broidy spent a year cultivating a couple of the corrupt princes from Arabian Peninsula, he "thought he was finally close to nailing more than $1 billion in business. He had ingratiated himself with crown princes from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who were seeking to alter US foreign policy and punish Qatar, an archrival in the Gulf that he dubbed 'the snake.' To do that, the California businessman had helped spearhead a secret campaign to influence the White House and Congress, flooding Washington with political donations. Broidy and his business partner, Lebanese-American George Nader, pitched themselves to the crown princes as a backchannel to the White House, passing the princes' praise-- and messaging-- straight to the president's ears... Broidy and Nader sought to get an anti-Qatar bill through Congress while obscuring the source of the money behind their influence campaign... Broidy's campaign to alter US policy in the Middle East and reap a fortune for himself shows that one of the president's top money men found the swamp as navigable as ever with Trump in office.

By December of last year, the partners were riding a wave of success in their campaign to create an anti-Qatar drumbeat in Washington.

Saudi Arabia was finding a new ascendancy following Trump's election. Broidy sought to claim credit for it, emails show, and was keen to collect the first installment of $36 million for an intelligence-gathering contract with the UAE.

It all might have proceeded smoothly save for one factor: the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel to look into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

In many ways, the partnership between Broidy, 60, and Nader, 59, embodies the insider influence that has given contractors in D.C. the nickname "beltway bandits."

Both of their careers were marked by high-rolling success and spectacular falls from grace-- and criminal convictions. The onset of the Trump administration presented an opportunity: a return to glory.

Broidy, who made a fortune in investments, was finance chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2006 to 2008. But when a New York state pension fund decided to invest $250 million with him, investigators found that he had plied state officials with nearly $1 million in illegal gifts while collecting $18 million in management fees.

In 2009, Broidy pleaded guilty to a felony charge of rewarding official misconduct.

"In seeking investments from the New York State Common Retirement Fund, I made payments for the benefit of high-ranking officials at the Office of the New York State Comptroller, who had influence and decision-making authority over investment decisions," Broidy said in his plea and cooperation agreement.

...Mueller's team was interested in two meetings that took place before Donald Trump's inauguration.

One was in the Seychelles, a tropical archipelago in the Indian Ocean, which drew scrutiny because it included Prince, an informal adviser to Trump, and Russian investor Kirill Dmitriev, who has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The meeting has prompted questions about whether it was an attempt to establish a backchannel between Russia and the incoming Trump administration.

The other meeting was at Trump Tower in New York.

Nader and MBZ were at both.

...In late September, Broidy arranged for the most coveted meeting for any lobbyist in Washington: an audience for himself with the president in the Oval Office.

In advance of the meeting, Nader wrote Broidy a script, an email shows. There were several objectives: to sell the idea for a Muslim fighting force, to keep the president from intervening on Qatar and to arrange a discreet meeting between Trump and the crown prince of Abu Dhabi.

The princes "are counting on you to relate it blunt and straight," Nader wrote.

Nader told Broidy the meeting was potentially historic and to "take advantage of this priceless asset."

And there was one more thing. Nader asked Broidy to tell the president about his connections with the crown princes, using code names for all three.

"Appreciate how you would make sure to bring up my role to Chairman," Nader emailed. "How I work closely with Two Big Friends."

After the Oct. 6 meeting, Broidy reported back to Nader that he had passed along the messages and had urged the president to stay out of the dispute with Qatar. He also said he explained Circinus' plan to build a Muslim fighting force.

"President Trump was extremely enthusiastic," he wrote. Broidy said Trump asked what the next step would be and that he told the president he should meet with the crown prince from the UAE, adding, "President Trump agreed that a meeting with MBZ was a good idea."

...Despite that successful readout, Nader wanted more: He wanted a photo of himself with the president-- a big request for a convicted pedophile.

Broidy was co-hosting a fundraiser for Trump and the Republican National Committee in Dallas on Oct. 25. The Secret Service had said Nader wouldn't be allowed to meet the president. It was not clear if the objections were related to his convictions for sexually abusing children.

Broidy drafted an email to Trump's chief of staff, John Kelly, asking him to intervene on behalf of his friend, whom he oddly called "George Vader"-- a misnomer that appears elsewhere in the emails.

"One of my companies does deep vetting for the US government," he wrote. "We ran all data bases including FBI and Interpol and found no issues with regard to Mr. Vader."

There was another issue. RNC officials had decreed there would be no photos with the president without payment. Broidy suggested that Nader meet the suggested threshold with a donation between $100,000 and $250,000.

It's unclear exactly how the two issues were resolved. Records from the Federal Election Commission show no donations from either George Nader or "George Vader," but on Nov. 30, Broidy gave $189,000 to the RNC-- more than he had given to the RNC in over two decades of Republican fundraising.

The result: a picture of Nader and Trump grinning in front of the American flag.

Broidy met Trump once again on Dec. 2. He reported back to Nader that he'd told Trump the crown princes were "most favorably impressed by his leadership." He offered the crown princes' help in the Middle East peace plan being developed by Jared Kushner. He did not tell Trump that his partner had complete contempt for the plan-- and for the president's son-in-law.

"You have to hear in private my Brother what Principals think of 'Clown prince's' efforts and his plan!" Nader wrote. "Nobody would even waste cup of coffee on him if it wasn't for who he is married to."

Days after Broidy's meeting with Trump, the UAE awarded Broidy the intelligence contract the partners had been seeking for up to $600 million over 5 years, according to a leaked email.

...The FBI raided the premises of Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, seeking information on hush money paid to porn actress Stormy Daniels, who said she'd had an affair with the president.

Broidy, it turned out, was also a Cohen client. He'd had an affair with Playboy bunny Shera Bechard, who got pregnant and later had an abortion. Broidy agreed to pay her $1.6 million to help her out, so long as she never spoke about it.

"I acknowledge I had a consensual relationship with a Playboy Playmate," Broidy said in a statement the day the news broke. He apologized to his wife and resigned from the RNC. There is no indication Broidy is under investigation by Mueller's team.

In the end, Nader and Broidy's anti-Qatar operation lost its momentum. There has been no traction on the effort to get the base in Qatar moved to the UAE. In late April, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called for an end to the bickering among Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar during a trip to the Gulf.

Terrible Rumor: Donald Norcross, A Conservative Democrat From New Jersey's Most Corrupt Political Family Is Being Vetted As Biden's Labor Secretary

Neoliberal Democratic presidents do a little balancing dance when they pick their first cabinets. They give a grotesque Wall Street whore the Treasury job and they gave a real progressive the Labor Secretary job. JFK's first Secretary of Labor was Arthur Goldberg, a Steelworkers general counsel who was appointed to the Supreme Court. JFK didn't even pretend when it came to the Treasury Secretary; he gave the job to conservative Republican and Wall Street bankster Douglas Dillon. Bill Clinton gave the Labor job to Robert Reich and then appointed 3 for the most conservative assholes to Treasury imaginable: Lloyd Bentsen, Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers. Obama gave Labor to Hilda Solis-- another outstanding progressive-- and Treasury to Wall Street creep Tim Geithner.

There's no reason to imagine Biden isn't going to find a nightmarish conservative for the Treasury job. Bank on it. And I think he intends to pick a progressive for Labor-- but not a real progressive. A rumor has been circulating in New Jersey and DC that he has his mind on a crooked pro-labor conservative congressman, Donald Norcross. How can Norcross be called a progressive? Well, he can't-- except that Mark Pocan sold him a spot in the Progressive Caucus and made him vice chair for labor. Norcross doesn't have an "A" rating from Progressive Punch, nor even a "B" or a "C." He doesn't even have a "D." Nope-- pure "F." That's Pocan's idea of a progressive-able-to-write-a-check. And Biden's people honed right in on it.

Norcross' big brother, George-- who gave him the congressional seat in 2014-- is the party boss of South Jersey and widely considered one of the most corrupt and venal Democrats in America-- just the kind Biden loves. He was also a Chris Christie ally.

And the front man for the Norcross appointment is Douglas McCarron, president of one of America's most right-wing union-- the Republican-leaning Carpenters, a union George Norcross controls. (They even have another crooked Democrat owned by George as Norcross' replacement in Congress, New Jersey Senate President Stephen Sweeney, another piece of crap.)

Worst California State Legislator? Is Anyone Worse Than Devon ("Proud White Guy")?

Everyone following politics throughout the nation has no doubt heard of Devin Nunes, his ridiculous hackery is legendary at this point. One interesting fact about Nunes is that his district overlaps with that of another terrible Devon whose name is nearly unknown outside of Sacramento-- Devon Mathis in California Assembly District 26, a chunk of the Central Valley, primarily Tulare County with sparsely populated Inyo County and a small piece of Kern County, the Kern River Valley.

In 2017, while Devin Nunes was colluding with the Russians on Trump's behalf, Devon Mathis made headlines in 2017 after reports came out that he allegedly assaulted a female member of his staff. A Sacramento Police Department investigation quickly wrapped up a month later with no charges filed. However, Mathis lost staff and his former chief of staff filed a lawsuit alleging he was fired after raising concerns about inappropriate behavior by Mathis.

In 2018, while Nunes was stepping up his collusion with Moscow, Mathis was sued by his former district director alleging sexual harassment and unfair pay practices. The California Assembly Rules Committee disciplined Mathis in 2018 for violating sexual harassment policy but gave so few details about the incident, that it is unknown whether the probe had been related to the staffer’s lawsuit. The only detail given was that the sexual harassment took the form of "sexual 'locker room talk'."

In a more recent scandal, Mathis was forced to donate $14,000 to charity from his campaign committee after serious criminal charges were leveled at Dr. Yorai Benzeevi, an executive who ran Healthcare Conglomerate Associates (HCCA). HCCA was the organization that had been donating-- as in bribing-- at least $14,000 to Mathis.

Mathis was approached by a local group called Citizens for Hospital Accountability who asked that Mathis request an audit of HCCA due to possible mismanagement of the Tulare Regional Medical Center. Mathis at first refused to request an audit, having been overheard once saying that he could not request an audit because he "owed Dr. Beenzeevi a favor." Mathis has, at this point, still not been arrested for taking bribes.

Later, Mathis signed a letter of support for an audit that had been requested by Senator Jean Fuller, but that support came nearly three years after the initial audit had been requested by local activists-- and after HCCA was removed as the hospital’s manager. Devon’s inaction let a bad situation deteriorate to the point that the Tulare Regional Medical Center was nearly closed on a permanent basis. Since then, the man to whom Mathis owed the favor, Dr. Benzeevi, has been charged with 40 felonies including counts of money laundering, conspiracy, embezzlement, and grand theft.

At this point you might be asking, how can Devon Mathis act as an effective legislator amid such extensive personal and professional scandal? The answer is-- he just doesn’t get much done. He delivers nearly nothing for the people in his district and has in fact continually voted against their interests. In the most recent legislative session, he was only able to get one of his thirty-seven bills passed and he has missed nearly 1,000 votes since first being sworn in in 2014.

Relating to the current pandemic, Mathis is one of the most prominent anti-vaccine leaders in the California Assembly. He refused to support a measure meant to provide additional funding to help fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and opposed efforts to require that hospitals furnish personal protective equipment (PPE) and that employees use the equipment supplied. He was also a trailblazer in putting children at risk, calling for schools to reopen in mid-May of 2020. Friday Tulare reported 95 new cases, bringing the county total to 13,117, with 210 already dead.

"Proud white guy"

As a cherry on top, there he was in 2019 on the floor of the Assembly saying that he is "a proud white guy" in response to his Black peers describing their experiences with law enforcement profiling. We’re sure everyone on the floor was happy he wanted that entered into the record in responses to valid critiques of poor police practices. 

Devon Mathis can truly be described as one of the worst legislators in Sacramento, on both a personal and professional level. His opponent, Tulare Democrat Drew Phelps, is someone we are in the midst of vetting right now... but so far, the process is going well as I feel in my gut we'll have an announcement coming in the next week or two about that.

California Is Burning-- But Trump Told FEMA Not To Help Because Not Enough Californians Voted For Him In 2016

There are dozens of wildfires raging across northern California right now-- primarily in Napa, Sonoma, Solano, Lake and Yolo counties. Thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes. At least 5 people, including 2 first responders, are dead. During his Convention segment Thursday night, Gavin Newsom said "If you are in denial about climate change, come to California." Led by Ted Lieu, the majority of California's congressional delegation has asked Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari to open an investigation into allegations-- watch the video from the former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff below-- that the federal government improperly denied or delayed aid to California wildfire victims. The letter follows allegations from a former Department of Homeland Security official that President Trump ordered FEMA to deny assistance to Californians because of the political demographics of the state. Taylor said that on a phone call with FEMA, Trump told them "to cut off the money and no longer give individual assistance to California. He told us to stop giving money to people whose houses had burned down from a wildfire because he was so rageful that people in the state of California didn't support him."





Trump has lost whatever bit of sanity he ever had. Although only 31.6% of Californians voted for him, that's still 4,483,810 people-- more voters than from any other states other than Texas and Florida. And most of the worst devastation from the fires were in Republican areas in the northeast corner of the state, solidly Republican CA-01, where a notorious Trump apologist and enabler, Doug LaMalfa is the congressman.

Ted Lieu's letter to Cuffari asks 4 questions all Californians should want to hear answered:

• Did the President or DHS officials improperly influence the issuance of any fire management assistance grant?
• Did the President or DHS officials improperly delay granting or deny any requests for an emergency or major disaster declaration?
• Did the President or DHS officials attempt to revoke or delay the distribution of any assistance that had already been granted to California fire victims?
• Did the President or DHS officials improperly deny requests from the State of California to adjust state and local cost share requirements associated with debris removal and emergency protective measures assistance?

Lieu asked every member of the California delegation to sign onto his letter. Most did-- but not a single Republican did. They rejected it out of hand. Kevin McCarthy, Devin Nunes, Ken Calvert, Tom McClintock, Paul Cook, Mike Garcia and, most shockingly, Doug LaMalfa all showed they would rather stand with Trump politically than stand with their own constituents in a life or death situation. California has 53 House members but just 7 are Republicans. In a justice world, there wouldn't be single California Republican left in Congress.

Liam O'Mara is a history professor in Riverside County running for the last southern California seat the GOP has managed to cling onto. Yesterday, after reading Lieu's letter-- and seeing Ken Calvert wasn't a signatory-- O'Mara noted that "Calvert is a hyper-partisan creature, afraid to buck this president and act in the interests of Californians. His spinelessness is part of the reason he's never chaired a committee and authored so little legislation-- he's afraid to stand out from the crowd. Our 'Representative' will never have the courage to challenge his own party leadership, even when doing so is transparently in the interests of his constituents and his home state. Failing to speak up as Californians die and their houses are destroyed is unconscionable and almost criminally negligent."

There's another corrosive "Devin" in the Central Valley-- it's a popular name among Republicans-- Devon Mathis of Tulare County, widely considered one of the California legislatures very worst members. His opponent is a young progressive first-time candidate, Drew Phelps, who told us that "Once again, California is faced with an unprecedented wildfire season. Meanwhile, to find out recently that the federal administration may have withheld past wildfire aid is extremely alarming. While our state leaders and the federal administration can bicker over policy differences, putting human lives at stake over those differences is never acceptable and should not be tolerated."

Jackie Fielder is running for California Assembly also, but in a November contest that pits her-- a staunch progressive-- against another Democrat, Scott Wiener, a corporate shill and conservative lackey of special interests. Jackie told me yesterday that "Californians affected by the wildfires are Americans, too. Whether the President likes it or not, he is their president. It’s disgusting he would let politics get in the way of providing relief for people who are being asked to leave their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs in the middle of the night. We simply don’t have enough resources to fight these fires and save lives."

Global Warming Is Accelerating. (In Other News, Democrats Reverse Platform, Won't End Fossil Fuel Subsidies)

The three colors in the chart represent odds that a season will be perceived as cool (blue), normal (white) or hot (red). In 1950 to 1980, if represented on a six-sided dice, there were two blue sides, two red sides and two white sides. "The dice are now loaded, really loaded. ... Four sides of the die are now red (hot) and one side is deep red for extreme heat, more than three standard deviations warmer than in 1951-1980. Dark red (22%) is creeping onto another side" (James Hansen et. al.)

by Thomas Neuburger

As we contemplate the political events of the week — the Republican takeover of the Democratic Party and convention; Democratic media adjunct MSNBC lying about AOC's Party-approved nomination of Bernie Sanders (before changing their headline); Bill Clinton daring to show his face in public, and post-MeToo leadership letting him — it's nevertheless impossible not to be overwhelmed by this.

 • "Good morning. The Greenland ice sheet has past the melting point of no return"

"[I]ce that’s discharging into the ocean is far surpassing the snow that’s accumulating on the surface of the ice sheet" — Michalea King, lead author of the study and a researcher at The Ohio State University’s Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center.

"[S]tarting in 2000, you start superimposing that seasonal melt on a higher baseline—so you’re going to get even more losses,” meaning the melt-rate has permanently accelerated while the snowfall has not. 

But there's a bright side: “It’s always a positive thing to learn more about glacier environments, because we can only improve our predictions for how rapidly things will change in the future ... The more we know, the better we can prepare.”

We're learning how to learn sooner how wrong we are, "so we can better prepare." That's the bright side.

 • "Record Arctic blazes may herald new ‘fire regime’ decades sooner than anticipated"

"Something’s changed in the environment there" — Mark Parrington, senior scientist and wildfire expert at the EU’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service.

“This is the type of fire event that would be described by these worst-case modeling scenarios that were supposed to occur mid-century” — Jessica McCarty, a wildfire expert at Miami University of Ohio.

Mid-century (2050) Arctic fires now occur regularly.

 • "Global warming is accelerating. 12-month mean peaked just below prior maximum"

"[G]lobal temperature is clearly running well above the linear trend that existed for decades" — climate scientist James Hansen

"1) That jump off the linear trend ought to scare the crap out of you. 2) Who but the careful public managers of your emotions say that being batcrap-scared is a useless response to the climate?" — Yours truly

Nonetheless, not everyone is scared.

 • "Democrats Drop Demand To End Fossil Fuel Subsidies From Party Platform"

"Roughly half of all U.S. oil reserves required subsidies to generate a profit, according to a study published in the journal Nature Energy in 2017, and that was before the price of crude plunged far below $50 a barrel." — Huffington Post writer Alexander Kaufman.

“This platform is a step backwards” — Charlie Jiang, Greenpeace.

• "DNC’s Flip-Flop on Fossil Fuel Subsidies Follows Deep Ties the Industry"

"In August 2018, the DNC approved a resolution from Chair Tom Perez that reversed a DNC policy prohibiting it from accepting contributions from fossil fuel PACs. ... Shortly thereafter, donations from fossil fuel executives began flowing into DNC coffers." — Donald Shaw, money-in-politics editor and co-founder, Sludge

 • "A-a-and we're done..." — Yours truly

If the question is climate, who with any power is the answer? Certainly not Joe Biden.

The real answer, of course, is the people, but only if they know it.
 

Culture Of Corruption-- Mitch McConnell's Pandemic Relief Bill... And Plenty Of The Worst Dems In Congress Love The Worst Parts Of It

UnAmerican by Chip Proser

House Democrats passed a $3 trillion dollar recovery and stimulus package in May. The Republicans' bill, finally revealed last night, was about a third of that-- and McConnell said, arbitrarily, that it will likely represent lawmakers’ last major legislative response to the coronavirus pandemic. What an asshat! That's up to the pandemic not some closet case from Kentucky to determine. Besides, if he doesn't die sooner, he'll likely be out of power in a few months anyway. Washington Post reporters Jeff Stein, Laura Meckler and Tony Romm wrote that the two bills are so dissimilar that "the path toward a final compromise [is] unclear on many key questions."

The GOP legislation left out some White House priorities, such as the president’s demand for a payroll tax cut, but includes more than $100 billion for America’s schools; a liability shield to protect businesses from coronavirus-related lawsuits; another round of direct stimulus payments; a new round of funding for the Paycheck Protection Program, as well as more money for emergency business loans; and a reduced extension of emergency federal unemployment benefits, among other measures.

The legislation is also notable for what it leaves out, as the GOP opted against including new funding for state and local governments, and hazard pay for essential front-line workers, among other policies pushed by congressional Democrats.

So... let's compare. Over 20 million people are collecting enhanced unemployment benefits-- or were; it runs out this week. It was $600/week. McConnell's bill lowers that to $200. Pelosi's bill extends the $600 benefit. And even in the Deep Red South, voters want more pandemic relief, not less:

In McConnell's bill, the one-time government stimulus check is for another $1,200 for the same people who got it last time. Pelosi's would make the benefit bigger by providing families with an additional $1,200 for reach child for up to three children, whereas the initial bill approved in March gave families only $500 per child.

And then comes the GOP "liability shield," which prevents businesses and other institutions from being sued for 5 years even if they're found guilty of negligence in the deaths of employees and customers. McConnell has basically said that without this, there will be no package whatsoever. Democratic leaders oppose it but I suspect that the corrupt New Dems and Blue Dogs like it as much as Republicans and will force Pelosi and Hoyer to give in eventually. Just watch.

McConnell isn't interested in aiding local governments, which is a key Democratic demand-- a trillion dollars worth. Presumably the Democrats will get part of their wish on this one in return for McConnell's liability shield.

Stein, Meckler and Romm wrote that "The GOP bill includes $105 billion for education, with $70 billion targeted to K-12 schools. Of that, two-thirds of the funding reserved to help schools to reopen for in-person instruction. To get the funding schools would have to meet certain 'minimum opening requirements' established by their states. Trump has demanded that schools open fully for the fall term, even as covid-19 cases rise. He’s threatened to pull federal funding from those who don’t. He doesn’t have the power to do that, but he has insisted that new funding be tied to schools reopening... Senate Democrats are demanding more total money for schools, although House Democrats’ package has slightly less. Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), the top Democrat on the Senate Education Committee, proposed $175 billion for K-12 schools and $132 billion for higher education plus a $33 billion flexible Governor’s Fund."

As for the troubled and corrupted Paycheck Protection Program, McConnell wants to throw about $190 billion in to support second loans for PPP recipients and another $100 billion for long-term loans to seasonal businesses and businesses in poor neighborhoods. Democrats will likely be fine with this.

McConnell is proposing $16 billion in funding for testing; $16 billion for the National Institutes of Health; and $3 billion for the Centers for Disease Control in their efforts to contain the virus, also likely to be fine with Senate Democrats.

As we mentioned earlier, the GOP wants to make business meals 100% deductible (instead of 50% as they are now). This has been a Trump priority forever.

Other nonsense proposals having nothing to do with the pandemic include $686 million for new #F35 fighter jets-- because, of course, fighter jets are well known for their pandemic fighting abilities.

And that ain't all. Trump forced McConnell to include nearly $2 billion in the relief bill "for the design and construction of a Washington, D.C. headquarters facility for the Federal Bureau of Investigation." Why? CNN reported Señor T personally demanded this. Why? Simple: "Plans to relocate the FBI from the aging Hoover building, which had been in the works since at least 2012, could have resulted in the construction of a hotel to compete with Trump's hotel a block away... In late 2018, senior House Democrats said they had reviewed documents indicating that Trump was 'directly involved with the decision to abandon the long-term relocation plan and instead move ahead with the more expensive proposal to construct a new building on the same site, and thereby prevent Trump Hotel competitors from acquiring the land.'" Always a scumbag.

And speaking of scumbags... anything co-sponsored by a Republican, in this case, Mitt Romney, with the four biggest conservative suck-ups in the Senate, Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Joe Manchin (WV), Doug Jones (AL) and Mark Warner (VA) can only be scumbaggery. In this case, the inclusion of their so-called Trust Act into the bill. It's a toxic brew from right-wing advocacy groups, including the Koch-funded organization Americans for Prosperity, that will allow the Senate to try again to dismantle Social Security. Because, you know how much that belongs in a pandemic rescue package. Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare: "This would allow benefit cuts to be fast-tracked through Congress. Seniors and people with disabilities need their benefits boosted, not slashed. Like payroll tax cuts, the TRUST Act is bad medicine for everyday Americans struggling to stay financially afloat, especially during the Covid crisis."

Alex Lawson and Nancy Altman, respectively, executive director and president of Social Security Works: "Trump and his stooges in the Senate can't stop trying to rob us of our Social Security. They will use every opportunity and every crisis-- including the mass death and economic carnage from Covid-- as cover for their sick desire to destroy our Social Security system." And Altman warned the TRUST ACT is "a way to undermine the economic security of Americans without political accountability. Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and all congressional Republicans have made their priorities clear. In the midst of a catastrophic pandemic, they should be focused on protecting seniors, essential workers, and the unemployed. Instead, they are plotting to use the cover of the pandemic to slash Social Security. Democrats must stand united and unequivocally reject any package that includes the TRUST Act."

There are also 30 House Democrats eager to destroy Social Security-- the worst of the worst garbage among House Dems. Here's a letter they signed to Pelosi advocating for Romney's Trust Act:

• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)
• Ben McAdams (Blue Dog-UT)
• Dean Phillips (New Dem-MN)
• Ed Case (Blue Dog-HI)
• Stephanie Murphy (Blue Dog-FL)
• Kathleen Rice (New Dem-NY)
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR)
• Derek Kilmer (New Dem-WA)... Rebecca Parson is priamrying him next week
• Jimmy Panetta (New Dem-CA)
• Cindy Axne (New Dem-IA)
• Tom O'Halleran (Blue Dog-AZ)... Eva Putzova is primarying him next week
• Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog-NY)
• Ron Kind (New Dem-WI)
• Kendra Horn (Blue Dog-OK)
• Abigail Spanberger (Blue Dog-VA)
• Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN)... Keeda Haynes is primarying him next week
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
• Xochitl Torres Small (Blue Dog-NM)
• Dan Lipinksi (Blue Dog-IL)... defeated by Marie Newman in a primary
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
• Joe Cunningham (Blue Dog-SC)
• Harley Rouda (New Dem-CA)
• Ann Kuster (New Dem-NH)
• Colin Allred (New Dem-TX)
• Lou Correa (Blue Dog-CA)
• Chrissy Houlahan (New Dem-PA)
• Terri Sewell (New Dem-AL)
• Sharice Davids (New Dem-KS)
• Gil Cisneros (New Dem-CA)

That's basically a list of the 30 Democrats in the House who should be defeated in November if they survive primary season, as most of them have. When someone mentions the "Republican wing of the Democratic Party"... that's the House contingent. One more thing about the McConnell bill-- David Sirota reported that "while raking in cash from health care industry donors, McConnell and his cronies copied and pasted Cuomo's incredibly corrupt corporate immunity law into their new COVID relief package... word-for-word.

Adam Christensen is the progressive candidate running in north-central Florida for the seat that Ted Yoho is abandoning. He told me today that he had recently spent the morning at Grace marketplace in Gainesville. "Grace," he said, "is an organization that works to find permanent housing for the chronically homeless. They have done an absolutely amazing job to prevent the spread of COVID-19 with those that they are working with. But they also told me that they feared they would be overrun in the next couple months. That if evictions start to happen, and people start to lose their homes that there are almost 28,000,000 people that will be at risk of being on the street. We also have reports of people walking around in poor neighborhoods offering cash to buy homes (for pennies on the dollar) taking advantage of desperate people. Before the pandemic 40% of people in the U.S. were living paycheck to paycheck and only had $400 in their accounts. That money is now gone. Unless we take bold and drastic steps now, we are going to see a level of poverty and pain that the United States has never experienced before. That is why I have backed an emergency UBI of $2,000 a month, so that people are able to get through this crisis. Because if we don’t start taking care of people instead of just donors then our problems are only going to get worse." Suggestion: give Adam a hand with his campaign here. You'll never find his name on a list of Democrats who want to dismantle Social Security.